MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by asimpletune | 2025-08-09 17:54:54+00:00
I just applied some stuff that’s been known for a long time in a different context. But let me give you a scenario to think about as a demonstration of how I mean.

Imagine we trained an AI on everything ever written, but the catch is we’ve restricted the training data to the year, let’s say, 400 BCE and earlier (Ignore the fact that most of what was written then is lost to us now and just pretend that’s not issue for our thought experiment) The AI is also programmed to seek new knowledge based off that starting knowledge.

Also pretend that this AI has an oracle it could talk to that would help the AI simulate experiments. So the AI could ask questions and get answers but only in a way that builds ever so slightly off what it already knows.

Making any progress at all in this experiment and discovering new knowledge is what we’re after and “new knowledge” would be defined as some r that’s demonstrated using some p and q as propositions, where r is neither p or q, and r is also correct in terms of 2025 knowledge.

If the AI, with the aid of the knowledge it started with and the help of the oracle to let it ask questions about the world and build off that knowledge, can ever arrive, or exceed, 2025 knowledge then it’s at least generally intelligent and equal to a human. Although the bar could maybe be even less.

It loses, however, if it never advances, gets stuck in a loop, or in some other sense can’t make progress.

This is intelligence: to proceed from things everyone agrees on and ask questions and formulate assertions that depend on propositions holding true, and in the process demonstrate new things that were not already part of common belief.

I don’t know how this experiment could be done in real life with an LLM for example but this is a story version of what I mean in my original comment.
by vedmakk | 2025-08-09 17:54:57+00:00
I agree with the article. Discussing previously created code and do code reviews live covers a lot of ground. Whereas live coding is just meaningless for the stated reasons.

But a 9-hours interview process seems just too much... I think you will only ever know a candidates true fit once you start actually working together and 2-3 short sessions with someone is enough to get that go/no go feeling.

You can't hire without taking risks.

Where I live, you usually have a 3-months probation time in which both sides can quit within a 7 days period... so the risk is manageable.

Just feel a candidates fit and then go for it... and adjust when necessary. Don't overthink it.
by junon | 2025-08-09 17:55:08+00:00
This actually used to work well. I had to memorialize my ex boyfriend's (long time ago) profile. His mother was using it to spout scripture of homophobic nature, and message his friends acting like he was still around - to this day, I'm not sure to what end.

Once it was memorialized, I got the expected harumph message from her passed through the grapevine, and then never heard about it again. All it took was a link to his online obit from the local newspaper. Took maybe 3-4 days to process.

That was about 15 years ago, so it doesn't surprise me that program has fallen by the wayside since then.
by d_tr | 2025-08-09 17:55:32+00:00
I'm not a fan of the language but QtQuick & QML is what I'd use for this type of widgets. OTOH I am starting two projects at work, one being a traditional desktop app and another being an HMI with lots of functionality, and decided to just go with QtWidgets and save myself from all of QML's JS influences and C++ interop boilerplate.
by commandersaki | 2025-08-09 17:56:11+00:00
Counterpoint: when I "wfh" I end up just sleeping 90% of my work hours and smashing out actual work for the remainder. When I'm in an office I'm productive 70% of my hours and it has nothing to do with accountability, just a proper office environment (and yes I have a work area at home). Regardless of going to office or wfh, I don't have set hours.

The overarching point is everyone is different, ymmv.
by zdragnar | 2025-08-09 17:56:18+00:00
The Bolsheviks were the first to get a country to legalize elective abortion in 1920. They did so as a temporary measure because so many women would have difficulty raising a child in the post-war environment.

It got to the point where hospitals were overwhelmed and they started setting up dedicated clinics.

They tried making it illegal again in the 30s but brought it back in 1955 because there was such demand.

So, presumably this 170 million number is written by someone who believes a fetus is a unique human life and the prevalence of elective abortion was so high as to be a not insignificant number of "lost lives".
by rectang | 2025-08-09 17:56:35+00:00
An excellent point. Compelling others to live no matter how great their pain or grim their prospects has much in common with compelling others to cede their likenesses after death no matter how much the usage might go against their wishes. In both cases, it's external collectivists demanding that an individual exist only for the benefit of other entities — either society at large, or private businesses.
by CyberDildonics | 2025-08-09 17:56:43+00:00
Zig has defer.

