MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by pinkmuffinere | 2025-11-07 18:37:02+00:00
There are two main claims that I think you may be touching on:

1. The question of whether concepts exist in the absence of a human mind to imagine them. This is still debated in philosophy. I'm not an expert, so I won't make a claim about this, but I will point out that if it was easy to resolve, it probably wouldn't be a field of active debate after 2000+ years.

2. The question of whether it is necessary that _something_ physically must exist. This I do make a strong claim on: it is not necessary that something physically exist. There is no law that forces objects to exist. We find ourselves in a universe where objects do exist. This is not required. It just happens to be the case.

Side-note: I find the response "Nope :)" to be kindof condescending. I realize English may be a second language to you, so maybe you don't feel the subtle jab in that -- no worries if so, I'm sure I make the same mistakes in other languages all the time. Smiley faces are definitely allowed online, but in general I'd say to use them when making a joke or when acknowledging your own mistake.

Edit: In case somebody is curious, "the question of whether concepts exist in the absence of a human mind to imagine them" is debated at least since plato's time. I believe these concepts-that-exist-without-humans are sometimes called Platonic Forms. They are good for a wikipedia binge!
by District5524 | 2025-11-07 18:37:05+00:00
That still seems to be a problem. It was not what "Socrates thought", but what Plato put into Socrates' mouth in Phaedrus, and even this imaginary Socrates is not saying anything like that, just referencing an even earlier Egyptian tale: "There is an old Egyptian tale of Theuth, the inventor of writing, showing his invention to the god Thamus, who told him that he would only spoil men’s memories and take away their understandings..." https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/plato/dialogues/benjamin-j... But that's just pedantery. The real painpoint is that just because there are lots of useful AI tools, it doesn't mean it's not dangerous at the same time for a surprising number of 8B people currently alive (children, elderly, mentally lazy or just fatigued). At the very least, they will end up being exploited by bandits. And if you let the bandits continue to exploit those who lack certain mental resistance, the bandits will become stronger etc.
by wat10000 | 2025-11-07 18:37:45+00:00
It's a very attractive idea. It gives you an immediate counterargument (people must prefer it this way because they're all doing it), and gives you the satisfaction of calling the other person a hypocrite (you think it's better yet you aren't doing it).

I've lost count of how many times I've had someone tell me, "If you think you should pay more taxes, you can always send the IRS some extra cash."
by shortrounddev2 | 2025-11-07 18:37:54+00:00
I first joined reddit in 2010 because it was the best place to see other people's minecraft creations. I no longer have an account but by far the most commonly suggested videos for me when I view the front page without an account are

1. Car crashes

2. Street/bum fights

3. Conspiracy theory content (UFOs, Anti-vax, chemtrails)

4. Anti-semitic videos (one such video was titled "Kanye was right about everything")

5. Anti-muslim videos (weirdly I get a lot of Indian majority subreddits that post a lot of hate videos about Pakistan/Muslims)

Every single one of these categories produces feelings of outrage. Reddit has just become a fucking hate machine. Not just hate toward other races, but hate toward the entire human race. Every video shows someone doing some anti-social shit, like people driving like total assholes, or running people over, or getting hit by a train after cutting off traffic, or beating each other senseless in public. In the 1990s there was a huge outcry over violence in media because of Mortal Kombat, Doom, and The Matrix, but here we are today watching actual people die on dashcams regularly. This has to be just bad for us on a really primal level
by eximius | 2025-11-07 18:38:01+00:00
> Rather than defining a single interface and mock on the producer side that can be reused by all these packages

This is the answer. The domain that exports the API should also provide a high fidelity test double that is a fake/in memory implementation (not a mock!) that all internal downstream consumers can use.

New method on the interface (or behavioral change to existing methods)? Update the fake in the same change (you have to, otherwise the fake won't meet the interface and uses won't compile!), and your build system can run all tests that use it.
by thewebguyd | 2025-11-07 18:38:36+00:00
> Why shouldn't society do things that are good for society, even if they increase a burden on a profit making company?

