MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by toomuchtodo | 2025-12-29 22:38:58+00:00
Observing demographic systems ("demographics are destiny") and its context within a political and governance system, and then building a thesis from those observations is simply academic. Attempting to predict the future isn't a fantasy (death or otherwise) imho, but I do enjoy trying to predict the future from observations and data. But, from your comment "A small price to pay for election integrity," (when elections were already high integrity) I can already deduce your mental model and that it is not grounded in facts or data.

Trump wants to stop states from voting by mail and using voting machines - https://www.npr.org/2025/08/18/nx-s1-5506210/trump-mail-in-b... - August 19th, 2025

> "We're going to start with an executive order that's being written right now by the best lawyers in the country to end mail-in ballots because they're corrupt," Trump said later Monday, during a meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy at the White House. "And it's time that the Republicans get tough and stop it because the Democrats want it. It's the only way they can get elected."

> Although Trump himself urged his supporters to vote using mail ballots prior to the 2024 election, Democrats have been significantly more likely to vote using mail-in ballots, compared to Republicans, since the 2020 election. That gap has only gotten wider in recent elections as GOP-led states have passed more restrictions on this method of voting.

> But legal experts say Trump does not have the legal authority to tell states how to run their elections.

As the saying goes, "Every accusation is a confession."
by syspec | 2025-12-29 22:39:53+00:00
> This announcement is more than just a headline—it's validation of our pioneering work with General AI Agents.

Anyone else thought this was satire when they read that as the second line in the announcement?

I literally laughed, then clicked the top left logo, to check out the homepage and see if this `ManuAI` was a real website.

---

You would think that they would know better to at least edit that out.

It's not just ironic -- it's cosmically poetic.
by throwaway7783 | 2025-12-29 22:40:01+00:00
In the SQL example, unless you actually use an SQL service as a fake, you cannot really quite get the fake do the right thing either. At which point, it's no longer a mock/fake test but an integration/DB test.
Network servers are another such class and for most parts can be either mocked or faked using interface methods.

I would argue that (barring SQL), if there are too many ways to skin a cat, it is a design smell. Interfaces are contracts. Even for SQL, I almost end up using a repository method (findByXxx flavors) so it is very narrow in scope.
by barishnamazov | 2025-12-29 22:40:02+00:00
The author missed the mark on the financial barriers to entry. He predicted that the shift from text to broadband/multimedia would make politics "more expensive" and raise entry barriers because video is costly to produce.

In reality, the cost of video production dropped to near-zero (smartphones, TikTok, YouTube). However, he was right about the outcome. The "entry barrier" isn't the cost of the camera, it's the cost of the algorithmic optimization and the "strategies to draw attention" in an information glut. The rich didn't win because video is expensive; they won because virality is gameable with resources. Credits where due, he indeed called out this potential for "international manipulation of domestic politics" well before the major scandals of the 2016 era.
by teraflop | 2025-12-29 22:40:09+00:00
You're muddying the waters by using the word "received".

The instant in time at which your letter is technically "received" by the USPS, in the sense of them having physical possession, has never mattered for any legal purposes whatsoever. That's because in many cases, there is absolutely no physical proof of exactly what instant in time that event happened.

Electoral rules aren't written based on when the USPS received your ballot, because that's typically unprovable. They're either based on when the ballot was delivered to the election office, or when the ballot was postmarked. The postmarking may happen at some point while the piece of mail is in USPS custody, or it may not happen at all if you don't specifically ask for it.

The rules are based on the postmark date because the postmark date is the only available documentary evidence of the date of mailing.

Again, this is not a change in policy, it's merely documenting the way the mail system has always worked.
by furyofantares | 2025-12-29 22:40:10+00:00
I've worked really hard over the last year at working out how to use these things, and it has more than paid off.

But I think if I had started learning today instead of a year ago, I'd get up to speed in more like 6 months instead of a year. A lot of stuff I learned a year ago is not really necessary anymore, but furthermore, there's just a lot more information out there about how to use these from people who have been learning it on their own.

