MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by mindcrime | 2025-11-04 20:30:59+00:00
From what I can remember, while there was some public awareness of "computer crime" by 1988 (War Games helped with that), it wasn't exactly a "big deal" to most people yet. My subjective recollection is that things took a marked turn around 1990, with the advent of "Operation Sundevil"[1], the raid on Steve Jackson Games, etc.

And by the mid to late 90's (I'd say about 1997) it was finally becoming "received wisdom" to most hacker that "this is real now: getting caught doing this stuff could mean actual jail time, fines, not getting into college, losing jobs, etc." Now I grew up in a rural part of NC and so we probably lagged other parts of the country in terms of information dispersal, so I expect other people view the timeline differently, so YMMV.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Sundevil
by mbreese | 2025-11-04 20:31:01+00:00
> Do people using notebooks these days hate this fundamental feature of notebooks?

It's one of the things that is the most confusing to people I've worked with. The idea that there is hidden state and you have to re-run cells to get variables to update (or variables still exist when you've deleted those cells) is quite confusing.

If you're trying to have a reproducible workflow, it can be difficult. Jupyter is no different from other notebooks in this regard (RStudio, for example will happily run code and keep variables around that you don't reference any longer in your .R or .Rmd files.)

But I see your point -- if you're using it as a long-term storage notebook, then this is the expected behavior. And you absolutely want to have "historical" data/results kept.

I generally think of / use notebooks as a way to make reports for analyses. So, I want to work with them, draft them, change them, put them in git, etc... then run them all at once to get my output. For me, having a reproducible, documented workflow is more important. I don't want state to be kept outside of those one-off runs. Really until your comment, I didn't understand the other side of the issue, so thanks!
by Terr_ | 2025-11-04 20:31:11+00:00
Very little I disagree with there, so just nibbling at the edges.

> a scheme that’s flexible enough to sustain belief even when things don’t work out as planned; the promise of a better future that can be realized only if believers uncover hidden truths; and a hope for salvation from the horrors of this world.

Sometimes 90% of the "hidden truths" are things already "known" by the believers, an elite knowledge that sets them apart from the sheeple. The remaining 10% is acquiring some McGuffin that finally proves they were Right-All-Along so that they can take a victory lap.

> Superintelligence is the hot new flavor—AGI but better!—introduced as talk of AGI becomes commonplace.

In turn, AGI was the hot new flavor—AI but better!—companies pivoted to as consumers started getting disappointed/jaded experiencing "AI" that wasn't going to give them robot butlers.

> When those people are not shilling for utopia, they’re saving us from hell.

Yeah, much like how hatred is not really the opposite of love, the "AI doom" folks are really just a side-sect of the "AI awesome" folks.

> But what if there are, in fact, shadowy puppet masters here—and they’re the very people who have pushed the AGI conspiracy hardest all along? The kings of Silicon Valley are throwing everything they can get at building AGI for profit. The myth of AGI serves their interests more than anybody else’s.

Yes, the economic engine behind all this, the potential to make money, is what really supercharges everything and lifts it out of niche communities.
by seanmcdirmid | 2025-11-04 20:31:38+00:00
We have a voter guide, I don't really find it useful because people generally present themselves in the best light. This morning I had to fill out a ballot with 5 school board races (no idea why we have to vote for each one) and none of those were easy. For the top line elections, I knew what to do, for the lower line elections...I often just left entries empty because I didn't have time to figure out why I would prefer one candidate or the other.
by epolanski | 2025-11-04 20:31:50+00:00
Addressed already in my original post:

> unless you can prove discrimination, it's their house, it's their business, they can and should do what they want

None of the links you posted, I skimmed quickly, says anything about my point: that you cannot refuse business if you don't want to (unless you can prove the reason you don't want to is illegal).
by ricksunny | 2025-11-04 20:31:59+00:00
Hey - tried to reply this to the earlier thread on Mansfield, but evidently there's a timeout on reply-to's. Anyway appreciated your response (my not responding is often just me contemplating..:) ) Grokipedia found this on Mansfield which I've found is adding additional context about Mansfield's motiviations: https://doi.org/10.1126/science.169.3943.356 (can read in sci-hub) . The Vietnam war thematic background was helpful - Google Gemini agreed with you and the Grokipedia article seems to add support to it as well, (though not directly tying to Sen. Mansfield's motivations).

