MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by rtp4me | 2025-12-08 01:58:12+00:00
I have been to the Dollar Store (and similar) many times and have never witnessed anyone getting yelled at for saying, "Hey, I think this was a mistake. Can you correct it, please?" (or any other place I shop - especially the grocery stores). We tend to have very positive experiences when pointing out pricing errors. My mother-in-law made it a point to review the receipts ever time we went to the grocery store. No big deal. As other have said, sometimes you get +10% of your money back and other times you get it for free.

Yes, mistakes happen; yes, people get over charged. But to imply people are shamed for asking to correct the error just seems...odd.
by ssl-3 | 2025-12-08 01:58:14+00:00
I prefer to think that people (including those who run corporations at the level of -- you know -- price tags) are broadly more incompetent than they are malicious, dishonest, replete scumbags who would sooner stab a person in the back and take their wallet than give them the time of day.

It is possible that I am wrong about this.
by protocolture | 2025-12-08 01:58:20+00:00
Regulators take tip offs and if one gets through, the enforcement action is usually pretty fast and strong.

They also like doing this. The ACCC makes a huge deal out of parading their latest conquest in the media.

Has its faults, the ACCCs dealings with telcos are especially terrible.

I still have friends at an Applecare provider based in oz, and they had a big one where as a settlement with the ACCC over trying to have it both ways with consumer law, they agreed to provide repairs or replacements for like a decade of wrongfully denied hardware issues. Hushed it right up. It was in lieu of a public apology from memory. But my friends spent weeks calling back old customers, chasing new contact details etc, to try and get them all free replacements.
by puildupO | 2025-12-08 01:58:29+00:00
Thanks for the feedback. I understand that playlists are not the usual type of post here. The idea was more about seeing what people do with a shared notebook space rather than focusing on the music itself. It is just a small experiment to test how people use an open board when they can create their own section inside it. Glad you found the design clean. I tried to keep everything simple and fast.
by phil21 | 2025-12-08 01:58:34+00:00
The lack of customer density over time drove out all the fabric stores - medium sized or not.

At-home sewing has been declining since I've been alive, and it was just barely hanging on when I was a kid. The demographics simply cannot support these stores in most locations outside of hyper-dense cities.

Not to mention the folks who shop for fabric tend to be some of the most cost-conscious consumers around. They are more or less the prototype of a customer who will go to a B&M store and then price match on-line,.

I'm honestly surprised even Jo-anne survived as long as it did.
by 4bpp | 2025-12-08 01:59:46+00:00
As usual with these, it helps to try to keep the metaphor used for downplaying AI, but flip the script. Let's grant the author's perception that AI is a "bag of words", which is already damn good at producing the "right words" for any given situation, and only keeps getting better at it.

Sure, this is not the same as being a human. Does that really mean, as the author seems to believe without argument, that humans need not be afraid that it will usurp their role? In how many contexts is the utility of having a human, if you squint, not just that a human has so far been the best way to "produce the right words in any given situation", that is, to use the meat-bag only in its capacity as a word-bag? In how many more contexts would a really good magic bag of words be better than a human, if it existed, even if the current human is used somewhat differently? The author seems to rest assured that a human (long-distance?) lover will not be replaced by a "bag of words"; why, especially once the bag of words is also ducttaped to a bag of pictures and a bag of sounds?

I can just imagine someone - a horse breeder, or an anthropomorphised horse - dismissing all concerns on the eve of the automotive revolution, talking about how marketers and gullible marks are prone to hippomorphising anything that looks like it can be ridden and some more, and sprinkling some anecdotes about kids riding broomsticks, legends of pegasi and patterns of stars in the sky being interpreted as horses since ancient times.
by jader201 | 2025-12-08 02:01:19+00:00
> I don't understand the mindset of people who complain about Apple's products and behavior over the past decade, then don't receive this news as directionally positive.

Short of Tim Cook being replaced, it just seems like disarray and things are falling apart at the seams, resulting in things only likely getting worse, not better.

