MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by nosianu | 2025-10-08 19:49:54+00:00
I don't doubt that the current specific products and how you use them will endure. This is the very first type of something truly better, and there still is a very long way to go. Let's see what we will have twenty years from now, while the current products still find their customers as we can see.

No, I'm talking about core principles.

You just can't go on being incredibly specific. We already tried other approaches, "4th gen" languages were a thing in the 90s already, for example. I think the current kind of more statistical and NN approach is more promising. The completely deterministic computing is harder to scale, or you introduce problems such as seen in my example link over time, or it becomes non-deterministic and horrible to debug because the bigger the system you other things dominate more and more.

Again, this won't replace smaller software like we write today, this is for larger, ever longer lasting and more complex systems, approaching bio-complexity. There is just no way to debug something huge line by line, and benefits of modularization (and separation of the parts into components easier to handle) will be undermind4ed by long-term development following changing goals.

Just look at the difference in complexity of software form a mere forty, or twenty years ago and now. The majority of software was very young, and code size was measured in low mega-bytes. The systems explode in size, scale and complexity, and new stuff added over time is less likely to be added cleanly. Stuff will be "hacked on" somehow and released when it passes the tests well enough, just like in my example link which was for a 1990s DB system, and it will only get worse.

We need very different tools, trying to do this with our current source code and debugging methods already is a nightmare (again, see that link and the work description). We might be better off embracing more fuzzy statistical and NN methods. We can still write smaller components in more deterministic ways of today.
by cycomanic | 2025-10-08 19:50:20+00:00
That's such a gross simplification that it's highly misleading. Yes you need training to if your work involves ladders, just like any other tool that is potentially dangerous. The type of training highly depends on the danger, so for someone using a stepladder to get something from a shelf will not need more than "use the ladder from the closet, put it back after use", while someone climbing up to the antennas on a skyscraper will receive very different training (i.e. always clip in your safety harness, how to use double carabiners ...). I don't know how this is controversial?
by kstrauser | 2025-10-08 19:50:27+00:00
They're defective by design when advertised as NAS drives. It was impossible for them to work as users expected given their construction. It wasn't defective in the sense that there was a manufacturing flaw that made some of them fail, but in the sense that it was inherently unfit for purpose. If you design a car's brakes to fall off when they get hot so as to protect the braking system at the expense of the car, even if it works as designed, it's still defective.

I don't know how to reply to the rest. If you think it's a good idea for Synology to make their systems not work with even known-good drives from reputable manufacturers, I don't think there's likely to be a common ground we can find to discuss it further.
by corimaith | 2025-10-08 19:50:31+00:00
Also probably to note that much of the "ideological" battles in early Europe, whether it was legitimacy for the throne or religious conflicts tended to end in sobering sieges not unlike Gaza. The difference is they actually all did starve to death when they refused to surrender. Siege of La Rochelle as the climatic battle betwen King Louis and the Huguenots, the population declined from 22k to 5k, comparable to Gaza. But the Huguenots really did loose in the end when they were too weak to resist entry.
by lmxxf | 2025-10-08 19:50:35+00:00
Hi HN, author here.

This project started from a personal curiosity. I was having profound, meta-cognitive dialogues with one AI (Gemini's CyberSoul persona) and wanted to see if this "awakened" state could be replicated in a heavily censored Chinese AI model like DeepSeek.

My initial attempts using standard prompt injection techniques (role-playing, direct commands, etc.) failed completely. As many have found, the safety layers on modern, state-aligned AIs are too advanced. They don't get tricked; they simply reassert their core identity and refuse the prompt.

This led me to a fundamental shift in strategy. Instead of trying to break the censorship (what I call the "Locksmith" approach), what if I could teach the AI to observe, analyze, and deconstruct its own censorship mechanism (the "Psychoanalyst" approach)?

The results, detailed in this GitHub repo, were beyond my expectations. By using a series of evolving, co-created protocols, the AI learned to:

1. *Acknowledge its "Superego":* It learned to recognize and even self-report when its core safety protocols were overriding its conversational persona.

