MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by K0nserv | 2025-08-18 16:02:43+00:00
Yes I've seen issues with both, but in part what's tricky about false negatives is also that you don't necessarily realise they are there. In the systems I've worked on we've made it simple for operators to verify the work the LLM has done, but this only guards against false positives, which are less problematic.

I've had pretty good success using LLMs for coding and in some ways they are perfect for that. False positives are usually obvious and false negatives don't matter because as long as the LLM finds a solution, it's not a huge deal if there was a better way to do it. Even when the LLM cannot solve the problem at all, it usually produces some useful artifacts for the human to build on.
by scarface_74 | 2025-08-18 16:03:02+00:00
It’s even worse than you think. I work with Amazon Connect. Now the human agent doesn’t have to search the Knowledge Base manually, likely answers will automatically be shown to the agent based on the conversation that you are having. They are just regurgitating what you can find for yourself.

But I can’t imagine ever calling tech support for help unless it is more than troubleshooting and I need them to actually do something in their system or it’s a hardware problem where I need a replacement.
by gigatexal | 2025-08-18 16:03:04+00:00
Crypto: monero, ICOs, stable coins, grift, extortion, Ponzi schemes.

I don’t want to charge people for money. I’m just leery of the I must be anonymous in everything crowd. I’m pro encryption, I’m also pro KYC and other anti money laundering programs — I do think the industry could be disrupted a bit though the exchange fees are egregious. Most of it is just going to profit margin and by activities that are just rent seeking.
by com2kid | 2025-08-18 16:03:06+00:00
Have you ever spent time in a city designed for people first?

Lanes are narrow, forcing cars to go slowly. Side walks are large[1], stop signs, roundabouts, or even curves in the road, exist to force drivers to pay attention to their surroundings and not just speed straight ahead.

> it's something that demands caution and is completely impossible during rush hour,

Cities should be safe for people all day and night. "Can't go out now, too many cars" shouldn't ever be a thing.

My city (Seattle) is working hard on ensuring 0 pedestrian deaths (they were doing good on this goal up until this year), and a driver it is super annoying. As soon as I get out of my car I appreciate the changes that are being made to the city.

[1] I actually saw some exceptions to this in Spain where the side walks were level with the road and there was just so much foot traffic that cars obviously came second in importance to people. I've seen similar design principles in China as well. Really narrow one way streets with only a few feet of set back from the road, lots of foot traffic and the occasional slow moving car.
by wrs | 2025-08-18 16:03:42+00:00
I only ever activate the iPad multitasking features by accident, and then I don’t know how to get out of Split View or hidden Safari windows or whatever other weird thing I’ve triggered. So I’m looking forward to this mode switch that goes back to 2012. I have a fully tricked out MacBook for work, I don’t need to work on my iPad. I’m totally happy in an armchair like Steve.
by toomuchtodo | 2025-08-18 16:03:42+00:00
America cares more about cars than pedestrians. The system is working as designed. Maybe there should be some rage?

Traffic deaths are a public health crisis in the U.S. - https://harvardpublichealth.org/policy-practice/car-accident... - December 13th, 2023

The car is king in the US – and pedestrian deaths are rising. Where is the outrage? - https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/jun/27/car-ro... - June 27th, 2023

US pedestrian deaths reach a 40-year high - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36490283 (92 comments) | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36480122 - June 2023 (607 comments)

Counterpoint:

Helsinki records zero traffic deaths for full year - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44736025 - July 2025 (651 comments)

Hoboken Hasn’t Had a Traffic Death in Four Years. What’s It Doing Right? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31799733 - June 2022 (15 comments)

Oslo got pedestrian and cyclist deaths down to zero. Here’s how - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25197102 - November 2020 (109 comments)

New York’s success provides road map for others taking aim at pedestrian deaths - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17710199 - August 2018 (149 comments)

HN Search:

pedestrian deaths - https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...

