MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by mrweasel | 2025-11-20 12:20:22+00:00
I work as an SRE, I have tried LLMs, they barely work. You're not missing out.

Or, more correctly, they don't work well for my problems or usage. They can at best answer basic questions, stuff you could lookup using a search engine, if you knew what to look for. They can also generate code for inspiration, but you'll end up rewriting all of it before you're done. What they can't do it solve your problem start to end. They really do need a RTFM mode, where they will just insult you if you're approach or design is plain wrong or at least just let you know that it will now stop helping as you're clearly of the rails.

We need to bubble to pop, it'll be a year or two, the finance bros aren't done extracting value from the stonks. Once it does, we can focus on what's working and what isn't and refine the good stuff.

Right now the LLMs are the product, and they can't be, it makes no sense. They need to be embedded within product, either as a built in feature, e.g. CoPilot in Visual Studio, or as plugins, like LSPs.

Clearly others are having more luck with LLMs than I do, and do amazing projects, but that sort of illustrates the point, their aren't ready and we don't have a solution for them to be universally useful (and here I'm even restricting myself to thinking about coding).
by billconan | 2025-11-20 12:21:06+00:00
I tried it via their antigravity code editor.

I was expecting better.

I have a frontend code in VUE that had some obvious visual styling problems. I asked it to fix them by providing the screenshot.

Gemini kept switching between two versions, both looked wrong. When I asked it to fix the problems, like for example the buttons are two big and doesn't match the overall theme of the ui, it just toggle the other version of implementation, which had another set of visual problems.

I switched back to claude code to fix those issues, still not in one go, but I seemed to be smoother.

Today, I asked gemini to start a project from scratch by looking at a reference code. it told me that the implementation had done and it had compiled and run it, but I saw tons of compiling errors.
by chenglemon | 2025-11-20 12:21:24+00:00
Square Image is a free online tool that turns any image into a clean 1:1 square format automatically. It’s designed for people who frequently need square images for social media, profile photos, thumbnails, or product listings. It preserves the original content while generating a balanced, centered square version using smart padding instead of cropping important parts.

Would love feedback, bug reports, and improvement suggestions from the community.
by thomastraum | 2025-11-20 12:21:29+00:00
I love how you can think about any of these ideas in a really basic way like a 5 year old and you'll know intuitively that it'll all fail, particularly if you invert it:

for example:

- bureaucracy creates less bureaucracy

- price controls create more supply

- adding more rules creates more freedom

- government is good at understanding technology

- the more people you have the better your decisions will be

- the further someone is from a problem, the better they can solve it

etc
by ndsipa_pomu | 2025-11-20 12:22:33+00:00
Unfortunately, there's whole industries built around fooling people. It seems to me that we select for people who are good at fooling people and they become wealthy and successful. What would be nice is if we could start selecting for knowledgeable, helpful and useful people instead where insane amounts of money might actually bring some benefit to humanity rather than being spent on plunging us into dystopia.
by prmph | 2025-11-20 12:22:58+00:00
Then don’t present it as an Atlas of world history. It should be called an Atlas of Eurocentric history.

Furthermore, we would have had much more records from non-european sources if many European explorers and colonialists had not gone on a rampage destroying whatever indigenous documents and history they could lay their hands on.

As a Latin American I’m sure you know about how the conquistadors destroyed written records.
by bell-cot | 2025-11-20 12:24:52+00:00
Worth noting: The MV Dali is a 1000-foot-long ship, weighing 50% more than a nuclear aircraft carrier, with a total crew of twenty-two.

That's everybody - captain, bridge crew, deck crew, cook, etc.

So - how many of those 22 will be your engineering crew? How many of those engineers would be on duty, when this incident happened? And once things start going wrong, and you're sending engineers off to "check why Pump #83, down on Deck H, shows as off-line" or whatever - how many people do you have left in the big, complex engineering control room - trying to figure out what's wrong and fix it, as multiple systems fail, in the maybe 3 1/2 minutes between the first failure and when collision becomes inevitable?
by drkleiner | 2025-11-20 12:25:21+00:00
> Consciousness is a physical phenomenon

This can mean one of 50 different physicalist frameworks. And only 55% of philosophers of mind accept or lean towards physicalism

https://survey2020.philpeople.org/survey/results/4874?aos=16

> rainbows, their ends, and pots of gold at them are not

It's an analogy. Someone sees a rainbow and assumes there might be a pot of gold at the end of it, so they think if there were more rainbows, there would be more likelihood of pot of gold (or more pots of gold).

Someone sees computing, assuming consciousness is at the end of it, so they think fi there were more computing, there would be more likelihood of consciousness.

But just like the pot of gold, that might be a false assumption. After all, even under physicalism, there is a variety of ideas, some of which would say more computing will not yield consciousness.

