MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by thomastjeffery | 2025-10-13 19:09:23+00:00
The real problem is not "AI". The problem is everything around it.

Human communication has been consolidated, monopolized, and enshittified, by corporations whose very existence is dependent on political outcomes.

Political engagement can be effectively reduced to engagement. It doesn't matter what narrative or presentation is used, only that an audience engages with it, and associates it positively with your political in-group. No political group in history has played this game as well as the contemporary alt-right United States GOP. This was the case at least as long ago as 2016, long before GPT's 2022 launch.

Generative statistical models (I reject the anthropomorphization that "Artificial Intelligence" implies) do not change the game; they only provide the means to amplify engagement, and thereby play the game more, which happens to be the same thing as winning.

---

Now is as good a time as any for a revolution in digital communication. If we can liberate people from enshittified social platforms, we can even the playing field for engagement. That won't solve the problem, but it might get us a solid step in the right direction.

So what can we do about it?

Decentralized platforms exist. They are even doing relatively well, but is that enough? Probably not. As long as corporate platforms can engage with hundreds of millions of people, progress is stalled. Decentralized platforms may be able to "compete", but they are not in a practical position to win this game. Corporate monopolies have moats on their side, and those moats are guarded by law. How can we expect a significant majority of users to leave Facebook when Facebook itself can legally reject platform interoperability?

The cards are stacked against us. I don't have the solution, but the more I think about it, the more I doubt that solution can be compatible with the law.
by drdeca | 2025-10-13 19:09:25+00:00
Here are some applications of eigenvectors and eigenvalues:

1) If you have a set of states and a stochastic transition function, which gives for each starting state, the probability distribution over what the state will be at the next time step, you can describe this as a matrix. The long-term behavior of applying this can be described using the eigenvectors and eigenvalues of this matrix. Any stable distribution will be an eigenvector with eigenvalue 1. If there is periodicity to the behavior, where for some initial distributions, the distribution will change over time in a periodic way, where it ends up endlessly cycling through a finite set of distributions, then the matrix will have eigenvalues that are roots of unity (i.e. a complex number s such that s^n = 1 for some positive integer n). Eigenvalues with absolute value less than 1 correspond to transient contributions to the distribution which will decay (the closer to 0, the quicker the decay.). When there are finitely many states, there will always be at least one eigenvector with eigenvalue 1.

2) Related to (1), there is the PageRank algorithm, where one takes a graph where each node has links to other nodes, and one models a random walk on these nodes, and one uses the eigenvector one (approximately) finds in order to find the relative importance of the different nodes.

3) Rotations generally have eigenvalues that are complex numbers with length 1. As mentioned in (1), eigenvalues that are complex numbers with length 1 are associated with periodic/oscillating behavior. Well, I guess it sorta depends how you are using the matrix. If you have a matrix M with all of its eigenvalues purely imaginary, then exp(t M) (with t representing time) will describe oscillations with rates given by those eigenvalues. exp(t M) itself will have eigenvalues that are complex numbers of length 1. This is very relevant in solutions to higher order differential equations or differential equations where the quantity changing over time is a vector quantity.

____

But, for purposes of gamedev, I think probably the eigenvalues/eigenvectors are probably the less relevant things. Probably instead, at least for rendering and such, you want stuff like, "you can use homogeneous coordinates in order to incorporate translations and rotations into a single 4x4 matrix (and also for other things relating the 3d scene to the 2d screen)", and stuff about like... well, quaternions can be helpful.

Of course, it all depends what you are trying to do...
by guptadeepak | 2025-10-13 19:09:36+00:00
This piece explores why users perceive secure authentication as friction rather than protection. Three key insights stood out: 1. loss aversion drives users to avoid perceived effort 2. mental models of “security” lag behind actual threat models 3. familiarity bias favors weak but habitual patterns

Empirically, usability testing shows rejection rates rise sharply when authentication adds more than two new steps.

I’d love to hear from others—what design trade-offs have you found most effective in aligning user convenience with real security gains?
by triceratops | 2025-10-13 19:09:38+00:00
> If you ever want to sell

I already said that buybacks benefit sellers.

> share based M&A or compensation

All fair points. Share-based M&A can be good for investors. But if the stock price is going up because the company spent money on buybacks, then the company could also just pay cash for M&A and skip the buybacks.

Higher compensation is good for employees who get paid stock and for upper management, who are nearly always paid largely in stock. There's an argument that's good for shareholders because of better retention. But if that were the case, why not just pay employees more cash?
by constantius | 2025-10-13 19:09:41+00:00
Thanks for posting, an insightful overview of the ramifications of the Online Safety Act on online freedoms.

> Perhaps most troubling, the UK’s approach sets a dangerous precedent for global internet regulation. If every country can claim jurisdiction over any website accessible within its borders, the internet becomes subject to the most restrictive speech laws anywhere in the world.

