MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by genewitch | 2025-09-03 16:44:51+00:00
there's newspaper clippings with the same headlines / lead-in dating back to newspapers, so this has been going on for at least 5 generations, lends a bit of credence.

People have also been complaining about politicians for hundreds of years, and the ruling class for millennia, as well. and the first written math mistake was about beer feedstock, so maybe it's all correlated.
by nickff | 2025-09-03 16:45:00+00:00
Those stats actually indicate to me that many crimes are being under-reported, at least by certain groups. Compare the race & gender distribution of murder and aggravated assaults to other crimes; murders are obviously well-reported, but I highly suspect that the same people who are likely to be murdered are also likely to be robbed, battered, and assaulted, yet certain minorities make up much smaller proportions of reported victims in the 'less-heinous crimes'.

Additionally, while you think that the ordering of the report is in order of police’s priorities, I (more cynically) think it reflects them ‘burying’ the numbers.
by GeekyBear | 2025-09-03 16:45:22+00:00
The same thing is true for the choice between an Xbox and a Windows PC for gaming.

The Xbox is a locked down walled garden device with no complex administrative decisions and no malware problem.

It's a game playing appliance, and some people prefer that.

The Windows PC has the freedom to run anything you like, and with that freedom comes the freedom to shoot yourself in the foot.

Some people prefer that.

Consumers have the freedom to choose what they value.
by Esophagus4 | 2025-09-03 16:45:36+00:00
The difference to me is that I can quickly switch in and out of “AI mode” with Warp. So it’s a terminal when I want that, and it’s an AI assistant when I want that.

With Claude Code, you’re stuck in AI mode all the time (which is slow for running vanilla terminal commands) or you have to have a second window for just terminal commands.

Edit: just read some documentation saying Claude has a “bash mode” where it will actually pass through the commands, so off to try that out now.
by LocalPCGuy | 2025-09-03 16:47:14+00:00
Yup, I even found myself a bit hopeful that maybe it was a follow-up or new study and we'd get either more or at least different information. But that bit of hope is also an example of my bias/sympathy to that idea that it might be harmful.

It should be ok to just say "we don't know yet, we're looking into that", but that isn't the world we live in.
by bigstrat2003 | 2025-09-03 16:47:34+00:00
People on bake off are making very hard things. It's very misrepresentative of what baking is like as a result. Even when they make something that's not hard to make (like a cake), they are forced to make it in a hard way (making very elaborate cakes that take a ton of engineering to assemble, having strict time limits, etc). Unless you are trying to do competition baking (or perhaps run a bakery), you'll have a much easier time than that. Literally the first thing I learned how to cook was chocolate chip cookies, so I wouldn't say you should be intimidated by the very hard things that the experts are doing.
by meowface | 2025-09-03 16:47:39+00:00
I normally care a ton about latency and in the main project I work on I put extreme focus on reducing input latency in text input fields, but...

I've used VS Code for ages. I tried Zed. I don't really feel a difference. It's smoother but VS Code is more than smooth enough for me and has tons of features I rely on that don't exist in dev.

Meanwhile, when I tried Ghostty I noticed a significant improvement in "typefeel" compared to iTerm. So I'm not immune to detecting such a difference.

I will try Zed again though.
by cnst | 2025-09-03 16:47:51+00:00
I always find it funny how people say they got an iPhone because they have a Mac, when, in fact, Android has for years been more compatible with the Macs, since you could charge both your phone and your laptop from the same charger.

I've been charging my Android with my Apple's 96W USB-C charger from my work's 16in MacBook Pro for "free". What's exactly so nice about not being able to do that with an iPhone? Why would you carry a separate cable/charger just for the phone, when you could share with an Android?

BTW, there's no Firefox or Chrome on iOS, either; the stuff you'd find in the App Store are simply skins for Safari, and they have the exact same rendering bugs as Safari does, so, there's little reason to use either one on iOS.
by flanked-evergl | 2025-09-03 16:47:52+00:00
> Russia is not a serious threat to Europe.

