MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by AngryData | 2025-10-01 10:02:58+00:00
There would be some correlation between the visual color of objects and the spectrum of an object in another EM frequency, many object's color share the same dye or pigment materials, but it seems pretty unlikely that it would be reliable at all with a spectrum of different objects and materials and dyes because there is no universal RGB dye or pigment set we rely upon. You can make the same red color many different ways but each material will have different spectral "colors" outside of the visual range. Even something simple like black plastics can be completely transparent in other spectrums like the PS3 was to infrared. Structural colors would probably be impossible to see discern however I don't think too many household objects have structural colors unless you got a stuffed bird or fish on the wall.
by derangedHorse | 2025-10-01 10:03:25+00:00
Maybe seeing you’re argument as a template will have you recognize the weakness of your argument:

{{currency}} is a negative-sum game. You can only get out what others put in and {{entities}} continuously have to {{maintain infrastructure}}.

An actual argument could be derived from the last point by asking whether the cost of maintaining the infrastructure is worth it. This is something the market decides.
by EdSchouten | 2025-10-01 10:03:49+00:00
In my case I observed a ~2% reduction in data storage when attempting to store and deduplicate various versions of the Linux kernel source tree (see link above). But that also includes the space needed to store the original version.

If we take that out of the equation and only measure the size of the additional chunks being transferred, it's a reduction of about 3.4%. So it's not an order of magnitude difference, but not bad for a relatively small change.
by safety1st | 2025-10-01 10:03:51+00:00
Well, the proverb doesn't necessarily attribute the death of the company to the lawyer.

If a company is dying (aka winding down), you most likely do in fact want a lawyer in charge, whatever their job title may be. For instance why would you put a scientist or engineer in charge of negotiating your acquisition?

It's a great proverb and in particular the "accountants in charge to extract maximum value after maturity, lawyers in charge at the end to wind it down or sell it off" part is accurate of many businesses in general. No company gets to live in the startup and growth stages forever. At a certain point shareholders decide to get everything they can out of their investment and move on.
by fjdjshsh | 2025-10-01 10:04:11+00:00
>Things also become very difficult to reason about because their is state in the bandit stats that are being used to optimize things. You can often think of that as a black box, but sometimes you need to look inside and it can be very difficult.

One way to peak into the state is to use bayesian models to represent the "belief" state of the bandits. For example, the arm's "utility" can be a linear function of the features of the arm. At each period, you can inspect the coefficients (and their distribution) for each arm.

See this package:

https://github.com/bayesianbandits/bayesianbandits
by Imustaskforhelp | 2025-10-01 10:04:42+00:00
Why sell shit that you don't want yourself/ aren't passionate about??

That is just exploitative of sorts on preying people who don't have enough knowledge about AI let's say...

And this behaviour shouldn't be condoned though

> And investors have no clue what to do with their money, but heard somewhere that "AI is the thing now" and that's where they want to flush their money.

This is where the system needs to change, People need to realize this that maybe AI is in a bit of bubble right now and not try to invest in such things...

But profits....

Shush, profits can come another day if business has good solid financials otherwise welp, that isn't investing, that's just speculating in the AI bubble
by moewatn | 2025-10-01 10:05:52+00:00
Hey everyone! I'm a mural and graffiti artist and wanted to share a little side project that came out of pure frustration.

A while ago I had a big commission where I had to match more than 150 colors from a digital design with actual spray paints. It took me a whole day flipping through swatches and guessing – super annoying. I searched for tools, but everything I found was either locked to one OS or didn’t support the brands I use.

So I built my own app: Canpicker

It’s a free PWA, works on any device, and lets you:

upload a design or photo

click on a color and see matching spray cans from 9+ major brands

create color lists, download them, and even check lighter/darker shades

I made this mainly for myself, but I’d love to hear what others think. Any feedback, suggestions, or feature ideas are super welcome!

