MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by mdp2021 | 2025-09-02 20:02:49+00:00
> Each word has nearly 5 billion calculations behind its choice

If you mean "the words picked by LLMs have nearly 5 billion calculations behind", then the reply is simply "LLMs are easily effing morons" - those calculations must be not well spent or not enough.

And in the example, the paid «expert» (which is actually meant to be "the professional" - expert, talented and educated) is the human, not the machine.
by stevedotcarter | 2025-09-02 20:03:09+00:00
I noticed this recently when I saw someone post with an AI generated map of Europe which was all wrong. I tried the same and asked ChatGPT to generate a map of Ireland and it was wrong too. So then I asked to find me some accurate maps of Ireland and instead of generating it gave me images and links to proper websites.

Will definitely be remembering to put "generate" vs "find" in my prompts depending on what I'm looking for. Not quite sure how you would train the model to know which answer is more suitable.
by DanielHB | 2025-09-02 20:03:21+00:00
It is not nearly as much of a problem in JS because JS only has an event loop, there is no way to mix in threads with async code because there are no threads. Makes everything a lot simpler and a lot of the data structures a lot faster (because no locks required). But actual parallelization (instead of just concurrency) is impossible[1].

A lot of the async problems in other languages is because they haven't bought up into the concept fully with some 3rd party code using it and some don't. JS went all-in with async.

[1]: Yes I know about service workers, but they are not threads in the sense that there is no shared memory*. It is good for some types of parallelization problems, but not others because of all the memory copying required.

[2]: Yes I know about SharedArrayBuffer and there is a bunch of proposals to add support for locks and all that fun stuff to them, which also brings all the complexity back.
by belter | 2025-09-02 20:03:34+00:00
The AI story is over.

One more unimpressive release of ChatGPT or Claude, another 2 Billion spent by Zuckerberg on subpar AI offers, and the final realization by CNBC that all of AI right now...Is just code generators, will do it.

You will have ghost data centers in excess like you have ghost cities in China.
by const_cast | 2025-09-02 20:03:53+00:00
Of course I don't, I'm directly refuting the "everything is everything else" style of reasoning.

But AI, as a piece of software available to everyone, is certainly more dangerous than a sharp stick.

If I went out and produced, say, 200,000 sharp sticks and started hanging them out like candy, guess what - id get the authorities attention.

Everything is a function of scale. If we ignore scale than stubbing your toe is genocide, stealing a penny is grand theft auto, and running a mile is time travel.
by wvenable | 2025-09-02 20:04:45+00:00
What I've seen with these large services like Google is that once they deem you undesirable (either on purpose or by accident) then they're just done with you forever. They have so many customers and so many bad actors that it's just not worth it to give anyone a second chance. It's pretty horrible for people caught in that situation.

We would need some kind of legislation around this. No company is looking to decay scores over time unless there is some profit motive to be exploited (like there is with credit scores).
by vrnvu | 2025-09-02 20:05:00+00:00
Some thoughts:

Linkedin just deprecated Kafka in favor of Northguard [1]. Curious how this actually compares in practice. Is it worth the effort of building yet another distributed log? Is it worth the effort to mantain Kafka if new alternatives are popping? Jepsen found plenty of issues last year [2], so maybe Linkedin is in the right direction by building from scratch...

Distributed systems are tough to get right, and while it's exciting to see new approaches, the space is definitely getting harder to follow.

[1] https://www.linkedin.com/blog/engineering/infrastructure/int...

[2] https://jepsen.io/analyses/bufstream-0.1.0
by bmacho | 2025-09-02 20:05:17+00:00
Linear algebra has motivations and applications everywhere, since its main defining concepts, 'addition' and 'transformation that keeps sums' are everywhere. So a linear algebra curse is a huge pile of disjointed facts. It is not such a set of material that can have motivations behind it.