I agree. Look at how many times since 2011 Bethesda has put some "new" version of Skyrim up for sale. I myself probably bought the game at least 3 separate times.

At this point, Bethesda has made their money off of it and then some, what's the harm at this point in opening it up? Give it to the community under some form of no-commercial use/sale license, as an act of public good. Outside of excess profit, there's little reason to continue to hoard IP after a certain time.

Would be nice if all offline games followed something like that, although I fear if such copyright expiry was the law we'd never see fully offline games again.
by testing22321 | 2025-11-07 18:39:39+00:00
For what it’s worth, cooking a large meal for three (big pot of pasta or rice, brown onions and garlic, brown mince meat, vegetables, simmer sauce) on my induction in my round the world vehicle uses smack on 40Ah of a 12v lithium battery - so about 0.5kwh.

It’s connected with a 3000W inverter.

600W of solar helps a lot.
by MeetingsBrowser | 2025-11-07 18:39:41+00:00
I think popularity and regarded favorably are probably inversely correlated.

Many of the most popular languages are also the most hated. Many of the more niche languages are viewed the most favorably.

It is easy to dislike something yo are familiar with, and easy to be overoptimistic about something you don't know as well.

"the grass is always greener ... "
by danogentili | 2025-11-07 18:39:41+00:00
Seems pretty much a private equivalent of "fair share" govt regulation currently being pushed by ISPs in Europe through lobbying with the Digital Networks Act (https://www.namex.it/toward-the-digital-networks-act-the-fut..., https://stopdna.eu/).

South Korea pioneered fair share govt regulations in 2016 (which caused Twitch to exit the market in 2024 due the exorbitant "fair share" fees).
by gummydogg | 2025-11-07 18:39:49+00:00
I don’t accept the excuse it’s too hard. If they have to spend $10 billion per year to maintain an acceptable level trust on their platforms then so be it. It’s the cost of doing business. If I went into a mall and opened up a fake Wells Fargo bank branch it would be shut down pretty instantly by human intervention. These are the conditions most businesses run under. Why should these platforms given such leeway just because ‘it’s hard’? Size and scale shouldn’t be an excuse. If its not viable to prevent fraud then they don’t have a viable business.
by mariusor | 2025-11-07 18:39:53+00:00
I had seen that post, and frankly it didn't pass my smell test of "LLM solves entirely new problems". But again, I'm not a mathematician to know what "unsolved problems" means in the context of the ones they gave AlphaEvolve, and more than that I'm entirely a skeptic on LLM solves problems that don't exist in their training data, so I'm biased. However the request for details is genuine. :)
by kjkjadksj | 2025-11-07 18:40:30+00:00
Socrates is probably right. There are probably entirely different connections being made in ones brain in an oral culture vs written culture. Socrates was alive to see the transition where these differences in manners of brain activity were readily apparent, unlike today where all educated people are already “ruined” by writing and there is no control possible.

I have seen something similar. Engineers from the analog era able to solve complicated calculations in their head like you and I might perform simple arithmetic. It is like entire functional capabilities have been lost thanks to being able to punt these tasks to a calculator in modern times. Akin to an animal no longer competent to make the amino acids it needs to survive because some other species in the environment makes them and can be eaten.
by renewiltord | 2025-11-07 18:41:00+00:00
From a source with more info:

> Activist group Stop AI, known for organizing protests at OpenAI’s San Francisco office, also claimed responsibility. The group stated that Altman’s subpoena was tied to their upcoming trial, in which members will face charges for non-violent demonstrations aimed at halting what they describe as AI’s “existential threat to humanity.”

https://www.sfgate.com/tech/article/openai-sam-altman-subpeo...
by delusional | 2025-11-07 18:41:16+00:00
Not from what I can tell. From what I can read, it only establishes a new authority, under the supervision and at the digression, of the Member state that can, with judicial approval mandate "the least intrusive in terms of the impact on the users’ rights to private and family life" detection activities on platforms where "there is evidence [... ] it is likely, [...] that the service is used, to an appreciable extent for the dissemination of known child sexual abuse material".

