MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by glenstein | 2025-09-04 01:54:43+00:00
I've said this before, but you can't, and honestly don't need to start from definitions to be able to do meaningful research and have meaningful conversations about consciousness (though it certainly would be preferable to have one rather than not have one).

There are many research areas where the object of research is to know something well enough that you could converge on such a thing as a definition, e.g. dark matter, intelligence, colony collapse syndrome, SIDS. We nevertheless can progress in our understanding of them in a whole motley of strategic ways, by case studies that best exhibit salient properties, trace the outer boundaries of the problem space, track the central cluster of "family resemblances" that seem to characterize the problem, entertain candidate explanations that are closer or further away, etc. Essentially a practical attitude.

I don't doubt in principle that we could arrive at such a thing as a definition that satisfies most people, but I suspect you're more likely to have that at the end than the beginning.
by dlcarrier | 2025-09-04 01:55:35+00:00
I've never had physical cash get stolen, but multiple times I've had to get new credit card numbers, because mine was revealed in a data breach. Even if I had been robbed, the cash I have on hand is a fraction of a percent of either my credit limit or bank account balance.

I'm only near a few dozen people per day at most, and the chances of one of them trying to rob me are near zero, and the most they could get is a fraction of what they could access through a stolen card number. Meanwhile, there's constant attempts for data breaches at payment processors and those they work with, so my chances of being harmed by a data breach are much higher than by a robbery.

Also, you are paying insurance premiums for those voided transactions. Vendors are chanrged around 3% for card transactions, and they pass that on to the customer, although some only pass it to their card customers, with a surcharge for card transaction.
by jdiff | 2025-09-04 01:55:40+00:00
Existing features are also suffering and going unfixed. If you browse any tweet with more than a few dozen replies, loading replies takes a notable amount of time, and X very conspicuously does not load all of them. Sometimes changing reply sorting algorithms loads entirely different batches of tweets.

Besides that most basic functionality, many times notifications are not sent when the notification settings would suggest they should be. And of course, moderation has fallen by the wayside, although that's more of a policy shift than a technical failure.
by shagie | 2025-09-04 01:56:30+00:00
It was also in part a budgetary time bomb that was set to go off in the next term. If Trump won, they would have rolled it back. As it was, there were several attempts to roll it back between 2021 and 2024 that were blocked by republicans ( https://www.claconnect.com/en/resources/blogs/manufacturing/... https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/4737635-senate-republica... ) so that the economy would continue to suffer under Biden.

Once Trump won and was in place for 2025, they defused it so that (they hoped) the economy would pick up.
by frosted-flakes | 2025-09-04 01:57:04+00:00
Anyone who tried to pay for anything in Canada on 8 July 2022 knows that it's not that simple. The entire Interac network was shut down for over 15 hours, which meant that debit and credit payments through POS terminals were halted nationwide. It was chaos, I was away from home and was unaware that anything had happened because I had no phone service. There were long lines everywhere, and a stranger paid for my coffee with cash, because the single toonie I happened to have wasn't enough.

The cause of the failure was multi-fold: all of Interac's Internet links relied on the Rogers' network in one way or another, so when one went down, so did the other.
by bwfan123 | 2025-09-04 01:57:05+00:00
> writing code was never the bottleneck

This is an insightful observation.

When working on anything, I am asked: what is the smallest "hard" problem that this is solving ? ie, in software, value is added by solving "hard" problems - not by solving easy problems. Another way to put it is: hard problems are those that are not "templated" ie, solved elsewhere and only need to be copied.

LLMs are allowing the easy problems to be solved faster. But the real bottleneck is in solving the hard problems - and hard problems could be "hard" due to technical reasons, or business reasons or customer-adoption reasons. Hard problems are where value lies particularly when everyone has access to this tool, and everyone can equally well create or copy something using it.