It's funny, my impression had been that Mansfield was legislating from a heavily right-wing standpoint, of 'Why are we tax-and-spending into something that won't help protect the sanctity of my private property?" I was pleased to see the motivations were different. The fact that so few have articulated why the invoke Mansfield underscores why I was able to adopt such an orthogonal interpretation of Mansfield's amendment prior to this discussion. All the best AfterHIA. -ricksunny
by goatlover | 2025-11-04 20:32:14+00:00
Almost all humans do things daily that LLMs don't. It's only if you define general intelligence to be proficiency at generating text instead of successfully navigating the world while pursuing goals such as friendships, careers, families, politics, managing health.

LLMs aren't Data (Star Trek) or Replicants (Blade Runner). They're not even David or the androids from the movie A.I.
Ask HN: Do you know of a AI company that's using user's clients to request stuff
by d--b | 2025-11-04 20:32:28+00:00
Hey all,

I am using a small web hosting provider, and since two days ago they get spam from a wide variety of sources, limiting their ability to operate smoothly.

They suspect that some AI company is calling their services for on-demand AI requests, but they don't know for sure.

Does anyone here know anything about a AI company that would be using their user's clients to performs searches on the Internet rather than doing it server-side?
by shwaj | 2025-11-04 20:32:40+00:00
Hear hear, one of my favorite comments recently.

Can’t agree more about the technical points (category error etc), and then the unexpected switch to the value of receiving constructive criticism as a gift not an attack.

Myself, I’m definitely conditioned to receive it as an attack. I’m trying to break this habit. This morning I gave some extensive feedback to some friends who have a startup. The whole time I was writing it, I was stressing out that they’d feel attacked, because that’s how I might take similar criticism.

How was it actually received? A mix I think. Some people explicitly received it as a gift, and others I’m not so sure.
I built sbsh: Persistent terminal sessions with discovery, profiles, and an API
by eminwux | 2025-11-04 20:33:00+00:00
Needing a better way to share how to access Kubernetes and Terraform environments with my team, and to set clear prompts for each environment so that I completely avoid mistakes, I built sbsh.

sbsh provides persistent terminal sessions with built-in discovery, environment profiles, and an API for automation.

*The problem:*

- Complex configuration required to access multiple Kubernetes clusters and Terraform workspaces, including setting visual prompts to identify production environments and avoid mistakes

- Manual setup of environment variables and credentials for each environment

- No easy, shareable way to reproduce those configurations across a team

- Lack of structured logs or visibility into existing sessions

- SSH sessions that die in the middle of debugging or long tasks

*How it works:*

sbsh separates the terminal session (your shell and environment) from the supervisor (the controller). Terminals continue running even if the supervisor stops or the network connection drops.

*Key features:*

- Terminal session discovery: sb get lists all sessions, sb attach mysession reconnects instantly

- Profiles: YAML-defined environments for Kubernetes contexts, Terraform workspaces, or Docker containers, identical in local dev and CI/CD

- Multi-attach: Several users can connect to the same live session

- API access: Control and automate sessions programmatically

- Structured logs: All input and output are recorded for replay or analysis

*Use cases:*

- DevOps: Persistent kubectl or Terraform sessions

- Developers: Long-running tests and builds over unstable connections; launching Python environments, npm projects, and more

- CI/CD: Identical profiles in local and pipeline environments

sbsh is a single Go binary (busybox-style) that can also be used as a login shell. It runs on Linux, macOS, and FreeBSD.

Repository: github.com/eminwux/sbsh

I have been using it for some time now, and it completely changed how I manage infrastructure. I would love to hear feedback and see how others might use it.
by richardfeynman | 2025-11-04 20:33:22+00:00
I see you ignored this opportunity to confirm the accused is innocent until proven guilty and deserves a fair trial before people call them rapists. Too bad.

