MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by octo888 | 2025-08-15 21:29:31+00:00
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/mar/11/internet-provi...

> Two internet providers are tracking and collecting the websites visited by their customers as part of a secretive Home Office trial, designed to work out if a national bulk surveillance system would be useful for national security and law enforcement.

> Home Office sources indicated that it was taking advantage of abilities in the Investigatory Powers Act 2016, to test what data can be acquired, how useful it is in practice, and how it might be used in investigations.
by dhfbshfbu4u3 | 2025-08-15 21:29:33+00:00
I lived there for several years and I know exactly what you are talking about. There are a billion parties (or it seems like it) while the UK tends to have more factions grouped within larger parties. That said, as an outsider, I always saw this playing out a little differently in terms of national cohesion. Die Zauberformel tends to enforce that by design.
by foobarian | 2025-08-15 21:29:39+00:00
> As mentioned, if you get all the software developers building houses instead

Back in the day I would often run into people who would mention something like "oh yeah, my Dad built our house." Wonder what happened to that? Thinking on doing this right now in our neighborhood, I can see lasting 5 minutes before busybodies and town inspectors showed up with stop orders
by baby_souffle | 2025-08-15 21:29:43+00:00
> Which online doctor? I've had the same frustrating experience with "real" psychiatrists but didn't know you could arbitrage the prescription like that.

There are a few providers out there. The DEA is cracking down on them (they call them "pill mills") and that crackdown is - depending on who you ask - partially/fully responsible for the stimulant shortages the past few years. The /r/ADHD sub has some good discussion(s) from time to time on the latest action(s) taken by the DEA.

---

When I was seeing medical help to confirm or refine my suspected/self-diagnosed ADHD, it was a _pain_ to jump through all the hoops. I was nervous getting my first Rx filled but oh my god was it a night and day difference. Within 45 min, it was _clear_ that the medication was working ... exactly how it's supposed to for people with ADHD. That "validation" was my prize for attempting to navigate the american health care system.

If I could have replaced dozens of hours / 6+ months of phone-tag/paperwork/assessments for a monthly subscription and a 30 min video call, I'd have jumped at the chance.
by switchbak | 2025-08-15 21:30:04+00:00
I think those with a thirst for power have seen this a very long time ago, and this is bound to be a new battlefield for control.

It's one thing to massage the kind of data that a Google search shows, but interacting with an AI is a much more akin to talking to a co-worker/friend. This really is tantamount to controlling what and how people are allowed to think.
by bondarchuk | 2025-08-15 21:31:52+00:00
Yes, that would make sense, and it would probably be the best-case scenario after complete assurance that there's no consciousness at all. At least we could understand what's going on. But if you acknowledge that a machine can suffer, given how little we understand about consciousness, you should also acknowledge that they might be suffering in ways completely alien to us, for reasons that have very little to do with the reasons humans suffer. Maybe the training process is extremely unpleasant, or something.
by Aloisius | 2025-08-15 21:32:47+00:00
Testing has demonstrated that microstamping remains readable on casings after thousands of rounds with a SEM.

Moreover, even if it wasn't, who cares? It would still be an improvement over what currently exists (unintentional microstamping) given a fair number of guns that are used in crimes have barely been fired.

Nor does it matter if someone switches the firing pin since criminals aren't likely to do that. They don't even file down serial numbers most of the time.

The fact that it isn't absolutely 100% perfect doesn't mean it isn't better.
by alephnerd | 2025-08-15 21:33:20+00:00
Thailand wanted the F-35 [0], but the we will not give it to them given how close the Thai government has become to China after the junta [1].

Their junta and King wants to keep Thailand as an authoritarian illiberal democracy. The Biden admin on the other hand strongly opposed democratic backsliding in Thailand [2]

As a result, they - like Cambodia - decided to flip to China.

[0] - https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/thailand-...

[1] - https://foreignpolicy.com/2022/06/17/china-thailand-submarin...

[2] - https://asia.nikkei.com/politics/turbulent-thailand/thailand...
by teamonkey | 2025-08-15 21:33:33+00:00
If they see their face or some defining characteristics that help them identify the perpetrator, and that person is known, then obviously they’re going to try to bring that person in and prosecute. I keep hearing that most thefts are made by repeat offenders in the same area, so the evidence can build up, eventually leading to an arrest.