Another interesting point is that the UK could just ban the websites it finds objectionable, but that'd expose them as a censor, so instead the strategy is to basically force those websites to withdraw from the market voluntarily (or comply), which is a much less revolting story to sell to its population.
by eimrine | 2025-10-13 19:10:07+00:00
Why disabling youtube recommendation? It is literally the only recommendation engine that works, just don't watch shite (at least from your account) and you will never be recommended of that. Other smartphone services are irrepairely wrong, but youtube is a search engine for what you dream. Everything you are searching in google or mentioning somewhere on youtube forum will be added to your "interests". Regular search is broken but the recommendation "search" is the best service I ever had, it is like an oldschool librarian who knows what book will interest you.
by marcosdumay | 2025-10-13 19:10:23+00:00
I don't think I have any issue with steer-by-wire as a concept. Yes, steering bars are very mature technology, but so are steering actuators.

Car manufacturers have just never bothered to do it right. If they cheapened as much on steering bars, it would break all the time too.

That said, OTA updates for basic functionality is an immediate blocker. Updates are by definition not mature technology.
by nasretdinov | 2025-10-13 19:10:27+00:00
BTW you could've used e.g. kittenhouse (https://github.com/YuriyNasretdinov/kittenhouse, my fork) or just a simpler buffer table, with 2 layers and a larger aggregation period than in the example.

Alternatively, you could've used async insert functionality built into ClickHouse: https://clickhouse.com/docs/optimize/asynchronous-inserts . All of these solutions are operationally simpler than Kafka + Vector, although obviously it's all tradeoffs.
by wat10000 | 2025-10-13 19:10:37+00:00
The potential reward for putting it in something riskier is enormous. You and I might consider $7 billion/year to be plenty and there's no point in chasing higher returns, but we tend not to be the sort of person who is in the position to control a fifth of a trillion dollars in the first place. Investing it in something riskier to make more money would be foolish but it's also something that's been done many times before.
by bewal416 | 2025-10-13 19:10:45+00:00
I'm finishing my side project BookBlend: Spotify Blend for Goodreads users

https://bookblend.app/

Given two Goodreads accounts, BookBlend uses a combination of web scraping, data analysis, and LLMs to calculate a blend score from 0-100. It shows you shared books, authors, and genres, as well as recommends books for the two to read together!

It's 100% free, and the source code is available on the "info" modal in the top right.
by adastra22 | 2025-10-13 19:10:55+00:00
Sure thing.

By the way, the far more impactful application of this principle is as a solution (imho) to the problem of free will.

Most people intuitively hold that free will is incompatible with determinism, because making a choice feels unconstrained. Taken in the extreme, this leads to Penrose and others looking for quantum randomness to save their models of the mind from the Newtonian clockwork universe.

But we should have some unease with this, because choices being a random roll of the dice doesn’t sit right either. When we make decisions, we do so for reasons. We justify the choices we make. This is because so-called “free will” is just what a deterministic decision making process feels like from the inside.

Philosophically this is called the “compatibilist” position, but I object to that term. It’s not that free will is merely compatible with determinism—it requires it! In a totally random universe you wouldn’t be able to experience the qualia of making a free choice.

To experience a “free choice” you need to be able to be presented with alternatives, weight the pro and con factors of each, and then make a decision based on that info. From the outside this is a fully deterministic process. From the inside though, some of the decision making criteria are outside of conscious review, so it doesn’t feel like a deterministic decision. Weighing all the options and then going with your gut in picking a winner feels like unconstrained choice. But why did your gut make you choose the way you did? Cause your “gut” here is an unconscious but nevertheless deterministic neural net evaluation of the options against your core principles and preferences.

“Free will” is just what a deterministic application of decision theory feels like from the inside.
by yunitsukiyama | 2025-10-13 19:10:56+00:00
Location: France Remote: Yes Willing to relocate: No Technologies: C, C++, Bash, Python, C#, VHDL, Ruby, Ada, SQL Résumé/CV: ask yunitsukiyama@riseup.net Email: yunitsukiyama@riseup.net

Software engineer with 3-4 years of professional experience, specialized in embedded systems and compilers/language theory.
by yibg | 2025-10-13 19:11:05+00:00
Typically as economies advance there is a shift to services and higher value add / higher skill manufacturing anyways. That can be the explicit strategy for the US as well. Focus on renewables, high tech, aerospace etc instead of the lower margin / lower skill manufacturing.

They're not mutually exclusive of course. There can be some national protection via tariffs on some types of manufacturing, while investing in automating some other types and just completely ignoring others and keeping those offshore. Problem currently is there doesn't seem to be a much of a strategy.
by sombragris | 2025-10-13 19:11:44+00:00
At least in my use case (as link between Android devices and both Linux/Win PCs) KDE Connect is a real killer app. It enabled seamless integration and saved me lots of hassle and time. It really should get more exposure.

