MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by derektank | 2025-08-03 18:25:39+00:00
Was supporting Operation Warp Speed and the delivery of Covid vaccines evil? General Perna, the logistics lead for OWS regularly called out Palantir as being instrumental in helping the extract and loal local and state data into a single national dashboard, making the rapid rollout possible without losing vaccines to a poorly planned cold chain

"Perna: The system we set up was based on the foundation and the collaboration of local and federal government and industry. We did this, really, with almost perfection. Never been done before. We opened up over 70,000 locations across the country that could receive and administer vaccine. We had to create data-use agreements with the states in order to put an ERP in place to track the vaccine. Then we had to validate the 70,000 locations through the CDC, so that they could receive it and administer it. Because our goal was, we wanted people to have access in places they were comfortable being: a local doctor’s office, a hospital, CVS, Walgreens, Wal-Mart.

Gilsinan: They say plans don’t survive first contact with the enemy. I’m curious what adjustments became warranted in those first few weeks and why.

Perna: That plan worked. We brought in Palantir. Palantir created a system that allowed us to see ourselves from manufacturing all the way down to the distribution sites."

https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2022/05/12/gus-perna-...
by atoav | 2025-08-03 18:25:55+00:00
As someone somewhat critical of LLMs, this is not quite correct. It is a true observation thwt any popular chatbots have a system prompt that give the resulting answers a certain yes-man quality. But that is not necessarily so. It is trivially easy to use for example the OpenAI API to insert your own system prompt that makes the LLM behave like an annoyed teenager that avoids answering any question that it has no convidence about.

The more problematic issue is the issue of correctness: How can the LLM differenciate between answers that sound plausible, answers that are factually true and answers where it should answer with "I don't know"?

The issue might not be resolvable at all. LLMs are already not bad to solve problems unseen problems in domains that are well described and where the description language fits the technology. But there are other domains where it is catastrophically wrong, e.g. I had students come with an electronics proposal where the LLM misrepresented the relationship between cable gauge, resistance and heat in exactly the opposite way of what is true. Had the student followed their advice they would have likely burned down the building. Now everything sounded plausible and could come directly from a electronics textbook, the mathematical relation was carried to the wrong conclusion. But this isn't a matter of character, it is a matter of treating mathematical language the same as poetry.
by benreesman | 2025-08-03 18:27:26+00:00
Listen, I think its bullshit what happened to the Windsurf people. And I'm happy that the Figma people didnt get crammed down with some scam ass preference assplay.

But blaming Lina Khan for the crime orgy that started the minute she was forced out is silly.

Go stick that blade where it belongs. I'll help any way I can.

https://youtu.be/pDaELkYEC_g
by sgnelson | 2025-08-03 18:27:26+00:00
FabAcademy which is the course taught by the same professor, but not part of MIT, includes a "wildcard" week where you can choose what to do. Many students will do embroidery using a embroidery machine. A number of final projects will also include sewing/textiles.

A friend of mine final project: https://fabacademy.org/2022/labs/charlotte/students/nidhie-d...

Also, as someone already mentioned, see fabricacademy.

Edit:

What about making a cast iron skillet from scratch? https://fabacademy.org/2024/labs/dilijan/students/shushanik-...
by const_cast | 2025-08-03 18:27:38+00:00
Telling people the truth about themselves cannot destroy someone's reputation - rather, they destroy their own reputation.

People "cancel" those on the Right because the Right constantly proposes laws that directly, and indisputably, harm them.

I don't want to be friends with Republicans not because I'm bitter or mean - but because I'm just not friends with people who wish me harm. That's not what a friendly person does.

Now, if you lie, that's a different story. But you don't need to lie to destroy someone's reputation. For most republican voters, you can just tell the truth.

But, if you find the notion of the truth a threat, you require serious introspection. I've seen many, many men on online dating apps hide their political affiliation or outright lie.

