MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by spoiler | 2025-12-08 23:39:25+00:00
Tangentially related, but I'm low key miffed that em dashes get a bad rep now because of AI.

They're a great way to "inject" something into a sentence, similar to how people speak in person. I feel like my written style has now gotten worse because I have to dumb it down, or I'll be anxious any writing/linguistic flourish will be interpreted as gen AI
by jjk166 | 2025-12-08 23:39:59+00:00
It doesn't matter what I consider a conflict. The fact is someone went to their boss with a conflict because it rose above their threshold of what a conflict is. If one of the parties involved feels there is a conflict in need of mediation, then there is a conflict in need of mediation. Very likely the issue is that the second party didn't realize what they said would cause conflict, which is exactly why the boss should be talking to them.

No one is saying that the boss should be looking for and trying to mediate "conflicts" no one wants them to resolve.
by phantasmish | 2025-12-08 23:40:13+00:00
It works OK for me on Mac, but all touchID drops to about 50/50 for me in Winter, under the (otherwise) best circumstances. Dry air, I guess.

On iPhone, specifically, it was awful for me. I was too likely to have wet hands (raining, just got out of shower, whatever—even dried, the higher moisture in my skin meant it didn't work) or gloves on or some other problem that made it fail. Trying to hold it the right way, one-handed, to get a finger in the right position (waaaaay down near the bottom) was also a high-risk maneuver for a drop, and was not a way I'd otherwise have tried to hold the device.
by wafflemaker | 2025-12-08 23:40:52+00:00
The thing is they are the best e-scooters provider in town. They have fantastic support, few times agreed to my feature requests. They have very forgiving policy for when you forgot to lock the scooter and so on. I really believe that if I messaged them off season (when they work on the app, like now in winter), and suggested changing the way they attest phones, they would consider using the attestation that GOS can pass.
by hinkley | 2025-12-08 23:40:58+00:00
There was a comic artist I used to follow when I was doing more front end work, who would blog about his craft. One of the things he said that really hit me was talking about silhouettes. The visual noise in certain eras of comics make them very unapproachable. If you repainted your strip by flood filling everything with black, would people have any clue what's going on?

One of the things I'm seeing in some of these examples is icons with the same silhouette doing nothing or less than nothing for scannability. This is the same problem AWS has. Their dashboard is just noise, because the icons are neither visually distinct nor descriptive of the project.

I've also seen some of this same problem with card and board games as well. You can see that some designers care about accessibility. This type has both a distinct color AND shape so colorblind people can see it, all the icons are big enough that people can make them out sitting upside down in front of the person across the table from them, even if they're over 40.

His first example, Google Sheets, does well by this metric IMO, but the next few are kinda bad.
by xxpor | 2025-12-08 23:41:23+00:00
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Planning_Analytics

>When Visicalc was released, Perez became convinced that it was the ideal user interface for his visionary product: the Functional Database. With his friend Jose Sinai formed the Sinper Corporation in early 1983 and released his initial product, TM/1 (the "TM" in TM1 stands for "Table Manager"). Sinper was purchased by Applix in 1996, which was purchased by Cognos in late 2007, which was in itself acquired mere months later by IBM.[3][2]

TM1 is widely used as a way to interface with official ledgers.
by michaelt | 2025-12-08 23:41:51+00:00
Imagine you own a factory that makes plastic widgets. The factory has a widget-making machine.

You'll pay rent on the factory and interest on the loan you took out to buy the widget-making machine whether you make one widget or a million. But the amount you'll spend on plastic and machine operator wages goes up the more widgets you want to make.

So you can plot a line, y=mx+c where y is the amount you spend and x is the number of widgets you make. m is the cost of plastic and worker wages, c is the cost of rent and loan interest. (Obviously this is a simplification)

You would carefully monitor the per-unit costs of plastic and machine operator wages - but if you've got a machine that turns 10 cents of plastic into a $1 widget, the more plastic you put in the more profit you make. Only an idiot would try to save money by refusing to buy plastic.

On the other hand, if you need to take out a loan to buy plastic, that's an ominous sign indeed - because the previous batch of widgets should have sold at a profit, giving you all the cash needed to buy the plastic for the next batch.

