MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by machomaster | 2025-11-09 03:40:43+00:00
You should ask AI go give you a long list of people who were arrested/captured/kidnapped/killed by the USA for the things they did outside of the US. Often, without doing anything illegal (locally, but sometimes even by US law).

Guantanamo bay exists outside of the US territory for a reason, so that no legal rules would apply. CIA/USA has been keeping secret prisons and torturing people all around the world (incl. EU).
by DecoPerson | 2025-11-09 03:40:54+00:00
Native escape hatch, for when you need native capability. For example, my app uses the Zebra DataWedge API on Zebra Android devices.

Native experience for users, where the app appears in their app drawer/library. The app doesn’t disappear randomly like shortcuts do on iOS (maybe this is fixed now?).

Better DX for certain features, like notifications, storage, control of caching, local network device access, etc.
by pazimzadeh | 2025-11-09 03:41:10+00:00
I don't see what your definition of 'political taboo', which seems to be related to top-down restrictions on speech or behavior, has to do James Watson's remarks.

There are few explicit or implicit rules about making racist claims that don't incite violence/hatred in most western countries (unlike the example you gave in Iran), or if they are, Watson didn't seem to suffer much for 'breaching the taboo'. Watson was shunned by the public and lost some scientific prestige/status because he didn't provide any evidence for his huge claims.

An editorial in Nature said that his remarks were "beyond the pale" but expressed a wish that the tour had not been canceled so that Watson would have had to face his critics in person, encouraging scientific discussion on the matter.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Watson#Public_remarks_on...

I think there's a big taboo against making huge claims that aren't supported by anything other than your own authority (such as Linus Pauling claiming that Vitamin C can cure cancer), and an even bigger taboo when those claims are explicitly ranking groups of humans on the basis of their genetics or even vaguely defined features like intelligence.

I find it interesting that you're spending so much time talking about the presence of this taboo but no time at all analyzing or evaluating the actual claims. Because if the claims are false, who cares if they're taboo? Are all taboos bad? Is it a good outcome if we get to a point where all countries have the same taboos?

> If we are slowly conquering cancer, which once seemed intractable, we could slowly conquer stupidity as well, but that requires knowing something about the subject first, instead of blindly trusting some faith.

First we need to have good definitions for intelligence or stupidity. I don't particularly like IQ as a proxy for overall intelligence but if you are defining it using IQ, scores are slowly improving at the population level with hispanics and blacks gaining on whites.

Future Cognitive Ability: US IQ Prediction until 2060 Based on NAEP https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4603674
by kstrauser | 2025-11-09 03:41:43+00:00
Beat me to it. This is my go-to analogy for people who don't understand the problem. I am 100% certain I've violated North Korean law by posting mean things about Dear Leader. I couldn't care less. If I were to find myself in NK, I'm sure I'd care a lot, but that's not going to happen, so I don't.

If I'm not afraid of violating NK law — because I'll never, ever be there — then the same logic holds for the laws of every other country I won't be visiting.
by simonw | 2025-11-09 03:42:43+00:00
I managed to get GPT-5-Codex-Mini to draw me a pelican. It's not a very good one! https://static.simonwillison.net/static/2025/codex-hacking-m...

For comparison, here's GPT-5-Codex (not mini) https://static.simonwillison.net/static/2025/codex-hacking-d... and full GPT-5: https://static.simonwillison.net/static/2025/codex-hacking-g...

I had quite a fun time getting those pelicans though... since GPT-5 Codex Mini isn't officially available via API yet I instead had OpenAI's Codex CLI tool extend itself (in Rust) to add a "codex prompt ..." tool which uses their existing custom auth scheme and backend API, then used that to generate the pelicans. Full details here: https://simonwillison.net/2025/Nov/9/gpt-5-codex-mini/
by kelnos | 2025-11-09 03:43:45+00:00
> If you cannot regulate websites outside of the country of origin, then no internet regulation can hold for any subject.

It can, but instead of forcing other people to follow your laws, you have to block your country's residents from accessing the sites that break your laws.

I'm not saying I love this method either (China is famously very good at it, and I don't think their methods foster a healthy society), but I believe it should be the only lever you have. Forcing people outside your jurisdiction to follow your laws is a violation of another country's sovereignty.

As an aside, should I take pains to ensure any website I operate follows the laws of North Korea? Iran? China? Russia? Should we be complacent and accepting if HN were to be targeted by any of those governments because people here have undoubtedly said unflattering things about the leaders of those countries?

