MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by willvarfar | 2025-08-13 08:00:03+00:00
I think Hinton uses terms like reasoning and creativity and consciousness in a way that are different from my own embeddings.

I recently had fun asking Gemini to compare how Wittgenstein and Chomsky would view calling a large transformer that was trained entirely on a synthetic 'language' (in my case symbols that encode user behaviour in an app) a 'language' or not. And then, for the killer blow, whether an LLM that is trained on Perl is a language model.

My point being that whilst Hinton is a great and all, I don't think I can quite pin down his definitions of the precise words like reasoning etc. Its possible for people to have opposite meanings for the same words (Wittgenstein famously had two contradictory approaches in his lifetime). In the case of Hinton, I can't quite pin down how loosely or precisely he is using the terms.

A forward-only transformer like GPT can only do symbolic arithmetic to the depth of its layers, for example. And I don't think the solution is to add more layers.

Of course humans are entirely neuro and we somehow manage to 'reason'. So YMMV.
by thunderbong | 2025-08-13 08:00:15+00:00
Thanks for this.

Lots of people, many amongst us here at HN, are critical of AI and LLMs in general. A lot of it has to do with two things, in my opinion - first, with the amount of money being thrown at it, and second, with the hype around it.

Many technical people, myself included, resent money being thrown at a problem rather than finding a proper solution. And we're especially skeptical of the hype cycle, because we've been through multiple hypes which didn't really live up to their claims.

But despite all that, I find regular people, using ChatGPT and other tools, just like any other online tool. Just like all of us rely on some software to find the time on the other side of the world when we have to schedule meetings, similarly, all these people are using these as tools to increase their capabilities and knowledge without the extra cruft that used to be involved in searching the web.

Additionally, AI is literally approachable by anybody who has an internet connection, and that means anyone with a smartphone. This didn't happen with devices, this didn't happen with Napster, this didn't happen with Bittorrent, and certainly not with Bitcoin. Each of these had some hurdle associated with it - cost of device, connectivity, technical knowhow.

But over the years, all those helped lay the foundation of what AI is being seen as now - as a tool that anybody can use. The more savvy among us are also using it to build their own tools as well.

So, yes, this time it certainly feels different.
Agent-First GTM: How AI Agents Let Jacob Bank Run a One-Person GTM at Relay.app
by rishikeshranjan | 2025-08-13 08:00:46+00:00
From zero users to 1,000 paying customers, (no ads, no growth team) just a founder, a swarm of AI agents, six-star support, and one high-leverage channel per stage.

https://www{.}productgrowth{.}blog/p/agent-first-gtm-jacob-bank-relay-app
by bamboozled | 2025-08-13 08:03:18+00:00
Are you familiar with the garnet hype cycle? https://www.gartner.com/en/research/methodologies/gartner-hy...

I'm doing everything you're doing and probably more with Claude code (I 'let it run'). I'd say I too have been through a few of the different phases of the gartner hype cycle now.

As I said it's a good tool, it's far from being an "auto-pilot".
by abrenuntio | 2025-08-13 08:03:20+00:00
Not sure whether an index is still pragmatic.

But I hope the Catholic Church of the future will take the defense of its flock more serious again. Many books (and movies and TV series...) out there contain downright evil ideas, sometimes presented in dishonest ways. Perhaps some organized, ecclesiastically sanctioned system of reviews to guide readers would be feasible?
by aspenmayer | 2025-08-13 08:03:51+00:00
These articles answer a lot of the questions you’re raising. It’s in OpenAI’s interest to claim AGI hasn’t been achieved yet as long as it benefits them. They may be getting sweetheart deals on compute from Microsoft under the current arrangement. It’s possibly also beneficial for Microsoft, but I think they are in a somewhat different market as a compute provider rather than consumer.

https://www.wired.com/story/microsoft-and-openais-agi-fight-... | https://archive.is/yvpfl

OpenAI has been adding other compute providers, so this hurts Microsoft too, because OpenAI can use their already low pricing to underbid other compute providers who want the volume and access that being a provider at OpenAI’s scale would bring.

https://www.cnbc.com/2025/07/16/openai-googles-cloud-chatgpt... | https://archive.is/HGgWf

Microsoft is already seeking to plan for the eventuality where OpenAI exercises the option and effectively declares AGI.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-07-29/microsoft... | https://archive.is/mLEmC
by bondarchuk | 2025-08-13 08:04:06+00:00
>For the "AI will be [human to ant difference] more intelligent than us" argument to follow it would require us to be pretty fucking dumb, and in that case we're pretty fucking dumb and it'd be silly to think we can make these types of predictions with reasonable accuracy (also true in the unbounded case!).

