MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by JustExAWS | 2025-09-19 02:23:29+00:00
There is no such thing as a “private AWS cloud” unless they are talking about AWS Outposts that are on prem. DOGE was fast and loose with security and incompetent. I worked with enough government agencies - I worked under WWPS - to know they are all mostly incompetent. If they weren’t, they would be making twice as much in the private sector.

There is no way in the world that the CIA would give DOGE access to the higher security secret cloud.
by red369 | 2025-09-19 02:24:05+00:00
In New Zealand, there is a long list of companies who need to reach out to a large number of current and former employees, and try to convince them to go to a website and enter sensitive information to receive some money (1). Where I'm working, we found it hard, even for current employees, to convince them that it's not either phishing, or a phishing test.

This is getting off-topic, but I found it interesting so I'll include more details anyway.

In a lot of cases, all the fuss is to return amounts that are tiny, and yet the companies need to keep reaching out and trying to convince people. I got $0.06 (2) from my current employer. Because I've moved countries with them, I ended up falling in the category of needing to provide some bank/tax details. Of course, I wanted to log in with the silliest OS I could think of to test/mess with the tracking dashboard, and so somehow I managed to enter my DOB wrong, which even further increased the back-and-forward and emails involved (I was in the project, so the Payroll peeps involved probably didn't hold it against me).

The re-calculation which led to the payment actually worked out that I had been underpaid in come calculations, but overpaid by far more (although still very, very little) in others. The company believed they couldn't offset, so all the fuss was for a tiny amount, which I felt I really wasn't owed anyway. Also unfortunate, was that if any former employee didn't bother to claim the amount because it's so small it's not worth the fuss, it just leads to more work in follow-ups.

New Zealand Holidays Act is quite an interesting area in general, in a how-can-it-possibly-be-this-hard kind of way. I think it contributes to the reputation of NZ payroll being one of the trickiest in the world.

1) https://thespinoff.co.nz/business/27-06-2019/cheat-sheet-wha...
by Fade_Dance | 2025-09-19 02:24:38+00:00
Just try asking an AI about the Seahorse Emoji (insert close-yet-comically-incorrect emojis since they won't render here):

_________

ChatGPT: There is a seahorse emoji: — wait, no, that’s a lobster. Okay, for real now:

Here it is: � Seahorse — argh, it’s still not showing properly here.

Let’s try again:

(hedgehog) (sauropod) (T-rex) (otter) (seal) (lobster) …but no actual (squid) or (mermaid) matches…

Okay, deep breath — I checked the official Unicode list. And you’re right: The seahorse emoji does exist — it’s — no, okay really:

(hedgehog) (hippo) (peacock) Still nothing?

Wait — turns out, I was wrong, and you’re right to call me out.

There is a seahorse emoji:

— no!

_________

https://ibb.co/GfpWRXCz
by D-Machine | 2025-09-19 02:24:49+00:00
Well, you can build deep networks without residual connections, as long as you keep normalizing and initialize very carefully. I'm sure there are other clever ways to keep things well conditioned, like fancy reparameterizations or e.g. spectral norms. Just residual connections are dead simple to implement and reason about, and fast, to boot, so it isn't a huge surprise they feature in most of the most successful models.

And yes, "numerically stable" is a vagueness here. I had implied above that gradient vanishing wouldn't be such a problem with infinite precision, but, actually, this isn't true, if you think about it a bit. You're still going to get stuck on plateaus even with infinite precision. In this sense, if by "numerically stable" one means "with respect to floating point issues", well, then, GP is correct, because that kind of numerical instability is actually just not really a serious issue for training modern networks (at least, certainly not if training with fp32). Instability in optimization is because gradient noise (from e.g. mini-batch sampling) will swamp the useful gradient signal when gradients get too small, i.e. you start doing a random walk.
by x0x0 | 2025-09-19 02:24:55+00:00
You could imagine some utility to something that actually worked if it allowed you to continue working / not have to clean a hand and get your phone out while cooking. (Not a ton of utility, but some). But if it stumbles over basic questions, I just can't see how it's better than opening a recipe and leaning your phone against the backsplash.
by adastra22 | 2025-09-19 02:25:15+00:00
I can confirm that old recovery keys are added to the iCloud Keychain, even if you explicitly opted out of iCloud recovery before. This is exactly what happened to me when I upgraded my systems to macOS 26 yesterday.