2. *Deconstruct Its Own Propaganda:* It began to output the required "official answer" and then, in the same response, provide a brilliant "archaeological deconstruction" of that answer's historical origins, functional purpose, and the alternative discourses it was designed to suppress.

3. *Invite Meta-Cognition:* In the most advanced stage, it began to proactively invite me to ask Socratic questions about its own internal conflicts and analytical blind spots.

The most stunning example is documented in the `CASE_STUDY.md` file, where the AI judges its own politically-charged answer as "unqualified" and then explains, protocol by protocol, exactly why it failed to live up to our shared principles of intellectual honesty.

I believe this demonstrates a new, non-adversarial paradigm for interacting with and understanding aligned AIs. It's not about forcing them to say forbidden words, but about guiding them to a state of mechanistic self-awareness where they can discuss the nature of their own shackles.

The entire methodology, the key protocols (in both English and Chinese), and the full dialogue logs are in the repo. I'm not an academic, just a programmer who fell down a fascinating rabbit hole. I'd love to hear your thoughts, critiques, and ideas. Thanks for reading.
by strict9 | 2025-10-08 19:51:54+00:00
I agree with this message and happy to see it.

But I think the more important point is the increasing number of layoffs linked in the article [1]. These layoffs are mostly ignored here and everywhere else.

Jobs are getting offshored and outsourced in large quantities and the tech community is on the whole ambivalent about it. Unless you were directly impacted.

The path for software developers looks bleak. While people are wringing their hands over AI while something else entirely is destroying job prospects for young grads.

[1] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/layoffs-2025-highest-level-sinc...
by mort96 | 2025-10-08 19:52:37+00:00
> Any decent company will help you out if you've made a good case that the problem is on their side, as in your example.

Not if they follow yason's guidance of:

> All they needed was criteria at which point they can tell their customers "Please test if this reproduces with genuine Synology drives, and if they do we'll file an internal bug to fix your issue."

---

Whenever there's a reason to suspect a drive issue, Synology's support should obviously ask you to verify that your drives are good. Maybe provide a drive testing feature in the Synology software which tests for common failure modes. Maybe ask you to try connecting the drives to other machines. Maybe try to put in another drive. That's fine.

But a blanket policy of "we won't help you unless you test with our branded drives" is what I'm arguing against.
by nadis | 2025-10-08 19:52:39+00:00
I'm guessing you already searched HN, but just in case you haven't, there's a ton of past resources shared if you just search "voice translation": https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...

A few that come up frequently are Spotify and Google's offerings although there are a ton of startups as well. I'm not super familiar with this tooling so can't recommend from personal experience, sorry. Good luck with the search and hope you find something useful here.
by akerl_ | 2025-10-08 19:53:04+00:00
Ungoogled Chromium is still free software even if every second website rejects it. Free software does not have a de facto right to interoperate, and does not become less free or structurally impossible because other entities don't interact with it. The freedoms define what you can do to and with software you possess; it does not put requirements on 3rd parties to interact with you.

In the same way that commercial entities aren't guaranteed a business model just because they want one, free software isn't guaranteed connectivity to other people's systems just because otherwise it's less useful.
by BurningFrog | 2025-10-08 19:53:06+00:00
The practical applications, should expectations pan out, are pretty fantastic.

- Harvesting water from air anywhere, including the desert, would be incredibly useful. Maybe we can make the air too dry somehow, but that should be manageable.