I just don't think people who have ignored it up until now are really that far behind.
by michaelt | 2025-12-29 22:40:30+00:00
Intel's market cap is US$ 174.96 Billion

TSMC's market cap is US$ 1.560 Trillion

It turns out when you are manufacturing nvidia's GPUs, Google's TPUs, AMD's CPUs and GPUs, Apple's processors, and the flagship smartphone chips from Qualcomm, MediaTek and Broadcom - and none of them can go elsewhere because your products are so far ahead of the competitors - that's pretty valuable.

Convincing TSMC to sell you their chipmaking trade secrets? You might as well try to convince Apple to sell you their smartphone division.
by doug_durham | 2025-12-29 22:40:32+00:00
I don’t know about right/wrong. You need to use the tools that make you productive. I personally find that in my work there are dozens of little scripts or helper functions that accelerate my work. However I usually don’t write them because I don’t have the time. AI can generate these little scripts very consistently. That accelerates my work. Perhaps just start simple.
by JumpCrisscross | 2025-12-29 22:40:35+00:00
> Europe doesn’t need new entrants. They got legacy automakers that are no worse at making EVs than Chinese and American startups

Innovator's dilemma. It's not a coincidence that the two largest EV makers in the world are battery natives [1], and that they outproduce Nos. 3 (Geely), 4 (GM) and 5 (VW) combined.

[1] https://www.fool.com/research/largest-ev-companies/
by __MatrixMan__ | 2025-12-29 22:40:46+00:00
The Brave/BAT experiment was similar to what you're describing. I think it failed to live up to its dreams of revolutionizing advertising because for the most part there are two kinds of people.

- I try not to think about ads

- I think about ads because I aggressively block them

I'm sure somebody out there represents a middle ground, but I think it's a pretty small demographic.
Is SuperMemory That Impressive?
by gabrycina | 2025-12-29 22:40:57+00:00
I’ve been seeing a lot of hype around SuperMemory lately, and I’m honestly trying to figure out what’s genuinely new here versus what’s just good marketing.

From what I can tell, it’s essentially a memory layer on top of an LLM: store user facts, retrieve them later, personalize responses. Useful? Sure. Novel? I’m not convinced. We’ve had embeddings + vector search + profile stores for years, and plenty of teams have built similar systems internally.

What’s unclear to me:

What does SuperMemory do better than a well-tuned vector DB + retrieval logic?

Is there anything defensible here beyond UX and branding?

How does it handle memory decay, contradictions, or bad user data at scale?

What’s the real-world latency and cost once you move past demos?

Not trying to dunk on it, if there’s real technical innovation under the hood, I’d like to understand it. But right now it feels like a polished repackaging of known ideas rather than a breakthrough.

Curious to hear from anyone who’s actually integrated it in production or evaluated it seriously.
by joshuamerrill | 2025-12-29 22:41:01+00:00
The evidence is pretty clear, and it keeps growing. Social media causes real harm, both to individuals and to society. It is addictive by design, it worsens mental health especially for kids, and it rewards outrage and misinformation. In that way, social media looks a lot like smoking. It was widely adopted before we understood the risks, then aggressively pushed because it was profitable.

Meta did more than just take part in this system. It perfected it, scaled it worldwide, and resisted meaningful change until public pressure or regulation forced its hand.

That is why it is worrying to see Meta present itself as a trusted builder of the next major technology wave. When a company repeatedly puts growth ahead of social harm, skepticism is not bias. It is common sense. Giving that company even more powerful and less transparent tools should cause us alarm.
by chfritz | 2025-12-29 22:41:01+00:00
tl;dr: No need to simulate life for it to exist -- "it's the thought that counts".

I have been entertaining this thought for a while and finally wrote it down. Would love to hear what people think, in particular in terms of how this might relate to existing philosophical arguments. I'm also really interested in other fundamental results about logic itself, similar to Gödel's incompleteness theorem, that might add corollaries to this theory.
by yeputons | 2025-12-29 22:41:10+00:00
Happens regularly. And if you don't have a visa for the new destination, well, too bad.

