MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by sleepyguy | 2025-08-06 03:17:19+00:00
What rock are you living under? Have you seen what a good half of the cities in Luhansk and Donbass look like? They look worse. Most of those cities will never be rebuilt, and the destruction is so thorough. There are shots of Bakhmut that look like the end of the world. During the day, the sky was black, you couldn't even see the sun, and you could smell the death and destruction from kilometers away.

https://www.reuters.com/news/picture/in-pictures-russias-vic...

https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2025/02/24/in-photos-ukrainia...

https://www.businessinsider.com/before-and-after-images-show...
by adrr | 2025-08-06 03:17:53+00:00
Running models without a filter on it. OpenAI has an overzealous filter and won’t even tell you what you violated. So you have to do a dance with prompts to see if it’s copyright, trademark or whatever. Recently it just refused to answer my questions and said it wasn’t true that a civil servant would get fired for releasing a report per their job duties. Another dance sending it links to stories that it was true so it could answer my question. I want a LLMs without training wheels.
by satvikpendem | 2025-08-06 03:19:35+00:00
I can't test this out right now, is this just a demo or is it actually an apk for replacing the engine? Because those are two different things, the latter can be used any time you want to read something aloud on the page for example. This is the sherpa-onnx one I'm talking about.

https://k2-fsa.github.io/sherpa/onnx/tts/apk-engine.html
by genewitch | 2025-08-06 03:19:53+00:00
Please re-read what i said. i said USDA, not FCC. As i tried to start a WISP and could not get any federal funding for it because of the gerrymandering. this was within the last 10 years.

It turns out the USDA changed it. February. of 2024. not 2015 (or whatever). So my information was good until about 18 months ago.

it is now 25/3 (what you are writing as 25*3). https://www.usda.gov/sustainability/infrastructure/broadband... under "mapping", the first question.

I know it often seems like i have no idea what i am talking about, but i very specifically said USDA.

note: they also changed it so cellular no longer counts, amazing:

> Sufficient access to broadband, as defined in the NOFO published on February 21, 2024, is 25 megabits per second (Mbps) downstream and 3 Mbps upstream (25/3). Mobile/cellular and satellite services will not be considered in making the determination of sufficient access to broadband. Additionally, areas with current broadband service from unlicensed wireless facilities, or have an enforceable commitment associated with unlicensed wireless facilities, are eligible for funding under this notice.

here's the old section (from 2018, you're not paying me to prove exactly the numbers i said, which are older by a year or two):

§ 1738.53 Eligible service area. (a) A service area may be eligible for assistance as follows: (1) For loan and loan/grant combinations, the proposed funded service area is completely contained within a rural area. For loan guarantee applications, the proposed funded service area must be contained within an area with a population of 50,000 or less, as defined in 7 U.S.C. 1991(a)(13); (2) For loan/grant combinations, at least 90 percent of the households in the proposed service area must not have access to broadband service. For loans and loan guarantees, at least 50 percent of the households in the proposed service area must not have access to broadband service; (3) No part of the proposed funded service area has three or more *incumbent service providers*; and (4) No part of the proposed funded service area overlaps with the service area of current RUS borrowers or grantees with outstanding obligations. Notwithstanding, after October 1, 2020, the service areas of grantees that are providing service that is *less than 10 Mbps downstream or less than 1 Mbps upstream* will be considered unserved unless, at the time of the proposed application, the grantee has begun to construct broadband facilities that will meet the minimum acceptable level of service established in § 1738.55. § 1738.58; (c) Applicants will be asked to remove areas determined to be ineligible from their proposed funded service area. The application will then be evaluated based on what remains if the resultant service territory is de minimis in change. Otherwise, the Applicant will be requested to provide additional information to the Agency relating to the ineligible areas, such as updated pro forma financials. If the Applicant fails to respond, the application may be returned.

please note the starred parts, as well as 1738.58 (c) which explicitly says that it's gunna be gerrymandered.
by shusaku | 2025-08-06 03:20:24+00:00
The concerning thing is that AI contrarianism is being left wing coded. Imagine you’re fighting a war and one side decides “guns are overhyped, let’s stick with swords”. While there is a lot of hype about AI, even the pessimistic take has to admit it’s a game changing tech. If it isn’t doing anything useful for you, that’s because you need to get off your butt and start building tools on top of it.

