MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by dkersten | 2025-08-15 22:10:56+00:00
You can trivially demonstrate that its just a very complex and fancy pattern matcher: "if prompt looks something like this, then response looks something like that".

You can demonstrate this by eg asking it mathematical questions. If its seen them before, or something similar enough, it'll give you the correct answer, if it hasn't, it gives you a right-ish-looking yet incorrect answer.

For example, I just did this on GPT-5:

Me: what is 435 multiplied by 573? GPT-5: 435 x 573 = 249,255

This is correct. But now lets try it with numbers its very unlikely to have seen before:

Me: what is 102492524193282 multiplied by 89834234583922? GPT-5: 102492524193282 x 89834234583922 = 9,205,626,075,852,076,980,972,804

Which is not the correct answer, but it looks quite similar to the correct answer. Here is GPT's answer (first one) and the actual correct answer (second one):

9,205,626,075,852,076,980,972, 804 9,207,337,461,477,596,127,977,612,004

They sure look kinda similar, when lined up like that, some of the digits even match up. But they're very very different numbers.

So its trivially not "real thinking" because its just an "if this then that" pattern matcher. A very sophisticated one that can do incredible things, but a pattern matcher nonetheless. There's no reasoning, no step by step application of logic. Even when it does chain of thought.

To try give it the best chance, I asked it the second one again but asked it to show me the step by step process. It broke it into steps and produced a different, yet still incorrect, result:

9,205,626,075,852,076,980,972,704

Now, I know that LLM's are language models, not calculators, this is just a simple example that's easy to try out. I've seen similar things with coding: it can produce things that its likely to have seen, but struggles with logically relatively simple but unlikely to have seen things.

Another example is if you purposely butcher that riddle about the doctor/surgeon being the persons mother and ask it incorrectly, eg:

A child was in an accident. The surgeon refuses to treat him because he hates him. Why?

The LLM's I've tried it on all respond with some variation of "The surgeon is the boy’s father." or similar. A correct answer would be that there isn't enough information to know the answer.

They're for sure getting better at matching things, eg if you ask the river crossing riddle but replace the animals with abstract variables, it does tend to get it now (didn't in the past), but if you add a few more degrees of separation to make the riddle semantically the same but harder to "see", it takes coaxing to get it to correctly step through to the right answer.
by tshaddox | 2025-08-15 22:10:58+00:00
> You'll meet some amazing musicians who have been touring for decades and are still playing on the same guitar they got for $800 15 years ago.

This is a nice story, but I suspect it's rarer than you make it sound. Serious working musicians like serious equipment which tends to cost a lot of money for a good reasons.

But these are also lower volume products, and I agree with your overall point that the music gear industry is kept alive by hobbyists with disposable income.
by dns_snek | 2025-08-15 22:10:59+00:00
> if you're an average user (note: Hacker News users aren't average users) your ISP already knows which porn sites you visit, and your privacy is dependent entirely on your ISP not sharing that information with the government or other organizations.

You're doing this thing where you pretend that public policy is only required to consider the average person's needs on their most average day. The same rhetoric can be used to argue against the vast majority of your personal freedoms.

Imagine for a second that freedom of speech doesn't exist yet. If you're just like the average person who has nothing of value to say on the average day, then you don't need freedom of speech. Utilizing freedom of speech isn't the norm, therefore demanding it as a fundamental right is unreasonable. Nobody cares and why should they, they don't have anything important to say. Case closed.

> If you look closely you'll see that none of your concerns are actually valid.

No, you just severely underestimate the challenges of designing and implementing a system that would likely take many PhD-lifetimes of effort if you wanted to be confident that your implementation doesn't completely destroy whatever is left of our online privacy.

You're potentially creating a digital panopticon, one that doesn't have any escape hatches like the current internet and yet you naively brush every concern away as "trivial" while your "solution" to one of the most pressing concerns depends on good faith collaboration from the website operator and even then incorrectly presumes that the Referer header is the only way that the government could possibly learn that information.
by joemi | 2025-08-15 22:11:03+00:00
I actually can't read things on that site at all. I move my mouse around while reading, not necessarily near the words I'm currently reading, so when my mouse disappears it's haltingly distracting. In addition to that, the way the "game" visually interferes with the text that I'm trying to read makes it incredibly hard to focus on reading. These two things combine to make this site literally unreadable for me.

