MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by low_tech_love | 2025-08-13 06:36:48+00:00
The thing with identifying yourself with an “ism” (e.g. rationalism, feminism, socialism) is that, even though you might not want that, you’re inherently positioning yourself in a reductionist and inaccurate corner of the world. Or in other words you’re shielding yourself in a comfortable, but wrong, bubble.

To call yourself an -ist means that you consider that you give more importance to that concept than other people—-you’re more rational than most, or care more about women than most, or care more about social issues than most. That is wrong both because there are many irrational rationalists and also because there are many rational people who don’t associate with the group (same with the other isms). The thing is that the very fact of creating the label and associating yourself with it will ruin the very thing that you strive for. You will attract a bunch of weirdos who want to be associated with the label without having to do the job that it requires, and you will become estranged from those who prefer to walk the walk instead of talk the talk. In both ways, you failed.

The fact is that every ism is a specific set of thoughts and ideas that is not generic, and not broad enough to carry the weight of its name. Being a feminist does not mean you care about women; it means you are tied to a specific set of ideologies and behaviours that may or may not advance the quality of life of women in the modern world, and are definitely not the only way to achieve that goal (hence the inaccuracy of the label).
by k1t | 2025-08-13 06:38:13+00:00
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/BNE_(artist)

BNE is an anonymous graffiti artist known for stickers that read "BNE" or "BNE was here". The artist has left their mark in countries throughout the world, including the United States, Canada, Asia, Romania, Australia, Europe, and South America. "His accent and knowledge of local artists suggest he is from New York."
by Daub | 2025-08-13 06:38:42+00:00
He was a physicist and author with an interest in old technologies. I believe that most of van Leeuwenhoek's microscopes are replicas, but their basic form is well documented. As I recall, the most difficult thing to replicate was the lens, which he made using the same method van Leeuwenhoek's used: dropping molten glass through air.

The telescope was relatively easy in comparison. He used two lens from his stock of lenses and simply mounted them in a tube. I recall him having fun with the decorations, which are quite detailed.

He was so good at making/repairing ancient technology that the Science museum trusted him to repair some of their most precious items from their old wireless collection. He used vintage brass (modern brass looks wrong), vintage ebonite and authenticity old mahogany. Wish I could remember more. I have a few more of his things: a set of Napier's Bones (an old calculation device) made from chop sticks, an reproduction crystal set, a number of orreries.
by tmnvdb | 2025-08-13 06:39:19+00:00
If you train an LLM on chess, it will learn that too. You don't need to explain the rules, just feed it chess games, and it will stop making illegal moves at some point. It is a clear example of an inferred world model from training.

https://arxiv.org/abs/2501.17186

PS "Major commercial American LLM" is not very meaningful, you could be using GPT4o with that description.
by Lio | 2025-08-13 06:40:09+00:00
Completely agree.

I was given a small electric fan. It’s great in that it’s portable and I can use it in some of the crummy hotels I have to stay in.

Unfortunately, it has a bright blue LED on it so it’s a pain to use at night when you’re trying to sleep.

It’s so bright that even covered with tape it still shines through the thin plastic of the fan body.

What really gets me is why they bothered putting an operating light on it in the first place?

It’s a fan. The fact that it’s working tells you it’s working.

A Jobs or Torvalds type character would have pointed that out.

I suspect though that it’s often a case of people noticing these type of design flaws but not having the authority to fix them while those with the authority don’t care.
by max_ | 2025-08-13 06:40:15+00:00
Europe is a serfdom & always has been.

Everything is done to prop up the stature of "Lords" (the already big)

And sqeeze out or limit the ambition of serfs wanting to reach Lordly status.

Its a nice place if you are docile donkey that love's being taken care of by lords and have no personal agency whatsoever.
by nicewood | 2025-08-13 06:40:29+00:00
Nice one, I thought I need this and wanted to build something like that too couple weeks ago.

But the more I worked with Claude, I felt like *I am the bottleneck* and not the waiting times. Also waiting for more than (really max) 5 minutes is for my features just not happening.