But the good news is that if you are only interested in for example geometry, game theory, systems of linear equations, polynomials, statistics, etc, then you can skip 80% of the content of linear algebra books. You don't have to read them, understand them, memorize them. You'll interact with a tiny part of linear algebra anyway, and you don't have to do that upfront.
by mrkeen | 2025-09-02 20:05:33+00:00
> For example COVID emergencies were kept in effect long after it was appropriate.

COVID didn't get the memo.

Both Hazelo and Abuhl, who were election observers, challenged a mask mandate in the ballot counting room imposed by Island County Auditor Sheilah Crider, a Republican. She imposed the rule after 10 people in the office became ill with COVID during the primary ballot recount in August, and she didn’t want to jeopardize the health of the team of elderly volunteers. https://www.southwhidbeyrecord.com/news/jury-finds-former-head-of-island-county-republicans-guilty-in-elections-office-mask-mandate-case/
by Marsymars | 2025-09-02 20:05:41+00:00
I don't think you do. My Mac Mini has the same Secure Enclave as other devices with the M4/A18 SoC, and it literally doesn't have a fingerprint reader (or Face ID).

The Secure Enclave is used to handle data around biometrics, but biometrics aren't a requirement for its use.

Biometrics on Apple devices are generally a convenience method so that you don't have to type your strong password every time, they're not a second factor to the password.
by srean | 2025-09-02 20:05:42+00:00
Mea culpa about translation.

For a moment I was thinking in homogeneous coordinates - that's not the right thing to do in the introductory phase.

Thanks for catching the error and making an important point. I am letting my original comment stand unedited so that your point stands.

About rotations though, one need not let the cat out of the bag and explain what addition of rotation is *.

One simply defines addition of two linear operators as the addition of the vectors that each would have individually produced. This can be demonstrated geometrically with arrows, without fixing coordinates.

* In 2D it's a scaled rotation.
by Sharlin | 2025-09-02 20:05:42+00:00
Rotation matrices are somewhat mysterious to the uninitiated, but so is matrix multiplication until it "clicks". Whether it ever clicks is a function of the quality of the learning resource (I certainly do not recommend trying to learn linalg via 3D graphics by just dabbling without a good graphics-oriented textbook or tutorial – that usually doesn’t end well).

Anyway, I believe that it's perfectly possible to explain rotation matrices so that it "clicks" with a high probability, as long as you understand the basic fact that (cos a, sin a) is the point that you get when you rotate the point (1, 0) by angle a counter-clockwise about the origin (that's basically their definition!) Involving triangles at all is fully optional.
by ChrisArchitect | 2025-09-02 20:06:51+00:00
[dupe]

This story didn't just break.

More discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45088651

WSJ source last week: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45059030

OpenAI's response from a week ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45050635

Related:

In Search of AI Psychosis

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45027072
by mindslight | 2025-09-02 20:07:44+00:00
Those are the exact same talking points I hear from people supporting Trump as some kind of supposed alternative. Our main political dynamic is that each professional team plays up how bad the other professional team is to drive support to themselves - so sensational criticism of one single professional team boils down to support for the other professional team.

And as I said I thought we were criticizing authoritarianism in general. I wasn't asking you the difference between the two flavors in terms of their marketing, but asking why you would choose to focus on their differences rather than their commonalities, especially in the context of caring about individual liberty.
by Kuinox | 2025-09-02 20:07:57+00:00
Just search it: https://www.theenglishkitchen.co/2015/07/fried-potato-salad.... https://www.food.com/recipe/southern-fried-potato-salad-2134...

And simply french fries salad: https://tinaschic.com/2015/02/french-fry-salad/
by cluckindan | 2025-09-02 20:08:17+00:00
”So, a judge who is convinced you're about to kill somebody can unleash the police to follow you everywhere in hopes of preventing that crime. Similarly, a judge who thinks your computer system contains information related to financial crimes can allow the police to hack that system. Likewise, a judge who thinks you're stalking your ex can order you to stay out of a certain part of town.”

