MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by HarHarVeryFunny | 2025-10-19 16:45:32+00:00
> humans say the night sky is beautiful is because they see that it is

True, but we could engineer AI to see that too, just as evolution has engineered us to see it.

Our innate emotional responses to things has been honed by evolution to be adaptive, to serve a purpose, but the things that trigger these various responses are not going to be super specific. e.g. We may derive pleasure from eating a nice juicy peach, but that doesn't mean that is encoded in our DNA - it's going to be primarily the reaction to sugar/sweetness, a good source of energy, that we are reacting to.

Similarly, we may have an emotional reaction to certain pieces of modern art or artistic expression, but clearly evolution has not selected for those specifically, but rather it is the artist triggering innate responses that evolved for reasons other than appreciation of art.

It's hard to guess what innate responses, that were actually selected for, are being triggered by our response to the night sky, and I'm also not sure how much of our response is purely visual (beauty) as opposed to wonder or awe. Maybe it's an attraction to the unknown, or sense of size and opportunity, with these being the universals that are actually adaptive.

In any case, if we figured out the specifics of our hard wired emotional reactions, that evolution as given us, then we could choose to engineer emotional AI that had those same reactions, in just as genuine a way as we do, if we chose to.
by marssaxman | 2025-10-19 16:45:45+00:00
Thank you for your helpful reply. I'm afraid I don't have enough familiarity with emacs to quite follow your explanation - I didn't actually write the bit of emacs-speak in my previous message, and I don't know what its terms mean. I just asked ChatGPT to invent something one emacs user might plausibly say to another!

It has always sounded like emacs is extraordinarily powerful and configurable, and that must be great for people who want to do extraordinary things with their text editor. There was a time when I enjoyed tinkering with my environment more, but these days I prefer simple, ordinary tools I can easily understand. I don't really want to think about the tools at all, but focus on the task I'm doing with them. I'm content to let emacs be something other people appreciate.
by firasd | 2025-10-19 16:45:51+00:00
I’ve found this quick command using standard Linux utilities helpful:

find . -type f ! -name 'combined_output.txt' ! -name '.png' ! -name '.css' -print0 | xargs -0 -I {} sh -c 'echo "Full path: {}"; echo "-------------------"; cat "{}"; printf "\n-------------------\n"' > combined_output.txt
by username223 | 2025-10-19 16:47:23+00:00
"I have been assured by a very knowing American of my acquaintance in London, that a young healthy child well nursed, is, at a year old, a most delicious nourishing and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted, baked, or boiled; and I make no doubt that it will equally serve in a fricassee, or a ragout."

Would Sam Altman even understand the original, or would he just wander ignorantly into the kitchen and fling some salt at it (https://www.ft.com/content/b1804820-c74b-4d37-b112-1df882629...)? I'm not optimistic about our modern oligarchs.
by bamboozled | 2025-10-19 16:47:23+00:00
“Let’s suppose that you were able every night to dream any dream that you wanted to dream, and that you could, for example, have the power within one night to dream 75 years of dreams, or any length of time you wanted to have. And you would, naturally as you began on this adventure of dreams, you would fulfill all your wishes. You would have every kind of pleasure you could conceive. And after several nights, of 75 years of total pleasure each, you would say ‘Well, that was pretty great. But now let’s have a surprise. Let’s have a dream which isn’t under control. Where something is gonna happen to me that I don’t know what it’s gonna be.’ And you would dig that and come out of that and say ‘Wow, that was a close shave, wasn’t it?’. And then you would get more and more adventurous, and you would make further and further out gambles as to what you would dream. And finally, you would dream where you are now. You would dream the dream of living the life that you are actually living today.”

~Alan Watts…
by beeflet | 2025-10-19 16:47:31+00:00
>They're not coming for all jobs.

So we are all going to just do useless bullcrap like sell artisan clay pots to each other and pimp each other out? Wow, some future!

I just don't know how this goofball economy is going to work out when a handful elites/AI overlords control everything you need to eat and survive and everyone else is weaving them artisan wicker baskets and busking (jobs which are totally automated and redundant, have you, but the elites would keep us around for the sentimental value).