Especially people on the left need to realize how important their vision is to the future if AI. Right now you can see the current US admin having zero concern for AI safety or carbon use. If you keep your head in the dirt saying “bubble!” that’s no problem. But if this is here to stay then you need to get involved.
by pxc | 2025-08-06 03:20:54+00:00
> What makes these AIs so amazing is thinking of them as entirely replacing Google with something closer to a god

I guess that way of thinking may foster amazement, but it doesn't seem very grounded in how these things work or their current capabilities. Seems a bit manic tbf.

And again, enabling web search in your chats doesn't prevent these models from doing anything "integrative reasoning", so-to-speak, that they can purportedly do. It just helps ensure that relevant facts are in context for the model.
by slaterbug | 2025-08-06 03:21:34+00:00
This is digressing a bit, but I don't buy that space exploration will be more interesting than anything you can see on Earth.

Aren't other planets / moons etc. basically just barren deserts of rock and dust? Once you get over the novelty of it, it will basically just be the shittiest and most uncomfortable place you've ever been.
by wenc | 2025-08-06 03:25:30+00:00
Demand response is very common indeed.

I used to work for a company that did load curtailment in anticipation of power demand peaks, because if you could lower (or eliminate) power usage during those peaks, the power producer would give you financial incentives. So we shut down our systems if we think the grid will peak.

And you're right about the little guys. If you give utility companies access to your NEST thermostat in exchange for a discount on power bills, they'll turn up your temperature on summer days automatically. (or you can do it manually).
by estebanrfp | 2025-08-06 03:25:32+00:00
* Hybrid Delta & Full-State Synchronization Engine: GenosDB leverages a state-of-the-art hybrid synchronization protocol. The primary path utilizes a sliding-window Operation Log (Oplog) to exchange minimal, compressed Deltas, ensuring ultra-efficient network communication and minimal latency. For fault tolerance and guaranteed consistency, the engine features a robust Full-State Fallback that automatically detects heavily desynchronized peers and provides them with the complete, current graph state. This dual-mode approach offers the performance of delta-syncing with the absolute reliability of full-state reconciliation.
by esseph | 2025-08-06 03:26:10+00:00
Just reading through posts on here about various blogs/posts/opinion pieces there always seems to be a handful of people that jumps to "this is AI". And maybe it is! But the driving force behind this seems not to be to identify that something is AI, but because they spite it so (AI writing), to quickly rule out caring about the material if identified as AI slop.

The problem I see this leading to is plenty of legitimate written things getting thrown away because somebodys online exposure bubbles don't end up including a lot of Medium or Tumblr or a certain Discord or whatever bubble where _huge_ groups of people actually are writing in whatever $STYLE is being identified by the reader and commenter as AI. Which then, because of their post, also gets other people to not even look.

It seems like a disaster, frankly.
by hatthew | 2025-08-06 03:26:22+00:00
> the signage requirements for school speed zones only require signs to designate when the school zone is in effect. So even if a school speed zone sign states that drivers must slow down “when [the light is] flashing,” that light doesn’t have to actually be flashing for a driver to get cited.

I'm a little confused. If the light isn't flashing, doesn't that mean that the school zone isn't in effect? I don't understand what about the law makes it possible to get cited when the light isn't flashing.
by oreally | 2025-08-06 03:26:26+00:00
It starts when companies decide they have a right to time outside the employee's official hours and that they shouldn't have to properly reflect it in their employees' salaries, nor in their employment guarantees.

And furthermore, as an employee end of the day it's your right to have to be look out for yourself. You probably don't realize that because you're infected with startupitis where everyone has to be all in to succeed.
by jemmyw | 2025-08-06 03:27:05+00:00
For the resources you've listed we're nowhere near extracting just the known reserves. For lithium there are a lot of known sources that aren't included in the reserves because they haven't been assessed yet.

