MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by jerf | 2025-08-04 13:15:51+00:00
The major problem with understanding articles like this is that while it typically doesn't involve quantum entanglement, it's close enough to quantum that it makes the science writers get all giddy about the words they are throwing around and they do their usual "why inform the reader about what is going on when we can just make them go Gee Whiz" schtick.

The key word is "quasi-particle" which is somewhat less exotic than it sounds. It is a combination of what you might call real or normal particles that produces some sort of pattern in it that itself acts like a particle of some sort. The resulting "quasi-particle" can have all kinds of interesting properties that normal particles can't have on their own, but what makes them "quasi" is that they can't exist on their own. They're intrinsically on top of some substrate of normal particles.

One of the simplest quasiparticle is the "electron hole". Take a lattice of some electrically neutral substance. Remove one electron from it. There is now an "electron hole" in it. You can treat that hole like a particle now. It can "move" to another location by having the real electrons change places. It can "flow" through a series of such events. You can model a lot of things with "electron holes" that act in very particle-like ways. But they don't exist on their own. This one is simple because you don't even need quantum mechanics to get a hold of it in your head.

Many more complicated scenarios are possible. Many interesting things can happen with them. Most, if not all, news articles about "new phases of matter", which science writers love to write about only slightly less than making "woo woo" motions with their fingers while talking about quantum entanglement, are new quasiparticles of some sort. This is somewhat less interesting than they think because if you include quasiparticles as "phases of matter" then there are already hundreds or thousands, but the science writer wants to write an article about every single one of them as if the list is now "solid, liquid, gas, Weyl semimetals" and then write the next article as if the list is now "solid, liquid, gas, ELECTRON HOLE" and so on and so on for each new quasiparticle.

But from this perspective, the list hasn't been so short as "solid, liquid, gas" for well over a hundred years now, and while adding a new one is often good science, it has also been "just" another one of thousands for a while now.

This post is not an explanation of "spin ice", "Wely fermions", or anything else; what this is is the "secret decoder ring" to remove the wiggly fingers and the "woo woo" noises the science writers add to this topic every time they write about it and to give you the terms you can Google and start reading up on what is one of the most interesting and productive fields in the hard sciences right now. Everyone loves to talk about how stuck particle physics is, but physics is making a lot of interesting findings in the field of making the particles we know about sing and dance in all sorts of new and interesting ways.
by TrackerFF | 2025-08-04 13:16:35+00:00
We received a presentation/demo of their products when I worked in the gov (not the US gov. though) a couple of years ago.

They seemed, okay? I mean nothing seemed mind-blowing. I worked on surveillance in a specific sector, where interagency collaboration is important. Hence why Palantir pitched their tools.

I'm not sure how they've managed to blow up like that. Do they have some extensive network with gov. officials, in the same way top management consulting firms operate?

EDIT: Basically their pitch was that if agency A and B (and C, D, etc.) connected their data sources to the tool (I think it was Gotham), then identifying and catching threat actors would be much easier, and that their software would streamline this.
by Fade_Dance | 2025-08-04 13:16:54+00:00
They fingerprint users and ban all associated accounts.

...and believe it or not, it takes months of appeals for some Shadowbanned users to have their appeal lifted. What I'm not sure about is if there is a hidden ban length, and if submitting an appeal automatically lifts the ban if the ban length has passed. I'm guessing that this is the actual case of how it all works.
by kehiy | 2025-08-04 13:17:31+00:00
We saw LLMs are able to call tools for a long time and we even saw protocols like MCP out there to make it more standard.

It's simple to understand how it work at the surface level, but for me the big question was how a large LANGUAGE mode calls a tool? It was obvious that they had to SAY it and ask to the client somehow to do it for them, but they are very dynamic? how do we force them to always respond in a known format? So, based on this video I just understand they are fine-tuning models to learn how to call a tool correctly in standard form.

You may knew this, but it was always a question for me and after a long time I had enough time to do a search about it.
by FuriouslyAdrift | 2025-08-04 13:17:45+00:00
I used to do support for a service that did transcription for doctors. The doctors would call in and tell the medical transcriptionist what to type and they would do the input.

It always seemed incredibly inefficient and expensive but hospital management told me this was the most dependable way to get accurate records and even a single lost lawsuit would cost more than the service.

It's stupid, but that's the world we live in.
by JimDabell | 2025-08-04 13:17:46+00:00
> I'm also a researcher and agree wholeheartedly with the article.

