MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by throwaway7783 | 2025-12-31 17:55:50+00:00
My point is that a fake doesn't magically fix this issue. Both are narrow models of the underlying interface. I don't still quite understand why a mock is worse than a fake, when it comes to narrow models of the interface. If there is a method that needs to be called with a specific set up, there is no practical difference between a fake and a mock.

Again, none of this is a replacement for writing integration tests where possible. Mocks have a place in the testing realm and they are not an inherently bad tool.
by __MatrixMan__ | 2025-12-31 17:55:57+00:00
Your word choice implies a very zero-sum perspective on value.

Value is determined by what we value, it's a choice. If a bunch of scientists value good approximations for how a protein will fold, and then a model generates more such things in a year than those scientists could make in a century, that's a lot of value. Not extracted from anyone, created.
by wccrawford | 2025-12-31 17:56:00+00:00
I think I'm going to get my wife a stamp that says some thing like that. I'll probably note that if it was sold, it was stolen, but not put any personal details on it. It's not like I could really do anything about it anyhow, and people would be mad if I told them that when they reported it.

Thanks for the idea!
by CamperBob2 | 2025-12-31 17:56:20+00:00
People are constantly being fooled by bots in forums like Reddit and this one. That's good enough for me to consider the Turing test passed.

It also makes me consider it an inadequate test to begin with, since all classes of humans including domain experts can be fooled and have been in the past. The Turing test has always said more about the human participants than the machine.
by andy99 | 2025-12-31 17:56:21+00:00
I just commented about this in another thread. I know there has been some walking back e.g. of the significance of a Turing test but I think overall the goalposts for AI have shifted in the other way, to narrowing down the definition of intelligence to something like “being really good at some set of defined tasks” which coincidentally is basically the strong point of neural networks.

We seem hyperfocused on finding more tasks to train neural networks to do. This of course leads to a moving goalpost effect like in the article, but they’re moving along an axis that doesn’t measure intelligence.

My other comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46445511
by aw1621107 | 2025-12-31 17:56:56+00:00
> That is exactly what I am talking about: if you call __builtin_malloc (e.g. via macro definition in the libc header), compiler is free to do whatever it wants. However, calling "malloc" library function should call "malloc" library function, and anything else is unacceptable and a bug.

I think that's an overly narrow reading of the footnote. I don't see an obvious reason why "such names" in the footnote should only cover "some macro names beginning with an underscore" and not also "external identifiers". And if implementations are allowed to define special semantics for "external identifiers", then... well, that's exactly what they did!

In addition, there's still the as-if rule. The semantics of malloc/free are defined by the C standard; if the compiler can deduce that there is no observable difference between a version of the program that calls those and a version that does not, why does it matter that the call is emitted? A function call in and of itself is not a side effect, and since the C standard dictates what malloc/free do the compiler knows their possible side effects.

Furthermore, the addition of memset_explicit and its footnote ("The intention is that the memory store is always performed (i.e. never elided), regardless of optimizations. This is in
contrast to calls to the memset function (7.26.6.1)") implies that eliding calls is in fact acceptable behavior when optimizations are enabled. If eliding calls were not permissible when optimizing then what's the point of memset_explicit?

> There should be no case where compiler could assume anything about a function it does not see based simply on it's name.

Again, external identifiers defined by the C standard are reserved. Reserved external identifiers aren't just for show. From the C89 standard:

> If the program defines an external identifier with the same name as a reserved external identifier, even in a semantically equivalent form, the behavior is undefined.

And from C23:

> If the program declares or defines an identifier in a context in which it is reserved (other than as allowed by 7.1.4), the behavior is undefined.

This means that yes, under modern compilers' interpretation of UB compilers can assume things about functions based on their names because modern compilers generally optimize assuming UB does not happen. The compiler does not need to see the function's implementation because it is the function's implementation as far as it is concerned.
by algo_trader | 2025-12-31 17:56:56+00:00
This is less about masked modelling and more about reverse-curriculum.

e.g. DeepCubeA 2019 (!) paper to solve Rubik cube.