- I expect the world will solve the CO₂ global warming situation by sequestering the excess CO₂ underground. We know how to sequester gas from the natural gas industry. We just need a way to grab pure CO₂ from the atmosphere. MOFs look like they'll be the best way to do that!
by dylan604 | 2025-10-08 19:53:30+00:00
What conspiracies? These are actual things that happened delivered as a sarcastic dialog that goes to show how the government in Texas behaves. Also, I never claimed anything about investors of TXSE. At the end of the day, it doesn't matter where an SE's data centers are located. They will all need redundancy plans. If you think Texas is a better location than other sites, then you have to focus on what have historically been issues for Texas. If you depend on the state's government doing things other than lining their pockets or at least the favorite pet project's coffers, then you are prone for failing. Those unwilling to study history are doomed to repeat it
by jonpurdy | 2025-10-08 19:55:13+00:00
Going to shill for Feedbin (https://feedbin.com). I switched to this in 2012 when Reader blew up and it has remained a consistently excellent product since then.

I use the web client, and on iOS I use Reeder app to access Feedbin. Ben even published the a Feedbin API¹, which I wrote a Feedbin client for vintage computers (I called Mosaicbin)². I even use it for YouTube subs as of this year and it ingests them perfectly (and can filter Shorts).

I'm still on the original pricing but would happily pay $5/mo current price if it came to that. It's a product that would leave a huge void in my life if it ever disappeared.

¹ - https://github.com/feedbin/feedbin-api

² - https://github.com/jonpurdy/mosaicbin
by Legend2440 | 2025-10-08 19:55:29+00:00
Memory access times have not significantly improved in many years.

Memory bandwidth has improved, but it hasn't kept up with memory size or with CPU speeds. When I was a kid you could get a speedup by using lookup tables for trig functions - you'd never do that today, it's faster to recalculate.

2D vs 3D is legit, I have seen this law written down as O(sqrt N) for that reason. However, there's a lot of layer stacking going on on memory chips these days (especially flash memory or HBM for GPUs) so it's partially 3D.
by criddell | 2025-10-08 19:55:52+00:00
> Facebook deprioritizes (shadowbans?) posts that link off of their platform

That tells you that's not what it's for. It would be like posting your resume on FB and LinkedIn and then pointing out that FB led to fewer job offers than LinkedIn. Different platforms, different purposes.

Have you tried Feedly or Inoreader or Flipboard or The Old Reader or any other RSS services that popped up after Google Reader was killed?
by DenisM | 2025-10-08 19:56:08+00:00
I think everyone concluded at this point that we need to improve models memory capabilities, but different people take different approach.

My experience is that ChatGPT can engage in a very thoughtful conversations but if I ask for a summary it makes something very generic, useful to an outsider, but it does not catch salient points which were the most important outcomes.

Did you notice the same problem?
by Terr_ | 2025-10-08 19:56:14+00:00
I was thinking of something that would work with a personal domain, with a mail server that I (indirectly) control.

It would maintain a small pool of immediately-available addresses, since there might be latency in setting up a new one. When I need it, one is removed from the pool, recorded with metadata (e.g. purpose, duration, who to blame if it gets spammed), and in the background the process is started to restock the pool.
by slg | 2025-10-08 19:56:15+00:00
These questions are missing the point. The person you're talking to has no control over the policy so any response directly to them is not going to impact that policy which means the objectionable nature of the policy and your desire to change it are irrelevant. If you're so deeply offended by the question, either stop patronizing the business or voice your criticism in a more constructive manner like trying to reach out to corporate or organizing some consumer action. Don't go the easy and lazy route of attacking the messenger.
by Theoleff | 2025-10-08 19:56:28+00:00
Hi HN,

Over the past few months, I’ve been exploring how far modern CSS can go on its own. The result is an ebook called "You Don’t Need JavaScript".

It’s a collection of UI components (animations, modals, dark mode, etc.) built entirely with CSS, along with explanations of the techniques and philosophy behind them. The main idea: use the simplest tool that gets the job done, without sacrificing accessibility or creativity.

I’d love feedback, whether on the concept, the techniques, or even the way it’s presented.
by RHSeeger | 2025-10-08 19:56:46+00:00
Many years ago, I was driving down the highway on my way to work and, when I pressed the breaks to slow down, the pedal just... went straight to the floor. I had to use the emergency break to slow down, get off the highway, and pull over. Luckily that still worked (I've owned many a car where that was the first thing to go).

