MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by bigmealbigmeal | 2025-11-23 11:18:57+00:00
Charli XCX was around before PC Music, but the sound she is known for and became famous for originated from PC Music. The fact that she delivered a bit of "minor popstar" cred to them is fine, but the key to my point is that they determined the sound that made her iconic.

Sophie was an example. I didn't see it necessary to talk about all the artists involved in PC Music to make the point that the producers on the label pioneered the sound.

Look at the credits for her albums. She had producers and writers credited on every single song. This IS a lot of help. You're acting like she just did a couple of collabs with AG Cook and that's it. She had many different people helping her on the actual composition and production of every single song.

This is the point being refuted -- that the popstars are geniuses responsible for carrying the burden of their rise. It's mythology. The reality is that they bring performance skills and charisma to the table, some non-awful lyrical skill, and then the lion's share of actually making the music work is done by producers and writers. They would be nowhere without the producers. The producers would be nowhere without the popstars. But it's the most common poptimist mistake to confuse the popstar's charisma for the producer's mastery.
by jotaen | 2025-11-23 11:20:40+00:00
> First question after Moxie Marlinspike talk at the CCC conference was: "When will Signal not base itself on a mobile phone number, I am an activist from Iran"

Not meant to be pedantic, but the question about phone numbers appears to be the last question after the talk, asked at 38:05 in the video. (The first question, at 30:50, is about post quantum security.) I also don’t think the asker mentions being from Iran.
by shevy-java | 2025-11-23 11:21:20+00:00
These are all spy-apps anyway. To me it always looked as if the US government is just a thin fake-coat over this operation. There is a reason they dislike people having secrets. No spy agency wants people to have secrets. Cops asking for an ID without a probable cause is another reason that then ties into the legal system. I feel that most governments overreach what they can do in general; they have a tendency to grow in what they claim is their concern when it really is not.
by dust42 | 2025-11-23 11:22:50+00:00
I think the most hilarious fun trivia about him -being the unifier of Italy- is that Nice named a square after him in 1870, thus 10 years after _splitting_ from Italy and joining France. And then to add insult to injury at his death the city decided to put a statue of him into the square. So now he stands on a square in France which actually during his lifetime was Italy. Must hurt him every day ;)
by dredmorbius | 2025-11-23 11:22:52+00:00
It can be frustrating, and I'd engaged for years on HN with the assumption that The Mods were Biased Against My Point of View. This itself is a common trope: <https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...> and <https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...>.

I've changed that opinion, both by observing their behaviour (you can follow both your own, and any users' threads, on HN, including mods, which I review fairly frequently), and overall site characteristics (see: <https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...> and <https://toot.cat/deck/tags/HackerNewsAnalytics> and related).

I do have some remaining concerns that HN's policies can amount to tone-policing, and that issues which are themselves long-standing or recurring, regardless of other merits, tend to trip across the guidelines to a greater extent, which imposes a natural bias against them.

That said, if you do want to discuss a volatile, persistent, or repetitive issue, you'll find far greater success if you do so with HN's principles and guidelines in mind. It might possibly also make you a more efficient advocate and debater.
by ivape | 2025-11-23 11:23:12+00:00
The apps are LLM agnostic, so all MCP apps will be portable. Economically, this means developers don’t have convince users to pay $20 a month, these users are already paying that. Devs just have to convince users to buy the app on the platform.

I don’t see this being the future state. We’d be talking about a world where any and all apps exist inside of fucking ChatGPT and that just sounds ridiculous.
by 89297288 | 2025-11-23 11:23:18+00:00
It doesn't sound like SimpleX solves this either [0]:

> There is still a risk that a server maliciously records all queues and messages (even though encrypted) sent via the same transport connection to gain a partial knowledge of the user’s communications graph and other meta-data.

[0]: https://github.com/simplex-chat/simplexmq/blob/master/protoc...
by hopelite | 2025-11-23 11:23:39+00:00
The tobacco industry also did that, but in many ways it also seems different, because where tobacco was something that has existed for millennia and was a scourge introduced to the world by the tribes of the “new world”; Facebook was a primary player in creating the whole social media space, something that effectively did not exist in the predatory and malignant manner that it was used for to create a digital panopticon, or more accurately and way worse, where your participation is required for a certain kind of success.

Social media is abusive and utterly psychotic and narcissistic, because that is the type of people who created it using basic psychological abuse and submission tactics. Banks, casinos, games, hollywood/TV, news/politics, social media, contemporary academia and religion, etc.; they all function on being endorphin dealers/dispensers.
by skylurk | 2025-11-23 11:23:45+00:00
Hmm I see your point, though to be fair, that Roman writing is also missing spacing and punctuation.

My guess is the author knows what they are doing and is intentionally reinforcing the disoriented and unsettled feeling. Or, at least, is intentionally making no effort to mitigate it.

