MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by Lerc | 2025-10-26 19:55:46+00:00
This is like sending an unsolicited email to someone who might want to buy your product.

A single instance is not a bad thing, but once it becomes a repeated occuance it is terrible.

With this particular case, the threshold is likely to be in expectation. If you approach people and any of them are aware of this concept in advance, they might feel used. If they know what you are going to do before you start talking then the entire atmosphere has already been polluted.

It might be easier to think of it in ecological terms. Sustainability and limiting harms mark the core of what should govern human endeavours. If the bar was considered an ecological environment, the harm would be in negatively impacting the enjoyment of customers. A single query from a stranger might do no harm. It might even enrich their evening experience. Done unsustainably however, results in a progressive reduction in the quality of experience across the ecosystem.
by Simulacra | 2025-10-26 19:56:23+00:00
"Short of powering off or walking away, what can we do to manage this dependency? We can access device settings and activate only those features we truly require, adjusting them now and again as our habits and lifestyles change."

I think this is how some people feel about the dating apps. They promise love, affection, and future, but only manipulate our emotions.
by dang | 2025-10-26 19:56:40+00:00
Related ongoing thread:

Movie posters from Ghana in the 1980s and 90s - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45712807 - Oct 2025 (91 comments)

Also:

Bizarre Movie Posters From Africa That Are So Bad, They’re Good - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37259525 - Aug 2023 (24 comments)
by programmertote | 2025-10-26 19:56:42+00:00
Wish I could give your comment 10 more upvotes for visibility.

This is Myanmar military trying to do field work for China. China is the one who allowed these militias to thrive in the border areas and they have been arming them for decades. This particular operation happens in Myawaddy, which is in lower eastern part of Myanmar close to Thailand, but not in northeastern Myanmar closer to China, because Myanmar military dare only touch the militia there. It helps that the accused collaborators of these scam centers in the lower east part of Myanmar are Kayin ethnic militia, who--unlike Wa or Kokang--aren't as Chinese, and thus, China doesn't care. Also, China is now 100% backing the military regime (which staged a coup around 2021) in Myanmar, so this is like shooting two birds with one stone (i.e., get rid of scam centers for China, while helping Myanmar's brutal military to remove an income source of one of the non-ethnically Chinese militia).

The military dares not assault the northeastern militias like Wa [ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Wa_State_Army ], Kokang militia [ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myanmar_National_Democratic_Al... ] because these guys are truly backed (and enabled) by China. There was a raid by Myanmar military in northeastern part (close to China) about a year ago [ https://www.rfa.org/english/myanmar/2024/11/20/shan-state-wa... ] and that was backed by China. Otherwise, Myanmar military dares not do that.

Basically, China is getting what it sowed and now that its citizens are being impacted, it's asking its lapdog, Burmese military, to do the clean-up for them selectively.
by tsimionescu | 2025-10-26 19:57:31+00:00
Ones in which both the human test takers and the human counterparts are actively trying to prove to each other that they are actually human.

With today's chat bots, it's absolutely trivial to tell that you're not talking to a real human. They will never interrupt you, continue their train of thought even thought you're trying to change the conversation, go on a complete non-sequitur, swear at you, etc. These are all things that the human "controls" should be doing to prove to the judges that they are indeed human.

LLMs are nowhere near beating the Turing test. They may fool some humans in some limited interactions, especially if the output is curated by a human. But left alone to interact with the raw output for more than a few lines, and if actively seeking to tell if you're interacting with a human or an AI (instead of wanting to believe), there really is no chance you'd be tricked.
by lcnPylGDnU4H9OF | 2025-10-26 19:58:02+00:00
> None of my points or clarifications hinge on a specific crime.

Well, this is not true. Yet again I simply must explain that writing the words "they're investigating a crime" is literally a point that hinges on there being a specific crime. Without that, and especially with the words "we want to ask you questions about a protest", it is not reasonable to say that. Minimally, when someone else asks for a source, they probably don't just need to be told what the FBI is.

I can, at least, assert with evidence that they are not investigating a crime. You've so far failed to assert with evidence that they are investigating a crime. You may not feel you need evidence to assert that but basic logic suggests otherwise.
by BriggyDwiggs42 | 2025-10-26 19:58:10+00:00
>how about taxation and over-regulation

Are you convinced that people’s lives get better and that workers get paid more, every time, with less regulation? What about e.g. planned obsolescence or web enshittification or any other strategy where a company can increase its profits by making its product worse? What about mass consumer advertising that constantly manipulates people into buying stuff they don’t care about and wouldn’t have bought before by making them feel like it will give them unrelated things like status or family? Market competition doesn’t solve these problems, it spreads them.

