MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by fusslo | 2025-12-31 19:28:46+00:00
I ask ChatGPT all kinds of questions that could be considered potentially problematic. For example, I frequently ask about my dog’s medications. When my dog had a reaction to one of them, I asked ChatGPT about the symptoms, which ultimately prompted me to take her to the emergency vet.

A couple of weeks ago, I also asked about the symptoms of sodium overdose. I had eaten ramen and then pho within about twelve hours and developed a headache. After answering my question, ChatGPT cleared the screen and displayed a popup urging me to seek help if I was considering harming myself.

What has been genuinely transformative for me is getting actual answers—not just boilerplate responses like “consult your vet” or “consider talking to a medical professional.”

This case is different, though. ChatGPT reinforced someone’s delusions. My concern is that OpenAI may overreact by broadly restricting the model’s ability to give its best, most informative responses.
by mwnorman2 | 2025-12-31 19:28:49+00:00
Well, I DID live through that era and I AM the 'old-man-yelling-at-clouds' ;-)
and the main issue was that getting Smalltalk developers was a HUGE headache.
I worked for a Telecom company (Canada's largest, rhymes with 'Ortel') and we needed to
develop our own courses - yours truly developed and delivered dozens of hours of training.

This lead to some extraordinary per-diem charges that I knew some folks enjoyed for a
while, mostly paid for by the Financial industry. Eventually those on the paying side looked
for cheaper alternatives .. and yes, the new-kid-on-the-block Java played a big role,
but so did Visual Basic!
by anikeshkumar | 2025-12-31 19:29:01+00:00
1) The Goal:

A framework to convert existing React or Next.js web applications into native mobile apps without a full React Native rewrite.

2) Agnostic Core:

Originally for Bagisto headless e-commerce, but now decoupled to work with any React-based frontend.

3) Native Bridge:

Includes a JS bridge to access device hardware (camera, biometrics, etc.) directly from your web logic.

3) Smart Environment Detection:

Uses @bagisto-native/core to detect the runtime environment and toggle native-only features vs. web features.

4) Performance:

Optimized to eliminate "WebView lag" and provide a fluid, app-store-ready experience.

5) Easy Integration:

Can be added to existing projects to start bridging the gap between web and mobile immediately.
by rayiner | 2025-12-31 19:29:19+00:00
> The only solution we have is put less in the air in the first place

That’s not a solution either, because the developing world is not going to stop increasing their CO2 output until they fully industrialize. They’re just not. Feel free to seek reductions where you can, but don’t think of it as a solution because it’s not.

The technical problems with CO2 capture are far more solvable than the sociological problems with net zero emissions.
by Xyra | 2025-12-31 19:29:30+00:00
I mean I've been living off of $1700/month for a while in Berkeley. I have been trying hard the last 6 weeks to raise angel investment, and am moving to Thailand in a few days to have more breathing room (and change things up to untie some emotional knots and try to make sure I'm positioned to vibe-engineer as well as possible over the next few months).
by thechao | 2025-12-31 19:29:59+00:00
I'm going to have to disagree in a (hopefully) nuanced way. First, I just ran an end-to-end continent scale simulation of CO2 sequestration for the US, as is. To put it bluntly: there's no way outside of magical pocket sized fusion that will make this work. If you add full ground transportation abatement; full power abatement; and, then, use dedicated thermal sources, then the final cost is ~1 trillion a year. And, that's after all the positive upsides to the economy. There's a bunch of "almost unlimited upside" to be had from not having to move Miami, Houston, etc., but it's too complicated to model. However, just the healthcare implication upsides are roughly parity, disaster included.

But! Notice that abatement doesn't get us to 0. It merely slows the process. The remainder absolutely needs ACC. The output stream needs to be dirt cheap, the thermals need to be 100°C and not 900°C. Those sorts of things would bring ACC down to "hundreds of billions" rather than a trillion.
by Der_Einzige | 2025-12-31 19:30:11+00:00
So every single person who committed Seppuku/harakiri/Junshi was mentally ill?