The article says:

> Yet, every time I tried to get LLMs to perform novel research, they fail because they don’t have access to existing literature on the topic.

You say:

> LLMs can maybe help you sift through existing literature

> they can be used or background research in hypothesis generation by finding pairs of related terms in the literature

As far as I can see, these two positions are mutually exclusive. Aren’t you disagreeing with the article?
by SideburnsOfDoom | 2025-08-04 13:17:57+00:00
Yes, this. Here's Loeb 2 years ago on Oumuamua - was it Aliens?

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/astronomer-avi-lo...

https://earthsky.org/space/oumuamua-a-comet-avi-loeb-respond...

Here's Loeb on space dust - was it Aliens?

https://www.livescience.com/space/extraterrestrial-life/alie...

He's doing what he usually does. It's fun to think about, but not to be taken too seriously or regarded as anything unique.
by george87 | 2025-08-04 13:18:12+00:00
Location: Europe Remote: Yes Willing to relocate: Yes Technologies: Java (Spring, Swing, FX), JavaScript (Node, React, D3), Python (2, 3), various SQL & NoSQL data stores, ETL platforms, UI/UX design tools, AI/LLM tools, Git, AWS, etc. Résumé/CV: www.linkedin.com/in/georgetanev/ Email: geotanjazz@gmail.com

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by mschuster91 | 2025-08-04 13:18:19+00:00
> Anyway just wanted to note there is no known policy that would stop rural flight.

Actually, there is. Industry steering politics...

Look at Eastern Germany for example. After the 90s people fled in droves (and neo-Nazis moved in to pursue their dreams of "national befreite Zonen" settlements that they couldn't have in Western Germany), but "Silicon Saxony" is a lighthouse that attracts industries and talent from all over the world, even if Intel's fab plans shattered due to Intel's often-described internal issues.

The thing is, for this to work, governments and especially their politicians have to be willing to think decades in the future - and they have to put money where their mouth is, and build the surrounding infrastructure as well: roads, rail, high speed internet, schools and universities.

That, however, is where many Western governments utterly and completely failed ever since Thatcher and the emergence of rabid unchecked capitalism, tax races to the bottom, "trickle down" and "small state" ideology. When the government doesn't have funds to invest into developing the industries of the future, you'll get the issues that almost all Western societies have.

China in contrast has used the shitload of money they got from the Western countries over the last quarter century (when they joined the WTO) to do exactly this. For all that I hate the CCP for various reasons, their way of thinking in five-year plans plus even longer macroeconomic planning has proven to be incredibly successful.
by netcyrax | 2025-08-04 13:18:25+00:00
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by palebt | 2025-08-04 13:18:49+00:00
SEEKING WORK | REMOTE | Worldwide availability (EU based)

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by mrweasel | 2025-08-04 13:19:09+00:00
I don't really know why that "understandable". We see this with so many TV shows and movie francises. There's a reason why there's only two seasons of The Office in the UK version, but it's just beaten to death in the US version. Same with The Simpsons, Futurama, Big Bang Theory, pretty much the entire Marvel francise, Star Wars, Jurassic Park and so many more shows and movies.

You just find yourself in the corner yield "Please stop, it dead! It's been dead for years!" For example Star Wars, that francise is completely ruined, but the fans are insufferable and just keeps pouring money into something that quite frankly sucks by now.

Why must everything be milked dry to the point where we start hating it?
by npilk | 2025-08-04 13:19:27+00:00
HTMX is amazing for simpler web apps. If you have a ton of complexity, need to manage a lot of state, etc., I can see how it would be frustrating trying to get everything to fit into HTMX's patterns. In fact, it might actually increase complexity. But, if you have something smaller and want to make it more interactive, React is way overkill and HTMX is a breath of fresh air.

I think a lot of the arguments over HTMX come down to this difference. The people that love it see how much better it is for their use case than something like React, while the critics are finding it can't replace bigger frameworks for more demanding projects.

(Here's an example interface made with HTMX. IMO React would have been overkill for this compared to how simple it was with HTMX. https://www.bulletyn.co )
by watwut | 2025-08-04 13:19:44+00:00
You are the one who is making the claim that goes both against what historical data show and against what economists say.

So, yeah, predictability matter. Institution do not want to invest based on something that goes up and down randomly.

> Is your only objective is to ensure that local manufacturers pay the least amount possible for their raw materials? This is very simplistic view of things.

