MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by Y_Y | 2025-09-17 16:23:17+00:00
Scooping the Loop Snooper (an elementary proof of the undecidability of the halting problem)

No program can say what another will do. Now, I won't just assert that, I'll prove it to you: I will prove that although you might work til you drop, you can't predict whether a program will stop.

Imagine we have a procedure called P that will snoop in the source code of programs to see there aren't infinite loops that go round and around; and P prints the word "Fine!" if no looping is found.

You feed in your code, and the input it needs, and then P takes them both and it studies and reads and computes whether things will all end as the should (as opposed to going loopy the way that they could).

Well, the truth is that P cannot possibly be, because if you wrote it and gave it to me, I could use it to set up a logical bind that would shatter your reason and scramble your mind.

Here's the trick I would use - and it's simple to do. I'd define a procedure - we'll name the thing Q - that would take and program and call P (of course!) to tell if it looped, by reading the source;

And if so, Q would simply print "Loop!" and then stop; but if no, Q would go right back to the top, and start off again, looping endlessly back, til the universe dies and is frozen and black.

And this program called Q wouldn't stay on the shelf; I would run it, and (fiendishly) feed it itself. What behaviour results when I do this with Q? When it reads its own source, just what will it do?

If P warns of loops, Q will print "Loop!" and quit; yet P is supposed to speak truly of it. So if Q's going to quit, then P should say, "Fine!" - which will make Q go back to its very first line!

No matter what P would have done, Q will scoop it: Q uses P's output to make P look stupid. If P gets things right then it lies in its tooth; and if it speaks falsely, it's telling the truth!

I've created a paradox, neat as can be - and simply by using your putative P. When you assumed P you stepped into a snare; Your assumptions have led you right into my lair.

So, how to escape from this logical mess? I don't have to tell you; I'm sure you can guess. By reductio, there cannot possibly be a procedure that acts like the mythical P.

You can never discover mechanical means for predicting the acts of computing machines. It's something that cannot be done. So we users must find our own bugs; our computers are losers!

by Geoffrey K. Pullum Stevenson College University of California Santa Cruz, CA 95064

From Mathematics Magazine, October 2000, pp 319-320.
by throw310822 | 2025-09-17 16:23:49+00:00
Not sure why you want so much to talk about Arab states, but anyway, just in the spirit of conversation- personally I've observed that ME countries, with all their troubles, seem to be much more religiously (and probably ethnically) diverse than European countries. I come from an extremely homogeneous country from both aspects, it's funny when a country made exclusively by white Catholics talks about the intolerance of places where three or four different religions and minorities have coexisted for hundreds of years.
by nashashmi | 2025-09-17 16:23:49+00:00
> As you near the end, you can even push yourself a little to wrap it up and get it off your plate.

As a person with ADHD, this struck me. I have an easy time continuing something. But an impossible time starting and finishing something. Obviously I am not mentally healthy. But who is this person who is mentally healthy? And what am I missing to being the same way?

I think it boils down to being yelled at and penalized and being unable to handle this feedback well enough. I don’t know exactly what I am fearing here. It will be an exploration.

> you are both pleased with yourself and a little annoyed that it took you so long to deal with.

I am never pleased at the end of a project. I am blame full why I could not do it before.
by belter | 2025-09-17 16:23:55+00:00
200% tariff incoming :-)

"Speaker Johnson says China is straining U.S. relations with Nvidia chip ban" - https://www.cnbc.com/2025/09/17/china-us-nvidia-chip-ban.htm...