And C has free, but you have to remember to use it and use it correctly every single time instead of the memory working by default with no intervention.

Says most people in the field of software correctness

Not true, the last 30 years have had much safer languages than before java, scripting languages, modern C++ and rust.

That's true, but these are not memory safety guarantees.

Pragmatically they mean you don't have to worry about bounds checking or memory deallocation and it stops being a problem. Zig doesn't have this and it doesn't have safety guarantees either.
by simonw | 2025-08-09 17:58:49+00:00
This write-up only took me about an hour and a half (for a fifteen minute talk), thanks to the tooling I have in place to help: https://simonwillison.net/2023/Aug/6/annotated-presentations...

Here's the latest version of that tool: https://tools.simonwillison.net/annotated-presentations
by matheusmoreira | 2025-08-09 17:58:56+00:00
> While nazism and its crimes were condemned after World War II [...] this has not happened with communism.

This resonates quite deeply. In my country nazis go straight to jail but communists walk our soil completely unpunished. They have half a dozen political parties, are well coordinated, are popular and are constantly elected by the population when they promise them heaven on earth. This is especially ironic since nazism is short for national socialism.

Communism is alive and well in Latin America. Brazilian president Lula declared to CNN his intention to install communism in my country not even a week ago. It has been his intention for over 40 years. He and his party has been in power for over 20 years. Yet people act as though it was fake news.
by MKRhere | 2025-08-09 17:59:57+00:00
Author here.

To be clear, what you're asking for is basically:

const X = comptime(condition ? A : B);

and have it compile down to

const X = A;

without attempting to serialise the functions themselves. Is this correct? The way comptime.ts currently works is that it runs the expression in a constructed block. But perhaps a new primitive, like

import { conditional } from "comptime.ts" with { type: "comptime" };

const X = conditional(condition, X, Y);

Might work though! I'm also interested in conditional comptime code removal, but not sure about the API design there. I know bundlers already do it, but I'd like for it to be possible in source->source transformations too, for example shipping a version of a library with debugs/traces.

Feel free to open an issue if you'd like to discuss ideas.
by sloaken | 2025-08-09 18:00:15+00:00
For honest reviews, there are a lot of issues. Back in the day PC Magazine used to have reviews that were not very honest. They would be sent product to test, that was clearly curated by the vendor to be the best of the best. Think PC comparison where the vendor would tie test 1000 machines and send the fastest one in for review.

So it is an issue of you have to find a trusted source. Consumer Reports advertises that they buy everything they test off the shelf. Although I suspect car dealers in the area of CR get prescreened cars.

I personally trust Toms Hardware for many issues.

Also I look at Amazon 1 & 2 star reviews. People will complain, and I look for common comments. Of course you have to dodge the crap reviews that complain about delivery issues or (my favorite) the advanced book that was not a good introductory book.
by yongjik | 2025-08-09 18:00:25+00:00
I think the point is, despite America having "constitutional protections for freedom of speech, that are greater than any other country," it has fallen to such a sorry state that a government officer is fired for reporting inconvenient numbers and that's not even the craziest thing the president did this week.

...which raises question on whether "freedom of speech" is the great defense against authoritarianism Americans believe it to be.
by vbezhenar | 2025-08-09 18:00:33+00:00
For question 3, ChatGPT 5 Pro gave better answer:

> It isn’t “wrong.” Wolfram defines Binomial[n,m] at negative integers by a symmetric limiting rule that enforces Binomial[n,m] = Binomial[n,n−m]. With n = −1, m = −1 this forces Binomial[−1,−1] = Binomial[−1,0] = 1. The gamma-formula has poles at nonpositive integers, so values there depend on which limit you adopt. Wolfram chooses the symmetry-preserving limit; it breaks Pascal’s identity at a few points but keeps symmetry. If you want the convention that preserves Pascal’s rule and makes all cases with both arguments negative zero, use PascalBinomial[−1,−1] = 0. Wolfram added this explicitly to support that alternative definition.