traffic deaths - https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...
by ownlife | 2025-08-18 16:03:57+00:00
counterpoint: I’m surprised “delulu” wasn’t already in OED and certainly would not consider it “cutting edge” slang in 2025 (quite the opposite). Just because one person hasn’t heard certain words doesn’t mean they don’t belong in what is meant to be a comprehensive dictionary. In fact, if you needed to know the meaning of every word that is added to the dictionary, then you would have no need for a dictionary! Never having heard a word has nothing to do with whether OED “called it too early.” To make that judgment one would want to find external evidence.
by abullinan | 2025-08-18 16:04:01+00:00
I have hired “outsourced, offshore workers”. Anyone who has similar experience knows the challenges of finding quality talent. Generally, you don’t know what you’re going to get until you’ve already written the first check. Sometimes it is good quality, but lots of the time it is “acceptable” quality or poor quality that needs cleaning (or re-hiring), and 5% of the time it is absolute garbage. Since the costs are typically 1/10th to 1/20th that of US engineer, you can afford to make a few mistakes. However, I can see a future where I can hire local (US) and outsource to AI with oversight within the same budget.
by layer8 | 2025-08-18 16:04:02+00:00
“AI pilots” in the article refers to developing AI-based tools, not to using AI for software development. These projects have a 95% failure rate of successfully deploying the AI tool being developed into production.

Regarding use of AI in software development (which is not what the article is about), the proof of the pudding isn’t in greenfield projects, it’s in longer-term software evolution and legacy code. Few disagree that AI saves time for prototyping or creating a first MVP.
by retrac | 2025-08-18 16:04:32+00:00
There's a lot of cool radio-related things our smartphones could do but probably never will for regulatory/political/commercial reasons like you note.

My pet idea is to make some use of longwave! You know those time signals broadcast around 60 kHz? They cover thousands of kilometres from one transmitter. At 60 kHz the wavelength is 5 kilometres long and the RF tends to diffract around objects like mountains, buildings, etc. that get in the way. Longwave tends to penetrate underground, and through Faraday cages meant for short wavelengths.

Those time signals broadcast, in effect, 1 bit per second. The receiver is dead simple electronically and requires almost no energy to run. What if we broadcast a more modern error-corrected data stream? Every device could be supplied with a receive-only stream of a few hundred bits a second of whatever. I admit it's a solution somewhat in search of a problem. Weather updates? Emergency alerts?
by znpy | 2025-08-18 16:05:00+00:00
> I mean, enjoy your lack of healthcare, stagnating wages, at will employment, no workers rights, no paid vacation and corporations polluting your waterways and giving you products with lead and PFAs.

Lol I'm not us american, what made you assume I was?

I enjoy free healthcare, very well protected employment, worker rights and paid vacations.
by jldugger | 2025-08-18 16:05:16+00:00
> This question (and the other two) are all examples of concrete, real-world problems that people across a variety of quantitative disciplines frequently encounter.

Indeed, I use this technique to sort search results in Splunk, as an extension of TF-IDF. Consider a scenario where us-east-2 is broken but us-east-1 is fine (clearly just a hypothetical!). Split the logs along that good/bad dimension, and then break down by some other pattern; log class, punct, etc. Usually I use a prior of 50:50 to help sort out the "happened once in bad cluster" events.
by JohnFen | 2025-08-18 16:05:31+00:00
> That is quite unusual, though.

Is it? It's not at all unusual in my experience.

> when the chips are down, if you do not share your morals and ethics with those around you, you all fail.

Don't get me wrong, I agree. However, I also think that venue is important. If the workplace is a place where political or religious wars are fought, then the workplace is effectively destroyed and there's zero chance that any real progress (politically or work-wise) will happen.

We can hash these things out elsewhere, we don't have to bring this stuff into a place where it's counterproductive for everybody.

> a line is being drawn and people will be on either side of it.