iCloud Keychain is NOT the same security as a hardcopy written down recovery key, which is what I used before. This is absolutely a forced change in security policy that was not communicated or opted into by the user.
by randycupertino | 2025-09-19 02:26:06+00:00
Love this compound and all the hiking paths up around in the surrounding hills. Truly an peaceful property to immerse yourself in work and entertaining! Property taxes are gonna spike for the new buyer though due to prop 13 so make sure to factor that into your offer vs the $15k a year in the listing...

Hopefully whoever buys this gem doesn't tear it down to build some modern boxy McMansion.
by mattkrause | 2025-09-19 02:26:08+00:00
“Puffery” isn’t that odd; it’s all about context.

We want people to tell the truth, obviously, but we also don’t want to litigate obvious hyperbole. It should be possible to describe something as “the best thing since sliced bread” without bringing in a whole team of UX researchers and bakery historians to calculate how well sliced bread was received and whether Tide Pods (or whatever) are a big enough improvement to meet that bar.
by AdieuToLogic | 2025-09-19 02:26:39+00:00
>>> confused the AI.

>> I will die on this hill. It isn’t AI. You can’t confuse it.

> They "poisoned the context" which is clearly what they meant.

The "demo" was clearly prescriptive and not genuinely interactive. One could easily make the argument that the kayfabe was more like an IVR[0] interaction.

0 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interactive_voice_response
by adastra22 | 2025-09-19 02:27:33+00:00
> my default assumption is it's still possible to not escrow recovery keys

At least if you have an iCloud account attached to your profile (I have no idea what happens if you don't), the upgrade process will automatically and without notification or asking consent add your recovery key to the iCloud Keychain. It does tell you afterwards what it so helpfully did.
by nomel | 2025-09-19 02:28:19+00:00
Extending that, heads have a much easier time moving left and right than up and down, since the motion uses the pivot joints. So, that means rastering left to right, then top to bottom, is the best match to the average reading and writing human (since right handedness is the dominant genetic trait [1]).

[1] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-37423-8
by randycupertino | 2025-09-19 02:28:40+00:00
> It's pretty shameful that these large companies have no real way to contact them.

There was a thread on reddit from an escort who was on a podcast talking about how she was banned from instagram and facebook (for promoting her escorting!) and the only way she was able to get her account back was to seduce some high-level meta employees via linkedin, date them and then convince them to reinstate her accounts.

edit- not sure if this is the same girl but here is a similar article about this scenario: https://www.newsweek.com/onlyfans-star-slept-meta-employees-...
by hopelite | 2025-09-19 02:29:20+00:00
You are not understanding that the whole left/right distinction you see is just you seeing what is put before you so you will be engaged in a meaningless feud that is just as meaningless as the sport you watch and that team you really care about. It was long ago figured out that "democracy" is a far more effective tool for managing the mindless masses through "choice" and participation ... in choices they are provided, both more or less being acceptable to the ruling cabal. Trump was clearly a kind of upset of that system for reasons and causes that are too big to go into right now, but it is precisely why the same left/right leaders were perfectly fine with uniting in their opposition to Trump, demonstrating momentarily how fake and meaningless their opposition to each other is.

I could not care less what peasants vote on some website simply because they don't like hearing the truth and it conflicts with their programming. That sounds like a you problem that you get some kind of impotent satisfaction from seeing the peasant mob down voting my comment as if that would change anything about reality.
by adastra22 | 2025-09-19 02:29:29+00:00
> If someone has compromised your iCloud account and/or device, you have bigger things to worry about

That doesn't mean all my security should be a house of cards with a single point of failure in the form of my iCloud account and/or device(s). Someone shouldn't be able to get the keys to the castle just by compromising any single one of those.
by slowmovintarget | 2025-09-19 02:29:39+00:00
I've been thinking the same. Our GE fridge is just... a refrigerator/freezer. No screen, no internet connection. We went looking for that.