E.g. on December 20 a WizzAir flight 4768 was diverted to Thessaloniki (Greece) instead of its destination Skopje (North Macedonia): https://www.flightaware.com/live/flight/WZZ4768/history/2025... . Those with Schengen visas (or appropriate passports) got a bus to Skopje. The rest allegedly waited for three hours and then got returned to Cyprus (EU, but not Schengen), but to a different airport (Paphos instead of Larnaca). So if someone had a car left on Larnaca's parking, too bad.
by nikole9696 | 2025-12-29 22:41:45+00:00
I used ChatGPT to find a bike for me. It asked good questions, recommended good results, linked me to options and the websites I needed to further research things. I don't do a lot of shopping though so this is one tiny example. If I was looking to actually shop again though I'd use it again. Most of my shopping these days is the grocery store. I don't have a lot of needs.
by kylecazar | 2025-12-29 22:42:09+00:00
From their Wikipedia, because I had no idea who they were:

"Following Manus's launch in March 2025, Butterfly Effect raised $75 million in a funding round led by Benchmark at a valuation of approximately $500 million in April 2025."

Half a billion a month after launch and acquisition before the end of the same year. Wild times.
by sunshine-o | 2025-12-29 22:42:11+00:00
> Having a government-insured bank deposit means that I've never had to think about this in my lifetime. It's a problem that I don't need.

Government-insured bank deposits are mostly BS, the fine prints say they have about 10 years to reimburse you and in case of a systemic failure good luck.

In case the bank app, their "system" or your computer is compromised most banks will not reimburse you. It is very easy for them to say you were ultimately responsible for the hack. Very few banks have the policy of taking the loss and it is hard to know which one still do that unless you know someone in their fraud department.
by Dilettante_ | 2025-12-29 22:42:21+00:00
>You would easily be able to confirm for yourself that creatures are born with distinct personalities

Refer to my previous post: "I'm assuming that we're in agreement that genetics, pre-birth nutrition etc, are part of these circumstances and not of the 'soul' you're after?"

That's not some mysterious transcendant soul, that's genetics. Literally the exact same thing as a computer program. Dog breeds are specifically bred(programmed) to exhibit certain character traits, for example.

>You don't really think you are a tree. You do think you are distinct.

You missed the point of the argument. Just as the tree is not separate from its circumstances, neither am I.

You brought up "know thyself" so I assumed we were pulling from a similar corpus and brought up "the illusion of separation" as a mutually familiar point that didn't need much elaboration, sorry about that.

Also, it's not so much that I "think" I am distinct, more that I "believe" it, to put it in the terms you used earlier. I am conditioned to consider certain things "me" and others not.

Really I am no more distinct from the tree than, say, my fingernail is distinct from my nosebone. They belong to the same Individual.
by iknowstuff | 2025-12-29 22:42:24+00:00
Remember how everyone kept saying tesla is doomed because any minute now the old OEMs were going to storm in and kill their EV business? In actuality, those OEMs are getting killed by Tesla and Chinese startups. You are making the same argument for autonomy. Old OEMS cannot compete in this space at all. Waymo cannot compete on price with Tesla.
by llmslave2 | 2025-12-29 22:42:25+00:00
I sort of agree. If anything I feel like they've gotten a bit worse, but the advances in the tooling around them (eg claude code) has masked that slightly.

I think they are useful as an augmentation, but largely valueless for directly outputting code. Who knows if that will change. It's still made me more productive as a dev despite not oneshotting entire files. It's just not industry-changing, at least yet.
by strix_mahalo | 2025-12-29 22:42:31+00:00
My friend I see a lot of myself in what you wrote, I was in a deep depression and trying to think my way out of it. It didn't work. Honestly I didn't have it as bad as you "sunny day surrounded by loved ones seems like a trip to hell" - this is VERY concerning.

I got better. Much better. I'm literally more social than ever and for the first time in my life i feel my cup is full.

