MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by palata | 2025-09-09 08:51:08+00:00
> I would guess that if the FBI could merely have a list of who their suspect contacted over an app, and when

Well with WhatsApp they most definitely can, but it has never been a secret. WhatsApp always had access to the metadata (whereas Signal makes a lot of effort to reduce the metadata they have access to). In ~2016 WhatsApp integrated the Signal protocol to add end-to-end encryption, but did nothing about the metadata.

Again: if you care about privacy, use Signal.
by judofyr | 2025-09-09 08:51:50+00:00
> This has massive implications. SEC means low latency, because nodes don't need to coordinate to handle reads and writes. It means incredible fault tolerance - every single node in the system bar one could simultaneously crash, and reads and writes could still happen normally. And it means nodes still function properly if they're offline or split from the network for arbitrary time periods.

Well, this all depends on the definition of «function properly». Convergence ensures that everyone observed the same state, not that it’s a useful state. For instance, The Imploding Hashmap is a very easy CRDT to implement. The rule is that when there’s concurrent changes to the same key, the final value becomes null. This gives Strong Eventual Consistency, but isn’t really a very useful data structure. All the data would just disappear!

So yes, CRDT is a massively useful property which we should strive for, but it’s not going to magically solve all the end-user problems.
by toofy | 2025-09-09 08:52:24+00:00
this sounds dangerous in our current situation.

consider how many in our current administration are entirely completely ill-equipped for their positions. many of them almost certainly rely on llms for even basic shit.

considering how many of these people try to make up for their … inexperience by asking a chatbot to make even basic decisions, poisoning the well would almost certainly cause very real very serious national or even international consequences.

i mean if we had people who were actually equipped for their jobs, it could be hilarious to do. they wouldn’t be nearly as likely to fall for entirely wrong absurd answers. but in our current reality it could actually lead to a nightmare.

i mean that genuinely. many many many people in this current government would -in actuality- fall for the wildest simplest dumbest information poisoning and that terrifies me.

“yes, glue on your pizza will stop the cheese from sliding off” only with actual real consequences.
by coldtea | 2025-09-09 08:52:24+00:00
>I really don't get this argument. I see it all the time, but the term AI has been used for over half a century for algorithms far less sophisticated than modern LLMs.

And it was fine there, because nobody, not even a layman, would mixup those with regular human intelligence (or AGI).

And laymen didn't care about those AI products or algorithms except as novelties, specicialized tools (like chess engines), or objects of ridicule (like the Clippy).

So we might be using AI as a term, but it was either as a techical term in the field, or as a vague term the average layman didn't care about much, and whose fruits would never conflate with general intelligence.

But now people attribute intelligence of the human kind to LLMs all the time, and not just laymen either.

That's the issue the parent wants to point.
by apricot13 | 2025-09-09 08:52:38+00:00
fwiw I (a YouTube premium subscriber) recently enabled restricted mode myself due to the app showing me completely unrelated and 'scary' videos in searches.

After some searching I found a few threads where others had encountered this and restricted mode was the only thing that seemed to stop these videos and honestly they're jarring and unwanted enough for me to warrant enabling restricted mode and all the features it disables - YouTube please please stop these unrelated 'jump scare' videos!

as an example I'm scrolling through videos on how to fix a leaky tap at 10pm I'll come across a thumbnail 5 videos down with a ghostly face or trypophobia type thumbnail then another 5-10 videos down. in no way are they highlighted as sponsored and I find it hard to believe that Google with it's search skills and other far more relevant videos in the results can be returning these videos as results!
by silicon5 | 2025-09-09 08:52:46+00:00
The author notes that circles don't draw well due to mouse polling, but I wonder if this isn't a limit of the emulator running on Windows. I remember Deluxe Paint III on the Amiga drawing freehand circles very well, whereas MS Paint on Windows 95, quickly drawn circles ended up looking like polyhedrons due to infrequent polling.

