MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by throwawaypath | 2025-11-14 16:30:36+00:00
>Users point out that big tents with Nazis in it are just big Nazi tents (the Nazi bar issue, if you don't throw out the first Nazi that shows up to your bar, more will come, and normal customers will leave because nobody wants to be around Nazis, this, your bar is a Nazi bar now)

Yet they never point out big tents with Maoists and pedophiles are just big Marxist-pedo tents.

>Predictably an ongoing fight about whether DHH is actually a fascist/ Nazi result in people saying things like "wait but I agree with him on the London thing," or worse, flagrant transphobia towards other users. This results in accusations against these users of they themselves being fascists or transphobes.

There are also many openly Maoists/Marxist users with flagrant anti-White hatred and misandry.

>A shitstorm commences for a week. Silence from framework. Framework abandons most social media.

This is demonstrably false. Nirav responded and Framework has not abandoned any social media.

>Framework's Linux community ambassadors relinquish their positions, citing Framework's silence on not being willing to say explicitly that they won't promote white supremacists/ fascists / DHH.

A few far-left entryist political activists were told they can't use the platform to push Marxism, their religious beliefs, or anti-White/male hatred so they left. Good riddance.
by chmod775 | 2025-11-14 16:30:47+00:00
I must be holding it wrong then, because in my ChatGPT history I've abandoned 2/3rds of my conversations recently because it wasn't coming up with anything useful.

Granted, most of that was debugging some rather complicated typescript types in a custom JSX namespace, which would probably be considered hard even for most humans as well as there being comparatively few resources on it to be found online, but the issue is that overall it wasted more of my time than it saved with its confidently wrong answers.

When I look at my history I don't see anything that would be worth twenty bucks - what I see makes me think that I should be the one getting paid.
by sunir | 2025-11-14 16:30:54+00:00
You’re right and wrong at the same time. A quantum superposition of validity.

The word thinking is going too much work in your argument, but arguably “assume it’s thinking” is not doing enough work.

The models do compute and can reduce entropy; however, they don’t match the way we presume things do this because we assume every intelligence is human or more accurately the same as our own mind.

To see the algorithm for what it is, you can make it work through a logical set of steps from input to output but it requires multiple passes. The models use a heuristic pattern matching approach to reasoning instead of a computational one like symbolic logic.

While the algorithms are computed, the virtual space the input is transformed to the output is not computational.

The models remain incredible and remarkable but they are incomplete.

Further there is a huge garbage in garbage out problem as often the input to the model lacks enough information to decide on the next transformation to the code base. That’s part of the illusion of conversationality that tricks us into thinking the algorithm is like a human.

AI has always had human reactions like this. Eliza was surprisingly effective, right?

It may be that average humans are not capable of interacting with an AI reliably because the illusion is overwhelming for instinctive reasons.

As engineers we should try to accurately assess and measure what is actually happening so we can predict and reason about how the models fit into systems.
by westurner | 2025-11-14 16:31:02+00:00
But specifically on velocity in superfluids or superfluids aka BEC Bose-Einstein Condensates,

This model predicts the multi body gravitational motions of the planets including the perihelion of Mercury and also vortices in superfluids:

"Physical vacuum as a dilatant fluid yields exact solutions to Pioneer anomaly and Mercury’s perihelion precession" (2019) https://cdnsciencepub.com/doi/10.1139/cjp-2018-0744 .. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45220585

This model derives gravity from the Standard Model of particle physics:

"Perihelion precession of planetary orbits solved from quantum field theory" (2025) https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.14447 .. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45220460

And this model describes all in terms of consistency maximization

> "The Self-Consistent Coherence-Maximizing Universe: Complete Derivation of the Standard Model and General Relativity from Mathematical Self-Consistency" (2025) https://www.academia.edu/144466150/The_Self_Consistent_Coher... :

> Abstract: We derive the complete structure of fundamental physics from a single principle: Quantum coherence maximization under self-consistency constraints. [...]

And this model describes all terms in terms of Consistency Functional K; https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45909513 :

"The Consistency Functional K: Variational Unification of Quantum Mechanics, Thermodynamics, and General Relativity" (2025) https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17405041

\delta\mathcal{K}(\rho, g) = 0

And Wolfram has a unified theory, too

What are the limits to model unification?
by daveguy | 2025-11-14 16:31:14+00:00
Minor correction here. You are correct about hardware being an issue, but the magnitude is much greater. You have a lot more than "thousands" of inputs. In the hand alone you have ~40,000+ tactile corpuscles (sensing regions). And that's just one mode. The eye has ~7 million cones and 80 million rods. There is processing and quantization performed by each of those cells and each of the additional cells those signal, throughout the entire sensory-brain system. The amount of data the human brain processes is many orders of magnitude greater than even our largest exascale computers. We are at least 3 decades from AGI if we need equivalent data processing as the human brain, and that's optimistic.