In my experience, LLMs have not yet made a dent in solving the hard problems because, they dont really have a theory of how something really works. On the other hand, they have really helped boost productivity for tasks that are templated .
by SilverElfin | 2025-09-04 01:57:10+00:00
Abusive parents are extremely rare. It should be hand waved away to give most parents the freedom to parent that they fundamentally deserve. Withholding a vaccine isn’t abuse - it’s just a legitimate decision to live differently and judge risks and benefits differently. What you’re arguing for is a highly controlled authoritarian culture with no room to think differently from the powers that be. Free societies value individual rights above societal ones exactly to avoid this basic authoritarian trap.
by atleastoptimal | 2025-09-04 01:58:00+00:00
Those are fundamentally different. If people on this site really can't tell the difference then it makes sense why people on HN assume AI is a bubble.

People paid a lot for beanie babies and various speculative securities on the assumption that they could be sold for more in the future. They were assets people aimed to resell at a profit. They had no value by themselves.

The source of revenue for AI companies has inherent value but is not a resell-able asset. You can't resell API calls you buy from an AI company at some indefinite later date. There is no "market" for reselling anything you purchase from a company that offers use of a web app and API calls.
by seabass-labrax | 2025-09-04 01:58:04+00:00
This point - that EMV cards have the effect of siphoning money out of many countries to the USA in payment processing fees - is one of the primary motivations behind the development of Wero[1]. For those that haven't come across it yet, it's a new payments system based on 'instant' SEPA wire transfers. It is starting to gain ground now, particularly in Germany and the Benelux. I'm not aware of any smartcard-based implementations yet, though - currently it functions more like WeChat typically does, where you need to authorize the transaction on a smartphone.

[1]: https://wero-wallet.eu/
by devilbunny | 2025-09-04 01:58:44+00:00
Credit card financial protections for Americans are one of the most strongly pro-customer sets of laws we have in the US. The rewards are a nice way to get some of your money back, but you really can’t be cleaned out by fraud on actual credit cards (not debit cards using the MC/Visa logo and payment system). “That is an unauthorized charge, please cancel the card” is perfectly acceptable. In theory you are on the hook for the first $50, but in practice almost no bank holds you to that.

The consumer essentially can’t be accused of not exercising due caution unless you have ignored at least one bill with fraudulent charges. This is real value, so once you’ve bought into the system, getting the rewards is a major incentive to choose one card over another.
by ProllyInfamous | 2025-09-04 01:59:06+00:00
My local credit union has switched entirely to machined staff, even inside locations (with attendant staff for transaction impossible via ATM).

For some silly reason, the machine stocks only these bills: $5$ $20$ $100$

Why waste an entire cash dispenser on fives when it could instead be handing out fifties (or at least tens)... especially at an ATM!?

I think it's time for a $1000 bill, again. Let's get rid of bills less than $10$ (coins instead); also, get rid of pennies [in progress] and nickels.

Leaving only: dimes*, quarters, halves, dollar [coin], $2 & $5 [coins], $10$ $20$ $50$ $100$ $1000$ [bills]

*I'd suggest nix'ing this one, too, if it were physically larger [but isn't]

I only stock my wallet with $100$ $50$ $10$ $2$ [bills], and immediately get rid of ones ($1$) when possible. I do not have any credit cards.
by foxglacier | 2025-09-04 01:59:41+00:00
Robots are only harder because they have expensive hardware. We already have robots that can load dishwashers and do other manual work but humans are cheaper so there isn't much of a market for them.

The rising tide idea came from a 1997 paper by Moravec. Here's a nice graphic and subsequent history https://lifearchitect.ai/flood/

Interestingly, Moravec also stated: "When the highest peaks are covered, there will be machines than can interact as intelligently as any human on any subject. The presence of minds in machines will then become self−evident." We pretty much have those today so by 1997 standards, machines have minds, yet somehow we moved the goalposts and decided that doesn't count anymore. Even if LLMs end up being strictly more capable than every human on every subject, I'm sure we'll find some new excuse why they don't have minds or aren't really intelligent.
by mdaniel | 2025-09-04 01:59:45+00:00
I suspect I am just predisposed to not wanting to watch a video of anything, because it usually has a very low bitrate of knowledge transferred per investment of my time, which is ironic given the actual bandwidth requirements of video. In this specific case it did turn out to actually help me by pointing to the actual PR that their bot made <https://github.com/datafruit-dev/terraform-demo/pull/26/file...> and/or <https://github.com/datafruit-dev/terraform-demo/pull/27/file...> so I can know for sure that I am not a good fit for this product