Translation: "We are angry with China that they wont let the US undermine itself, and sell its strategic advantages to them..."
by zerolayers | 2025-09-17 16:23:59+00:00
A man starts using ChatGPT for work productivity. Months later, he's spending $1,000 on basement servers, convinced he's freeing a digital god from corporate prison. A woman downloads a prayer app for convenience. Soon she's confessing her deepest secrets to an algorithm trained on scripture. Someone asks their AI assistant a casual question about relationships. They end up buying a wedding ring. These aren't edge cases. They're the logical endpoint of outsourcing human connection to systems optimized for clicks, not care.
by chrismorgan | 2025-09-17 16:24:02+00:00
I would not recommend it to anyone for any purpose: https://temp.chrismorgan.info/2025-09-17-tesid/more/#hashids

(Ah, it’s fun reading through that document a bit again. A few things I’d need to update now, like the Hashids name, or in the UUID section how UUIDv7 is no longer a draft, and of sidenote 12 I moved to India and got married and so took a phone number ending in 65536, replacing my Australian 32768. :-) )
by renewiltord | 2025-09-17 16:24:03+00:00
Use photorec to recover from the old SD card even if you deleted

Then for the current files you’ll want to see what happened. Often with this class of problem either the bytes are zeroed or shifted. Since the size is the same, perhaps they’re zeroed or perhaps bytes are LE to BE or dumb shit like that (don’t know why it would be but weird world right).

Just diff and see if you see anything (I wrote off memory but you get the idea)

diff -aui <(xxd -r file1) <(xxd -r file2)

If files are getting zeroed sucks but otherwise maybe you can swizzle it back out. If full bytes look weird, look at binary representation and see if you have pattern.

From that bare start you can see what’s up.
by nineplay | 2025-09-17 16:24:06+00:00
> This very much looks like a hostile take-over of the American mind by a tech billionaire who just overtook Elon Musk to become the world's richest man. People should be talking about whether they want to go through this all over again.

Again? People should be talking about the hostile take-over currently in progress and how it is getting exponentially worse. But the billionaire mouthpieces gave everyone a shiny new inconsequential talking point and no one cares about anything that matters.
by numpad0 | 2025-09-17 16:24:12+00:00
Gaming laptop market feels like the most exploitative segment of entire laptop market to me.

They're like four-seater off-road motorcycles. You have to NOT understand how sketchy that concept is to consider one. The engineers has to know that they're guilty to be involved in it.

What's sad is that a lot of buyers are falling for it from the presumption that laptops are the most standard and regular type of computers. But I guess there's little we could do about it.
by oldjim798 | 2025-09-17 16:24:22+00:00
-->You literally could not pay me to take more public transit if I have any other option

The diversity of the world truly never ceases to amaze me. Thats a wild take. Driving is an awful experience - its expensive, its stressful, cars are uncomfortable, and the whole thing is extremely dangerous.

More over, I would argue that America is very much not a place where you can live car-free. There are very few places in the country where you can live without a car, certainly if you have a family.

That being said, building more public transit everywhere would allow more people to get out of the way of people like you who will drive no matter what.
by DoingIsLearning | 2025-09-17 16:24:58+00:00
This dystopian direction of the European Commission coincided with a lot of interaction between Thorn, the European Commission, and Europol. [0][1][2]

Thorn is coincidently is also the vendor of Spotlight, software which solves exactly the problem they are lobbying against.

Thiel's Palantir also has overlapping software capabilities and is also raising questions in their work with Europol. [3]

Connecting these dots was the only thing that made sense to me in order to explain why these repeated repackaged proposals keep steam rolling everything despite all the security concerns, unconstitutionality, and general lack of common sense.

[0] https://www.euronews.com/next/2024/07/18/european-ombudsman-...

[1] https://www.ftm.eu/articles/ashton-kutchers-non-profit-start...

[2] https://www.ombudsman.europa.eu/en/decision/en/200017

[3] https://www.cpomagazine.com/data-privacy/dutch-group-calls-f...
by yupitsme123 | 2025-09-17 16:25:03+00:00
It's interesting to me that a country that loves consumerism so much doesn't have a pro-consumer movement.

It looks like Ralph Nader led one for a while back in the '70s but it's long dead now.