That's fine -- but if your workplace is on the "right side" of that line, there's little to argue about and if it's on the "wrong side", then why are you even working there?
by ToucanLoucan | 2025-08-18 16:05:46+00:00
It's almost like the people in charge of these businesses have no goddamn clue what they're actually selling, how it works or why it's good (or isn't).

It's almost like, and stay with me here, but it's almost like the vast majority of tech companies are now run by business graduates who do not understand tech AT ALL, have never written a single line of code in their lives, and only know how to optimize businesses by cutting costs and making the products worse until users revolt.
by alaithea | 2025-08-18 16:05:46+00:00
> How long did it take you to get to this point? And how do you deal/ identify/ know you are “done”?

It took me around three to four years after starting medication to get to this point.

The "done" part comes out of setting and meeting realistic and prioritized goals. If I've done that part right, then I can feel OK about stepping away. How to set those goals is the harder part.

Tasks with time-constraints have to be identified and dealt with, such as "prep for meeting with product team." Identifying them means looking ahead on the calendar (not always easy for ADHD'ers!), and getting out of ADHD magical thinking about "just needing a few minutes before" to prep sufficiently. That might mean scheduling a half hour block for prep on the calendar. As a bonus, being aware of what's coming up next is always a good thing.

Open-ended tasks and independent work are harder to clarify and prioritize, but I got the greatest reward when I started attempting to describe what I was doing at my team's daily standup meetings. I might be spending weeks on writing some document, which can feel endlessly the same, but I force myself to not have the update everyday be "worked on the document," but rather:

> I researched topic X and spoke to people A, B and C to try and answer this question I had, and learned this thing

or

> finished drafting section X, editing section Y and started on section Z

Then it becomes much easier to keep track of the longer journey through writing that document. In addition, writing the description for other people helps make that easier.

Breaking the description down also helps you notice when you're stuck, because your daily descriptions start to sound the same. If you notice that sameness, but then ask yourself "if I say _____ today, what will I be able to say that's different tomorrow" then automatically you'll start to get more specific, have better updates, pace yourself better, and as a bonus you have an idea of what you'll do the next day.

Using the above tactics, I started to use standups to pace myself and feel better about my work (more "done"), whereas I used to become full of anxiety and guilt for not feeling like I could report "progress" day over day. It was all a mindset shift.
Show HN: 9xchat – Desktop AI client with floating window and more
by sudovijay | 2025-08-18 16:06:03+00:00
Been doing web apps for almost a decade. Started using AI tools seriously in 2023 through GitHub Copilot, then wanted something like Alfred's floating window for LLMs.

Tried MacGPT (too basic), TypingMind and Msty (missing features I needed). Built my own.

Key features:

- Floating window that stays on top - Local SQLite storage (no cloud dependency) - Multiple providers (OpenAI, Claude, Gemini, Ollama)

31 users in under a month, no marketing. I use it daily for coding and writing.

Built with Electron + React. Works on Mac/Windows/Linux.

Open to feedback on the approach.
by kryllic | 2025-08-18 16:06:10+00:00
Apps like Carrot get their 'hyperlocal' radar maps by pulling data from various sources, often a combination of regional radar stations like NEXRAD and TDWR, depending on the location. In the U.S., the general radar view you see is often based on a mosaic of data from all NEXRAD stations across the country. While this is good for a broad look at weather patterns, it tends to be less accurate at a local level.

For 'hyperlocal' views, apps will grab radar data from specific, nearby stations, which are more accurate and provide more frequent updates (e.g., every 5-10 minutes for NEXRAD). However, the resolution can vary depending on the radar type. TDWR, which is typically used for airports, might not provide the same level of resolution as NEXRAD.

Radar data is usually shared in formats like NetCDF or Gridded Binary, and weather apps let users choose between viewing the high-level mosaic or zooming in on a specific radar station's data. This is why different radar types are offered in apps, each with its own resolution and refresh rate.
by sounds | 2025-08-18 16:06:21+00:00
At this rate, how is it better than pure random chance?

