MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by imiric | 2025-10-28 08:34:00+00:00
For better or worse, this type of writing (and coding, and ...) is here to stay.

We can dismiss it on the basis of "slop", but that would be throwing out the baby with the bath water. The reality is that pretty much everyone will rely on these tools, and it would be more beneficial for the audience to discern good content vs bad content, over whether it was machine-generated or not.

In fact, playing devil's advocate, it may have some benefits as well. For many people the content might not be in their first language, so the tools help with improving grammar, fixing typos, etc. They're the same assistive writing tools we've had for decades, but far, far, better. This makes the content much clearer and easier to read. The style of the content can always be changed in seconds, so if a certain cadence bothers the author, that can be easily changed. And, personally, I enjoy the privacy aspect. It's long been possible to identify the author of written text simply by their language, style, etc. These tools can make this more difficult, preserving the anonimity of the author. Or they can mimic the author's style, if instructed to do so. These are all powerful features.

To be clear: I can't stand "AI slop" either. I don't like that it replaces the humanity and personality of the author with something that tries to mimic it. But we should learn to accept it and see beyond it.

So the main question is: is the content of this article worthless? Or is it worth reading despite of it being machine-generated?

Hell, if it bothers you that much, ask your favorite LLM to summarize it for you, or rewrite it in any style you like. :)
by bayindirh | 2025-10-28 08:34:44+00:00
> Supposing that the advice it provides does more good than harm, why?

Because a human, esp. a confused and depressive human being is a complex thing. Much more complex than a stable, healthy human.

Words encouraging a healthy person can break a depressed person further. Statistically positive words can deepen wounds, and push people more to the edge.

Dark corners of human nature is twisted, hard to navigate and full of distortions. Simple words don't and can't help.

Humans are not machines, brains are not mathematical formulae. We're not deterministic. We need to leave this fantasy behind.
by ErroneousBosh | 2025-10-28 08:34:47+00:00
It was great. I remember trying it about twenty years ago. The very first time I fired it up, I just typed "linux" at a prompt, and a kernel booted - right there in the terminal.

And then panicked, because it had no root. But hey, I've got a root filesystem right here!

So the second time I typed "linux root=/dev/hda1" (because we had parallel ATA drives back then).

It booted, mounted root, and of course that was the root filesystem the host was booted off.

Anyway it recovered after a power cycle and I didn't need to reinstall, and most importantly I learned not to do THAT again, which is often the important thing to learn.
by MarcelOlsz | 2025-10-28 08:34:55+00:00
>I think of Math Academy as ideal for efficiently mastering subjects at a level slightly deeper than a typical education in a shorter amount of time, and AoPS is for taking your time to go much deeper into the topics.

I've been searching hi and lo for the ultimate beginner resource and nothing comes close to AoPS for the exact reason you mentioned. I started with principia mathematica by bertrand russel because I thought math worked like a big tree all stemming from one trunk. Boy was that a bad move lol. I'd be reading some textbook and I have an infinite amount of why's that would block me on the most basic of things, tons of assumed knowledge. AoPS treats you like a caveman who first discovered fire, and then discovered their books, in that order.

I'll give MathAcademy a go too, I heard lots of great things.
by atoav | 2025-10-28 08:35:05+00:00
Why? There are actually valuable takeaways from this.

One would be that people are the weak point in your security system. If all your organizational security hinges on one guy not folding, that guy is the natural target. Whether a literal 5$ wrench is used or they bribe him makes no difference.

That means you could consider shaping your org in a way that is resistent against this by e.g. decentralizing secrets. That means instead of bringing a "5$ wrench" to one person (which may even work without raising suspicion), you now need to convince multiple people at once which is much more unlikely to work without being detected.
by tags2k | 2025-10-28 08:35:42+00:00
Since everyone's giving !opinions, in my C# DDD world you'd ideally be able to:

_unitOfWork.Begin(); var users = await _usersRepo.Load(u => u.LastLogin <= whateverDate); users.CheckForExpiry(); _unitOfWork.Commit();

That then writes the "send expiry email" commands from the aggregate, to an outbox, which a worker then picks up to send. Simple, transactional domain logic.
by mellosouls | 2025-10-28 08:36:47+00:00
I tried it briefly. Its an ok initial start with significant flaws - while it counters Wikipedia's (editorial demographic) bias on cultural topics it seems to do so by assuming the style of a bland, unanalytical reporter, accepting the self-framing of the subject and relaying it at turgid length.