(In many other posts, capitalisation rules are followed.)
by tormeh | 2025-11-23 11:23:56+00:00
It's just entertainment. I don't think there's anything to it. The four chord song over and over. We all want some sort of excitement or maybe magic, and these superstars give it to us. The reality distortion fields around them is attractive in and of themself as an escape from our boring lives. Being 'artistic' is not in itself a good thing. It could just mean you take yourself too seriously. If you advance the art somehow - cool. If you're just being weird for the sake of originality... I guess some people like that as well.
by ilaksh | 2025-11-23 11:25:08+00:00
I skimmed over this, but did I see a reference sandbox implementation? And then basically the chat UI interacts with that with postMessage (and receiving) and forwards tool calls to the MCP server. Does it also forward tool calls the MCP server doesn't handle to the host backend?

What I am imagining is something like a meta UI tool call that just creates a menu. The whole MCP server's purpose might be to add this menu creation capability to the chat user interface. But what you are selecting from isn't known ahead of time, it's the input to the UI.

When they select something I assume it would output a tool call like menuItemSelected('option B'). I suppose if you want your server to do anything specific with this then you would have to handle that in the particular server. But I guess you could also just have a tool call that just sends the inputs to the agent. This could make for what is a very slow to respond but extremely flexible overall UX.

I guess this is not the intended use, but suppose you give your agent generic MCP UI tools for showing any menu, showing any data table, showing a form, etc. So the inputSchemas would be somehow (if this is possible) quite loosely defined.

I guess the purpose is probably more about not having to go through the LLM rather than giving it the ability to dynamically put up UI elements that it has to react to individual interactions with.

But maybe one of the inputs to the dataTable are the query parameters for its data, and the table has a refresh button. Maybe another input is the URI for the details form MCP UI that slides over when you click a row.

Maybe there is an MCP UI for Layout what allows you to embed other MCP UIs in a specific structure.

This might not make sense, but I am wondering if I can use MCP Apps as an alternative to always building custom MindRoot plugins (my Python/web components agentic app framework) to provide unique web pages and UI for each client's agentic application.

I think I may have gotten the MCP Apps and MCP UI a bit conflated here so I probably need to read it again.
Show HN: Video Notes for YouTube
by prameshbajra | 2025-11-23 11:25:13+00:00
I built a Chrome extension to take timestamped notes while watching YouTube.

I learn a ton from YouTube, but taking notes with timestamps was always annoying so I built a simple extension for that.

It's just a simple extension (plain HTML, CSS, JS). Everything is stored locally in your browser — no account, no sync.

60-second demo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rOi7xQ8DLpo

Chrome Web Store: https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/video-notes/phgnkid...
by brabel | 2025-11-23 11:25:46+00:00
> We are still trained to hate women, to hate ourselves and to be angry at women if they step out of the neat little box that public perception has put them in.

I really don’t see this. Female singers seem to be enjoying about as much freedom to do and act in whatever way they please as it’s possible without basically letting them get away with criminal behavior… and even then many openly talk about doing drugs and other stuff that would get anyone else in trouble. Is it possible I am blind to some patriarchal society traits that make us “hate” women and she’s right about that?? If not, why some women still believe that??
by simonw | 2025-11-23 11:25:52+00:00
I know the cure for 68 blog drafts!

You have to lower your standards.

I make a point of hitting "publish" when I'm still not entirely happy with what I've written, because I know that the alternative is a folder full of drafts and nothing published at all.

Nobody who reads your stuff will ever know how good it could have been if you kept on polishing it.
by macbem | 2025-11-23 11:26:02+00:00
Out of curiosity, does lacking the sense of smell influence your sense of taste? Do some things taste wildly differently to you versus how your friends would describe them? I have a very weak sense of smell that comes and goes (sometimes I get weeks without being able to smell anything other than the strongest scents) and it definitely has an impact on my appetite and how much I enjoy certain foods. I have noticed that I'm much more sensitive to texture and mouth feel than others and I suspect it's because of this, but I also have AuDHD so I can't be sure.
by WillAdams | 2025-11-23 11:26:25+00:00
How reliable are the processes which these things run?

I'm processing thousands of files using Copilot, and even 20 at a time, it usually skips a couple, and sometimes, when skipping, it merges the data from one file to the next, not applying anything to the second file, other times it completely applies the data parsed from one file to the second --- not a big deal since I'm reviewing each operation manually, but the only reason the error rate is acceptable is the files are so inconsistent that normal techniques weren't working.

Is there an equivalent to "double-keying" where two different LLMs process the same input and it only moves forward if both match perfectly?
by RaiausderDose | 2025-11-23 11:26:33+00:00
I hope the classification for these drugs is not so wide that "normal" drug users are now weapon holders while using their stuff recreational without harming anybody.