...which is why we should be careful not to rush full-speed ahead and develop AI before we can predict how it will behave after some iterations of self-improvement. As the rationalist argument goes.

BTW you are assuming that intelligence will necessarily and inherently lead to (good) morality, and I think that's a much weirder assumption than some you're accusing rationalists of holding.
Show HN: ThumbFlow AI – Create viral YouTube thumbnails in seconds with AI
by myq0032 | 2025-08-13 08:05:11+00:00
Hey everyone! I recently built ThumbFlow AI, an AI-powered tool that creates viral YouTube thumbnails in seconds. I'd like to share it with the HN community.

*How it started:* As a solo maker, I kept seeing creators struggling with thumbnail creation - either spending hours learning design tools or paying $50+ for each thumbnail from freelancers. Most existing AI tools produce mediocre results that don't actually drive clicks. I thought there had to be a better way to solve this.

*What makes ThumbFlow different?*

*4-in-1 AI toolkit in one chat interface:* - Text-to-Image: Just describe your scene, get a complete thumbnail - Background Transform: Upload any photo, AI changes the background while keeping the subject - Face Swap: Natural face replacement for brand consistency - Smart Edit: Use plain English like "make the text bolder" or "darker sky"

*Built for actual results:* Early users report 3x higher click-through rates compared to their previous thumbnails. One creator told me a thumbnail made in 30 seconds helped their video go viral.

*Transparent pricing:* Every operation costs exactly 5 credits. No hidden fees, no complex tiers based on features. New users get 20 free credits to try everything.

*Real usage scenarios:*

*YouTube Creators:* Stop spending hours in Photoshop or paying designers. Describe your hook → get a click-worthy thumbnail in seconds.

*Small Businesses:* Need product promo images? Upload your product photo, tell the AI to put it in any scene you want.

*Social Media Managers:* Maintain consistent branding across channels with face swap, then customize backgrounds for different platforms.

*Content Agencies:* Batch-create thumbnails for multiple clients without hiring a design team.

*How to use:* Super simple, just like chatting: 1. Sign up at https://thumbflow.io (20 free credits, no card needed) 2. Go to /create and either describe a scene or upload a photo 3. AI generates your thumbnail in ~15 seconds 4. Download or use smart edit to fine-tune

*Technical details for the curious:* - Built with Next.js 14 + Supabase + TypeScript - Uses state-of-the-art AI models optimized specifically for thumbnail generation - Real-time chat interface with session management - Integrated payment processing and credit system - All images stored securely with user ownership

*Try it here:* https://thumbflow.io/create

*Current status:* Fully launched with paying customers! The core functionality is solid, and I'm now working on features like template libraries and batch processing based on user feedback.

*Special offer for HN:* Use code RMZYR9OMPZ for 40% off your first 3 months if you decide to subscribe.

I'd love to hear your thoughts! What other AI-powered creative tools would be useful for content creators? Any technical questions about the implementation?

Thanks for checking it out!
by fractallyte | 2025-08-13 08:05:39+00:00
You don't necessarily need an expensive lawyer to take on a contesting party.

Some years back, I challenged a property developer over a right of way issue. I had no legal experience, so I went to my local university's law library in the afternoons when it was open to the public, and I read up on land law.

I bought some "...For Dummies"-style books, wrote my own pleadings, and submitted all the documents to court using the correct civil procedure rules. (Heck, I even formatted the documents using WordPerfect!)

The result was that I spent a few hundred € while the enemy was out of pocket by tens of thousands. (It ended up being settled out of court, in my favor; I'm sure if it had ended up in front of a judge, I would have won.)