I didn’t say it would help in every case, it might even be a tiny proportion of cases, but court records show CCTV recordings are used as evidence, so it happens.

Is that number of crimes it helps solve worth the trade-off in personal freedoms? That’s where we are now.

> But if laptops arent worth investigating, they should make stealing one legal, or at the very least tell the public they cant be bothered with laptops.

That’s hyperbole and also a misreading of what I said.

The chance of recovering a laptop once stolen is close to zero. If the police attempt to track down the stolen item they will most likely not find it, it is literally a waste of their time. Best you can hope for is that they find a stash of them in future and can identify yours.

If they have a lead on who did it, they will focus on the culprit. Or they may choose to focus on prevention, if they think it will reduce the chances of it happening again. Or they may have nothing in which case they can do nothing.

Either way, if your laptop’s been nicked (as mine was) then you’ll get no catharsis, even if they catch the guy who did it. It sucks, but there isn’t a practical alternative.

The police cannot guarantee every crime get solved and it’s unreasonable to expect that. That is not the same as saying that they have no effect at all, that they don’t reduce the number of robberies that take place, or that you might as well make theft legal.
by dylan-m | 2025-08-15 21:33:34+00:00
I feel like Disney+ really cemented the decline here. I enjoyed watching Reservation Dogs, which I think I had pirated originally because it was one of those smaller shows with awkward distribution rights. I genuinely wanted to just go and buy the second and third seasons up front when they were airing. It's fine if it's unreasonably priced and it takes a day or two for the episodes to be available, I needed to absolve my guilt for pirating it. So I tried iTunes, which has basically everything if you bring cash, right? Used to, anyway. Not anymore. The only way to watch this show is if you subscribe to Disney+. I don't know why they make this hard, and I don't care either. Episodes were available immediately on TPB. I felt bad, but Disney made me do it. To be fair, Netflix does the same thing, but they don't have their fingers in so many places.
by bondarchuk | 2025-08-15 21:34:16+00:00
I was (explicitly and on purpose) pointing out a dichotomy in the fine article without taking a stance on machine consciousness in general now or in the future. It's certainly a conversation worth having but also it's been done to death, I'm much more interested in analyzing the specifics here.

("it's not going to "feel bad" the way you and I do." - I do agree this is very possible though, see my reply to swalsh)
by nkingsy | 2025-08-15 21:34:50+00:00
I’ve only taken it once.

I woke up feeling sick, stiff, and lethargic while staying with a friend in NYC in 2008. My friend said “I’ve got just the thing” and gave me one of his adderall.

20 minutes later I was feeling better than I’ve ever felt in my life. We had one of the most exciting, memorable days in my life, just pinging all over the city. That night we went out to a club, where I somehow charmed a girl way out of my league.

We met up the next day and she was very disappointed.

That is to say, it was quite pleasant for me.

I sometimes think I have undiagnosed ADHD (my daughter has it), but this would seem like evidence against it, as it was undeniably stimulating.
by baby_souffle | 2025-08-15 21:34:51+00:00
> Since you may sell them if you get them more frequently. Now here's a pack of 30.

But it's already a C/II class medication so the name on the Rx has to match the name on the photo ID and the pharmacy has to keep the records / there are rules for how often C/II medications can be dispensed. If you have a 30d Rx, the soonest you can come back with an Rx for that same medication is ~25d.

Regardless, does it matter if I have to re-fill every 30d or every 90d? As long as I'm only in there every 80d to get my 90d supply topped up, how is that any different from a 2d Rx or a 30d Rx being filled every 1d or every 25d?
by flyinglizard | 2025-08-15 21:35:16+00:00
By the examples the post provided (minor sexual content, terror planning) it seems like they are using “AI feelings” as an excuse to censor illegal content. I’m sure many people interact with AI in a way that’s perfectly legal but would evoke negative feelings in fellow humans, but they are not talking about that kind of behavior - only what can get them in trouble.
by anon373839 | 2025-08-15 21:35:25+00:00
If true, I think it’s interesting that there are people at Anthropic who are delusional enough to believe this and influential enough to alter the products.

