MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by stillpointlab | 2025-09-03 21:00:22+00:00
I want to consider the higher-level claims in the article. In between the historical context helpfully provided by the article there is also some speculation about Merkaba, Platonic solids, Flower of Life and other sacred geometry.

There is a premise hidden in those speculations that there is some strong connection between the structure of the universe itself and the structures humans find pleasing when listening to music. And I detect a suggestion that studying the output of our most genius musicians might reveal some kind of hidden information about the universe, specifically related to some kind of "spirituality".

This was a sentiment shared, in some sense, by the deists of the enlightenment. They rejected the scriptures and instead believed that studying the physical universe might reveal the "mind of God".

If we are looking for correspondences between these things - why limit ourselves to Euclidean geometry? Modern physics leans on Riemannian geometry, symmetry, and topology. It appears the topology of the universe, under a wide array of experiments, is way more complicated than the old geometric ideas. Most physicists talk about Lie Groups, fiber bundles, etc.

If you take "as above, so below" seriously and you want to find connections between cosmology and music, I believe you have to use modern mathematical tools. I think we need to expand beyond geometry and embrace topology. Can we think of the chromatic scale tones as a Group? What operators would we need? etc.

It's interesting to try to get into the head of a guy like Coltrane and his mathematical approach, but perhaps we could be pushing new boundaries based on new understanding.
by bdangubic | 2025-09-03 21:00:30+00:00
What if me, as a parent, decide that it is insane my child to wear clothes because their skin will get fucked up from fabric? OK for my kid to walk around the school naked? What if I think it is in the best interest of my boy to be tough and tell him it is OK to punch the lights out of anyone he wants in school, other kid, teacher, whatever? I am a parent after all and I only care about my child - your or other children in the school are not my concern, all this good?
by arp242 | 2025-09-03 21:00:33+00:00
These seem to be from a company OneThird: https://onethird.io/avocado-scanner

From their website on how it works:

"Every piece of fresh produce has a unique spectral fingerprint. We have collected a vast amount of spectral data for many different varieties and maturity levels. Our system combines this with other data sources and uses AI algorithms to analyze the data and determine what the expected shelf-life is."

So basically, it just looks at the colour. And "AI" because it's 2025.
by tech_ken | 2025-09-03 21:00:55+00:00
> Are there methods that specifically apply this idea?

Stochastic gradient descent is basically this (not exactly the sane, but the core intuitions align IMO). Not exactly optimization but Hamiltonian MCMC also seems highly related.

> I could imagine a similar thing where if a potential function has lots of ridges, you can "glue it together" so all the level sets line up, and that corresponds with some lower dimensional optimization problem that's easier to solve.

Excellent intuition, this is exactly the idea of HMC (as far as I recall); the concrete math behind this is (IIRC) a "fiber bundle".
by Dig1t | 2025-09-03 21:00:55+00:00
Well I agree and understand that herd immunity exists and it protects the small number of kids who can’t get the vaccine for whatever reason. But the choice is still the same, you’re asking parents to prioritize someone else’s child over their own and if they believe that it is dangerous to do so then why would they do that?

I don’t believe there are any people who believe that NOT beating their children is dangerous. If you put yourself in these parents’ shoes, they basically see this stuff as poison. What you’re asking them to do (in their mind) is inject their children with poison and for no other reason than because the government says so. It’s just a losing battle, you need to educate these people and show them that they are safe, address their concerns directly.

I would not inject my children with mercury if the government told me to. I would need to be convinced that mercury is safe and beneficial before I allowed my kid to be injected with it. I don’t feel like equating this to physical violence is helpful at all because in this case these parents believe they are preventing harm to their children.
by dghlsakjg | 2025-09-03 21:01:06+00:00
Why cast such negative aspersions on a stranger doing good work?

If you are smart and patient you can find good used machine tools for very cheap (relative to their new cost). I would guess that buying a new Honda Civic costs more than what this person has in their shop. And if you bother to watch the video, you see at the end that he takes what he makes home to a different shop, implying that this is a shared or borrowed set of machine tools. Buying a bunch of tools that will hold their value while producing more value is not a sign of being reckless with someone else’s money.