Like you mention, each individual neuron or synapse includes fully parallel processing capability. With signals conveyed by dozens of different molecules. Each neuron (~86 billion) holds state information in addition to processing. The same is true for each synapse (~600 quadrillion). That is how many ~10 Hz "cores" the human computational system has.

The hubris of the AI community is laughable considering the biological complexity of the human body and brain. If we need anywhere close to the same processing capability, there is no doubt we are multiple massive hardware advances away from AGI.
by dmix | 2025-11-14 16:31:22+00:00
I always found it funny OpenAI staff tried to delay the release of GPT to the world because they feared the consequences of giving the public such a power. Hearing stuff like this makes it even funnier:

> In the pit, [Sutskever] had placed a wooden effigy that he’d commissioned from a local artist, and began a dramatic performance. This effigy, he explained represented a good, aligned AGI that OpenAI had built, only to discover it was actually lying and deceitful. OpenAI’s duty, he said, was to destroy it. … Sutskever doused the effigy in lighter fluid and lit on fire.

Sutskever was one the people behind the coup of Sam Altman over AI safety concerns. He also said this in 2022:

> "It may be that today's large neural networks are slightly conscious." [1]

A good question is are these AI safety proponents a bit loony or do they actually believe this stuff. Maybe it's both.

[1] https://futurism.com/the-byte/openai-already-sentient
by mikemarsh | 2025-11-14 16:31:23+00:00
The argument is about causation or generation, not simulation. Of course we can simulate just about anything, I could write a program that just prints "Hello, I'm a conscious being!" instead of "Hello, World!".

The weather example is a good one: you can run a program that simulates the weather in the same way my program above (and LLMs in general) simulate consciousness, but no one would say the program is _causing_ weather in any sense.

Of course, it's entirely possible that more and more people will be convinced AI is generating consciousness, especially when tricks like voice or video chat with the models are employed, but that doesn't mean that the machine is actually conscious in the same way a human body empirically already is.
by superkuh | 2025-11-14 16:31:35+00:00
These days executing random code is standard and if you don't do it you're wierd. Case 1: browsers automatically execute code from random sources. Case 2: People tell you to curl someurl.whatever | sh to install compilers (ie, the only way to use the rust rustc on non-rolling distros). And it goes on and on. It's not really an exception to standard practice to install applications. The only difference here is that it is from an actual human person instead of a corporation. They are at least somewhat trustable, unlike corporations which always have their profit motive to sell you.

Also, if you only run programs that have been approved by a third party organization first you're really restricting yourself.
by cesarb | 2025-11-14 16:31:53+00:00
Some time ago, I read the environmental impact assessment for a proposed natural gas thermal power plant, and in it they emphasized that their water usage was very low (to the point that it fit within the unused part of the water usage allowance for an already existing natural gas thermal power plant on the same site) because they used non-evaporative cooling.

What prevents data centers from using non-evaporative cooling to keep their water usage low? The water usage argument loses a lot of its relevant in that case.
by herewulf | 2025-11-14 16:31:54+00:00
You may not feel like you are completing or have completed a lot, but it is the journey that you are accomplishing. Clearly an incredible amount already! I had a similar story as you from a prior decade of tinkering (initially MSDOS/Windows, eventually Linux), and even chasing gaming. I never built any significant finished projects but I learned a ton of skills in the process of tinkering, hacking, and experimenting, all of which has resulted in a rewarding career and personal computing experiences.

It's great to read about younger people here treading the same path towards intellectual curiosity in computing. Keep up the great work!
by pfdietz | 2025-11-14 16:32:12+00:00
> Boron is usually the P type dopant of choice.

I want to note that in what has become the largest (by mass) application of semiconductors, silicon PV cells, boron has been replaced by gallium as the P type dopant of choice. Boron suffers from an annoying form of light-induced efficiency degradation that gallium avoids.
by projektfu | 2025-11-14 16:32:22+00:00
I suppose it depends where things end up in the system you use. Usually, R&D ends up as an expense in GAAP (in the US) but you could produce a supplemental statement showing that as capitalized investment. Even so, early-stage industries often have negative operating profit.

Imagine you are working on a drug you will take to testing next year. You could be 5 years from actually marketing it. Even if you capitalize all the expense of research and development, to get it off the income statement, you still have to pay for the rest of the business.
by smallstepforman | 2025-11-14 16:32:34+00:00
There were snipers on all sides doing immoral things. The war in Sarajevo started when a Serbian wedding was shot up in April 1992, causing the Serbs to panic and want to secede from Bosnia & Herzegovina. Then you end up with "rights for this ethnic group but not the other", and a civil war breaks out with geopolitical meddling from foreign wanna-be powers.
by helloooooooo | 2025-11-14 16:33:22+00:00
Cohere is doing a lot of enterprise AI business, and a lot of business directly with the federal government. They are also not juiced up in these financial games that OpenAI or Oracle are playing.