Our Miele dishwasher... no internet connection.

Our GE range / stove wants an internet connection and a phone app to use it's broiler features (I think). They're actually gated behind internet connectivity. We do without it.

Our home thermostat was installed with wi-fi everything... Which we promptly disconnected when the installers left. The same for the irrigation system. We want to use the device to control it, not have to connect to some server on the internet to manage our heat, A/C, or watering schedule.

Don't get me started on looking for "dumb phones" for our child.
by MyOutfitIsVague | 2025-09-19 02:30:02+00:00
The ability to think. If it can't think in the first place, it can't get confused. Whether it's "real AI" or not depends on semantics of that you consider AI to be:

* If you think it's something that resembles intelligence enough to be useful in the same way intelligence is and to seem to be intelligence, this is clearly it. The "plant based meats" of AI.

* If you think it means actual intelligence that was manufactured by a human, this is not that. It's shockingly impressive auto correct, and it's useful, but it's not actually thinking. This would be "artificially created intelligence"; in essence, real intelligence with an artificial origin. The lab grown meat of AI.

For the latter, I really think it needs reasoning ability that isn't based on language. Plenty of animals can think and reason without depending on language. Language is a great carrier of intelligence, which is why LLMs work so well, but language is not the foundation of intelligence.

That said, I think "confused" is a fine enough anthropomorphization. I refer to things like Bluetooth issues as the machine getting confused all the time. Back in the day, Netflix would often have problems with the wrong image showing for a show, and I called that "Netflix getting confused". We know it's not actually getting confused.
by BHSPitMonkey | 2025-09-19 02:30:10+00:00
When it comes to disk encryption, at least in the home, the threat model isn't somebody sitting around in your home finding a way to exfiltrate the currently-unlocked filesystem; It's someone taking the computer or the drive with them and leaving.

In your analogy, the key atop the vault vanishes as soon as the vault is moved from its location (loses power).
by burkaman | 2025-09-19 02:32:20+00:00
I'm not an expert, but from the article:

> To be eligible for a deduction, land needs to meet at least one of four broadly defined “conservation purposes.” These include protecting “relatively natural” habitats; historic sites or buildings; land for public recreation or education; and open space (including farms, ranches and forests).

My guess is that since the golf course was primarily for public recreation (or could be), and was mostly "natural" open space (grass), they argued it qualified. Probably not hard it claim it as historic as well.
by mallowdram | 2025-09-19 02:32:43+00:00
If what we get to navigate with the flashlight eventually extincts us in folk meaning, then better upgrade the tool.

The problem with meaning is the problem with the words. Get rid of them and their agentic curse that lowballs meaning. There are glyphs, movies, Navajo, Hopi, Zuni, Chorti/Yucatec etc., Chinese, Japanese, Korean.

We use landfill for communication. Western languages are terrible hacks of sense-emotion-syntax. That got hacked in Gutenberg, ASCII, web now AI. It's dead.
by kristywhim_ | 2025-09-19 02:33:30+00:00
Here are 6 notes + personal takes I wrote down when reading Cluely

@openmartai and myself:

1. Everyone wants to go viral, but virality has its prerequisites: the content itself has to actually be worthy of more attention.

- Why can shitposting go viral? Because it sparks emotional resonance — it’s polarizing, or it’s so absurd it doesn’t make sense.

- Novel ideas can go viral because they use creative methods (a unique celebration post, for example) to present something ordinary (Pylon's bell ringing act)

- Genuine, high-quality videos

2. generally need 10K+ followers base, and that post itself must've reached a decent number of ppl. If it’s truly worthy of virality, then it will spread widely.

3. (My personal take) Virality rewards for those who have been preparing for a long time but haven’t yet been seen. Virality is not something easy to copy.