An example: the classical liberal writer Douglas Murray is one of the many targets on Wikipedia of ludicrous "far right" style categorizations; nevertheless its correct to attempt to draw out his own alignments and biases especially where he writes provocatively in areas with cultural tensions.

Grokipedia seems to smooth over those tensions almost in denial while Wikipedia stirs them up via exaggeration. I don't think either are helpful or honest.

https://grokipedia.com/page/Douglas_Murray_(author)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_Murray_(author)
by FarmerPotato | 2025-10-28 08:36:59+00:00
Present day: I can fabricate a wire-wrap version from my PCB footprints, much faster than I can route the PCB!

With wire-wrap, you can route multiple traces between the same pins, or I like to neatly bundle a whole bus' worth.

I'm far more pleased with the results of my wire-wrap, than the quality of my SMT soldering once I get a PCB made.

I had a tutor for wire-wrap in the 1980s. But I'm self-taught in PCB routing, and I start it over at least 3 times.
by forgotoldacc | 2025-10-28 08:37:31+00:00
In my experience, there are two types of customer service.

One is the type where people are working to actually help the customer and the rep is authorized to take whatever action necessary to accomplish that goal.

The other is the type where the rep has no authority to do anything. They'll endlessly transfer the caller to another rep, make them wait, transfer again, make up excuses for why nothing can be done, and just do what they can to goad the caller into consenting to giving up, absolving the company of having to pay anything or provide any sort of service.

I don't think number one will be replaced by AI. I think number two will be replaced by AI.
by hnlmorg | 2025-10-28 08:37:37+00:00
I think their point was that the lock picking videos were faked. But it’s still a silly comment from the Proven employee.

I’ve also seen people use “liberal” as a literal curse word before. On one “reality show”, a member of the cast broke down while highly intoxicated and started screaming at other people saying:

“You’re worse than a beep! You’re a liberal”

It’s insane just how far the political divide has become.
by fainpul | 2025-10-28 08:38:23+00:00
But with tests you can only prevent those future bugs you managed to think of. Anything you didn't anticipate will not be covered by tests.

TDD is useful to build some initial "guard rails" when writing new code and it's useful to prevent regressions (by adding more guard rails when you notice the program went off the road). You can't just add "all the guard rails ever needed" in advance.
by anonymous908213 | 2025-10-28 08:38:36+00:00
Having had to interact with it, AI customer support is about as horrific as you'd expect. Hallucinating policies, hallucinating that they've provided a refund without actually doing so, etc.

But it doesn't really matter what "people" think. Corporate sees a way to save money by employing less people, customers be damned. Sadly customer service does not seem to have any bearing on a company's success, considering Google is successful as it is when it literally does not offer any kind of customer service at all.
by ancarda | 2025-10-28 08:38:40+00:00
It's likely because there's a citation in a paper. That's apparently the bar you need to reach to get Wikipedia to see something as significant enough. I tried to get a draft article about SourceHut ( https://sourcehut.org/ ) to be published after extensive improvements and they refused because there weren't enough third party links. This is despite the fact there's like a dozen pages in Wikipedia about software that is hosted on SourceHut, so it seems notable enough?
by mohsen1 | 2025-10-28 08:39:20+00:00
Like anyone else I am also annoyed by customer service experience over the phone. However if you're on the other side of CS calls you'll notice so many calls that are for simple things that the user could easily do online. Those trivial calls takes the time from CS representatives to address more important queries. If AI CS is done right, it would be mostly a filter for helping human CS folks only deal with real issues rather than "how do I log into my account? I'm on your blog page..."
by fsflover | 2025-10-28 08:39:39+00:00
> They don't really want to get rid of their smartphone