>I imagine in the future, many people will be paid full time to be part of scientific studies that can't easily be done today, such as extended, large cohort diet and exercise studies of people in metabolic chambers.

Yeah this is one plausible future, we could all be lab rats testing the next cancer medicine or donating organs to the elites. I can't imagine the conditions will be very humane, being that the unwashed masses will have basically no leverage to negotiate their pay.
by quickthrowman | 2025-10-19 16:47:59+00:00
I would expect a refrigerator that has EC motors running the compressor(s) and fan(s) to be around 2-2.5x as efficient as one with fixed speed motors, based on what I know about variable frequency drives and three-phase induction motors. For those, 80% speed uses 50% of the power, 63% uses 25% of the power. For an 1800 rpm motor that is 1440 rpm and 1134 rpm. VFDs work well for most applications with variable torque (fans and pumps), but applications requiring constant torque (saws, grinders, etc) are better served by fixed speed starters.
by JumpCrisscross | 2025-10-19 16:48:11+00:00
> Spherical cows are about simplifying assumptions that lead to absurd conclusions

There aren’t any commonly-accepted conclusions from spherical cows because the bit is the punch line. It’s a joke a physics 101 student makes when toughing through problems that assume away any real-world complexity and thus applicability.

Spherical cows, in the real world, are pedagogical tools first, approximations second, and mis-applied models by inexperienced practitioners third.

“Hello World” is a spherical cow. Simplifying assumptions about data are spherical cows. (And real dairy farmers implicitly assume flat cows when using square feet to determine how much room and grazing area they need per head.)
by throaway1988 | 2025-10-19 16:48:26+00:00
Once AI gets good enough, we will be able to tailor it. It (our agent that we personally use) will tell us what is AI and what is not ai generated, if we wish it. But until then, it’s a disaster zone. A holocaust for integrity lol.

If you think this is naive and optimistic, ask yourself, what more valuable technology would there be than an AI agent thats legitimately accurate? It will replace search, it will replace gui. Just tell it what to do.
by vineyardmike | 2025-10-19 16:48:56+00:00
Economies of Scale have been such a huge influence on the last ~by 300 years of industrial change. In 1725 people sat at home hand crafting things to sell to neighbors. In 1825, capitalists were able to open factories that hired people. By 1925, those products were built in a massive factory that employed the entire town and were shipped all over the country on rail roads. By 2025 factories might be partially automated while hiring tens of thousands of people, cost billions to build and the products get distributed globally. The same trend applies to knowledge work as well, despite the rise of personal computing.

Companies are spending hundreds of millions of dollars on training AI models, why wouldn’t they expect to own the reward from that investment? These models are best run on $100k+ fleets of power hungry, interconnected GPUs, just like factory equipment vs a hand loom.

Open weight models are a political and marketing tool. They’re not being opened up out of kindness, or because “data wants to be free”. AI firms open models to try and destabilize American companies by “dumping”, and AI firms open models as a way to incentivize companies who don’t like closed-source models to buy their hosted services.
by franga2000 | 2025-10-19 16:49:21+00:00
This is exactly why I put "the government" in quotes. The parent post was saying "the government" should just fix the underlying problem instead of showing AI progress. This has the same problem - no government can do that alone.

So it's either "we all science ourselves out of a job and die from uncontrolled capitalism" or "we try to do something about the uncontrolled capitalism and in the meantime, everyone else keeps sciencing everyone out of a job". The result is the same, but some of us at least tried to do something about it.
by alphazard | 2025-10-19 16:49:47+00:00
I think we are just using the word competence differently. It's not an innate quality. It's an observed quality. I would define it as the ability to perform a task well.

Flipping a coin has no skill component, it's all chance. It's impossible to be competent at flipping a coin. Poker has a skill component. A single hand is mostly luck, but repeated hands tend to result in the same few players having more at the end. That is observable evidence that poker has a skill component, and it make sense to call people with that skill "competent at poker".

If a problem is complex or unpredictable, then there will be a luck component, but chain enough of those together (like over the course of a few quarters at a company), and the luck washes out leaving a skill signal.