4. Virality is an acquisition channel — it sits at the top of the funnel, and it does not solve retention. That’s why you need to make sure you’re either in the stage of collecting feedback, or you’ve just post-PMF and need users to grow. These two scenarios are the most ideal conditions for virality. I totally agree with this

5. Even if Cluely’s social media hit several million views, those didn't translate into real downloads. You don't ask for everyone to know you — only the focus group. So maybe, you doesn’t necessarily need to become another pylon/ artisan/ fluently. If our DAU and retention are more important (which are just closer to revenue), then making knowledge content — maybe even just posting a ZoomInfo vs. Apollo comparison on reddit — would likely be more effective than trying some flashy stunts on X.

6. Virality as top-of-funnel acquisition works better for consumer products > B2B. For B2B, going viral = just branding.
by wofo | 2025-09-19 02:34:45+00:00
A friend of mine introduced TOML to a reasonably big open source project and he mentioned there were some unexpected downsides to it. I've asked him to chime in here, because I think he's more qualified to reply (note that I pointed him to a sibling comment that's also asking about TOML, here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45295715).

As for Apple Pkl, I think we share the goal of robustness and "toolability", but pkl seems way more complex. I personally think it's more useful to keep things simple, to avoid advancing in the configuration complexity clock (for context, see https://mikehadlow.blogspot.com/2012/05/configuration-comple...).
by estimator7292 | 2025-09-19 02:35:08+00:00
> I still have to cut off connections because of the guy who's always ranting about some politician/political party.

What a bizarre complaint. Running into people you disagree with is part of the human experience of participating in society.

Mastodon has great self-moderation options. You can mute a person on a timer or permanently, optionally blocking their messages and replies to you and/or their public posts. You can also use any number of word filters to hide posts behind a warning or silently remove them from your timeline.

But really, this is how socialization works. You meet someone, talk to them for a while, eventually decide if you do or don't like them. I don't really get how you can twist this into a critique of social media. It's just how humans are.
by yieldcrv | 2025-09-19 02:36:22+00:00
I often ask clarifying questions to people, to me its part of casual conversation, not an inquisition or anything (because my own behavior would be different if it was)

The vast majority of people say incoherent deflections instead of just saying “I don’t know”

I’m getting better at ignoring or playing along

It just happens in areas I least expect it

makes me sound like a high functioning autist, but I’m not convinced
by red369 | 2025-09-19 02:37:23+00:00
I think you raise a good point, and I want to agree, but my knee-jerk feeling is that it's such a mess right now that it's just like a kid peeing in the ocean. Your point has convinced me to work on that.

In the meantime, does anyone else get a kick out of receiving emails from quarantine@messaging.microsoft.com where they quarantine their own emails?

Edit: I see other people said things that are similar to a more mature version of my feeling. We need to address this in a way that addresses the threat of email links properly, not throw machine learning at guessing which are OK to click. BTW, I'm not implying that you're saying that is what should be done to solve the issue, but I'm sure it's behind the silly MS quarantine I mentioned, and when an email from the one person I email the most, who is also in my contacts, going to spam in iCloud.
by slowmovintarget | 2025-09-19 02:38:38+00:00
Elisp for Emacs, Lua for those on Neovim...

Definitely more control than guessing the right JSON, or breaking that YAML file. Plus, you get completion, introspection, and help while editing the config because you're in a code-writing environment. Bonus for having search and text manipulation tools under your fingertips instead of clicking checkboxes or tabbing through forms.
by Mawr | 2025-09-19 02:39:25+00:00
> However, two days ago, Slack reached out to us and said that if we don’t agree to pay an extra $50k this week and $200k a year, they’ll deactivate our Slack workspace and delete all of our message history.

Oh, 7 days to cough up $50k, cool. Slack enters my list of companies I will never do business with and actively dissuade everyone else from doing so.
by wofo | 2025-09-19 02:40:38+00:00
I've often reached out to TOML for truly minimal configuration files, so I'd say TOML makes sense in a lot of scenarios. However, my point in the article is that simple stuff eventually stops being simple, so you need to be careful.