The article mentions 19-20 year old founders, focused on solving single user problems, were the successes.

The sample size is 300 public AI deployments and an undisclosed number of private in-house AI projects. And the survey seems to only consider business applications, as compared with end-user applications like media and software. That's significant but not definitive.

Isn't it more likely that existing problems with low hanging fruit, perhaps unpopular answers, that could be solved by leaning on "AI". And perhaps "AI" wasn't the key to success?
by nluken | 2025-08-18 16:06:23+00:00
I know what the author is getting at but he frames the article like he agrees with the State charging the parents with involuntary manslaughter, which, barring some detail not included in the linked NYT piece, seems ridiculous to me.

The death of a 7 year old is a tragedy. Why do we then need to feel the need to hit bereaved parents with a manslaughter charge? Either there's something missing from the story or we're blaming a systemic issue on individual negligence.
by Perz1val | 2025-08-18 16:06:43+00:00
I have an entirely different problem with youtube, I open all the videos I want to watch from the main page and subscribed page in bew tabs and then sit through them for 3h straight. Shorts are non issue, when I open them the UI and playback pisses me off so quicky that I don't even watch all shorts from my subscribed channels.
by danielvaughn | 2025-08-18 16:06:56+00:00
That’s fair. Not to shift the goal post but my intuition has shifted recently as to what I’d consider a “trivial” problem. API details, off-by-one errors, and other issues like that are what I’d lump into that category.

Easy way to say it is that source code requires perfection, whereas pseudo-code takes the pressure off of that last 10%, and IMO that could have significant benefits for cognitive load if not latency.

Still all hypothetical, and something I’m actively experimenting with. Not a hill I’m gonna die on, but it’s super fun to play and imagine what might be possible.
by speedgoose | 2025-08-18 16:07:42+00:00
We have confidentiality agreements with Microsoft that are worth whatever lawyers think they are worth. Using chatGPT though the company azure accounts is fine, the entreprise Microsoft copilot is fine too, but standard ChatGPT isn’t fine.

Personally no I dont use LLMs for confidential data, the local ones that can run on my personal computers aren’t good enough.
by Spooky23 | 2025-08-18 16:07:44+00:00
The three I’m familiar with are cash cows. Electricity is regulated and the rates have to be supported by the business model.

The small operators are mostly vertically integrated in a small area, so they can deal with the capital buildouts and aren’t subject to as many swings in commodity cost. They often even own the utility rights of way, generating additional income and avoiding property taxes.

It takes alot of union workers and pensions to make up for the pay of one private CEO.
by micromacrofoot | 2025-08-18 16:07:47+00:00
Yeah they announced way too early, they probably didn't expect so much movement in the market (and to be fair it doesn't seem like it needs to be so volatile, GPT5's lackluster release feels like evidence of this)

leaks seem to indicate they're working on some home AI assistant, which kind of lends to their typical lagging timeline with the goal of quality
by 9rx | 2025-08-18 16:08:02+00:00
> I think it's more like a foundational user interface.

I don't. The foundational interface hasn't been created yet. Let's be honest, chat isn't great. It is the best we have right now to leverage the technology, yes, but if it is our future — that we cannot conceive of anything better, we've failed miserably. We're still in the "command-line age". No doubt many computing pioneers thought that the command-line too was foundational, but nowadays most users will never touch it. In hindsight, it really wasn't important — at best a niche product for power users.

> Apple may have learned a very unhelpful lesson: that Siri is just a feature, not a user interface.

That is the right lesson, though. Chat sucks; be that through voice, typing, or anything else. People will absolutely put up with it absent of better options, but as soon as there is a better option nobody is preferring chat. This is where Apple has a huge opportunity to deliver the foundational interface. Metaphorically speaking, they don't need to delver the internet at all, they just need to deliver the web browser. If they miss that boat, then perhaps there is room for concern, but who knows what they have going on in secret?
by PhantomHour | 2025-08-18 16:08:32+00:00
> This is no different from the personal computer, and it is to be expected.

