MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by a2tech | 2025-11-21 14:52:26+00:00
The fallacy is believing the country has ever perfectly embodied the principals of its people. Unlike your and others dismissive talk of my 'bright eyed idealism' I and the people that I interact with fully understand the missteps and failures of our country.

That does not stop us from working towards making the nation a better place. I'm stubborn and loud and I talk to politicians and others when I see things that I don't think are right. Maybe (probably) I'm tilting at windmills. But I'm not giving up on what I think the United States should be.
by lesuorac | 2025-11-21 14:52:32+00:00
> The SEC, SolarWinds and its chief information security officer, Timothy Brown, asked a federal judge on Wednesday to stay court proceedings while they finalize paperwork for a settlement. The judge granted their motion, filings showed.

I mean we can call a settlement "dropped" if you want.

I don't particular know the terms but given that apparently the legal system has been canceling the SEC ("A judge dismissed much of the regulator's case last year.") I suspect they're going to be favorable to SolarWins and so "dropped" is appropriate.

Afaik, the lawsuit probably has little merit in that all of these security companies provide no assurances about their products so uh there's no reason to believe they work. So if they don't do something they didn't claim to do its kinda like a non issue.
by jdrake501 | 2025-11-21 14:52:41+00:00
Over the past year I’ve been writing a series of reflections on AI, its evolution, its risks, and the strange new era it’s pulling us into. I’ve gathered them into an ‘AI Notebook’ page on my website for anyone who wants a deeper, more human take on what’s coming. If you’re interested in AI’s next decade, both the promise and the problems, you might enjoy browsing the collection. Thoughtful readers are welcome!
by killerstorm | 2025-11-21 14:52:46+00:00
tl;dr: If calculate "the human time horizon using the same methodology as we do for models", it's only 1.5 hours @ 50% success rate for the baseline experts METR hired, and it was surpassed by o3 in April 2025, 6 months ahead METR's prediction.

METR considers this "raw baseline" largely irrelevant as it might be affected by people getting bored / not paid enough, etc. But they admit this introduces a bias which makes reported numbers less relevant for human-vs-AI comparison.
by lloeki | 2025-11-21 14:53:04+00:00
> and then even browser and software.

Firefox is adding non-free codec support like HEVC on the basis that the hardware decoder (reached at through whatever OS API) already has a license.

No double dipping there.

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1963910

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1924066

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1894818
by inglor_cz | 2025-11-21 14:54:14+00:00
The Lower Thames Crossing project in the UK already generated 360000 pages of paper in the planing phase:

https://www.newcivilengineer.com/latest/lower-thames-crossin...

The Works in Progress magazine says that, in comparison, environmental assessment for an extension of a line of the Madrid metro, had only 19 pages.

https://worksinprogress.co/issue/how-madrid-built-its-metro-...

Granted, this is not completely the same, but 360 000 pages is a LOT. Most civilizational infrastructure around the world was built using orders of magnitude less bureaucracy.

That is overregulation for me, and I don't think this pushes any agenda except "360 000 pages for a tunnel is freaking insane".
by esbranson | 2025-11-21 14:56:58+00:00
As mentioned by others, this apparently uses Wi-Fi Aware (aka Neighbor Awareness Networking or NAN). I'd be interested to know if the wpa_supplicant NAN interfaces can be used.[1]

[1] https://w1.fi/cgit/hostap/tree/wpa_supplicant/README-NAN-USD
by svat | 2025-11-21 14:57:03+00:00
Don't miss the response “His Coy Mistress To Mr. Marvell” (by A. D. Hope): https://allpoetry.com/His-Coy-Mistress-To-Mr.-Marvell

Since you have world enough and time Sir, to admonish me in rhyme, Pray Mr Marvell, can it be You think to have persuaded me? […] But-- well I ask: to draw attention To worms in-- what I blush to mention, And prate of dust upon it too! Sir, was this any way to woo?
by dylan604 | 2025-11-21 14:57:12+00:00
Yeah, just because some data hoarder on the internet has TBs of videos doesn't mean that's normal. So weird call out.

