MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by everdrive | 2025-09-10 15:49:34+00:00
>The worst argument anybody can make is "but that's just life in the big city!"

A cousin was visiting us in our nice suburb. We had a slow, not-busy road we walked on when we lived there, and we'd wave to anyone; neighbors, vehicles, etc. Our cousin was sort of uncomfortable, and asked "do you know all these people?" I explained that we knew some of them but were just being polite and friendly. She explained that that were she lived (Boston) you just couldn't safely wave at just anybody you passed.

I don't think this occurred to her at the time, but that means she lives in a pretty awful place. Why exactly would it be _dangerous_ to wave at someone in a friendly way? There's only one answer to that question; because you live around violent or unstable people.

Before anyone says I'm just privileged, I've lived in rough areas before, and I can't fathom why anyone would put up with that sort of daily violence, noise and general degradation of quality of life if they otherwise didn't have to. We ultimately ended up moving out of the city just like you said because the crime was getting worse year by year. Do you want some drunk kid blasting his bass right outside your house at 11pm on a weeknight? (for hours, no less) And if you go and try to get him to turn it down there's a significant chance you'll be met with violence? Or people harassing your wife if she's ever "foolish" enough to walk down the street without you? Or to need to explain to your wife "hey, we can't walk through that group of kids, I can't really defend you against more than two attackers." All of these were regular issues for us. Home invasions on our block started ramping up, we knew people who were attacked, shot, killed, just while walking home.

To your point, this wasn't academic. It can be quite the 3rd rail to try to explain _why_ the violence in the city is bad, what is the cause and what is the solution. But when we're talking about my family's safety, I just don't care. I'm not going to live like that, and would have done almost anything to get my family out of that sort of situation. I really can't even fathom people who would write these things off. "Sure, my wife might be murdered and abused in a home invasion, but there are really cool walk-able restaurants!" It's pathological.
by antonly | 2025-09-10 15:49:47+00:00
I'm sorry, I don't follow. Can you point me to where exactly I am "nitpicking" and not addressing the "main issue"?

Your main point was not "free movement of labor undermining sovereignty and eventually quality of living".

You started off by implying that the problems we see come from a "Import refugees and give them free money" policy.

I then pointed out that I don't think refugees receiving free money is the main problem, as there is comparatively little money going to refugees.

You then point out that 16% of the UK were foreign born, implying that they were refugees, that they get "free money", and that this is the reason why the UK has infrastructure problems now.

I simply pointed out that "foreign born" != "refugee".

If we entertain your goalpost-shifting and argue about free movement of labour as the root cause for lessened sovereignty and quality of living, I would like to ask you to how Chinese students coming to your country to study, or eastern European truckers trucking around your goods exactly undermine the sovereignty of your country. I am honestly curious.

I cannot figure out how this prevents your country from maintaining her own infrastructure.

Btw, I would invite you to reflect a bit on how you came to the extremely reductionist viewpoint that all foreign born people are refugees.
by ckemere | 2025-09-10 15:50:16+00:00
As a memory neuroscientist, I enjoyed the shoutout here to episodic memory. It strikes me, however, that a feature that I've noticed when observing "reasoning" models is that they may explicitly search for evidence for intermediate pieces of their responses. If we're following the "remember"/"know" distinction developed by Squire and others, perhaps the more apt analogy might be that a singly pass through an LLM is similar to a "I know this" result, prone to hallucination, conflation, etc., and the multipass reasoning model might be more akin to the "I remember this" result, where primary evidence serves as a substrate for the response?
by ctoth | 2025-09-10 15:51:04+00:00
"Why wouldn't a locksmith make copies of all their customers' keys? They're a fucking locksmith company!"

Having technical capability doesn't create ethical permission.

The distinction between "can" and "should" is fundamental to data governance - a concept that exists precisely because unrestricted access to customer data, even for security purposes, creates massive ethical and legal problems.

Huntress didn't monitor a contracted customer's systems for that customer's benefit. They surveilled a trial user for three months based on a hostname match, then published the results. That's not "how their software works" - that's a choice about how to use the access their software provides.