Cheers, Moe
by montenegrohugo | 2025-10-01 10:06:41+00:00
Also, to expand on this a bit more:

Currently merchants get kind of shafted by VISA/Mastercard. Not only do they have to wait until they get their funds (sometimes even up to two weeks!), which is horrible for a business where cash flow is important, margins low and float very tight; they also pay huge fees on top!

Depending on geo, these fees can go from 1-3% (total) to >6-8% in geos like Argentina and Brazil (and even worse in some other places). That's insane.

Whilst stablecoin & blockchain adoption is not fundamentally impossible for Visa/MC (see this post for more info https://x.com/uwwgo/status/1973038511897923848), it is still a very long way off, and we expect to be very competitive, especially with sovereign nations pushing their own alternatives that we interoperate with (PIX, Mercadopago, DUITNOW, MB WAY etc)
by tolerance | 2025-10-01 10:07:12+00:00
Was the pleasure of writing code that the author describes tied to the actual practice or its profits?

My impression is that many white collar workers felt that their jobs and accompanying status were immutable. They’re not. Couldn’t they have seen this coming?

Nothing prevents people from continuing on with their trades or interests how they did before the AI bubble bloomed. But if they want to earn a living doing it, I guess they need to start thinking outside of the box. I believe prolonged contact with insulation induces hive breakout.
by u_sama | 2025-10-01 10:08:09+00:00
I actually agree, which is why I have high hopes for Ladybird and such. The best type of government is not a democracy but an benevolent dictatorship (also historically called the philosopher-king). You force the politics of neutrality on people, but doing so leads to people on the extremes attacking you and labelling you with unacceptable names like what is happening with DHH and the Omarchy thing
by AngryData | 2025-10-01 10:08:12+00:00
I mean from mine, and im sure many other people's view, that is already mostly true. Her biggest mistake to me seems like messing with a big dog, rather than screwing over little guys that don't have millions to throw at the courts or teams of full time lawyers. If JPMorgan defrauded the same amount of money from a bunch of regular joes I doubt anybody would be in jail or even that any potential fees would come anywhere to matching the amount of money defrauded.
by Angostura | 2025-10-01 10:08:17+00:00
> Or, just ban children from the internet, same as gun ownership for 12yo's. Fine/imprison parents.

It's an interesting idea. I presume that the there would be similar laws to selling guns. So there would need to be the national ID card and checks when selling any internet-enabled device. TVs, phones, cameras etc.

I as, a parent would probably need a phone safe, into which I could place my phone when I wasn't using it (though I suppose conceal-carry would be permissible). I;d probably want to have biometric locks on my TV, Chromecast etc etc and the children wouldn't be able to use the TV unsupervised unless all smart functions were locked down.

Doesn't sound particularly cool.
by Imustaskforhelp | 2025-10-01 10:08:38+00:00
I am not sure if this is the correct place but pardon me, I was one trying to remove the luksEncryption key and I searched it on stackoverflow thinking that I am going to figure this out myself...

The first thing on stackoverflow permanently made the data recoverable and it was only under the comment that people mentioned this...

My whole data of projects and what not got lost because of it and that just gave me the lesson of actually reading the whole thing.

I sometimes wonder if using AI would've made any difference or would it have even mattered because I didn't want to use AI and that's why I went to stackoverflow lol... But at the same point, AI makes hallucinations too but it was a good reality check for me as well to always read the whole thing before running commands.
by ThrownOffGame | 2025-10-01 10:08:56+00:00
Except it isn’t money at all; only suckers call it ‘money’.

It’s considered a security; a representation of value for sure. Move it around all you want until you’re blue in the face.

But money still has to come out of an exchange and through some sort of bank. So it’s all a shell game that’s decidedly not anonymous or protected at all.

That’s why so many have concluded that crypto is a scam; we might as well be smuggling Egyptian grave goods.
by globular-toast | 2025-10-01 10:09:46+00:00
What you're talking about is changing the interface of the code under test. You usually can't do that. If the interface outputs a string then you need to deal with a string.

Ideally a test should be an extremely literal interpretation of the spec. The test in the example I would read as "the output should be the result of a string concatenation between the base URL string and this string". The problem is that spec doesn't exist because it's stupid and wrong. This test suite implements a bug-ridden, ad hoc URL builder.