Of course I didn't walk back my claim that the video is doctored, and of course it's not unsupported. Here is one of many articles alleging the video is doctored and pointing to the specific person (Guy Peleg) who doctored it by splicing together different clips from different days: https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/sde-teiman-the-leak-that-sho...

This is just reporting, and it will need to be tested in court. But my claim is not unsupported.
by TeMPOraL | 2025-11-04 20:33:24+00:00
> Fundamentally, it is, just in the form of a swarm. With added challenges!

Right, in the same sense that existing Starlink constellation is a Death Star.

This paper does not describe a giant space station. It describes a couple dozen of satellites in a formation, using gravity and optics to get extra bandwidth for inter-satellite links. The example they gave uses 81 satellites, which is a number made trivial by Starlink (it's also in the blog release itself, so no "not clicking through to the paper" excuses here!).

(In a gist, the paper seems to be describing a small constellation as useful compute unit that can be scaled, indefinitely - basically replicating the scaling design used in terrestrial ML data centers.)
by Aurornis | 2025-11-04 20:33:40+00:00
> I am not hopeful they will be able to write custom firmware for the thermostats.

If you read the GitHub Readme (typically a better way to judge a project than stalking someone on LinkedIn) you can see that they didn’t write a custom firmware. They modified the Nest firmware to contact different back end servers.

The firmware is the same (they claim) except for modifications to change which server is contacted. They then built a back end to mimic the original Google serves.
by ryandobby | 2025-11-04 20:34:38+00:00
Location: Norman, OK (Open to Remote)

Remote: Yes (preferred)

Willing to relocate: No

Technologies: PHP, Laravel, TypeScript, JavaScript, React, Vue.js, Livewire, Next.js, Node, Hapi.js, Bash, Python

Résumé / Website: https://ryandobyns.com | GitHub: https://github.com/ryandobby | LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/ryandobby

Email: ryandobyns@gmail.com

Experience: 7+ years

I'm a full-stack engineer with 7+ years of experience building and scaling production systems — from early-stage startups to global enterprises with 150,000+ employees.

Most recently, I was a Senior Software Engineer at Flywheel Digital, where I helped lead backend development on Commerce Cloud, integrating data pipelines and services for Fortune 500 partners like Amazon, Walmart, and Target. Prior to that, I helped grow a seed-stage startup (WellCaddie) to a $15M+ valuation and run a consultancy focused on bespoke web applications.

I specialize in Laravel and TypeScript, with deep experience in the full product lifecycle, large-scale refactors, and reducing technical debt in complex legacy codebases.

Looking for: Full-time remote roles focused on Laravel, TypeScript, or other full-stack engineering. Particularly interested in teams modernizing legacy systems or scaling mature products.
Ask HN: Has an LLM Discovered Calculus?
by cobbzilla | 2025-11-04 20:35:34+00:00
It seems like an easy test: Train an LLM but restrict the data set to publications from <= year 1600, tell it that it's an expert geometrist, and ask for a formula yielding the area under a curve.

You could do the same for any number of more recent inventions, and see if the LLM is able to "innovate" the solution solely from what had been published prior to the actual human invention.

Has anyone done anything like this? It seems like an easy way to measure AI "innovative-ness". That or to dispel the idea that it exists, if it doesn't.
by somethoughts | 2025-11-04 20:35:41+00:00
I think the reverse offering on the Apple device roadmap would be interesting.

A MacPad and a MacPhone. Given its eventually going to be completely the same silicon this would enable them to offer a non App Store experience for people who want to experiment with alternative app stores like Epic.

In that way they could keep the average Apple target iPhone/iPad customer within the walled garden of iOS while being able to point specifically to EU regulators that they are allowing alternative app stores on the MacPhone/MacPad platform.
by Ajedi32 | 2025-11-04 20:35:48+00:00
They're in control of some things certainly, but not this. The decision to filibuster republican attempts to re-open the government is almost entirely up to Schumer, and under current rules the republicans can't do anything about that without 60 votes.