I see reports that it doesn't work. These are mostly for distros where Plasma is either rather old or taking a backseat after other environment (usually Gnome). I'm having great results with the latest Plasma 6 on Slackware-current and also in a standard Windows 11 environment.
by SAI_Peregrinus | 2025-10-13 19:12:14+00:00
The rules allow for wars. They don't prevent killing every combatant the other side has. The two sides agree to have a war, then their combatants kill one another until one side gives up or runs out of people to draft as combatants. The rules prohibit killing various classes of noncombatants, with some situational exceptions.
by vkou | 2025-10-13 19:13:18+00:00
> This is great for ordinary Americans.

If that's true, why isn't unrestricted immigration[1] good for them? It means that the citizens don't have to do the boring immigrant jobs, but still get the benefits for vast amounts of immigrant-produced goods and services.

The only ones who will lose out are ones who 'want to'[2] do the boring immigrant jobs.

AI can't just handwave all this shit away because 'technology good'. Whether or you agree with these concerns or not, there's a massive backlash from various flavors of nativists about jobs. Why isn't it directed at all of these pie in the sky AI promises?

---

[1] Or, you know, just buying imports from China. What difference does it make to me where a factory is located, when that factory doesn't employ me or my neighbours? The people collecting profits from it aren't going to share them with us.

[2] What does it mean to 'want to' do a 'boring' job? Rent's due in two weeks, 'wants' don't enter into it much.
by BeetleB | 2025-10-13 19:13:44+00:00
Your psychology lesson is misplaced. I know my usage before and after, and it's a minor delta. The bulk of my Emacs usage today is using features that have been in my config since prior to my learning Elisp.

If we're going to be patronizing here: Most people who learn Elisp early into their Emacs experience are failing at identifying the source of their growing expertise, and are incorrectly attributing it to their knowledge of Elisp, when in reality they are merely becoming better Emacs users due to repetitive practice.

They also have a habit of reinventing solutions that are readily available within Emacs, or as a package.
by eimrine | 2025-10-13 19:13:56+00:00
AI has stolen my satisfaction from Philosophy. Now there are not the times I need to be sure in my outcomes by the ideological reasons. If I can not persuade LLM my theory is nothing. If I can persuade LLM I use LLM's thesises instead of my own.

How can I chose my political views and preferences if I need to consult about them with LLM?
by zamadatix | 2025-10-13 19:14:00+00:00
Spend every day for a year watching the highest quality YouTube content and it won't get you as far as spending every day for a month directly engaging with content yourself, or some other use of the same time. It's fun, engaging, and easy enough to turn into something you can argue "but it's not slop, it's <x>!". At the end of the day though... it's still 95% entertainment.

I spend a lot of time "protecting" my YouTube recommendations (clearing garbage videos from my history, blocking certain channels, opening links from friends separately) but I still try to immensely limit the amount of time I spend on the site, and the recommendations go directly against that.
by gooodvibes | 2025-10-13 19:14:08+00:00
> The entire premise of AI coding tools is that they automate the thinking, not just the typing. You're supposed to be able to describe a problem and get a solution without understanding the details.

This isn't accurate.

> So I feel pressure to always, always, start by info dumping the problem description to AI and gamble for a one-shot. Voice transcription for 10 minutes, hit send, hope I get something first try, if not hope I can iterate until something works.

These things have planning modes - you can iterate on a plan all you want, make changes when ready, make changes one at a time etc. I don't know if the "pressure" is your own psychological block or you just haven't considered that you can use these tools differently.

Whether it feels satisfying or not - that's a personal thing, some people will like it, some won't. But what you're describing is just not using your tools correctly.
by devmor | 2025-10-13 19:14:08+00:00
There were a lot of simpler options that came to mind while reading through this, frankly.

But I imagine the writeup eschews myriad future concerns and does not entirely illustrate the pressure and stress of trying to solve such a high-scale problem.

Ultimately, going with a somewhat more complex solution that involves additional architecture but has been tried and tested by a 3rd party that you trust can sometimes be the more fitting end result. Assurance often weighs more than simplicity, I think.
by npalli | 2025-10-13 19:14:24+00:00
How will Fivetran and dbt who are detested for being overpriced and underfeatured in the segment they are supposed to be good at (ETL/ELT) be taking on being a datalake? That's orders of magnitude more complex in engineering and operating and they have no experience. This is really a play to consolidate, get rid of duplicate functions and provide a better experience to customers.
by BuildTheRobots | 2025-10-13 19:14:28+00:00
It was one of those situations where the internet was part of the lease, and the property owners got the MSP to provide for multiple companies on the site. Sadly I wasn't a customer of either Juniper or the MSP, and it wasn't something they ever actually claimed to support.

