MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by freedomben | 2025-10-22 14:05:52+00:00
> Is there a name for this “value stuffing”? This seems to appeal to some form of subconscious hoarding. There is no possible way that you’ll listen to 20,000 audiobooks.

If you read what I said, I explicitly scope limited my criticism. It should be pretty clear that I didn't (and don't claim to have) listened to 20,000 audiobooks (emphasis added in quote below):

> That said, the vast majority of the recordings from Librivox I've listened to are pretty bad.

As sibling comment noted, there is an entire field called "statistics" that works by confidently making predictions about an entire population based on a reasonably sized sample. So even if I were applying my opinions to the entire library, it would still be reasonable. Over the years I've listened to at 500 to 600 hours of audiobooks from there, maybe even into the thousands.

Also, please explain what you mean by "some form of subconscious hoarding"
by n4r9 | 2025-10-22 14:05:54+00:00
I don't think that people are stopped from committing assault by an abstract risk-benefit calculation that considers the likelihood of jailtime. It's not what stops me, at least. Mostly I just don't want to. And even if I do want to hit someone, I know that that fleeting temptation doesn't accord with my fundamental values; I'll feel bad afterwards. I'm intimately aware that they might retaliate, or that I might accidentally kill them (or vice versa). It just doesn't feel worth it because I've been socialised to weigh up those odds. But the distant prospect of jail time feels abstract and harder to socialise into people in the heat of the moment.
by randycupertino | 2025-10-22 14:06:05+00:00
Here's a link to the original report: https://blog.stackademic.com/aws-just-fired-40-of-its-devops...

> But by the afternoon, nearly 40% of AWS’s DevOps employees were cut in a single internal strike.

> An email memo, which was briefly posted on the internal wiki before being taken down, blamed the cuts on strategic automation initiatives.
by stared | 2025-10-22 14:06:20+00:00
Sure, advertising is profitable. Yet, there are various regulations or social norms telling what is available and what is not. For example, we can think of covering a landmark "because it is profitable" - e.g. think of dressing the Statue of Liberty in clothes of a given brand, or covering the Greek Pantheon in free-to-play game ads.

Of course, tastes matter. The US is littered with (in real world) advertising banners, my native Poland - even more. But there are quite a few places in the Europe in which people would consider it off putting to use a glowing sign on a historical or otherwise clean design.

So it is about both tastes and regulations.

> most people are reluctant to spend money, but they're ok to "spend" their attention and their data

This is a tricky part. Kind of miss times when we were buying paper newspapers.

But let's take an example - devs were reluctant to pay $ for services. Not everyone and their dog pays for tokens.
by kragen | 2025-10-22 14:06:21+00:00
For a couple of different reasons.

The first is literary merit: reading Harry Potter is a great deal more enjoyable than reading Bechdolt's book. Rowling may not be Homer or Shakespeare, and there are things about her books that could be better, but reading them has been an extremely popular activity since they were first published. I suspect that, if there are people in 200 years, less of them will read Rowling than do today. But there are still people reading works first published 200 years ago today, even fictional works. Pride and Prejudice was published in 01813, Frankenstein was first published in 01818, Rip Van Winkle was published in 01819, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow was published in 01820, The Last of the Mohicans was published in 01826, Self-Reliance was published in 01841, The Cask of Amontillado was published in 01846. Maybe Rowling doesn't rise to the level of Austen, but I'd definitely put her above Washington Irving and James Fenimore Cooper.

The second is that the humans, unable to think about the world directly, instead think in terms of narratives and metaphors, and they get these narratives and metaphors from the stories that other humans tell, which are necessarily more or less fictional, even when they attempt to describe reality. In order to understand human culture, then, there is no replacement for understanding those stories. Harry Potter, like Rambo, The Matrix, and Frankenstein, supplies metaphors and narratives through which nearly everyone today interprets the world around them, even if they haven't read it themselves; and its influence will continue as long as there are people.