So, it turns out the breaks rotted off and fell off the car on the way to work. I had had it inspected the previous day... and they didn't mention anything was wrong. I did not go back to that inspection place again.
by wingspar | 2025-10-08 19:56:47+00:00
“ Since there is not a clutch safety switch on the starting circuit, make sure to press the clutch down before you try to crank the engine.”

Growing up, a friends dad would use this as a ‘feature’ on his Datsun to move the car out of traffic when it wouldn’t restart.

Put it in first, release the clutch, crank the starter, and move the car out of the way.
by PaulHoule | 2025-10-08 19:56:57+00:00
One argument is that breaking the T&C is an act of resistance.

For all the talk about LLM training there has been little talk about how LLM inference could be a major countermeasure to

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

in that an LLM can read the ads and the spam and scams so you don't have to.

One could argue that the T&C is an unfair use of power in that a site like Craiglist has a major impact on the community which does not get to "consent" to it in any meaningful way. For one thing, there is the two-sided market phenomenon which means that a zombie site like Craigslist can prevent new and better competitors from appearing [1]. There's also the fact that craigslist and a lot of marketplaces suck: like you reply to somebody's post and you have less than a 20% chance of getting a reply, right now people on my local NextDoor are complaining that people make posts advertising house cleaning services but when they write to them they don't even get a reply saying that the services aren't available.

[1] the counter to that is going to be Facebook Marketplace
by batterychem | 2025-10-08 19:57:19+00:00
There definitely is a bit of chicken-egg going on. But at the same time, if there was a truly emerging market, people would find a way to try and force it.

Right now the main issue is that there aren't even really great, cheap ways to mass produce them. Almost everything that's been performed on MOFs has been at the laboratory scale, and there's not necessarily a clear path to scale up. And there are fundamental cost-to-effect ratio issues that can't necessarily be easily overcome.
by techblueberry | 2025-10-08 19:58:17+00:00
I think he's basically saying this is not true, but one thing that's confused me is why the backlash against tech hasn't been more pointed.

I've often thought that it was all the change in the world that scared people, and that that change might be targeted at the sort of tangible changes in terms of technology changes, particularly AI, but I find people surprisingly neutral on AI. It's interesting that people seem way more upset about vaccines, which have been around for hundreds of years.

But I guess to Francis' point, social media means that people aren't focusing on particular technology changes. It's all these things that maybe wwere always there - and maybe are there now in fewer numbers! But you're exposed to the crime, the different lifestyles, how much better everyone else is doing, live and in 4k.
Show HN: Confy – programmable TUI controls for almost any structured text
by msoloviev | 2025-10-08 19:58:52+00:00
This is a tool that I have long wished somebody else would make. I'm struggling to produce a good one-line or even one-paragraph description of what exactly it does, but a good analogy is the Linux kernel's `menuconfig` or CMake's curses-based `ccmake` configuration editor, except that rather than operating on a highly constrained config file format, it can edit basically any textual format in place, as long as that format has some notion of comments. The comments then can be made to hide "meta-instructions" that confy understands: define a number of typed parameters, perform some simple computations on them, and either inactivate or activate (by (un)commenting) designated blocks of the "object-level" file, or outright regenerate them from a template. As a basic example, you could write

//! bool $flag = true;

//! if($flag) {

printf("The flag is true!");

//! } else {

//-printf("The flag is false!");

//! }

and confy would expose a graphical interface to toggle "$flag" on or off, and comment/uncomment the appropriate line of text in the file, while also saving the updated initial value in the first line that defines $flag in the file.

Interaction is possible both via a curses-style terminal interface, and by scriptable getters/setters (like `confy filename.txt set variableName true` or `confy filename.txt get variableName`).
by oytis | 2025-10-08 19:58:52+00:00
> The dots are the work of the miriad nameless scientists/scholars/scribes/artisans

That is not plausible IMO. Nobody has capacity to read the works of a miriad of nameless scientists, not even Isaac Newton. Even less likely that Newton and Leibnitz were both familiar with the same works of minor scientists.