Start with solved state and teach the network successively harder states. This is so "obvious" and "unhelpful in real domains" that perhaps they havent heard of this paper.
by mikestorrent | 2025-12-31 17:57:04+00:00
Well, of course it's the people. I started online in '94 and it was exclusively the territory of nerds for a long while, even as everyday folks started to use the web and email for basic things. Truly, we should appreciate having places like Hacker News for still giving us a place to post like we always used to...

Plenty of forums still do exist, but I wonder about their future as we age out. Car forums in particular were absolute godsends for amateur mechanics - not just to look up info but to ask a self-selected group of interested folks who were happy to help for free out of a sense of community for fellow fans of their brand.
by AshamedCaptain | 2025-12-31 17:57:24+00:00
Because it is the ad network that I chose 30 years ago that was doing any of the types of tracking you mention. In fact, all of the ad networks from 30 years ago would be considered as doing "teen tracking" today. I do not know how you can do tracking without doing teen tracking, barring precisely I troducing age verification on every single website. And I also do not know if there is any network out there doing advertisements without tracking -- certainly none of the major local news websites use it.

I do think the "wont somebody think of the children" arguments are in bad faith though, and I say this as a father.
by mindcrash | 2025-12-31 17:57:35+00:00
No software is perfect, and if we really want to discuss flawed then IMO we should talk about systemd instead, which took one of UNIX' (and later on GNU/Linux) most famous core architecture principles - namely "do one thing and do it well" - and took it out to a kill site.

And yet they'll have to pry my OpenRC, cronie, and sysklogd from my cold dead hands.
by borski | 2025-12-31 17:58:05+00:00
I don’t disagree with you in general, but:

> Presumably, the cops are aware of previous disruption with these specific devices, or threats thereof. And it's not like they're going to say exactly what, nor should they, lest it give people ideas...

I don’t think this is necessarily true. The TSA bans all sorts of crap solely because they feel like it, and not in the name of any kind of actual security. It is entirely possible that the NYPD “heard” these terms in media and got spooked, so here we are.
by jondwillis | 2025-12-31 17:58:25+00:00
Well, Discord is from a gaming lineage. Definitely lots of script kiddies and pros alike hang out in various servers. It’s sort of like the forums of yesteryear, but more walled-garden, for better or worse.

Probably goes without saying here, but gaming tends to be an on-ramp for getting young people into computers/tech/programming. I started reversing, hacking, and writing bots for old MMOs to try to avoid the grind. I ended up enjoying writing naughty code more than playing the games themselves.

You don’t need a phone to use Discord AFAIK, but in my elderly imagination every teen is already on Discord.
by milesvp | 2025-12-31 17:59:01+00:00
It’s been fine? Are you completely immune to attention grabbing features? I absolutely cannot use win11 as it comes on a stock lenovo. Maybe you got your hands on some corporate version with some of the standard settings off? But between the news feed and the advertising in the start menu I find stock installs to he maddening, and I loath needing to boot my win11 partition.
by hightrix | 2025-12-31 17:59:07+00:00
I’m not this person, but I installed win11 a month or two after launch and have lived through many many updates.

I’ve never had a single setting switched from what I set it to. Nor have I had AI shoved down my throat. My guess is that since I set it up with a local account originally and have never added a MSFT account, that insulates me from a lot of the issues others have seen.
by easyThrowaway | 2025-12-31 17:59:44+00:00
Something I've also noticed is a trending "silent exodus" from Windows 11 to Linux and macOS from a bunch of non-technical users.

Compared to the past, where some friend or relative who asked for help into moving from Windows to Linux or Mac usually had a certain ideology-driven strain in the decision, nowadays the requests I receive are along the lines of "look, I'm tired of Windows weirdness, I need something that doesn't change in weird ways between reboots, even if everything is not compatible 100%".