Of course this particular question might have been in the training set.

Honestly 2.5 years feel like infinity when it comes to AI development. I'm using ChatGPT very regularly, and while it's far from perfect, recently it gave obviously wrong answers very rarely. Can't say anything about ChatGPT 5, I feel like in my conversations with AI, I've reached my limit, so I'd hardly notice AI getting smarter, because it's already smart enough for my questions.
by esprehn | 2025-08-09 18:01:14+00:00
Notable from that page is this paragraph though:

""" Based on testing at high pressure, the DeepFlight Challenger was determined to be suitable only for a single dive, not the repeated uses that had been planned as part of Virgin Oceanic service. As such, in 2014, Virgin Oceanic scrapped plans for the five dives project using the DeepFlight Challenger, as originally conceived, putting plans on hold until more suitable technologies are developed. """
by HillRat | 2025-08-09 18:01:32+00:00
Packer and ag consolidation is a huge problem, but the underlying issue here is climate change and long-lasting droughts; some of the issues with herd size — the smallest since about 1950 — come from COVID hangover when cows weren’t getting processed and price-per-head plummeted, but the immediate problem is that ranchers can’t support large herds due to lack of rain and cost of feed. We’re looking at long-term cost trends that are unlikely to reverse or even be significantly ameliorated anytime soon.
by charcircuit | 2025-08-09 18:02:08+00:00
Except in this case the restauraut would have been able to handle the 5k orders if they didn't arbitrarily have their workers work with their hands tied behind their back. And instead of untieing their workers and appreciating the realization they were accidently bottlenecking themselves they blame the nearby event who caused a spike in foot traffic.

Publicly attacking your users instead of celebrating their success and your new learnings is not what I would call handling it perfectly. I think going for a halo effect strategy where you celebrate how people are using your platform to accomplish their goals will help people understand how what is being done is valuable and want people to adopt it or financially support it. On the other hand attacking people who use your platform publicly can make people apprehensive in using it fearing that they will be criticized too.
by keiferski | 2025-08-09 18:02:28+00:00
This is exactly the kind of low effort, no imagination response that I was referring to. No discussion of alternatives, no acknowledgement that maybe there are some issues with the current capitalist system, etc.

Just apocalyptic language, with no openness to the idea that yeah, communism was a terrible system, but maybe that doesn’t automatically imply that contemporary capitalism is inherently the best system.
by Nadya | 2025-08-09 18:03:26+00:00
Yes, but none of that is truly unique. The odds of a doppleganger sharing my name are astronomically slim but my looks, voice, interests, personality, etc. are not truly unique to me.

For an example, what of voice impersonators? Sounding like Morgan Freeman is not unique to Morgan Freeman. What if a soundalike legally changes their name to Morgan Freeman? What if a lookalike changes their name?

I'm familiar with the existence of such laws but less so with how they are enforced or how they can even be enforced at all. The laws have never made that much sense to me.
Show HN: I built a platform to connect with future peers before you start
by suhaibkhan699 | 2025-08-09 18:04:01+00:00
When I moved to a new city for my master’s and later for work, I realized how isolating it can be. I had to find housing, figure out the commute, and find roommates, all completely on my own.

So I built a free site, Findeaze, that connects people headed to the same city (often for school or work) so they can plan the move, housing, and commute together rather than having to do all of it alone.

It’s still early, so the community is small. If you try it now, you might not instantly find a match. But every post helps the network grow and makes it easier for the next person to connect.

If you try it, please let me know what works well and what I could improve.
by A4ET8a8uTh0_v2 | 2025-08-09 18:04:49+00:00
This version of black mirror is definitely a sight to behold. I am convinced now it is a likely path given that I am working on a personal productivity suite that heavily utilizes AI augmented workflows ( as in, I can't possibly be the only one, who sees potential for a boost across the board ).

But this is now a real consideration, after all the pieces of my suite are in place, how do I make sure, it is really not operational when I am gone unless I wish it to stay.