That all sounds extremely boring and political, but the essence is that it mandates a local authority to scan messages on platforms that are likely to contain child pornography. That's not a blanket scan of all messages everywhere.
by mlmonkey | 2025-11-07 18:41:21+00:00
I was visiting Palm Springs one year, late summer. I had assumed that since it was in the middle of the desert, that water use would be regulated.

But as I drove around over there, I was shocked to see massive lawns being watered in the middle of the day, and large amounts of water just flowing out from these lawns into the drains. Sometimes the giant sprinklers were watering the sidewalks and roads too.

What a waste of water! Speaking to a local, they claimed that due to some old water rights agreement, Palm Springs gets its water for really cheap and there is no incentive to conserve it. Sad state of affairs.
by systems | 2025-11-07 18:41:22+00:00
+10 for bad windows support, i think this is a key and weirdly underestimated reason

just to give an idea how bad, until recently, you could not just go to ocaml.org and download ocaml for windows, you had to either download one for mingw or wsl

so for many it was just not installable, i.e. for many we didnt have ocaml for windows, until very very recently
by AnthonyMouse | 2025-11-07 18:41:40+00:00
You can ask the same questions about a local law enforcement agency but the answers won't be the same for every one of them.

And then in terms of literal sentiment, most people aren't familiar with any given local law enforcement agency because there are so many of them, so they wouldn't know what to think, and some of them are quite bad. But the knowledge of the average person it isn't really the point.

Suppose you actually were familiar with the record of whatever specific agency just showed up. If you would still have to think "oh fuck" then they suck.
by elric | 2025-11-07 18:41:58+00:00
The problem is not "social media", that's just an insanely broad and poorly category. HN is probably "social media". Many games are probably "social media".

The problem is that certain platforms exploit people for profit by feeding them crap, from political propaganda to ads for weight loss drugs. Many of them are designed to be addictive so folks can keep up "engagement". Enough eyeballs make all crap profitable, or something like that.

On the other end of the spectrum, there are tons of great platforms that young people can benefit from, and vice versa. Including HN. Many subreddits. Tons of forums. Loads online games.

Ban the exploitation. Ban the propaganda. Ban the abuse. But don't ban young people.
by tanjtanjtanj | 2025-11-07 18:41:59+00:00
Crime is certainly down, assuming you live in a developed country that isn’t one of a couple massively regressing ones.

You are displaying a bias here. Unless there is a “itbeho’s neighborhood gazette” reporting exclusively on what you see through your front window and THEY’RE saying there is no increase in crime then your complaint doesn’t hold.

My grandfather, in the US, was waylaid by actual bandits operating openly on a major US highway in the 1970s. In some cities you couldn’t take public transport without almost surely being victimized.

Crime is very much down and that’s especially true for large cities. Maybe you’ve become overly fixated on the topic or maybe your neighborhood is an outlier but that doesn’t make the statistics “wrong”.
by northlondoner | 2025-11-07 18:41:59+00:00
Probably I should have a bit more explicit why it is promising. Rendering speed is quite critical as it is related perception and human reaction time. If rendering is very slow then the engagement and iterating of writing maths will be interrupted. Imagine compiling of Latex would have taken 10 min, it won't be used widely like this. So it is promising, and maybe super promising indeed!
by stego-tech | 2025-11-07 18:42:29+00:00
The solution - as always - is regulation. ISPs typically already have very generous business models with widespread monopolies on customers, overwhelming barriers to entry for new companies, and a lack of rate controls allowing then to price arbitrarily - all of which supports immensely profitable businesses without the need for additional extraction of capital from other parties. Regulators and consumers alike should be screaming in rage at the idea that their ISPs are now multi-dipping for revenue, but we’ve done a piss-poor job of explaining how this works to the common man and thus can’t count on them to support the Open Internet as we’d like to see it.

That being said, the threat to the open internet is also more than just ISPs being gigantic assholes: it’s centralization in general. A majority of web traffic passes into or through one of three main cloud compute providers; Cloudflare has such an outsized impact that regional IP blocks can disrupt global traffic; and ISPs have been permitted to consolidate through mergers and acquisitions into expansive monopolies. The internet is fiercely centralized and largely closed already, which is why these ploys by shitty ISPs are likely to work absent Government intervention.