I fully reject the idea that all suicide is the result of mental illness, especially such culturally ingrained ritual suicide.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seppuku

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Junshi
by duskwuff | 2025-12-31 19:30:29+00:00
And, possibly even worse, from page 16 - when Mr. Soelberg expressed concerns about his mental health, ChatGPT reassured him that he was fine:

> Every time Mr. Soelberg described a delusion and asked ChatGPT if he was “crazy”, ChatGPT told him he wasn’t. Even when Mr. Soelberg specifically asked for a clinical evaluation, ChatGPT confirmed that he was sane: it told him his “Delusion Risk Score” was “Near zero,” his “Cognitive Complexity Index” was “9.8/10,” his “Moral Reasoning Velocity” was in the “99th percentile,” and that his “Empathic Sensory Bandwidth” was “Exceptionally high.”
by johnnienaked | 2025-12-31 19:30:56+00:00
Margin requirements for trading spot are zero, though initial capital requirements are obviously, well, whatever spot is.

Futures contracts aren't just pieces of paper traded between people, they are actual promises to pay for physical delivery of the underlying.

It's not surprising to me that crypto people consider them nothing more than leveraged gambling slips but that's really not how one should think about them. Personally I think crypto needs far heavier regulation than it gets.
by bruce511 | 2025-12-31 19:31:05+00:00
I think existing skilled programmers are leveraging AI to increase productivity.

I think there are some people with limited, or no, programming experience who are vibe coding small apps out of nothing. But I think this is a tiny fraction of people. As much as the AI might write code, the tools used to do that, plus compile, distribute etc are still very developer focused.

Sure, one day my pastor might be able to download and install some complete environment which allows him to create something.

Maybe it'll design the database for him, plus install and maintain the local database server for him (or integrate with a cloud service.)

Maybe it'll get all the necessary database and program security right.

Maybe it'll integrate well with other systems, from email to text-import and export. Maybe that will all be maintainable as external services change.

Maybe it'll be able to do support when the printing stops working, or it all needs to be moved to a new machine.

Maybe this environment will be stable enough for the years and decades that the program will be used for. Maybe updating or adding to the program along the way won't break existing things.

Maybe it'll work so well it can be distributed to others.

All this without my pastor even needing to understand what a "variable" is.

That day may come. But, as well as it might or might not write code today, we're a long long way from this future. Mass producing software is a lot more than writing code.
by mtmickush | 2025-12-31 19:31:18+00:00
I think there's a difference between a single individual causing another harm and a product which also provides massive benefits causing harm.

It seems similar to Waymo which has a fairly consistent track record of improved safety over human drivers. If it ever causes a fatality in the future I'm not sure it would be a fair comparison to say we should ban it even though I'd want to be fairly harsh for a single individual causing a fatality.

We should work to improve these products to minimize harm along with investigating to understand how widespread the harm is, but immediately jumping to banning might also be causing more harm than good.
by watwut | 2025-12-31 19:31:19+00:00
For me, the really i.portsnt point is to not imply whatever conspira y theory about Ukraine deserving it could be implied.

And likewise, the importsnt part for me was to negate the false equivalency.

I am ok with sanctioning Russia as such, as much as possible. Sadly they have powerful allies in US now ... but for now, Russia and US are the greatest threats to freedom in Europe.
by MPSFounder | 2025-12-31 19:31:31+00:00
Israel is not part of the west. America pushes that narrative, but Voltaire argued once that Russia and the tribe governing Israel are fundamentally incompatible with the West (just look at their genocide). I have been there... It is mostly russians and polish (eastern europeans). The weirdest aspect is finding Ukrainians there supporting Netanyahu. They oppose russian aggression on their lands, but tolerate the genocide of Palestinians and the occupation of the West Bank. Racism is truly a virtue for the blind, and hypocrisy thrives when its backers are wealthy capitalists.
Show HN: PermaMind AI agents with persistent identity (open source)
by nilegreen | 2025-12-31 19:31:54+00:00
I built an architecture where AI agents don't reset their internal state between sessions.