If there's one piece of advice I can give is take ACTION, stay in MOTION. Always DO something to get better. You started going to the gym? That's great! Join some classes while you're at it. Don't stay still. That's when it gets you.

It sounds to me like you're already living with some
ambition. What do you REALLY want from 2026?
by AlotOfReading | 2025-12-29 22:42:41+00:00
Your C++ compiler already implements a solution to that called short string optimization. Strings start out as small byte buffers that can be easily be passed around. When they grow beyond that, the fixed buffer is swapped out for pointer to another allocation on the heap. There's no (immediate) reason that allocation has to come from a direct call to the system allocator though, and it usually doesn't. It can just as easily come from an allocation pool that was initialized at startup.

Even if you needed to hardcode upper size limits, which your compiler already does to some extent (the C/C++ standards anticipate this by setting minimum limits for certain things like string length), you wouldn't actually pay the full price on most systems because of overcommit. There are other downsides to this depending on implementation details like how you reclaim memory and spawn compiler processes, so I'm not suggesting it as a good idea. It's just possible.
by dylan604 | 2025-12-29 22:42:42+00:00
not sure what the point is. this is possible, clearly as that's what has happened. i'm only asking why with the known situation that something left in your personal box not getting postmarked as expected for whatever reasons would you allow something of this import to be handled that way? you only file taxes once a year, and most people only vote every four years. making arrangements for that infrequent to have a piece of mind something was postmarked as expected doesn't seem too outlandish to me. i even stipulated potential for victim blaming suggesting if you read the context that i was in no way suggesting whatever you want to think is a gotcha
by threeducks | 2025-12-29 22:43:13+00:00
> This is from the man who has no finished open source projects

To be fair, which open source project can really claim that it is "finished", and what does "finished" even mean?

The only projects that I can truly call "finished" are those that I have laid to rest because they have been superseded by newer technologies, not because they have achieved completeness, because there is always more to do.
by nzoschke | 2025-12-29 22:43:15+00:00
Right there with you.

I'm instructing my agents to doing old school boring form POST, SSR templates, and vanilla JS / CSS.

I previously shifted away from this to abstractions because typing all the boilerplate was tedious.

But now that I'm not typing, the tedious but simple approach is great for the agent writing the code, and great for the the people doing code reviews.
by aspenmartin | 2025-12-29 22:43:20+00:00
AI boosters? Like people are planted by Sam Altman like the way they hire crowds for political events or something? Hey! Maybe I’m AI! You’re absolutely right!

In seriousness: I’m sure there are projects that are heavily powered by Claude, myself and a lot of other people I know use Claude almost exclusively to write and then leverage it as a tool when reviewing. Almost everyone I hear that has this super negative hostile attitude references some “promise” that has gone unfulfilled but it’s so silly: judge the product they are producing and maybe just maybe consider the rate of progress to _guess_ where things are heading
by cmrdporcupine | 2025-12-29 22:43:21+00:00
This is remarkably dismissive and comes across as arrogant. In reality they assist many people with expert skills in a domain in getting things done in areas they are competent in, without getting bogged down in tedium.

They need a heavy hand to police to make sure they do the right thing. Garbage in, garbage out.

The smarter the hand of the person driving them, the better the output. You see a problem, you correct it. Or make them correct it. The stronger the foundation they're starting from, the better the production.

It's basically the opposite of what you're asserting here.
by hansmayer | 2025-12-29 22:43:28+00:00
> One can treat current LLMs as a layer of "cheese" for any software development or deployment pipeline

It's another interesting attempt at normalising the bullshit output by LLMs, but NO. Even with the entshittified Boeing, the aviation industry safety and reliability records, are far far far above deterministic software (know for a lot of un-reliability itself), and deterministic, B2C software to LLMs in turn is what Boeing and Airbus software and hardware reliablity are for the B2C software...So you cannot even begin to apply aviation industry paradigms to the shit machines, please.
by 1vuio0pswjnm7 | 2025-12-29 22:43:29+00:00
"As the severity of censorship in Russia has increased, WebTunnel has also received several fixes, such as SNI imitation and safe non-WebPKI certificate support with certificate-chain pinning to ensure it can withstand more kinds of censorship, including SNI allowlisting and the rapid blocking of distributed bridges."