Juniper themselves stated in the manual that this base model device didn't support SCTP, though on ever other level it was faster, more capable and more featureful than the mid-range but much older device it replaced. The MSP didn't have a clue that we (or anyone else for that matter) used SCTP so missed the single footnote mention that the command to enable SCTP forwarding might not be available on some base-level devices.

In their defence, I'm not sure _I'd_ have thought to check if SCTP was supported and I had it running on my network. It works over the internet, it's basically IP, how could it not be suppo---oh.
by DamonHD | 2025-10-13 19:14:29+00:00
I tried this and had a couple of reasonable results (and a few discarded duds):

https://www.earth.org.uk/AI-promo-video.html

Though I am annoyed by current AI hype, given that I'm writing a lecture about tech sustainability, I thought that I'd give it a try. I have made real videos with real people for (eg) crowdfunding, and I am well aware of time and costs, so this would not happen at all without similar short-cuts. Thus I don't think that I am stealing bread from any creatives' mouths. What I can't see is how much energy and CO2 each ~90s video generation run costs...
by alexchamberlain | 2025-10-13 19:14:44+00:00
My point was more about the original comment is fine from the perspective of an American, but for the rest of the world, it doesn’t really matter if it is USD or rubles - it’s still a foreign transaction. I appreciate that for a large percentage of the world, consumers can probably do an approximation of the USD conversion in their head, and not a rubles one, and therefore, USD may be more friendly. That being said, the sales page has already got the approximation in USD anyway, which would be enough for me.
by martin-t | 2025-10-13 19:14:59+00:00
As noble as the goal sounds, I think it's wrong.

Software is just a tool. Much like a hammer, a knife, or ammonium nitrate, it can be used for both good or bad.

I say this as someone who has spent almost 15 years writing software in my free time and publishing it as open source: building software and allowing anyone to use it does not automatically make other people's lives better.

A lot of my work has been used for bad purposes or what some people would consider bad purposes - cheating on tests, cheating in games, accessing personal information without permission, and in one case my work contributed to someone's doxxing. That's because as soon as you publish it, you lose control over it.

But at least with open source software, every person can use it to the same extent so if the majority of people are good, the result is likely to be more positive than negative.

With what is called AI today, only the largest corporations can afford to train the models which means they are controlled by people who have entirely different incentives from the general working population and many of whom have quite obvious antisocial personality traits.

At least 2 billion people live in dictatorships. AI has the potential to become a tool of mass surveillance and total oppression from which those countries will never recover because just like the models can detect a woman is pregnant before she knows it, it will detect a dissenter long before dissent turns into resistance.

I don't have high hopes for AI to be a force for good and teaching people how toy models work, as fun as it is, is not gonna change it.
by triceratops | 2025-10-13 19:15:08+00:00
This is true. I'd still file tax-loss harvesting under "advanced maneuvers employed by high net worth people".

At a societal level, and I understand this is a completely different point, I also question whether it's prudent to allow tax dodging this way. We already tax labor heavily and at the same time we incentivize companies to improve productivity (read: use less labor). How do we pay for society without taxing some of the productivity (read: profits) or taxing labor even more? You can only cut so many services.
by IntrepidPig | 2025-10-13 19:15:21+00:00
Yeah it feels similar to inventing the nuke. Or it’s even more insidious because the harmful effects of the tech are not nearly as obvious or immediate as the good effects, so less restraint is applied. But also, similar to the nuke, once the knowledge on how to do it is out there, someone’s going to use it, which obligates everyone else to use it to keep up.
by alphazard | 2025-10-13 19:15:30+00:00
This is a little wild to think about. It would make infosec impossible in the UK.

Imagine the IT departments of every mutltinational corporation desperately trying to sort out permissions to keep important information off of machines deployed in the UK. New authorization groups for everyone in the UK, lots of meetings with lawyers to sort out what they can have access to. Everyone in the UK becomes a second class psuedo-trustworthy employee overnight.

Were I in charge of IT, when that bombshell came across my desk, I think I would give every UK employee a chromebook, and migrate all workloads to the cloud. No data could be saved locally. No thumb drives. Depending on the availability of good cloud tools, the productivity hit might be so large that layoffs would be warranted.
by mixologic | 2025-10-13 19:15:31+00:00
That's only sorta how it usually works. The developer has to check with a singular US tech company before they can sign the software they've given you.

Except yeah, the way this android stuff works is closer to that way. Instead of Google giving out a key for signing, they instead ask for one and tie a developer to a namespace, so yeah, I guess your Android phone has to check whether or not that namespace is "in the clear"
by andrewgleave | 2025-10-13 19:15:33+00:00
For any stamp collectors here, the Isle of Man Post Office [1] has just issued an official set of 6 Roger Dean and Rick Wakeman stamps [2]:

[1] https://iomstamps.com/collections/wakeman [2] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/clyqe679gqno