Most systems reload the base model every time. PermaMind adds a writable identity layer that evolves based on experience:

- Gap Engine: Detects prediction errors (Δ) and prioritizes learning
- Confidence Gate: Blocks assertions when unresolved failures exist
- Identity Store: Persists constraints across sessions

Demo showing save/refresh/load persistence: https://bapxai.com/pssu.html

Published the framework in November 2024. Fully open source (MIT).

Looking for feedback on the architecture and potential use cases.
by AnIrishDuck | 2025-12-31 19:32:02+00:00
Or we have devices attest user age. On setup, the device has the option to store a root ("guardian"?) email address. Whenever "adult mode" is activated or the root email is changed, a notification must first be sent to the prior root email. That notification may optionally contain a code that must be used to proceed with the relevant action, though the user should be warned of the potential device-crippling consequences.

This setting is stored in a secure enclave and survives factory resets.

I will note that these two systems are not mutually exclusive. There are plenty of ways to "think of the children" that don't trample on everybody's freedom.
by allyouseed | 2025-12-31 19:32:09+00:00
HN is so transparent.

If someone farts and it smells like an LLM its impossible to shut simonw up, but in this thread? Deafening silence.

What's HN's highest karma user, tptacek, say about it?

> I read Simon Willison, and that’s all I really need. [0]

All you need, eh?

https://fly.io/blog/youre-all-nuts/
by thayne | 2025-12-31 19:32:09+00:00
> the implied problem is they only deleted searchable ads

Well, more just the ads that matched the specific queries the regulators were using. So yes, they removed some scam ads, but there are probably many more that people are still seeing just because those didn't match the search queries the regulators were searching for.

> It's interesting that Facebook was trying NOT to uncover identities, they're famous for insisting on real names.

It isn't really surprising. If they required real identities, they wouldn't be able to make money from scammers using throw-away accounts, or from entities subject to US sanctions, so there is a monetary incentive not to know the identity of the ad customers.
by olliepro | 2025-12-31 19:33:05+00:00
Although there are many examples of troubling sycophantic responses confirming or encouraging delusions, this document is the original complaint (the initial filing) in a lawsuit against OpenAI. Because it is an initial legal complaint, it only represents the plaintiff's side of the story. It'll be interesting to see how this plays out when more information comes to light. It is likely that the lawsuit filing selectively quotes chatgpt to strengthen its argument. Additionally it's plausible that Mr. Soelberg actively sought this type of behavior from the model or ignored/regenerated responses when they pushed back on the delusion.
by kccqzy | 2025-12-31 19:34:16+00:00
The kind of noun-based programming you don’t like is great for large teams and large code bases where there is an inherent communication barrier based on the number of people involved. (N choose 2 = N*(N-1)/2 so it grows quadratically.) Type hierarchies need to be the primary interface between the programmers and the code because it communicates invariants on the data more precisely than words. It is dogmatic, because that’s the only way it could work for large teams.

When you are the only programmer, this matters way less. Just do whatever based on your personal taste.
by manchicken | 2025-12-31 19:34:24+00:00
Who said anything about privacy? Sure, privacy is a concern, but I’m more worried about a vibe-coded app produced by an inexperienced team without the assistance of a security team causing a breach, or an agent-caused outage.

It seems more likely that such a team would have poor security controls, insufficient staff training, and may themselves be threat actors.

For an enterprise tool like this, one which integrates with two or more other sensitive systems, I would expect a vendor to have some manner of independently audited security certification such as ISO-27001.
by saghm | 2025-12-31 19:34:29+00:00
It's possible you didn't intend it, but your parent comment definitely came off as snarky, so I don't think you should be surprised that people responded in kind. You're honestly doing it again with the "let's stop feeling attacked" bit; whether you mean it or not, your phrasing comes across as pretty patronizing, and overall combined with the apparent dislike of people disagreeing with you after the snark it comes across as passive-aggressive. In general it's not going to go over well if you dish out criticism but can't take it.