And if we did extract the majority of those particular resources then there would be so much of them in circulation that wide scale recycling becomes viable. It already is for copper. And if you're thinking then that recycling is going to be more energy intensive, that's not clear for copper and lithium either - both require high energy to extract in the first place and potentially less to keep them going around.
by t-writescode | 2025-08-06 03:28:14+00:00
The previous context was, "Why on earth would there be a 40mph road next to a school"

The surrounding context was a comment about how the flashing light WASN'T on and how the speed limit was, per the sign, only enforced when the flashing light is on.

So, "why would it be 40mph?" because it's a stroad - a main thoroughfare through a town that's like maybe 5 or more lanes wide (including both directions and the 'turning lane'.

There's value in asking the question why there's such a wild variance in speeds between "normal" speed and "school open/close" hours, and that's a useful question to ask and likely comes down to the car-centric politics that filled the United States for well over 50 years, and will take a very long time (and a lot of political clout) to fix.

Depending on the size of the town, that may also, literally, be "the only road" that makes sense for that school to be on, so you have conflicting interests of a major, high-speed arterial road as well as the safety of children during particular hours.

And to add *even more* to that, if you're going 40 and expect the speed limit to be 40 and everyone around you also expects the speed limit to be 40 (because that's the posted speed limit, and the sign isn't flashing), then you going 20 creates a 20mph differential between you and the rest of the traffic around you and now you're *going* to cause an accident.
by slaterbug | 2025-08-06 03:28:18+00:00
> I feel like a lot of AI angst comes from people who place their self-worth and value on external validation. There is value in simply existing and doing what you want to do even if nobody else wants it.

I agree on this point, and have come to that conclusion myself regarding my own AI angst. However that doesn't solve the economic issues that arise from this technology. As large swathes of the workforce becomes replaced (something that, in my opinion, is rapidly approaching), how do we organise society so that everyone can survive / thrive?

As far as I can see there is very little impetus behind tackling such issues, compared to the forces pushing this tech forward so rapidly.
by hedora | 2025-08-06 03:28:30+00:00
Have you seen modern US schools? They're basically setup like prison yards because of all the school shootings. There's no way the kids are going to run into the street without first going through a parking lot (and, often, a line of bollards).

On the bright side, there's zero reason to slow cars down when kids aren't being actively picked up or dropped off.

(Not that there was a reason to slow the cars down during off hours in the past, since the law has always been "When children are present" in places I've lived, which is good enough.)
by burnt-resistor | 2025-08-06 03:28:46+00:00
It's (with arc and eden) aren't really anything like Mercurial anymore. It superficially resembles "hg" but it's a very hacked fork. It's more like sapling. https://sapling-scm.com

The legend has it that git folks didn't want to help scale mega monorepo support way back while hg folks did. Subsequently, Microsoft hired a git person who did add this functionality later such that modern git would work fine today.
by dragontamer | 2025-08-06 03:30:13+00:00
Then why can I buy porn with my MasterCard right now?

Answer: because the company I buy Porn from uses CCBill, not Stripe. You know, like what the article says Itch.io is looking into.

There are specific payment processors for pornography. This is accepted because everyone knows that Porn gets more chargebacks (Hubands often have to chargebacks and pretend they didn't buy porn when their Wives find the charge). So there's a large degree of customer fraud in pornographic purchases.

-------

Like Steam, Mastercard, Itch.io and even stripe themselves are pointing out: the problem is solidly the payment processor. Or Stripe in this specific Itch.io case.

Done. Now when another Manga / Doujin Library gets banned for too much porn on behest of MasterCard, that will be the time to complain. But for now, stand down. This issue is becoming a boy cried wolf like overreaction. Especially as the facts are finally coming in.
by 42772827 | 2025-08-06 03:30:24+00:00
The choice is no longer between "cutting out bread and sugar completely" and "some kind of lifelong moderation for a person that has struggled." The choice is now between "cutting out bread and sugar completely" and "removing the struggle to moderate bread and sugar."

