MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by robot-wrangler | 2025-11-21 18:53:01+00:00
> Phenomenal consciousness is crazy. It doesn’t really seem possible in principle for matter to “wake up”.

> In 2004, neuroscientist Giulio Tononi proposed that consciousness depended on a certain computational property, the integrated information level, dubbed Φ. Computer scientist Scott Aaronson complained that thermostats could have very high levels of Φ, and therefore integrated information theory should dub them conscious. Tononi responded that yup, thermostats are conscious. It probably isn’t a very interesting consciousness. They have no language or metacognition, so they can’t think thoughts like “I am a thermostat”. They just sit there, dimly aware of the temperature. You can’t prove that they don’t.

For whatever reason HN does not like integrated information theory. Neither does Aaronson. His critique is pretty great, but beyond poking holes in IIT, that critique also admits that it's the rare theory that's actually quantified and testable. The holes as such don't show conclusively that the theory is beyond repair. IIT is also a moving target, not something that's frozen since 2004. (For example [1]). Quickly dismissing it without much analysis and then bemoaning the poor state of discussion seems unfortunate!

The answer to the thermostat riddle is basically just "why did you expect a binary value for consciousness and why shouldn't it be a continuum?" Common sense and philosophers will both be sympathetic to the intuition here if you invoke animals instead of thermostats. If you wanted a binary yes/no for whatever reason, just use an arbitrary cut-off I guess, which will lead to various unintuitive conclusions.. but play stupid games and win stupid prizes.

For the other standard objections, like a oldschool library card-catalogue or a hard drive that encodes a contrived Vandermonde matrix being paradoxically more conscious than people, variations on IIT are looking at normalizing phi-values to disentangle matters of redundancy of information "modes". I haven't read the paper behind TFA and definitely don't have in-depth knowledge of Recurrent Processing Theory or Global Workspace Theory at all. But speaking as mere bystander, IIT seems very generic in its reach and economical in assumptions. Even if it's broken in the details, it's hard to imagine that some minor variant on the basic ideas would not be able to express other theories.

Phi ultimately is about applied mereology moving from the world of philosophy towards math and engineering, i.e. "is the whole more than the sum of the parts, if so how much more". That's the closest I've ever heard to anything touching on the hard problem and phenomenology.

[1] https://pubs.aip.org/aip/cha/article/32/1/013115/2835635/Int...
by QuercusMax | 2025-11-21 18:53:04+00:00
I had the opposite experience. I was home schooled from 2nd grade through high school, but I didn't just spend all my time alone with parents. My family was part of a home-school co-op, I played in the local youth symphony, and I had a job working at the local university when I was 16 and taking college classes there. I also have a large extended family.

I didn't really have much trouble adjusting to living on campus at college, and I've never had issues with interpersonal stuff at work or school.

Your anecdote is not universal; neither is mine.
by tantalor | 2025-11-21 18:53:09+00:00
There are several mentions of "closed-form expression" without precisely defining what that means, only "finite combinations of basic operations".

TFA implies that branches (if statements and piecewise statements) are not allowed, but I don't see why not. Seems like a basic operation to me.

Nevermind that `s[i]` is essentially a piecewise statement.
by purple_turtle | 2025-11-21 18:53:11+00:00
Note that I am not saying that "throw away regulation, always less regulation is better".

That would be asking to drop all regulations.

I am saying that regulations have cost so you should have as little as regulation as possible to achieve wanted effect.

And wanted effect often should not be literally zero of accidents or bribery or corruption. As it may be either impossible to achieve or extra side effects not worth it past certain point.

In other words minimisation of how much regulations you have should be one of targets.
by kstrauser | 2025-11-21 18:53:15+00:00
My reply here is to people reading along. I know you know this stuff.