It is however a call out of the GP as well for not knowing how ubiquitous something can be while not being shoved in your face that it is being used. The GP is evidently unaware that most streaming services will offer an h.265 encode for those users that can use it as the bandwidth savings make it very worthwhile. Mobile devices are using HEVC by default now as well as at least iOS using a still image variant. From reading elsewhere in these comments, clearly MS Teams uses it as well.

So just because you don't know it is being used does not mean it is not being used the way you might think.
by doublerabbit | 2025-11-21 14:57:30+00:00
> It has a garden

In this scenario your starting out as an gardener, would you rather having LLM "plant me five bulbs and two tulips in ideal soil conditions" or would you rather grow them yourself? If the latter you wouldn't gain skills as if you had the previous year made the compost, double dug the soil and sowed the seeds. All this knowledge learnt, skills gained and achievement that lost in the process. You may be novice and it may not bring all your flowers to bloom but if you succeed in one, that's the accomplishment, the feel good energy.

LLM may bring you the flowers, but you've not attempted. You've palmed the work to something else and just busking in the result. I wouldn't count that being a achievement; I just couldn't take pride in that. I was brought up in a strict form of "cheating: your only cheating yourself" ideology which may be what triggering this.

I would accept that on terms of teaching that there is a net plus for LLM's. A glorified Liberian. A traditional teacher may teach you one method - one for the whole class, LLM can adjust it's explanation until it clicks with yourself. "Explain it using Teddy Bears" -- a 24/365 resource allowing you to learn.

As such a LLM explaining that "your switch case statement is checking if the variable is populated and not that if the file is empty" on your existing written the code is relaying back a fault that would be no different of if you had asked a professional to review.

I just can't grip the feel of having LLM code for you. When you do it spreads like regex; you become dependent on it. "Now display a base64 image retrieved from an internal hash table while checking that the rendered image is actually 800x600" and that it does but the knowledge how-to becomes lost. You have to put double time in to learn what it did, question it's efficiency and assume it hasn't introduced further issues. It may take yourself few hours, days to get the logic right but at least you can take a step back and look at it knowing it's my code, my skills that made that single flower bloom.

The cat is out of the bag, reality is forcing you to embrace. It's not for me and that's fine; I'm not going to grudge over folk enjoying the ability to experience a specialist subject. I do become concerned when I see dystopian dangers ahead and see a future generation degraded in knowledge because we got vibe and over-hyped the current.

Knowledge and history is in real danger.
by nhecker | 2025-11-21 14:57:48+00:00
I read a paper long ago (so there's no chance of my recalling the source!) and one of the takeaways was that in a cockroach one of the neural ganglia basically had a binary "run!" mode that was flipped on instantly if sense nerves very close to it were triggered. So when researchers tapped or blew air on the rears of the roaches the roach in question would sprint away, its powerful legs being efficiently driven at full tilt by this little sprinting circuit without needing any input or interaction from the more complex main brain. Imagine getting used to that effect! "Ahhh! Why am I suddenly running and where am I going to steer this runaway body?"
by gjm11 | 2025-11-21 14:57:58+00:00
Note that at the time this was written the word "quaint" had both (1) roughly its modern meaning -- unusual and quirky, with side-orders of prettiness and (at the time) ingenuity, fastidiousness, and pride -- and also (2) a rather different meaning, equivalent to a shorter word ending in -nt.

So, even less couched than some readers might realise.
Ask HN: How do you spend your L&D budget?
by higgins | 2025-11-21 15:00:07+00:00
Do you work at a company that grants you an annual Learning & Development (L&D) stipend?

Like vacation time, it can be very "use it or lose it".