The real spec is probably "the output should be a string containing a valid URL for the photos page". I see two options for writing this test:

1. Compare to a "trusted" string literal which conforms to the spec (ie. to be a valid URL for the photos page),

2. Decode the string using a "trusted" URL decoder and validate it at the URL level.

I think they are equally valid options and a matter of taste and convenience but both accurately reflect the spec, unlike the example.

The second option is essentially playing off two bits of code against each other, like testing a forwards operation against a reverse operation. This works if both bits of code are completely independent and therefore extremely unlikely to accidentally compensate for each other's bugs. If the URL decoder is in a widely used standard library then this could be considered OK (the robustness principle explicitly makes things asymmetric, though, so a URL decoder with a "strict" mode would be most appropriate). But ad hoc code written in a test suite is definitely not OK!
by brabel | 2025-10-01 10:10:38+00:00
That’s just not true. Rust has a wonderful type system and it can encode mutability, which is a must for anything performance oriented. That is a benefit that FP misses out on. You can still analyze Rust programs with a great deal of assurances. The fact that it’s procedural seems to not matter much at all. An example of a language that allows mutability and has a research-level type system is Flix.
by simianparrot | 2025-10-01 10:12:38+00:00
The problem I'm seeing here in Norway is that the bar to put people on statins is way too low given the severe side-effects and likely consequences of long-term statin use, even low doses.

I think LDL is a good biomarker, just not in isolation, and especially not a "one-size fits all" metric for individual humans.
by defrost | 2025-10-01 10:14:34+00:00
Hey now, let's not forget the Australovenator

Constructed from retired tools, machine parts and farm scrap collected throughout rural Western Australia.

~ https://www.jordanspriggsculptures.com.au/australovenator

and a home ground culture that loves scrap metal* and Mig welders.

* https://ictv.com.au/video/11144-stompem-ground-scrap-metal-t...
by royletron | 2025-10-01 10:14:37+00:00
The hardest bit of that Camp Bryan wiki is this disparity.

Ruby Jane McMillan - part of a meth supply ring. Sentenced to 38 months, completed less than 2 years.

Laurel Yurchick - had 50g of meth on her. Sentenced with intent to supply to 10years - not due for parole until 2029.

So one was clearly higher in the supply chain yet got sentenced to a third of the time?
by sipofwater | 2025-10-01 10:15:32+00:00
"Motorola moto g play 2024 Smartphone, Android 14 Operating System, Termux, And cryptsetup: Linux Unified Key Setup (LUKS) Encryption/Decryption And The ext4 Filesystem Without Using root Access, Without Using proot-distro, And Without Using QEMU": https://old.reddit.com/r/MotoG/comments/1jkl0f8/motorola_mot... (old.reddit.com/r/MotoG/comments/1jkl0f8/motorola_moto_g_play_2024_smartphone_android_14/)
by srj | 2025-10-01 10:15:59+00:00
FWIW I didn't downvote you. I don't work on AI personally, and while I have no way of proving it to you I certainly am not trying to shill for my employer.

My skepticism of AI safety is just because of skepticism of AI generally. These are amazing things, but I don't believe the technology is even a road to AGI. There's a reason it can give a chess move when prompted and explain all the rules and notation, but can't actually play chess: it's not in the training data. I simply think the hype and anxiety is unnecessary, is my issue. Now this is most definitely just my opinion and has nothing to do with that company I work for who I'd bet would disagree with me on all of this anyway. If I did believe this was a road to AGI I actually would be in favor of AI safety regulation.
by cthalupa | 2025-10-01 10:16:47+00:00
Comments like these just aren't based in reality. LDL levels are not a proxy or a wet streets cause rain. We even have a strong understanding of the mechanisms in which cholesterol causes things like heart attacks, strokes, peripheral arterial disease, etc. etc. etc. Something has to deposit plaque in your arteries.