Yeah, I can imagine hacking something together on my own if I had to ("first run `zfs create tank/myproject`...") but I'm glad I don't. I'm not referring to the person here, but I've seen people go to great lengths to avoid virtualenvs when they're about as lightweight as such a thing can possibly be. Like, this is the entire process for using one in a project:

$ python -m venv .venv $ source .venv/bin/activate

Now if you run `pip install foo` in that shell, it'll install the package inside that virtualenv. If your code has `import foo` somewhere, it'll load the virtualenv's package, no matter what versions of foo are installed elsewhere. It's nearly identical in concept to Node's ./node_modules directories, except that you have to explicitly activate the virtualenv, which also gives you the flexibility to easily use the same venv for multiple projects if you really want to.

If you have something like mise or uv, you can ask them to manage a venv for you, but they're conceptually just wrappers around those steps.
by woodruffw | 2025-11-21 18:53:46+00:00
Yep, that's definitely the assumption. However, I think it's also worth noting that zero-days, once disclosed, do typically receive advisories. Those advisories then (at least in Dependabot) bypass any cooldown controls, since the thinking is that a known vulnerability is more important to remediate than the open-ended risk of a compromised update.

> I'm sure the majority of bugs and vulnerabilities were never supply chain attacks: they were just ordinary bugs introduced unintentionally in the normal course of software development.

Yes, absolutely! The overwhelming majority of vulnerabilities stem from normal accidental bug introduction -- what makes these kinds of dependency compromises uniquely interesting is how immediately dangerous they are versus, say, a DoS somewhere in my network stack (where I'm not even sure it affects me).
by f1shy | 2025-11-21 18:53:58+00:00
Like if the single mum living of a minimum wage has time and energy while dressing the 2 kids to not forget such things.

Sorry I know such people that I profoundly admire. I feel is just unfair such a comment. I have enough time and little stress in my life, I can plan what I’m going to cook the next week. But I could never criticize that people for not being able to.
by ksaj | 2025-11-21 18:53:58+00:00
I used to use TASM. For a short spell, I used MASM and realized they, including a86, use different binary representations of nearly all register-to-register operations.

With that discovery, I wrote a forensic tool that would identify what compiler a computer virus was compiled with, and a subsequent tool that would flip (using a simple XOR) a few of them to create a short binary string watermark. The watermarking tool wasn't all that practical in the end, but it was a fun experiment.
by nyeah | 2025-11-21 18:54:12+00:00
For some reason most companies never seem to realize that they will destroy their acquisitions. It's always kind of an afterthought. "Oh, right, we have to terrify the new customers and lay off the people who make the products work. Sam, take care of that, will you?"

Acquisitions tend to be done in a haze of dream-state thinking. Maybe that's part of it.
by ricksunny | 2025-11-21 18:55:32+00:00
NYT is featuring dueling narratives about the film released today Age of Disclosure. The first, by Leslie Kean and Ralph Blumenthal, could be anticipated as these authors wrote the seminal 2017 NYT article (post's link) that kicked off the modern-day awareness movement toward UAP transparency. Kean has regularly engaged with the individuals appearing in the film through podcasts and articles over the intervening years.

The 2nd is by reviewer Ben Kenigsberg, is the more typical "I'm a normie, you'll look dumb if you watch this film' take that politically inconvenient citizen investigation movements (think covid origins before 2021, Epstein prior to this year, and UAP) have come to expect from mass media.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/20/movies/the-age-of-disclos...
by chasd00 | 2025-11-21 18:55:33+00:00
i'm sure many others will reply as well but there's lots of extracurricular options for homeschoolers as well as social engagements. It's kind of like a shadow school system, there's associations and groups and other organizations built around home schooled children. My wife and I considered it but we have managed to navigate our public school situation well enough without me, or my wife, having to quit working.
by catigula | 2025-11-21 18:55:36+00:00
I generally regard thinking about consciousness, unfortunately, a thing of madness.

"I think consciousness will remain a mystery. Yes, that's what I tend to believe... I tend to think that the workings of the conscious brain will be elucidated to a large extent. Biologists and perhaps physicists will understand much better how the brain works. But why something that we call consciousness goes with those workings, I think that will remain mysterious." - Ed Witten, probably the greatest living physicist
by isr | 2025-11-21 18:55:41+00:00
Look, we can all acknowledge that there were, and are, many Americans who wish for this to be true. But at no point in America's history did that "many" ever constitute a majority. Or even close to it.