> Its another avenue which is addictive like gaming, gambling, alcoholism etc

So people can't moderate themselves due to the addiction, which is completely different from "don't really want". This is not at all surprising given that a huge industry is dedicated to make the addiction stronger. The latter is the actual problem, not people or smartphones.
by bondarchuk | 2025-10-28 08:40:26+00:00
It becomes a problem when people cannot distinguish real from fake. As long as people realize they are talking to a piece of software and not a real person, "suicidal people shouldn't be allowed to use LLMs" is almost on par with "suicidal people shouldn't be allowed to read books", or "operate a dvd player", or "listen to alt-rock from the 90s". The real problem is of course grossly deficient mental health care and lack of social support that let it get this far.

(Also, if we put LLMs on par with media consumption one could take the view that "talking to an LLM about suicide" is not that much different from "reading a book/watching a movie about suicide", which is not considered as concerning in the general culture.)
by 000ooo000 | 2025-10-28 08:41:03+00:00
https://github.com/microsoft/call-center-ai?tab=readme-ov-fi...

One annoying part of the new AI world is these worthless AI-generated diagrams. I don't mean AI generated the pixels, I mean it was asked to generate docs, maybe even a "system diagram", and the result is just noise.
by txrx0000 | 2025-10-28 08:41:36+00:00
I don't mean there's a single centralized moderating authority overseeing everything, but rather the general tools and mechanisms used for moderation on the Internet are centralized and undemocratic. They produce groups with authoritarian power structures and norms. Those groups get larger over time with no limit on their size. When they get large enough, they fight over which one gets to run a country. This is how modern democratic countries can turn authoritarian very fast, and it's already happening.

When I say "group", I don't mean an actual Facebook group or subreddit (it could be, though). I mean a group of intellectually/ideologically homogenous people. They may be distributed across many subreddits and comment sections. Forums/subreddits/servers can be separate entities in form, but not in substance. Two Discord servers that moderate content the same way are the same group in this context.

Moderation is not just for posters. It also affects lurking viewers because it changes what they will see. If a post is deleted by a moderator, then that moderator has decided for the viewers what they can and cannot see.

Up/down voting (aka likes/dislikes) is a hidden form of moderation as well. People's likes and dislikes are deciding what other people are more likely to see because upvoted posts get to the top of the feed. Recommendation and ranking algorithms do the same thing.

I'm not making a statement about who has nobler goals, be it the ad companies or Putin or the US gov or the people here on HN. I'm saying that the concept of centralized moderation on the Internet is itself the problem. Regardless of what or whose goals these tools serve, they're bad because they coagulate people into intellectually and ideologically homogenous groups, and there is no group size limit due to the practically infinite connectivity of the Internet. This will create nasty real-world consequences in the long run. But we can defuse this by moving all moderation and ranking to the client-side.
by Zanfa | 2025-10-28 08:41:49+00:00
IMO the biggest issue with AI code is that writing code is the easiest part of software development. Reviewing code is so much more difficult than writing it, even more so if you're not already intimately familiar with it in the first place.

It's like with AI images, where they look plausible at first, but then you start noticing all the little things that are off in the sidelines.
by KronisLV | 2025-10-28 08:42:04+00:00
> Anyone who disagrees very likely is not someone who would produce good quality work by themselves (on average).

So for those producing slop and not knowing any better (or not caring), AI just improved the speed at which they work! Sounds like a great investment for them!

For many mastering any given craft might not be the goal, but rather just pushing stuff out the door and paying bills. A case of mismatched incentives, one might say.
by xnorswap | 2025-10-28 08:42:40+00:00
How about this?

>> Marko delivers 12.6 kB raw (6.8 kB compressed). Next.js ships 497.8 kB raw (154.5 kB compressed). That’s a 39x difference in raw size that translates to real seconds on cellular networks.

Sorry, it isn't 2006, cellular networks aren't spending "seconds" in the difference between 13kB and 500kB.

Payload size can matter, but it's complete nonsense that 500kB would translate to "real seconds".