If Tim Cook is indeed about to get replaced, then I think you might hear fewer complaints. But right now, the complaints are likely assuming a Tim Cook replacement isn’t part of the plan, or at the very least, not a guarantee.

If you’re wrong about a Tim Cook replacement, then I think the complaints may be justified.
by MarkusQ | 2025-12-08 02:01:20+00:00
Poor wording on my part.

I should have said "Peer review doesn't catch _all_ errors" or perhaps "Peer review doesn't eliminate errors".

In other words, being "peer reviewed" is nowhere close to "error free," and if (as is often the case) the rate of errors is significantly greater than the rate at which errors are caught, peer review may not even significantly improve the quality.

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC1182327/
by rmunn | 2025-12-08 02:02:04+00:00
Funny story on porn blockers. Back when I attended college, the college I attended blocked porn sites at the DNS level. It was pretty good at its job, but I did notice one false positive: I was trying to access the website for the Extremely Reliable Operating System (whose URL at the time was eros-os.org, though that URL no longer works). The porn blocker blocked my access attempt; I had to click on the "email the sysadmins" link and send them an email saying "Hey, can you add this site to the DNS whitelist? Despite having "eros" in the URL it's got nothing at all to do with porn." They whitelisted it and I had no more false-positives the rest of my college career. But I still laugh about that one, more than two decades later.
by jjtheblunt | 2025-12-08 02:03:00+00:00
Or maybe not and Cook and Williams are in their 60s and want to be retired, Giannandrea (sp?) was overpaid enormously but didn't create any magic, Dye is a longtime Apple person who had incredible luck but is frankly fungible (bring back Evans Hankey, for instance). Srouji is a special personality and talent, though.
by FpUser | 2025-12-08 02:03:04+00:00
I've read many very positive reviews about Gemini 3. I tried using it including Pro and to me it looks very inferior to ChatGPT. What was very interesting though was when I caught it bullshitting me I called its BS and Gemini expressed very human like behavior. It did try to weasel its way out, degenerated down to "true Scotsman" level but finally admitted that it was full of it. this is kind of impressive / scary.
by this_user | 2025-12-08 02:05:16+00:00
Cook is denying that he has any current plans to step down. There was also a Bloomberg article about this a couple of days ago.

What they point out is that a lot of Apple's senior leadership are of a similar age and are simply approaching retirement now. But they are also losing younger rising stars they desperately need to fill the ensuing void. At the moment, they are simply losing talent left and right, and that is unsustainable if they want to maintain their competitive edge and avoid completely turning into Microsoft.

The more likely explanation is that a certain amount of internal rot has set in. They haven't really launched a successful major new product category in years, and a lot of their initiatives have either stalled or failed. Something is clearly not right, and top tier talent doesn't will only tolerate that sort of thing for so long before moving on.
by hu3 | 2025-12-08 02:05:22+00:00
Invert the logic.

The big assumption here is to think that a language can be so much superior and yet mostly ignored after half of century of existence.

I'm sure Lisp has its technical merits but language adoption criterion is multi-dimensional.

Thinking Lisp should be more popular disregarding many factors of language popularity is the true "Programmer who live in Flatland".
by buu700 | 2025-12-08 02:05:25+00:00
Whether or not it will one day get there is anyone's guess, but it sounds like we agree that it at least isn't currently there. I brought up that goalpost to illustrate why more efficient models will only improve the aggregate volume and/or quality of output for the foreseeable future, as opposed to creating a glut of supply that destroys the economics of data centers.
by Kim_Bruning | 2025-12-08 02:06:05+00:00
Amanda Askell studied under David Chalmers at NYU: the philosopher who coined "the hard problem of consciousness" and is famous for taking phenomenal experience seriously rather than explaining it away. That context makes her choice to speak this way more striking: this isn't naive anthropomorphizing from someone unfamiliar with the debates. It's someone trained by one of the most rigorous philosophers of consciousness, who knows all the arguments for dismissing mental states in non-biological systems, and is still choosing to speak carefully about models potentially having something like feelings or insecurities.
by assemblyman | 2025-12-08 02:06:18+00:00
Renting can be much better financially than buying.