You would think they would want someone that likes them, no? It's all very strange. They should reassess what kind of person they want to be.
by Avipat_ | 2025-08-03 18:28:38+00:00
It’s not just boilerplate. We actively verify uploads using multiple signals: EXIF metadata, timestamps, device signatures, and visual similarity checks. If a file wasn't captured by the uploader’s device or shows signs of being scraped/copied, it gets flagged or rejected.

In short, if it's not your original content, it won’t pass. And we’re constantly tightening this loop as we scale.
by seadan83 | 2025-08-03 18:29:23+00:00
No, the issue is if you don't take algebra I by 8th grade then you won't take advanced math. Nobody is considering algebra I tk be advanced, the key is when you take algebra I in order to move on. Turns out, whether you take algebra I before high school has less to do with how good you are at math and more to do with (frankly) segregation. This is an article revealing in data how modern day segregation works.

I'm a product of NC schools. When going to grade school in the 90s I did not realize that those schools desegregated less than 10 years prior. The advanced classes were essentially all white. Those advanced classes in early grade school position you for the slow track, or the fast track.
by jamienk | 2025-08-03 18:29:26+00:00
How does this specifically work? Wouldn't any decision about what training data to use be part of a "technique" in this sense? When Stable Diffusion didn't train on porn.

OTOH if the majority of your data is "bad" (maybe morally, but maybe not, maybe you are feeding in too much gibberish), won't that pollute your model?

You notice that X keeps telling you a WRONG physics equation. So, rather than "correct" it, you keep training until you see the output giving the RIGHT equation?

How could you know (in, say 1899) if the WRONG output wasn't quantum and the RIGHT output was classical?

I'm not sure I'm understand the distinctions here. In all cases, we are relying on the idea that it is easy to know what should count as "right"?
by ryandrake | 2025-08-03 18:29:37+00:00
Same here. I may be thinking about this wrong, but in my view, that "magic number" is a constantly increasing target, increasingly unapproachable. I once thought I could retire on $1M saved--at a 4% withdrawal rate, that's 40K per year... add social security and I could probably do it in a very low cost of living state. 5 more years later, when everything costs a little bit more, and my lifestyle inflated a little, I started thinking that the number I could safely retire with was $2M. A few more years of inflation and cost increases later, plus a kid that needs college, I started thinking I had to shoot for $5M in order to be safe. Some more years pass, more societal safety nets are burning down, and now I'm starting to feel the pangs of old age and potential health problems, I feel like that number is even larger and further out of reach....
by zeroCalories | 2025-08-03 18:29:44+00:00
I also wonder if this is an issue. At my work we will usually have some kind of artifact of notes, decisions, and action items after a meeting. While people will rarely go back and read the artifact, they exist as a form of documentation that can be helpful in a pinch. "Why didn't we do x again?" "What are the issues we need to look into?" All important details worth keeping a record of. That said, I don't really know what a UN report is supposed to be.
by filoleg | 2025-08-03 18:32:13+00:00
>>No jumping off high buildings is perfectly safe as long as you land skillfully.

Not really, because no matter how you spin it, the person in your scenario dies.

However, doing Steve Jobs’ diet might actually be fine (or at least not deadly) for an average person. Only as long as they don’t have late-stage pancreatic cancer and don’t decide to forego chemotherapy treatment.

Which is what killed Jobs, not the diet. For all we know, he might’ve been alive today even if he followed the same diet, as long as he also did the chemo treatment.
by majke | 2025-08-03 18:32:29+00:00
This is a great comment. Thanks.

In my case - indeed the name is a historical baggage, I'm not arguing for or against it.

Indeed we had regularly situations that we had to pull in experts from other rooms, to discuss specific topics (like TCP), so we should have forwarded the conversation at the start.

But I don't think this should be categorical. There is value in non-experts responding faster (the channel had good reach) by your non-expert colleagues than waiting longer for the experts on the other continent to wake up.

Maybe there should be an option to... move conversation threads across channels?