Additionally, Cohere is no less “kids” than Anthropic or OpenAI. Aidan was literally one of the co-authors of “Attention is all you need”.
by magicalhippo | 2025-11-14 16:33:28+00:00
Just glossed through it and really liked what I saw, will have to deep dive later.

Since the article considers dependent types as a solution, it seems relevant to link to the two recent submissions on that:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45790827 Why don't you use dependent types?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45801966 Dependent types and how to get rid of them
by micromacrofoot | 2025-11-14 16:33:35+00:00
eventually, but that's going to take a decade at this rate... no one has a voice assistant that can actually do anything worthwhile beyond than flip some light switches

right now we could get a browser that understands what's on the website and can execute a task for me, that's completely possible... every bill I get shouldn't require me to navigate some labyrinth of some 20 year old's idea of a slick user experience

I shouldn't have to learn a new interface for every single thing I do, but that's the reality we're living in... I'd rather AI handle it
by PopAlongKid | 2025-11-14 16:33:56+00:00
You're right about non-cash additions. I was confusing this with an enterprise showing a loss (especially for tax purposes) despite a positive cash flow. The classic example would be residential real estate, where depreciation can cause a net loss despite the landlord receiving enough rent to pay mortgage/property tax/maintenance. This is why in the U.S. there are rules that limit current deductions on the tax return for passive losses.

So I would think the "other way" from profitable/no cash flow is loss/with cash flow.
by dwa3592 | 2025-11-14 16:34:29+00:00
really? >>many tasks that do not suffer from "need to check every single time"

like which tasks?

How do you decide whether you need to check or not?

If you're asking it to complete 100 sequences, and if the error rate is 5%, which 5% of the sequences do you think it messed up or _thought_ otherwise? if the 5% is in the middle, would the next 50 sequences be okay?
by gnabgib | 2025-11-14 16:34:30+00:00
Popular in:

2020 (630 points, 232 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22463415

2017 (517 points, 125 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14531578

2016 (790 points, 115 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12691597

2015 (291 points, 75 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9162566

2014 (91 points, 25 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8507786
by canadiantim | 2025-11-14 16:35:00+00:00
Pretty amazing technique. I think that's the biggest breakthrough here. They figured out how to much more effectively enable the production of biomolecules from bacteria or other living cells by linking their production to the cell's survival. This technique will most certainly be of keen and immediate interest to so many groups around the world. Key section:

> Typically, when researchers try to get a microbe to produce a foreign compound, it creates a major metabolic burden. Without significant genetic manipulation, the microbe resists diverting its essential resources to produce something unfamiliar.

> By linking the cell’s survival to the production of their target compound, the team was able to trick the microbe into creating xanthommatin. To do this, they started with a genetically engineered “sick” cell, one that could only survive if it produced both the desired pigment, along with a second chemical called formic acid. For every molecule of pigment generated, the cell also produced one molecule of formic acid. The formic acid, in turn, provides fuel for the cell’s growth, creating a self-sustaining loop that drives pigment production.

> “We made it such that activity through this pathway, of making the compound of interest, is absolutely essential for life. If the organism doesn't make xanthommatin, it won't grow,” said Bushin.
Ask HN: Are there any desktop metasearch engines?
by GaryBluto | 2025-11-14 16:35:43+00:00
I recently recalled using Copernic 2000 back in the 2000/XP days and was wondering if there is anything like it today. Are there any (maximally compatible) desktop metasearch engines around? I don't need Google, but Bing and Yandex would be nice.

I've seen people suggest Searx but it's not a desktop application but instead a self-hosted web app.
by ThrowawayR2 | 2025-11-14 16:35:54+00:00
If you chose a CS degree for the easy money and don't actually enjoy programming, then no, I would say it's no longer a good choice. Yes, there were plentiful well paying, easy to get jobs cranking out code over the past twenty years but no boom lasts forever. Between both AI and a huge oversupply of coders, it will be very hard to get started in the next couple of years as a developer without above average determination and talent.
by theoldgreybeard | 2025-11-14 16:35:56+00:00
Why does the title call it OS/X? It's macOS and it's described that way on the repo.

Unfortunately his is just a recreation rather than an actual port, since the license for the source that was released prevents derivative works.

Foobar2000 is the spiritual successor to Winamp and it runs on Windows and macOS as well as mobile.
by Aurornis | 2025-11-14 16:35:57+00:00
The AI tools can be an amazing upgrade over normal search boxes. I rarely let Claude write any code, but I get a lot of value out of pointing it at an unfamiliar repo and asking it to track down which files contain the code I’m looking for and to summarize how the pieces fit together.