One of these things is not like the others…
by foresto | 2025-09-02 20:08:31+00:00
A little history...

During development, asyncio was called tulip. A quick search turns up this talk by Guido:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aurOB4qYuFM

I seem to recall that Guido was in touch with the author of Twisted at the time, so design ideas from that project may have helped shape asyncio.

https://twisted.org/

Before asyncio, Python had asyncore, a minimal event loop/callback module. I think it was was introduced in Python 1.5.2, and remained part of the standard library until 3.12.

https://docs.python.org/3.11/library/asyncore.html

https://docs.python.org/3.11/library/asynchat.html
by vaylian | 2025-09-02 20:08:33+00:00
I think hardware keys are the best option for passkeys, because they have a separate (physical) user interface compared to software-based keys. This makes it easier to understand the login process. You physically interact with the hardware key to confirm that you want to log in. And you can use your key for many different accounts.

The downside is of course that hardware keys are typically not cheap and you should also buy a backup key. Another unnecessary downside is that certain companies like Microsoft require the use of resident keys, which take up storage space on the hardware key. The better alternative is non-resident keys, of which you can have an infinite number on your key.
by feoren | 2025-09-02 20:08:36+00:00
Ask the people who worked at Bell Labs in its heyday, or at NASA during the Apollo program, or who make a modest living earning a salary for a charity or organization they care about -- ask them whether it's a mistake to try to derive emotional value from their jobs. The problem isn't that humans become invested in their work, the problem is that almost all jobs are stupid meaningless bullshit. It might seem like a monumental task trying to reinvent the economy so that most jobs aren't just fucking awful mind-prisons, but it's actually easier than changing human nature. Humans want to care about their work, it's just that the parasitic, psycopathic caste of C-suite "Business Leadership" nepo-babies who currently run the entire economy don't give a shit about what humans want. People in the 1950s were largely proud of their jobs, and not because they were morons, but because their jobs actually mattered, they contributed real things to the company and the world, and they were paid well -- within a factor of 10x what the CEO was paid. None of that is true anymore, and it's not human nature's fault. It's the fault of a small percentage of very specific psycopaths.
by 9dev | 2025-09-02 20:09:06+00:00
No. It’s not the influencers, they are just an irrelevant nuisance. It’s the business plan of Vercel, the venture-Capital backed company.

They hire the core contributors of all major web frameworks to continue development under their roof. Suddenly, ongoing improvement of the web platform is largely dependent on the whims of Vercel investors.

They pretend to cater to all hosting providers equally, but just look at Next, which will always be tailored toward Vercel. When will it happen to Nuxt? Sveltekit? Vercel is in a position to make strategic moves across the entire SSR market now. Regardless of whether they make use of that power, it’s bad enough they wield it at all.

When has this ever been a good idea? When has it produced a good outcome? It never has, and it never will.
by crazygringo | 2025-09-02 20:09:16+00:00
> The consumers’ 2021 lawsuit said Amazon violated antitrust law by restricting third-party sellers from offering their products for lower prices elsewhere on rival platforms while they are also for sale on Amazon.

I've noticed that third-party sellers generally get around this by having the same list price on their own site, but basically offering everyone a coupon for 15-30% off. Not just for signing up for e-mails, but spinning a wheel that pops up a discount, items that are on sale 95% of the time, etc.

So while this may very well be anticompetitive of Amazon, at the same time it's generally something savvy sellers and savvy consumers have been able to get around easily for a long time.
by kace91 | 2025-09-02 20:09:20+00:00
That heavily depends on where you live.

In large, dense cities you’re pretty much anonymous; I could dance naked in a main street today and (provided no one’s recording) carry on with my life with zero repercussions.