I think there is place for both - unstructured conversations, and structured ones. What I don't like about managerial approach, is that many managers want to shape, constrain, control communication. This is not how I work. I value personal connections, I value personal expertise and curiosity. I dislike non-human touch.

"You should ask in the channel XYZ" is a dry and discouraging answer.

"Hey, Mat worked on it a while ago, let's summon him here, but he's in east coast so he's not at work yet, give him 2h" is a way better one.

I know that concentrating knowledge / ownership at a person is not always good, but perhaps a better way to manage this is to... hire someone else who is competent or make other people more vocal.

And yes, I don't like managers trying to shape communication patterns.
by WarOnPrivacy | 2025-08-03 18:32:52+00:00
> We have more too, we just choose to display ~2 pages of results. If what you are searching for is not within first two pages on Kagi, you are better of changing the query.

The more I consider your response, the more I an concerned by it.

If I have it right, you are saying Kagi can and does withhold relevant search results if they don't appear in the first two pages. As far as I am correct, this is a problem for me.

My day job is solving obscure technical issues and going past the 2nd page of results is (and has always been) a permanent necessity.

Some reasons

There are no search queries that will present my needed result sooner. I need clues which only appear in downstream results. The trial+error time needed to craft a working query far outstrips the time I spend reviewing downstream results.

Assuming I have it correct, I'd like to post your response as new HN post. My goal is to clarify and sunshine what is. My goal is not to blow things up for it's own sake.

What are your thoughts?
by chermi | 2025-08-03 18:33:07+00:00
Just as an example,

"The enrollment process created additional barriers for students and families. When students went online to select their courses, in many school districts they could not see classes that required teacher recommendations and may not have known those courses existed. Students who requested placement in advanced classes were frequently told they could not enroll, even when they had strong academic credentials. Students had no pathway to demonstrate their readiness or earn their way into these courses through their academic performance. They had to be recommended by a teacher."

Maybe this system shouldn't be set up this way? Who set up the system I wonder.
by II2II | 2025-08-03 18:33:24+00:00
> Towards the end of my tenure there, a PM said to me “the last thing these people want is to have to learn yet another workflow”.

I suspect that people entering medicine do so to address human needs, and have very little interest in dealing with technology (or handling traditional paperwork for that matter). Couple that with a perception that pretty much anything digital being obsolete before it reaches market, and even more so when it can take upwards of a decade for the product to reach them, and you are left with a group of people who have nothing but dread about being stuck on a never ending treadmill that is outside their scope of interest and expertise.

Take that opinion with a grain of salt though. My background is in that other quagmire: education. I have seen some amazing tools developed over the years that were abandoned, so everyone had to move on. Worse yet, no replacement was created for most of those tools so everyone is back where they were before the revolution happened. (I'm thinking specifically of software used by teachers and administrative staff, but something similar can be said for software used to deliver the curriculum.)
by roughly | 2025-08-03 18:33:47+00:00
One of my favorites was Python’s datetime.time() object evaluating to True for every value except exact midnight, which is the sort of thing that makes fine sense when you think about the underlying implementation but is absolutely going to take a toe off of someone.

My favorite part about that one was it got to go through the full feature deprecation cycle before removal because several people argued in the bug thread about it that they were relying on that behavior in their systems.
Ask HN: Do you use tapes for personal backup?
by freedomben | 2025-08-03 18:34:45+00:00
I have about 25 TB of data stored currently on HDDs, and I'd like to make a full (and preferably off-site) backup. I've heard increasingly that people are buying and using tapes for that, but I don't personally know anyone doing so.

Are you doing it? If so, can you recommend a tape drive that works on Linux, and any other advice?
by ModernMech | 2025-08-03 18:36:13+00:00
> to me

Key words there. To you, it's a electric saw because you already know how to program, and that's the other person's point; it doesn't necessarily empower people to build software. You? Yes. Generally though when you hand the public an electric saw and say "have at it, build stuff" you end up with a lot of lost appendages.