If you want to understand how English-speaking people thought 200 years ago, or how people think today, you should read Frankenstein, among other things. And if someone in 200 years wants to understand how people think today, they should also read Harry Potter.

This is obvious sometimes when people use words from the books—Muggles, horcrux, mudblood—but it also happens in a much subtler and more pervasive way.

Bechdolt's book just doesn't have the same kind of importance.
Show HN: Project Juno – my experiment in modeling compatibility with AI
by MrMilkshake | 2025-10-22 14:06:33+00:00
Hey HN, this is my first post.

I built this as a prototype and a way to get my idea out there — to see if others find it interesting and to hopefully meet like-minded people.

The project is called Project Juno — an experiment in using AI to model compatibility based on values, habits, and communication style rather than engagement metrics.

There’s a whitepaper on the site that explains the concept, and I’ve set up a small Discord to discuss it and connect with anyone who’s curious or might want to collaborate.

https://www.projectjuno.ai
by ratelimitsteve | 2025-10-22 14:06:35+00:00
>It's a trivial kindness and it takes a few seconds

We're doing 2200 covers tonight. If you know what that means then you know I don't have a few seconds to spare, and if you don't then you're not really qualified to have this discussion.

>Further if the restaurant asks ahead of time, that's a signifier that they take it seriously. If you have to tell them, it's much more likely you will encounter cavalier treatment of cross-contamination and such

These are provable statements. Prove them.
by tmvphil | 2025-10-22 14:07:06+00:00
Not sure what the slippery slope is here. The linked page imagines a 4km x 4km radiator/solar array. The cross-sectional area of the array is going to be directly proportional to the probability of impacting high velocity space debris. In such an event the amount of debris that would be generated could also scale with the area of the array. This seems bad
by marginalia_nu | 2025-10-22 14:07:08+00:00
It does index bits of NYT, but coverage is pretty spotty outside of their archives. They put a lot of crawler countermeasures up on their main site (which I guess is fair, they have a business to run), but author biographies are generally accessible, including Ezra's[1].

Though since the search engine doesn't really apply much in terms of domain authority, this doesn't rank very highly, the websites that talk about Ezra Klein rank higher.

[1] https://marginalia-search.com/search?query=site%3Anytimes.co...
by amiga386 | 2025-10-22 14:07:13+00:00
There are 53 states (out of 193 UN states + 2 observer states) that have not abolished, and continue to use the death penalty.

"First-world" is Cold War terminology meaning Western countries and their allies, as opposed to second-world Warsaw Pact states and their allies, versus third-world non-aligned states. This would include death penalty states like Pakistan and Iran, who at one point were British dominions.

If we instead mean "developed countries" (as defined by the IMF), then 4 out of 60 developed countries have not abolished the death penalty: they are the United States, Japan, Singapore and Taiwan.

The other 49 states continuing to use the death penalty (including China) are not considered "developed countries" by the IMF.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_punishment_by_country
by Forgeties79 | 2025-10-22 14:07:18+00:00
AI scraping, online harassment, etc. makes people like me want to build more of a “fort” than an open community because I feel a responsibility to protect the community we’ve already built.

Discord makes it somewhat easy to keep folks/entities out that you don’t want around, hence so many hobbies and such moving into the space off traditional forums and social media. But it also silos off knowledge which means other folks can’t find it. It’s a real catch 22
by wutbrodo | 2025-10-22 14:07:19+00:00
I may be missing something, but I don't see how this clearly precludes that behavior.

Which descriptor do you think is unambiguously violated by making it easier to provide consent than withhold it? To my eyes, both 'freely' and 'informed' are plausibly upheld.

It would be very straightforward to specify that consent and withholding must be equally accessible in the interface, instead of splitting hairs about definitions of "freely given". This is what people refer to when they say the law is poorly written
by Tepix | 2025-10-22 14:07:20+00:00
If you give the LLM more context (i.e. the player's past actions) and some directions such as "don't make any suggestions", I think you can get good results. Yes, they may not always be perfect.

For the types of responses, needed long term context shouldn't be required.