You're clearly an advocate for your father making healthy choices. So why would you advocate against the use of a drug that makes that easier?
by porphyra | 2025-08-06 03:31:12+00:00
I don't like progressive decoding. Lots of people don't realize that it's a thing, and complain that my photo is blurry when it simply hasn't loaded fully yet. If it just loaded normally from top to bottom, it would be obvious whether it has loaded or not, and people will be able to more accurately judge the quality of the image. That's why I always save my JPEGs as baseline encoding.
by spauldo | 2025-08-06 03:31:42+00:00
Competition is great except when it isn't. Rural customers get screwed because they're not worth the effort. You'll spend more money running fiber to them than you'll ever get back, and that's before you take competition into consideration.

Back when we had the AT&T monopoly the government forced them to serve rural customers. It was subsided by a small fee on every phone bill. That carried over to the baby Bells because they were local monopolies. The problem is, no one has land lines anymore and no companies are willing to take on the last mile problem without a hefty incentive. Being the broadband monopoly is part of that incentive.

I argued for years that the AT&T breakup was done in the stupidest way possible. Put the natural monopoly - the last mile - on its own and regulate the hell out of it like we did AT&T. Then allow competition to run the service on top of those connections. We started in that direction but lost our way somewhere.
by sandreas | 2025-08-06 03:32:33+00:00
Cool.

While I think this is indeed impressive and has a specific use case (e.g. in the embedded sector), I'm not totally convinced that the quality is good enough to replace bigger models.

With fish-speech[1] and f5-tts[2] there are at least 2 open source models pushing the quality limits of offline text-to-speech. I tested F5-TTS with an old NVidia 1660 (6GB VRAM) and it worked ok-ish, so running it on a little more modern hardware will not cost you a fortune and produce MUCH higher quality with multi-language and zero-shot support.

For Android there is SherpaTTS[3], which plays pretty well with most TTS Applications.

1: https://github.com/fishaudio/fish-speech

2: https://github.com/SWivid/F5-TTS

3: https://github.com/woheller69/ttsengine
by dijit | 2025-08-06 03:33:14+00:00
> 74% of Europe’s publicly listed companies rely on US-based tech like Google and Microsoft.

Only 74%?

That feels wrong.

I don’t know a single company off the top of my head that wouldn’t suffer serious damage if you null-routed Google and Microsoft’s servers.

Excel rules the world, and even if it didn’t: nobody is running libreoffice on linux professionally, at least not that I am aware of- and hosting mail? Conventional wisdom is that you should outsource that: I don’t seriously believe that people would outsource mail and not go with Google/Microsoft and get a productivity suite “for free”.
by frosted-flakes | 2025-08-06 03:33:41+00:00
> According to state law, all the money collected by local governments through paid fines can only be used for public safety initiatives like crossing guards and police training.

Should the broken flashing lights be fixed? Of course, and "school" times in regard to community safety zones should also be standardised state-wide.

What's the incentive for implementing misleading automated ticketing cameras if the revenue generated can only be used to do what the cameras already do? The purpose of the cameras is to improve safety. The money isn't going to Christmas bonuses so the police chief can buy a boat.

> “It’s violator-funded. If you don't want to pay $100, it is a very simple hack—don't speed in school zones and you won't get a citation.”
by lisbbb | 2025-08-06 03:33:50+00:00
Everything I have worked on as a fullstack developer for multiple large companies over the past 25 years tells me that AI isn't just going to replace a bunch of workers. The complexity of those places is crazy and it takes teamwork to keep them running. Just look what happens internally over a long holiday weekend at most big companies, they are often just barely meeting their uptime guarantees.

I was recently at a big, three-letter pharmacy company and I can't be specific, but just let me say this: They're always on the edge of having the main websites going down for this or that reason. It's a constant battle.

How is adding more AI complexity going to help any of that when they don't even have a competent enough workforce to manage the complexity as it is today?