I think remote claude code is nice if you start a completely new app with loads of features that will take a long time OR for checking pull requests (the remote execution is more important here)
by Nevermark | 2025-08-13 06:42:59+00:00
For congressional seat/term limits on parties.

Lots of ways to achieve that. I am not going to pick here. That’s an interesting discussion in its own right. But simple examples that demonstrate limits: parties can only operate in 10 states or less (for congressional candidates). Or parties can only hold 30% or less of congressional seats in either house. Etc.

In the short run, it enforces bipartisanship,

In the long run, it kills long term incentives to attempt to achieve single party rule temporarily, permanent or effectively permanent. Which has been a very destructive incentive driving tremendous organized partisan efforts. (Even when not achieved, the pursuit kills bipartisanship and competition on policy, in pursuit of a lasting hold on power.)

And it would open up elections to more parties, more choices, and force more flexibility, adaptation and collaboration from all parties, instead of more two party polarization and entrenchment.
by gylterud | 2025-08-13 06:43:53+00:00
That's a neat thought!

One could interpret the outcome of the game as a number by ○ being the digit 0 and ● being 1. For fun we could also say that if there is a repeating subsequence at the end (someone lost), then that is repeated infinitely. I suggest this because any won game has a sub-string repeated three times at the end, so we might as well repeat it to infinity!

Say the example game, ● ● ○ ○ ● ● ○ ○ ● ● ○ ● ● ○ ● ○ ○ ● ● ○ ○ ● ● ○ ○ ●, would be 0.11001100110110100110011001, or perhaps 0.11001100110110(1001) where the parenthesis express infinite repetition. If we choose the first, it is 768160/959951 and the second would be 65553/81920.

In any case, a won game would be a rational number, while a game which goes on forever would be an irrational! One could then wonder which irrational numbers are represented by such games.
by robbomacrae | 2025-08-13 06:45:11+00:00
Thank you! The SMS is feature is untested so I don't mention it much. I think unlike the others (TTS/ASR/Slack/Whatsapp) SMS will require a paid account on twilio. Twilio can’t absorb the carriers network costs for free like they can with WhatsApp sandboxing. If it's critical for you id be happy to work with you to get that feature working properly!
by yosefk | 2025-08-13 06:45:53+00:00
Correct - as long as the tools the LLM uses are non-ML-based algorithms existing today, and it operates on a large code base with no programmers in the loop, I would be wrong. If the LLM uses a chess engine, then it does nothing on top of the engine; similarly if an LLM will use another system adding no value on top, I would not be wrong. If the LLM uses something based on a novel ML approach, I would not be wrong - it would be my "ML breakthrough" scenario. If the LLM uses classical algorithms or an ML algo known today and adds value on top of them and operates autonomously on a large code base - no programmer needed on the team - then I am wrong
by satisfice | 2025-08-13 06:46:04+00:00
This strikes me as babbling. 70 percent fever dream.

To take one example, the author speaks of using AI to chat with his favorite thinkers. Well I have favorite thinkers, so why don’t I chat with AI versions of them? Because I know it’s all fake. Whatever substance there is to chatting with a corpse or corpus is unknowable. So it amounts to playing with dolls.

I think for a living. I would LIKE AI to help. But it doesn’t. On balance, any benefit is drowned out by the effort it takes me to check its work.

I’m left wondering if the only people who value GenAI are those who haven’t experienced the satisfaction of thinking for themselves, or who have crippling impostor syndrome.
by uecker | 2025-08-13 06:47:30+00:00
> It's that textual inclusion is just a terrible model. You end up reprocessing > the same thing over and over again, everywhere it is used.

One could certainly store the interfaces in some binary format, but is it really worth it? This would also work with headers by using a cache, but nobody does it for C because there is not much to gain. Parsing is fast anyhow, and compilers are smart enough not to look at headers multiple times when protected by include guards. According to some quick measurements, you could save a couple of percent at most.