If you genuinely can't see the difference between contracted security monitoring and opportunistic surveillance of trial users, you shouldn't be commenting on security practices at all, let alone so confidently.
by jhatemyjob | 2025-09-10 15:51:06+00:00
It's solvable it's just a lot of work. You need to have guardrails, i.e. multiple sanity-check passes (maybe there are other techniques, but I found this to be most effective)

One concrete example I'm sure these Skyrim mods aren't using is: enums in structured outputs [1] with a finite list of locations/characters/topics/etc that are allowed to be discussed. The AI is not allowed to respond with anything that is not in the enum. So you can give it a list of all the locations in the game in a huge array and it would be forced to pick one.

[1] https://platform.openai.com/docs/guides/structured-outputs#a...
by zahlman | 2025-09-10 15:51:11+00:00
>I fear you think that this issue is in some way political.

You are the one who started out the thread by suggesting that it's somehow weird that white people don't use white skin-tone emojis, while also arguing that "yellow-as-default" is somehow problematic and/or insincere.

Those are both plainly political. Identity politics, and racial politics, are politics. You are implying that people should change their real-world behaviour for reasons related to race.
by BizarroLand | 2025-09-10 15:51:12+00:00
As far as I know, no current gen model AI "thinks". It's all processes trained against a body of work generated by actual thinkers along with a bevy of smoke and mirrors to fill in the gaps.

It's amazing that it's as good as it is given how far it is from thinking, but if you threw something actually novel at it, all it would do is confidently word salad a response.
by lproven | 2025-09-10 15:51:17+00:00
> Maybe we need a simple posix os that would run on a simple open dedicated hardware that can be comprehended by a small group of human beings.

That was part of the plan for Minix 3.

Clean separation in a microkernel, simple enough for teaching students, but robust.

But Intel used it and gave nothing back, and AST retired. :-(
by dizlexic | 2025-09-10 15:51:22+00:00
If you can't think around this corner I can't help you,

Who will prohibit it? Magical Gnomes?

If you say the UN let me remind you that the UN is comprised of Governments, the majority of which are considered autocracies.

So in short, you want dictatorships worldwide to be empowered to define and control speech.

Sounds... Great...

Also If you'd like we could go into the ineffectiveness of the UN in general, but I'm not going to spend the time typing all of that out.

edit: fixed a missing word
by HankStallone | 2025-09-10 15:51:44+00:00
My rural home insurance in the Midwest where the only risk is tornados has certainly gone up.

When I saw the headline "disaster-prone cities," I thought maybe they were talking about crime or terrorism or something. For something like a hurricane, everyone in the danger area would see insurance rates go up, not just those in the cities. Odd way to word it.
by tialaramex | 2025-09-10 15:51:50+00:00
Skyscrapers aren't practical in most places. On Manhattan you've got sky high land prices and excellent rock, so hence skyscrapers.

But in a lot of places the bedrock isn't very good and the prices are lower and it just does not make sense to build a skyscraper.

Urban densification is a real thing if you don't legislate to prevent it and create a culture which abhors it. The street I live on was here a century ago, but back then it'd have a few dozen scattered family homes. Over time there's infill, maybe we knock down a big house and we put up a semi (I think Americans would call this a "duplex"?), sell both units and so by the 1980s the street has a lot more individual homes, with smaller lots.

But there's still densification pressure, so two things begin to happen. One is that people buy a family home, cut it up and sell the parts. So maybe you take a 5 bed, slice it up, re-plumb and offer three small units each contained to one floor of what had previously been a house.

The other is what happened where I live, builders buy a house with excess land, knock the house down, and put an entire block of dedicated flats ("apartments") where it stood, designed so that it looks basically like a single large house from the street.
by Jsebast24 | 2025-09-10 15:52:05+00:00
Incident Response is like Project Management: you have a long list of processes with acronyms and definitions that you are supposed to follow step by step if something happens. Oh, and the process can only be directed by someone certified to do it. You spend a lot of time and energy just to make sure you fill up all the blanks in the process —playing with the tool when you should be fixing the thing.
by dragontamer | 2025-09-10 15:52:20+00:00
> That whole demographic assumes that media is lying by default.