> you could live like an irish immigrant

I think our society builds what we want to a really large degree. People get taught to feel like getting rich or middle class or whatever is what they should be doing, or like having the expensive car is important. We don’t pop put of the womb knowing what the hell we should want and we learn to want a whole lot of shit we could go without. Also, you’d really struggle to construct that lifestyle for yourself. The only places where land would be cheap enough to be proportional would be sparse places where most work would be hard to find. You’d still need to drive to your jobs presumably, since you wouldn’t have a computer, so you’re paying for a beater, maintenance, gas and insurance. you would probably want to avoid a salaried position because the vast majority of them are gonna want you to work more than 15 hours a week, which cuts you out of a lot of the best paying jobs. I’m not saying you couldn’t do it, but you’d have to have a lot of knowledge to do it. There’s a real barrier to entry there.
by PantaloonFlames | 2025-10-26 19:58:30+00:00
regarding that post-update script, can you explain?

I would think you'd want to

cd /home/kragen/public_html/sw/dev3 git update-server-info git pull

..in that order.

And I wouldn't think you'd need to run git update-server-info again, after git pull. My understanding isthe update-server-info makes updates to info/refs , which is necessary _after a push_.

What am I missing?
by raincom | 2025-10-26 19:58:49+00:00
Even after JFK's initiated reforms, quotas based on origins (birth county of future immigrants or birth country of existing immigrants in the US) is intact. If one sees this as a formula based on origins, some variables are changed after Immigration and Naturalization Act of 1965. So, it is very hard to get rid of origin and quota-based formulas. Now Trump wants to change some variables.
by tonetegeatinst | 2025-10-26 19:58:58+00:00
As someone in the security field, who is currently in a security degree program...I have a major overlap with the EE and computer engineering degree requirements.

Iv dabbled in some basic MIPS assembly and some microcontroller programming but don't consider that as complicated as boot level firmware or say the firmware that controls complex stuff.

I view embedded as the closest I will ever get to actual hardware engineering and it shocks me how complex everything is.
by ValentineC | 2025-10-26 19:59:48+00:00
> The money gets laundered through all kinds of channels into different tax havens. It might pass through Taiwan—'cause, you know, China can't touch it there and the money looks clean—and then it goes on to China or Singapore... basically, right into those bosses' pockets.

Singapore cracked down on a huge part of that: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023_Singapore_money_launderin...

Funny how the banks let these money launderers go on with their activities for years, most likely because they paid the banks their share of fees and commissions.
by punchfunk4lyte | 2025-10-26 20:00:13+00:00
You have more respect for grifters on social media as humans expressing themselves than for authors of books...? That's very strange.

Doubly so because no one suggested "silencing them," they pointed out that people do presume to teach on social media. You acknowledge this but not how it relates to your original argument, you've pivoted to defending their right to speech instead of shoring up your original argument.
by samrus | 2025-10-26 20:00:43+00:00
I think the access to so much information itself isnt bad. Cuz access to all of wikipedia wouldnt do this. People would get bored because its still work to digest that information

I think this access gave opportunities to bad actors whose incentives are misalligned with society's. Social media companies. They use this opportunity to serve us easily digestible garbage thats going to get us hooked.

Its a not some grand and malicious conspiracy or anything. Greed is just a part of capitalism. Before, people loved getting others hooked on drugs because it made them so much money.

People who like capitalism know this is a bug in the system that needs to be patched with regulations. We stopped putting cocaine in coca cola. We just need to stop putting brainrot garbage in our kids information feeds. We need to penalize companies for these greed driven addiction algorithms. Itll be hard, but its what needs to be done and we can do it if we have enough societal willpower
by dangus | 2025-10-26 20:01:40+00:00
What if our definition of those concepts is biological to begin with?

How does a computer with full AGI experience the feeling of butterflies in your stomach when your first love is required?

How does a computer experience the tightening of your chest when you have a panic attack?

How does a computer experience the effects of chemicals like adrenaline or dopamine?

The A in AGI stands for “artificial” for good reason, IMO. A computer system can understand these concepts by description or recognize some of them them by computer vision, audio, or other sensors, but it seems as though it will always lack sufficient biological context to experience true consciousness.

Perhaps humans are just biological computers, but the “biological” part could be the most important part of that equation.
by sim7c00 | 2025-10-26 20:02:08+00:00
they do not, but the same argument can hold true by the fact the true human nature is not really known and thus trying to define what a human like intelligence would consist of can only be incomplete.

there are many parts of human cognition, phycology etc. especially related to consciousness that are known unknowns and/or completely unknown.

a mitigation for this isaue would be to call it generally applicable intelligence or something, rather than human like intelligence. implying ita not specialized AI but also not human like. (i dont see why it would need to be human like, because even with all the right logic and intelligence a human can still do something counter to all of that. humans do this everyday. intuitive action, or irrational action etc.

what we want is generally applicable intelligence, not human like intelligence.
by DeepSeaTortoise | 2025-10-26 20:02:17+00:00
Kind of my fault, I specifically thought only about the powerplant + fuel part.