Sadly, in this case the "lost appendages" are going to be man-decades of time spent undoing all the landmines vibecoders are going to plant around the digital commons. Which means AI even fails as a metaphorical "electric saw", because a good electric saw should strike fear into the user by promising mortal damage through misuse. AI has no such misuse deterrent, so people will freely misuse it until consequences swing back wildly, and the blast radius is community-scale.

> more like going from analog photography to digital photography. Whatever it is, you get more programming done.

By volume, the primary outcome of digital photography has been a deluge of pointless photographs to the extent we've had to invent new words to categorize them. "selfies". "sexts". "foodstagramming". Sure, AI will increase the actual programming being done, the same way digital photography gave us more photography art. But much more than that, AI will bring the equivalent of "foodstagramming" but for programs. Kind of like how the Apple App Store brought us some good apps, but at the same time 9 bajillion travel guides and flashlight apps. When you lower the bar you also open the flood gates.
by seadan83 | 2025-08-03 18:37:54+00:00
> It does not make sense to have admins and other parents with vested interests block kids from whatever classes they want to take!

Sure it does. There is a vested interest in some to ensure a desired peer group of the classes their kids take. More generally, to ensure 'space's at the top for those that get the teacher recommendations. Bluntly speaking, it's racist as shit. The data presented is a case study of systemic racism.
by glitchc | 2025-08-03 18:37:59+00:00
I don't believe anything I see online anymore. Payola is everywhere and people are happy to sell their professional souls for little more than likes and free LLM credits.

Deeper still is this: The group that openly relies on LLMs to code is likely the first group to be replaced by LLMs, since they've already identified the recipe that the organization needs to replace them.

More broadly, we live in an age where marketing is crucial to getting noticed, where good work alone is not sufficient and you have the perfect scenario for people to market themselves out of the workforce.
by watwut | 2025-08-03 18:39:08+00:00
I would not expect journalists to regularly download them and read them without specific reason. I would expect them to be read when someone is actually dealing with the issue at hands and needs the details from an authority.

Like, if something like "Report of the Secretary-General on the staff of the United Nations Secretariat" has 5000 readers, it is 4995 more then I would expect. That is a real report I just pulled from their database. I did not bothered to read it.
by martin-t | 2025-08-03 18:39:20+00:00
Simplicity and usability are not the same thing.

On one hand you have massive GUIs spanning the whole screen containing hundreds of controls. On the other you have airy GUIs with more empty space than actual content and every time you want something you have to open 3 layers of menus to find it.

Both are wrong. The correct thing is to find a balance. The balance depends on the usecase as well as the users.

This is what makes it hard. You can't just code up an app and throw is over the fence. You have to actually engage with the users, watch them perform their work, even try it yourself. You have to understand what is important and what is a distraction. You have to understand when these things chance. And you have to understand that beginner users evolve into experts all the while you have new beginner users coming in.
by pllbnk | 2025-08-03 18:39:23+00:00
I agree. As usual these days, the culprit for lack of innovation is AI (mostly LLMs). Apple did try to shove it to the users unsuccessfully and they had the right amount of sanity to backtrack once they realized how the users' expectations are misaligned with what LLMs have to offer, which is mostly lack of reliability; average user thinks that something walks like a duck, quacks like a duck must be a duck, but LLMs, while pretending to be human-like are not like that. On the other hand, Microsoft is still forcing it upon their users with Copilot but users are resisting. We will see which tactic will win in the long-run but I would bet on Apple.
by rented_mule | 2025-08-03 18:39:53+00:00
For simple string search (i.e., not regular expressions) ripgrep is quite fast. I just generated a simple 20 GB file with 10 random words per line (from /usr/share/dict/words). `rg --count-matches funny` takes about 6 seconds on my M2 Pro. Compressing it using `zstd -0` and then searching with `zstdcat lines_with_words.txt.zstd | rg --count-matches funny` takes about 25 seconds. Both timings start with the file not cached in memory.
by browningstreet | 2025-08-03 18:40:14+00:00
A lot of what I was probing called themselves that.