Nowadays we have LLMs which can do a huge amount of drudge work for us. (Yes, with the usual caveats: check everything carefully!)

Law is understandable once you ease yourself into the ecosystem. It is possible to fight and win.
by lurquer | 2025-08-13 08:05:41+00:00
Are you suggesting the scriptures do not obligate church leaders to protect the flock from heresy?

1 Timothy 6:20–21 – “O Timothy, keep that which is committed to thy trust, avoiding the profane novelties of words and oppositions of knowledge falsely so called, which some professing have erred concerning the faith.”

2 Timothy 4:3–4 – Warns of people turning from truth to myths, implying leaders must protect them from such influences.

Titus 1:9–11 – Bishops must “stop the mouths” of those teaching error, which includes preventing their works from spreading.

Acts 20:28–31 – Paul warns the Ephesian elders to guard the flock from false teachers who will arise “speaking perverse things.”

2 John 1:10–11 – “If any man come to you, and bring not this doctrine, receive him not into the house nor say to him, God speed you.”

Romans 16:17 – Mark and avoid those who cause doctrinal divisions; a list of banned works is a formal way of “marking” them.

Acts 19:19 – New converts in Ephesus publicly burn their occult books after coming to the faith.

Deuteronomy 13:1–5 – False prophets and their influence must be eradicated from the midst of the people.

Etc, etc, etc.
The systems language from the '70s that almost beat C
by alexandratabone | 2025-08-13 08:07:04+00:00
Back in the mid-70s, there was a systems programming language that, for a while, looked like it might become the standard for writing operating systems. It had the low-level control of C but with better memory safety, a cleaner module system, and syntax that didn’t feel like you were wrestling the compiler.

It even saw some experimental use in kernels and compiler projects. Benchmarks at the time sometimes put it ahead of C on real hardware, and it avoided some of the undefined behavior landmines that C has carried with it for decades.

So why haven’t you heard of it?

It never had the same institutional backing as C, its compiler toolchains were spotty, and by the time it was ready for prime time, universities were already standardizing their teaching around C. AT&T’s influence didn’t hurt either.

I’ve been digging through old manuals, source listings, and mailing list archives to see what made it tick and why it disappeared. I’ll share:

a couple of short code examples next to C equivalents

some notes on how it handled memory

the story of its brief moment in OS development

and what it got right that modern languages like Rust and Zig are rediscovering

It’s strange how much of what we think is “modern” was already there 40+ years ago, quietly ignored.
by qcnguy | 2025-08-13 08:07:22+00:00
The point of masks, originally, was to catch saliva drops from surgeons as they worked over an open body, not to stop viruses.

For COVID its use was novel. But having an intention isn't enough. It must actually work. Otherwise, you are just engaging in witchcraft and tomfoolery.

The respiratory droplet model of how COVID spread was wrong, which was proven by lots of real world evidence. Look at how the Diamond Princess worked out and please explain how that was compatible with either masks or lockdowns working? SARS-CoV-2 spreads like every other respiratory virus, as a gaseous aerosol that doesn't care about masks in the slightest.
Show HN: I built an app to help you get dating advice and learn how to flirt
by ivandrag | 2025-08-13 08:07:30+00:00
Hey everyone, I want to show you my iOS app. For the past 8 months I worked on this revamp and the app was approved on the App Store two days ago on the first go.

How did I come up with the idea?

Last year while I was looking for a new app to build I found lots of Reddit posts where people were asking about "How to practice flirting" or "How to flirt". Most of the posts had a ton of engagement and I thought that it might be a good opportunity to build an app which helps people with this problem.

The first version of the app was not great, but I got 4 customers and made $94. Two paid monthly and 2 paid for the yearly subscription.

What problem does the app solve?

Online dating apps are "broken". You either get no matches or if you somehow match you are ghosted or you have no clue how to avoid an awkward conversation.

We have to learn how to engage better in offline and online conversations.

How does the app solve the problem?