Would you make such judgements about every Honda owner for spending a five figure sum?
by rachelrusiecki | 2025-09-03 21:01:11+00:00
Location: Chicago, IL

Remote: Open to Remote, In-person, or Hybrid

Willing to relocate: For the right position

Technologies:

Languages - JavaScript, TypeScript, Ruby, Python, SQL Frameworks / Libraries - Express, Sinatra, React, Jest, Vitest Cloud / Databases - AWS, DocumentDB, MongoDB, PostgreSQL, RDS Other - Docker, AI/LLMs, RAG, MCP, SSE, WebSockets

Résumé/CV: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Kth3eZ7SxedI1bsCCKKOkw7oKNp...

Email: rachrusiecki@gmail.com

Hi! I'm Rachel and I'm a Full-Stack Software Engineer based in Chicago with multiple years of experience in JavaScript, TypeScript, Ruby, and Python. I have also worked with various technologies including AWS and Docker. I am the co-creator of Pendulum, a reactive Backend as a Service for web applications.
by vladimirralev | 2025-09-03 21:01:19+00:00
They say "these results are completely general for any probability distribution with zero mean and a finite covariance matrix with rank much larger than the number of steps". It's not clear to me if that condition implies the number of steps is much lower than the dimensions of the random walk space or perhaps the probability distribution needs to be concentrated into a smaller number of dimensions to begin with? In which case the results is much less shocking.
by polartx | 2025-09-03 21:02:00+00:00
The weakest link of the proposed technology like this is guaranteed fallibility of the folks using it, ie the judicial system and the asymmetric power dynamic against those it supposedly serves.

This is a very common scenario: a sheriffs deputy holds a biased belief against an individual. Said deputy selects and overfits data from systems like this to obtain a warrant against said individual. Individual is arrested and enters the meat grinder that is the justice system where hundreds of experienced indifferent agents and millions of dollars are put to work to support that deputies biased accusation. That original bad actor can now disengage and go about their life. Meanwhile, our Individual must spend a fortune on legal defense to prove their innocence. Individual loses time, money, peace, and reputation pursuing the best case realistic scenario—having charges dismissed (though indefinitely tainting their record). The more realistic scenario is individual is unjustly punished to some degree through plea agreements or trial (if they can afford it) which could easily ruin the rest of their life.

I’m not on the ACAB extreme, I just personally know many law enforcement officers and work in the industry adjacent to the justice system.
by smokel | 2025-09-03 21:02:17+00:00
Thanks for the suggestions. I tried my very best a few years ago, and the release of 6502 BASIC has lifted my spirits a bit, so I'll try again and see where it gets me :)

Unfortunately, the outlook for most Philips P2000T software is rather bleak, at least from a legal standpoint. The machine enjoyed only limited popularity, and commercial developers showed little interest in supporting it. As a result, much of the available software, particularly games, was written by hobbyists, and sharing through copied tapes was common practice.

In the Netherlands, where the P2000T had its strongest following, copying software was legally permitted until 1990. After that, it became prohibited. Complicating matters further, many original developers released their programs under pseudonyms and provided no contact details. One can obtain quite a lot of this software by buying second-hand machines and tapes. However, redistribution is not legally allowed. As the magnetic tapes gradually degrade, many titles risk being lost forever.
by JumpCrisscross | 2025-09-03 21:02:47+00:00
This has nothing to do with India’s energy purchases.

Put simply, Modi bet on the wrong man: “During a phone call on June 17, Mr. Trump…mentioned that Pakistan was going to nominate him for the Nobel Peace Prize, an honor for which he had been openly campaigning. The not-so-subtle implication, according to people familiar with the call, was that Mr. Modi should do the same.

The Indian leader bristled. He told Mr. Trump that U.S. involvement had nothing to do with the recent cease-fire. It had been settled directly between India and Pakistan.

Mr. Trump largely brushed off Mr. Modi’s comments, but the disagreement — and Mr. Modi’s refusal to engage on the Nobel — has played an outsize role in the souring relationship between the two leaders, whose once-close ties go back to Mr. Trump’s first term” [1].

