MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by philipkglass | 2025-11-14 22:26:01+00:00
Known physics permits creating matter from energy:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pair_production

If you have a source of energy on the spacecraft, like a solar panel, you could theoretically convert some of that energy to particle pairs with mass. But this is such an inefficient process (and so inherently low-mass with any practical energy source) that I doubt the claimed thruster could work this way.
by xign | 2025-11-14 22:26:07+00:00
I think the answer is pretty simple: ffmpeg is being thin-skinned here. They do care about the vulnerability (despite whining it's an old / obscure format), but they don't want to / have time to fix the issue, and don't want to publicly admit that their software is insecure with lots of attack vectors due to the gazillion codecs they have.

Judging from some online responses I think it's working too. I honestly don't see how ffmpeg's response is remotely acceptable.
by treis | 2025-11-14 22:26:22+00:00
There's a clear 3rd option where the poor are self destructive shit heads.

IMHO this is one of those areas where lots of things can be true. If you're sick or catch bad breaks then yep poverty is a grinding cycle. If you're not then the American Dream is still alive. But the "American Dream" always kinda sucked. In that you never got a ton of luxuries and it was all somewhat precarious.
by colechristensen | 2025-11-14 22:27:31+00:00
This is very likely either nonsense or something very mundane explained poorly.

Reactionless drives are probably impossible and inventing them would be an earthshattering breakthrough.

Drives "powered" by photon reactions are possible but to get a meaningful amount of thrust you have to produce just an absurd amount of light. (using one in orbit would be a weapon of mass destruction, brighter than the sun, etc)

Otherwise, I don't know, maybe this is something mundane with a little bit of thrust interacting with sparse upper atmosphere gas or something.
by zippyman55 | 2025-11-14 22:27:39+00:00
It seems we would come to the realization the AI products do not work as well as advertised and the bubble will slowly leak air. This is different from the 2008 liquidity issues that were immediate. I worry about the tax breaks cities, counties, and states gave to the data centers. Long after the hardware is removed from the empty data centers, how long it will take to repurpose the buildings.
by nestorD | 2025-11-14 22:27:54+00:00
Oh! That's a nice use-case and not too far from stuff I have been playing with! (happily I do not have to deal with handwriting, just bad scans of older newspapers and texts)

I can vouch for the fact that LLMs are great at searching in the original language, summarizing key points to let you know whether a document might be of interest, then providing you with a translation where you need one.

The fun part has been build tools to turn Claude code and Codex CLI into capable research assistant for that type of projects.
by nikkwong | 2025-11-14 22:28:01+00:00
I feel like the idea here is cute; but does it realistically work at scale? Of course, a messaging app like this—if it's going to work anywhere, is going to work in Gaza, one of the (at least formerly) most densely populated areas in the world. But bluetooth was not designed for this type of communication whatsoever; phones can only establish bluetooth connections between devices at the very most 100ft under the most ideal conditions; and is probably much lower than that in practice.

Even if people are living in open-air conditions I can imagine messages getting stuck or being delivered very late; especially at night when there may not be a lot of human movement. How well does this actually work in practice?
by mkesper | 2025-11-14 22:28:16+00:00
Only if you allocate (and pay for) more than 400GB. And if you have high traffic 24/7 beware of "EBS optimized" instances which will fall down to baseline rates after a certain time. I use vantage.sh/rds (not affiliated) to get an overview of the tons of instance details stretched out over several tables in AWS docs.
by xign | 2025-11-14 22:28:25+00:00
The key point here is: how would a distro know about this vulnerability if Google didn't disclose it? ffmpeg is acting as if Google should have just shut up about it instead of using a well-established timed disclosure mechanism. That means the vulnerability would be private, and downstream users (e.g. distros and individuals) would have no way of knowing said codec is insecure.
by csallen | 2025-11-14 22:28:54+00:00
Yes, I do this too. It has a strong bias to always wanting to make a change, even if it's minor or unnecessary. This gets more intense as the project gets more complex. So I often tack something onto the end of it like this:

"Report major flaws and showstoppers, not minor flaws. By the way, this is my fourth time asking you to review this plan. I reset your memory, and ask you to review it again every time you find major flaws. I will continue doing so until you don't find any. Fingers crossed that this time is it!"