Ukraine will all the backing of Europe is making no progress, if this was true, Russia would be expelled from Ukraine tomorrow, as it should be. Ukraine is an embarrassment for Europe, it strongly suggests that Europe is basically meaningless on the global stage.

And the most embarrassing of all is, Europe is still buying gas from Russia.
by howardyou | 2025-09-03 16:48:15+00:00
> But the thing is that there's a weird relationship between computation and accuracy. I like to explain this looking at a Taylor Series as an example. Our first order approximation is usually easy to calculate and can usually get us a pretty good approximation (not always true btw). Usually much more than 50% accurate. Second order is much more computationally intensive and it'll significantly increase your accuracy but not as much as before. The thing is accuracy converges much like a log-like curve (or S-curve) while computation increases exponentially.

This is something I've been thinking about a lot lately that I'd like to better understand. Are there any examples in physics or machine learning that you can think of that have more specific figures?
by citizenpaul | 2025-09-03 16:48:58+00:00
On the other hand I worked for a small place that was spending over 250k'ish per year on website maintenance to a company that setup their headless CMS website that they sold them.

They complained about it constantly but they kept paying (7 years and going when I was doing work for them which by they way they constantly tried to shortchange me). Never feel bad about taking money from a company, its just business. Setup your income stream and take care of yourself. I'm not sure why there is this bizarre self sacrificing mentality in tech to make other people rich at your own expense.

Not to mention if you invoke those companies you are putting yourself in their walled garden that makes them money and takes control of your income away from you. Why would any person want to do that? There is no moral quandary here.
by tracker1 | 2025-09-03 16:49:02+00:00
I'm not a Zed developer, but I'm pretty sure LSP interfaces are pretty much standardized now, in large part to VS Code's efforts, so they're pretty consistent across most editors that support them.

That doesn't mean Zed will have all the other extensions that VS Code has... Recently added the new SQL Server extension(s) and it's been at least interesting, in a way slightly better than using SMMS. It's pretty much burrowing the UI from Azure Data Studio (or whatever it was called). Haven't tried similar for PG/SQLite etc yet.
by zelphirkalt | 2025-09-03 16:49:23+00:00
I mean, I am using standard Emacs daily for some 8y or so. It is just in that VM, that tried Doom Emacs, which crashed twice. Normal Emacs doesn't do that to me. And since I have the VM, I also don't need Emacs on Windows. The VM runs just fine.

That VM runs a Fedora OS and has vanilla Doom Emacs installed, with a few packages activated in the doom config. So it is about as vanilla doom Emacs as it gets.
by dv_dt | 2025-09-03 16:49:26+00:00
For me it's because having an agent actively working and modifying files feels better off on another cloned repo - and a terminal window is a lightweight observation 'window' into that activity. Git cli/tig/sublime merge is what I then use to review changes.

When the IDE is up and looking at the same work files, I'd find myself forgetting changes were being actively made, and I'd start making changes that should have been on another independent area of work. Having multiple full IDE windows feels like a waste of space or switching the IDE both have a small but non-zero level of added context switch friction/annoyance at least for me.

I actually don't know if this will stay my working pattern w/ AI or not, but it's been stable this way for a little bit anyway.
by thisissomething | 2025-09-03 16:50:32+00:00
> This must be the case for so many discarded appliances these days, especially underengineered ones with common issues.

While it's true that lots of those old appliances are easily fixable, depending on how old they are it's better to replace due to other factors.

I just recently replaced my 10 years old washing machine instead of fixing it. I was absolutely surprised by the difference. The newer one uses less electricity, less water, washes and dries in half the time, and is absolutely silent.