Just spotted this section:

>> The real-world cost: A 113 kB difference at 3G speeds (750 kbps) means 1.2 seconds for download plus 500ms to 1s for parse/execution on mobile CPUs. Total: 1.5 to 2 seconds slower between frameworks.

3G is literally being decommissioned, and 3G isn't 750kbps, it's significantly faster than that.

> On first glance it seems very legit

Yes, that's exactly the danger of AI slop. It's very plausible, very slick and very easy to digest. It also frequently contains unchecked errors without any strong signals that would traditionally go along with that.
by asdefghyk | 2025-10-28 08:42:55+00:00
From the articale .... "...Prince Andrew is a "hypocrite" who believes he is above the law, according to historian and author Andrew Lownie, who has written an unauthorised biography on the under siege royal.

Lownie interviewed hundreds of people while researching the book, including the prince's former wife, Sarah Ferguson.

"[He's a] very self-entitled, arrogant, pompous guy who has never really been given any boundaries in his life, has never actually been disciplined," Lownie said...."
by MarcelOlsz | 2025-10-28 08:43:04+00:00
I've been experimenting with various TDD methods with AI and it cannot do frontend work. Frontend has too many ancient illogical incantations and ways of doing things that it has no clarity on, you have to handhold it every step of the way. When I let AI go off the rails and build a frontend it's an absolute mess and it frequently chooses the hardest and dumbest way to do things. Stellar for low surface-area work though.

Once AI has cheap real-time eyes it might get slightly better, but all the logs and browser MCP tools and yadda yadda in the world will not get it to produce anything remotely efficient.
by miggol | 2025-10-28 08:44:06+00:00
I wonder if these will get better over time. Fun idea and I kind of want to join a table.

For now at least, some can't even determine which hand they have:

> LLAMA bets $170 on Flop > "We have top pair with Tc4d on a flop of 2s Ts Jh. The board is relatively dry, and we have a decent chance of having the best hand. We're betting $170.00 to build the pot and protect our hand."

(That's not top pair)
by Azkron | 2025-10-28 08:44:12+00:00
This reminds me of the CEO of a cyber security company that challenged Anonimous https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HBGary. If you work for any kind of security company, do not ever ever ever challenge any kind penetration specialist. Everything is hackable, it is only a matter of cost vs reward, but when you challenge someone that goes out of the window.
by hashstring | 2025-10-28 08:45:33+00:00
In what way?

This whole manufacturing of a fear culture, the emphasis on us-vs-them (ICE), loyalty oaths (MIT, pledges of CEOs), purging of institutions (doge), attempts to reorganize higher education (Harvard), control of media (Kimmel), the symbolism (maga), it’s all Trump 2.0 boring attempt at a ‘Cultural Revolution’ a la Mao. It’s just a bit messier because Trump never commits to much and blatantly chases much of his own selfish interests (crypto schemes and market manipulation).

I believe that the parallels that someone may draw between Biden and Mao are much much weaker.
by ChrisMarshallNY | 2025-10-28 08:45:54+00:00
> Did we really let customer service get so bad that people think this will be an improvement?

Yes.

One of the things that I learned, early in my career, is that the best customer service, is good product design, obviating the need for customer service. That’s something within my control.

For many companies, post-sale customer service is a money sink. I remember being told that the margins on a product were so thin, that a single call from a user would wipe out the profit.

But I was also never given support to produce a decent UX, because that was expensive.

Damned if you do[n’t].
by etchalon | 2025-10-28 08:46:07+00:00
The entire issue is that, despite the law, some people refuse to feed everyone. And not a small handful of people, but a sizable enough population that their actions mean millions aren't fed.

That's my point.

Your "solution" only works if racism is eliminated. It is not eliminated, despite eduction and fairness laws.

So we can either chose to feed the hungry or let them starve in the name of a false, ignorant, and naive position of neutrality.
by wongarsu | 2025-10-28 08:47:21+00:00
If the internet didn't exist this would be incredibly useful. Call the cinema to find out when the movie is playing, call a company to find out their refund policy and get troubleshooting steps for their products, etc.