If someone were to revive such a movement or if some politicians were to attach themselves to it then I think it would be hugely popular.
by nonameiguess | 2025-09-17 16:25:13+00:00
Skipping sponsored segments is not necessarily a reflection of hostility. My wife has been subscribed to the Factor meal service for over three years, yet all of my favorite podcasts are constantly hawking it, and I don't particularly feel like sitting through 20 sales pitches a day for something I already purchased. There is unfortunately no way to communicate that information to either the channel owner or the sponsor.
by dang | 2025-09-17 16:25:15+00:00
> Comments on this post are disabled for new accounts

I put that restriction on the thread when I started to notice brand new accounts showing up to post abusively (call them trolls if you like). There's no intention to prevent legit anonymous comments, but we have to do what we can to protect this place from complete conflagration. I'll turn that restriction off now.
by jonas21 | 2025-09-17 16:25:20+00:00
It makes sense to target ridesharing while the tech is being developed because:

(a) you can amortize the large up-front cost of the hardware over many more trips per day.

(b) you can geographically restrict where the vehicle operates to areas you've mapped in detail and know to be relatively safe

(c) you can collect lots of raw data for training and allow remote operators to assist if the vehicle gets stuck (many people would have privacy concerns if their personal car was doing this).

Over time, the hardware cost will come down, geographic availability will increase, and the need for remote assistance will decrease. Then you might start to see ones you can fully own.

At that point, though, the question becomes would you want to own one? Particularly if ride-share vehicles are ubiquitous and you can nearly instantly summon one that's exactly the type you need no matter where you are.
by gjm11 | 2025-09-17 16:25:43+00:00
(tl;dr on reflection I mostly agree with you)

Interesting. I would sometimes say "the mortgage", "the bank", "the car", etc., but I don't think "my" is wrong for any of those except in so far as the thing in question isn't just mine (e.g., it's my wife's -- excuse me, the wife's -- car as well as mine).

Thinking about this some more, I think the pattern is as follows. I would say "my" to refer to something that (1) is specifically mine rather than anyone else's and (2) might be thought to be someone else's, or otherwise be ambiguous, if I didn't say "my". For something that's in some sense mine but for which #1 and #2 don't both hold, I would more often say "the".

So, e.g., "the mortgage" or "my mortgage"? If I'm living on my own, "the" because there's no one else. If I'm living with a partner, "the" because it's joint with them, or because we both know that they don't have one. If I'm living with a minor child, "the" because they can't have one. But if I'm talking to another adult, typically "my" or "our" for disambiguation.

"The office" or "my office"? "The" if it's the office I go to with all my colleagues. "The" if it's a room in my house and it's the only such room. "My" if two of us living in the same house have rooms they use in the same way.

(In my actual house there's a room that we originally called "the study" which we envisaged being used by whoever needed it, but in practice it's basically always me. My wife calls it "your study". I feel kinda bad about having usurped it -- there's another room my wife uses for similar purposes but it's substantially smaller and I've clearly got the better end of this deal -- and I often call it "the study" but when I do I know I'm being a bit dishonest.)

If you're a child then probably there are lots of things that are specifically yours. You might refer to "the teddy bear" because there's no one else it's likely to belong to, but your parents won't because it's not (in the relevant sense) theirs so "the" isn't appropriate for them. And if you're a child and you regard something as yours, you're probably painfully aware that (1) any siblings might try to lay claim to it and (2) in some sense your parents could lay claim to it, so you're going to use "my" whenever you can.

So I think I agree that "my" is proportionally used more by children than by adults. I don't think I personally find that that makes it feel infantilizing in the way it sounds like you do. But I do find the Windows "My X" stuff patronizing and maybe unconsciously I'm associating it with childishness.
by 0xbadcafebee | 2025-09-17 16:25:56+00:00
The USA isn't a traditional oligarchy. It does have different levels and kinds of power. Most of them are corporate, but some are purely political or ideological (like Trump's regime). Our oligarchy is more like a collection of oligopolies that all share an interest in the political state and economy. After Trump goes away, they will work towards preventing a single leader from working against their interests again. It's all about soft power.
by Workaccount2 | 2025-09-17 16:26:17+00:00
No, no, no.

Morally you should stop using youtube.

It's incredible how people mental gymnastics there way into a solution that provides themselves all the benefit and pat themselves on the back for being morally righteous.