Here are some digital resources I've found helpful:

Animation: * https://www.schoolofmotion.com/courses/rive-academy-volume-1 * https://alexgrigg.studio/animation-basecamp

Web dev: * https://www.advanced-react.com/ * https://www.getwebperf.com/

What are yours?
by red-iron-pine | 2025-11-21 15:00:15+00:00
yeah the generated images are fun a few times, and they've come up in some tabletop RPG gaming with friends as quick fillers for NPCs or cave locations, etc.

but it's a niche thing. in exchange for one-offs we basically have the internet turn into bots and the annihilation of art as man-made expression -- and by burning the equivalent of a small country's daily power consumption.

at this point its tech bros praying for AGI, which will in all likelihood end up with a Torment Nexus
by bluGill | 2025-11-21 15:00:44+00:00
Which is why I can't legally replace my water heater - a simple job that I've done myself several times in other cities. Or lots of other basic home maintenance. (I grew up in a house built by a plumber, and my current house was owned by a builder before me - so I have plenty of first hand experience with how bad trades can do their own work)
by breppp | 2025-11-21 15:00:44+00:00
> They were literally intentionally directed at civilian population. With special focus on healthcare workers

no, they were directed at the militant organizations in Gaza while the civilian population was warned to evacuate in advance.

the only thing you can base this on is the fact hamas intentionally does not publish its dead, all of the casualties are "civilians", and Hamas was caught either converting dead militants to "journalists" and such or completely inflating its statistics such as the 500 false dead in the hospital "attack".

if you compare this to a similar contemporary war with reliable statistics like the war against hezbollah, you can see Israel was clearly able and successful in targeting militants.

regarding "starvation" even according to unreliable Hamas statistics these are minuscule, while if you will look at instagram there was actually a restaurant and food blogging scene in gaza throughout the war which is very inconsistent with mass famine
by mtillman | 2025-11-21 15:00:58+00:00
Maps, news, stocks are all installed by default and supported by ads. Opting out eliminates personalization. One needs to install an app like lulu to block background calls even with personalization turned off. This started with the twitter integration many years again and while social is no longer tightly integrated, the philosophy around user fingerprinting “while not being tied to your identity” is still very much alive and well in a default macOS install.
by drzaiusx11 | 2025-11-21 15:01:01+00:00
Nope, the closest thing to a a breaking javalang change is adding new keywords like var. Outside of the language itself, java's standard libraries have undergone some depreciations and packaging moves (moving javafx, etc.), but absolutely nothing like breaking core language constructs, syntax or behaviors across revisions. I would expect standard libraries to have some deprecations across a 20+ year span.

However, I'm of the opinion that "standard libraries" should be much more minimalist and than javas: move as much as you can into a "core" library that isn't necessarily part of the language, just an optional runtime component following semver so you can be sure pinning a major version will work for essentially forever. Java isn't perfect in this regard, but it sure as hell better than what perl, ruby and python have done in significantly less time than javas...
by sevg | 2025-11-21 15:01:38+00:00
Hmm, maybe it’s still necessary to rebind ctrl-q in some cases.

This says gnome has ctrl-q to quit applications:

https://wiki.gnome.org/Design/OS/KeyboardShortcuts

I don’t know if the above is still the default, but I have this in my gnome setup scripts anyway:

gsettings set org.gnome.settings-daemon.plugins.media-keys screensaver “[‘<Control>q’]”

(IIRC it’s a terminal command because trying to bind ctrl-q in Settings will quit the Settings window. And you can’t unbind ctrl-q completely, so you have to bind it to something else. You could maybe add it as a custom launcher that just runs /bin/true.)
by inglor_cz | 2025-11-21 15:02:04+00:00
This requires some actual history, not just memes and conspiracy theories.

Originally, it was the French during Mitterrand times who pushed for a unified European currency. Kohl granted it to them in exchange for their consent to unify Germany, but wasn't happy about it, because he knew that conservative German voters were attached to the strength of the Deutsche Mark.

Nevertheless, 15-20 years on, it actually turned out that a weaker euro was a problem for industry in places like France and Italy, while supporting German exports. Germany had a streak of really strong exports.