You're right of course that Trump could probably persuade Schumer to end the shutdown by agreeing to his demands, but I think it's disingenuous to suggest that means he's in "control" of what's happening. (Let alone the insanity of trying to suggest Elon Musk is somehow to blame as previous commenters did, or that X users are for continuing to use X. This thread about a new link preloading feature in Twitter got very off topic very quickly.)
by bitwize | 2025-11-04 20:36:39+00:00
Apple used to rule mass education sales by offering steep discounts on the Apple II line, a pricey option for home users, to schools. Their latest effort along that line was the eMac, an early 2000s all-in-one similar to the original iMac but done in inoffensive opaque white, whose spirit still remains with us as many Hackernews inadvertently let their iPhones autocorrect "Emacs" to "eMacs". The eMac was originally for the educational market but after a few months Apple would make it available to everyone. It'd be nice to see Apple target education again, though admittedly mainly for nostalgia's sake and as a hedge against data thieves like Google.
by eminwux | 2025-11-04 20:36:42+00:00
One friend asked me how it differs from tmux or screen, so here are my thoughts.

sbsh does not multiplex a single terminal session like those tools. Instead, it runs a persistent supervisor that manages multiple terminal sessions (PTYs) as independent processes. Each session can continue running even if the supervisor exits, and you can attach to it later from any machine that has access.

The main motivation was having YAML-defined profiles that set up environment variables, prompts, and startup commands for kubectl, terraform, or any other tool. This makes it easy to share consistent environments across a team without relying on ad-hoc Bash scripts.
by cmrdporcupine | 2025-11-04 20:36:46+00:00
I taught myself both StandardML and OCaml 20+ years ago as hobby. But I'd never advertise myself as an OCaml programmer. Yes, the syntax is relatively easy to learn. But when I look at what Jane St etc have created for libs, the tooling, etc.

C'mon, there's more there than 2 weeks.
by ModernMech | 2025-11-04 20:36:57+00:00
The problem with corporate control isn't that they require funding or they are private, the problem is they are motivated first by profit. Sometimes exclusively. So when "what's best" is at odds with "what's profitable", they tend to make the wrong choice.

Take this project for instance. If one day their choice is to forgo all future profits, or to close the source to continue operating, it's very likely they will close the source to continue operating, rather than forgoing profits. We've seen it happen enough to be wary from the project structure alone.
by Simulacra | 2025-11-04 20:37:17+00:00
I am conflicted a little on all of this. EBT etc should in most cases temporary, outside of disabled, elderly, and children. I would like to see more of that money going to school meals, lunch and breakfast. Feed the kids directly, with another amount going to parents. Ia that feasible?

Is there any way to insure kids are being taken care of?
by pcthrowaway | 2025-11-04 20:37:25+00:00
In 2022 42 Vietnamese workers fleeing human trafficking were captured on video as they escaped from a clandestine call center in a Cambodian casino, where they were being held against their will, and crossed the neighbouring river on foot, which separates Cambodia from Vietnam: https://www.rfa.org/english/news/cambodia/casino-workers-082...
by overfeed | 2025-11-04 20:37:28+00:00
The fed can take nore active measures than just managing rates. I lost some money by unexpectedly finding myself on the opposite side of US government policy - and dollar-firehose - during COVID. Shorting travel-related stocks can be a losing bet if the government wants to "shore up" share prices by directly injecting hitherto unheard of amounts of liquidity into the market.
by lotsofpulp | 2025-11-04 20:37:32+00:00
If this is the source, it does not seem like an objective, audited figure:

https://edition.cnn.com/2023/08/15/investing/michael-burry-s...

>Traders following the investments disclosed by Scion’s over the last 3 years (between May of 2020 and May 2023) would have made annualized returns of 56% according to an analysis by Sure Dividend

Seems like Scion Capital could have just disclosed winning trades, that they may or may not have made?
by hattmall | 2025-11-04 20:37:49+00:00
It would very easily allow someone to undermine their business. If you could shop at Walmart, by walking into Target it would be very easy for Target to say "here is the same item for $0.01 less"

If people find a benefit from using AI to shop on Amazon at scale then there's really no reason to keep Amazon in the loop at all. Especially for products that are high margin.
by Someone | 2025-11-04 20:38:11+00:00
> Then they moved to iCloud or manual sync and your forced to manage individual files again. Delete in iCloud, it’s gone everywhere. Want to keep your bad shots, but not have them on every device? Figure out how to move photos between multiple libraries while only being allowed to have one open at a time.