There's a neat modern DPaint clone called PyDPainter (https://github.com/mriale/PyDPainter). It has various advantages, such as support for modern graphics formats like PNG.
by gyomu | 2025-09-09 08:52:58+00:00
so much this

Most AAA videogames seem to teach people "mash attack button until enemy goes away, move forward to the next shiny dot on the map, repeat". It's crazy that when a game asks the player to actually take stock of the situation and learn from their mistakes, it gets billed as "brutally difficult".

For what it's worth, I find Silksong challenging, but I really don't get the "impossible difficulty" complaints. I think I'm about halfway through the main game and the most I've spent on a single boss is ~30 minutes.

And I don't think I'm a crazy pro gamer with insane reflexes - I play only a few videogames a year (I mostly care about the art), every time I've tried a multiplayer FPS I get utterly destroyed by other players.
by samus | 2025-09-09 08:53:43+00:00
The problem is that they are slowly losing the mobile markets, while their usual markets are not growing as they used to. AMD is less vulnerable to the issues that arise from that because they are fabless, and they could pivot entirely to GPU or non-x86 markets if they really wanted to. But Intel has fabs (very expensive in terms of R&D and capex) dedicated to products for desktop and server markets that must continue to generate revenue.
by daduke | 2025-09-09 08:54:21+00:00
I set this up to connect a TP-Link Deco X50-5G router at my parents' place to be able to troubleshoot their network, they practically live in the middle of the forest and 5G is the only option. The router supports a WireGuard VPN server, but has a proprietary firmware and is pretty locked down, no way to run Tailscale on it.

Now I have it connected to my tailnet with this docker container on a VPS, and it's pretty stable even through regular reboots and IP changes.
by M4v3R | 2025-09-09 08:54:34+00:00
Most people struggle with this boss, I stopped counting how many times it killed me but I spent probably close to 2 hours fighting it. The fight is just unfair. And when I finally beat it I didn't even feel satisfied, just glad it's finally over and I can move on.

Heck, there's even a dedicated subreddit for hating on this boss: https://www.reddit.com/r/fucksavagebeastfly/
by b3lvedere | 2025-09-09 08:54:51+00:00
Why do corporations/publishers feel entitled that people feed them as much (personal) information as possible via invasive ads, even when these people did not consent to that?

Businesses should really stop complaining the consumer is the problem here. The businesses made this model and expected consumers to gladly accept it. Don't want people to consume your content for free? Make it a subscription or something. Can't get enough subscribers to be profitable? We're so so sorry...

Same with cookies. Don't want the mandatory-by-law cookie popups? Stop using cookies.
by palmfacehn | 2025-09-09 08:54:55+00:00
Kei cars are designed to be primarily city cars. I'm sure there are many areas where it would lack in comparison to a modern vehicle. It is based on an old racing design from the creator of Lotus. The focus was always on power to weight and less is more.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caterham_7

People generally build kits resembling this design with more powerful motors. This is a factory build with a streetable config.
by graemep | 2025-09-09 08:54:57+00:00
You said because it is a proxy for local people's moral systems.

Firstly, laws are not a great proxy for local people's moral systems in dictatorships. I am not sure they are even that reliable proxy in democracies.

Secondly, while some exact expressions are of western origin, the general concept of freedom is pretty universal. Secondly, ideas of western origin might well be widely supported by people anywhere. Ideas spread.

Finally, where do you draw the line? Will you be entirely amoral and cooperate with any laws? Will you supply torture implements because the government wants them? A surveillance system primarily aimed at a ethnic or religious minority, or to identify supporters of the opposition? Genocide?

Most businesses claim to have some moral stance, and when they fail to stick to it it just looks like hypocrisy to me. A very visible example is the complete lack of rainbow logos in the same companies Chinese or Saudi operations during pride month - and media businesses that have a gay rights stance in the west will edit our gay scenes in Asia. Plenty of companies will claim to be anti-racist but do business than funds the Uighur genocide.
by gyomu | 2025-09-09 08:55:30+00:00
Everyone repeats this, but is there any information that confirms it?