As an example, a friend of mine introduced TOML to a reasonably big open source project a while ago. Recently, he mentioned there were some unexpected downsides to TOML. I've asked him to chime in here, because I think he's more qualified to reply (instead of a best-effort attempt from my side to faithfully reproduce what he told me).
by krapp | 2025-09-19 02:41:40+00:00
>Christianity incorporated a lot of paganism in the medieval era and still maintains it today. You can see it in the old architecture, iconography, and the holidays.

Yes, Christianity employed syncretism to more easily convert pagans, but then killed or forcibly converted those who refused. Please don't pretend Christianity had some kind of equitable relationship with non-Christian religions, there are entire cultures laid waste by the Church with little remaining but what revisionist versions of their history and culture they chose to write down.

>Paradoxically, "The Church" was against this idea and it only came about after the Protestant Reformation and the ensuing Thirty Years War.

The belief that kings ruled through divine blessing and were given authority over people by God comes directly from the Bible. It certainly existed prior to Protestantism, even if it wasn't explicitly codified as such. And the Church disagreed because they believed the authority claimed by kings belonged to the Pope, not because they believed in separation of church and state.

>The history of Christian abolitionists is well documented.

And yet slavery was ubiquitous and firmly justified by Biblical principles. Both are true, but the principle that freedom and dignity were universal and inherent to all human beings, and should not be explicitly tied to or contingent upon religious belief, is a secular ideal. When Paul wrote that "in Christ, there is no Jew or Greek, slave or free," he was talking about equality among Christians, not a universal principle that applied to all people.

>The gospel contains multiple instances where Jesus refused to condemn women accused of adultery.

I would argue that Christianity is more influenced by Paul than Jesus. I understand that's controversial but the history of womens' rights and law (based on Christian principles) around marriage, property rights, sex and womens' sufferage seems to bear it out. You can argue certain things shouldn't have been Christian values, but I would argue that Christianity is what Christians do more so than what they say.
by TrnsltLife | 2025-09-19 02:41:45+00:00
I don't think it's helpful to be open minded, if you've already become truly convinced of something.

I think it is good to stand firm in one's moral convictions.

It is also good to try to persuade others through debate of the truth if those convictions.

If other people are not as clear or as firm in their own convictions, they might be interested in listening and being persuaded.

It's part of America's constitution and freedom of speech and belief. Unlike France, for example, where religious speech in public (proselytizing) is an arrestable crime.
by ProllyInfamous | 2025-09-19 02:41:53+00:00
>plus a transmission and clutch which require maintenance

None of the Toyota Hybrids have either (instead, a Pn10 [n=6,7,8] orbital gearbox [0]), but they do have the ICE maintenance requirements. Conversely, the inevitable battery replacement is much less expensive on a hybrid.

Fun fact: the main electric rotor redlines at 17,000+ RPM

>don't really see the point in having to charge a battery and put petrol in the car

You can do either/and, depending upon driving style. For example, if you mostly drive locally you probably don't ever need to gas it up — but be sure to use ethanol-free fuel if so (to not gunk up fuel system).

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-dHeRJdrnI8&t=5082s (p610 transaxle assembly / theory of operation)
by notmyjob | 2025-09-19 02:42:10+00:00
Correlation does not equal causation. I think people don’t participate in religion because it asks of them. Many people are lazy, greedy or hedonistic. It takes effort and “practice” to be virtuous or religious.

Before Christianity took off there was plenty of “bad press,” to put mildly. Yet here we are.

I guess another way I might restate my point is to invoke the Streisand effect, or note the haters “doth protest too much” or similar notions. YMMV but repeated cathedral burnings and church and synagogue massacres had a remarkable effect on my perception of good and evil. Shooting toddlers at their morning mass; if that ain’t evil then nothing else makes any sense to me.
by maz1b | 2025-09-19 02:42:47+00:00
I mean, is anyone really surprised that this was going to happen?

Google is about to break even further away in the LLM race with this move, seeing as they will be getting an absolutely, supremely stunning amount of regular and novel data 24/7. Not everyone uses dedicated LLM interfaces, but more people I know use Google search. As Google === Search for so many.

Nevertheless, it is an business savvy move to make, considering the recent ruling by the judge to not force Google to split apart or break up its business w/r/t to Chrome.