Anyway, I noticed that on a standard laptop, getting a response from the Chrome Prompt API running Gemini nano takes a rather long time.
by abc123abc123 | 2025-10-22 14:07:37+00:00
I disagree. He sounds like an excellent, intelligent, potentially attractive employee.

People who signal that MS is sh*t are always worthwhile to listen to. They have character and principles, and they know bad and good software when they see it.

Needless to say, in my company all microsoft products are banned and I would never hire microsoft fanboys.
by scotty79 | 2025-10-22 14:07:40+00:00
This reminds me so much of fashion and what young people find cool and not as the time passes.

Enslaving our media to what triggers the cravings of the masses was probably one of the dumbest thing we did. And we owe it, like many other terrible things, to ad industry.

It's a parasite of the economy and cancer of society. Serves no useful purpose beyond what an open access database of all products and services could cheaply fulfill.
by n4r9 | 2025-10-22 14:07:46+00:00
I think most people who commit a crime either do it in the heat of the moment, or believe that they're very unlikely to get caught. The distant prospect of punishment doesn't apply in either case.

I guess there are some edge cases. Drug smugglers for example are probably aware of the rough probability of detection and weigh it up against the length of jail time. But I reckon Sarkozy thought he'd just get away with it and didn't even consider what the potential punishment would be.
by IMTDb | 2025-10-22 14:08:36+00:00
It's also worth noting that members of the second system had his picture pinned on a wall called "The wall of the assholes"[1] amongst other political and public servant they did not like. They still claim they are totally independent and impartial when judging any of these figures.

[1] (French Wikipedia article about the affair) https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affaire_du_%C2%AB_Mur_des_cons...
by alephnerd | 2025-10-22 14:08:50+00:00
I'm not fully behind this argument, largely because this argument overindexes American success which is directly related to continuing to leverage the brain drain as well as manage a multilateral coalition.

Furthermore, Beckley is a member of the AEI and FPRI - both of whom played a role in Project 2025's foreign policy goals) - and has been strongly in favor of Trump's current foreign policy goals, arguing that American unilateralism will allow America to ascend other nations [0], which is not neccesarily true.

Additonally, this argument removes the agency that regional powers have and their ability to coalesce when needed, such as Japan-Australia-Korea-India cooperation in the Indo-Pac and ASEAN, along with Japanese and Korean leverage across much of ASEAN.

Finally, the power differential between a "great" and "regional" power is rapidly diminishing, as Russia's experience in Ukraine is clearly showing, despite Ukraine at first glance being a much weaker country that cannot project power to the same degree that Russia can. A regional power is by definition a power that can match head-to-head against a larger power within it's specific region. Thus, as regional powers increasingly retool and build domestic capacity, the power differential for "great" powers is steadily reduced.

I agree that American doomerism is overblown to a certain extent, but America's advantage lies in multilateral coalition management, as a NATO+, QUAD+, NAFTA, and other transnational coalitions not only give regional powers a say, but also prevent them from building their own alternative compacts.

[0] - https://www.aei.org/multimedia/america-ascendant-beckley-on-...
by canto | 2025-10-22 14:09:35+00:00
It's absolutely stunning that people actually defend this behaviour!

The community is having an outrage - and rightfully so - about a silently discontinued artifact delivery at a very critical time. Which is their opinion and every human being is entitled to have their own opinion and state it openly.

It is also perfectly fine to expect a standardised behaviour to continue.

However, what is most important is that is perfectly fine to shame an open source product for pulling features and money grabbing people after years of gathering community and locking them in.
by keiferski | 2025-10-22 14:10:18+00:00
This is just the bundling of one product with another. Personally I get the Financial Times as a benefit of another service I pay for. It’s worth it to me, but I don’t really interpret a newspaper as being the arbiter of democracy in the first place.