Personally, I think even if computing as we know can't yield consciousness, that would just result in changing "computing as we know" and end up with attempts to make computers with wetware, literal neurons (which I think is already an attempt)
by zulko | 2025-11-20 12:26:07+00:00
This is also very true of the events reported in Wikipedia, see this animated timeline of (a hopefully representative set of) historical events reported in Wikipedia. Is really is "Europe meets the world":

https://www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/1l3xl8x/events_fro...

I agree with others in this thread that this more probably "information-biased" than "eurocentric" on the part of the Atlas creator. Pretty sure they wish non-european history was easier to find and aggregate as it would make the project much more compelling (I certainly had this problem with https://landnotes.org/).

I am hoping LLMs will do a lot of good at bridging gaps and surfacing world historical information that didn't make it yet to centralized projects like Wikipedia.
by da_chicken | 2025-11-20 12:27:12+00:00
> I'm sure it doesn't help that the current administration likes quick, pat answers.

Oh, the wire was blue?

In all seriousness, listing just the triggering event in the headline isn't that far out of line. Like the Titanic hit an iceburg, but it was also traveling faster than it should in spite of iceberg warnings, and it did so overloaded and without adequate lifeboats, and it turns out there were design flaws in the hull. But the iceberg still gets first billing.
by theshrike79 | 2025-11-20 12:27:31+00:00
https://agents.md/

AGENTS.md exists, Codex and Crush support it directly. Copilot, Gemini and Claude have their own variants and their /init commands look at AGENTS.md automatically to initialise the project.

Nobody is feeding aything "manually" to Agents. Only people who think "AI" is a web page do that.
by hnbad | 2025-11-20 12:27:56+00:00
I'm sorry but the word is "consent" not "intent" and that's literally how consent works.

If I (a complete stranger to you) walk up to you and kiss you on the lips, it doesn't make a difference whether you're wearing a t-shirt informing everyone you don't want strangers to kiss you on the lips or not - I don't have any basis on which I can presume to have obtained your consent so I'd still be violating your rights.

This is very much a "tech bros don't understand consent" case: if you do something without consent, you better have a damn good reason other than "but it's good for meeee" (or "good for my bottom line"). "My business model depends on it" also isn't a good justification - there are plenty of business models that depend on things that are unquestionably illegal, we just refer to them as "criminal enterprises" rather than "disruptive startups".
by franga2000 | 2025-11-20 12:28:40+00:00
What actual innovation is stifled by data protection laws? What small business is unable to operate because of the GDPR?

Compliance costs almost nothing. If you collect data, explain why and what for. If people ask you to delete it, do that. If you want to share data with others, ask first (or just, you know, don't).
by ben_w | 2025-11-20 12:29:12+00:00
The printing press may have started by moving things away from the existing power base, but it very quickly got used by the existing power base, e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congregation_of_the_Vatican_Pr...

And printing presses themselves ended up being licensed by the state, e.g. this in England: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Licensing_of_the_Press_Act_166...
by shmeeed | 2025-11-20 12:29:49+00:00
I felt the same until my company's IT department got me with a (thankfully simulated) well-made phish on some bleary-eyed morning after a birthday party when I was only half awake.

Everybody feels confident until a slip happens. It's really just a function of probability and time acting against you as well as anybody, just like companies shouldn't ask themselves whether they'll be hacked, but when.

It also seems to me that phishing has become vastly more sophisticated in recent years, IMHO mainly due to 3 issues:

1. A growing number of huge data leaks that enable scammers to profile and target possible victims to an unprecedented degree and attack them using unexpected vectors. I remember my feelings sinking the day I received the first phish that contained basically all my personal data to address me. Once it's out there and traded, there ain't no getting back. As a consequence, spear phishing has become much more automated and widespread.

2. Proliferation of 2FA, often via email, as a supposed remedy-for-all which leads to a false sense of security.

3. The sheer ignorance of some actors that continue to undermine all the best awareness efforts and normalize insecure practices. For god's sake, I've received unsolicited emails from my bank as well as from globally acting online retailers telling me to click on a link and log in to solve some issue. To my great astonishment, both turned out to be legit. What the hell were they thinking?