However, I would not have learned that they seem to offer GCP, too, from the website; I only learned that from the video. That is my complaint: how hard would it have been to include "AWS or GCP" on the page? Or, if nextjs doesn't support arbitrary text for some reason, then including those 3 letters in the textarea here would have gone a long way, too

I know this is a ton of words, and that I'm barking up the wrong tree by telling you about my sadness about the lack of specificity from a Launch HN. But you asked to understand, and I knew from prior experience that either YC, or the mods, or both, are super sensitive to having any Lanuch HN criticized so I knew this conversation was coming. I do hope that I presented my observations in a factual and [mostly] neutral albeit frustrated tone (err, except for the "come on" ... I do regret that I included that part)

But based on your response I'm guessing I'm just not in the target demographic of what a Launch HN should offer to folks who read them. I can only say that I'll try harder to keep my feedback to myself, despite almost all of them ending with "We would love to hear your thoughts!" So, I guess it's closer to someone saying "how are you?" in the morning
by papascrubs | 2025-09-04 01:59:53+00:00
The year is 2030: The junior engineers of the Adeptus Mechanicus stand in a circle around the holy monitor, chanting prayers to the Omnissiah. Their arcane books and lore guide the machine spirit, ensuring the correct holy words of blessing are entered into the holy prompt. Petitioning the machine spirit for its most truthful, secure holy answers.

Oh wait, wrong distopian future.
by rootusrootus | 2025-09-04 01:59:55+00:00
> My manager told me that the time to deliver my latest project was cut to 20% of the original estimate

That's insane. Who the hell pulls a number out of their ass and declares it the new reality? When it doesn't happen, he'll pin the blame on you, but everyone else above will pin the blame on him. He's the one who will get fired.

Laying off unnecessary developers is the answer if LLMs turn out to make us all so much more productive (assuming we don't just increase the amount of software written instead). But that happens after successful implementation of LLMs into the development process, not in advance.

Starting to think I should do the inadvisable and move my investments far far away from the S&P 500 and into something that will survive the hype crash that can't be too far off now.
by giancarlostoro | 2025-09-04 01:59:56+00:00
I would honestly spend money to get access to the VB6 source if that's what it takes to get Microsoft to fund open sourcing it. One key thing was that VB6 was the first version that wasn't using P-Code but was actually compiling natively into an EXE.

I like to imagine that there was actually a VB7 in the works with a lot of enhancements to VB6 that we just never got to see once Microsoft dropped .NET and made VB .NET a thing.
by jppope | 2025-09-04 02:00:50+00:00
I prefer cash, not for the reasons mentioned.

First, cash makes me really think about what I'm buying. It doesn't poke you the same way when you tap a card... which is obviously one of the main reasons they want you do use cards. When I use cash, I am reminded of when I didn't have a lot, which keeps me from spending without thought.

Next, its a hallmark of the middle class to spend money that you don't have. Myself and some other people pay their cards off every month but that isn't the norm. Many people keep a balance... I do not want to be one of those people. When you use cash, its stupidly easy to know if you have the money or not.

Its also easier to do social activities when you have cash. Need to split a tab, here's the money. I'll buy the next round, heres the cash.

Also, it may just be me but keeping a decent stack of bills is like a little pat on the back for the hard work. Its a reminder that hard work pays off, which I can see when I buy a coffee, or some bread or something.

Reasons why I don't like cash: family members tend to treat my wallet like an ATM.