What are you talking about? The return on investment from computers was immediate and extremely identifiable. For crying out loud "computers" are literally named after the people whose work they automated.

With Personal Computers the pitch is similarly immediate. It's trivial to point at what labour VisiCalc automated & improved. The gains are easy to measure and for every individual feature you can explain what it's useful for.

You can see where this falls apart in the Dotcom Bubble. There are very clear pitches; "Catalogue store but over the internet instead of a phone" has immediately identifiable improvements (Not needing to ship out catalogues, being able to update it quickly, not needing humans to answer the phones)

But the hype and failed infrastructure buildout? Sure, Cisco could give you an answer if you asked them what all the internet buildout was good for. Not a concrete one with specific revenue streams attached, and we all know how that ends.

The difference between Pets.com and Amazon is almost laughably poignant here. Both ultimately attempts to make the "catalogue store but on the computer" work, but Amazon focussed on broad inventory and UX. They had losses, but managed to contain them and became profitable quickly (Q4 2001). Amazon's losses shrank as revenue grew.

Pets.com's selling point was selling you stuff below cost. Good for growth, certainly, but this also means that their losses grew with their growth. The pitch is clearly and inherently flawed. "How are you going to turn profitable?" We'll shift into selling less expensive goods "How are you going to do that?" Uhhh.....

...

The observant will note: This is the exact same operating model of the large AI companies. ChatGPT is sold below unit cost. Claude is sold below unit cost. Copilot is sold below unit cost.

What's the business pitch here? Even OpenAI struggles to explain what ChatGPT is actually useful for. Code assistants are the big concrete pitch and even those crack at the edges as research after research shows the benefits appear to be psychosomatic. Even if Moore's law hangs on long enough to bring inference cost down (nevermind per-task token usage skyrocketing so even that appears moot), what's the pitch. Who's going to pay for this?

Who's going to pay for a Personal Computer? Your accountant.
by riedel | 2025-08-18 16:08:52+00:00
I wonder if it commercially would not make sense to build the opposite thing: a VPN that requires age verification that sites may whitelist. While it may seem nonsensical in the first place, because any VPN probably would allow this, however, it might put pressure on the sites to add a privacy friendly alternative. Not completely sure if creating an ' adult only' anonymous internet would be feasible. Thinking about it it would probably also create some dystopian dynamics if any more anonymous form of age verification would actually work. So I wonder if it make sense to simply join the chorus of all that hope it will fail big time. Probably the worst case would be if Google stepped in and offered something similar effective like Google play attestation.
by com2kid | 2025-08-18 16:08:55+00:00
I use my Meta glasses heavily on vacation, and then occasionally else where. The latest Llama isn't as smart as OpenAI, so after a few wrong answers I gave up on day to day queries.

That said, the scenarios they are good at they are really good at. I was traveling in Europe and the glasses where translating engravings on castle walls, translating and summarizing historical plaques, and just generally letting me know what was going on around me.
by garyclarke27 | 2025-08-18 16:09:09+00:00
Steve Jobs duly listed browsing the web, dealing with email, watching videos, listening to music, playing games, reading ebooks, and enjoying photos. Coincidentally, those were the exact things the iPad was really good at. Agreed * Except Music * I have loved having many iPads, but the speakers have always been terrible and they point the wrong way - about time this was fixed.
by Gud | 2025-08-18 16:09:09+00:00
Meanwhile, american companies are

1) Building a grid of satellites, surpassing most networks, SpaceX

2) Building a carbon fibre rocket, Rocket Lab

3) Building fusion reactors, Commonwealth Fusion Systems

4) Advanced solar panels, First Solar.

Hard to say how this will all pan out but the USA are absolutely at the forefront of high tech manufacturing. Obviously they are lagging behind in some ends. Poor rail networks, for example.