* There are over 120 structured video & text lessons, each with multiple questions. On each response you receive feedback and if you still have things to clarify you can ask an Ai tutor questions about the lesson. * Real-world scenarios with voice practice. Multiple scenarios like coffee shop meeting or at the dog park etc. You have a goal and some tasks. Don't worry If you get stuck during the conversation, you can ask for hints. During the conversation an Ai analyzes your emotions through your language and at the end of the conversation you will receive a beautiful report which you can use to improve, see strengths or fix your weaknesses. * 3 Daily challenges with different difficulty levels. * Stats screen where you can see progress

I have a ton of ideas on stuff to do in the app, but I ll implement them slowly. Now I'm trying to get feedback from users.

The app is behind a paywall after sign in, because it might have Ai APIs cost. If you feel the subscription is too expensive or cannot afford DM and I'll make your account paid in exchange for feedback ( Make sure you don't hide email when you sign in so I can find you in the db )

Looking forward to your feedback.

Thank you
by a_bonobo | 2025-08-13 08:08:23+00:00
This feels like Motte-and-bailey

>The motte-and-bailey fallacy (named after the motte-and-bailey castle) is a form of argument and an informal fallacy where an arguer conflates two positions that share similarities: one modest and easy to defend (the "motte") and one much more controversial and harder to defend (the "bailey")

The bailey: 'we can build AGI, give us millions of dollars'. The motte: '“I think the point of all of this is it doesn’t really matter and it’s just this continuing exponential of model capability that we’ll rely on for more and more things'
by qcnguy | 2025-08-13 08:08:40+00:00
Nobody was persuaded, they were forced by law exactly because it was obvious to everyone with their brain switched on that masks didn't work. Remember how when the rules demanding masks on planes were rescinded there were videos of whole planes ripping off their masks and celebrating mid-flight? Literally the second the law changed, people stopped wearing masks.

That's because masks were a mass hysteria. They did not work. Everyone could see it.
by sandreas | 2025-08-13 08:08:48+00:00
Interesting article and great results.

PSUs are probably the only piece of Hardware, i DO NOT fiddle around with, not even for saving lots of money or time.

PSU Capacitors are no joke, especially in (older) TVs. However, I expected more like an instruction manual why PSUs are dangerous and how to properly discharge capacitors before taking them apart less than how to replace a fan although it's dangerous and getting away with it with a simple hint to not touch the capacitors (no offense).

BTW I would recommend to use electrical tape and shrink tube instead of simple adhesive tape (as it looks in the pictures) to prevent lose cables touching the spinning fan.
by allan_s | 2025-08-13 08:08:54+00:00
You know I can explain why a murderer has killed someone in her twisted system of value without myself adhering to said system

Also don't be so harsh on interpreting what I'm saying.

I'm saying that it's not the job of a company to "train" about moral value, while bring itself amoral by definition. Why are you interpreting that as me saying "nobody should teach moral value"

Also I don't see why as a French working in France, a French company should "train" me with a DEI focused on US history (US minorities are not French one) just because the main investors are US-based
by boxed | 2025-08-13 08:10:28+00:00
I was very skeptical of Claude Code but was finally convinced to try it and it does feel very different to use. I made three hobby projects in a weekend that I had pushed up for years due to "it's too much hassle to get started" inertia. Two of the projects it did very well with, the third I had to fight with it and it still is subtly wrong (swiftUI animations and claude code seemingly is not a good mix!)

That being said, I think your analysis is 100% correct. LLMs are fundamentally stupid beyond belief :P
Show HN: Build and Deploy Custom AI Agents with a Simple Prompt with GPT-5-Mini
by Radeen1 | 2025-08-13 08:11:15+00:00
I created a tool that lets you write a prompt like “build a research report agent in LlamaIndex” or in any framework and automatically generates and deploys the agent locally, complete with a testing page. Powered by OpenAI’s GPT-5-mini, it’s stable (98% success rate in my tests) and works with frameworks like Agno and LlamaIndex. Previous GPT models struggled with this kind of tasks, but this handles them well.
by ben_w | 2025-08-13 08:13:02+00:00
"Large" is very vague.

The leaderboard shows (50 of) 166385 registered accounts* on https://www.lesswrong.com/leaderboard

This is simultaneously a large body and an insignificant minority.