Yes, it started as a DLC for Hollow Knight - but the devs have known for the past 5 years that it would be a standalone sequel. Is there any evidence that they designed it as "extended content for people who had already beaten the secret harder stuff", rather than approached it as a game on its own right?
by NGRhodes | 2025-09-09 08:55:51+00:00
I don't even think YouTube is anywhere near the worst advert offender. My local newspaper website is stuffed full of adverts. Between a large picture, article heading and advert, you often don't see a signle line of new content above the fold on a 1080p screen.

I do not regularly visit such sites. I do unblock websites that I return to often.
by kazinator | 2025-09-09 08:56:40+00:00
This is positively false. In my anecdotal experience, I have produced code that was brutal to write, but then it was easy to read afterward.

Just like a piece of music being easy to listen to after sweating out the composition.

Sone coding is like solving the puzzle. Once it is written and debugged, you're looking at the solution. The code will readily spoon-feed you the solution again when you revisit it months or years after forgetting everything, possibly even its existence.

Wen code is easy to write but hard to read, you must be writing fluff. Maybe try to steer your career a bit away from that. But do improve your ability to make fluff readable.
by bob1029 | 2025-09-09 08:57:29+00:00
> which really ought to be “UserFactsCollection”, or List or Bag or whatever singular object they are actually saving per table row

I try to avoid putting nouns on things when they could otherwise be inferred from their context of use. In this case we know it's a table. The possibility of multiple items being included is implied.

Singular/plural debate is driving us to name stuff in weird ways. This is why you should just go with the flow. Consider what a non technical person somewhere else in the business might call it. Aligning with this language has tremendous benefits. Trying to force purity into a natural language and communications context is how we make type systems and schemas that are indecipherable to the business.
by FooBarWidget | 2025-09-09 08:58:50+00:00
Sovereignty. Having a European company means others can't as easily take it away.

This is one thing the EU can learn from China. Lots of "expert" smash China for duplicating/"copying" stuff that the west was already doing, better. They criticize that it's wasteful spending etc. They don't get it. It's about sovereignty, so you're not at the whims of whomever wants to sanction you for whatever frivolous reasons. The EU is now learning what it means when it can't rely on the US for everything anymore.

It doesn't matter that it isn't as good as the competition right now. Human capital takes time and effort to cultivate. There is strategic reason to keep Mistal alive even if it's not very commercially competitive.

I hope our EU leaders can see this too, commit for the long term, and don't just look at financial balance sheets.
by coldtea | 2025-09-09 08:58:58+00:00
>Shifting goalposts of AI aside, intelligence as a general faculty does not require sentience, consciousness, awareness, qualia, valence or any of the things traditionally associated with a high level of biological intelligence

Citation needed would apply here. What if I say it doe require some or all of those things?

>But what it does require: the ability to produce useful output beyond the sum total of past experience and present (sensory) input. An LLM does only this. Where as a human-like intelligence has some form on internal randomness, plus an internal world model against which such randomized output could get validated.

What's the difference between human internal randomness and an random number generator hooked to the LLM? Could even use anything real world like a lava lamp for true randomness.

And what's the difference between "an internal world model" and a number of connections between concepts and tokens and their weights? How different is a human's world model?
by tome | 2025-09-09 08:59:15+00:00
> privatised water companies have built no new reservoir capacity and relied on drawing from rivers and other sources

Why does privatisation mean that the government can't build infrastructure? I think the answer is more likely nimbyism than privatisation.

I personally think it makes no sense to privatise infrastructure for which no competition can reasonably take place, and I'd include distribution networks of many sorts in that: water distribution, rail lines, electricity distribution.