Yes. And then they turn around and trust that the Boston Marathon Bomber was some random kid because Reddit said so.

The new generation of netizens distrusts classic media and then suddenly trusts Reddit and Google searches and random blogs.

Bad Twitter arguments citing YouTube videos talking about a Redditors problem about Microsoft Updates and SSDs just broke through a week or two ago and nearly everyone involved in the discussion is utterly wrong.
by Etheryte | 2025-09-10 15:52:21+00:00
> If you can’t produce a comprehensive answer with confidence and on the whim the second you read the question, you don’t have the sufficient background knowledge.

While the article makes some reasonable points, this is too far gone. You don't need to know how to "weigh each minute spend on flexibility against the minutes spent on aerobic capacity and strength" to put together a reasonable workout plan. Sure, your workouts might not be as minmaxed as they possibly could be, but that really doesn't matter. So long as the plan is not downright bad, the main thing is that you keep at it regularly. The same idea extends to nearly every other domain, you don't need to be a deep expert to get reasonably good results.
by SoylentOrange | 2025-09-10 15:52:38+00:00
This looks very useful for Mac setup!

I just wish there were a Linux option. Like in the example config doc, I have a dotfiles repo in Github. It includes some basic settings for vim and tmux that I like to install on servers such as jump hosts or EC2 instances when running long-running development tasks. I have a file `linux-install.sh` which will install dependencies (e.g. newer version of vim, silversearcher, ripgrep, tmux) and then another `config-install.sh` that will sync config files for both Mac and Linux (tmux config, zsh config, install vim plugins, ...). A declarative syntax would be really nice for that usecase, though not sure how common that is.
by Tade0 | 2025-09-10 15:52:41+00:00
I'm seeing a similar trend in my country where even the culture in city centres is not conducive to having a large family, or a family at all even.

All the parents of 3+ children that I know live in the suburbs or even in the middle of nowhere in the case of one family totalling 7 at the moment, as their firstborn already moved out.

Personally I was priced out of the city where I grew up, so I moved to one that's half the size and live on the outskirts with my family, but in the 13 apartments connected to our staircase we're one of three families and the only ones not renting.
by dpoloncsak | 2025-09-10 15:52:52+00:00
Half of this is just macOS. I'm here for it.

I've used "DeskPins" for a while now to replicate "Always On Top". Exciting to see its now 'native' to Windows. It's not a significant program, but I'm gonna try to swap over

(https://github.com/thewhitegrizzli/DeskPins)
by mallowdram | 2025-09-10 15:53:38+00:00
This is patently false.

"I’ll remind you that biologists do not, in the year 2025, know memory’s physical substrate in the brain! Plenty of hypotheses — no agreement. Is there any more central mystery in human biology, maybe even human existence?"

A hypothesis is very distinct from theoretical knowledge. A hypothesis lacks empirical evidence. A theory uses empirical information. That CS personnel are lacking both the scientific method and the ability to discern the current state of the art empirical research to disprove such wildly unsupported statements speaks to the field's total failure to develop present-day relevant tools. I would direct the author to two critical books

Evolution of Memory Systems

https://academic.oup.com/book/26033

How we remember: brain mechanisms of episodic memory

https://direct.mit.edu/books/monograph/2909/How-We-RememberB...
by chrismorgan | 2025-09-10 15:53:49+00:00
I think you’ve misunderstood something? This is about suppressing the turning of a segment break into a space, not about line break opportunities.

> Unicode has U+200B ZERO WIDTH SPACE for that purpose.

ZWSP is not at all “for that purpose”. If you mean this:

A—&ZeroWidthSpace; B

Well, I am mildly surprised to find that no extra space is added in Gecko or Blink. But in WebKit, a space is still added; for this is part of the “UA-defined” bit I quoted.