The advantages of headers is that they are simple, transparent, discoverable, and work with outside tools in a modular way. This goes against the trend of building frameworks that tie everything together in a tightly integrated way. But I prefer the former. I do not think it is a terrible model, quite the opposite. I think it is a much better and nicer model.
by shkkmo | 2025-08-13 06:48:43+00:00
> If LLM fell to tricks of Elizabet Loftus, we'd say LLM hallucinated.

She's strongly oversold how and when false memories can be created. She testified in defense of Ghislaine Maxwell at her 2021 trial that financial incentives can create false memories and only later admitted that there were no studies to back this up when directly questioned.

She's spent a career over-generalizing data about implanting false minor memories to make money discrediting victims' traumatic memories and defend abusers.

You conflate "hallucination" with "imagination" but the former has much more in common with lieing than it does with imagining.
by frumplestlatz | 2025-08-13 06:49:14+00:00
I know the historical rationale that’s cited, but DEI trainings aren’t neutral history lessons or empathy-building exercises. They’re rooted in an unfalsifiable, quasi-religious ideology that assigns moral worth by group identity, rewrites history to fit its narrative, and enforces compliance rather than fostering genuine understanding. Since they also function as a jobs program for those willing to find and punish ideological deviance, they incentivize division — a prime example of pathological institutionalized empathy.
by dragonwriter | 2025-08-13 06:50:15+00:00
> Makes me think that if this list was still published it would have a sort of Father Ted effect and act as a list of books you’d definitely want to read.

The Wikipedia article on the Index note that a related list (the _Index Expurgatorius_, which was at the time published separately but later had its function incorporated within the _Index Librorum Prohibitum_, and listed books subject to similar restrictions as the main index but only conditionally pending correction of specified errors) was called out for something like that use -- in 1627.
by fifilura | 2025-08-13 06:52:09+00:00
First search for SAMO!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SAMO

But difficult to figure out if any of them are original.

I liked this one, but it is most likely newer. It is on top of the City-as-school building where Basquiat attended, so it is probably a tribute.

https://www.alltext.nyc/panorama/DZz7Gp1PtROe78ailUpvlA?o=11...
by karlgkk | 2025-08-13 06:53:38+00:00
> Reading cannot be a sin. Thinking cannot be a sin. Speaking cannot be a sin.

the catholic church is an ancient institution that believes it is the continuing ministry of jesus christ. and thus, it is not beholding to purely biblical rules - but also tradition.

indeed, sin is an "utterance, deed, or desire" that offends God. the concept of sin is that it is abhorrent, and caused by concupiscence.

the ccc (catcheism) indeed has a definition for sin and does not specify what is or isn't sin directly - but rather through the above criteria, both biblical and traditional. and it is defined and ruminated upon by those who are the apostles (bishops) via the magisterium, which is their upholding of this

which is to say,

reading can be a sin - if those works are abhorrent to god, the bible, or the tradition of the church

thinking can be a sin - if those thoughts are abhorrent to god, the bible, or the tradition of the church

speaking can be a sin - if those words are abhorrent to god, the bible, or the tradition of the church

and boy howdy, if those fuckin jesusmonks put together a book of read-sins and by the magisterium and the tradition of the church, then reading them is a sin. sorry about your religion
by JohnKemeny | 2025-08-13 06:54:01+00:00
The article keeps referring to "AI" as if it's a coherent, agreed-upon thing. It's not. "AI" is a marketing term that's been applied to whatever happens to look impressive at the moment---right now, that's LLMs. There's no settled definition, no unified discipline, and lumping everything from generative text models to actual robotics under the same label just obscures the discussion. If we're talking about LLMs, let's call them LLMs.

And let's be real: we're in a bubble. There's zero evidence that LLMs have produced a measurable productivity boom. If anything, they're net negative in many contexts---encouraging shallow engagement, short-circuiting the learning process, and making knowledge workers more dependent on stochastic parrots that frequently hallucinate. We've replaced "look it up" with "ask the oracle," and the oracle can't reliably tell fact from fiction.

The hype cycle will keep burning cash until someone admits the emperor's wardrobe is ... speculative at best.
by mac-mc | 2025-08-13 06:54:10+00:00
Do you have many memories of that time, around 3 to 5, and remember what your cognitive processes were?