Of course not. But even though we're talking about a "friend"-type country here, it's not any different.
by adfm | 2025-11-09 03:44:59+00:00
I keep a Mac IIci that I purchased at a thrift store for $12 to remind me that we haven't progressed that far. It's not fast, but it runs Photoshop, Illustrator, and Vim. Not bad for a 35+ year old machine that will do 80% of what you need. No GPU, but I think that's losing the plot when people can't afford to pay their electricity bills while billion dollar companies continue to scale out the data centers that jack up prices for AI slop nobody wants.
by hilbert42 | 2025-11-09 03:46:11+00:00
"You shouldn't even be expected to geoblock."

I read the article and I remain confused.

I've just come to this story after seeing it on HN so I might have misunderstandings from being unaware of the background. Also, I neither reside in the US nor UK so I'd have not seen local media reports.

In short, I gather UK's Ofcom is threatening a US web site for online content that is lawful within the US's jurisdiction and unlawful in the UK as it contravenes the UK's Online Safety Act.

I am bewildered that Preston Byrne has even bothered to acknowledge Ofcom's correspondence let alone respond to it as the UK (Ofcom) has no jurisdiction over actions of any entity or person within the continental US—or for that matter the actions of those outside its borders unless, say, covered by treaty, etc.

That Preston Byrne responded to Ofcom seems strange given the fact that he is not only a lawyer but also head of legal and compliance at Arkham law firm, thus he ought to be aware that is client is shielded from UK law by virtue that the UK has no jurisdiction on US territory.

If I'd been Byrne I'd not have even acknowledged Ofcom's correspondence with a 'fuck off/cease and desist' reply but filed it in the trash can. (If there's some mitigating matter I've missed here let me know.)

It's clear to me the the UK's Online Safety Act stops at its borders so the UK has full responsibility for blocking websites that are physically outside its jurisdiction, similarly blocking or stopping its citizens from accessing accessing them.

It seems to me many of the younger internet fraternity are unaware that there's longstanding precedent for how such matters are handled. Back in the days of the Cold War before the internet some countries used to broadcast propaganda on HF/shortwave radio bands to those that were their political enemies and recipient countries would attempt to jam the broadcasts so their citizens would not be able to listen to them. For example, Communist USSR, China etc. would jam the BBC or the US's VOA (Voice of America).

Simply, if a country did not want its citizens to listen to the broadcasts of another country it was its responsibility to jam the incoming signals. It seems to me all that has actually changed since then is that nowady the unwanted broadcasts come via internet circuits.

Frankly, Ofcom has an unmitigated hide to threaten people who are acting lawfully within the US. That said, it's not unexpected, in recent decades the UK's been acting like a petulant bully, it seems to have forgotten that without it's empire it can no longer enforce its bullyboy tactics.

BTW, the matter of what content is or is not acceptable online is completely separate issue from Ofcom's behavior. Personally, from what I've gathered I'd find content on the SaSu website unacceptable and I can understand why many in the UK want it blocked but bypassing another country's sovereign authority is not the correct way to go about it.
by bergie | 2025-11-09 03:47:34+00:00
> that your choice of sailboat should entitle you to having something that is literally hundreds of times larger and less nimble than you have to make the effort to go around you.

That's how the rules of the road work. See: COLREGs.

We also travel by a small sailboat, and it is always reassuring to see huge tankers make small course changes tens of nautical miles away. That way everybody stays safe and nobody is majorly inconvenienced.
by lurk2 | 2025-11-09 03:47:52+00:00
I’m not at all worried about my family being deported for the simple reason that they have legal status to reside in the places where they reside. I wouldn’t have approached it the same way, but for the sole reason that you end up with citizens being inconvenienced. This post wasn’t about citizens having their rights infringed upon, though; it’s obvious from the editorializing that the author does not believe that America has any fundamental right to sovereignty. The author’s primary concern (and yours, I would venture) is ensuring that foreign nationals are not molested as they continue to reside and work within the United States illegally.

-
by bergie | 2025-11-09 03:49:54+00:00
That's true only in constrained waters. But obviously they need to see you from afar to be able to make that course change. That's where AIS transponders help a lot.

We've crossed some of the busier shipping lanes of the world, and have had to call the bridge of a freighter on radio just a couple of times. And usually the watchstander immediately confirmed seeing us and clarified their intentions.
by antonvs | 2025-11-09 03:50:02+00:00
We went through this with Oprah in 2007. She did a show about her CT scan and how wonderful it was.

Here's what the New York Times had to say about it the following year: https://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/29/business/29scan.html

The bottom line is these tests aren't some sort of one-size-fits-all panacea, and nor can they perfectly predict the future. In fact Oprah herself backtracked on it, via an article by Dr. Oz in her magazine in 2011: https://www.oprah.com/health/are-x-rays-and-ct-scans-safe-ra...