The short-term noise actually helps those in imposter roles hide their lack of competence. It's like a poker player that never bets, and decays their bankroll slowly enough that no one really notices. Then through politics they are able to get a refill, and stay at the table to let it slowly decay again.
by alterom | 2025-10-19 16:49:50+00:00
Yeah, as if reading and understanding RFCs was the pastime of the commoner in Ye Olde Dayse.

Or as if the vibe-coder of today would've totally™ definitely© be the type of person to peruse the RFCs.

It's like saying the the proof of, say, Seifert-van Kampen theorem is "forgotten" because nowadays, my friend, people ask ChatGPT to write out solutions to their math homework.
by bamboozled | 2025-10-19 16:51:44+00:00
This is a pretty ancient idea, it’s interesting how there is an intersection beteeen AI and god, I don’t think our minds can avoid it.

Hindus believed god was the thing you describe, infinitely intelligent, able to do several things at once etc, and they believe we’re part of that things dream…to literally keep things spicy. Just as an elephant is part of that dream.

I pasted an interesting quote in another comment by Alan Watts that sums it up better.

Simulation theory is another version of religion imo.
by Imustaskforhelp | 2025-10-19 16:52:14+00:00
I think I have discovered gold in the comments

Someone makes a comment about how its okay for things to be replaced in specialization in business

Then someone equates it to intimacy

Then someone says its only possible in HN

Then we get into some nifty discussion of can we argue about the similarity between marriage and job contracts and first they disagree

Now we come to your comment which I can kinda agree about and here is my take

Marriage and business both require some definition of laws and a trust in state which comes out of how state has a monopoly (well legal monopoly) over violence and how it can punish people who don't follow laws over it and how the past record of it handling cases have been

As an example, I doubt how marriages can be a good mutually binding legal agreement in something like saudi arabia which is mysognistic. Same can be said for exploitations in businesses for countries, same countries like saudia arabia and qatar have some people from south asia like india etc. in a sort of legal slavery where they are forced to reside in their own designated quarters of the country and they are insanely restricted. Look it up.

Also off topic but I asked LLM's to find countries where divorce for women are illegal and I confirmed it, as an example, divorce in philipines for non muslims are banned (muslim woman's divorces are handled via sharia law) I have since fact checked it as well via searching but it's just that divorce itself isn't an option in philipines but rather limiting marital dissolution to annulment or legal separation

"In the Philippines, the general legal framework under the Family Code prohibits absolute divorce for the majority of the population, limiting marital dissolution to annulment or legal separation " [1]

[1]: source: https://www.respicio.ph/commentaries/divorce-under-muslim-pe...
by 1970-01-01 | 2025-10-19 16:52:42+00:00
This is a great point. I would make the counterargument that app translators doing simple transactions of languageA to languageB for $X was possible a decade ago. AI certainly has made that low hanging fruit impossible to capitalize at speed and scale. Since AI has made the easiest part of translator's jobs much harder to monetize, translators can still offer value in lengthy transactions. Books that are to be translated for publishing, legal documents, and languages that are not understood by AI.
by theptip | 2025-10-19 16:52:58+00:00
Humanoid robotics (ie replacing the majority of workers) is highly software-limited right now.

Here’s a napkin-sketch proof: for many decades we have had hardware that is capable of dextrously automating specific tasks (eg car manufacture) but the limitation is the control loop; you have to hire a specialist to write g-code or whatever, it’s difficult to adapt to hardware variance (slop, wear, etc) let alone adjust the task to new requirements.

If you look at the current “robot butler” hardware startups they are working on: 1) making hardware affordable, 2) inventing the required software.

Nothing in my post suggested costs go to zero. In the AGI scenario you assume software costs halve every N years, which means more software is written, and timelines for valuable projects get dramatically compressed.
Show HN: Photerra – One app to discover hidden gems, plan with friends, and book
by davidlevien | 2025-10-19 16:53:24+00:00
Hey HN — I'm David, and I built Photerra to solve a problem I kept running into: planning trips meant juggling dozens of browser tabs, Google Sheets, and the same recycled "top 10" lists everyone else sees.

Photerra turns geolocated photos into map spots you can organize into trips, share with friends, and book from — all in one flow.