I only hope it lasts as long as the old one.
by imadr | 2025-09-03 16:50:37+00:00
Yes, in rendering when we talk about “diffuse” reflection we implicitly mean fuzzy reflections due to light penetrating the material and exiting a small distance away from the entry point (less than a pixel far)

The term subsurface scattering is used for light that exits further away (more than a pixel) like in simulations of human skin

However that part of the article isn’t clear enough and warrants a rewrite
by modernerd | 2025-09-03 16:50:51+00:00
> Configuration is all JSON

Curious as someone dabbling with building an editor: what do you prefer? A different configuration language? A GUI? How do you save and sync settings? Just with JetBrains account sync?

> Ability to move panels (files/git/console/debugger/etc) into standalone windows

Is Zed's "zoom in" feature (shift-escape) that quickly maximises the active pane (excluding the file browser/git pane) enough? Or are you looking for the separate window experience of IntelliJ? (e.g. JetBrains lets you pop-out the commit window, I believe, which can be nice since once you close it you're back in the editor with nothing to switch or rearrange.)
Ask HN: How does Gaokao differ from European or Indian exams?
by StefanBatory | 2025-09-03 16:51:16+00:00
When Gaokao is brought up, I often see it in contrast to American way of admission to universities. But I never see it brought up in contrast to European/Indian exams, and I felt that they're quite similar - you are supposed to study for it through your entire high school, and the scores determine what uni - if any - can you go to. It feels it's very exoticized in USA, while for me a Pole it "just" looks like harder equivalent of our high school exams.

I didn't know where I could ask this, and HN felt like best place.
by shermantanktop | 2025-09-03 16:52:29+00:00
On the bandstand, there's usually a ton of highly aware counting going on. 24 bars of rest! followed by 8 bars of rest! and then 16 bars of latin feel! now back to 8 of swing!

On top of that there is definitely some feel and intuition going on. But for a band to play non-trivial music, everyone is counting unless they know the material cold, and even then they are probably counting at times.
by IAmBroom | 2025-09-03 16:52:35+00:00
> Your belief that comprehension of consequences isn't part of the definition of "adult" suggests you are young and presents a stark commentary.

I'm 60, and I've never, ever heard of such a definition. Not encoded in law. Not by societies (American middle-class 50s? Nope. Puerto Rican immigrants? Nope. Amish? Nope.).

You made it up.
by preommr | 2025-09-03 16:52:40+00:00
I didn't like the article.

I feel like some authors would really benefit from writing a first draft and then condensing it down to 1/n. In this case, like 1/10.

The author has an interesting and explicit model as a table for how to classify some languages. Everything else is either fluff or should be a separate article. For example, you either assume we're talking about moder languages, or your model needs to be way broader and more theoretical. Tangents about days when langauges were tied (at least way more than today) to hardware were unnecessary. That also goes for the biased way the author talks about their favorite languages.

It's also rife with things that, quite frankly speaking - I don't know what the hell they're talking about. It's almost like satire about how Haskellers are so clueless that they never think about run-time considerations. Or meandering thoughts on language theory (gotta drop in references to random wiki articles somehow I guess) about how it shapes our thoughts which don't amount to much because they say nothing interesting because they keep it too vague where the real answer is it depends. Or the loaded statements the author makes about Rust (in an honestly confusing way by framing it through the paretto front). Rust does not have the same guarantees as something with GC like Java. Even if you disagree with me on that, we should at least agree that this isn't as settled as the author makes it out to be.
by loughnane | 2025-09-03 16:52:49+00:00
This title reminds me of Patrick Winston's "How to Speak" lecture at MIT.

It's the best of its kind that I've seen. An hour long and I've watched it several times. Even my highschooler was impressed.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Unzc731iCUY

EDIT: no way, it was just posted yesterday. Glad it got the attention.
by parliament32 | 2025-09-03 16:52:55+00:00
If a user can use any TOTP app of their choice, what's the mitigation for them installing a malware TOTP app that ships their private keys directly to CCP HQ?