* How many are junk accounts? IDK. But I do know it's international, because I live in Berlin, Germany, and socialise regularly.
by qweiopqweiop | 2025-08-13 08:13:42+00:00
Google, currently thought of as the AI leader has shown time and time again they will resort to monopolistic practices.

I really hope open source models are the way, but the fact is the vast majority of day to day usage of LLMs is on models owned by multi-bullion dollar companies.

And even if they're not monopolies, people being influenced by companies to this extent should worry people.
by RaSoJo | 2025-08-13 08:14:01+00:00
> bsky.app | @greg.org on Bluesky https://bsky.app/profile/greg.org/post/3lvt3mjvskk2i Reported: 07 August, 2025 at 19:53 Shut down on: 07 August, 2025 Geoblocking due to OSA Statue of |david behind age verification filter

So, going forward, will similar pieces of art be blocked in the British Museum as well? Like physically?
by mna_ | 2025-08-13 08:17:09+00:00
>We are living in an unprecedented golden age of peace and prosperity. What collapse are you talking about?

War in Ukraine, Israel-Palestine conflict, the recent India-Pakistan conflict, China rapidly ramping up its military and openly carrying out drills that are clearly designed to be practise runs for a Taiwan takeover, China asserting its presence near the Phillipines militarily, European countries ramping up defense spending, and so on, are clear indicators that the world is not going through a golden age of peace.
by metalman | 2025-08-13 08:17:15+00:00
the way the article phrases certain descriptions of the climate, is telling

"climate scientist at Météo France, said it was too soon to say if records were being “shattered” rather than simply broken, but said the geographic extent of the heat was significant. “Unfortunately, it’s to be expected,” she said"

since nothing else has pushed any real action on climate change, having to endure dry drolleries from the French might be the thing that gets people to change
by Telaneo | 2025-08-13 08:17:35+00:00
Invasive from the content providers' POV, yes. Mostly in good ways in my experience being on the other side of that, but its obviously not completely non-invasive, given that a few things happened after the GDPR came into effect. If it was completely non-invasive, then nothing would have happened, and there wouldn't have been any point in passing it. No point in passing a law you don't want to actually affect anything.
by delamon | 2025-08-13 08:17:56+00:00
Sometimes managed switch is the only way to find out faulty cable. I'm speaking about a bit bad cable, which corrupts some data, not all of it. Just by looking on interface error counters you can easily tell if something is off. Without it you either need somehow come up with very expensive cable tester or just pretend that slow network speed is due to some other popular blame destination (e.g. it's just bad macos update) ;)
by 334f905d22bc19 | 2025-08-13 08:18:20+00:00
>It’s a paradigm shift in accessing knowledge

This statement and similar ones along the line have a very bitter taste to me. Someone has to create the knowledge. Someone has to create the actual training data for others to be received in dumbed down and stripped out version through AI. You will always be late to the game when you try to gain knowledge that way. I really really don't understand why people overhype the learning part of AI so much. Yes, it's a neat tool, but in my opinion rather bad for __actual in depth__ learning
by MadnessASAP | 2025-08-13 08:19:48+00:00
In Proof-of-Work the cost of the work is what keeps the network honest. If the work has value then an attacker is free to invest as many resources as I want into subverting the network. Even a failed attack can still be profitable, just less so.

In another scenario, where the works value is less then the cost you're still hoping that at no point in the future will an attacker figure out a way to do the work at a net profit.

The only way the network can be trusted is if the work has definitely now and always, 0 value.
by dragonwriter | 2025-08-13 08:19:58+00:00
> "Has been abolished in 1966" says that it was abolished in 1966 and it remains abolished today.

That meaning would be expressed as "has been abolished since 1966", unless it is still 1966 when the idea is being expressed, in which case "has been abolished in 1966" works instead; "has been abolished" is a present perfect (passive voice) construction so "in <past time period>" doesn't make sense with it, while "since <past time period>" or "in <current time period>" does.
by gus_tpm | 2025-08-13 08:20:28+00:00
I honestly don't think it's really all down to being greedy. Even the Linux desktop suffers from this to some extent.

I think it's because UI design is very much something that can't really be "solved" in the traditional sense, so a lot of us use our own opinions when we inevitably find a corner case that isn't working exactly the way we want.