> USA can't manufacture a lot many goods because of lack of cheap labour

California’s manufacturing sector is 80% the size of India’s [2][3].

America needs manufacturing partners. Its manufacturing employment has steadily gone down over decades. And China is whooping its ass. But India is not—currently—a manufacturing hub.

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/30/us/politics/trump-modi-in...

[2] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CAMANNQGSP $400bn, Q1 ‘25 annualised

[3] https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NV.IND.MANF.CD?location... $494bn in ‘24
by eduction | 2025-09-03 21:03:11+00:00
Give it time? Just because the CEO hasn’t texted you back in the hours after close of business in Paris doesn’t mean the person is ignoring the issue. What are they supposed to do until business opens tomorrow?

It also sounds like you’ve been in touch with support for a weekend and a few business days and it’s not resolved yet. But it also sounds like communication is ongoing.

In a subsequent message you say your Gmail was compromised and probably your Gandi too. Do you think it’s realistic or desirable for them to sort that in just a few days?

I’ve not loved the direction of the new Gandi but if it were me in your shoes I’d be shocked if it were resolved as quickly as you expect it to be. They have the unenviable task of sorting out your hacker from you from thousands of miles away. I don’t think it’s bad, neccesarily, that they need more than three business days to do it.
by dimgl | 2025-09-03 21:03:24+00:00
I tried it and I think it's still missing a few important features.

- I don't want to constantly auto-accept. The point of auto-accept is that it auto-accepts. Seems like a bug.

- It'd be great if I could go back to a specific message and delete the ones I don't want, similar to the CLI version.

- Where is Plan Mode? Maybe I just couldn't figure out how to get to it.

- I can't easily see Background Tasks.

- How do I change models?

- How do I create new sessions (via /new for instance)? Why is `/clear` not supported?

- I don't want to see the entirety of the edits in the terminal. Can they be collapsed by default? Or maybe show a preview?
by johnisgood | 2025-09-03 21:03:35+00:00
No, mass surveillance will never eradicate crimes.

UK (or London) has about 99% coverage. It means jack shit without enforcement, and let me tell you, there are many streets out there with junkies smoking crack without any issues.

My girlfriend in LA is scared to go to the bus stop. There used to be two drunks around noon, and now they even set up a camp and there are more people. Cops are doing fuck all about it.

CCTVs mean nothing.
by bondarchuk | 2025-09-03 21:03:43+00:00
There is no distinction: the idea that there is a distinction rests on a linguistic confusion. The sentence "something it is like to be a bat" tries, as it were, to split the concept of "being a bat" in two, then makes us wonder about the difference between the two halves. I reject that we have to answer for any such difference, when we can show that the two halves are actually the same thing. It's a grammatical trick caused by collapsing a word that usually relates two distinct things ("A is like B") onto a singular "something".
by tom_ | 2025-09-03 21:03:48+00:00
Regarding other BASIC versions: it's probably-abandonware rather than open source, but the (more than slightly inscrutable) source code for Acorn's 8-bit BBC BASIC is here: https://github.com/stardot/AcornDmosBasic (there are commented disassemblies available - you would probably find those more illuminating...)

(BBC BASIC is pretty horrid by modern standards, but you'll probably still like it more than Microsoft BASIC. Has arbitary length variable names, multi-dimensional arrays, integer variables, PROCs, FNs, and an inline assembler.)
by Sn0wCoder | 2025-09-03 21:04:19+00:00
If nothing else would assume they have used GitHub or say 'drop it in teams'. Even if they have only ever used the cloud there is send a link from my Google or One Drive. My first answer would be FTP or rsync. Maybe they are over thinking it and assume they need to get it on another machine without the owner knowing about it IDK. Maybe it needs to be reworded. Or follow up if there is no answer and say how did you turn in your homework to the professors or think about how you collaborate with other developers on a project.
by MarsIronPI | 2025-09-03 21:04:26+00:00
I find it surprising that a single-pass compiler is easier to implement than a traditional lexer->parser->AST->emitter. (I'm not a compiler expert, though.) I'd have expected that generating an AST would be at least as simple, if not simpler. Plus by generating an AST, doing some simple optimization is a lot easier: one can pattern-match parts of the AST and replace them with more efficient equivalents. Maybe I'm overthinking this, though. I tend to like extensible program designs, even when they don't necessarily make sense for the scale of the program…