Edit: I got more infos:

- Germany's national authorities will classify GBL and 1,4-Butanediol as weapons under German criminal law, treating administration as weapon deployment to strengthen prosecution.

- Under previous German criminal law, administering date-rape drugs was often charged as bodily harm without weapon classification, while survivor groups noted victims face memory loss complicating evidence.

- The reform permits courts to apply strengthened sentencing, allowing German prosecutors and courts to impose longer prison terms and mandatory minimums since administering drugs counts as weapon use, aiding prosecution.

- Survivors of drug-facilitated assault stand to gain a stronger legal foundation and clearer accountability, while the symbolic framing signals a cultural shift in German society prioritizing survivor protection.

- Legal experts warn that judicial training, forensic improvements and survivor-centered reporting systems are vital, while critics caution offenders may exploit loopholes or switch substances without such measures.

---

Seems reasonable, complicated topic
by ad_hockey | 2025-11-23 11:27:00+00:00
That seems like quite a high bar, to the extent that I'm not sure we could ever credit anyone with creating a pop song if it applies. Everyone seems comfortable crediting Lennon and McCartney with their various Beatles songs, for example, but were they doing all the things you describe? Did they do more to create those songs than, say, Taylor Swift does for hers? It's not obvious to me that it's the case.
by hackontool | 2025-11-23 11:27:05+00:00
A free privacy-first, in-browser tool to instantly convert JSON to TOON (and vice versa). Recall each conversion with the History pane and load it into the tool. TOON is a new optimized format that combines the best of YAML and CSV. Its goal is to be a drop-in replacement for JSON in LLM prompts.
by jeroenhd | 2025-11-23 11:27:26+00:00
I this case, Signal could give users the option to protect their privacy by giving users the option to disable/mask/randomize timings on delivery receipts. I think there's a way to do it.

Thanks to this leak, surveillance states don't need to work around sealed sender stuff, though. They can just mass collect the Signal data and figure out IP patterns over time. Without proxying your traffic through ever-changing proxy networks such as Tor, it's only a matter of gathering data. Especially if someone accidentally hits the call button, which arranges a peer to peer setup immediately identifying the two parties.

Signal is still the best general purpose messenger out there if you value privacy and security. My government uses it as a communication mechanism between people and embassies in places with terrorist presence.

It looks like SimpleX has some protocol advantages but reading the reviews, the app doesn't seem good enough for the general population. It's probably because they value privacy above usability, but with problems like "messages don't get delivered if the other party doesn't open their app for a few days", that app isn't going to work for the people I talk to. I also can't really find who's paying for SimpleX, all I can find is anonymous donation links and a company listing in the UK (the country known for forcing Apple's hand in disabling E2EE backups). Probably fine, but once again, no messenger is perfect.
by jillesvangurp | 2025-11-23 11:29:26+00:00
The main point of Markdown is that it has a very important feature that other languages don't have: it's supported in a lot of places. Most of the alternatives mentioned in this thread or in the article are things that require custom tools, that can't be used in most of the places that currently do support markdown. It's common in a lot of places. Even Google Docs has a well hidden feature that allows you to paste markdown.

It's one of those good enough things where the things it doesn't do are outweighed by the notion that you can just use it pretty much everywhere.

It's a Betamax vs VHS type discussion (both are at this point obsolete and forgotten). HTML used to be pretty limited as well compared to things like SGML or any of the wonderful things people used for structured documentation in the eighties. Most of which are long forgotten. It still is pretty limited compared to those probably. But the point with HTML is that that's what browsers supported and not other formats. Many of the limitations were addressed over time.

Markdown could be improved in a similar way over time. We have ambiguous standardization, lack of features, mutually incompatible implementations, etc. The whole thing actually resembles HTML4 before people started addressing such concerns. Evolving Markdown seems like the easier path than replacing it with something else.
by stopbulying | 2025-11-23 11:29:27+00:00
Donald and Melania Trump appear in the film Zoolander (2001) with male model manager Maury Ballstein and journalist Matilda Jeffries.

In the film Zoolander, Derek Zoolander attends a secretive rehab spa brainwashing program.

Zoolander: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoolander
by TheOtherHobbes | 2025-11-23 11:29:43+00:00
This is what China does. The problem is that the application is a little, uh, selective. As soon as you get any kind of corruption it becomes a power play between different factions in the elites.

You can't do any of this without a strong, independent, judiciary, strongly resistant to corruption. Making that happen is harder than it sounds.

And it still won't help, because the perps are sociopaths and they can't process consequences. So it's not a deterrent.

The only effective way to deal with this is to bar certain personality types from positions of power.

You might think that sounds outrageous, but we effectively have that today, only in reverse. People with strong moral codes are actively excluded from senior management.