Well, yeah, them paying more is rather massive obstacle. You know what is simplistic view of things? Belief that Trump will make economy better, because you like his fraudster personality and would like to be like him.
by spacebanana7 | 2025-08-04 13:20:19+00:00
If something is solved at the OS level it probably needs to vary by OS. Just like how an application layer solution to parsing data must vary slightly between nodeJS and java.

For a solution to be truly generic to OS, it's likely better done at the network level. Like by putting your traffic through a proxy that only allows traffic to certain whitelisted / blacklisted destinations.
by okacodes | 2025-08-04 13:20:23+00:00
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by _mlbt | 2025-08-04 13:20:30+00:00
I think people misunderstand how MWR funds work. The military isn't taking this gambling money to buy bombs and bullets with.

The funds that the military themselves provide for MWR are very small. Most MWR facilities and activities are funded by what are called non-appropriated funds (NAFs). NAFs are essentially earned through charging fees for services, such as renting equipment like RVs, bounce houses, and other things. MWR funds are also provided from the profits earned by on post golf courses, post exchanges (basically military Walmart), gas stations, etc.

That being said, I do agree that this practice should be ended immediately, as gambling is unhealthy and corrosive to good military order and discipline.
by twalkz | 2025-08-04 13:21:13+00:00
Such a lovely show! It’s always fun to see examples of how it takes so much intention to make something that appears simple.

For any adults who have either never heard of Bluey, or never thought of watching a “kids” show, maybe try to an episode the next time you can’t figure out what to stream next. “Sleepy time” (season 2 episode 26) is one of the most renown, but they’re all pretty good! (https://www.bluey.tv/watch/season-2/sleepytime/)
by amiga386 | 2025-08-04 13:21:17+00:00
If this is just evil old Valve, why did itch.io - a site founded on openness and the right to sell adult-only games, especially if they cover LGBT themes, tell everyone that their payment processors also want them not to offer adult-only games?

Which is more likely:

1. Porn-hating, sex-hating, LGBT-hating activist group from Australia bombards Mastercard with complaints that Valve and Itch are selling adult games. Mastercard reminds its payment processors not to bring shame on The Mark. Valve's and Itch's payment processors tell them not to sell adult games.

2. Porn-hating, sex-hating, LGBT-hating activist group from Australia bombards Mastercard with complaints that Valve and Itch are selling adult games. Valve and Itch agree with these harpies and remove their revenue streams and support for developers (because they hate revenue and hate supporting their developers; they'd much rather align with moral prudes from Australia in order to lose money and abandon the people who make them that money), then they sneakily pin the blame on Mastercard. Valve and Itch also use telepathy to know Collective Shout's desires, which they agree with, to ban games precisely at the time Collective Shout are calling up Mastercard, in order for it to be Collective Shout -> Valve/Itch rather than Collective Shout -> Mastercard -> Payment processors -> Valve/Itch
by protoduction | 2025-08-04 13:21:50+00:00
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by EGreg | 2025-08-04 13:22:13+00:00
Ok so let’s see

You need a roof over your head and some food to eat

But whoops, no one is willing to pay you enough to do that.

This was already in 2013:

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/80-percent-of-us-adults-face-ne...

And this is now:

https://www.acainternational.org/news/2024-paycheck-to-paych...
I built a tool to track how visible your brand is to ChatGPT and Claude
by nojus_li | 2025-08-04 13:22:19+00:00
Hey folks,

I got obsessed with how AI engines like ChatGPT, Claude, SGE etc. actually find and recommend stuff. Turns out, most websites, especially Shopify stores are invisible to them. Not just bad SEO, but bad structure, metadata, missing context.

I am building https://eleway.app to tackle these, give it a shot!

Still rough around the edges. Feedback very welcome, especially from folks deep in AI/discovery/Shopify.
by rossdavidh | 2025-08-04 13:22:20+00:00
I can tell you that the press sometimes looks at HN for material, anyway. Several years ago I made a comment on HN, and it got seen by someone at the New York Times who asked me to write an opinion piece based on it: https://www.rosshartshorn.net/stuffrossthinksabout/nyt_opini...

But, "the press" is normally considered to be content generated by people doing that for a living (albeit not necessarily a good one), and most HN contributors do other things for a living.
by XorNot | 2025-08-04 13:23:04+00:00
So either the war goes immediately nuclear, in which case no one wins but the US has a significant missile advantage, or it doesn't in which case China will be facing down an adversary with a 11 aircraft carriers and their support flotillas, as well as deep magazines of long range antishipping missiles and the largest submarine fleet in the world and the largest airforce in the world.