Still a really cool article and an impressive project, though. I especially like the StringPool technique; I'll have to keep it in mind if I ever write a compiler!
by mallowdram | 2025-09-03 21:04:55+00:00
We know the healthy brain is unpredictable. We suspect error minimization and prediction are not central tenets. We know the brain creates memory via differences in sharp wave ripples. That it's oscillatory. That it neither uses symbols nor represents. That words are wholly external to what we call thought. The authors deal with molecules which are neither arbitrary nor specific. Yet tumors ARE specific, while words are wholly arbitrary. Knowing these things should offer a deep suspicion of ML/LLMs. They have so little to do with how brains work and the units brains actually use (all oscillation is specific, all stats emerge from arbitrary symbols and worse: metaphors) that mistaking LLMs for reasoning/inference is less lexemic hallucination and more eugenic.
by marstall | 2025-09-03 21:05:12+00:00
As part of a longer conversation, i asked chatgpt when GPT5-level capabilities will be cheap enough to include in gift cards, throwaway plastic toys, etc. Answer was 2030-35. https://chatgpt.com/share/68b8ac92-ad28-8008-b2f4-5b1d777558... ... conversation went on to envision a future where trillions of discarded full-gpt5 chips litter landfills and fungi learn to power them up and incorporate their knowledge into their biome, but you can just ignore that part
by bobbylarrybobby | 2025-09-03 21:05:25+00:00
Neovim can run in server mode, where other editors send it user input and then Neovim sends back the buffer. This is how I use vim in VSCode — not the Vim extension but the Neovim extension, which uses the real Neovim, which of course reads my Neovim config and plugins and makes them available to VSCode. So it seems like helix “just” needs a server mode, and then you can integrate it into any editor.
by dongcarl | 2025-09-03 21:06:22+00:00
Yup, when you're not using a VPN, even with encrypted DNS and HTTPS, you're still sending hostnames (e.g. wikileaks.org) over plaintext in TLS SNI for every HTTPS connection. I believe most firewall appliances now even prefer to use SNI for deep-packet-inspection since it's so reliable.
by swat535 | 2025-09-03 21:06:25+00:00
There are at least 2 ancient pagan flood stories: The Gilgamesh Epic and the Atrathasis Epic, both originating in ancient Mesopotamia. Because both sources predate the source of Noah's story, many scholars have concluded that Noah's flood story was borrowed from these. However, consider the following objections:

- When a historical event is retold to different audiences over time, the story generally becomes more mythical and embellished, and poetry and exalted language are used. It is the opposite when Noah's and the pagan stories are compared. Noah's story is simpler and told in a straightforward narrative, while the pagan stories are told in a more mythical and embellished style.

- Noah's story is monotheistic, and the characters are ethically moral. The pagan stories are polytheistic, and the characters are ethically capricious. The pagan gods are implied to be selfish, jealous of each other and lie to each other. Moreover, in the Atrathasis Epic the gods discover that due to the flood, they have wiped out their only source of food (people's sacrifices) implying that they depend on humans.

- The shape of the ark in Noah's story is the only one that can be considered seaworthy, being rectangular and in dimensions similar to more modern cargo barges. The pagan stories describe an ark that is round or cubic, which would make an ark less stable for floatation and also more vulnerable to damage/overturning by wave impact.

It is therefore more likely that Noah's story with its later source is faithful to the actual historical event; while the pagan stories are versions modified to suit the polytheistic religion/culture of their audiences. At the same time, it is remarkable that the pagan stories confirm that a history changing flood did occur.
by slightlyoff | 2025-09-03 21:06:36+00:00
I'm simply pointing out that Apple declined to try to constructively solve the problems developers expressed, demurred from engaging in design work in many areas, and did not ship alternatives instead (as it could have, and did in the past when Safari/WebKit were not on a starvation budget).