Some people make a living out of that fact. Tourist traps do not exactly engage recurring customers, every purchase is a customer’s first.
by Sharlin | 2025-09-02 20:09:40+00:00
There are affine spaces, and there is an algebra of the elements of affine spaces. That is, rules that describe how the elements can be manipulated. There are affine transforms, affine combinations, affine bases, and so on, all of them analogous to the corresponding concepts in linear algebra.

(The term "algebra" can also refer to a particular type of algebraic structure in math, but that’s not what I meant.)
by like_any_other | 2025-09-02 20:09:47+00:00
$100 each for 330 million Americans sums to $33 billion, which is about half of Amazon's yearly profit (the whole company, not just e-commerce). While I think it should be higher still (anti-competitive practices should be harshly punished), it's not negligible. The real point isn't in the consumer payout, but in discouraging these practices, so that a handful of companies don't get a chokehold on the market (one could argue it's a bit late for that...)
by ben_w | 2025-09-02 20:10:08+00:00
> they meant that to be interpreted as a statement of how good GPT-2 is

Every previous time someone says something like this, I've looked at the original blog post again just to make sure I didn't miss something.

OpenAI's own words for GPT-2 never read like a boast to me. Caution, not a boast.

News may have bigged it up, but news does that for everything.

I mean just compare it to the GPT-5 release: they're not shy or subtle when they actually want to boast.
by SilverElfin | 2025-09-02 20:10:37+00:00
If you’re claiming it’s not open source, cite your source. I certainly could be wrong and am open to that possibility. But from my searching, I don’t see something saying it’s not open source. I posted that link since it was linked to from a news article on this topic (not because I analyzed it).

> I advise you to save some Flavor Aid for your next informed uninformed opinions

Was this personal attack necessary?
by Kim_Bruning | 2025-09-02 20:10:53+00:00
If you weaken encryption so that your government can get access, now other sides can get access too. Including criminals and other governments.

No I would not like to weaken encryption for my bank (obviously), my personal information (if only due to spear fishing), cryptographic authentication like passkeys in general and ssh keys in particular, and absolutely no one gets access to any teenager's phone anywhere. (unless it's their parents maybe,... that one is debatable).

ps the term "NOBUS fallacy" is apparently not a thing yet. (I thought it was!)
by scellus | 2025-09-02 20:10:57+00:00
I don't know. iNaturalist contributes a valuable identification service in their free apps. I'm a relatively experienced naturalist, but greatly helped by the iOS app, simply because remembering hundreds of species names is hard, even when the species are familiar. And the identification abilities of their models outside of my own domain are just stupendous, and freely available.

If they feel like keeping the models to themselves, I think it's a fair game. I give them observations, they gave me the id service for free. Maybe they even sell the models to fund their development efforts? I wouldn't mind... they need to fund their functions somehow anyway.

And remember, their observation databases are open. In fact my observations are automatically copied to the databases of a national biodiversity institution (which is open as well, except for some critical species).

Institutions need to maintain themselves and be able to pay their employees for them being able to feed their kids, etc.
by everyone | 2025-09-02 20:10:58+00:00
Seeing, not just stuff like this, but a myriad of things, imo the US is cooked. EU countries that still have enlightenment ideals alive need to cut ties asap. In particular we need our own completely independent armies, arms production, and nuclear deterrence.

Imo what we're seeing in the US now is the visible "blooming" of things which have been growing and metastasizing since the 80's.
by const_cast | 2025-09-02 20:11:15+00:00
The way we calculate risk is inherently extremely biased towards the wealthy.

In terms of real, relative risk, being a laborer is much more risky than being an investor.

The investor may lose hundreds of millions, but it doesn't matter. The laborer may lose 500 dollars after being fired, and it could kill them.

We've detached risk from real risk. Real risk is - will I eat, will I survive.
by Lammy | 2025-09-02 20:11:51+00:00
While I broadly agree with the article's point, this part stood out to me as the author not really knowing that much about Utah:

> the image [of overt social-credit tech in public] is so powerful that Utah's House passed a law banning social credit systems, despite none existing in America.