I don’t understand that. If you use iCloud, the cloud is primary storage, and your disk caches recently accessed cloud data.

So, just keep everything in a single library, and if your disk fills up iCloud will remove pictures you haven’t accessed recently from your disk.
by 9rx | 2025-11-04 20:38:31+00:00
'you mean there's no more Netware, Lantastic or (insert dozens of others), theres only (insert hundreds of linux derivatives), (insert a handful of BSD variants), (insert solaris variants), (insert clones), and a half dozen relatively popular new OSes all under current development, not counting the three popular mainstream commercial providers' is strangely absent from your list.

Perhaps it has a shorter trade name?
by atum47 | 2025-11-04 20:39:45+00:00
I was working on a image editor on the browser, https://victorribeiro.com/customFilter

Right now the neat future it have is the ability of running custom filters of varied window size of images, and use custom formulas to blend several images

I don't have a tutorial at hand on how to use it, but I have a YouTube video where I show some of its features

https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL3pnEx5_eGm9rVr1_u1Hm_LK6...
by criemen | 2025-11-04 20:40:18+00:00
It's hard for me to say. I don't think you know you're on the S-curve until after the fact.

On the one hand, most models are "good enough" for chatgpt-like usage, and there it's hard to see/feel generation-to-generation improvements. On the other hand, if you look at instruction following, dealing with long context windows, >200 tool call interactions while staying on track, there's still plenty of improvements to be had. So, hard to say where we are.
by Wowfunhappy | 2025-11-04 20:40:21+00:00
> There is a gap in Apple's offerings. Casual computer users like students probably can't justify dropping nearly a K on a MacBook, so they go for these 400-600$ dell/hp laptops, or a Chromebook. This fits that hole.

I could say the same about their cell phone lineup. If I have $400 to spend on a phone, what can I get from Apple?

A $400 iPhone would certainly increase market share--but Apple does not seem to want that market. Too low margin, I would think, or maybe too high a risk of "cheapening" their overall brand. Or maybe both.

Why is a laptop different?
by dfex | 2025-11-04 20:40:28+00:00
Lovely story. I work out of the back seat(s) (Crew Model) of my Ford Transit pretty regularly and can relate.

I'm astonished at how productive I can be while waiting around outside a job site for late deliveries/people or even my kids music lessons for an hour or two, or when sometimes I can sit at my desk and get nothing done in the same time. Maybe it's the constraints of the time/space? I (only half) jokingly wonder if some times I'd be more productive sitting in the van in my own driveway rather than in my home office.

My "truck desk" is the rear parcel shelf/cargo blind out of a Hyundai Accent and the moulded counters fit my laptop and mouse pad perfectly. It also tucks nicely into the void behind the back seats when not in use.

I recently acquired a Vision Pro and am still coming to terms with how incredible it can be sitting in the back of my van parked literally anywhere in the country and having a full ultra-wide desktop experience that packs away into something the size of a lunchbox.

This is the cyberpunk future I dreamed of as a kid.
by outworlder | 2025-11-04 20:40:36+00:00
They may not be "thinking" in the way you and I think, and instead just finding the correct output from a really incredibly large search space.

> Knee jerk dismissing the evidence in front of your eyes

Anthropomorphizing isn't any better.

That also dismisses the negative evidence, where they output completely _stupid_ things and make mind boggling mistakes that no human with a functioning brain would do. It's clear that there's some "thinking" analog, but there are pieces missing.

I like to say that LLMs are like if we took the part of our brain responsible for language and told it to solve complex problems, without all the other brain parts, no neocortex, etc. Maybe it can do that, but it's just as likely that it is going to produce a bunch of nonsense. And it won't be able to tell those apart without the other brain areas to cross check.