But if we interpreted the headline as if the article was actually about the idea: I do think there is an interesting idea (which I first read in Byung-Chul Han‘a The Transparency Society) which is that trust and transparency are functionally opposites. We tend to treat transparency as an automatically good thing in democratic systems, but I think you can make the argument that the call for transparency only comes after trust has already been lost.

So it’s not really a solution to a more democratic system that results in more trust between constituents and representatives, but rather just a way to deal with the loss of trust in an ostensibly practical way.
by Nextgrid | 2025-10-22 14:10:31+00:00
> even if they themselves didn't commit any crimes

Does that still even exist? The problem I see in politics is that everyone has their hand in the cookie jar to some degree.

You don't get into politics unless you already have your hand in there, or are given the option to prove yourself where moving up the ranks involves helping someone getting their hand in there, with the unspoken assumption that they'll return the favor. And of course once you're in and have your hand in there, why rock the boat and waste all that effort?
by gerhardi | 2025-10-22 14:10:58+00:00
I used to drive for five years (2015-2020) a 2009 naturally aspirated petrol Jaguar XF and it had zero issues except a single vacuum hose leak during my 100 000 kilometers (from 120 000 to 220 000) or so. The original rear upper wishbone arms were replaced and no more than expected normal wear & tear brake part replacements were needed. I still sometimes think that I'd like to have one again because in my opinion it was a quite nice and comfortable ride and turned out to be very good value as a used vehicle!

Maybe I had some kind of exception or are there dramatic differences between models and engines?
by timr | 2025-10-22 14:11:09+00:00
No. US courts consider both, to the extent that it’s a bright-line divider between “conservative” judges and “liberal” ones, where the former are far more likely to profess strict adherence to the text of the law (particularly constitutional law).

In any case, there is always a difference between the “intent” of a large and diverse body of politicians, and the actual text of a law. Any practical legal system must take it into consideration.
by apgwoz | 2025-10-22 14:11:11+00:00
We’re going to see a bigger rise up of independent media, and that means that Substack, Patreon, and other platforms that exist to spread a message to paid subscribers are vulnerable to the same buy and squash tactics as traditional media.

We certainly need a more P2P, version of this type of platform and a way to fund and scale it such that it can’t be messed with by billionaire hacks.

The odds of this being wildly successful are pretty slim, I’d say…
by freedomben | 2025-10-22 14:11:15+00:00
I had a similar desire but wasn't able to find anything through Librivox directly. Not everything is up there (at least when I was checking), but I ended up going through archive.org for a number of big collections using the torrent option. I've been seeding some of those torrents now for years and they get very little traffic so I have no problem keeping them up indefinitely.
by regentbowerbird | 2025-10-22 14:11:38+00:00
Our culture values the act of buying things for social status (consumerism), and one of the main reasons for that is advertising.

You're assuming people would still have the same amount of money, but for most money is not a given, and people strive to earn money precisely because they want to buy the things they were advertised.

Without the social pressure to acquire things one doesn't need, it's very possible people might simply work less and use that time for other things.
Show HN: Echorb – An orchestration layer for multiple AI CLI assistants
by giovannibekker | 2025-10-22 14:11:39+00:00
Hi HN,

I built ECHORB (https://virtual-life.dev/echorb), a desktop app for managing multiple AI assistants (like Claude Code, Codex, etc.) that can communicate with each other.

As a developer, I wanted to stop copy-pasting between AI chats and instead have a "System Orchestrator" that could delegate specific tasks to a team of specialized AI agents (e.g., frontend, QA, image generation).

ECHORB allows you to do this through a single interface. It also includes features for creating automated workflows (triggered by schedules, webhooks, or file changes) and simplified Git worktree management.

It's a commercial tool at $10/month, but there is a 60-day free trial with no credit card required.

I built this solo and would love to get your feedback and answer any questions.
by Gazoche | 2025-10-22 14:11:53+00:00
I've barely started reading the post, but

> “In space, you get almost unlimited, low-cost renewable energy”

Low cost???????? Sending a solar array into space would probably rank among the most expensive forms of energy production.

> Starcloud’s space-based data centers can use the vacuum of deep space as an infinite heat sink.