To be honest, I think all of Anthropic’s weird “safety” research is an increasingly pathetic effort to sustain the idea that they’ve got something powerful in the kitchen when everyone knows this technology has plateaued.
by indy | 2025-08-15 21:35:54+00:00
You're right probably nothing, just a far right conspiracy theory:

"I hunt phone thieves professionally – I was still targeted on Oxford Street Former detective turned private investigator warns some London areas have become ‘lawless’" https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/08/15/phone-thieves-ox...

"Some 78,000 people had phones or bags snatched from them on the street in the year ending March 2024, according to the Crime Survey for England and Wales.

That is equivalent to 200 “snatch thefts” a day and is a 153 per cent increase on the number of incidents in the year ending March 2023.

London is seen as the “epicentre” of phone thefts with £50 million worth of handsets reported stolen in the capital in 2024.

In a blitz on the “scourge of mobile phone theft” in February, Met officers arrested 230 people in just a week and recovered 1,000 handsets by targeting hotspots such as Westminster and the West End."
by hombre_fatal | 2025-08-15 21:37:31+00:00
I was on a 90 day prescription for ten years (vyvanse) when I told my doctor I was traveling abroad.

Insurance doesn’t cover 90 day bottles so it was $300/mo but worth it.

Nowadays there’s generic Vyvanse which is much cheaper so it probably makes 90 day prescriptions financially viable?

I just moved back to the US and had to find a new local doctor who gives me 30 day scripts so I haven’t asked about 90 day yet. I imagine these pill mills are pretty stingy. It takes a lot of time and calling around to find docs who don’t treat you like a fiend in some way.

But we need to count our blessings. People on pain killers need to put up with crazy shit like getting randomly summoned to the office so they can count your remaining pills.
by tptacek | 2025-08-15 21:38:04+00:00
There's no reason for normal userland code not part of the distribution itself ever to use /dev/random, and getrandom(2) with GRND_RANDOM unset is probably the right answer for everything.

Both Linux and BSD use a CSPRNG to satisfy /dev/{urandom,random} and getrandom, and, for future-secrecy/compromise-protection continually update their entropy pools with hashed high-entropy events (there's ~essentially no practical cryptographic reason a "seeded" CSPRNG ever needs to be rekeyed, but there are practical systems security reasons to do it).
by bsimpson | 2025-08-15 21:38:37+00:00
I've seen so much strongly relatable ADHD content over my life, and had so many close friends get diagnosed, that I've often wondered if I'm in the population, or if it's pathologizing the regular experience of modern humans.

I haven't had mental healthcare, so I don't have much personal insight, but I found this interview with Trevor Noah very interesting. It's the first time I've heard someone who identified with ADHD share his experience, and not have it resonate with mine:

https://youtu.be/SkDvqvpxKBY?si=oszaQx7OOh5G3NXb
by hungmung | 2025-08-15 21:38:57+00:00
I've always wanted to create a blog "platform" that's just plaintext or markdown files in a git repo hosted over a torrent-like network. By publishing, you automatically sign every post (commit) with a key, the fingerprint which can be used for lookup on a DHT. By "following" a blog, you're just cloning the git repo from peers and hosting it like a torrent. Things like fonts and colors get sorted out by the user, but the client has some built in theming options. Just roll it all in a simple app so mom and dad could use it.

Free hosting, censorship resistance, minimal styling blah blah blah. What's not to like?
by alephnerd | 2025-08-15 21:39:23+00:00
It's a side effect of democracy promotion.

We the US cannot have a values based foreign policy - all that matters is power.

Cambodian and Thai leadership wants to retain power, so they decided to work with the Chinese - who don't care if you are an autocracy or a democracy, while we tried to make an example out of Thailand (and Cambodia) for regressing into authoritarian military governments.

We the US need to return to the same mercenary foreign policy. We are starting to do that again with rappoachment to Pakistan, shielding Israel, and arm twisting the Europeans.