I don't get why people keep posting and upvoting articles from this user-hostile site.
by arthurofbabylon | 2025-08-15 22:11:10+00:00
> TextKit2 is implemented to be used by UITextView

This is the key insight that makes TextKit2 workable. I personally would not attempt to build an alternative to UITextView on TextKit (1 or 2). Instead, TextKit2 is all about very sensible intervention points for customizing UITextView (eg, Markdown-style parsing, typography, interactions, layout).

I recently rebuilt Minimal’s editor with TextKit2 (see minimal.app/#beta to experience it), and found Kryzanowskim’s deep dives very fruitful. He explores the edges of the API, so his writing helped me identify a nice bounds of safe-space to work in, and helped clarify what areas are too complex to safely build custom functionality within. (So thank you, author!)

I would not dismiss TextKit2; it is an incredible improvement over TextKit1. It remains a complicated and challenging field.
by clwg | 2025-08-15 22:11:15+00:00
This may be an unpopular opinion, but I want a government-issued digital ID with zero-knowledge proof for things like age verification. I worry about kids online, as well as my own safety and privacy.

I also want a government issued email, integrated with an OAuth provider, that allows me to quickly access banking, commerce, and government services. If I lose access for some reason, I should be able to go to the post office, show my ID, and reset my credentials.

There are obviously risks, but the government already has full access to my finances, health data (I’m Canadian), census records, and other personal information, and already issues all my identity documents. We have privacy laws and safeguards on all those things, so I really don’t understand the concerns apart from the risk of poor implementations.
by kstrauser | 2025-08-15 22:11:18+00:00
I do believe you’re right. I truly mean that I don’t feel anything different when I take it, just more focused. There’s no high, no racing heart, no hyper alertness, or any of the other stereotypical stimulant reactions. I just get more work done than usual, then go home and sleep normally that evening.

And FWIW I’m very glad for this. I don’t want it to feel good. I just want to be able to pay rent, not get high on the meds that make it possible.
by Molitor5901 | 2025-08-15 22:11:20+00:00
This has quite a few issues with framing bias. It sets up this dichotomy between “polite society’s” vague, restrictive rules for men and the "manosphere’s" toxic but concrete guidance. Then she talks about only the men she has dated and kind of ignores the rest of male dating experience. All in all it just reads like a emotional attempt to persuade us to.. something.. but no real evidence. I don't think we can generalize men of the bay area, or men in general around these experience of one person.
by HocusLocus | 2025-08-15 22:11:27+00:00
I have found Imagein to be a good general purpose editor and we use it to clean up bitmaps, and adjust black points and white points and curves on greyscale, so it is good for preparing B&W greyscale photographs for print to compensate for dot gain in halftone screens on laser printers. Its 'color separation' capability is rudimentary/first draft though and is ridiculously close to inverse RGB rather than CMYK. For good color seps we use Photoshop so I can control undercolor removal.
by culi | 2025-08-15 22:11:31+00:00
Almost certainly, Havana Syndrome. Caused by a (microwave-, possibly) weapon that can lead to permanent neurological symptoms. And the US is not the only country that has it but is expanding a lot of energy into making the media talk about it less. CHUPPL did a great investigation on it if you're interested

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

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xqE0ltifQ2M
by baby_souffle | 2025-08-15 22:12:02+00:00
> Curious if anyone has gone through the process of an adult adhd diagnosis at Kaiser SF.

Yep. It appears to be different by region. When I left the bay area and moved to a different kaiser region, they didn't accept any of the medical history from the bay and I had to start over again. Yes, I did have the prescribing pshyc from the bay area send the detailed clinical notes to kaiser but because I didn't take _their preferred_ computer diagnostic tests, I had to start over. Nevermind that the psych I was seeing in the bay area has been treating ADHD since Reagan was in office, the computer test was worth more than the medical professional's experience and opinion!
by roenxi | 2025-08-15 22:12:07+00:00
One of the joys of vast wealth and success is living your own life without anyone else telling you what to do. So from that sense, good on Woz. Money doesn't lead to happiness and if he wants happiness then his money wasn't the place to look.

That being said, what he is literally saying there is he made all his money young then coasted. I actually doubt that is what he did since he seems like one of those people who doesn't sit still, but the quote doesn't paint him in a great light. In simple terms, if good people don't take responsibility for deploying capital effectively, only bad people will make important decisions. There is no pride to be had in handing over large amount of money to a system that is, ultimately, controlled by the likes of Biden and Trump while upholding a teenage naivete that was buffered through life by vast wealth. Bill Gates sold out - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_%26_Melinda_Gates_Foundat....
by sivm | 2025-08-15 22:12:14+00:00
Edit- I tried using poetry above to identify my own cribs and then used software to search and best I got for K4 is:

AT FIRST LIGHT FACE EAST. ALIGN WITH THE RIM SHADOW. READ EDGE TO EDGE TO FIND THE FINAL CODE.