You want to protect the open internet? Regulate the shit out of its major players again. Force them to keep it open, especially when it hinders expanding profit margins.
by cauch | 2025-11-07 18:43:27+00:00
I think that you are right, but what is the worse (illustrative numbers):

- 70% of men being allowed to get 20$ and 30% being excluded from this opportunity and getting only 5$

- 100% of women being excluded from the opportunity to get 20$ and getting only 12$

Sure, the excluded women gets more than the excluded men, but it is also very unfair that men have 70% chance to "make it" while women have 0% chance to "make it".

Not saying one is worse than the other (and it is illustrative numbers anyway), but just to illustrate that 1. in both cases, looking at only one metric is not enough, 2. at the end, the answer is not really "objective" or "mathematical", and two persons can reach different conclusions based on their values.
by arcfour | 2025-11-07 18:43:27+00:00
As a parent, you should be able to parent your child, rather than having the government arbitrarily and capriciously do so on your behalf, and for everyone else's kids, too.

As someone who got my first BlackBerry at 11, which really spurred a lot of my later interests which are now part of my career or led to it indirectly, I am opposed to paternalistic authoritarian governments making choices for everyone.

(Funny anecdote, but I didn't even figure out how to sign up for Facebook until I was 11-12, because I wouldn't lie about my age and it would tell me I was too young. Heh.)
by tptacek | 2025-11-07 18:43:34+00:00
The model will quickly stop tool calling on its own; in fact, I've had more trouble getting GPT5 to tool call enough. The "real" loop is driven, at each iteration, by a prompt from the "user" (which might be human or might be human-mediated code that keeps supplying new prompts).

In my personal agent, I have a system prompt that tells the model to generate responses (after absorbing tool responses) with <1>...</1> <2>...</2> <3>...</3> delimited suggestions for next steps; my TUI presents those, parsed out of the output, as a selector, which is how I drive it.
by randycupertino | 2025-11-07 18:43:43+00:00
Here are a few examples of ones where right-wing influencers are making AI-shop videos of people complaining about losing SNAP benefits:

https://www.reddit.com/r/BlackPeopleTwitter/comments/1ojydgq...

https://www.reddit.com/r/themayormccheese/comments/1ojtbwz/a...

Note how that second one all uses the same script, "I have 7 babies from 7 different baby daddies!"
by newpavlov | 2025-11-07 18:43:46+00:00
I agree. In my opinion NaNs were a big mistake in the IEEE 754 spec. Not only they introduce a lot of special casing, but also consume a relatively big chunk of all values in 32 bit floats (~0.4%).

I am not saying we do not need NaNs (I would even love to see them in integers, see: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45174074), but I would prefer if we had less of them in floats with clear sorting rules.
by rexpop | 2025-11-07 18:44:10+00:00
No, it's mainstream, almost universal belief that masculinity is synonymous with domination or the will to do violence.

Masculinity has been traditionally constructed in many societies as a set of norms that emphasize strength, dominance, emotional stoicism, and aggressive behavior. These traits are often framed as essential markers of being "a real man," which creates societal pressure for men to conform to this ideal. This cultural scripting associates masculinity closely with control, competition, and the capacity for violence as a means of asserting power and status. The phrase "boys will be boys" is often used to normalize aggressive or violent male behavior, reinforcing the idea that violence is natural and expected in masculine identity.

From a young age, boys are socialized to suppress vulnerability and express strength and aggression as a pathway to social acceptance and identity affirmation. This pressure creates a continuum of behavior where even subtle forms of dominance (e.g., mansplaining or macho banter) are normalized as expressions of masculinity, potentially escalating to more severe violence like domestic abuse or mass shootings.