Which is why, from its very inception, the US has employed mass genocide at home, invasions & regime changes in the America's, then post-slavery apartheid at home, with invasions & regime changes in the rest of the world.

That's not anti-American rhetoric. That's just historical fact.

So, commingled with those facts, where does "law, love & fair play" come in. If you're honest, THAT was the propaganda. And the above realities, that was the truth.

The America of today IS the America it has always been. Its just that the propaganda mask can't be reattached with more duct tape. America started by geniciding non-whites at home, and rounding up & dragging non-whites TO America, in chains.

Now it's genociding non-whites abroad (primarily the Middle East), and rounding up & dragging non-whites FROM America, in chains.

When you focus on the common threads throughout American history, and strip away the fluff, you realise ... that's the real America (which still has the largest slave labour force in the world, through indentured workforces via its prison system).
by dkhenry | 2025-11-21 18:55:42+00:00
Depending on where you live there are many options. In my school district home school kids can join any club or team offered by the public school system where you reside. Additionally there are numerous non-school related clubs and activities all over the place. My kids could play music with the local school district, with a musical education non-profit that is prolific in our area, or ( where they do play music ) with private lessons that have group classes, bands, and performance opportunities.
by jay_kyburz | 2025-11-21 18:55:46+00:00
I really enjoyed teaching my kids during covid, and they got a bug jump ahead compared to the kids who just played video games while the schools were closed. We only did 3-4 hours a day but it was fun, and I could really see the changes.

I don't mind the idea of teaching 10 kids, my way, and in and environment I can control. The thought of teaching 35 kids, mired in bureaucracy, is a nightmare.
by Nextgrid | 2025-11-21 18:55:48+00:00
> everyone else is trying but haven't really shown much promise

What was the incentive/funding for their attempts? In a non-national-security scenario it makes sense not to try too hard because you can just buy ASML's solution.

With China it's a bit different, if they decide it's a matter of national security and pour Manhattan-project-levels of money/resources into it, they could make faster progress.
by deathanatos | 2025-11-21 18:55:57+00:00
> Just to be clear, most abortions in Texas are illegal. That's not necessarily a good thing. Nor are flock cameras necessarily a good thing. But given abortions are illegal in Texas, it's simply being used for its nominal purpose.

(IANAL.) In the specific case cited by the parent poster, AFAICT looking at the facts of the case, no Texas law was violated, nor do the authorities involved ever allege that any law was violated.

Nonetheless, the authorities involved in this case violated her privacy, including use of ALPR cameras in other states. The reasoning given is disputed, and seems to be a motte/bailey between "it was a missing person report" (with specious reasoning as to her being "missing") and "investigation of an abortion" that the State themselves admits they "could not statutorily charge [her]" for.
by dingnuts | 2025-11-21 18:56:12+00:00
> The gap between engineers using the tools and those not are continuing to grow

Yeah, the ONLY place I hear this where it means "AI pushers are getting faster" is on this website, where half of your salaries depend on said belief.

When I go outside and talk to real engineers who I respect, in confidence and away from the suits forcing them to use AI, away from the hype of the industry telling them only one opinion is allowed, they all agree that "agentic coding" is simply not a meaningful improvement in quality or speed of publishing working software in the real world.

Maybe you like it, and that's fine. If you want to pay a lot of money for advanced IntelliSense and you can get your boss to do that for you, have fun. Just don't force it on me.

I don't believe you'll be meaningfully faster or produce better work than I can without the clanker's help.

If I get furloughed I'm going to get a new career working with my hands.
by rahimnathwani | 2025-11-21 18:56:44+00:00
Education is expensive and underfunded.

Expensive yes. Underfunded depends on where you are.

San Francisco's school district has an annual operating budget that equates to $28k per student.