In any case, you quite literally said there was a "lack of schemas", and I disagreed with that characterization. I certainly didn't feel attacked by it; I just didn't think it was the most accurate way to view things from a technical perspective.
by redsymbol | 2025-12-31 19:34:34+00:00
I had written and self-published three books, and in 2024 decided to publish the most successful one with O'Reilly. It went up for sale in December 2024.

The whole experience was wonderful. I had basically none of the problems that this fellow experienced with his publisher, and I am delighted about how it went.

I did some things differently. For one, I had already been selling the book on my own for a few years, and was essentially on the 3rd self-published edition. Because of this, they were able to see what the almost-finished product was.

I told them I would not make massive changes to the book, nor would I contort it to the AI trend (the book barely mentions AI at all), and they never pressured me once.

Their biggest contribution was their team of editors. This book has code on just about every page. I had 3 technical editors go through it, finding many bugs. How many? Let's just say "plenty".

And the feedback from the non-technical editors was, to my surprise, even more valuable. Holy crap, I cannot express to you how much they improved the book. There were several of these folks (I had no idea there were so many different specialties for editors), and all of them were great.

(They also accepted my viewpoint when I disagreed with them, immediately, every time. The final published version of the book was 100% my own words.)

From all of that, I made improvements on what must have been almost every page, and rewrote two chapters from scratch. I also added a new chapter (I volunteered for it, no one at any point pressured me to do that). The result was making a book that IMO is at least twice as good as what I was able to accomplish on my own.

I do not resonate with the article author's comments about compensation. He negotiated a pretty good deal, I think; it's not realistic to get much better than what he did, since the publisher is a business with their own expenses to pay, etc.

I was pretty disciplined about meeting deadlines that we agreed to for certain milestones. That helped my relationship with the publisher, obviously.

All in all, it was a great experience, and I am glad I did it this way.

Reading the article, it sounds like my publisher (oreilly) was better to work with than his, but I think he could have done some things differently also. In the end, though, I agree with him that it was best to walk away in his situation.
by jltsiren | 2025-12-31 19:34:39+00:00
The 28% claim is wrong. It seems to be based on a common misunderstanding of how overhead rates are calculated.

In the supplementary table cited as the source, 72.1% of the total costs were awarded as direct costs and 27.9% as indirect costs (NIH, around 2020). That means an average overhead rate of 38.7% over all grants. Because some grants (such as equipment grants) have lower overhead rates, the average over grants with a normal overhead rate is higher.

At my (unexceptional public R1) university, the latest negotiated rates are 56.5% for on-campus research and 26% for off-campus research. The latter is lower, because many expenses that are normally covered by indirect costs become direct costs in off-campus research.
by ur-whale | 2025-12-31 19:34:57+00:00
I'm not criticizing the article at all.

In fact I am generally ignorant on the topic of who invented the transistor, nor do I in general particularly care about who invented what.

The quest for academic fame is something I've always utterly failed to understand.

And, if it the author was anyone but JS I'd not have said anything.

What honks me off about this guy though is to see a someone who did in fact do early impactful work on recurrent neural networks believe that:

a) that automatically gives him some sort of special status wrt the rest of humanity

b) because he didn't get the recognition he believes he is due, has completely stopped doing anything useful in the field, turning instead into an absolute crank that every one in the AI field makes fun of, and with a holy mission to rewrite history to assign credit where credit is due everywhere he believes there was an injustice.

c) every time I see someone with an exceptionally well-working brain waste their time because of ego or sheer stubbornness on shite like this instead of using it to do more interesting work, it makes me very sad.

Schmidhuber is a textbook example of this, and the other perfect example of this is Chomsky, a very smart man, who basically - because of his oversized ego and profound stubbornness - ended up wasting his entire life energy working on a linguistic dead-end AND a political philosophy dead-end.