It's a covert farming process that excludes those who would use corporate power constructively rather than abusing it for short-term gain.
by jmgao | 2025-11-23 11:30:01+00:00
Describing it as 'Google' is misleading, because different arms of the company might as well be completely different companies. The Chrome org seems to have had the same stance as Firefox with regards to JPEG XL: "we don't want to add 100,000 lines of multithreaded C++ because it's a giant gaping security risk", and the JPEG XL team (in a completely separate org) is addressing those concerns by implementing a Rust version. I'd guess that needing the "commitment to long-term maintenance" is Chrome fighting with Google Research or whatever about long-term headcount allocation towards support: Chrome doesn't want the JPEG XL team to launch and abandon JPEG XL in chrome and leaving Chrome engineers to deal with the fallout.
by willis936 | 2025-11-23 11:30:52+00:00
Starlink service is blacked out if you're within 20 miles of a radiotelescope that uses nearby bands as starlink. Maybe that's considered an edge case, but I can promise you Comcast has a lot of neglected infrastructure in those areas. I have receipts to prove that service dropouts are from outside the demarc but I had to waste a lot of time getting a tech to come out and say "looks fine to me".
by Y_Y | 2025-11-23 11:32:46+00:00
You can fix bugs without source lots of ways, although many are arcane and finicky. An example of a healthy and productive ecosystem for this is in game modding. Sometimes this relies on vendor supplied tools (like a modkit, e.g. Elder Scrolls games), messing with bytecode directly (Minecraft until recently), or some cooperation from the vendor (Dwarf Fortress).

In all of those cases users/players were able to fix bugs and add desired functionality (mostly) independently, on a closed-source program.

For industrial software you don't see as much, even though arguably cracks (to skip license check) qualify here.
by viktorcode | 2025-11-23 11:32:47+00:00
> You still need one to register

Case in point: recently, some Russian mobile service providers started blocking registration SMS for popular messengers, Signal included.

In earlier years there were also cases of mobile number spoofing in the country, where the control over the number was given to law enforcement who then use it as second factor authentication to break into different accounts.

That's how easy it is. The word "secure" and "mobile phone number" are the opposites of each other.
by noduerme | 2025-11-23 11:33:05+00:00
Precisely. It's a bit like the browser fingerprinting dilemma. The greater lengths to which you go to hide your fingerprint, the more unusual your total profile becomes.

May I humbly suggest the thing I've done for 25 years, when I need to pass sensitive data like a slate of passwords or API keys or confidential business logic... I just PGP encrypt a zip file and attach it to a normal email.

This does nothing to address the anonymity issue, as you point out. But I'm really not sure that any set of measures I could take would truly keep me anonymous at this point in the race between governments and the well-funded organizations trying to evade them. I assume that no matter what I do to hide my identity, someone with enough money and motivation would be able to unmask it. To believe otherwise would be foolish.
by skylerwiernik | 2025-11-23 11:33:29+00:00
> this feature is very technically complex, and totally useless

Now, to break your confidentiality, Signal would have to have a relatively complex system setup for trying to match up messages and deanonymize people. You could imagine many scenarios where a bad actor (agency) attempts to trick Signal into logging metadata. This now requires a lot more information, and if nothing else would give you a level of deniability.
by input_sh | 2025-11-23 11:34:17+00:00
I saw your comment and just finished listening to it, to those that can't be bothered to, he boils it down to: they don't want you to lose all of your social network if you lose your device. Imagine having to re-discover every user you've communicated with because you no longer have their identifiers, which I think is a fair argument to make.

Also, now that we know the timestamp, we know this user spread two pieces of misinformation in 28 words: Iran was never mentioned and it was not the first question in the QA. I think some snark is well justified here.
by jeroenhd | 2025-11-23 11:34:18+00:00
If you're looking to protect yourself from metadata analysis, Matrix is not the protocol for you.

Matrix and XMPP are excellent protocols for decentralisation, but their E2EE implementation leaves all kinds of metadata exposed outside of the E2EE envelope.

You need to trust the server to not expose any of this information to anyone else (which is difficult to do when the police comes in with a warrant). If you use your own Matrix server(s) this isn't a direct problem, but then the communication links between you and the people you talk to would stand out immediately, so protection fails in other ways.

I'm not saying you should drop Matrix or anything, its decentralized nature and clear finances do have some trust advantages over Signal's occasional behaviour, but on a protocol level, an ultra paranoid person would probably be better off using (an audited client for) Signal.
by gus_massa | 2025-11-23 11:34:24+00:00
I used Skype and other app like this a long time ago. My bank here in Argentina has a WhatsApp number, they are pushing it, probably because it's cheaper (I think they have a bot, and I'm not sure if you can escalate to a human. I use the phone anyway, because all the easy task are solved in the webpage/app, and if I call it's probably something weird. They have a bot in the telephone line anyway, but if you press the correct menu items you can get a human eventually.)