I’m not bagging on NGOs in particular. But it’s also how a lot of them refer to themselves.

This is more about the lack of clarity in messaging by orgs that ostensibly have a vested interest in making their progress known. At least as long as they’re engaged in public outreach.
by kachapopopow | 2025-08-03 18:40:35+00:00
Well, I haven't read the report about this report either, but I have indirectly read about the information it provided.

I feel like this is a non-issue since it's like the 'new' section on HN. Something that's important or and interesting gets picked up and spread (although only accessed once or twice) and is now a world-wide headline.
by rapatel0 | 2025-08-03 18:41:18+00:00
I don't think the research is as clear cut as the article suggests. Firstly, the concept was created in the 60s and only became wide spread in the 80s. The study was conducted in the 1975.

This has two important implications:

- There were fewer people that were actually instructed in whole language and they skewed younger (and less practiced)

- The teaching profession had fewer years of as practitioners so methods resources were likely unrefined. Fewer books, instructional materials.

Also, there is always a bias to publish a scoop in acadamia, so unless there were multiple corroborating studies we should take it with a grain of salt.

Most importantly, I think that different kids learn differently. My son has been working on phonics for a long time and still struggles connecting sounds to words. In contrast, whole language approaches have been working better for him.
by hnburnsy | 2025-08-03 18:41:31+00:00
> I'm on a M4 with nano texture display. It's IMO the pinnacle of what a computer should be. I hate apple and their anti repair practices but wanted to chime in about how good the hardware has become. > > If they push forward with local AI that can be somewhat trusted, it would be a huge win.

How is that touch screen?
by JustExAWS | 2025-08-03 18:41:50+00:00
Most startup hiring has always been a scam for the idealistic where people would be better off statistically by just working for a publicly traded tech company that put RSUs in your brokerage account that you could immediately sell (and should) diversify once you are vested.

In my latter years of my career, I’ve been offered “great opportunities” at a startup that paid less in cash for more responsibilities than I was making as a mid level employee (cash + RSUs) at BigTech when I was there.

Of course they promised “equity” that was illiquid and probably would have been worthless.
by CamperBob2 | 2025-08-03 18:42:20+00:00
Largely agreed. It's no surprise that a government elected by a brainwashed populace will treat public education as a threat to be eliminated rather than as a goal to be achieved.

But how does that answer the question of how resources -- which are still finite no matter how much you insist otherwise, given that it takes money to distribute food -- should be allocated? If we leave it up to the government, or to the people who elected said government, it's irrational to expect a fair outcome.
by m2tchoui | 2025-08-03 18:44:00+00:00
The SponsorBlock Chrome extension is great when segments have been manually tagged, but I’ve been exploring whether it's possible to skip sponsor segments automatically — without relying on community input.

Skipwise is a concept for a Chrome extension that would use AI to detect things like low-value intros, mid-video ad reads, and end-screen CTAs, and skip them in real time while watching YouTube.

It's not fully built yet — the link just goes to a landing page I put together to gauge interest and see if this is a problem others care about. I’d love any feedback on the idea itself, especially from anyone who's worked on video/audio heuristics or browser-based automation.
by varispeed | 2025-08-03 18:44:59+00:00
You can't just tell LLM "make it faster, no mistakes or else". You may need to nudge it to use specific techniques (good idea to ask it first what techniques it is aware of), then give it comparison before and after, maybe with assembly. You can even get assembly output to another LLM session and ask it to count cycles, then feed the result to another session. You can also look yourself what seems excessive, consult CPU datasheets and nudge LLM to work on that area. This workflow isn't much faster than just optimising by hand, but if you are bored with typing code is a bit refreshing. Like you can focus on "high level" and LLM does the rest.