Lastly, if you want to make some people feel good (e.g. servers, bartenders, etc) tip them with $2 bills
by casey2 | 2025-09-04 02:01:12+00:00
It's a boot-strapping problem. LLMs have shown that we can reproduce data that's already in the form we want, and use that data to solve novel problems. There is no shortage of data, it's just data that's in a form you want is hard to come by. You want to create a model that generates steps for a robot with a particular shape? First you have to create a robot with that shape that can walk, then create a million of them and record them walking all over the place. Now you have something that's probably going to be too slow to run. Not fesible in the real world, the closest we have today is something like driverless car, (which is already a solved problem they are called trains)

This is why I think China will ultimately win the AI race, they will be able to put tens of millions of people to a specific task until there is enough data generated to replace humans on that task in 99.99% of cases, and they have the manufacturing capability to make the millions of IO devices needed for this.

Yes, humanoid robots are a good idea, but only if you can train them with walking data from real people, I think it will probably translate well enough to most humanoid robots, but ideally you are designing the physical robot from the ground up to model human movement as close as possible. You have to accept that if we go the LM route for AI that the optimal hardware behaves like human wetware. The neuromorphic computing people get it, robotics people should too.
by Gathering6678 | 2025-09-04 02:01:38+00:00
I was surprised to know recently that, in France apparently, there are quite a lot of shops that don't accept cash. I thought it was going to be the other way around: shops stipulating "cash only". In my country, there are actually regulations mandating the acceptance of cash (unless it's an unmanned booth or certain vendoring machines, if I remember correctly).
by SilverElfin | 2025-09-04 02:01:42+00:00
> Parents do not own their children any more than the state does and their rights should be protected by both parties.

Yes, they absolutely own their children more than the state does. I can’t believe there are any claims otherwise. Do you value the bond between parent and child and how special it is? Nothing should violate that. Not even the rare parent that is actually neglectful - meaning that should curtail the freedoms of the typical parent. And anyways, choosing to forego a vaccine isn’t abuse - on average it shifts outcomes very little. For example skipping a flu vaccine won’t change much.
by names_r_hard | 2025-09-04 02:03:13+00:00
I don't know of a way to do that. I don't think the cam will ever display an image on LV while a capture is in progress. The readout process from the sensor is fundamentally decoupled from the capture. You could probably interleave long exposures with short ones at greatly boosted ISO, and display only the short ones on LV.

I was assuming it would be possible to quite accurately model the drift over time, and adjust the model based on the last image. The model continuously guides the mount, and the lag in updates hopefully wouldn't matter - so you can use saved images, not LV. In fact, we can trigger actions to occur on the in memory image just before writing out.
by bruce511 | 2025-09-04 02:03:32+00:00
Again it'll vary by area. For us the cash was a lot more expensive. (Banks charge to deposit cash, and many of our bank branches don't accept cash anyway, so we have to go a bit further.)

Fortunately it was little enough that we didn't need a cash-transit vehicle, and it didn't affect our insurance.

Yes, I expect some merchants offer a cash discount, and that can add up for large purchases. But I'd prefer not to be carrying large amounts of cash. (We haven't had checks here for probably 15 years or so.)

We have a very efficient (and cheap) direct deposit system though, so I can pay via my phone straight from my bank app for a very nominal flat fee. So for large transactions that's akin to a cash discount.
by humpty-d | 2025-09-04 02:04:04+00:00
No mention that 2 candidates from other parties died in the run up. Or that it's out of 20,000+ individuals contesting various seats. No mention that they are mostly 59+ years old with preexisting health conditions.

Luckily it gives us the most critical bit of info we could ask for, that Musk tweeted "!!"

In summary this article is shit.
by kevin_thibedeau | 2025-09-04 02:04:16+00:00
Researchers need to project the pre-Covid hiring rates and omit the subsequent overhiring boom to credibly report on any believable loss in jobs. Dropping personnel who should never have been hired to begin with is a return to normal, not a new concerning trend. Start by showing the data from at least 2015 onward rather than lying with statistics using charts starting in 2021 for maximum drama.
by nomoreofthat | 2025-09-04 02:04:22+00:00
Their entire business is around the facilitation of illegal gambling, large scale fraud, tax evasion, money laundering, terrorist financing, and drug trafficking, with a tiny percentage of semi-legitimate users. Their founders have consistently behave like narcissist, who are always the victim in every situation and believe the rules shouldn’t apply to them.