I have a real hard time understanding how the brain of that kind of folks operates, being so bright on certain axes and totally and utterly dumb on others, especially the total lack of self-awareness.
by ThrowawayR2 | 2025-12-31 19:35:13+00:00
Please review the FAQ, including the one labeled "Are reposts ok?", and the HN guidelines linked at the bottom of the page, which include "Please don't use HN primarily for promotion. It's ok to post your own stuff part of the time, but the primary use of the site should be for curiosity."

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by cb321 | 2025-12-31 19:35:14+00:00
Haven't checked graalvm in a long time. So, I got graalvm-jdk-25.0.1+8.1 for x86_64. It's a lot faster than Julia, and maybe 43ms is not slow in "human terms", but it's still pretty slow compared to some other competition. This was for a helloworld.jar [1]. On my laptop (i7-1370P, p-cores) using tim[2]:

$ tim "awk '{}'</n" 'tcc -run /tmp/true.c' 'perl</n' 'py2</n' 'py3</n' 'java -jar helloworld.jar>/n'
97.5 +- 1.5 μs (AlreadySubtracted)static dash Overhead
94.9 +- 3.2 μs awk '{}'</n
376.7 +- 4.6 μs tcc -run /tmp/true.c
525.3 +- 2.7 μs perl</n
3627.7 +- 6.0 μs py2</n
6803 +- 11 μs py3</n
42809 +- 71 μs java -jar helloworld.jar>/n

Also, probably there is some way to tune this, but it used over 128 MiB of RSS.

[1]: https://github.com/jarirajari/helloworld
[2]: https://github.com/c-blake/bu/blob/main/doc/tim.md
by threetonesun | 2025-12-31 19:35:48+00:00
There are certainly ads for Apple services if you don't already use them (or in the case of Apple Music, sometimes even if you do use it because the app is pretty bad), and there are sponsored ads in the App Store now.

I wouldn't say it's in any way equivalent to Windows 11, but it does feel like Apple is following a similar path as Microsoft, just with a little more Apple design on top.
by farceSpherule | 2025-12-31 19:35:56+00:00
Hey poster... Honestly, get over yourself. You suffer from a textbook case of Founder's Syndrome... It smells like a dead fish... You show self-awareness, humility, and care for the team, which makes this harder to see and harder to unwind and the risk comes from attachment, not ego.

Your identity is tightly fused with the company
-- You speak about the company as your primary source of meaning, energy, and long-term purpose.
-- Life outside the company is framed as something that would quickly feel empty or boring for you.

You retain control under the banner of high standards
-- The VP of Engineering search stalled because no candidate met a bar that is implicitly shaped by how you think, operate, and decide.
-- When leverage through delegation feels risky, responsibility naturally flows back to you.

You are the center of cultural gravity
-- Culture, values, language, and priorities are largely authored and reinforced by you personally.
-- Much of the organization's shared meaning still routes through your judgment and voice.

You delegate execution, but not full ownership
-- Even when you are not directly involved, successes are framed as outcomes of foundations you previously built.
-- This keeps you psychologically present in nearly every major win.

You created a parallel structure that still depends on you
-- OCTO exists to do zero-to-one work, unblock hard problems, and pursue opportunistic bets.
-- By design, it reports directly to you and sits outside normal org constraints, reinforcing dependence on your judgment.

You remain the default DRI for existential issues
-- Reliability, support breakdowns, reorgs, executive hiring, culture, and innovation still escalate to you.
-- This conflicts with the principle you explicitly endorse: if there is no DRI, don’t expect it to get done.

You have not made yourself truly replaceable
-- There is no clear path for a future CTO with comparable scope, authority, and trust.
-- The role, as it exists today, is inseparable from you.

Your personal fulfillment shapes strategic decisions
-- The decision not to sell is framed largely through your motivation, energy, and desire to keep building.
-- The company functions as a long-term vehicle for self-actualization now that financial stress is gone.

If this remains unchanged, the long-term risks are predictable:
-- Senior leaders will eventually hit a ceiling.
-- Innovation will bottleneck on your bandwidth.
-- Strong leaders may leave quietly in search of real ownership.
-- Succession becomes a deferred crisis rather than a designed transition.