When the child is afraid of the monster in the dark, they are not literally visually hallucinating a beast in the dark; they are worried that there could be a beast in the dark, and they are not sure that there is due to a lack of sensory information confirming a lack of the monster. They are not being hyper precise because they are 3, so they say "there is a monster under my bed"! Children have instincts to be afraid of the dark.

Similarly with imaginary friends and play, it's an instinct to practice through smaller stakes simulations. When they are emotionally attached to their imaginary friends, it's much like they are emotionally attached to their security blanket. They know that the "friend" is not perceptible.

It's much like the projected anxieties of adults or teenagers, who are worried that everyone thinks they are super lame and thus act like people do, because on the balance of no information, they choose the "safer path".

That is pretty different than the hallucinations of LLMs IMO.
by bm3719 | 2025-08-13 06:54:20+00:00
The thinking-averse outnumber the thinking-inclined. They've tried this thinking thing, and want nothing to do with it. They all went to public school, after all, and the rare times thinking happened it was painful and had to be forced upon them. Their ideal of Being is to react to content, experience positive emotional immediacy, or dull their intellects: all feeling, no thinking.

They'll win in the short term, due to the tyranny of convenience. Then, when all economic value has been extracted from them and the possibility of future value made nil, they'll lose. Of course, that doesn't mean you'll win though.
by lelanthran | 2025-08-13 06:54:46+00:00
> One effective old technique for ranking is to capture the search-to-click relationship by real users. It's basically the training data by human mapping the search terms they entered to the links they clicked. With just a few of clicks, the ranking relevance goes way up.

That's not very effective. Ever heard of clickbait?

Like I've said uncountable times before, the only effective technique to clean out the search results of garbage is to use a point system that penalises each 3rd party advertisement placed on the page.

The more adverts, the lower the rank.

And the reason that will work is because you are directly addressing the incentive for producing garbage - money!

The result should be "when two sites have the same basic content, in the search results promote the one without ads over the ones with ads".

Until this is done, search engines will continue serving garbage, because they are rewarding those actors who are producing garbage.
by ehnto | 2025-08-13 06:54:54+00:00
I never intended to say it was true of all codebases for all developers, that would make no sense. I don't know all developers.

I think it's objectively true that the information is not in the LLM. It did not have all codebases to train with, and they do not (immediately) retrain on the codebases they encounter through usage.
by TazeTSchnitzel | 2025-08-13 06:54:58+00:00
I have recently lived through something called a psychotic break, which was an unimaginably horrible thing, but it did let me see from the inside what insanity does to your thinking. And what's fascinating, coming out the other side of this, is how similar LLMs are to someone in psychosis. Someone in psychosis can have all the ability LLMs have to recognise patterns and sound like they know what they're talking about, but their brain is not working well enough to have proper self-insight, to be able to check their thoughts actually fully make sense. (And “making sense” turns out to be a sliding scale — it is not as if you just wake up one day suddenly fully rational again, there's a sliding scale of irrational thinking and you have to gradually re-process your older thoughts into more and more coherent shapes as your brain starts to work more correctly again.) I believe this isn't actually a novel insight either, many have worried about this for years! Psychosis might be an interesting topic to read about if you want to get another angle to understand the AI models from. I won't claim that it's exactly the same thing, but I will say that most people probably have a very undeveloped idea of what mental illness actually is or how it works, and that leaves them badly prepared for interacting with a machine that has a strong resemblance to a mentally ill person who's learned to pretend to be normal.
by leodiceaa | 2025-08-13 06:56:22+00:00
> use it as a therapist or girlfriend or whatever

> it seems addictive to people (some kind of dopamine hit from deferring the need to think for yourself or something)

I think this whole thing has more to do with validation. Rigorous reasoning is hard. People found a validation machine and it released them from the need to be rigorous.

These people are not "having therapy", "developing relationships", they are fascinated by a validation engine. Hence the repositories full of woo woo physics as well, and why so many people want to believe there's something more there.