I've heard people in San Francisco say that schools here are underfunded. When I ask them how much we spend per student per year, their guess is usually less than half of the actual amount.
by ribosometronome | 2025-11-21 18:56:56+00:00
Looking at the replies, I do not think the general complaint is that homeschooling is bad for test scores but social development and preparing kids for society outside the house. It definitely requires considerably more, active attention from parents. Perhaps some of these people here have both the time to be hold down a decent career and also tutor their child in multiple curricula that haven't been important to them in decades and ensure that they're maintaining an active social life but I think the difficulty of nailing that as you go-your-own-way is apparent.
by beeforpork | 2025-11-21 18:57:09+00:00
Well, many or even most non-Americans generally look up to America to learn. The USA are regarded as the pinnacle of world culture, industry, and commerce by the world. Even in non-western countries, and even if daemonized by certain leaders, the common people generally know that there are the greatest achievements in the USA. A few people may not do so, and may know how bad some corners are cut and how rotten some things are, but that's a minority. Also, if a powerful US politician farts, it is on all the front pages of all media outlets around the world. There's no escape, US news are pushed into all corners. And politicians in the world see that the thug model has worked quite effectively, and so strategies are taken over to do the same everywhere else, like ignoring science and instead citing 'common sense'.

All this BS that's currently going on spreads into the last corners of the world as ultimately good ideas, as truths, and the thugs are role models for the world.

It is not good. How to explain future to my kids? Yeah, sorry, I am also using the 'kid' argument now.
by nonameiguess | 2025-11-21 18:57:16+00:00
This didn't cause an outage, but I was endlessly amused about regression test failures caused by synthetic data when the Navy's maritime domain awareness switched over to a tip file format that embedded pngs of each ship detection into an xml file and had some limit I'll never remember on the maximum number of such tips it could fit into a single file.

It was actually a testament to the thoroughness with which the NRO regression tests its shit, but the complaint was that the simulated scan the program was running detections on crapped out after something like 30,000 detections, which is already more ships than the US Pacific Fleet and probably more ships than any foreign Navy has in every ocean on the planet, certainly more than will ever be contained in a single image.

But in case I'm being 1981 Bill Gates level naive here, they are in fact prepared for the eventuality of gigantic swarms of microships taking over the oceans because of that regression test.
by SadTrombone | 2025-11-21 18:57:23+00:00
It's absolutely not worth noting that because it simply isn't true.

If anything, the MoH numbers are lower than the actual death toll. Even the IDF said internally the numbers were right and their own statistics state that 83% of casualties in Gaza have been civilians.

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...

https://www.theguardian.com/world/ng-interactive/2025/aug/21...

https://www.vice.com/en/article/israeli-intelligence-health-...
by swatcoder | 2025-11-21 18:58:26+00:00
You're probably imagining two black coffees, and all three drinks being of modest size like medium.

But if you turn those into "specialty" coffees and upsize them, and then add ~10% sales tax, it's very plausible that the price was closer to $20 than $10.

Between prices inflating and people's tastes being pretty unmoderated and indulgent for a long while now, the total cost of "everyday" expenses adds up quick.

Even the simple black drip coffee drinks that have basically no material or labor cost are priced at $2-4 in a lot of places now because people have become so dependent on the habit of treating themselves to one, and often a very large one, that they've become price insensitive and easily exploited by any coldly calculating business.
by dilyevsky | 2025-11-21 18:58:27+00:00
Stucco is not the default even here in NorCal where climate is as good as it gets... I don't think it's so much to do with "republic" but more with the fact that any given county permit office seems to be allowed to do its own thing. Evidence to that is even neighboring counties in my state have wildly different standards. Wrt to stucco though I think the technology is fairly standard and it's just the level of workmanship of contractors is so low that you might as well pay $$$ for relatively idiot proof product
by 5f3cfa1a | 2025-11-21 18:59:26+00:00
Of these, most are easily handled. I am in a midsized city and there are plenty of groups that offer music, robotics & engineering, speech & drama, etc. focused towards homeschooled students. That, plus the rise in homeschool "pods"/co-ops means socialization and activities are very available to students & parents who want them.