Yes, from a mechanistic standpoint, inflammation is also an important causal factor. Lp(a) is also an important factor for people that are genetically predisposed to high levels - it also deposits plaque, and is one of the reasons ApoB is recommended. Most people don't have worrisome Lp(a) levels but enough do that we've been missing them, and we now also have good treatments for them - PCKS9 inhibitors reduce it by ~1/3rd, and we have Lp(a) specific medications in phase 3 trials that are even stronger.

But we know that statins work. This is some of the most established science in health. I keep seeing claims in these comments from people stating otherwise, but it just doesn't match reality.

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...

We have MR studies on genetics that further reinforce this idea to a huge degree

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28444290/

We also know that lowering LDL in and of itself lowers inflammation within the arterial wall, though this isn't necessarily reflected in hsCRP. We know that foam cell activation and cytokine signaling increase inflammation at the site of the plaque, which results in further deposition, and these require ApoB particles be depositing plaque there to begin with. Some PCSK9 inhibitors show zero change in hsCRP results yet still show less localized inflammation - due to the significant reduction in LDL-C and Lp(a) particles.

https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/cardiovascular-medicine...

Lowering inflammation also works for reducing events independent of lowering ApoB particles - colchicine works even though it does nothing there - but if we're really trying to stretch the fire analogy, it's more like LDL and Lp(a) are the years of unmaintained brush and flammable debris in a forest, and inflammation is the strong winds. Both can lead to the spread of fire even without the other, fire can still spread even in the absence of both, but having either and especially having both will greatly increase the risk of the fire continuing to spread.
by jibal | 2025-10-01 10:23:58+00:00
> In philosophy he’s chiefly remembered for his incomprehensible theory of monads and for stating that this was the best of all possible worlds.

Those are not in fact the things Leibniz is best known for in philosophy ... in that field he's primarily known for the Identity of Indiscernibles and for Leibniz's Mill ... and many other things as well.
by amonith | 2025-10-01 10:24:46+00:00
A few weeks is definitely BS, but I took 3 years of German in high school and after roughly 3 months of 30min-1hr daily Duolingo I was already past the high school material.

I mean in our high school (Poland) it was like maybe 1 lesson (45mins) per week shared with a group. And of course excluding all the holidays and what not. That's not a high bar.
by h4ch1 | 2025-10-01 10:24:50+00:00
What's a SoTA diffing algorithm for diffing of a deeply nested JSON structure for example?

I am currently researching and have built my own naive implementation for diffing a dense tree and the performance... isn't very great.

The ideal outcome is to create patches by diffing different versions of the JSON object, then being able to apply said patches anywhere in the "commit" tree.
by thyristan | 2025-10-01 10:26:28+00:00
General-purpose benchmarks aren't worthless. They can be used to predict, in very broad strokes, what application performance might be. Especially if you don't really know what the applications would be, or if it is too tedious to use real application benchmarks.

But in your example, deciding between 24 cores with somewhat higher frequency or 32 cores with somewhat lower frequency based on some general-purpose benchmark is essentially pointless. The difference will be small enough that only the real application benchmark can tell you what you need to know. A general purpose benchmark will be no better than a coin toss, because the exact workings of the benchmark, the weightings of it's components into a score and the exact hardware you are running on will have interactions that will determine the decision to a far greater amount. You are right that there could be shared or separate caches, shared or separate memory channels. The benchmark might exercise those, or it might not. It might heat certain parts of the die more than others. It might just be the epitome of embarassingly parallel benchmarks, BogoMIPS, which is a loop executing NOPs. The predictive value of the general purpose benchmark is nil in those cases. The variability from the benchmark maker's choices will always necessarily introduce a bias and therefore a measurement uncertainty. And what you are trying to measure is usually smaller than that uncertainty. Therefore: No better than a coin toss.
Show HN: Kora – Chat with philosophers in lifelike voice
by juancarlosmaker | 2025-10-01 10:26:31+00:00
Hi HN,

I built Kora - a mobile app where you can have conversations with historical philosophers like Socrates and Marcus Aurelius.