The core idea: photos with GPS → actual spots on a map → drag into trip days → share → book.

What makes Photerra different:

• Real locations, not just POIs — Your photos have EXIF GPS data, so you're adding exact spots (that actual spot on the trail, not just “Yosemite” - no address needed).

• End-to-end flow — Discover → plan → coordinate → book, without switching between 5 apps.

• Photo-grounded data — Community spots come from real photos, not scraped listicles, so you find more off-path places.

• Works for everyday wandering — Not just big trips. Save local spots and open them in Maps or Uber with one tap.

Try it: iOS and Android apps are live (links in comments). I've seeded content in SF, Portland, LA, San Diego, Hawaii, Philly, Yosemite, and Mexico City.

Tech: React Native + RN-Maps on mobile; NestJS + TypeORM/MySQL + AWS on backend.

What I'd love feedback on:

• Is the photo→spot→trip flow intuitive on first use?

• What's missing to make this truly start-to-finish for your trips?

• Any friction in auth, maps, or sharing?

Be blunt — it's helpful. Happy to answer questions!

— David (solo, first-time founder)
by collinmanderson | 2025-10-19 16:53:35+00:00
> isn't "we made a machine to do something that people used to do" basically the entire history of of technology?

I know, right? Machines have been gradually replacing humans for centuries. Will we actually get to the point where there are not enough jobs left? It doesn't seem like we're currently anywhere close to the point of not having any jobs available.

Has anyone thought about how the Federal Reserve plays a role with this? Automation puts downward pressure on inflation, because it doesn't cost as much to make stuff. The Federal Reserve will heavily incentivize job creation if inflation is low enough and there aren't enough jobs available, right?
by Ray20 | 2025-10-19 16:53:54+00:00
> make a mess of the economy

You're not taking something into account. The economy is becoming stronger, more productive, and more efficient because of this. The brain drain from all other fields to the few highest-paying ones is decreasing.

> The people replaced by AI don’t have a similar path.

They have a better path: get a real job that will bring real benefit to society. Stop being parasites and start doing productive work. Yes, goods and services don't fall from the sky, and to create them, you have to get your hands dirty.
by SideburnsOfDoom | 2025-10-19 16:53:55+00:00
"The relevant antitrust authorities" aren't going to be able to touch anyone who manufactures in China, and that is currently the centre of battery manufacturing. I have nothing against batteries and EVs and solar panels made in China. They are a huge benefit to humanity as a whole. But it should not be a chokepoint.

But the rest stands. The barriers aren't that high. How soon it is diversified, depends on how much attention the other countries and companies are paying.
by davidlevien | 2025-10-19 16:54:04+00:00
Quick links:

• Web: https://photerra.com.

• iOS: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/photerra/id1621490090.

• Android: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.app.photer....

• Privacy/Terms: https://photerra.com/privacy · https://photerra.com/terms.

One way to try it:

1. Install → sign in (Apple/Google/email).

2. Add spots from your camera roll (we read EXIF GPS) or drop pins manually.

3. Build a trip: drag spots into days, share with friends.

4. From your plan, open provider deep links to finish booking.

Or just explore: open the map and use the filter dropdown to browse seeded spots in your area.

For local exploring too! You don't need a trip planned. Walk your neighborhood, save spots from recent photos, then tap any spot → "Open in Maps" or "Ride with Uber/Lyft." Fast way to turn "I should check that place out" into actually going.

Seeded areas (actively adding content): San Francisco, Portland, San Diego, Los Angeles, Hawaii, Philadelphia, Yosemite & Sequoia National Parks, Mexico City. If you're local and want to help seed spots, reach out!

Known limitations:

• EXIF stripped? (common with cloud exports) → You can still add spots manually via map.

• Large photo dumps: Clustering is on; first load may take a moment on older devices.

• Offline maps and more export formats are on the roadmap.

Coming soon:

• Instant Add (bulk upload): Dump a backlog of photos and auto-create map spots in one pass (titles/categories are quick-editable). Shipping shortly; I'll update this thread when live.

• Fine-tuning affiliate links.

FAQs:

• Why not just use ChatGPT/LLMs for trip planning?