The usage of LLMs at work, in government, policing, coding, etc is so concerning because of that. They will validate whatever poor reasoning people throw at them.
by brailsafe | 2025-08-13 06:56:45+00:00
> Now the public is on the hook for them. Plus, more jails will be needed if you wanna move all the unhoused in there.

> Maybe its easier just to build more housing.

Maybe instead of letting a George Carlin joke from 30 years ago become reality by calling them something different, patting ourselves on the back, then delegating responsibility to whoever's not building houses and subsequently (often) protest the construction of those houses, we should accept that the public is and should be on the hook for them. If not, then we're just a bunch of pathetic individualists who haven't realized the social safety around them is about as strong as cheap wet toilet paper.

Living somewhere is not on its own a contribution to society, and building more housing is not enough to uplift people out of severe fentanyl or meth addiction; people on the street are not having conversations about esoteric zoning policies and hoping studio apartments stay at only $2500/m because supply increased marginally quicker over the next 10 years while birth rates dropped and immigration slowed.

Supply is an issue, but it's often a red herring. Homeless people are the public, we are the public, blight and suffering within society is society's issue, not just when the Olympics roll around or the leader of a major foreign nation rolls up
by socalgal2 | 2025-08-13 06:56:45+00:00
that's great. I usually use the context menu on MacOS and the "Define" option on long press on iOS

That said, trying to use long press on iOS (or whatever it actually is), is one of those places that often drives me nuts. I don't know if the issue is a specific app or the OS or what but sometimes I want the popup menu to appear and I can't get it to appear. Or I do something to make it appear but it doesn't appear for x hundred milliseconds, during which I think it didn't get my gesture so I start a new one, just as it's finally responding in which case my new gesture dismisses it. Repeat 3-4 times before I'm ready to tear my hair out

It also shows why canvas based websites suck. Open Google Docs, select a word, press Cmd-Ctrl-D, ... nothing. Try it in gmail (which is not canvas based) and it works.
by robbomacrae | 2025-08-13 06:56:49+00:00
Thanks for the mention! Yeah I first wanted Claude Code to be more hands free when doing things around the house so added voice.. then I thought it would be great if we could go out and get messages read out by Siri on the AirPods when there is an update, and reply that way, so I added WhatsApp support specifically for this purpose. I'd be down for adding a phone option or Signal alternative but I'd be curious to know if the WhatsApp feature solves your problem? https://github.com/robdmac/talkito
by t0mas88 | 2025-08-13 06:56:50+00:00
I use VLANs to isolate the IoT devices. Their separate WiFi is VLAN tagged by the access points.

And my internet/IPTV provider uses broadcast for TV streams which requires IGMP support if you want to run it over your existing network. Otherwise you have to use their modem and run a cable direct from the TV box to the modem.
by isoprophlex | 2025-08-13 06:59:22+00:00
"Ah cool a list of historic technologies that caused a paradigm shift... I wonder what second-order effects are to be expected from generative AI!"

> Customer service automation, Agentic coding, Content creation

Fucking hell. Customer service automation. Auto-spaghetti code. Brainrot as a service. Truly what society needs.
by tsimionescu | 2025-08-13 06:59:26+00:00
You don't "tell them a role", they don't have any specific support for that. You give them a prompt and they complete based on that. If the prompt contains an indication that the counterparty should take on a certain role, the follow-up text will probably contain replies in that role. But there's no special training or part of the API where you specify a role. If the "take on a roll" prompt goes out of the context window, or is superseded by other prompts that push the probability to other styles, it will stop taking effect.
by sapphicsnail | 2025-08-13 06:59:38+00:00
If you actually read about the Bible you would know that 1 Timothy is probably fake.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pastoral_epistles

Any attempt to justify banning books from the New Testament is indirect at best. All Christians play loosy-goosy with the Bible to some degree. There are things Jesus directly warned against like gathering wealth that most Christians have no problem doing. Paul seems kinda iffy about marriage but for many Christians that's a core religious value. Meanwhile there's a bunch of stuff like book banning or being gay that's at best ambiguously condemned in the Bible that people are up in arms over.