Edit: all % numbers are per year

Consider the case of condos in cities. If you were to buy outright, you effectively get a return by not paying rent (i.e. paying yourself rent). Rent is usually ~5% of the condo cost. HOA + property taxes is 2-3% so subtract that from the rent return i.e. net return 2-3% (5-2/3%). The rest of the return is appreciation from the underlying real estate prices. I am excluding maintenance costs because they are negligible in condos.

On the other hand, if you rent and put the entire amount (that you would have paid to buy the condo), you get ~10% per year. To break even between the two scenarios, you would need real estate prices to grow 7-8% (2-3% + 8-7% = 10%).

Beyond this, there are psychological reasons to buy vs rent. Buying - ability to customize the space, peace of mind because of perceived stability etc. Renting - flexibility, peace of mind because of no long-term obligations etc.

A mortgage is an interpolation of the two cases at the cost of the interest one pays. It is noteworthy, at least in the US, that for most people, this is the only time they can borrow several hundreds of thousands at relatively low costs.
by jhawk28 | 2025-12-08 02:06:53+00:00
They are attributing malice/greed to what is more likely just incompetence compounded by inflation. The employees most likely haven't updated the pricing on the shelves. If you have ever been in a DG or DT, you can see that the inventory is generally a mess and just put everywhere. There is one or two people up at the front. They don't have as many people stocking shelves as a grocery store to keep the inventory in order.
by charleslmunger | 2025-12-08 02:07:34+00:00
>Critical section under 100ns, low contention (2-4 threads): Spinlock. You’ll waste less time spinning than you would on a context switch.

If your sections are that short then you can use a hybrid mutex and never actually park. Unless you're wrong about how long things take, in which case you'll save yourself.

>alignas(64) in C++

std::hardware_destructive_interference_size

Exists so you don't have to guess, although in practice it'll basically always be 64.

The code samples also don't obey the basic best practices for spinlocks for x86_64 or arm64. Spinlocks should perform a relaxed read in the loop, and only attempt a compare and set with acquire order if the first check shows the lock is unowned. This avoids hammering the CPU with cache coherency traffic.

Similarly the x86 PAUSE instruction isn't mentioned, even though it exist specifically to signal spin sections to the CPU.

Spinlocks outside the kernel are a bad idea in almost all cases, except dedicated nonpreemptable cases; use a hybrid mutex. Spinning for consumer threads can be done in specialty exclusive thread per core cases where you want to minimize wakeup costs, but that's not the same as a spinlock which would cause any contending thread to spin.
by JumpCrisscross | 2025-12-08 02:07:39+00:00
> Why bring up Revlon duties when as you say, their relevance is only during company acquisition or restructuring?

It’s an exception that proves the rule. In that specific case, what you’re saying applies. In all others, it does not.

> It's well established over hundreds of years of case law

Where are you getting this from?

> directors of public companies have to act in good faith to benefit the company (and therefore, the shareholders)

Where did you get that this only applies to public companies? What you’re describing is basic English and Delaware corporate law.

Also, there is a massive difference between “all shareholders” and “the shareholders”. And nothing about public companies says they can’t be structured in a way that sometimes undermines some shareholders. This comes up most commonly when different shares have different voting or blocking rights. But it’s also fundamental to the intent behind B Corps, publicly traded or not.
by jjtheblunt | 2025-12-08 02:07:43+00:00
Apple is (for a very long time) essentially a hardware company so all the contrived drama about not embracing AI is perhaps Apple style accumulation of data as it refines the sequence of "neural cores" to efficiently serve wherever the industry is careening.

While Apple wants its hardware to best run popular apps (AI included), it's premature to presume these people leaving for Meta (Dye in particular) have any impact other than tribal knowledge in their departures.