As of late my default answer has been "Do you need Photoshop or Office? Buy the cheapest Apple M-something laptop you can find. Otherwise tell me when you're free so we can install Linux on your machine", usually a bog standard version of Fedora KDE.

I've moved circa 10-12 laptops in the last year to Fedora, and outside of a single case it went way better than I expected. I've asked multiple times if they're ok and at least until now they all were like "yep, fine."

They do their job, expect their work device to never change in meaningful ways, and then forget about it for the rest of the day. Also they are not going to buy a new laptop just because a popup tells them their 3-years old pc can't be upgraded to Windows 11 for whatever reason.

Also we've reached a point where they couldn't care less if something like deCSS or an MP4 codec is missing. Entertainment apps are usually delegated to a tablet or an internet connected TV, as long as Youtube works they're fine.

They're people who don't really care about open source, GNU, Software Freedoms or so on. They're looking for something that doesn't interrupt them with Copilot this or AI Update that while they're having a call or a meeting on slack/teams/whatever.

Truth is linux has become... "Eh, good enough, that'll do it" for most people. Which is a more enticing proposal to most people compared to "Pay 400€ for something you've already own and spend the rest of the day closing popups".
by rvnx | 2025-12-31 18:00:20+00:00
Hey brother, it's really nice that you maintained my Shopify for free for so many years.

Yeah, yeah, I know you want to do something else. I'm giving you a donation of 500 USD, and then a 5 USD/month donation.

You do how you want, but if you stop doing that, then no donation.

Sounds cool ?
by MajorBee | 2025-12-31 18:00:25+00:00
In this case, as a solo dev, it's probably quite justified to be honest. I doubt ConcernedApe would have really been able to continue solo-ing it with this level of success if he also had to maintain distribution channels, sales/returns, marketing, legal stuff on a global scale.

It's probably the big name studios who already have entire departments to do that kind of stuff that feel they're being ripped off.
by mikestorrent | 2025-12-31 18:00:28+00:00
I strongly encourage you to do that. The selection of the material is key: you have to find something that she is going to find fascinating but could not read on her own due to missing vocabulary / context / idiom-and-allusion cultural awareness. Then you get to try to fill that in with asides as you go along, if she'll tolerate it. Good luck!
by m0dest | 2025-12-31 18:01:18+00:00
Even if it's just the build server, it's really hard to defend just having 1 physical server for a project that aspires to be a core part of the software distribution infrastructure for thousands of users.

The build server going down means that no one's app can be updated, even for critical security updates.

For something that important, they should aspire to 99.999% ("five nines of") reliability. With a single physical server, achieving five nines over a long period of time usually means that you were both lucky (no hardware failures other than redundant storage) and probably irresponsible (applied kernel updates infrequently - even if only on the hypervisor level).

Now... 2 servers in 2 different basements? That could achieve five nines ;)
by ThrowawayR2 | 2025-12-31 18:01:29+00:00
> "With that tech manufacturing base gone, rest of the world might be forced to buy from china"

There are plenty of other advanced chip fabs outside of Taiwan. The ignorati on HN like to talk shit about Intel, a fair bit of which is deserved, but they have the second most advanced fabs in the world. Samsung, I believe, has the third best.
by grugagag | 2025-12-31 18:02:04+00:00
If you drop a frog in a pot of boiling water, it will of course frantically try to clamber out. But if you place it gently in a pot of tepid water and turn the heat on low, it will float there quite placidly. As the water gradually heats up, the frog will sink into a tranquil stupor, exactly like one of us in a hot bath, and before long, with a smile on its face, it will unresistingly allow itself to be boiled to death.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boiling_frog
by OrvalWintermute | 2025-12-31 18:02:31+00:00
My general issue with this is that it is overly hardware centric and not as accurate when it comes to Aerospace Software

Law 4 Bhargava’s Law: Only 1 out of 10 research ideas make it into industrial practice is wrong anecdotally particularly when it relates to software.