China has a lot of resources, but they have not turned those into the type of resources which can fight and defeat the US military conventionally and have a serious power-projection problem compared to the logistical mobility the US military enjoys mastery of.

Which again highlights the absurdity of saying "couldn't defeat the Houthis, can't defeat China" as though you're comparing apples to apples.

The other absurdity is of course the supposition that anyone wants a war to be good for business: checkout how that's going for Russia's defence contractors. No: the fear of a war is good for business. An arms build up or modernization program is good for business. An actual war is ubiquitously terrible for business.
by A_D_E_P_T | 2025-08-04 13:23:06+00:00
Even if we grant that China is anything like Iraq (it sure ain't!), that was more than 20 years ago.

Last year, and not for want of trying, the US Navy sure didn't do anything to destroy the Houthi's conventional military capabilities. They're still sinking ships left and right! So much for freedom of navigation and freedom of the seas.

> https://edition.cnn.com/world/middleeast/eternity-c-houthi-r...

Now imagine the USN actually has to fight a war in shallow waters against a foe that's literally 10,000x better armed and equipped than the Houthis, and with a capacity for industrial production that dwarfs its own.

War is a measuring rod. Before it begins, each side guesses at its own strength and the other's will. Often it guesses wrong. (In Ukraine, NATO overrated its weapons and tactics, Russia both overrated its own capabilities, and underrated Ukraine's resolve.) But if both sides know the truth beforehand, they don't fight to begin with. Thus there's literally zero chance that there's a war between the US and China in 2027, because the outcome is not really in doubt.
by JimDabell | 2025-08-04 13:23:22+00:00
Not those numbers, but you might be interested in Netflix using generative AI:

> Using AI-powered tools, they were able to achieve an amazing result with remarkable speed and, in fact, that VFX sequence was completed 10 times faster than it could have been completed with traditional VFX tools and workflows

> The cost of [the special effects without AI] just wouldn’t have been feasible for a show in that budget

— https://www.theguardian.com/media/2025/jul/18/netflix-uses-g...

Discussed on Hacker News here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44602779
by tim333 | 2025-08-04 13:23:25+00:00
>...backtrack once they realized how the users' expectations are misaligned with what LLMs...

Not my experience as an Apple user. The issue was not that I expected something better than an LLM. It was that I'm used to ChatGPT and the Apple AI was rubbish in comparison.

And if did useless stuff like mangled summaries of messages. If I could set if to know what files I have and web pages I'd used and could ask "which file do I have the holiday records in?" etc. then that would be useful.
by debo_teamWork | 2025-08-04 13:23:35+00:00
I've just released version 0.1.0 of a project I've been building called Debo — a lightweight, terminal-first Hadoop cluster management tool inspired by Apache Ambari, but redesigned for simplicity, modularity, and ease of deployment.

GitHub: https://github.com/Debo-et/debo-teamwork
0€ budget, 120 users in 2 months and still not viral
by cesargstn | 2025-08-04 13:24:08+00:00
I'm working on Unzipme, a tool for content creators that meets a real need.

No advertising budget, no marketing team. Just ideas, a little nerve, and a lot of DMs.

Result: 120 users in 2 months.

It's cool. But not yet viral. And that's where it gets tricky.

Because at the beginning, you go after each user one by one.

You make posts, you join discussions, you reply to comments, you contact people.

But you quickly realize that this model isn't scaling.

And then the obsessive question becomes: "How do I trigger word of mouth? The real thing. The viral thing."

If you've already managed to take this leap, to go from "cool little project" to "snowball effect":

how did you do it? Or if you're like me: let's share our tests, our fails and our surprises.
by Mizza | 2025-08-04 13:24:10+00:00
Related to this is Loeb's proposal to nudge the Juno spacecraft, currently orbiting Jupiter and soon facing EOL, into the path of 3I/Atlas to try to scan it and snap some pictures. I doubt it has enough fuel left, but I hope they're looking into it.

https://avi-loeb.medium.com/how-close-can-the-juno-spacecraf...
by jzb | 2025-08-04 13:24:27+00:00
If you didn't laugh, I would say "not funny".

I didn't find it funny, myself, but I did find it to be a pretty good takedown. It's not funny (to me, anyway) because "humor equals tragedy plus time". It'll be funny in 10 years if/when we're not living in an AI slop hellscape and being constantly bombarded with AI marketing/having it shoved down our collective throats. Right now it's just "ugh, so true".