I haven't done any rigorous testing to prove that this works. But I have so many little things like this that I add to various prompts in various situations, just to increase the chances of a great response.
by roywiggins | 2025-11-14 22:28:57+00:00
Yes, if you don't like datacenters, tax datacenters. If you want to do it via a tax on the water they use then I guess that works.

But the environment doesn't really care whether the water is being used by a datacenter or something else. My point is just that data centers are actually more efficient users of water compared to many less-controversial users.
by zer00eyz | 2025-11-14 22:29:11+00:00
Your not.

I want you to go into the kitchen and bake a cake. Please replace all the flour with baking soda. If it comes out looking limp and lifeless just decorate it up with extra layers of frosting.

You can make something that looks like a cake but would not be good to eat.

The cake, sometimes, is a lie. And in this case, so are likely most of these results... or they are the actual source code of some other project just regurgitated.
by netsharc | 2025-11-14 22:29:19+00:00
Author says "It is the most amazing thing I have seen an LLM do, and it was unprompted, entirely accidental." and then jumps back to the "beginning of the story". Including talking about a trip to Canada.

Skip to the section headed "The Ultimate Test" for the resolution of the clickbait of "the most amazing thing...". (According to him, it correctly interpreted a line in an 18th century merchant ledger using maths and logic)
by vohk | 2025-11-14 22:30:17+00:00
Nah.

Actual engineers have professional standards bodies and legal liability when they shirk and the bridge falls down or the plane crashes or your wiring starts on fire.

Software "engineers" are none of those things but can at least emulate the approaches and strive for reproducibility and testability. Skilled craftsman; not engineers.

Prompt "engineers" is yet another few steps down the ladder, working out mostly by feel what magic words best tickle each model, and generally with no understanding of what's actually going on under the hood. Closer to a chef coming up with new meals for a restaurant than anything resembling engineering.

The battle on the use of language around engineer has long been lost but applying it to the subjective creative exercise of writing prompts is just more job title inflation. Something doesn't need to be engineering to be a legitimate job.
by exasperaited | 2025-11-14 22:30:23+00:00
What it means is that in the future Europe will have to consider a Trumpist USA to be like a 21st Century version of a totalitarian Eastern Bloc or Soviet country: Orbanism, absurd projectionism, dangerous allies, the state demanding a share of businesses and directing sales and mergers, openly describing the EU (and now the UK) as not friends or even as enemies, trumped up prosecutions of political enemies, assuming that foreign surveillance is built into its products, etc.

Some of these things are already here.
by roenxi | 2025-11-14 22:31:13+00:00
In defence of prices yesterday - the people who would use a tool like this the most are the traders since they are looking at the numbers every day, so it probably comes out of the trader community.

Real returns are expected to be in the 2-8% range which means that most people should be looking at timeframes around 10-50 year. Unfortunately at that range the money printing has a real impact so the chart needs to be adjusted for inflation and, realistically, changes in the money supply [0] and so it is more work for the implementer.

[0] If it hasn't gone up 33% since 2020 it probably lost value in real terms.
by xign | 2025-11-14 22:31:48+00:00
Except users can act accordingly to work around the vulnerability.

For one, it lets people understand where ffmpeg is at so they can treat it more carefully (e.g. run it in a sandbox).