Law 13 is flat-out wrong in that there is a huge amount of potential SWaP trades & innovation trades to be made, and the changing requirements environment where it is easy to predict where a requirement will be, despite a space program with a legacy requirements baseline.

An example of Law 13 errors would be the JPSS security redesign campaigns, and a less ideal retrofit
by barishnamazov | 2025-12-31 18:03:03+00:00
The "lies" described here are essentially the definition of weakly typed programming, even in statically typed languages.

Functional languages like ML/Haskell/Lisp dialects has no lies built in for decades, and it's good to see the mainstream programming (Java, TS, C++, etc.) to catch up as well.

There are also cute benefits of having strong schemas for your API as well -- for example, that endpoint becomes an MCP for LLMs automatically.
by exabrial | 2025-12-31 18:03:28+00:00
I think the python counterexample speaks a lot. A lot of languages "hide" their footprint in /usr/local or in a venv somewhere; out of sight, out of mind.

The JVM installs cleanly and is self contained, but any artifacts, by default, are not shared system wide as this _always_ have been seen as a security risk. The hot term for it today is "supply chain attack".

Instead, most Java programs tow their dependencies, giving it a bloated feel because its all just there, present in front of you, stored and running as your own user.
by thangalin | 2025-12-31 18:03:38+00:00
> There is no way to get your jar + the vm into a binary.

My text editor, KeenWrite[1], offered binaries for Linux, macOS, and Windows. The Windows binary was axed due code signing costs and requiring third-party builds, rather than any technical issues with cross-platform packaging.

One way is to create self-extracting executable binaries using a tool such as warp[2]. I've built an installer script[3] (install.sh) to create platform-specific launchers. Running `time keenwrite.bin --version` on Linux shows 0.327s; after the first run, subsequent launches are quick.

[1]: https://keenwrite.com

[2]: https://github.com/kirbylink/warp

[3]: https://repo.autonoma.ca/?action=repo&repo=keenwrite.git&vie...
by TuringTest | 2025-12-31 18:03:53+00:00
I have read the full conversation, and you're still failing to recognize how the original post has a valid point. You have admitted yourself that you create online accounts without gender identification, so your own experience is different from women that do create gendered accounts.

It was never the point that it's possible to go online without recieving such ubiquitous abuse, which is what you suggest women should do. You have still not acknowledged that such high level of abuse can be dangerous, not merely for the mental health problems but for the real possibility of being stalked in the real world. That way, you're just reinforcing the point you tried to deny, which is that it's hard for men to understand such abuse without having experienced it first hand.
by yunnpp | 2025-12-31 18:03:54+00:00
> New York’s mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani has invited the city’s residents to join him at a block party to celebrate his inauguration but told attendees not to bring a Raspberry Pi single-board computer to the event.

This is just disingenuous. He didn't tell anybody to do nothing. Some assistant made up a list of prohibited items and RPi ended up there because whatever. This kind of reporting is distracting and takes away from the actual issue.

Also, what is the issue anyway? There's a public event unrelated to computing and you're not allowed to bring your RPi. Get on with your life? I'd be more interested in knowing how much the mayor spent on his new array of Flock cameras to greet people at the event.
by squigz | 2025-12-31 18:04:24+00:00
> Perhaps it should be, "If I had a 12 year old daughter, do I want her to have easy access to pornography, self harm material and the ability to receive private messages from a 45 year old registered sex offender?"

If parents are concerned about this, why let them on the Internet? Why not use parental control systems? Why not teach your children healthy sex education, how to deal with their feelings, and to tell old creeps to fuck off?
by gmueckl | 2025-12-31 18:05:35+00:00
This is a somewhat naive view of engines in modern game development. Full-featured engines allow every department to dive in head first in parallel. The first gameplay elements often get programmed before the first pieces of content arrive. Scenes can be blocked out and drafted immwdiately at the start of the project. Complex animations with states and blend trees can be created amd tested independently of the gameplay code. Audio scenes, complex cues and (dynamic) music can be mixed and mastered independently of any code to integrate audio into the game. The whole process is highly parallelized these days and the engine tools serve to insulate the departments from one another to some extent so that everybody can move faster.
by smeeagain2 | 2025-12-31 18:06:09+00:00
> 'this idea of “go to zero” never happens.'