You most certainly need to be there and k4 is instructions. I’m not sending the guy $50 to check my answer though
by SV_BubbleTime | 2025-08-15 22:12:33+00:00
That’s funny, I’m looking for intellectual honesty. And honestly admitting no one here really has any fucking clue about global trade, economic effects, and policy would be a good start.

Nah.. “I’m an intellectual, I read tech blogs and listen to NPR… I’ve never made anything outside of a computer program, but listen to my opinion on tariffs that happens to align with all my media sources!”
by luxpir | 2025-08-15 22:12:39+00:00
Guess what...

I left FB around the time of Snowden leaks. And watched the others all go the same way. I only use them judiciously now for specific information. Even YouTube i have history off so I don't see a recommendations page and I just check my subs semi regularly.

So yeah. The web is better and less stressful that way. New generation perhaps doesn't even know it.
by philosophty | 2025-08-15 22:13:05+00:00
Steve Jobs brought a hell of a lot more to the table than just raw ambition.

I just meant to contrast the level of ambition between the two. Wozniak was extremely unambitious and Jobs pushed him into starting a company, with great difficulty.

Nothing is guaranteed in life but I've certainly met more than a few people that I predicted would be successful and then they were. There are character traits that incline people toward success.
by Molitor5901 | 2025-08-15 22:13:47+00:00
Another perspective if I may: People are used to the dating apps now which require just a few milliseconds of consideration before swiping yes, or no. That focus on essentially "hot or not" eliminates entire swaths of the dating pool to just those someone finds attractive. The worrisome part is that they take that mentality of "only swiping on ~10" that they've transferred it to the real world. Why bother talking to that man, or that women, when the app gives you thousands and thousands of infinite choice. Why settle when there's so many better ones to choose from?
by api | 2025-08-15 22:13:54+00:00
A lot of pathology in air travel is related to the fact that people use aggregate search engines to find flights and sort by price. The lowest up-front base fare tends to win. So that encourages airlines to nickel and dime later, such as by charging for bags and a million other things, making the whole experience worse.

If the whole price had to be flat and bundled into the ticket the experience would be better.

It's also an industry that competes on price, and that tends toward a spiral to the bottom in quality. They aren't allowed to skimp too much on safety stuff, and if they did it'd cost more in the long run, but they are incentivized to make seats tiny and uncomfortable and nickel and dime.
by refulgentis | 2025-08-15 22:14:23+00:00
Interesting read.

I have to wonder if the scrollbar problem is inescapable, given the shape of the problem.

Flutter has dealt with similar issues, perhaps by virtue of more eyeballs / being slightly older, there are solutions. SuperSliverList in particular completely erased the jumpy-jank that happened when estimates changed to concrete values.
by kelnos | 2025-08-15 22:14:24+00:00
I would much rather people be thinking about this when the models/LLMs/AIs are not sentient or conscious, rather than wait until some hypothetical future date when they are, and have no moral or legal framework in place to deal with it. We constantly run into problems where laws and ethics are not up to the task of giving us guidelines on how to interact with, treat, and use the (often bleeding-edge) technology we have. This has been true since before I was born, and will likely always continue to be true. When people are interested in getting ahead of the problem, I think that's a good thing, even if it's not quite applicable yet.
by vlovich123 | 2025-08-15 22:14:35+00:00
I have not observed the same with other languages, whether that’s Java, Rust, or Swift.

And note this is about an older compiler version using an older library with a “newer” language spec (ie been around 5 years). If you use up to date toolchains there’s less of an issue. This is yet another perennial weakness in the c++ ecosystem that isn’t present in other languages because the standard committee continues to abrogate their duties here.
by logicprog | 2025-08-15 22:14:45+00:00
Precisely, this would be a system that is essentially designed to ensure that your content can only be accessed by specific kinds of users you approve of, for specific kinds of use you approve of, and only with clients and software that you approve of by means of legislation, so that you don't have to go through the hassle of actually setting up the (user hostile) technologies that would be necessary to enforce this otherwise and/or give up the appearance of an open web by requiring sign ins, while just being hostile on another level. It's trying to have your cake and eat it too, and it will only massively strengthen the entire ecosystem of DRM and IP. I also just personally find the idea of posting something on a board in a town square and then trying to decide who gets to look at it ethically repugnant.