The idea is to make philosophy more interactive and accessible. Instead of only reading quotes, you can ask questions and explore ideas in dialogue. Current features include: • Text and lifelike voice chats with philosophers • Daily wisdom notifications + discussion with Marcus Aurelius • Essay critique (get feedback on your writing from different philosophers)

Stack • Frontend: Bravo Studio (no-code mobile builder) • Backend: Xano (APIs, user data) • AI: OpenAI • Subscriptions/paywall: RevenueCat

We launched last week on iOS (Android coming soon) and already have early paying subscribers.

I would love feedback from the HN community - on the idea itself, the tech stack, and what you think could make this more valuable. I am especially curious whether you see potential beyond casual curiosity (students, lifelong learners, philosophy lovers).

Happy to answer questions. Thanks for reading!
by JimDabell | 2025-10-01 10:26:32+00:00
> i think the myth of "you can't self-host email" persists because while it can evidently be done, basically all of the software involved is ancient, baroque, inconsistently documented, requires a PhD in Bullshit to correctly configure, and is almost actively hostile to observation. but this is _annoying_, very different from _impossible_, and fortunately mostly solvable by delegating the annoying bits to an expert using something like NixOS to make it reliably work

Why are they calling this a “myth” when they readily admit that even when you are an expert who has been doing it for years, there’s still problems sending to the biggest providers in the world?

There is zero practical difference between “you need to be an expert and you will still fail to get something fundamental working” and “you can’t self-host email”.

> Microsoft 365 however apparently will hate your email no matter what. you learn to live with it

Or you don’t self-host but use a major email provider and don’t have the problem.

> there exist several pieces of folk wisdom:

> - "you cannot run your own mail server in 2025, this is too hard and time consuming" (completely false, i've done this since ~2010 with minimal ongoing maintenance)

This seems completely true according to what they themselves write. It is too hard and time consuming.

> I think the combo of "roll the IP gacha a few times" + "let it sit for 8 months while the VM idles" probably did me a lot of good here

Is letting it sit for eight months not “time consuming”?

> until I cleaned up my IP reputation (which has been awful for almost a decade) Gmail refused to deliver to anything but spam

This is not in any way acceptable to the average person, and it does not meet what most people would describe as “I can self-host email”. “I can self-host email but Gmail sends me to spam” is functionally equivalent to “I cannot self-host email”.
by esrh | 2025-10-01 10:26:41+00:00
This is my paper (first author).

I think the results here are much less important and surprising than what some people seem to be thinking. To summarize the core of the paper, we took stable diffusion (which is a 3-part system of an encoder, u-net, decoder), and replaced the encoder to use WiFi data instead of images. This gives you two advantages: you get text-based guidance for free, and the encoder model can be smaller. The smaller model combined with the semantic compression from the autoencoder gives you better (SOTA resolution) results, much faster.

I noticed a lot of discussion about how the model can possibly be so accurate. It wouldn't be wrong to consider the model overfit, in the sense that the visual details of the scene are moved from the training data to the model weights. These kinds of models are meant to be trained & deployed in a single environment. What's interesting about this work is that learning the environment well has become really fast because the output dimension is smaller than image space. In fact, it's so fast that you can basically do it in real time... you turn on a data collection node and can train a model from scratch online, in a new environment that gets decent results with at least a little bit of interesting generalization in ~10min. I'm presenting a demonstration of this at Mobicom 2025 next month in Hong Kong.

What people call "WiFi sensing" is now mostly CSI (channel state information) sensing. When you transmit a packet on many subcarriers (frequencies), the CSI represents how the data on each frequency changed during transmission. So, CSI is inherently quite sensitive to environmental changes.

I want to point out something that most everybody working in the CSI sensing/general ISAC space seems to know: generalization is hard and most definitely unsolved for any reasonably high-dimensional sensing problem (like image generation and to some extent pose estimation). I see a lot of fearmongering online about wifi sensing killing privacy for good, but in my opinion we're still quite far off.

I've made the project's code and some formatted data public since this paper is starting to pick up some attention: https://github.com/nishio-laboratory/latentcsi