But I'm not aware that privatisation means that the state can't take on reservoir projects. The problem is that development of all kinds in the UK is utterly crippled by nimbyism. The article mentions the proposed Abingdon reservoir but links it to the boogyman of data centres rather than call out what the picture obviously shows: it's being stalled by nimbys.
by sylware | 2025-09-09 08:59:22+00:00
RISC-V has no PI lock like ARM or x86 and x86_64.

RISC-V has to start to seriously defend itself, because it is a death sentence for ARM ISA and and could start to cast shadows on x86_64 in some areas slowly but surely. Some people will try to bring it down, hard.

If you stick to core rva22+ (core RISC-V ISA), RISC-V is good enough to replace all of them, without PI lock, and with a global standard ISA, software may have a chance to get out of the horrible mess it is currently in (a lot of critical software code path may end up assembly written... no compiler lock-in, extremely hard to do planned obsolescence, etc).

RISC-V is basically ARM ISA without PI lock.

I have been writting RISC-V assembly running on x86_64 with an interpreter for much of my software projects. It is very pleasant to code using it (basic assembler: no pseudo-instructions, I don't even use the compressed instructions).

I hope to get my hands on RISC-V performant implementations on near state-of-the-art silicon process some day (probably a mini-server, for all the self hosted stuff).

The 'silicon market' is saturated then it is amazing what the RISC-V supporters have been able to achieve. There will be mistakes (some probably big), before implementations do stabilize in the various domains (desktop/server/embedded/mobile/etc), and expect the others to press hard on them.

The next step for RISC-V would be a GPU ISA, and for RVAX, a standard hardware GPU programming interface... but it may be still too early for that since we kind of still don't know if we reach 'the sweet spot'.
by graemep | 2025-09-09 08:59:30+00:00
A western idea in origin. According to the historian Tom Holland its a Christian idea in origin (read his book Dominion if you want an explanation) - does that mean atheists should not support it? its a good idea, everyone should adopt it.

No repercussions for anything short of calling violence is actually an American idea, to some extent other Anglophone countries. It is not generally accepted in continental Europe which has always had far more restrictions on speech. So its not generically "western". On the other hand some level of free speech is widely supported by many people in non-western countries. its in a lot of constitutions, and people will generally say they support free speech.
Ask HN: E-ink devices with real AI/LLM integration?
by arbayi | 2025-09-09 08:59:33+00:00
I know many e-ink readers and note apps send text to other tools for AI. I’m wondering if any devices have AI features built in—like summarizing, Q&A, or helping organize notes—so it feels part of the device itself.

Has anyone used something like this?
by bbrks | 2025-09-09 08:59:39+00:00
It's not the default. You cannot buy a new house today without being on a meter. That is the default.

It's just our housing stock being so old and decrepit, where nobody can be bothered updating anything even if it's provided for free by the utility companies, that the majority of houses simply do not have a water meter!

There's a general sentiment that smart meters and metered water will make costs skyrocket or somehow hold you ransom to abrupt and unfair price changes, as if that somehow wasn't the case today...
by PMunch | 2025-09-09 08:59:51+00:00
Speech for the disabled would indeed be great, as long as the disability doesn't also affect the system which you use to "silent speak".

As for the privacy thing, I would say that I absolutely hate talking out loud to my devices. Just the idea of talking my ideas into a recorder in my own office where nobody can hear me feels very strange to me. But I love thinking through ideas and writing scripts for speeches or presentations in my mind, or to plan out some code or overall project. A device like this would allow me to do the internal monologue thing, then turn to "silent speak" them into this device to take notes which sounds great. And the form-factor doesn't look that dissimilar to a set a bone-conduction headsets which would be perfect for privacy-aware feedback while allowing you to take in your surroundings.

With this tech demo though it seems like the transmission rate is veeery slow, he sits still in his chair staring into the room and a short sentence is all that appears. Not exactly speed of thought..

And of course there is the cable running off to who knows what kind of computational resources.