You mention VR--that's another huge flop. I got my son a VR headset for Christmas in like 2022. It was cool, but he couldn't use it long or he got nauseaus. I was like "okay, this is problematic." I really liked it in some ways, but sitting around with that goofy thing on your head wasn't a strong selling point at all. It just wasn't.

If AI can't start doing things with accuracy and cleverness, then it's not useful.
by mikepurvis | 2025-08-06 03:35:00+00:00
Right, but it puts rational people who seek to govern in a very uncomfortable position when they're up against an adversary who is happy to seize power at all costs, including weaponizing ignorance, ideology, polarization, conspiracy theories, and a complicit media apparatus, and then engages in blatantly un-democratic tactics like gerrymandering and the filibuster, and all the rest of it.

Basically when all or most of the facts are on your side, how do you balance the need to indulge stupid talking points and perspectives so that you can "reach" people, while also not inadvertently conceding ground in an attempt to meet a person where they are?
by Nash0x7e2 | 2025-08-06 03:35:41+00:00
Built a demo using Gemini Live and Ultralytic's YOLO models running on Stream's Video API for real-time feedback. In this example, I'm having the LLM provide feedback to the player as they try to improve their form.

On the backend, it uses Stream's Python SDK to capture the WebRTC frames from the player, send them to YOLO to detect their arms and body, and then feed them to the Gemini Live API. Once we have a response from Gemini, the audio output is encoded and sent directly to the call, where the user can hear and respond.
by slaterbug | 2025-08-06 03:36:54+00:00
> Whenever we have had a paradigm shift in our ability to process information, we have grappled with it by shifting to higher-level tasks.

People say this all the time, but I think it's a very short-sighted view. It really begs the question: do you believe that there are tasks that exist which a human can do, but we could not train an AI to also do? The difference between AI and any other technological advancement is that AI is (or promises to be, and I have no reason to believe otherwise) a tool that can be adapted to any task. I don't think analogies to history really apply here.
by virgulino | 2025-08-06 03:38:00+00:00
Some good information in video form:

What was the Anthropophagic Movement and how did it EAT European art? // A 1m30s video: https://youtu.be/oh0gZxX1WNM

How Brazil Redefined Modern Art (And Why It Matters) // By a Brazilian historian: https://youtu.be/VDeIH1r5IZ4

Tarsila, the mother of Brazilian Modern Art // Short CBS report: https://youtu.be/9prEjZUG63Y
by genewitch | 2025-08-06 03:38:58+00:00
also in the news in the last couple months was "promising for breast cancer" and another cancer (can't remember, don't care), and depression as well as some other mental health disorder.

If you would like to give me money i would be happy to do the research on what claims have been published about GLP-1 inhibitors since they became prescribed off-label.

I assure you it's more than "many conditions downstream of [...]", unless you want to concede that mental health like depression and dementia are related to gut bacteria, then we can be friends.

also, i caught wind that by December 2025 it's going to be recommended / "proven" to work for erectile dysfunction. At a certain point, we're mincing words.
by jejdjdndn | 2025-08-06 03:39:05+00:00
I think the overall aim of DOGE is simply to move research into privately controlled entities, especially those that can’t be cut. Its simply a continuation of transferring the national asset base (tax/usd) from democratic control, into private control.

It doesn’t need to be profit making in the normal sense (see SpaceX) it just needs to be the only game in town when the US Gov spends on national security
by cortesoft | 2025-08-06 03:39:53+00:00
I think what they mean is "they eat whatever they want and however much they want" and still don't get fat.

Some people just only want to eat an amount that doesn't get them fat. They aren't using any willpower or anything, they just don't want to eat more than a healthy amount for them.

I am not one of those people (I am overweight when I eat as much as I want), but I am for other things. For example, I don't drink very often (only maybe 10 times a year) and don't get very drunk when I do. I just don't feel a desire to drink very often. It takes zero self discipline to not drink for an extended period of time because I don't have the desire for it.

On the other hand, many alcoholics struggle mightily to avoid drinking. It takes all their willpower to not drink.

Everyone is different in their ability to avoid different addictions.