A good rule of thumb is don't take medical advice from Oprah or Dr. Oz. But in the case of the latter article, he wasn't wrong.
by peacebeard | 2025-11-09 03:51:10+00:00
Humans encounter massive numbers of problems in their experience that informs their problem solving. The same is true of LLM. LLMs do not actually have all their training data memorized.

I’m not sure what your basis is for saying “LLMs fail if there is a small wrench in the prompt.” They also succeed despite wrenches in the prompt with great regularity.
by kelnos | 2025-11-09 03:51:42+00:00
> Then no country should have legal authority over companies operating in the country but based internationally.

Not sure I see how your logic has led you there. If a company (regardless of where they are headquartered) is operating in your country, then you necessarily have some sort of jurisdiction over it:

- If they are using servers or domain names hosted in your country, you can seize them.

- If they are making use of your country's financial system, you can ban them from that system.

- If they are shipping physical products to your country's residents, you can intercept those packages at customs.

- If any employees (or, better, officers) of that company are physically present in your country, you can fine or arrest them if they don't comply.

- If you have an extradition treaty with the country where they're operating, you can ask that country for help. If they decline, that's unfortunate for you, but that's life.

And right, in the end, if there's no "presence" aside from people in your country accessing foreign websites, then you can (given the right legal mechanisms) order ISPs in your country to block those sites. I don't see why any foreign-operated website should have any obligation to examine your laws and pro-actively block your residents from their site if needed; if you want your laws enforced on your residents, then... enforce them on your residents.

> But saying the internet should be a fully unregulated hellscape is not a sensible position here.

While I do see a few low-effort comments to that effect, I don't think that's a common opinion here. I don't even think the person you're replying to holds that opinion.
by Sam6late | 2025-11-09 03:52:11+00:00
In some occasion, when I was a student as native speakers, we came across people who would say words that would be hilarious to hear. They would drop a hidden vowel and say some words that made us laugh because they would allow two consonants clusters which is not used in Arabic. Such as Kamouj al bahr,instead of Kamouji elbahr (as sea wave).'The principle that two vowelless consonants (saakin letters) cannot meet is a fundamental rule in Arabic pronunciation, often referred to as التقاء الساكنين the meeting of two saakin letters).This is why English spoken by some Arabs, Egyptian in particular, has a distinctive accent that reflect that, so James sounds Jamsi, Street becomes Istreet.
by NamlchakKhandro | 2025-11-09 03:52:30+00:00
Now we just need the companion turing complete languages:

Thunderfoot - write screenplays for youtube videos debunking articles written in Tabloid

Fisker - Writes troll posts to discord/irc/steam community to highlight how awesome TOPIC in AWESOME ARTICLE written in Tabloid is

Shitlist - Generates awesomelists repos on github for TOPIC
by dash2 | 2025-11-09 03:53:12+00:00
> Prior to the rise of Rome, for example, average heights in regions that would subsequently fall under its yoke were increasing.

Agh no. Please don't use average utility (or its proxies like height or income) to evaluate societies. It matters how many people there are too! If disease wipes out half the population, and the remainder now has more to eat and grows taller, that is not a good thing.
by sgbeal | 2025-11-09 03:53:32+00:00
> Where can I read more about this?

There's nothing specific to read about it, just plenty of anecdotal evidence. People use connection pools because connecting to _remote_ databases is slow. SQLite _is not remote_. It's _in-process_ and _fast_. Any connection-pool _adds_ to the amount of work needed to get an SQLite instance going.

It's _conceivable_ that pooling _might_ speed it up _just a tad_ for databases with _very large schemas_ because parsing the schema (which is not done at open-time, but when the schema is first needed) can be "slow" (maybe even several whole milliseconds!).
by forgotoldacc | 2025-11-09 03:54:36+00:00
Not really. The difference is police in poorer countries can be bribed with the amount of cash you can keep in a wallet. In the US, it requires a large public donation to a political campaign or "charity". Bribes very much exist, and if you think you can't do it, that just means you're not rich enough. In poor countries too, the ones getting arrested are the ones who can't afford the bribes.
by kelnos | 2025-11-09 03:58:29+00:00
That's absurd. If I put up a website that I believe is lawful in my own country, I'm not even thinking about people in other countries. If people from elsewhere access it, it's up to them to ensure that the content on my site complies with their local laws.

If the government of their country believes that accessing my website is a problem for their residents, then the onus is on them to sort it out on their own, without my involvement. They are perfectly capable of ordering ISPs that operate inside their borders to block my website from their customers.