The AI parts of this are less exciting to me, but as an input device I'm really on-board with the idea.
by card_zero | 2025-09-09 09:00:46+00:00
You must excuse me, it's well past my bedtime and I only entered into this to-and-fro by accident. But LLMs are very bad in some domains compared to humans, you say? Naturally I wonder which domains you have in mind.

Three things humans have that look to me like they matter to the question of what intelligence is, without wanting to chance my arm on formulating an actual definition, are ideas, creativity, and what I think of as the basic moral drive, which might also be called motivation or spontaneity or "the will" (rather 1930s that one) or curiosity. But those might all be one thing. This basic drive, the notion of what to do next, makes you create ideas - maybe. Here I'm inclined to repeat "fuck knows".

If you won't be drawn on a binary distinction, that seems to mean that everything is slightly intelligent, and the difference in quality of the intelligence of humans is a detail. But details interest me, you see.
by magicalhippo | 2025-09-09 09:00:50+00:00
Hm, I too primarily have srt's. No idea why just says "failed to load" or somesuch and I haven't been arsed to figure out why when I can just hop over to Plex and watch.

That said, I've had a few HDR movies which Jellyfin handled a lot better, so it's a bit here and there.

As for skipping, I primarily skip backwards when I miss dialog (so much mumbling these days), or forward when it's a TV show which has segments I don't care too much about, like say some irrelevant love subplot.
by cookiengineer | 2025-09-09 09:01:37+00:00
By this logic you cannot use anything, because there's likely at least one website that uses its featureset.

Of course I wouldn't farble on my bank's website, that would be pretty stupid.

But by default I would want trackers to get the farbled data, and only allowlist the websites I trust. Same trust concept as with uBlock Origin, NoScript and others.
by pkdpic | 2025-09-09 09:01:42+00:00
> Each case is different, but many voice the same laments: Overheads are killing businesses. Sales are down. It’s no longer fun. Primary pricing is untenable. Major collectors have stopped buying art or significantly reduced their spending. The next generation isn’t there to take over from the old guard. The art world has become bloated, and there isn’t an easy way to cure the malaise.

> “I don’t believe for one second that it’s cyclical,” Belgian collector and art market commentator Alain Servais told me. “It’s structural. The infrastructure is too big. There are too many advisors, too many galleries, too many artists, too many fairs. Everything will need to downsize. In my blunt opinion, blood will flow in the streets before the art market finds a new balance.”

Super exciting to imagine what new structures and ways of making and sharing art might arise in the aftermath of this system. It seems like in a lot of ways the gallery / collector relationship is still running essentially the same way that was established in the 1870s.
by menaerus | 2025-09-09 09:02:01+00:00
The competitive advantage of DeepSeek IMO were the engineers. Some pretty hard-core optimizations went out of their lab, and this is what I think is a major differentiator between success and failure. You can have all the HW you can wish for but if you don't have the right set of people you're not gonna make it. Many companies think that they have the right set of people but they don't.
by coldtea | 2025-09-09 09:02:33+00:00
>Isn't that what mathematical extrapolation or statistical inference does?

Obviously not, since those are just producing output based 100% on the "sum total of past experience and present (sensory) input" (i.e. the data set).

The parent's constraint is not just about the output merely reiterating parts of the dataset verbatim. It's also about not having the output be just a function of the dataset (which covers mathematical and statistical inference).
by mrtksn | 2025-09-09 09:02:42+00:00
Why would the risk be small? I've seen pretty expensive machinery been left behind. I destroyed such machinery to take out the copper wires from its transformars to make a net.

What makes you think that this can't happen? It can happen in so many ways, i.e. the owner is criminal and runs away or fucks up and loses everything and the court takes years to decide who gets what from the factories, the new owners put it on sale it takes another 10 years to sell because the repair costs incurred are massive and equipment is getting obsolete therefore you can't find a buyer. People get old, move on and all that decays for 50 years until the land becomes valuable enough for someone to buy it with all that obsolete garbage.

It happens all the time.