Apparently you've never lived through the crash of a 'currency' which is based on a flawed mathematical concept. You'll get to experience what that's like (for the first time in history!) when it's revealed there is some kind of subtle flaw in SHA-256 which renders it worthless as the basis of anything important, let alone a 'currency.'

How do you sell your 'coin' to anyone when the market disappears at the speed of news? Yes, it will go to ZERO, INSTANTLY.

Guess what happens when the crypto crash is combined with a) collapse of the real estate bubble, especially commercial real estate; b) the ongoing IT crash that is only just getting started; c) whatever damage the (current, red-flavored) orangutan in the White House manages to accomplish in his 3+ remaining years of hell; d) fear of looming war; e) economic fallout from COVID which is still ongoing and expanding (hint--many destroyed businesses and people out of work); f) a thousand other icebergs, minefields, and financial hazards confronting us in the near future? Buckle up!
by samiv | 2025-12-31 18:06:20+00:00
It's by design completely self serving. It's no longer a product for the users the users are the product.

Unfortunately I think it can and it will get a LOT worse before the push back will make any difference.

After all most users are not tech savvy and will be stuck with whatever is installed when they buy the machine and for the corporate there aren't any real alternatives.
by asa400 | 2025-12-31 18:06:32+00:00
> That said, if the Java community wanted to port reasonable tooling to their platform, I'm sure Claude could do a reasonable job of getting a decent chunk of BubbleTea and friends bootstrapped.

There's a poster upthread who seems to have done what you're describing: https://github.com/WilliamAGH/tui4j
by observationist | 2025-12-31 18:07:58+00:00
It's a natural extension of the ideas being discussed - the limit in computation per gram of mass has energetic bounds, as well, with configurations nearing the upper limit that start looking more like nuclear explosions than anything we'd regard as structured computation. The extremes are amazing to consider - things that look and act like stars, but are fantastically precise Turing machines, and so on.

It's a theme that sci-fi authors have explored deeply. Accelerando is a particularly fun and worthwhile read if you haven't already!
by tyre | 2025-12-31 18:08:15+00:00
If thoughtful commenters are allowed then normal commenters like those that don’t read the article should be allowed.

It's no longer the coming war on our right to comment without reading the article. The war is here. And we've lost every battle so far (mostly on the shitpost front). But they're coming for our actual commenters now. Through rules and propaganda (like this), moderation, and coordinated downvote tactics preventing comments of conspiracy screeds and encouraging reading.
by teknopaul | 2025-12-31 18:08:18+00:00
The is one trick that doesn't require political will. If you can make the microeconomics work it can be made to scale it self.

E.G. Make CO2 extraction so cheap it's worth everyone doing it and say, make a market to sell the CO2 to farmers. Then make burying inedible bits of plants so cheap it's done on a large scale.

Then you just wait. Microeconomics takes over.

They did this with plastic clean up. By building a machine that makes plastic into fuel & construction pellets. Then stuck such a machine on a plastic poluted island and waited.

For this trick. All you require from your políticans is that they don't lie or bomb the place.
by code_biologist | 2025-12-31 18:08:42+00:00
I agree that we're responsible for what we create. I would also submit that corporate culture has been under intense selective pressure over the past 10 years to get good at creating compliance with ethically problematic software projects. I'm curious how many people left Google because they dropped the "don't be evil" motto.

There's lots of carrots (compensation, high quality desk jobs) and sticks (promotion structures, threat of offshoring). The really annoying and egregious aspects of corporate speak are easy targets for ire and take the heat, while the subtle euphemisms make the actual questionable projects easier to live with day to day.