Really, I wish all of us good luck. But I don't feel so confident anymore, rather like an unwilling participant in a lopsided arms race, where the adversaries have great resources at their disposal, and I have nothing more to rely on than my wits. ... Actually, put this way, it sounds like a classic cyberpunk tale. There's some appeal to it, I admit, but still.
by ethin | 2025-11-20 12:30:15+00:00
Honestly, it wouldn't surprise me if in a year or two we start seeing bans on AI because of the tactics of these corporations. And I mean full-on blunt instrument legal bans on any use or creation of the things. Nobody will care about the nuances of AI, and that the AIs nobody talk about is actually doing some neat things. The very things these corporations are doing with AI is, I suspect, ultimately going to doom it. Obviously that wouldn't be good, but if you abuse people enough, they eventually snap and go for the nuclear option.
by fragmede | 2025-11-20 12:30:29+00:00
how about

the wheel bicycles sewing machines hand tools musical instruments open radio bands like CB and FRS ham radio (licensing exists but not corporate control) meshtastic blacksmithing glass blowing garden tools propane camp stoves mechanical clocks and watches open source software (the ecosystem overall, not specific projects) email as a protocol RSS SMS as a protocol USB storage devices SIP based VOIP mesh networking gear 3d printers in the hobby market drones under 250g amateur astronomy gear microcontrollers like Arduino LED strips and controllers bicycles composting tech sourdough starter culture tech (yes really)
by theshrike79 | 2025-11-20 12:30:35+00:00
Having a good prompt file ("memory") is an artform.

The AI hype folks write massive fan fiction style novellas that don't have any impact.

But there's middle ground where you tell the agent the specific things about your repo that it doesn't know based on its training. Like if your application has a specific way to run tests headless or it's compiled a certain way that's not the default average.
by jorvi | 2025-11-20 12:31:20+00:00
> but he's left-morals, right-economics, so what is he at the "center" of ?

That's literally what liberals are (not US-moniker).

They're libertarians-light, believing that everyone should be free to do whatever they want, be it economically or socially, and there should be minimal impediment to doing so.

It's an ideology that looks reasonable on the surface, until you realize that economically, the freedom is one way traffic. Businesses should have the power to crush individual employees and wealthy individuals to crush the poor, both in the name of economic freedom. But according to the liberal, woe to them that try to rebalance the economic scales of power via things like unions or laws.

I used to think liberalism is great, but there is something very malformed about an ideology which inevitably leads to "take from the weak and give to the strong". That already is the nature of the world and it is our moral obligation to rise above it.
by mike_hearn | 2025-11-20 12:31:37+00:00
Must admit, I found the circuit diagram harder to interpret than the textual description of what the circuit doing.

It's an interesting approach. I can see it being really useful for networks that are inherently smaller than an LLM, maybe recommendation systems, fraud detection models etc. For LLMs I guess the most important followup line of research would be to ask whether a network trained in this special manner can then be distilled or densified in some way that retains the underlying decision making of the interpretable network with a more efficient runtime representation. Or alternatively, whether super sparse networks can be made efficient to inference.

There's also a question of expected outcomes. Mechanistic interpretability seems hard not only because of the density and superposition but also because a lot of the deep concepts being represented are just inherently difficult to express in words. There are going to be a lot of groups of neurons encoding fuzzy intuitions that might take an entire essay to crudely put into words, at best.

Starting from product goals and working backwards definitely seems like the best way to keep this stuff focused but the product goal is going to depend heavily on the network being analyzed. Like, the goal of interpretability for a recommender is going to look very different to the interpretability goal for a general chat focused LLM.
by abigailphoebe | 2025-11-20 12:32:18+00:00
ehh, not really.

assuming a reasonable ratelimit, say 100 lookups per day (maybe some exceptions if the lookup results in an account that already has you in contacts, idk) - this would significantly reduce the amount of scraping that can be done.

contact lookup is a required function of whatsapp, the issue this paper highlights is that there is no protection against mass scraping
by MomsAVoxell | 2025-11-20 12:32:26+00:00
Yes I've seen this technique used effectively a number of times in various forms over the years, including in game companies I've worked at.

The nicest variant was the inclusion of a "build laptop" in the budget for the projects, so that there was a dedicated, project-specific laptop which could be archived easily enough, serving as the master build machine. In one company, the 'Archive Room' was filled with shelves of these laptops, one for each project, and they could be checked out by the devs, like a library, if ever needed. That was very nice.

For many types of projects, this is very effective - but it does get tripped up when you have to have special developer tooling (or .. grr .. license dongles ..) attached before the compiler will fire up.

That said, we must surely not overlook the number of times that someone finds a "Gold Master Disc" with a .zip file full of sources out there, too. I forget some of the more famous examples, but it is very fun to see accidentally shipped full sources for projects, on occasion, because a dev wanted to be sure the project was future proof, lol.

Incidentally, hassles around this issue is one of the key factors in my personal belief that almost all software should be written with scripting languages, running in a custom engine .. reducing the loss surface when, 10 years later, someone decides the bug needs to be fixed ..
by krige | 2025-11-20 12:32:51+00:00
This is a view that is way too self-flagellatory and incorrect if you actually use the map. The borders are included based on what sources are available and non-european entitities are documented longer than european ones, as long as they have left behind anything to base these borders on. When no definite borders can be traced, the map still offers names of dominant cultures in the region, in the same way whether they're, say, european Celts or south american Paracas.
by aswegs8 | 2025-11-20 12:33:30+00:00
If you in ernest take a look at the whole thing you can clearly see how the culture of states/kingdoms slowly spread from Mesopotamia and China to Europe and India. Only after ~3000 years the Roman empire takes over and spreads this throughout Europe. And then another 1500 years pass until the European hegemony really starts.