Also in: pan-generational advisors
by Muromec | 2025-08-09 18:04:52+00:00
Oh, I totally get it. I had once read an executive order with an instruction manual for the vital acts registry official, that describes all the different life circumstances in which birth certificate is issued and what to do in that case. For fun of course. We don't have the case law here, so all the stuff is nicely codified in one executive act and there is a lot of it.

But lawyers, like doctors and cops are overexposed to the high entropy side of things, which I thing warps their perspective.
by antonymoose | 2025-08-09 18:05:27+00:00
Unfortunately I do not have the source to back it up, but I recall a Jocko or Jocko-adjacent podcast discussing changes in medals of valor at or just after WWII, shifting away from “charged a machine gun” acts of valor to “saved his team’s life” style events, not just for the MOH but for all prestigious medals.
by mg | 2025-08-09 18:05:50+00:00
Now that Chromium supports the File System Access API on desktop and mobile, I am building every software I need as HTML+JS+CSS.

Before that, handling files in the browser was cumbersome. You had to offer download and upload links for users to manage files. And handling whole directories was impossible.

But now web apps are like native software tools that you can use to edit and manage files on the file system.

And the bonus point is that what you build this way is fully functional on mobile too. Right away, without any changes. At least on Android.
by jt2190 | 2025-08-09 18:05:50+00:00
> I remember meeting a WWII veteran of the Big Red One [U.S. First Infantry Division] who served in North Africa, Sicily, Normandy, all the way through Germany and into Czechoslovakia – over three years of almost continuous combat and came out of the war with three ribbons on his chest to show for it – and he never did get the actual medals at all.

Topic: “Too Many Medals?” U.S. Militaria Forum. https://www.usmilitariaforum.com/forums/index.php?/topic/233...
by fspeech | 2025-08-09 18:05:55+00:00
Unfortunately the writer's own understanding of statistics is flawed. For example sample size has not much to do with population size but a lot to do with effect size. For example to demonstrate that a chemical is fatal often a sample size of 1 is sufficient. Population comes into play if there is a large variance of the effect relative to the average size of the effect. You need a good statistical sampling of the population to study the variance but even here sample size if not determined by population size.
by QuadmasterXLII | 2025-08-09 18:06:31+00:00
First, whiteboard interviews were a great selection criteria for about 30 seconds before it became public knowledge that being able to pass them was a ticket to a google salary. Subsequently, they functioned literally at all while under the pressure of literal billions of people knowing that they were the ticket to a google salary. A criteria surviving this second challenge is extremely impressive.

To put it another way: I can hire based on open source contributions instead of credentials and interview performance. If google decided tomorrow to start hiring based on open source contributions, then their new criteria would leak on monday, and on tuesday the pull requests queues of every major project would simultaneously splatter like bugs on windshields.
by namibj | 2025-08-09 18:06:53+00:00
I specifically mean prompts here, and I don't mean they'd have casual attention. Just run an encoder to get your KV cache pre-filling of the prompt, then do non-causal diffusion generation of the response referencing the cached prompt without re-encoding the prompt.

You don't need to revert to chunks to get to enjoy prompt caching, especially if you use it in a RAG type way with minor provisions to allow KV caching the RAG fragments (a bunch of work has been done on that, iirc even DeepSeekV3 would allow that).
by pavel_lishin | 2025-08-09 18:07:11+00:00
> On the other hand, life was secure. There were no bank loans, therefore there were no bank fees or percents. There was no real worry over one’s job or workplace; one was available for everyone. Wages were low, but fear of losing one’s job was almost nonexistent. A person pretended to work; the state pretended to pay him. Living accommodations were crowded and faint hope existed to find a better apartment, but all had a roof over their heads.There had to be, since homelessness was forbidden by law.

> Nowadays, there exist people who yearn for that mollusk-like life.

This isn't an inaccurate description, and yes, it's not exactly a utopian state to find yourself in.