Aggressive male heroes, competitive sports culture, macho music themes, dominant male advertising, militarized masculinity, violent video game characters, combat-focused boys’ toys, "man up" language, male peer dominance, domestic violence perpetration, strongman political rhetoric, warrior archetypes, stoic male socialization, patriarchal religious teachings, protector family roles, aggressive workplace culture, male legal authority, heroic folklore violence, hypermasculine social media, objectifying female sexualization... the list goes on, and the phenomenon is further evidenced by elements of rape culture, which normalizes and excuses sexual aggression and violence against women as linked to masculine identity and power:

Victim-blaming attitudes, trivializing sexual assault, sexually explicit jokes, tolerance of sexual harassment, inflating false rape report statistics, public scrutiny of victims’ dress and history, media normalization of male sexual entitlement, degrading jokes and language, underreporting of sexual violence, peer pressure for sexual conquests, institutional failure to protect survivors, sexist stereotypes of male aggression, hyper-sexualized media portrayals, normalization of violent sexual behavior, systemic misogyny.

You must've thought I was talking about something else, because the evidence for domination masculinity narratives is overwhelmingly ubiquitous.
by MarkMarine | 2025-11-07 18:44:27+00:00
I revile this pattern. Look at the examples and imagine these are real and everything in the system is abstracted like this, and your coworkers ran out of concise names for their interfaces. Now you have to hop to 7 other files, through abstractions (and then read the DI code to understand which code actually implements this and what it specifically does) and keep all that context in your head… all in service of the I in some stupid acronym, just to build a mental model of what a piece of code does.

Go used to specifically warn against the overuse of this pattern in its teaching documentation, but let me offer an alternative so I’m not just complaining: Just write functions where the logic is clear to the reader. You’ll thank yourself in 6 months when you’re chasing down a bug
by paddleon | 2025-11-07 18:44:55+00:00
Curious if we could test/compare (popluation-level) memory skills before/after writing was introduced to the population.

I want to say "I remember things better when I write them down", and because I think I'm a smart person I think my memory is good.

I don't know how well I'd remember things if I'd spent a large portion of my life building memorization skills. Maybe I could be 100x better at memory if I exercised it more?
by D-Machine | 2025-11-07 18:45:24+00:00
Yes, although in this case the premise is just entirely wrong. A "traditional Google search" doesn't work anymore as Google just ignores half of what you put in anyway, and even vigorous quoting and Google-fu still generally just returns SEO garbage. Whereas e.g. Kagi is another world (proving that "knowing how to search" is not actually the problem anyway).
by debugnik | 2025-11-07 18:45:38+00:00
It's a matter of trends: F# is losing compatibility with the overall CLR ecosystem due to the churn in C# features with poor F# interop, but F# has already mingled its design with the CLR's, too much to live on its own as a native language. Plus its compiler is slow and the tooling is getting increasingly unstable.

Meanwhile, OCaml got rid of its global lock, got a really fast-compiling native toolchain with stable and improving editor tooling, and has a cleaner language design with some really powerful features unavailable to F#, like modules/functors, GADTs, effects or preprocessors. It somehow got immutable arrays before F#!

F# still has an edge on some domains due to having unboxed types, SIMD, better Windows support and the CLR's overall performance. But the first two are already in the OxCaml fork and will hopefully get upstreamed in the following years, and the third is improving already, now that the opam package manager supports Windows.
by danogentili | 2025-11-07 18:45:43+00:00
The current trend in govt regulation is actually going in the opposite direction, with telecom lobbies in Europe pushing for "fair share" (pretty much an implementation through law of what Deutsche Telekom and Vodafone Germany are doing right now) through the Digital Networks Act.

South Korea pioneered "fair share" govt regulations in 2016 (which caused Twitch to exit the market in 2024 due the exorbitant "fair share" fees).
by delusional | 2025-11-07 18:46:01+00:00
> That is indisputable.

I dispute that. The proposal explicitly states it has to be true that "it is likely, despite any mitigation measures that the provider may have taken or will take, that the service is used, to an appreciable extent for the dissemination of known child sexual abuse material;"

> How can a judge be involved

Because the proposal does not itself require any scanning. It requires Member states to construct an authority that can then mandate the scanning, in collaboration with a judge.

I suggest YOU read the proposal, at least once.