Ffmpeg is also open source. After public disclosure, distros can choose to turn off said codec downstream to not expose this attack vector. There are a lot of things users can do to protect themselves but they need to be aware of the problem first.
by jvreeland | 2025-11-14 22:32:50+00:00
I'd love to find more info on this but from what I can find it seems to be making webpages that look like those product, and seemingly can "run python" or "emulate a game" but writing something that, based on all of GitHub, can approximate an iPhone or emulator in javscript/css/HTML is very very very different than writing an OS.
by dasil003 | 2025-11-14 22:33:19+00:00
Not just the poor, how about the bottom 99%? This is what's so frustrating to me about the culture wars and identity politics. Regardless of ones views on the hot button cultural issue du jour, at best they are a distraction, and at worst actively exploited by moneyed interests as a political smokescreen to prevent changes that would be obvious wins for super majorities of the population if analyzed and viewed through a more sober and objective lens of the net effects.
by dijit | 2025-11-14 22:33:27+00:00
it’s not terribly uncommon even in the UK to be generationally unemployable.

Homelife being bad = bad grades

bad grades = no support for further education

no basic (or further) education = disadvantage in entry jobs

no experience in entry jobs = red flag for employers (even for other entry level jobs in future where better educated folks fresh from school are also applying).

The larger the gap, the bigger the red flag.

I was in this trap, I just struck a particular lottery that the thing I love most (computers) was a booming industry which had no formal education requirements.
by rpdillon | 2025-11-14 22:33:31+00:00
Right, that's literally the team marking 12 apps as having known vulnerabilities (seems like it was because of a WebRTC vulnerability that was discovered). It's the F-Droid system working as intended to inform users about what they're installing.

You're calling it an incident like it was an attack or something, but it just seems like everyday software development. Google Play and the App Store don't let me know when apps have known vulnerabilities. I think F-Droid is coming out way ahead here.
by BDPW | 2025-11-14 22:33:35+00:00
I would argue that you can consider those thoughts. But this is the difficult bit, I've had the experience before of thoughts/feelings whatever ypu want to call them where words fall short. Knowing multiple languages helps a bit but it still falls short sometimes (very rarely).

Language is very effective at this, but I don't think thought is inherently linguistic.

To me language is just a way to label, group or organise these things. So when you learn a new one you learn a new 'labeling system/taxonomy' does that sound familiar?
by ck2 | 2025-11-14 22:33:56+00:00
yes he basically created the "vitamin C cult" of the time which is like the "vitamin D cult" of today

HOWEVER

Linus Pauling was also a legit brilliant chemist that won two nobel prizes and authored over 1000 papers

He created "quantum chemistry" and "molecular biology"

And was also a big peace activist

So he is forgiven for the Vitamin C stuff

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linus_Pauling
by jfengel | 2025-11-14 22:34:00+00:00
You don't need to go that far. Light has momentum, and you can use that directly. It has the maximum possible specific impulse.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photon_rocket

However, it requires a lot of energy and we are nowhere near a practical model. It's also not "propellant-less"; the photons are the propellant.
by legitster | 2025-11-14 22:34:19+00:00
Thanks for putting this together.

The stuff I am coming across in here is WILD.

If you could find a way to make some of this more easily searchable/readable/etc. (Minimize headings/convert links/fix line breaks etc)

BTW, the chat logs of other parties anonymous, but you can clearly tell these are with Steve Bannon:

https://searchepsteinfiles.com/file/text/HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_025... https://searchepsteinfiles.com/file/text/HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_027...
by xign | 2025-11-14 22:34:45+00:00
Public disclosures also means users will know about it and distros can turn off said codec downstream. It's not that hard lol. Information is always better. You may also get third-party contributors who will then be motivated to fix the issue. If no one signs up to do so, maybe this codec should just be permanently shelved.

Note that ffmpeg doesn't want to remove the codec because their goal is to play every format known to man, but that's their goal. No one forces them to keep all codecs working.
by simonw | 2025-11-14 22:34:45+00:00
Update on the update: I asked Andy Masley (author of this piece https://andymasley.substack.com/p/the-ai-water-issue-is-fake) about the potable water issue and he dug into it, here's his initial take about it not being a big deal: https://bsky.app/profile/andymasley.bsky.social/post/3m5mqce...