Nowadays, it does not matter anymore, though. Aging of the population, expensive energies, bureaucracy gone wild and bad immigration policies have made Germany a sick man of Europe again. When it comes to raw industrial growth, the strongest player in the EU is now Poland, which does not even use the euro.
by kombine | 2025-11-21 15:02:11+00:00
This is demagoguery. There is ample evidencence that Israel committed genocide in Gaza. Historians who study genocide all their careers, including Israeli Jewish ones, concluded it a long time ago. There is 100 pages with references in the application by South Africa to the ICJ. If you intend to take the same route as the Holocaust denialists, the burden is on you to disprove all the evidence.
by xxbondsxx | 2025-11-21 15:02:34+00:00
This is very polished! I worked on http://learngitbranching.js.org/ which is a similar approach (browser simulated lessons).

My one suggestion is that you might want to allow people to jump into the harder lessons right away vs having to go through the basics. The first few lessons being simple selects wasn't the most engaging. Just a suggestion!
by u_sama | 2025-11-21 15:03:40+00:00
The minimum wage doesnt mean much in general, many European countries either dont have it or recently instated it (Germany). What matters is the Median and quintile salaries in which, the US fares much better anyways

Many other countries have official minimum wages and a big % of people working black, unreported because the minimum wage is to high relative to the average (Spain, Greece, Italy)
by PaulDavisThe1st | 2025-11-21 15:03:43+00:00
If the function of a symphony orchestra is to perform symphonies, there has been essentially zero change in their productivity for several hundred years. Contemporary instruments are no better than they were in the mid-1800s. Their rehearsals are rarely recorded, and even if they were, it is much less common for this to contribute to future rehearsals.

Wikipedia says that Baumol's is:

> the tendency for wages in jobs that have experienced little or no increase in labor productivity to rise in response to rising wages in other jobs that did experience high productivity growth.

while it's not the canonical source for the definition, it is notably more specific than your version.
by stevetron | 2025-11-21 15:03:52+00:00
In some reading I did several (decades) years ago, I read how the invention of the oscillator was an accident. Someone was building an amplifier, and made a wiring error that was described as connecting the amplifier's input to the amplifier's output and it produced a squeal.

Up until that time, radio frequency carriers were produced with AC Generators designed for a high-frequency (> 60 Hz) output. That is in part why it took so long for things like music to be broadcast by radio: you needed a high-frequency carrier. Generators were topping out at about 15K Hz according to the old article I read.

So once they had the accidental circuit that squealed, it was studied and expermented upon (trial and etrror modifications), and that is where all the 'classic' oscillator circuits originate.

Essentially, an oscillator is an amplifier with positive feedback. Amplifiers that are amplifiers sometimes have negative feedback.
by vfclists | 2025-11-21 15:04:07+00:00
If the sanctioned Israeli politicians and military commanders think those warrants are baseless, why don't they appear before the courts to defend themselves?

This isn't really about the ICC judges. It is about the failure of the major Western countries who are part of the ICC to come to the defence of the judges who they have appointed to make those decisions, and the control Israeli politicians exercise over the White House, ie the US President himself.

Americans don't seem to understand how the moral character of their politicians and their political system is relentlessly degraded by the so called Israel lobby, or they don't care, or have resigned themselves to it.

Sanctions of those kind or usually applied to corporate entities, state entitities or militant political groups aka "proscribed terrorist organizations". They are not intended to applied to individuals carrying out their legitimate duties in organizations approved or even created by America's own allies under principles America subscribes to, even if they are reluctant to submit themselves to those organizations.

And yet on account of Israel, the US applies these sanctions to judges carrying out the duties lawfully, and somehow they don't see how whimsical, capricious, petty and infantile such decisions are and the poor light they present the US in.
by claw-el | 2025-11-21 15:04:54+00:00
A regulation being good or bad is not a fixed thing. A regulation that was good when created could change to bad due to circumstances or new innovation introduced.

Maybe something innovators can learn to do better is to involve regulators earlier in the design process of this innovation process, so that regulation does not become the bottleneck for introducing the innovation to the market.

The tricky thing about involving regulators earlier is that it sometimes can be seen as aggressive or unethical lobbying.
by flag_fagger | 2025-11-21 15:05:29+00:00
> Americans don't seem to understand how the moral character of their politicians and their political system is relentlessly degraded by the so called Israel lobby, or they don't care, or have resigned themselves to it.