Of course nuclear is much more complex as a whole, because it comes with at least two, sometimes three different business sections attached by default: Production and sale of rare isotopes, on-site laboratories and research and recycling of spent fuel.

It's hard to beat gas. The small double digit MW plant in my town literally has only one on-site full-time employee. My guess the only reason the FTE hits even 60 (didn't check) is because there are so many small installations.

Coal has a lot of fuel processing on-site just for its own demand, the mostly very sensible environmental regulations add a lot of complexity to processing the flue gasses and this adds A LOT of moving parts.

Nuclear can be built simple enough that people are literally thinking about dropping it down a mile deep hole, barely the width of a US-standard human. On the "hands off" scale it can't beat gas, barely anything but solar, geothermal and nuclear thermal electric can, but it could beat coal and hydro and possibly even wind via scale. Just how often should one have to send a report to some oversight body on the number of functional overhead lights and whether the change in microclimate didn't displace any rare insect species before one can say: "You didn't read the last 20, you're not getting another one."
by submeta | 2025-10-26 20:03:05+00:00
Because one is an intellectual activity, the other is not. You cannot expect the 60+ year old coach to run and train with the team members. But you can as a CTO try out technology, open the terminal, run a docker container to see the technology. Otherwise you are too far away from the things you try to orchestrate. Here the analogy of a master chef comes to mind. She doesn't have to work with her sous-chefs, but it helps to be able to still master the knife, make sushi or make a Crème brûlée, or even an omelette. All while mostly focusing on the big picture.
by fluidcruft | 2025-10-26 20:04:08+00:00
I don't know... there's a pretty clear difference between copyright and a say a utility patent or trade secret. The right and wrong in FSF isn't about labor, it's about control over machines and ability to modify. Free software has never tried to control the community using patents and trade secrets and in general are rather hostile to them. In fact its fairly contemptuous of copyright and uses it from a purely utilitarian perspective. And frankly FSF is not opposed to commercial software. They're opposed to users being unable to modify machines and software that they are using. That's the core of the ethics. See the origins in that damn printer firmware RMS did battle with.

But I also disagree in general about LLMs. LLMs are statistical text models but the general concept of what if there were an "AI" that wasn't a LLM and was trained on open source software is the same at the end of the day. I think whether or not LLM are intelligent or equivalent to humans is a red herring. There's no reason to not consider the implications of machines that are indistinguishable or even superior to human programmers. Particularly if we're discussing ethics getting lost in implementation details seems like a distraction and then all the derived ethics gets thrown out after the next innovation.
by Tadpole9181 | 2025-10-26 20:06:06+00:00
And why are you acting like you have a right to unlimited access of all content made, regardless of the economics, for $20 a month at the highest quality of service through one platform?

Things cost money, that's the world we live in. You don't have to like it, but it is what it is.

The unethical option is actually illegal and, as more people do it, only game theories everyone else into having to pay more. Feel free to do it, not going to pretend I'm a saint on the matter, but don't act all incredulous and morally superior. You're still here complaining you could steal oxy cheaper than pay for it at a pharmacy; just a different fix.

WRT unsubscribing, I can't relate. It's, what, 5 buttons? I do it every other month and it's never been a problem. Isn't this forum supposed to be techies?
by pengaru | 2025-10-26 20:06:44+00:00
Or they "fix" their issue by replacing the fuel pump, but totally neglected to point out what actually fixed their problem was the clogged pick-up sock they incidentally replaced while replacing the fuel pump. And never even looked inside the tank to address, let alone identify, their real problem.

Seen this kind of thing play out on YT too many times to count.
by thwarted | 2025-10-26 20:06:50+00:00
They don't have a reason. There's no policy that keeps them from doing this. Sure, the whole point is to ultimately have the code in a common place where backups and code review can happen, but if it's a matter of starting something sooner because it takes a few days for the request to flow through to get things set up, they are not constrained by that AT ALL. They can create a git repo with git init immediately, start working, and once the repo is set up in the common area, git push all their work into it. Rather than train people on this, we spend time trying to hasten the common area repo setup time and put additional unneeded burden on the team responsible for that.
by softwaredoug | 2025-10-26 20:07:28+00:00
When I see a show has 2 seasons (like Andor) and it’s finished. And I see it’s well reviewed I’m definitely in. The creators thought out a compete arc.

When a (non episodic) show is in 3 out of ?? seasons even if everything is good so far, I’m now skeptical. Not just GoT but shows like Westworld leave me wondering if I wasted my time.
by bonoboTP | 2025-10-26 20:08:01+00:00
Okay but we are not really optimizing them to emulate humans right now. In fact, it's the opposite. The mainstream bots are explicitly trained to not identify as humans and to refuse to claim having thought or internal feelings or consciousness.