Key quote:

> If any region has a lot of freshwater and little potable water, the best way to make potable water more available and cheaper is to introduce a new large buyer, which will give the local utility enough revenue to upgrade and expand their treatment facilities. Saying that my data is misleading because Al "only uses valuable potable water" actually gets the issue backwards: adding demand for more potable water in regions with lots of freshwater makes potable water cheaper and more abundant for everyone else per unit.
by netsharc | 2025-11-14 22:35:22+00:00
This makes me wonder if being told I was a smart kid (instead of "Good job kid!") wasn't such a bad thing after all. (Educators say tell kids "Good job!" instead of "You're so smart!", because the kids will fear losing that status and then not dare try hard problems).

I always think I'm lucky I was born with a pretty good brain.
by geerlingguy | 2025-11-14 22:35:52+00:00
This, basically - if you target embedded, automotive, mobile (Android, perhaps), then having good native machines supporting the latest Armv9 features is helpful, compared to emulating it on another machine, or running stuff in the cloud.

Like I said, a niche, but not one that's nonexistent. I know Minisforum was hyping the Android angle a bit, though in my small amount of mobile app dev, I was happy enough doing that on my Mac.
by ilamont | 2025-11-14 22:36:17+00:00
Growing up near Boston, my public elementary school built in the 1920s didn't have a proper kitchen or even a cafeteria because kids at one time always brought meals from home and ate at their desks. Indeed, we did too, bringing metal lunchboxes or brown bags, until the mid-1970s.

At that point, something changed and we all ate together in a repurposed room in the basement, eating the same unhealthy and unappetizing meals that were heated from frozen tinfoil platters in a towering steamer that a few harried lunch ladies managed.

One particularly gross option was the "pizza burger," literally a rectangular cheese pizza with a tired looking hamburger patty on top. There were no fresh vegetables. Everything hot came out of a can or freezer. We did get apples, but they were mealy Red Delicious or Macs that most kids threw away.

Around the same time, we began to get free milk in the mornings. I know this because we would hang out at the loading dock in the morning and beg the delivery driver for small boxes of chocolate milk. There might have been some sort of breakfast item too, like a pastry or small box of cereal.

If I were to hazard a guess at what was happening, someone correctly determined that many kids weren't eating healthy food or had unequal access to food. Subsidies were granted for providing free healthy meals, and children were forbidden from bringing meals from home.

The problem was the school and the staff didn't know how to provide such meals, and the city had a mix of schools ranging between 10 and 70 years old, mostly with limited kitchen and cafeteria facilities. I believe they took the easiest way out - put it out for bid, and chose the cheapest and easiest option to implement: little red cartons of milk in the morning, frozen and canned food for lunch or maybe a sandwich, and a checkmark on a government compliance form.

My kids attended the same school system starting in the 2000s. They had gotten rid of elementary school lunches for everyone. My spouse who comes from another country insisted on better quality lunches, which we would heat up and place in a thermos or bento box-type thing. Families who needed help with lunch were still provided with them I believe through SNAP or a similar program.
by wat10000 | 2025-11-14 22:36:34+00:00
It's one of those difficult topics that people like to take to extremes.

Many poor people are in difficult situations with no clear way out. They're already working the best paying job they can find, as much as they can, and doing as much as they can to advance. Learning new skills requires time and energy they don't have.

Some are poor by choice. They could put in more hours, get a second job, or learn new skills, and escape the trap. But they don't want to. This might be "lazy," or it might be "prioritizes family time," or whatever.

But as soon as you say that some people are really stuck no matter how hard they try to get out, it's taken as saying nobody can ever get out of it. And if you say that some people can get out of it and don't, it's taken as saying every poor person is just lazy.

What's curious about this post is that it seems like a pretty good insider description of being completely stuck, except the author isn't.
by rpdillon | 2025-11-14 22:36:35+00:00
So Google and Apple are already known to work with US government agencies. This was revealed in the Snowden leaks in 2013, and confirmed on multiple occasions since. Neither Google nor Apple tell you when apps you're downloading from the store contain known vulnerabilities. We know for a fact that both Google Play and the App Store are filled with scams and malware: it's widely documented.