More like the LDS Church banned social credit systems that would compete with theirs lol
by wtbdbrrr | 2025-09-02 20:11:53+00:00
yep.

and people don't just remember. sometimes they set you up to test you and or to give you a chance.

some other times they set someone else up to test you and or to give you a chance.

and sometimes people poison others to increase their and or your social credit.

as Austin Powers (or was it Ali G?) said quite eloquently: "behave".
by alexpotato | 2025-09-02 20:12:13+00:00
In the book Fingerprints[0], they mention how, prior to fingerprints, much easier it was to just move to another town/county/state and just start over or even pretend to be somebody else. This was because there was no way to establish your identity with near 100% certainty.

This had pros and cons depending on who you were. For example, thieves loved it as you could drop you criminal record simply by moving somewhere that no one recognized you. On the other hand, there were documented cases of mistaken identity and people being prosecuted just because they looked like someone else. Then there is the case of William West which is better understood by looking at the pictures of two men names William West [1]

Contrast that to today where it doesn't matter which town in the US you live in, there is always a credit record that is tied to you.

0 - https://amzn.to/47XN9Id

1 - https://rarehistoricalphotos.com/will-william-west-case-fing...
by nomel | 2025-09-02 20:13:25+00:00
> they can run 30b-class models at 40+ tok/sec.

No, they can run quantized versions of those models, which are dumber than the base 30b models, which are much dumber than > 400b models (from my use).

> They are a little bit dumber than the big cloud models but not by much.

If this were true, we wouldn't see people paying the premiums for the bigger models (like Claude).

For every use case I've thrown at them, it's not a question of "a little dumber", it's the binary fact that the smaller models are incapable of doing what I need with any sort of consistency, and hallucinate at extreme rates.

What's the actual use case for these local models?
by tripletpeaks | 2025-09-02 20:13:37+00:00
I don’t suppose anything a bit less-serious is available to normies?

I have a iphone that died on vacation and was set to backup only on WiFi (I’ve since changed that setting, haha, whoops) and has a couple days of photos stuck on it that weren’t backed up. It boots and makes noise but the screen is dead. Uncertainty about how broken it is has kept me from paying the not-cheap cost to get a screen replacement, and I haven’t found a way to read its data over a cable without unlocking via the screen first (which doesn’t work, and its touch-sensing capacity also seems to be dead, so blind input doesn’t do it, or else I could probably unlock it with a couple tries and get it to connect to WiFi it already knows and do its backup, but it won’t do that without being unlocked)
by contingencies | 2025-09-02 20:13:44+00:00
This comment makes no sense as iNaturalist are a non-profit and they run on donations. Data is hosted for free by AWS under the Amazon Open Data Sponsorship Program, which covers infrastructure and bandwidth costs. The community already pays staff salaries. "For 2024, reported revenue was $4.71M, with over 94% coming from contributions and philanthropic sources". See https://www.inaturalist.org/pages/financials ~20 full time employees.
by krapp | 2025-09-02 20:13:47+00:00
You say we don't need socialism then give an example of where we need socialism.

Socialist activism is the reason we have labor rights and a minimum wage and eight hour workdays. Socialists are the reason American companies no longer field private armies to shoot striking workers dead. Socialists are the reason American schoolchildren get free lunches. Socialists died to make life in the US something more than grist for the mill for anyone who wasn't rich.

I'm going to say yes, we need socialism. And we need to admit that we need socialism. And we need to stop acting like socialism is a bad word.
by rangestransform | 2025-09-02 20:14:52+00:00
The idea of individual locus of control is how western society has made so much progress. The idea of determinism that a certain subset of the "political left" has embraced is detrimental to the functioning of society, no matter how true it actually is. When people are not invested in their outcomes through a society-wide belief in individual control, we end up with situations like collective farming. Taken to its extreme, the idea of determinism results in "from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs", equal outcomes for disparate effort and ability.