(disclaimer: was an engineer in an inner sanctum of apple for several years)
by ramraj07 | 2025-12-08 02:08:05+00:00
While we can agree that adding AI just to tick a box will win no awards, it will be a laughable proposition to suggest that Apple doesn't need to do anything on AI.

If anything its laughable and points to the unoriginality of product creators that we haven't fundamentally transformed how we interact with technology given how much AI offers as functionality. Anyone (I'll bet 20% on Ive) who figures this out will eat Apple's dinner.
by tatersolid | 2025-12-08 02:09:18+00:00
This is more about reputation than “custom domains”. I’ve had <realname>.com registered since 1996. Hosted at free Google Workspace account for 15+ years. They added SPF and then DKIM/DMARC as those thigs evolved. Never had spam reports in all that time; delivery is better than $dayjob’s 30-year-old domain.

Reputation is everything in email delivery.
by mr_windfrog | 2025-12-08 02:09:50+00:00
If the goal is to fix the behavior instead of just documenting it, the penalties need to escalate with repeat violations. The first mismatch can be treated as an honest mistake. But when the third or fourth inspection still shows the same pattern, the fine shouldn't be the same $5k: it should jump sharply. At some point the cost of ignoring the problem has to exceed the profit from letting it continue.

Right now the incentive structure is backwards. As long as the downside is fixed and small, large retailers will keep treating it as business-as-usual. A tiered system tied to repeated violations would at least push them toward actually fixing the issue, instead of just shrugging it off every time they get caught.
by ricardobeat | 2025-12-08 02:09:59+00:00
One of the reported hallucinations in this work [1], starting with David Rein, says the other authors are entirely made up. They are indeed absent from the original cited paper [2], but a Google search shows some of the same names featured in citations from other papers [3] [4].

Most of the names in these wrong attributions are actual people though, not hallucinations. What is going on? Is this a case of AI-powered citation management creating some weird feedback loop?

[1] https://app.gptzero.me/documents/54c8aa45-c97d-48fc-b9d0-d49...

[2] https://arxiv.org/pdf/2311.12022

[3] https://arxiv.org/html/2509.22536v3

[4] https://arxiv.org/html/2511.01191v1
by bloaf | 2025-12-08 02:10:30+00:00
I'll make the following observation:

The contra-positive of "All LLMs are not thinking like humans" is "No humans are thinking like LLMs"

And I do not believe we actually understand human thinking well enough to make that assertion.

Indeed, it is my deep suspicion that we will eventually achieve AGI not by totally abandoning today's LLMs for some other paradigm, but rather embedding them in a loop with the right persistence mechanisms.
by strcat | 2025-12-08 02:10:39+00:00
You came to this thread to promote an inaccurate narrative in support of the absolutely vile attacks on us. Meanwhile, we've never done anything to you or your project beyond promoting it as one of the available options. We stopped doing that a while ago due to attacks from yourself and other project members. We haven't responded to those attacks beyond not mentioning your project anymore and removing our many past links to it.

We have chat logs archives of your rooms which can be used to prove ongoing attacks by your project members towards GrapheneOS and our team. That includes voicing support for harassment content. Is it as severe as what we can show for many others? No, but it's enough. I'm not confusing you with someone else. I'm aware of who you are and what yourself and others you work with have said over the years.
by sfpotter | 2025-12-08 02:10:48+00:00
Networking involves more than just letting people know you exist. I'd say that's borderline useless. Actually networking requires building real relationships with people. For me, that means continually meeting new people who do the same kind of thing that I do, having pleasant or exciting conversations with them, learning as much as I can about them (showing a real interest! asking serious questions! listening to their answers!), and demonstrating to them that I'm hungry and I want to do Big Things. It's hard to do this effectively. I'm sure it depends on your field and it certainly requires continual practice.
by enraged_camel | 2025-12-08 02:12:15+00:00
This is the result of decades of Republican lobbying, legislation and outright sabotage. The philosophy, openly advertised by Grover Norquist's Americans for Tax Reform, goes like this: nobody likes taxes. So if people find the filing process difficult and stressful every year, they will be constantly reminded of this fact. This will in turn make them more open to suggestions and propaganda along the lines of taxes being something that must be fought tooth and nail at every turn, because let's face it, who wants the tax code to become even more complex?