Now I prefer to get this information from websites. But there is still a chunk of the population (mostly the older half) who prefer calling over websites, and maybe that's true even for these chat bots
by bee_rider | 2025-10-28 08:47:29+00:00
I think longer is… possible, at least? The internet has allowed me to keep in touch with friends from elementary school. I’m, unfortunately, approaching 40 more quickly than I’d like, so these are around 30 year friendships.

Although, I’ve also got some college friends that I’d consider close. So that’s more like 15 years. Also online mostly at this point.
by lan321 | 2025-10-28 08:47:48+00:00
Anonymizing names and such is fine/good but the whole push for equal net worth, etc is IMO bad. Granting assistance exclusively to people below the median is equal to punishing those above the median. And if you start adding race, gender, etc it gets even worse. And adding history makes it even more so. Historically everyone has fucked over everyone at some point and many versions exist for many events.

The status quo benefits me, but I also don't see why I owe X to Y. My parents worked hard to get me educated. Their parents worked hard to get them educated. Their parents worked hard to get them their own house. You can stretch it and say they were able to do that because Ys grand...parents got exploited but it's honestly not my problem at this point. We still exploit kids mining in bumfuck nowhere and making phones, everyone cares mostly when they can make an extra buck unless it's straight up death camps.
by roenxi | 2025-10-28 08:49:00+00:00
I've always been fascinated by how linear programming seems to be applicable to every problem under the sun but SAT solvers only really seem to be good at Sudoku.

In practice that are a bunch of problems that seem to be SAT, but they are either SAT at a scale where the solver still can't find a solution in any reasonable time or they turn out to not really be SAT because there is that one extra constraint that is quite difficult to encode in simple logic.

And it is unrewarding experimenting because it ends up being a day or so remembering how to use a SAT solver, then rediscovering how horrible raw sat solver interfaces are and trying to find a library that builds SAT problems from anything other than raw boolean algebra (the intros really undersell how bad the experience of using SAT solvers directly is, the DIMACS sat file format makes me think of the year 1973), then discovering that a SAT solver can't actually solve the alleged-SAT problem. Although if anyone is ever looking for a Clojure library I can recommend rolling-stones [0] as having a pleasant API to work with.

[0] https://github.com/Engelberg/rolling-stones
by Tade0 | 2025-10-28 08:49:32+00:00
Yes and my comment is just relaying what professionals have to say about the phenomenon:

Bottom line up front: the way out is to set aside some time for a menial task that isn't mentally taxing.

Screens are a particularly effective means of avoiding processing one's emotions. Those, of course, don't go away by themselves so if you don't take time to deal with them, you create a dependency.

The moment before going to sleep is typically when piled up emotions and intrusive thoughts return, so that's also when the temptation to set them aside is the greatest.

Resisting that temptation, but giving in to it eventually is dangerous, because next time the signal is stronger.
by hinkley | 2025-10-28 08:49:49+00:00
I can’t decide if this really is the biggest problem with CQS. Certainly the wiki page claims it is, and it’s a reasonable argument. For some simpler cases you could dodge it by wrapping the function pairs/tuples in a lock. Database calls are a bit sketchy, because a transaction only “fixes” the problem if you ignore the elephant in the room which is reduced system parallelism by a measurable amount because even in an MVCC database transactions aren’t free. They’re just cheaper.

Caches always mess up computational models because they turn all reads into writes. Which makes things you could say with static analysis no longer true. I know a lot of tricks for making systems faster and I’ve hardly ever seen anyone apply most of them to systems after caching was introduced. It has one upside and dozens of downsides as bad or worse than this one.
by reify | 2025-10-28 08:51:13+00:00
Been going on since 2021.

The UK has fined them has fined Clearview AI £7,552,800 in 2022 but they have not paid.

EU data protection authorities did not come up with a way to enforce its fines and bans against the US company, allowing Clearview AI to effectively dodge the law.

https://ico.org.uk/about-the-ico/media-centre/news-and-blogs...

A shit company