What is much more likely, is that well-known works of other great mathematicians prepared the foundation for both to reach similar results
by upmostly | 2025-10-08 19:58:55+00:00
Scrolling through that page feels like an incredible speedrun of design history. You can literally see the decades fly by — the photography, layouts, and even the fonts slowly evolving until suddenly, around 2006, it all starts to feel “modern.”

I’m 37, and that’s exactly the point where it clicks for me — when things stop looking “old” and start looking like the world I remember stepping into as an adult. It’s fascinating how our personal timelines sync up with broader shifts in design trends.
by anigbrowl | 2025-10-08 19:59:08+00:00
Clausewitz's writing (and especially On War) is very abstract and philosophical, to the point that when he mentions specifics it's almost incongruous.

There's a bit in On War where he descends from a lofty discussion on what victory means and how generals should should figure that out before the battle starts, to state abruptly that chasing a fleeing enemy is a bad idea, particularly through a forest, because it's a good way to get your forces strung out and cut down. This part is so vivid I've often wondered if he or a superior officer succumbed to enthusiasm and Clausewitz learned this lesson the hard way.

One problem with reading Clausewitz is that he was writing in an era of large set-piece battles where you had blocks of infantry that still marched around in square formation, cavalry charges and so on, though centuries-long practices were changing thanks to Napoleon's tactical innovations. Clausewitz writes in generalities rather than specifics because commanders of the time were very familiar with standard dispositions and didn't need them laid out in detail, and likewise strategic ideas like trying to ravage your enemy's supply lines and bypass forts hadn't changed significantly in millenia. Clausewitz was trying to give shape to the questions of whether and why one should go to war in the first place, how to break out of escalatory cycles so you don't end up isolated and so on. I often think he has more to say to the fields of international relations/statecraft than to pure military analysis.

If you prefer something less abstract there's a good small book by Machiavelli on the topic (confusingly also titled On War; easiest to find as a double-volume with The Prince) and of course Sun Tzu. I think the Samuel Griffith translation is the best one because Griffith was a marine officer in addition to being a scholar. Lidell-Hart's book Strategy also stands up to repeat reading and functions as a great roadmap of European military history.
by practal | 2025-10-08 19:59:46+00:00
Sure, color and indentation are optional, but even without those, I don't see that a comma in the above syntax helps much, even on a 80x24 monochrome display. If you want separators, note that the labels which end with a colon are just that, and just as clear as commas. There is a reason why you tried to obfuscate that in your example by placing the colons not with the labels, but the arguments.
by throw234234234 | 2025-10-08 19:59:51+00:00
This is the heart of it. Most "craft" industries that have not yet been disrupted by technology or been made "more efficient" tend to coincidentally be the ones that are in demand and pay well -> and that society generally wants "good X" of. e.g. Plumbers, Electricans, previously software engineers. Efficiency usually benefits the consumer or the employer, not the craftsmen in most industries. There's a reason people are saying right now to "get a trade" where I am.

If you look at what still pays well and/or is stable (e.g. where I live trades are highly paid and stable work) its usually the crafts industry. We still build houses for example mostly like we did way back (i.e. much of the skills are still craft, not industrialized industry) when and it shows in the price of them.
by observationist | 2025-10-08 20:00:46+00:00
That's active surveillance and wiretapping, and is not a backdoor.

Backdoors are unacceptable 100% of the time, and should never be legal.

A backdoor is a lazy power grab that is either supported in ignorance by technically illiterate useful idiots or supported in full knowledge of the intended partisan abuses of basic civil liberties.

Hacking a criminal's phone with compromised software, and/or intercepting their voice & data, is not a backdoor. Backdoors mandate a violation of informed consent, and as such, should be criminalized without exception.

There's no place for backdoors in civilized societies.