Sports might be the challenge. Many US states have athletic associations that handle most K-12 sports, and they require enrollment in an accredited member school. I am aware of several homeschool specific athletic associations in my area, but all are targeted towards religious homeschoolers. Not certain what secular alternatives would exist, but soccer is very popular & there are plenty of competitive academies that operate outside the school ecosystem.
by switchbak | 2025-11-21 18:59:45+00:00
I remember this used to actually be the case, but that was many moons ago when you'd often wait a long time between releases. Or maybe the quality bar was lower generally, and it was just easier to raise it?

These days it seems most software just changes mostly around the margins, and doesn't necessarily get a whole lot better. Perhaps this is also a sign I'm using boring and very stable software which is mostly "done"?
by pseudalopex | 2025-11-21 18:59:49+00:00
> I just don't buy the argument that PE takes over businesses and makes them strictly worse. You don't make money doing that.

The effects in health care were studied.[1]

Less competition supports higher prices. People can be convinced to purchase unnecessary services. People are slow to leave trusted doctors. Non compete agreements limit new competition. The time to train new veterinarians limits new competition. Short term profits fund future acquisitions.

[1] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10354830/
by fpoling | 2025-11-21 19:00:23+00:00
When discussing consciousness what is often missed is that the notion of consciousness is tightly coupled with the notion of the perception of time flow. By any reasonable notion conscious entity must perceive the flow of time.

And then the time flow is something that physics or mathematics still cannot describe, see Wikipedia and other articles on the philosophical problem of time series A versus time series B that originated in a paper from 1908 by philosopher John McTaggart.

As such AI cannot be conscious since mathematics behind it is strictly about time series B which cannot describe the perception of time flow.
by gusfoo | 2025-11-21 19:00:36+00:00
> The US government is not free to use frivolous sanctions to indirectly make payment processors stop serving a foreigner.

You may regard them as such, but they are not in any sense frivolous. It is the law that if-x-then-y, it's not a discretionary item that one interprets. And to be clear, these are not "indirectly" making payment processors stop serving the person, it is very clearly direct and you do not, as a company, have a choice in the matter.
by whynotmaybe | 2025-11-21 19:01:32+00:00
> The most dangerous change is Arduino now explicitly states that using their platform grants you no patent licenses whatsoever. You can’t even argue one is implied.

> This means Qualcomm could potentially assert patents against your projects if you built them using Arduino tools, Arduino examples, or Arduino-compatible hardware.

Yep, the complete opposite of "open".
by constantius | 2025-11-21 19:01:46+00:00
Interesting analysis, thanks for posting.

How much credence do you give it? I'm not an economist, and my general approach to any government's publications (especially in economics) is one of scepticism. Especially if it aligns with the party line (published in 2018, under May, who was very strongly anti-immigration).

Edit: this isn't made by the government but by a university, so scepticism is lessened slightly.
by dragonwriter | 2025-11-21 19:01:49+00:00
> Any instance of selective enforcement being necessary is ipso facto evidence of a bad law.

All laws are in some degree bad; perfect laws do not exist.

Some laws are useful and produce more good than harm in the concrete situation in which they exist.

Should laws be improved where possible? Yes. Does the need for selective enforcement indicate a problem? Yes. Does it provide sufficient information to determine the precise form of a better law to replace the one it shows a problem with? Very rarely.
by ghurtado | 2025-11-21 19:02:52+00:00
No we don't.

I have dozens of Arduinos that I will never use.

With a similarly priced (sometimes cheaper) platform like the amazing rp2040 / rp2350 which is roughly 100 times more powerful, I have no idea what the niche is for them any more.

The way they dropped the ball with their IDE is amazing. It still looks and feels like something that was rejected during beta testing in 1993

Arduino is following roughly the same trajectory as BlackBerry, with the current phase being "rapidly fading into obscurity"