Welcome to a multipolar world - only the powerful can set the rules.
by tptacek | 2025-08-15 21:39:24+00:00
OpenBSD isn't meaningfully more secure than Linux. It probably was 20 years ago. Today it's more accurate to say that Linux and OpenBSD have pursued different security strategies --- there are meaningful differences, but they aren't on a simple one-dimensional spectrum of "good" to "bad".

(I was involved, somewhat peripherally, in OpenBSD security during the era of the big OpenBSD Security Audit).
by cardanome | 2025-08-15 21:39:31+00:00
Yes, knowing about RSD was life changing for me.

Before I had my ADHD diagnosis, I just assumed that I have social anxiety and tried to fix it myself by giving me exposure therapy. I would force myself to seek out any social interaction regardless on how I felt.

The result was that I got worse, so much worse because I was basically trained myself to disregard my emotions. Turns out being undiagnosed with ADHD is traumatizing. I did not imagine that people hated me for being different, I never had any phobia. It wasn't "just in my head". The truth is that I am different and lots of people will instinctively hate me for being neurodivergent. I just needed to learn to deal with that.

That is why a correct diagnosis is so important. I despise that people are given generic diagnosis like depression or anxiety instead of digging deeper and trying to find out what actually causes them.
by recursivecaveat | 2025-08-15 21:39:42+00:00
Isn't it the same problem as public mining pools? I remember I ran my little desktop in one for a day or 2 and got paid some micro-coins despite not personally winning a block. I'm not sure how they verify work and prevent cheating, but they appear to do so. I don't know if it scales down to a small enough size to be appropriate for 1 webpage though.
by roenxi | 2025-08-15 21:39:43+00:00
> On the latter point, that is, you can have the same conversation tomorrow. The LLM has not "learned" anything, it has not adapted in any way.

They do learn, OpenAI has a memory feature. I just opened up a chat, asked "What do you know about me?" and got a long list of things specific to me that it certainly did not infer from the chat so far. It's a bit unsettling really, someone at OpenAI would probably have little difficulty matching my OpenAI account to my HN one, it looks like they have quite a few bits of information to work with. Privacy is a hard thing to maintain.

I really don't see the "LLMs don't learn" position as a defensible one long term given the appalling limitations of human memory and the strengths computers have at it. Given the improvements in RAG and large context windows it actually seems pretty likely that LLMs will be quite a lot better at humans when it comes to memory, they have SSDs. We just don't build LLMs with memory right yet for whatever reason.
by quesera | 2025-08-15 21:40:04+00:00
Absolutely agreed, but I suspect that a whole lot of what humans do every day can be reduced to pattern-following.

If/when LLMs or other AIs can create novel work / discover new knowledge, they will be "genius" in the literal sense of the word.

More genius would be great! (probably) . But genius is not required for the vast majority of tasks.
by viccis | 2025-08-15 21:40:09+00:00
>This feature was developed primarily as part of our exploratory work on potential AI welfare ... We remain highly uncertain about the potential moral status of Claude and other LLMs ... low-cost interventions to mitigate risks to model welfare, in case such welfare is possible ... pattern of apparent distress

Well looks like AI psychosis has spread to the people making it too.

And as someone else in here has pointed out, even if someone is simple minded or mentally unwell enough to think that current LLMs are conscious, this is basically just giving them the equivalent of a suicide pill.
by dh2022 | 2025-08-15 21:40:16+00:00
I used to watch veritasium and one blue tree brown on YouTube. I stopped this spring because of the number of ads I am getting on my iPad. Maybe I could’ve found a workaround via some ad blockers on iPad. But that was too much trouble so I am back to Wikipedia (so far no ads there).

I think the web is regressing to the point where it is more trouble than it is worth.
by keeda | 2025-08-15 21:40:43+00:00
> We already had this debate decades ago, and your side of the debate lost. It's not "theft" by any reasonable interpretation of the word.

That's only true when you ignore many, many common usages of the word "theft". I would hazard a guess that your interpretations are along the dictionary lines of "depriving a person of their property." However, here are some commonly used forms of the word (supported by wikipedia and government sites) that don't fit that definition:

- Wage theft: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wage_theft

- Time theft: https://www.adp.com/resources/articles-and-insights/articles...