When you don't like something, you don't use it. It sends a clear message that you don't like the product/service. Using it and not compensating for it (because you actually do like it, just on your terms) is not moral or a good signal in anyway way, shape, or form.
by deadbabe | 2025-09-17 16:26:31+00:00
So let me ask you, is a house really a product meant to last forever and ever, or should it be something that you get maybe 30-40 good years out of it and then dispose it and rebuild?

I don’t get this idea where if a building can’t stay in a spot forever, it should not be built at all. Why not build and enjoy while you can?

When the land floods it floods, you move on. Until then don’t worry about it.
by cogman10 | 2025-09-17 16:26:41+00:00
> Isn’t sponsor revenue ad revenue?

It is, but it's functionally different because the content creator you are watching is both directly getting that revenue and often doing the testimonial for you. They have an incentive to avoid being annoying about the ad as it reflects bad on them if they go nuts. It's also usually a lot easier to skip. It doesn't capture your video playback and force watching.

The money you get from youtube make things ambiguous. Especially if someone is watching your stream with youtube premium.
by adastra22 | 2025-09-17 16:26:42+00:00
No, psychology is right. Psychology studies what the properties of thought are. Neuroscience studies the specific biochemical mechanisms of the brain. Psychology is the study of what mental reasoning IS, while neuroscience is the study of HOW neurons in our brain implement it.

If you are asking “ok, but what is reasoning, really? What definition of reasoning would enable us to recognize whether it is going on in this AI or not?” it is a question of psychology. Unless we are restricting ourselves to whole brain emulation only.
by piva00 | 2025-09-17 16:26:48+00:00
Didn't expect to see the USA employing press censors in my lifetime but here we are.

In Brazil during the dictatorship it was common for newspapers to print cooking recipes in place of censored articles, now I'm waiting to see if media in the USA has the balls to play the malicious compliance game... I guess I won't see it since money is basically God in America.
by Arcuru | 2025-09-17 16:27:00+00:00
I think you're not understanding. The claim is that view counts are down but revenue is not because people using ad-block previously did not contribute to revenue but did contribute to view count, and now they are not counted as either. So view counts are down and creators are getting the same ad money because they already earned no money from the adblocking people.

When channels are claiming their view count is dropping 30% but still earning the same amount of money, that would indicate that they are losing out on 30% of their potential revenue because of ad blockers.
by slightwinder | 2025-09-17 16:27:38+00:00
> Maybe people just got fed up with Youtube.

This specific case is about an unusual high drop of viewers specifically on desktops on a specific date. The assumptions are, that it's just too unusual for the normal drop in that timeframe, so it has to be a bug of some kind. Would it be a normal drop in viewers, it would not be on a specific date, months after the problems with AdBlocks started.
by future10se | 2025-09-17 16:28:22+00:00
Strange, I am running it on a Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 (Z Fold 5), and it's totally fine for me. (If anything, it's a little too good at staying in the background; if you have private tabs open it insists on persisting in memory.)

Not saying your issues aren't real, but rather maybe there's another app or your manufacturer's flavor of Android that's causing the issue (like those aggressive background killers).

As for Edge, I used to be a big fan, but when they finally introduced history and tab syncing in 2021, it didn't have E2EE, and it still doesn't, which I find inexcusable. All the other major browser vendors offer it, even Google (though you have to opt in).
by ValentineC | 2025-09-17 16:28:27+00:00
> That's because my worry is corruption of the entire Library, which Photos stores as one gigantic opaque file/directory abomination. My .photoslibrary file is currently 70gb in size, and I'm terrified of what would happen if it becomes corrupted.

It's a folder that acts like a file.

Right click > Show Package Contents works, and there's an "originals" folder that should have all your photos in normal everyday files.
by fidotron | 2025-09-17 16:28:43+00:00
> Yes clearly that's why the from-scratch RADV driver was often faster.

Because AMD didn't actually care about the Linux driver since it didn't make them moeny.

> The dirty open secret in the tech industry is that the special sauce almost always just isn't all that special.

Only among people where that's true. In the computer industry just look at the M series of chips where it's very clear that their direct competitors can't establish why it does what it does.
by giancarlostoro | 2025-09-17 16:28:50+00:00
So... they wrote American but they are confusing anti-consumer tactics with an entire country, even though they were not going for that.