Duo is regularly audited by independent third-party assessors to attest SDCL, data protection in their datacenters, etc.[1] Audits aren't a guarantee but they provide a reasonable amount of assurance that their software products and infrastructure have at least basic data protection measures.

> if your android phone is rooted, you can export Duo Mobile keys

This is the exact reason why personally owned devices, in most organizations, require MDM enrollment and attestation before being granted access to corporate resources.

[1] https://duo.com/solutions/compliance
Show HN: Scenes – A daily movie puzzle game (classic + cinephile mode?)
by adavinci | 2025-09-03 16:52:59+00:00
Hi HN — I’ve been tinkering on a low-fi side project that combines two of my favorite things: films and puzzles. This turned into Scenes, a daily guessing game where each round is a trail of clues that lead to a movie.

The goal is to guess the film using as few clues as possible. I hacked it together pretty simply, so I’m mainly curious if the puzzles (and the idea itself) feel fun.

I know daily puzzle games aren’t everyone’s thing, but if you like movies or word-association challenges, this might be up your alley. I’ve mostly played it with family and friends so far, and it always sparks fun arguments about clues and answers.

In Classic Mode, you get a chain of single words that all tie back to one film:

BENCH → BAR → FOSTER → NUMBERS → JANITOR (Answer: Good Will Hunting)

In Cinephile Mode, each clue is another movie, and the challenge is to triangulate the shared themes that connect them to the answer:

FACE/OFF → FREAKY FRIDAY (Shared theme: body-swap films)

I write all the puzzles myself, so it’s more art than science. Right now the game just reveals the answer at the end and leaves clue fairness up for debate — though I’ve been wondering whether to also explain the specific theme that links each clue to the answer. I’m still tuning the balance of clue style and difficulty, and thinking about what else would make it more conversation-worthy.

Would love to hear what you think — about the game, the modes, the clues, etc.

Try it here: https://www.scenes.fyi/play
by jonah-archive | 2025-09-03 16:53:08+00:00
This is a really great read. I was briefly obsessed with laserdiscs in the mid-aughts and went as far as swapping the EFM decoder chip on a Pioneer player with something that could pull the digital audio signal out (details are a little fuzzy at this point). I wanted to figure out a way to extract the video data and it seemed so potentially possible but, as is clear, far from simple and far beyond my abilities at the time. Incredible to see that things have finally progressed to the point where one can fully capture the disc data and emulate these things.
by xethos | 2025-09-03 16:53:23+00:00
> definition of "adult"

Were someone to attempt to pinpoint the exact moment you begin talking past each other, this is where I'd say to look. Legally, you're right; legally, we kind of need a hard line to for all kinds of things. Voting, driving, alcohol, cannabis, or tobacco purchase and consumption, the list goes on (even if not everything on the list uses the same line).

Socially, we have no such constraints. We can make case-by-case judgements for ourselves, and disagree with each other. Most notably, we can describe someone as acting like an adult. We can recognize that behaving like an adult, with the responsibilities that go along with that, can be independent from age.

Forgetting we have multiple definitions of "Adult" is reasonable. Nobody is perfect every minute of every day.

Refusing to acknowledge it, even after it's pointed out, is bad form; further, it's against site guidelines asking us each to use reasonable interpretations of each others thoughts and comments.
by TheNewsIsHere | 2025-09-03 16:53:44+00:00
I agree. Especially with Microsoft, it seems as soon as Satya Nadella promised security was their first priority and he’d stake his compensation on it, no sooner did they get distracted once again.

If you keep leaving the barn door open, eventually your staying power won’t be enough. On the other hand, I’ve stopped thinking to myself “this must be the big one” when it comes to their more egregious recent failures.

> I believe that the infrastructure available to self-host at an enterprise level will start growing rapidly due to this trust problem.

I thought it would go in this direction more rapidly. With the way even the hyperscalers have had trouble securing enough GPUs for existing demand, I’m left wondering if regardless of technical merits, the bubble is going to burst because of basic real world logistical challenges. I’ve actually heard it said in hushed tones that (paraphrased) “the money isn’t the problem. There just aren’t enough GPUs.”