This is actually kind of why I like Anubis. Instead of trying to dictate what clients or purposes or types of users can access a site, it just changes the asymmetry of costs enough that hopefully it fixes the problem. Because like you can still scrape a site behind Anubis, it just takes a little bit more commitment, so it's easier to do it on an individual level than on a mass DoS level.
by stockresearcher | 2025-08-15 22:15:23+00:00
Ah, according to Wikipedia they were sale/leaseback agreements [1]

But I lived in that area. People absolutely were scammed because FedGov didn’t bother to evict heirs or tear down the houses for decades. And then they did. Indiana is a very lax state for real estate transactions. Attorneys are not required and real estate agents drive the process. A shady agent and a buyer that doesn’t know any better can very easily get scammed.

This quote glosses over a LOT, but I couldn’t find anything better online:

> there was a movement to purchase all the homes in Beverly Shores and incorporate the entire town into the National Lakeshore. This initiative did not succeed, but many local properties were acquired, especially those in the wetlands that constitute the southern portion. The acquisition process is ongoing. The owners of lots fronting on the beach were granted lifetime leasebacks with the proviso that the property would revert to the National Lakeshore; many of these houses have since been demolished.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beverly_Shores,_Indiana
by jauer | 2025-08-15 22:15:27+00:00
TFA asserts that Git LFS is bad for several reasons including because proprietary with vendor lock-in which I don't think is fair to claim. GitHub provided an open client and server which negates that.

LFS does break disconnected/offline/sneakernet operations which wasn't mentioned and is not awesome, but those are niche workflows. It sounds like that would also be broken with promisors.

The `git partial clone` examples are cool!

The description of Large Object Promisors makes it sound like they take the client-side complexity in LFS, move it server-side, and then increases the complexity? Instead of the client uploading to a git server and to a LFS server it uploads to a git server which in turn uploads to an object store, but the client will download directly from the object store? Obviously different tradeoffs there. I'm curious how often people will get bit by uploading to public git servers which upload to hidden promisor remotes.
by martin-t | 2025-08-15 22:15:31+00:00
How would people with money and no artistic talent know? If we're not talking about art but some other kind of productive work - again - money does not qualify them. It gives them the power to decide, it probably lets them cultivate a skill for knowing which investments are gonna make money and which are gonna lose it. But it does not qualify them to decide what is beneficial for others.

As for the analogy - who picks where it gets built? It better be an engineer. And just look at the mounf of work done by the engineer, the builders and some suit who rubber stamps it. Work and skill is what should be rewarded, not having money.
by n8m8 | 2025-08-15 22:15:38+00:00
Good point... how do moderation implementations actually work? They feel more like a separate supervising rigid model or even regex based -- this new feature is different, sounds like an MCP call that isn't very special.

edit: Meant to say, you're right though, this feels like a minor psychological improvement, and it sounds like it targets some behaviors that might not have flagged before
by delusional | 2025-08-15 22:16:13+00:00
It does not, because the previous administrations haven't openly spoken about retracting contracts because of personal infighting[1]. I am under no illusion that the American Democratic party is also quite terrible, but that does not make the current administrations outright corruption any more unclear.

[1]: https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/1146322069923...
by VirusNewbie | 2025-08-15 22:16:19+00:00
Lost in in the discourse of of toxic masculinity and deconstruction of male gender identies is the truth that there are traditionally masculine traits that women are biologically hard wired to find attractive.

Women across all cultures are drawn to status and, for lack of a more precise term, stoicism.

Status can take many forms in different societies or even sub cultures, but striving for status of some sort seems to be a universally attractive trait for males.

Women verbalize they want men who are emotionally available, but I've been compared to Spock in demeanor quite frequently and it seems to be quite popular with women.
by ncruces | 2025-08-15 22:16:29+00:00
Not just land, but all the bureaucratic costs, licensing, etc. Developers will always build the most high margin house the market will bear.

It still increases supply, though. And if there's no market for expensive houses, eventually they'll make cheaper houses.

Also, the people on the market who can afford the expensive houses, would still outbid you for a shittier house.
by FirmwareBurner | 2025-08-15 22:16:33+00:00
I'm not sure this is a red haring. What Netherlands is doing is detrimental to smaller EU companies who don't benefits from this tax avoidance scheme that only benefits the big corps in the Netherlands at the expense of the other EU members.

And this isn't a race worth competing in since it only benefits the super wealthy elite corpos at the expense of society.

Ideally we should regulate what the Netherlands is doing as an EU member, and not enter in a race to the bottom with it.