It would be shocking if they weren’t always disgracing themselves
by jaza | 2025-09-04 02:04:43+00:00
Various studies have shown that, for the investment needed to "maximise your rewards" (ie time needed to research the different cards on the market / read the fine print of your chosen product / put through payments on a high rewards card; money on signup fees, recurring fees, transaction fees, etc), you'll achieve a much better ROI just investing the equivalent time and money into an index fund.
by iwanttocomment | 2025-09-04 02:04:46+00:00
Here in the US, it's absolutely allowed.

Walmart, for example, will by default add in-store purchases using a credit card (and no other identifying information) to the purchase history on a Walmart.com account set up with the same credit card.

You can only disable this tracking by going into Account > Settings > Privacy > Data Sharing in your Walmart.com account, where you'll find an option that states "Allow us to automatically add store purchases to your purchase history using credit card."
by toomuchtodo | 2025-09-04 02:04:55+00:00
VXUS

Not investing advice; the bottom 490 companies in the S&P500 are nominally flat since 2022 and down against inflation, GPUs and AI hype are holding everything together at the moment.

> In simpler terms, 35% of the US stock market is held up by five or six companies buying GPUs. If NVIDIA's growth story stumbles, it will reverberate through the rest of the Magnificent 7, making them rely on their own AI trade stories.

https://www.wheresyoured.at/the-haters-gui/

> Capex spending for AI contributed more to growth in the U.S. economy in the past two quarters than all of consumer spending, says Neil Dutta, head of economic research at Renaissance Macro Research, citing data from the Bureau of Economic Analysis.

https://www.bloodinthemachine.com/p/the-ai-bubble-is-so-big-...

> Two Nvidia customers made up 39% of Nvidia’s revenue in its July quarter, the company revealed in a financial filing on Wednesday, raising concerns about the concentration of the chipmaker’s clientele.

https://www.cnbc.com/2025/08/28/nvidias-top-two-mystery-cust...
by asciimike | 2025-09-04 02:04:56+00:00
Hilariously, the physical cards can only be topped up at add fare machines (cash only) or ATMs (cash only).

If you go down the "add a pasmo/suica on your phone" then you get into licensing issues with the other cabal (credit card issuers): you need to use an Amex to charge it via Apple Pay (IIRC Visa is now supported, but when I tried it last week my card was declined, so... YMMV).
by lenerdenator | 2025-09-04 02:05:08+00:00
Feels pretty substantive to me. Just because it's not what you were going for in relation to the discussion of that work doesn't mean it's unsubstantive. I approached it from the position Nagel brought up, which is reductive. They have life experiences that none of us can fathom, so we reduce it to what we know of them, which in my case is them living in my attic, much to my chagrin.
by gspencley | 2025-09-04 02:05:20+00:00
> Money is a unit of exchange that exists to compel action. That's the point of it

Citation required.

Money is an intermediary form of exchange. It arises organically because if, for example, you are a dairy farmer, there is no practical way for you to a) save enough milk to barter for a house (not only is it perishable but where do you store it all? Especially before refrigeration) and b) find someone with a house they want to trade for that much milk.

Money is just a commodity and in the absence of fiat currency it arises organically. People tend to seek intermediary forms of exchange that are non-perishable, easily divisible, transportable and difficult to forge/counterfeit because it is a necessity of life.

You simply cannot practically barter everything you'd ever want to trade. So instead we humans trade what we produce for something we can stash away and trade later more easily.

Money is not an invention to compel action. It is a natural product of trade that arises because most people, when they're not too busy spouting ideological drivel on Internet forums, have common sense.