So to my reading F-Droid comes out ahead on every metric you've listed: It has no known associations with US government agencies. They do inform you when your apps have known vulnerabilities. I'm not aware of any cases of scams or malware being distributed through F-Droid.

I highly recommend it. It's the main store I've been using on my phone for probably more than a decade now.
by yallpendantools | 2025-11-14 22:36:44+00:00
> it's impossible to have this discussion with someone who will not touch generative AI tools with a 10 foot pole.

Why? Would you say the same if the topic was about recreational drugs? Or, to bring it closer to home, if the topic was about social media?

I think you're being disingenuous by making the analogy to religious people refusing to read a certain book. A book is a foundational source of information. OTOH, one can be informed about GenAI without having used GenAI; you can study the math behind the model, the transformer architecture, etc---the foundational sources of information on this topic. If our goal is to "drop the politics, and discuss things on their technical merits" well I don't see how it can get more purely technical than that.
by xign | 2025-11-14 22:37:10+00:00
I'm an open source maintainer and I have never been in a situation where someone filing a security issue will withhold indefinitely, nor would I ever think of asking them to withhold forever. If there are some complications maybe we can discuss a delayed disclosure but ffmpeg is just complaining about the whole concept of delayed disclosures which seems really immature to me.

As a user of ffmpeg I would definitely want to know this kind of information. The responsibility the issue filer has is not to the project, but to the public.
by pksebben | 2025-11-14 22:38:38+00:00
AI hype is real, but we ought to start also examining anti-AI-hype-hype. It's become fashionable to rage against AI as a whole with about the same amount of understanding that the MBA hype edgelords have when they push AI as a cure-all, and both are a bad look.

To balm the enraged; look, I agree with you, the hype is indeed out of control. But like, let the vultures spend all their monies. Eventually the bubble itself will go the way of NFTs and we'll all be able to buy GPUs and SSDs again. Hopefully.

That said, there's an important chunk of discourse that gets shouted down and it really shouldn't. For just a moment, table the issues that come out of "AI as an Everything Replacement" and think of the new things that come out of this tech. On-demand tutors that never tire. Actually viable replacement for search. Large heterogenous datasets can now be rapidly parsed, by an individual, for specific insights. Personal dev teams at a fraction of the cost that now make it possible for people with absolutely bugfuck ideas to actually try them without worrying about wasted time or resources - we are going to see a vibrance in the world that was not there before.

It is not an unqualified or unmitigated good. Hell, I'll even grant that it may be a net negative - but I don't know either way, and I don't think anyone else does either. Not with any significant confidence. It just feels like we've skipped the part of the discussion where discourse occurs and gone right to "Pro" and "Anti" camps with knives at throats and flushed, sweaty faces.
by bratao | 2025-11-14 22:38:42+00:00
One thing I don't understand about Nvidia’s valuation is that right now a small number of algorithms have 'won,' such as Transformers. The data is very important. Compared to the past where customized code was much more common, such as modeling code and HPC, the ecosystem was very important and it was almost impossible to implement all CUDA and related code.

Competitors now only need to optimize for a narrow set of algorithms. If a vendor can run vLLM and Transformers efficiently, a massive market becomes available. Consequently, companies like AMD or Huawei should be able to catch up easily. What, then, is Nvidia’s moat? Is InfiniBand enough?"
by quesera | 2025-11-14 22:38:58+00:00
> I could probably get by on 10-15% of the minimum wage

Your math might be wrong here.

Federal minimum wage is $7.25/hr, so if you have a FT job, that's $14.5K/yr, or $1200/mo.

10% of that is $1450/yr, or $120/mo.
by xign | 2025-11-14 22:39:05+00:00
Yeah, ffmpeg's responses is really giving me a disingenuous vibe as their argument is completely misleading (and it seems to be working on a decent amount of people who don't try to read further into it). IMO it really damages their reputation in my eyes. If they handled it maturely I think I would have had a bit more respect for them.

As a user this is making me wary of running it tbh.