But I'm not going to chuckle at the hypothetical people we're supposed to pity for wanting this; I bet there are quite a few people in the United States alone who would love to have this life, who would love to have a guaranteed job, a guaranteed roof over their heads, and the heads of their children.
by dragonwriter | 2025-08-09 18:07:29+00:00
OpenAPI (or its Swagger predecessor) or Proto (I assume by this you mean protobuf?) don't cover what MCP does. It could have layered over them instead of using JSON-RPC, but I don't see any strong reason why they would be better than JSON-RPC as the basis (Swagger has communication assumptions that don't work well with MCP's local use case; protobuf doesn't cover communication at all and would require additional consideration in the protocol layered over it.)

You'd still need basically the entire existing MCP spec to cover the use cases if it replaced JSON-RPC with Swagger or protobuf, plus additional material to cover the gaps and complications that that switch would involve.
by rolph | 2025-08-09 18:09:04+00:00
An academic paper [PDF] describing CHILD, by authors Noboru Myers, Obin Kwon, Sankalp Yamsani, and Joohyung Kim, is scheduled to be presented in Seoul, Korea, in October, at the IEEE RAS HUMANOIDS Conference 2025. (1)

(1) https://arxiv.org/pdf/2508.00162 [PDF]
by jmab | 2025-08-09 18:09:12+00:00
Location: New York (NYC), NY (In person / Hybrid strongly preferred)

Remote: open to remote

Willing to relocate: no but open to frequent travel

Technologies: RAG, AI, Python, Elasticsearch, Typescript, React, Kafka, DynamoDB, Airflow

Résumé/CV: https://jessica-bowden-resume.tiiny.site

Email: jessica.mbowden@gmail.com
by tootie | 2025-08-09 18:09:55+00:00
Vance doesn't support tariffs except in his role as Trump's agent. Absolutely nobody in politics besides Trump thinks these tariffs are a good idea. It's not clear tariffs are actually going to reduce the deficit just because they bring revenue because they are likely suppressing growth. Repealing the Trump tax cuts would be on the table for Democrats and Republicans would be happy just ignore the deficit issue again.
by A4ET8a8uTh0_v2 | 2025-08-09 18:10:12+00:00
I am personally looking into 'backing up' my individual personal model, but it is not as straight forward as just copy pasting context data ( not if you want sufficiently deterministic/convincing model ). It is a fair amount of things to consider ( and not directly available on mainstream APIs like chatgpt ). Yes, the bare minimum can be done easily, but easy stuff is not as reliable.
by echelon | 2025-08-09 18:10:14+00:00
We evolved to eat. We did not evolve to rape.

Eating, fundamentally, reduces some other organism's population. All of nature does it.

We consume life and the byproducts of life. Even the high energy gas exchange we rely upon is 100% a waste product that we consume.

Life is fundamentally about consuming and repurposing the materials of others.

You don't need to have sex. You need to eat to survive.

Our bodies are naturally adapted to consume wildlife. It is the most natural state for our body plan and biochemistry.

Our body cannot make all of the amino acids and metabolites it needs to be healthy. If technology and food fortification vanished one day, we would be forced to eat meat to survive. Non-meat diets are only enabled by technology. Without it, we would not even be having this discussion.
by 3eb7988a1663 | 2025-08-09 18:10:28+00:00
Sure, but if you set yourself up so a locked down VM has access to all three legs - that is going against the intention of Qubes. Qubes ideal is to have isolated VMs per "purpose" (defined by whatever granularity you require): one for nothing but banking, one just for email client, another for general web browsing, one for a password vault, etc. The more exposure to untrusted content (eg web browsing) the more locked down and limited data access it should have. Most Qubes/applications should not have any access to your private files so they have nothing to leak.

Then again, all theoretical on my part. I keep messing around with Qubes, but not enough to make it my daily driver.
by throwup238 | 2025-08-09 18:10:56+00:00
Maybe for a USDA Prime ribeye or tenderloin at Bristol Farms or something.

If you go to an ethnic store like Arabic halaal markets, ribeye steaks can be had for less than $10 a pound (but they’re ungraded). In one of the highest CoL areas in Southern California. Costco USDA Prime ribeyes are $20/pound and ribeye rounds are $25/pound.