And if you’re willing to do preprocessing, you can just merge the lines, that’d actually work.

> In HTML and hence Markdown you can also use `<wbr>`.

I fail to see how <wbr> is relevant.
by 0x000xca0xfe | 2025-09-10 15:54:51+00:00
Wrong, there is always somebody responsible. It may not be an explicit decision but somebody let it happen.

I've personally witnessed this at work and for lack of better terms call it "leadership by weakness". Initiatives to change a situation will be either ignored or actively undermined by lack of support from the one in charge.

Outsiders get the impression that "it just happened this way" or "things just are like this" but it really was a conscious decision by leadership. As an employee I found it insulting because of course our customers blamed us developers.
by zahlman | 2025-09-10 15:55:37+00:00
> The statement 'this thing has a differential impact on people of different races' does not automatically mean 'the people responsible for this thing are being accused of perpetrating racism'.

I genuinely don't understand how this claim can be sincerely made in the contemporary American political climate. The entire point of pointing at "differential impact" is to take the premise that it's an inherent moral wrong, and can be pursued regardless of the underlying cause, or of the intent of anyone involved. That's why the term "institutional racism" was coined.

>Emoji are Japanese, how can they possibly perpetuate default whiteness?!

That's the point. They cannot. That's exactly why your argument that "they really have represented white people all this time" (as with the LEGO figures) doesn't hold water.

> Like... really, no, that's not what I said, is it? I wrote about how the arrival of dark skinned options in a 'default yellow' world repeatedly reveals that 'default yellow' is, in Western culture, actually 'default white'. And that that repeated lesson explains why white people sticking with yellow isn't 'not choosing a skintone'. It's choosing white, but pretending not to. Because you don't have to.

This paragraph reads to me like you are trying very hard to claim that you didn't say what you said, by saying it again.
by cataflam | 2025-09-10 15:55:40+00:00
Still would have done nothing in this case, as they pulled the correct email address he uses for npm from another source (public API I think?).

That's exactly why I said all the other "helpful" recommendations and warning signs people are using are never foolproof, and thus mostly useless given the scale at which phishing campaigns operate.

Great if it helps you in the general case, terrible if it lulls you into a sense of confidence when it's actually a phishing email using the right email address.
by eth0up | 2025-09-10 15:55:49+00:00
I admire your courage in asking these questions.

I don't consider myself part of the HN crowd, rather just someone with a waning tech background and persistent interest in many things. I'm unaffiliated with any identity regarding the conflict. A mere American, dizzy and uneasy.

Personally, the effects for me, coupled with Ukraine, instill a sense of illness. I deliberately avoid the numbers as I would the flu. My delusions of a wonderful world are presently reserved for intoxicants and occasional suspensions of disbelief which come sparsely. The tension surrounding the topic, however, is palpable.

I wish you the extensive discussion the subject deserves.
by dathinab | 2025-09-10 15:55:58+00:00
but

it being available "on the internet" doesn't mean it' available to a child!

it also misses the important aspect that for children you need to nudge them into the right direction of learning

it also misses that children today often get bombarded with a non stop stream of skillfully engineered distractions and dopamine loops, that makes it much harder to nudge them in the direction of educating themself.

oh and all the fake news, fake education etc. isn't helping either,
by toss1 | 2025-09-10 15:56:03+00:00
Just for copyright infringement? You might like to have a word with Aaron Swartz, except he ended his life as he was being Federally prosecuted for copyright infringement, copying scientific articles.

Remarkably similar, bulk copying of data for other use, except Swartz wanted to make it free vs Anthropic, who wants to make it available via it's "AI" repackaging. One is Federally prosecuted with possibility of decades of jail time and million-dollar fines, the other is a mere civil action.
by cyanydeez | 2025-09-10 15:56:28+00:00
The US is, however, learning exactly what happens when rationality is not part of the equation. This is all a dance around what is a "fact" and how to string facts into a reasoning model that lets you predict or confirm other potential facts, etc...