So in that sense it's a triviality. You can ask ChatGPT whether it's human and it will say no upfront. And it has various guardrails in place against too much "roleplay", so you can't just instruct it to act human. You'd need a different post-training setup.

I'm not aware whether anyone did that with open models already.
by saulpw | 2025-10-26 20:08:11+00:00
Yeah, notice that the "inspiration" for this tactic was a designer who interrupted their loud conversation. He read the room and realized these guys were spitballing business ideas and took advantage of their drunken egos to get some Man On The Street opinions. That all seems fine. The problem comes when you start doing it to people who aren't talking loudly about their own stupid business ideas.
by PessimalDecimal | 2025-10-26 20:08:11+00:00
I don't know why but my elementary school taught my grade of kindergarteners specifically to program using Logo. The class before and after me didn't seem to get this. Some Apple IIe machines that would've quite old by that point and a big room full of kids pair programming Logo. Great memories! And I'm pretty sure this planted the seed that led to my career in software.

My oldest is now in kindergarten and I am going to use Logo to help her learn. I started by buying an Etch-a-sketch that we use together for a real-world point of contact with the idea.
by angelgonzales | 2025-10-26 20:08:42+00:00
I think I’ll just being empathetic here, maybe his heart is just in Idaho? If he is the chief if may be within his authority to built out infrastructure within the station. Presumably he can react much faster during weekdays since he’s already in the station and delegate authority during weekends when he’s away and cannot respond quickly. It would be in family for a police department to have redundancy and response plans for his brief absences. Flights from Boise to SF are relatively cheap and short so his commute could even be shorter than if he went snowboarding in Mammoth or backpacking in the nearby Sierra Nevadas over the weekend. Is he required to never vacation so he’s always available on short notice? Maybe we should look at the rules he allegedly broke and see if they need changing?
by freefaler | 2025-10-26 20:09:14+00:00
I'm waiting for TorrentCoin to pay/earn while you're watching/seeding to occur and then the pirating will become profitable and open the flood of dedicated for profit pirates from less regulated parts of the world. When this happens (it's sorta happening right now with Real Debrid & etc...) there will be a napster moment for movies and streaming.
by gwd | 2025-10-26 20:09:29+00:00
I mean, apparently the inventor of lead additive to gasoline used to pour the chemical over his hands to demonstrate how safe it was -- even though he knew it was actually quite toxic. So there are people who will knowingly give themselves small doses of poison to keep the money flowing.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IV3dnLzthDA&t=604s
by didibus | 2025-10-26 20:09:49+00:00
These type of studies trot the line of cargo cult though. Incredibly small effects, weak causation, full of possible confounders.

I'm not going to say being in a class where you are trying to pay attention and others are being very disruptive, and interrupt the lesson is enjoyable, it's annoying, but if you take even the studies you link, say the second link, it finds a 2% correlated effect, that is peers had scores 0.02 times lower than the standard deviation.

So if we were to change and group kids based on disruptiveness, instead of a 80% test core, your kid would have a 79.7% test score...

Now before you respond to this, I want to reiterate the point of my argument, that none of these ideas focus on actual teaching method improvements. How do you take a child at any level, and more effectively teach them so they learn faster and improve their intelligence and knowledge.

These alternatives, grouped by disruptiveness, grouped by current abilities, etc. they don't really change the pedagogy, just the environment. It seems their known effects are really small, and the effect on the average are not known.

So I'm not against them, as just from a pure setup they seem more appropriate, but it seems unlilely to result in much improvement learning wise, the kind that I'd be interested in.
by BugsJustFindMe | 2025-10-26 20:10:13+00:00
> How do we know we've achieved that? A machine that can feel emotions rather than merely emulating emotional behaviour.

Let me pose back to you a related question as my answer: How do you know that I feel emotions rather than merely emulating emotional behavior?

This gets into the philosophy of knowing anything at all. Descartes would say that you can't. So we acknowledge the limitation and do our best to build functional models that help us do things other than wallow in existential loneliness.
by Tadpole9181 | 2025-10-26 20:10:15+00:00
Eh, depends. Pirates these days need to burn hardware keys for 4K, so only sponsored or high-popularity stuff gets it. Everything else gets 1080p, though some groups do upscaling to try and make up for it.

If the content has a Blu-ray release, the pirated content will usually be better than the stream. But you could also purchase the Blu-ray yourself.

Anyway, pirating is illegal. I totally respect it for those who can't pay due to economic bloc or age, or as a form of protest... but hearing folk with 6-figure salaries bemoan having to pay too much, then act like children when told they could just take turn with the toys does rub me the wrong way.