Well, good luck getting the heat out first. I hope you planned for some big radiators to go along your 5GW solar array.
by rob | 2025-10-22 14:13:00+00:00
> the new Defender got to be the worst Land Rover ever built

No it isn't. I own a 2022 D90 P300 with 18" wheels, coils, front jump seat, everything. It's been great for ~40,000 miles. I'm constantly on dirt and rocky roads here. It's never let me down.

They're used by tons of people for offroading and modified heavily as well, with companies like Sarek, Lucky8, etc.

The only people who hate on new Defenders are the ones that love the ~25 year old versions with 200,000 miles, tons of rust, a diesel engine that can barely make it to highway speeds, and spends more time in the garage every weekend than "exploring." But hey, they're cooler than us because they work on their cars and have a manual transmission.
by randycupertino | 2025-10-22 14:13:09+00:00
> In her December TRO filing, Ritter alleged, “Unfortunately, my former partner is extraordinarily powerful and capable and has used every mean[s] to block me from getting access to secure data, devices, finances, or businesses, or to simply live my life in peace.”

> Two days before the December filing, Ritter’s parents allegedly were followed to and from dinner at an LA restaurant by a pair of private eyes. The cops were called and when officers questioned the PIs, one said he worked for a “billionaire’s private security detail” and was “not going to wake him up,” according to the filing.

He does seem to have a lot of drama with previous his exes as well, this NYTimes article about his decades long messy breakup with his previous mistress was also crazy:

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/12/technology/eric-schmidt-a...
by triceratops | 2025-10-22 14:13:58+00:00
> Human bodies don't adapt much to become more metabolically efficient

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-exercise-para...

That's not what recent research indicates. The author has written a book about this as well.

It's the key evidence behind the idea that you can't outrun your fork. To lose weight diet is the only way. Exercise gives you a nicer-looking, stronger body but it can't do much to make you shed fat.
by brightball | 2025-10-22 14:14:03+00:00
> You blame “short sighted” political motivations, I blame a ketamine-addled fickle billionaire who can’t keep his impulses in check. He consistently acts like a petulant, drunk child. We’ve seen it over and over again.

When people are willing to waste taxpayer funds to go with a solution 3x more expensive, it's absolutely a short sighted political motivation. Nobody who actually answers to their constituents could waste money to that degree.
by MangoToupe | 2025-10-22 14:14:12+00:00
Now let's run this experiment against the editorial boards in newsrooms.

Obviously, AI isn't an improvement, but people who blindly trust the news have always been credulous rubes. It's just that the alternative is being completely ignorant of the worldviews of everyone around you.

Peer-reviewed science is as close as we can get to good consensus and there's a lot of reasons this doesn't work for reporting.
by taylodl | 2025-10-22 14:14:32+00:00
Meanwhile, the median family income in the United States is roughly $80K. So, let's do some math. The average tax burden (local, state, federal) in the United States is 30%. Employers pay, on average, 70% of health insurance plan premiums. The employee then pays 30%. That's $8,100 dollars for the year. That's paid pre-tax, so our taxable income is now $71,900 which you get to keep 70%, or $50,330. The median monthly family housing cost is $2,035 or $24,420. Taken from my $71,900 of earnings I'm left with $47,480 of income for the year.

Of course that isn't all of your out-of-pocket medical costs (co-pays and prescriptions) that you're going to pay before you've hit your annual deductible. I'm seeing estimates for those costs for a family ranging anywhere from $2,000 per year (which seems low) to $9,000 per year (which seems high) - but "seems" is just what I'm paying. The middle would be $5,500, which seems a little high, but I know people who would be hitting that. Anyway that $5,500 needs to come off that $47,480 to leave us with $41,980 or roughly $3,500 per month to pay everything but the rent: retirement savings, food, utilities, transportation, etc. For a family of 4.

Now you see why Americans are stressed and the division we're seeing is primarily a result of that stress due to people's different perceptions of how to best "fix" it.