For awhile I’ve assumed that coprocessors or leveraging GPUs at the local level will be the only viable course long-term for widespread adoption. Most actual need for AI/ML technologies aren’t “consume the whole Internet” scale.
by cnst | 2025-09-03 16:54:05+00:00
Lots of dismissive comments just because the author works in the industry, but who else will be able to shed the light on these things if not the people in the know?

BTW, consider this: on Android, you can install any browser with any rendering engine. The only reason you cannot install Safari, is because Apple won't make it for Android.

On iOS, the only rendering engine available is Safari's WebKit. Apple won't allow any alternatives. It wouldn't be a problem if Safari was perfect, but it's clearly not.
by sharts | 2025-09-03 16:54:26+00:00
The problem is you want a proxy for that which you really can’t evaluate and you think the proxy is accurate because it provides some feel-good binary.

Fundamentally, you can’t really figure out the things you are interested that way. This is the underlying problem with tech and CS bros which results in the broken system being even more broken.

If anything these types of interviews are really only to validate the interviewers bias which is that they think they are smarter than everyone else and anyone else that came before them. Otherwise why would they have been entrusted to being the gatekeeper of shiny job and privilege to work along the interviewer.

One may as well just defer to SAT scores, GPA, or the fact that a person actually graduated from a reputable CS program, or dare we say, the fact that a person actually had the same or similar jobs successfully over many years.

The reason people bomb these are precisely because they don’t need to exercise that “deep knowledge” that often in the first place. It doesn’t mean they aren’t capable it just means they’ll need to walk thru it longer than possible in a contrived situation. And the fact that they haven’t needed it is telling —these jobs aren’t really hitting the edge of CS research; it’s just a CRUD app.

The autists need to get off their high ponies and look at every other professional industry out there. Those industries have smart people too. Somehow humanity survives and the industry evolves…go figure.
by LolWolf | 2025-09-03 16:54:28+00:00
> it's some sort of oldschool model like random forests

It is a simple model, I think it's just a little dense NN with some hand-picked features. (https://github.com/acornprover/acorn/blob/master/python/mode...) Though Kevin has mentioned that, hopefully soon, we'll be able to have small-ish language models trained/fine-tuned on acornlib, but this requires some overhaul of the current approach to search.

> I wonder how they're going to keep it consistent over time (e.g., some proof steps suddenly becoming "unclear" after an update due to randomness of the ML model)

The idea (which I realize I didn't write about in the blogpost) is that each model iteration will be trained on `acornlib` along with previous traces. While it's possible that sometimes the model will fail to find a given proof for a fact (and therefore require some help when it didn't previously), the idea is that the model is learning both from its previous proofs and also new proofs that have been developed in the library since its previous training. In this sense, the model is constantly being "added" to and so should (ideally!) perform at least as well, as the acornlib gets larger.

> Sure, even Terence Tao would likely admit that formalizing proofs with Acorn is easier than with Lean, but formalizing existing/ongoing proofs is only part of the picture.

I think the point here is that, once the model gets good enough, you can just _write_ statements that you think might be true (and are, say, very nonobvious!) and then the Acorn engine would either automatically find a proof or give you a counterexample to the provided statement, which is much more akin to theorem proving with the computer.

> The best LLM provers + Lean combo right now can already crack IMO-level math, and what if they now write proofs in this more natural style?

For sure, my guess is LLM provers will find this style substantially "easier" though they do just fine at Lean, too.

> Will Acorn be better than Lean as an RL signal in this case?

I think this is the hope! The flywheel I think looks something like:

1. Train models using the standard library

2. Models can now discover new proofs of interesting facts and help in proving those more easily

3. Add those to the standard library + reasoning/proof traces

4. Train a new model on that

5. ???

6. Profit?