The downsides to this are not lost on me. Why do you think I'm making an issue of it publicly now? We tried literally everything else. This is last resort stuff. The goal is always more collaboration, and through it, better, better-funded, and more capable browsers. Apple is the unique obstacle to all of that today.
by geye1234 | 2025-09-03 21:06:38+00:00
Several reasons. One is that my experience of looking at a tree is one thing, but the neurological firing that takes place in my brain when I look at a tree is another. They are not the same. If you can reduce your experience of looking at a tree to neurons firing, then you are not really looking at a tree, and absurdity results.

Another is that the propositions "the thought 2+2=4 is correct" and "the thought 2+2=5 is wrong" can only be true with regard to the content of a thought. If thought can be reduced to neurons firing, then describing a thought as correct or wrong is absurd. Since this is not the case, it must be impossible to reduce thought to neurons firing.

(Btw, the first paragraph of my previous comment is not my position. I am giving a three-sentence summary of Descartes' contribution to the mind-body problem.)
by imiric | 2025-09-03 21:06:43+00:00
I'm not so sure.

Design trends are cyclical, but clean and simple design can be timeless. E.g. Helvetica, Braun, etc.

This uses a classical serif font with minimal formatting and colors. It is inspired by a simple book layout, which wouldn't look out of place in any classy publication today, from a hundred years ago, and likely a hundred years from now.

There's not much here that can "age", or that we can move on from.
by jacquesm | 2025-09-03 21:06:52+00:00
> The war on drugs was prosecuted through law enforcement means inside the U.S., focused on controlling drugs.

That isn't the whole story, not by a long shot.

Plenty of Latin American countries collaborated on this with the United States and there were DEA personnel in many of those countries, some stationed permanently, others on shorter tours mainly involved in educating local LE. In Colombia for instance your chances of being interviewed by US DEA officer when leaving the country were pretty good. Even today they have plenty of representation outside of the USA:

https://www.dea.gov/foreign-offices/north-and-central-americ...
by insane_dreamer | 2025-09-03 21:06:59+00:00
I waste so much time deleting spam mail (which I have to scan through to make sure nothing actually important got caught in the filter), deleting ultra-personalized spam marketing that isn’t caught by a filer and which I have to scan to determine that it’s not from a valid business contact, answering/not answering robo calls (again requires determining whether to answer or not), clicking away subscriber popups, turning off all notifications for some service (all on be default of course, and these are paid services), sorting through and throwing away 90% of the postal mail to my house. It’s exhausting and I hate it all.
by Terr_ | 2025-09-03 21:07:54+00:00
I've been comparing LLMs to asbestos:

1. The thing has some amazing and near-irreplaceable aspects.

2. There are a few ways to use it that are safe or worth the risk.

3. ... But for someone to get filthy rich selling it everywhere, that means lots of horribly dangerous applications that will cause insidious long-term damage that other people will be stuck with.

_________

For example, researchers have found some LLMs will generate documents where a character faces harsher punishment, solely because of the grammar in the character's dialogue which is associated with a particular ethnicity.

While I would damn well hope we never use LLMs as legal judges, imagine the same pattern when people are using them to summarize your resume, to characterize you college application, or even screen a dating profile, and how those effects can add up to change the arc of victims' lives and livelihoods.

Some quick napkin-math: Imagine 100m adult Americans exist who have an average lifetime earnings of $1.7m. If LLM bias affects just 1% of them (1m) causing them to lose 1% of their earnings ($17k) that's still 17 billion dollars in harm.
by cnst | 2025-09-03 21:08:11+00:00
Around 2010, you had to use Mini-USB for digital cameras and Micro-USB for phones, and the super-ugly non-standard 30-pin dock connector for the iPhones and iPads. Mini-USB has remained popular for car dashcams until very-very recently.

It's hard to believe anyone would defend a time when you had to have a separate charging cable for each device.

Yet evidently, every iPhone used is happy to do just that. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