LLMs pull from the same public POI datasets and listicles everyone sees. Photerra builds from user-contributed, photo-verified GPS coordinates — more off-path, high-signal spots, less recycled top-10s. (You can still use AI helpers inside Photerra, but the core data is different).

• Why require sign-in?

Needed for sync and abuse prevention. Exploring a guest mode based on feedback here.

• Privacy?

Delete your account in-app anytime. No ad-tech. EXIF is optional (manual pins work fine). Standard analytics and crash logs only. Full details: photerra.com/privacy.

• Export options?

PDF export available for trip itineraries; other formats on the roadmap.

Related HN threads:

• Show HN: Ikuyo — a Travel Planning Web Application.

• Show HN: Ambulate — Detailed Trip Planning.

• Show HN: Itineraries.io — joint trip planner.

• Show HN: I built a web app to open source travel itineraries.

• Show HN: Myphotos.site — Make a gallery website from Google Photos.

• Show HN: Travel Guide Tool — Personalized Recs & Itineraries.

Around for questions and feedback. Email works too (on the site). Thanks for checking it out!
by Johnny555 | 2025-10-19 16:54:23+00:00
But do they? Does the person taking on that broken refrigerator know that it has a flaw that makes it consume so much electricity that in 3 years the power use alone would cost more than buying a brand new refrigerator?

(ok, in this case they gave it to someone that needs a temporary 'fridge during renovations, so it's kind of a moot point, they aren't just giving it to "poor people")
by itsnowandnever | 2025-10-19 16:55:15+00:00
commentary from first time staff engineers should be taken with a grain of salt because they can be silly trying to prove themselves. same as first time people managers with an engineering background. if they're not a few iterations through the engineering manager pendulum, they're still getting their bearings.

if you're at a company where leadership doesn't understand this, do your mental health a favor and leave.
by xpe | 2025-10-19 16:55:35+00:00
> This is what government is for, and not to stifle innovation

We should compare how anti-government politicians talk versus how trained, educated neoclassical economists talk. The latter readily recognize that a valid function of government is to steer, shape, and yes, regulate markets to some degree. This is why we don’t have (for example) legal, open markets for murder.

Markets do not define human values; they are a coordination mechanism given a diverse set of values.
by thelastgallon | 2025-10-19 16:56:10+00:00
The missing piece is the material science advances to get the 100% fidelity mouth/etc feel. Once we have that breakthrough, all men will just buy those devices (and video games) and chill. No need for any of these questionable biological services (marriage, etc) with no guarantee and a whole lot of heartache.

Any company that solves this problem will be a $10T company.
by andsoitis | 2025-10-19 16:56:24+00:00
There's an opportunity to break out of the LRUD-driven user interfaces and input modality.

Only issue is all the TV apps that will run on this virtual smart TV assume LRUD, so I don't have high hopes for a transcendent advancement in usability. Not even Apple, who introduced a touch remote, control the Apple TV (hardware) and the Apple TV app attempted to supersede LRUD.

LG's pointer-based input devices (you can think of it as a mouse) have been with us for many years now, but hasn't caught on with more device manufacturers.

Some people hold out hope for Voice UI, but it has a number of downsides that make it worse than LRUD.

Once you rethink the vending machine interface, maybe a different modality reveals it self.
by woodruffw | 2025-10-19 16:57:36+00:00
I don’t know what niche you inhabit, but anecdotally the overwhelming majority of engineers I know have consulted an RFC. RFCs are an active component in the Internet; you need to at least reference them (if not fully read them) to understand how various parts of the Internet interoperate.

(It seems extremely unlikely that the average non-junior engineer hasn’t opened up RFC 3339 or one of the HTTP caching RFCs, just for example.)
by silisili | 2025-10-19 16:57:36+00:00
I've always thought more state power was probably a good thing - the US is simply so huge and diverse in thought and religion that you'll always be upsetting a large swath of people no matter what you decide.

That said, as a fly on the wall, my obvious observation from people at large is a direct correlation between how much power they believe states should have and whether or not they belong to the party in power. So it's definitely worth the exercise of seeing if you'd feel the same way still if your exact clone ran the federal government.