In contrast, if the process is streamlined every year, most people won't even pay attention to how much they pay in taxes - which isn't great if your ultimate goal is to keep government as small as possible.
by amrocha | 2025-12-08 02:12:18+00:00
>A lot of people are terrible drivers, terrible judge of their own character, and terrible recreational drug users. Does that mean we need to remove all those things that can be misused?

Uhh, yes??? We have completely reshaped our cities so that cars can thrive in them at the expense of people. We have laws and exams and enforcement all to prevent cars from being driven by irresponsible people.

And most drugs are literally illegal! The ones that arent are highly regulated!

If your argument is that AI is like heroin then I agree, let’s ban it and arrest anyone making it.
by phil21 | 2025-12-08 02:12:48+00:00
Explain why rural customers prefer the dollar store to the grocery store? Are they just stupid and don't know what's best for themselves?

Perhaps the rural grocers are not carrying the appropriate product mix for their current (new?) customer base, and are overvaluing customer service?

I don't like it - but I also spend time in rural communities and see why these places beat the local grocers. They offer better value for the dollar. Often they are indeed cheaper on a unit cost basis, much less overall per transaction.

It's sort of like folks screeching about "food deserts" in urban communities I've lived in, thus enacting laws forcing fresh produce be carried by the local convenience stores. That produce simply rotted on the shelves since - surprise! - the local business owners knew their customer base better than a bunch of do-gooder ivory tower academics did.

You can make some strong cases for Walmart putting Main Street rural America out of business using predatory pricing schemes and the like. It's a lot more difficult for dollar stores.
by xyzzy123 | 2025-12-08 02:12:57+00:00
Using this reasoning, would you argue that a new proof of a theorem adds no new information that was not present in the axioms, rules of inference and so on?

If so, I'm not sure it's a useful framing.

For novel writing, sure, I would not expect much truly interesting progress from LLMs without human input because fundamentally they are unable to have human experiences, and novels are a shadow or projection of that.

But in math – and a lot of programming – the "world" is chiefly symbolic. The whole game is searching the space for new and useful arrangements. You don’t need to create new information in an information-theoretic sense for that. Even for the non-symbolic side (say diagnosing a network issue) of computing, AIs can interact with things almost as directly as we can by running commands so they are not fundamentally disadvantaged in terms of "closing the loop" with reality or conducting experiments.
by jjtheblunt | 2025-12-08 02:13:08+00:00
i wonder if Dye is the self-important personality who parked his audi r8 in handicapped parking routinely in front of IL1.

if not Dye, then apologies to Dye for looking like that person.

also, there's this.

https://9to5mac.com/2025/12/04/gruber-apple-employees-giddy-...
by grogenaut | 2025-12-08 02:13:16+00:00
Vhs came out in 76, blockbuster started in 85 (we went to video stores well before that when I was a kid), dvd in 95. I remember the sopranos making a joke about how dvd was barely taking off, they started in 99. Lets call it VHS had a run from 80 to 99, that's 19 years. The iphone launched in 2007, when did mobile become huge or inseprable from doing life (by force by so many apps), probbably in the pandemic.

I wouldn't say VHS was a blip. It was the recorded half video of media for almost 20 years.

I agree with the rest of what you said.

I'll say that the differences in the AI you're talking about today might be like the differences between VAX, PC JR, and the Lisa. All things before computing went main stream. I do think things go mainstream from tech a lot faster these days, people don't want to miss out.

I don't know where I'm going with this, I'm reading and replying to HN while watching the late night NFL game in an airport lounge.