"SNI imitation" and "non-WebPKI certificate support" sounds like it could be useful for purposes other than evading censorship in any particular country

Discerning web users around the globe might also be interesting evading data collection, surveillance and ads by so-called "tech" companies, for example

https://blog.torproject.org/introducing-webtunnel-evading-ce...
by JumpCrisscross | 2025-12-29 22:43:34+00:00
> short term focus is far too rewarded in Western companies

Zero auto companies outside China, America and Europe have successfully pivoted to EVs. And even within China, it's basically Geely and Changan. All the others are new entrants.

> China commonly avoids this trap with stakeholder rather than shareholder based governance

GM's unions own a significant fraction of its shares. This is a stakeholder system. What you may be referring to is state ownership, not stakeholder-based governance.
by mannanj | 2025-12-29 22:43:37+00:00
> things will break and when they do, it will incur a world of pain

How much if this is still true and exaggerated in our world environment today where the cost of making things is near 0?

I think “Evolution” would say that the cost of producing is near 0 so the possibility of creating what we want is high. The cost of trying again is low so mistakes and pain aren’t super high. For really high stakes situation (which most situations are not) bring the expert human in the loop until the expert better than that human is AI.
by reconnecting | 2025-12-29 22:43:42+00:00
This sounds to me like a lack of resource management, as tasks that junior developers might perform don't match your skills, and are thus boring.

As a creator of an open-source platform myself, I find trusting a semi-random word generator in front of users unreliable.

Moreover, I believe it creates a bad habit. I've seen developers forget how to read documentation and instead trust AI, and of course, as a result AI makes mistakes that are hard to debug or provokes security issues that are easy to overlook.

I know this sounds like a luddite talking, but I'm still not convinced that AI in its current state can be reliable in any way. However, because of engineers like you, AI is learning to make better choices, and that might change in the future.
by apgwoz | 2025-12-29 22:43:43+00:00
Downvoted for the reason that I’ve not seen any credible evidence of massive election fraud, in the USA, since the suggestion of it in 2020. If you can point me to something credible, that proves even 1,000s of votes in a single district were impacted, (thereby stealing an election via mail fraud) I’ll remove my downvote.
by transcriptase | 2025-12-29 22:43:50+00:00
I’ll be very surprised if during all the time he spends doing nothing and winning, he hasn’t planned ahead for his company not becoming the very thing he hates and sets it apart.

I’d put a controlling interest in a trust with ironclad instructions to have Valve do the opposite of Ubisoft/EA. That would buy it another half-century at least.
by arccy | 2025-12-29 22:44:09+00:00
In AWS, only the very core Infra-as-a-Service that they dogfood can be considered "good", Everything else that's more Platform-as-a-Service can be considered a half baked leaky abstraction. Anything they release as "GA" especially around ReInvent should be avoided for a minimum of 6 months-1 year since it's more like a public Beta with some guaranteed bugs.
by joemi | 2025-12-29 22:44:09+00:00
No it's not. It's just the Post Office trying to save money by being slower. This quote from the article describes it (note the last sentence in particular):

"Potential Delays: Because most postmarks are applied at processing facilities, the date inscribed may be later than the date the mail piece was first accepted by the USPS. This discrepancy is expected to become more common due to the implementation of the "Regional Transportation Optimization" (RTO) initiative and the adoption of "leg-based" service standards."
by lukan | 2025-12-29 22:44:18+00:00
I see. Not sure if TikTok is the best plattform then as you want a very local audience (but I never used TikTok, just watched family members do).

I rather would try to get an entry on google maps. Meaning when people browse the area, they see your thing. I certainly like to discover new stuff like this in new areas and some things I find are clearly there because of ads, but other got there by other ways. Making a entry by hand, publishing a picture there with further info ..