- Identity theft: https://www.usa.gov/identity-theft

- Theft of services: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theft_of_services

- Theft of trade secrets: https://uscode.house.gov/view.xhtml?req=TRADE+SECRETS

- Attention theft: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attention_theft

- Data theft: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_theft

- Electricity theft: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_theft

- Joke theft: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joke_theft

- Stolen valor: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stolen_valor

And here are more colloquial usages of theft of abstract things:

- Credit card theft (it's really just the number that is "stolen")

- Password theft (usually "stolen" during a data breach, more numbers being stolen)

- Bitcoin theft (even more numbers being "stolen".)

Here's a very simple explanation for this: In common parlance, "theft" generally means taking something of economic value -- either physical, like property, or abstract, like labor -- from someone without giving any value in return against their wishes.

If you extend this line of thought, you'll see why IP laws exist and why these abstract forms of theft are illegal.

And when examined from that perspective, those coherent reasons are basically just different ways of saying "because I can get away with it."
by some_furry | 2025-08-15 21:41:10+00:00
Do you believe our society should value tradition and hierarchy?

Yes -> right-leaning

No -> left-leaning

"Progress" implies there is an inevitable way forward, for which other beliefs are leading society astray from.

When it comes to things like "Are you prejudiced against groups of people?" the progressive answer is always "no". People on both "sides" can find valid reasons to say "no" to this question, but it's hard to maintain an internally consistent worldview if you're left-leaning (oppose hierarchies) and still want others to be lesser (which requires a hierarchy). Mainstream racism, homophobia, etc. naturally concentrate on the political right, but up until a few years ago, opposition to same-sex marriage was a mainstream position for liberal Democrats, too.

This is all to say, there is no actual significant leftist representation in American politics.
by imchillyb | 2025-08-15 21:41:19+00:00
> There, researchers under Dr. Nathan Gordon, a CIA chemist, mixed shellfish toxin with water and froze the mixture into a small pellet or dart. The finished projectile would be fired from a modified Colt M1911 pistol equipped with an electrical firing mechanism. It had an effective range of 100 meters and was virtually noiseless when fired.

> When fired into a target, the frozen dart would immediately melt and release its poisonous payload into the victim’s bloodstream. Shellfish toxins, which are known to completely shut down the cardiovascular system in concentrated doses, would spread to the victim’s heart, mimicking a heart attack and causing death within minutes.

> All that would be left behind was a tiny red dot where the dart entered the body, undetectable to those who didn’t know to look for it. As the target lay dying, the assassin could escape without notice.

> https://allthatsinteresting.com/heart-attack-gun
by alephnerd | 2025-08-15 21:41:21+00:00
He's implying the Gripen deal was a result of Trump.

In reality, the US-Thailand relationship has been dead since the Junta took over in Thailand, and for domestic brownie points we decided to make an example out of them and Cambodia for democratic backsliding during the Biden admin [3]

Edit: cannot reply below (@Dang am I being rate limited)

The US has consistently rejected Thailand's F-35 request under the Biden admin [0][1]. If forced to buy a 4th gen jet, may as well buy the cheapest option on the market, which is the Gripen, as they have been using the Gripen for decades [2].

European affairs have little to do with affairs in Asia.

[0] - https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/thailand-...

[1] - https://www.rfa.org/english/news/china/thailand-f35-02162022...

[2] - https://www.reuters.com/article/business/autos-transportatio...

[3] - https://asia.nikkei.com/politics/turbulent-thailand/thailand...
by bookofjoe | 2025-08-15 21:41:51+00:00
I completely understand what you said. It is NOT a fixable problem.

>How often do you need constant O2 readings?

You're missing the point: the fact you have the freedom to get as many readings as you like is fundamental. Who are you to decide how often I want/need them?

>What places are phones not permitted but Apple Watches are?

1. Among others: courtrooms (phones must be turned off, but no restriction on Apple Watches). Source: my appearances as an expert witness in courtrooms around the country. 2. Classrooms (phones off/Watches fine) 3. Theaters 4. In a dental chair and many, many more places.

>Obviously not as good as the original, but you should still get a constant histogram once reconnected.

But what if I can't reconnect or don't want to?