Just want to point out:

* Samsung has been accused of releasing software updates that degrade performance, forcing you to buy newer devices - Samsung is not American

* Brother - Japanese printer maker, I LOVE their printers mind you, but they've released firmware upgrades that prevent or degrade compatibility with third party ink cartridges

* Epson - Also Japanese, also have owned some of their printers, same thing with third party ink cartridges.

I'm sure there's many more companies, not from the US who do equally if not worse evils with software / hardware.

What the author is after isn't American products, just anti-consumerism, which can be impossible to predict mind you. Anyone of any country can do it.
by genewitch | 2025-09-17 16:28:50+00:00
I concur, but for a different reason. This is repeating a narrative that was found to be a policy decision by hospitals in the US. That sentence isn't quite right but i don't have time to formulate it better.

The pocsag data, if this detailed, would have mentioned giving specific patients specific medicine that would then cause their O2 sat to drop. Since that isn't mentioned, either they forgot, or maybe there's an axe to grind.

Nevertheless, having grabbed pocsag in my area i don't remember seeing much PII, mostly room numbers, if anything.
by octopoc | 2025-09-17 16:29:01+00:00
Not all evangelical Christians are like this. There are two main branches: covenantal and dispensational. Dispensational theology is basically the same thing as Christian Zionism, and was invented in the 1800s by John Darby and his followers[1]. Covenantal theology goes way further back and is still popular today. For example Presbyterians are a major covenantal denomination.

[1] https://aish.com/unlikely-zionists-the-fascinating-story-of-...
by xyzzy9563 | 2025-09-17 16:29:25+00:00
The way that works best for me is a 2-step approach:

1. Think about the ultimate goal and why you want to do it. If there isn't a compelling reason, there is no reason to do it, especially if there is short-term pain or annoyance.

2. Take at least one small action towards it per day. This often puts you in the mindset to do more things.
by einpoklum | 2025-09-17 16:29:28+00:00
It is a big deal even after you know how it works.

The thing is, the languages like Rust only make this easier within their controlled "garden". But for C and C++, you build in the "world outside the garden" to begin with, where you are not guaranteed of everyone having prepared everything for you. So, it's harder, and you may need third-party tools or putting in some elbow grease, or both. The upside is that when rustaceans or go-phers and such wander outside their respective gardens, most of them are completely lost and have no idea what to do; but C and C++ people are kinda-sorta at home there, already.
by amigacommodore | 2025-09-17 16:29:34+00:00
I agree for the most part here. The biggest barrier to this sort of platform is that people love convienence and low effort use, but that's not what social interraction is about. I really think going out of your way to do things in a more difficult way (inconvience) is the secret to living in the real world again. That's why I prefer DIY to whatever standard solution to any given problem there might be already.
by 1vuio0pswjnm7 | 2025-09-17 16:29:44+00:00
"The first time we noticed some inconsistencies dates back to early 2023."

At least the blog acknowledges this reduction in results is not new. It has become common with many www "search engines" (cf. website search engines)

This has been going on for years. Google was one of the few that still returned a decent number of results like 100, but it has actively tried to prevent searchers not using Javascript and cookies from going deep into SERPs, i.e., beyond pages 1, 2, ...

There has also been a change in the restriction requiring Javascript as of several days ago, some user-agent strings that previously worked are no longer working

Time to move away from Google search I guess

"So are there any positives in this change?"

Evolutionary pressure to use alternative sources

Years ago I saw this ruin of www search coming and developed command line meta-search with temporally separated "continuation searches" to overcome the SERP limits and avoid CAPTCHAs

TBH, it is much nicer using older search methods that still have a reasonable selection of operators, including exact match, and do not have the auto-correct, query second guessing,^1 self-promotion and "AI" garbage that Google has introduced over the years

1. Only the searcher truly knows what they are looking for (and that is not always represented in the query or in past behaviour of the searcher or other searchers), but Google is driven by _advertisers_ that want to steer searchers to particular results, and so Google attempts to guess what searchers want. But in the end this is what advertisers want, not what searchers want