It's simply different people we're talking about. Certain personalities are always going to gravitate to the "search for reason" model in life rather than "reason about facts".
by OhMeadhbh | 2025-09-10 15:57:17+00:00
For my part of the conversation, I think what I'm implying is we might get better outcomes if we paid teachers more.

That being said... there's a critique that keeps coming up that the structure of public education is largely unchanged since Victorian times. I've heard people say that the reason you get kids up in the morning and have them move from class to class every hour is to prepare them for life in the mines and mills. Certainly there is some validity to this observation. If we're trying to prepare students for the world of modern work, maybe they should be in front of a computer monitor for 8 hours a day and run to a local gym in 1 hour shifts in an effort to ensure their lives are not completely sedentary.

There's an "unschooling movement" that has made some interesting points, but still gets some of the details wrong (in my opinion.) "Pedagogy of the Oppressed" is a great read, even if you disagree with Freire's politics or semiotics.

When I say "high school is nothing more than child-care" I should probably say "I fear high school is nothing more than child-care" or "Some high schools are nothing more than child-care." I don't think low academic achievement is universal, but I also think there's a correlation between per-capita spending and academic achievement.

Most (many?) public schools in the US were set up in the post-war period to be funded with property taxes. But since the 60s / 70s many (most?) states have policies similar to California's Prop 13 that limited property taxes. [Don't have the data on this handy, point me at the data if I'm wrong.] So it seems like it's a perfect storm of decreasing teacher salaries, deferred maintenance for school district property and low academic achievement.

As a society, we can have as good a school system as we're willing to pay for.

At this point, if there's any way to supplement public school budgets with money from the football stadium... I'm all for it. I would just prefer that the money goes from the profitable football program to the general academic fund and not the other way around.

[Edit: I'm informed out of band that there's a correlation between a state's median income and public school educational achievement. This is a small, but important update on the assertion above saying there's a correlation between per-capita spending and academic achievement.]
by legitster | 2025-09-10 15:57:18+00:00
> Images from the birthday book are littered across numerous threads on 4chan’s “politically incorrect” messageboard, and some users have suggested that Democrats are spamming the site. Overall, though, the reaction to the book feels somewhat muted, given its contents. Despite the volume of posts, the tone across social media feels disproportionately apathetic. “So what do you want to do about it?” one poster wrote in response to the Trump letter. Even in communities such as Reddit’s r/conspiracy, there seems to be a broad feeling of not knowing what exactly to do with this information. Some threads contain the usual amateur sleuthing and theorizing. There is also a good bit of anger toward Trump and Epstein. But among those who have engaged with the document, much of the reaction has a “dog that caught the car” vibe.

This is actually really haunting. If you are shocked by these revelations, there is no recourse. No lever you can pull. The FBI literally had a book of names and confessions and gave up on the investigation at the whim of one of the implicated. The opposition party is powerless except in small doses. And they are feckless at the electorate level.
by r-johnv | 2025-09-10 15:57:19+00:00
Adding direct links to two of the videos of the MCP server in action.

This is the video of interacting with and debugging an industrial robot. (A few of the other comments here have been talking about this, that we see some amount of what looks like emergent behavior) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SrHzC5InJDA

This is a video from a collaborator research lab controlling a Unitree Go (robot dog) https://youtu.be/RW9_FgfxWzs?si=o7tIHs5eChEy9glI
by JumpCrisscross | 2025-09-10 15:57:25+00:00
> Why wouldn't they just take a taxi driven by a human?

Because the humans in New York, Phoenix, Los Angeles and San Francisco frequently cancel rides, get lost, drive unsafely, pitch me on their religion and smell. (They also must be tipped, at which point the Waymo is the same price or cheaper than the human-driven ride.)

When I have the option of a robotaxi, I pay a premium for it. It’s novel. It’s fun. But most importantly, it’s safe, punctual and comfortable. Otherwise, I'm fine taking a human-driven car. Having more options makes those cities a better experience.