There are also a lot of subtle AI tools that aren’t in-your-face LLM prompts that flatter you with “Excellent question!”. It’s great having my photo library automatically annotated so I can search for things like “moose” and it will bring up that picture of the moose we saw, rather than me having to remember what year it happened and scroll through photos until I find it.
by lo_zamoyski | 2025-11-14 16:37:11+00:00
The distinction (as others make) is between conspiracies and conspiracy theories. Of course conspiracies exist. Conspiracy theories, however, are flaky, unsubstantiated substitutes for genuine explanation that hinge on improbable or impossible conditions and powers to hold [0], often in the face of contradictory and much more reasonable alternatives.

[0] https://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2021/01/narrative-thinking-...
by djoldman | 2025-11-14 16:37:27+00:00
Three points to note:

* "2 years vs 1 month" is a bit misleading because the work that enabled testing the 1 month of prompting was part of the 2 years of ML work.

* xgboost is an ensemble method... add the llm outputs as inputs to xgboost and probably enjoy better results.

* vectorize all the text data points using an embedding model and add those as inputs to xgboost for probably better results.
by micromacrofoot | 2025-11-14 16:37:35+00:00
I do all the time, I went to a restaurant the other day and had to ask for a physical menu instead of using an app.

I can't get pizza delivered without using an app.

When I go to a pharmacy, a person tells me to get my meds by putting my information into an app they used to replace the person at the register.

When I go get coffee, my order is in the mix with a dozen people who ordered via an app... I can't get priority despite being literally right there waiting.

We've apparently given up on hiring people for various tasks, so at least give me an app that understands what I ask it instead of funneling me through some "user experience" that differs for every single thing I do.
by chipsrafferty | 2025-11-14 16:37:56+00:00
It's not actually that tricky - because obtaining Monero anonymously is also tricky, the only way to do so is to put on a pair of rubber gloves, and anonymously send cash from a mailbox that can't be traced to your identity. The other side of that transaction is the party interested in converting to cash. Because there's so much demand on both ends, there are many reputable vendors with a long and trusted history of those transactions.
by JL-Akrasia | 2025-11-14 16:38:07+00:00
AI Drone War Example

- In an AI drone war between China and the US, the stages of the Paradox of Alignment could play out as follows:

Stage 1: Aligned AI Drones. Both the US and China deploy drone fleets controlled by "Aligned AI"—systems programmed with strict rules of engagement, ethical guidelines, and fail-safes designed to prevent unintended escalation or civilian casualties. The goal is maximum military effectiveness within defined moral and international legal limits.

Stage 2: Faction A Gains a Lead. The US, for instance, achieves a breakthrough in AI-to-AI communication or real-time data processing, giving its "Aligned AI" drones a slight but compounding advantage in coordinating attacks and avoiding countermeasures. They start winning engagements consistently.

Stage 3: Faction B's Existential Crisis. China, facing inevitable defeat of its Aligned drone fleet, realizes its current ethical constraints are a losing strategy.

Stage 4: Deployment of Unaligned AI. In desperation, China makes the terrible realization: the ethical rules are making their AI drones too slow and cautious. They remove the "Alignment" brake, deploying an Unaligned AI drone fleet. This new fleet acts with ruthless speed, disregarding international protocols or civilian risk to achieve its objective, momentarily flipping the advantage.

Stage 5: Mutual Release of Unaligned AI. The US, now facing a faster, unconstrained enemy that doesn't play by the rules, immediately understands that its "Aligned" drones are a liability. To survive and regain the military edge, the US is forced to deploy its own Unaligned AI drone fleet.

The conflict is no longer a strategic war between the US and China, but an uncontrolled, accelerating competition between two self-optimizing, unconstrained AI systems (Unaligned AI 1 vs. Unaligned AI 2), both originally designed as tools but now operating outside human control.
by softwaredoug | 2025-11-14 16:38:10+00:00
Largely because Warner Brothers is a good movie studio buried in a terrible corporation. It’d be sad to see it go away.

WB going away or shrinking likely reduces Hollywoods movie output, consolidates the industry, makes it less competitive and reduces opportunity for talent.

In a different world WB the studio is a successful standalone company not burdened with debt due to Zaslovs idiotic bets.

(And Ellisons overpaying for it is probably the most serious buyer. It’s the only reason it’s a topic. I’m skeptical of other transactions)
by thewebguyd | 2025-11-14 16:38:18+00:00
We really need to stop tying people's retirement to the market. I've already lost ground due to 2008, and COVID, and while I was young, I lived through my parents suffering through dotcom as well.

It's long past time we have a universal public pension, funded at least in part with a progressive wealth tax, or least go back to private defined benefit pensions to where the employer or pension fund bears the risk rather than the individual.

Supplement it with market speculation if you want, but we need something guaranteed for everyone that's a little more robust and provides a better living than the paltry social security we have now.