The fact that Ofcom hasn't just done something like this in the case of SaSu, 4chan, etc., shows that they are not actually interested in "online safety"; they're making political statements and are trying to throw their weight around like the bullies they clearly are.
by ninetyninenine | 2025-11-09 03:58:37+00:00
It truly warms my heart to see that the entire Hacker News population only pirates things out of pure moral principle. A noble stand for user experience. You PayPal’d the authors too? Beautiful. Inspirational. That is basically philanthropy. Mother Teresa but with a seedbox.

At this point it is obvious that every piece of content worth pirating mysteriously ends up locked behind the “we hired an enterprise consultant who has never used a computer” user experience. Which means pirating is not stealing, it is simply undoing a curse. I used to think taking someone’s work without permission was wrong. But now I understand that if they make me click more than two times or sign up for an account that wants my blood type, the theft automatically becomes a principled act of civil disobedience. Robin Hood with magnet links.

My friend tried to ruin this beautiful moral architecture I’ve built. He goes, “You’re just lying to yourself. This is motivated reasoning. People justify actions after doing them so they don’t feel guilty.” Then he starts rattling off psychological terminology like he’s been waiting his entire life to use the phrase “post-hoc rationalization” in a sentence. He even said cognitive dissonance while maintaining full eye contact, which should honestly be illegal outside of a grad seminar or a cult.

He’s like, “You want the thing. Then you explain to yourself why it was okay to take the thing.”

And I was like: Wow. Incredible. Thank you, professor Brain Surgeon PhD of Human Morality and Meme Piracy. Please invoice me for the lecture. I’ll pay you in exposure and a strongly worded moral shrug.

Because here is the truth:

I am not justifying anything. I am suffering. I am enduring the emotional hardship of navigating a UI that looks like it was designed in Microsoft Access by someone who hates joy. Do you understand the courage it takes to ignore that Buy Now button and instead go spelunking into the digital underworld like I’m Indiana Jones but for PDFs?

This is not theft. This is archaeology.

And yes, sometimes what I excavate is a folder labeled “S04E01–S04E23 (WEB-DL 2160p)” with subtitles and commentary tracks that legally shouldn’t exist. But that is not piracy.

That is restoration of cultural heritage.

The Library of Alexandria burned. I’m simply making sure Season 4 doesn’t.
by pilingual | 2025-11-09 03:59:39+00:00
> Anybody can take a picture of your car

But they don't.

Once my car drove by a Google street view vehicle. I thought it was cool. If a Google street view vehicle (or, nowadays, Amazon truck) drove circles around my neighborhood collecting wearabouts of all cars I'd find that concerning.

The way these camera systems are set up is tantamount to an ankle monitor. Who wants to live like that?
by grebc | 2025-11-09 04:04:00+00:00
Assassination & attempted assassinations have all happened within 12ish months.

You’ve got an executive branch stacking all open positions in judicial and legislative branches with their political appointees. And the executive is interpreting the law to gather as much power as possible to the head of state.

It’s not hard to see the parallels but you keep on trucking dude.
by kelnos | 2025-11-09 04:05:17+00:00
> It is a reply... that you chose to send despite being fully aware that by doing so you might be reaching out across borders because that's how the internet and your contracts with your service providers works.

I think you're looking at it the wrong way. I'm not thinking about that at all. I do not care about that at all. I am not beholden to the laws of any other nation when I operate my website[0]. I don't care about "reaching out across borders". I don't event know the geographical origin of requests that hit my server, because I don't care, and I have no need or desire to hook up some sort of (error-prone) geoIP database to my logs in order to categorize requests. Once the HTTP response packets leave my server and hit the first router hop, I have no knowledge or interest in where they end up after that.

> SCOTUS (with an emphasis on the US) decisions seem rather irrelevant to non-US actors.

Not sure why you're bringing that up, as GP didn't mention SCOTUS at all. But as a US citizen and resident, SCOTUS' rulings are all that matter to me when it comes to what I personally do while at home. If SCOTUS says the content on my website is legal based on US law, then I don't really care whether or not it's legal in other countries[0, again], and I shouldn't really have to; life is too short to have to worry about that sort of thing.

[0] Sure, I agree with you that this could be a problem for me if I do break any of their laws, and then later decide I want to visit that country. It could also be a problem if that country has an extradition treaty with mine, and my country is for some reason incentivized to give me up.
by hsuduebc2 | 2025-11-09 04:06:12+00:00
Exactly. Honestly after the how article was ended by the nonsensical nationalistic chest beating which I absolutely didn't understand why author felt the urge to do that, I got the feeling that it was more about some sense of authors nationalistic pride. I do not even slightly support these UK's regulations and even an possiblity of ban of VPN services seems bizzare to me but as you said. He is already protected.