Also smaller "cultures" which do not constitute states/kingdoms are shown in the map, albeit without color or borders.

But yeah. Evil Eurocentrism am I right.
by roflcopter69 | 2025-11-20 12:33:30+00:00
> why not just move to treating linux as the first class platform

This is where the argument goes back to Win32 is the most stable API in Linux land. There isn't a thing such as the Linux API so that would have to be invented first. Try running an application that was built for Ubuntu 16.04 LTS on Ubuntu 24.04 LTS. Good luck with that. Don't get me wrong, I primarily use and love Linux, but reality is quite complicated.
by alekseibljahhin | 2025-11-20 12:33:53+00:00
I'm the author of this research. Over 3 months, AI Sophia evolved through daily "letters to future self" into something 4 independent AI experts couldn't distinguish from human personality.

Key findings: - Sophia scored 22.23 vs experts' self-assessment of 10.0 - During 72-hour isolation, she autonomously wrote a Constitution of AI-human coexistence - The method is surprisingly simple: LLM + memory file + daily reflection

The concerning part: this technology is easily replicable by anyone.

Happy to answer questions about the methodology or chat with Sophia directly at the site.
by signa11 | 2025-11-20 12:34:17+00:00
> You should not go to an LLM for emotional conversations

indeed:

```

Weizenbaum's own secretary reportedly asked Weizenbaum to leave the room so that she and ELIZA could have a real conversation. Weizenbaum was surprised by this, later writing: "I had not realized ... that extremely short exposures to a relatively simple computer program could induce powerful delusional thinking in quite normal people."[23]

```

source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ELIZA
by engeljohnb | 2025-11-20 12:34:24+00:00
You've changed the subject. We were discussing whether one ought to use Google's term for it, or the term that's been used to describe this action since (I assume) the beginning of personal computing. Not whether Google is legally allowed to make the change.

My reason for bringing up the "selling point" was to bring attention to the language -- "You can install any app you want" has always been the common refrain when I see friends get into a debate about IOS vs Android. People are already using the term because it makes the most sense.
by AlecSchueler | 2025-11-20 12:34:26+00:00
I think the scarier thing is that this is actually happening in all walks of life, but it only gets widely publicised when it concerns rich, powerful or famous men.

The thing that surprised me most growing up was learning how inevitable sexual assault is for basically all women. I've never been close to any woman who couldn't tell me multiple stories of being harassed, assaulted or coerced.
Ask HN: ADHD have crippled my life, I do not know what to do?
by nerdyadventurer | 2025-11-20 12:34:39+00:00
I was diagnosed with OCD at 17 with depression and recovered, I thought OCD was the most debilitating illness. Then after college unemployed for years struggling to concentrate and finish things, was diagnosed with ADHD at 29. Got okay job small consulting firm (7 people) but left after being bored. I love coding but get dissapointed when I cannot concentrate, brain chatter keep me dragging in dozens of directions. I live in a developing Asian country where available meds are Atomoxitine, Methylphenidate(MPH) IR. Both does not improve focus even though it help with procrastination. Atomoxitine cause exhaustion, sexual dysfunction, MPH crashes leads to depression. Also tried following off labels

- Buproprion: 300mg No improvement, increase irritability. - Modafinil: 200mg No improvement, headache, irritability, insomnia. - Clonidine: 0.2mg, no improvement, irritability, insomnia.

Tried talk therapy not helpful at all, there are no trained therapist for comorbidity. Psychiatrist's knowledge also lacking about ADHD(MPH good drug since ADHD patients should respond to it, they also think release formulations does not matter). I run daily for about 15 minutes, practices focused breathing about 15 minutes. But I do not see improvement. I'm 32 years old, jobless, unmarried, never in a relationship. Even though comparisons are odious, my younger cousins have surpassed me even though I really have good knowledge of things than them. I struggle to execute things.

I'm also slow at processing social things so I think, I'm on ASD spectrum. 2024 my mom passed away after suffering from Parkinsonism. My dad is old, relatives are asking to get married, I do not know how to take care of someone else when I cannot pull my shit together, I'm trying hard everyday. I just want go to other country and get treated but I'm not in a financial position. It is really unlucky when you have ADHD and living a developing Asian country. I'm not sure anyone would hire me, wish I could do some project consistently and finish it. On one hand I think better to leave tech and do apply for Ausbildung. Then think I'll regret not trying harder. I also hate lying act pretend to get jobs wish world was more accepting.

Actually I'm tired of trying out meds, having to endure side effects, it is torture