I mean, it’s causing a small rift in the GOP. Time will tell if that escalates any though. I stand firm in my believe that nothing ever happens though.
by fnbr | 2025-11-21 15:05:33+00:00
(I’m a researcher on the post-training team at Ai2.)

7B models are mostly useful for local use on consumer GPUs. 32B could be used for a lot of applications. There’s a lot of companies using fine tuned Qwen 3 models that might want to switch to Olmo now that we have released a 32B base model.
by scotty79 | 2025-11-21 15:06:39+00:00
> Or do you just mean from an aesthetic perspective more street parking would be used when you say cities would be more littered with cars?

Yes, but I'm more concerned about practical aspect than esthetics. Blocked walkways, lower visibility for drivers, longer distance between place of living and the car, and the car you had to park far away on the crowded street snd your business. This are all costs that developers love to externalize to all members of society instead of passing them to the future owners of the property they are building.

I'm not really talking about situation in US where people live so sparsely that they have plenty of space to patk their car when they are at home. Parking minimums I'm supporting are for medium to high density residential intermixed with conmercial zones. That is pretty much majority of spaces in European cities.

I'm sure that mininum parking requirements for businesses in US in purely commercial zones might be too high.
by gjm11 | 2025-11-21 15:06:45+00:00
Fun fact: in the original radio-series version of HHGttG the name was "Paul Neil Milne Johnstone" and allegedly he was an actual person known to Douglas Adams, who was Not Amused at being used in this way, hence the name-change in the books.

(I do not know whether said actual person actually wrote poetry or whether it was anywhere near as bad as implied. Online sources commonly claim that he did and it was, but that seems like the sort of thing that people might write without actually knowing it to be true.)

[EDITED to add:] Actually, some of those online sources do in fact give what looks like good reason to believe that he did write actual poetry and to suspect it wasn't all that bad. I haven't so far found anything that seems credibly an actual poem written by Johnstone. There is something on-screen at the appropriate point in the TV series, but it seems very unlikely that it is a real poem written by Paul Johnstone. There's a Wikipedia talk page for Johnstone (even though no longer an actual article) which quotes what purport to be two lines from one of his poems, on which the on-screen Terrible Poetry may be loosely based. It doesn't seem obviously very bad poetry, but it's hard to tell from so small a sample.
by VHRanger | 2025-11-21 15:06:48+00:00
That's a fair comment.

Just to give my point of view: I'm head of ML here, but I'm choosing to work here for the impact I believe I can have. I could work somewhere else.

As for the net positive effect, the point of my essay is that the trust relation you raise (not having to duplicate the research, etc) to me is a product design issue.

LLMs are fundamentally capable of bullshit. So products that leverage them have to keep that in mind to build workflows that don't end up breaking user trust in it.

The way we're currently thinking of doing that is to keep the user in the loop and incentivize the user to check sources by making it as easy as possible to quickly fact check LLM claims.

I'm on the same page as you that a model you can only trust 95% of the time is not useful because it's untrustable. So the product has to build an interaction flow that assumes that lack of trust but still makes something that is useful, saves time, respects user preferences, etc.

You're welcome to still think they're not useful for you, but that's the way we currently think about it and our goal is to make useful tools, not lofty promises of replacing humans at tasks.
by IAmBroom | 2025-11-21 15:07:49+00:00
Speaking for rail safety alone: rules are written in hypothetical blood. The FRA and similar bodies in CAN and EU are VERY proactive about safety, as are the light rail train companies themselves.

In fact, new safety regs are often suggested by rail companies, who observe previously-unexpected situations IRL (despite the best attempts to nail these down in advance).

You're enjoying tossing around a lot of "What if"s, out of ignorance, but modern transit safety is not based on some dude sitting around and thinking up rules for funsies. It's a highly intensive engineering process, with multiple layers of cross-checking.

And then millions of us get behind the wheel, and there's nothing anyone can do about decisions made by each of them. Car safety is based on the hope people fear getting tickets, and some soft design aids.