Business is going great, in fact you're running your widget-making machine at full capacity, and you decide to buy a second one - which is an almighty expense, but definitely a sensible one. If you accounted for this the same way you account for plastic, your accounts would look crazy - you were making decent profit every year, then you suddenly took a 800% loss one year? - so instead this is shown in a separate place in the accounts.

Obviously, you do want to invest in new machines when it's profitable to do so - but if you have to delay the purchase by a few months, it's not the end of the world. And taking out a loan to buy the machine could be reasonable.

So basically operating expenses (plastic) and capital expenses (new machines) are paid for differently, managed differently, and accounted for differently.

Of course if you don't operate a widget factory, the distinctions and the reasons for them might be a lot less clear.
by stryan | 2025-12-08 23:42:08+00:00
Taylor Swift (and Ed Sheeran) releasing her albums on vinyl is what caused vinyl prices to sky rocket, so not happy to hear she's moving onto cassettes too. I moved to collecting tapes due to vinyls being too expensive to get for anything but my most loved albums.

Some genres just feel better to listen to on tape too: lofi black metal, dungeon synth, hardcore, anything that likes to play with lo-fi sounds for aesthetic sounds nice on tapes and it really adds to the experience.
by zozbot234 | 2025-12-08 23:42:53+00:00
According to the github issue it seems to be a simple checksum step, not a true signature verification? If so there is no locked bootloader in any real sense.

If the real impediment is lack of demand or low-level development effort for any given device, that's in principle a solvable issue once projects like pmOS and Mobian choose to focus on some reasonably-available hackable hardware and bring it up to true daily driver state.
by maxrumpf | 2025-12-08 23:43:00+00:00
This is the tech report for a model I helped work on. I'm biased, but it turned out very well.

We essentially let the model learn to retrieve like a human would: Make a first search, read the results, and then make another. This lets the model be vastly better than pre-programmed pipelines. We test this extensively and compare against implementing this with API models (like Sonnet 4.5 and GPT-5.1). SID-1 compares favorably.

Happy to answer any questions or get feedback. First and foremost: Enjoy the read. It's much more detailed than most tech reports.
by rocketvole | 2025-12-08 23:43:17+00:00
hopefully fractional scaling in linux becomes more efficient in general. I stopped using linux because no amount of playing witht font sizes could make the gnome ui look decent at 100/200% scale coming from 175/225 percent scale, and the cpu penalty was twice that of windows. not a huge deal unless you're like me and rearrange windows all the time.
by socalgal2 | 2025-12-08 23:43:21+00:00
Not sure I agree. It's much easier for me to find the link icon than "Insert Link" in the Google Docs example. It's seem pretty close to a standard icon so, for me at least, it's helpful to find it. Same wit some of the others like increase indent, decrease indent, left, right, center justification, and lots of others.

I can also be helpful for non-English (or non-language of your choice) when you haven't had time to localize or don't have perfect localization. Let's assume the user has Japanese as their second language. It's much easier to find the option you want with icons than without
by GuB-42 | 2025-12-08 23:43:40+00:00
More like: "Every time someone stole from my car, that's because I forgot to lock the door, that the lock can be picked is not a problem".

Sure, a thief may pick your lock, but unless he knows there is something valuable in there, he will probably go find a car the owner forgot to lock, it less effort and there are plenty of them, or he may look for more valuable targets.
by Havoc | 2025-12-08 23:44:17+00:00
Noticing this most in visual content rather than LLMs. That era of anyone young and perpetually online can spot AI via uncanny valley was remarkably shortlived. [0]

>In the pre-LLM era, I could build mental models, rely on heuristics, or spot-check information strategically.

I wonder if this will be an enduring advantage of the current generation - building your formative world model in a pre-AI era. It seems plausible to me that anyone who built the foundations there has a much higher chance of having instincts that are more grounded even if post-AI experiences are layered on later

[0] https://www.reddit.com/r/antiai/comments/1p8z6y6/nano_banana...
by Terretta | 2025-12-08 23:44:27+00:00
> we do both text and voice (roughly 70% of data collection is typed, 30% spoken). Partly this is to make sure the model is learning to decode semantic intent (rather than just planned motor movements)

Both of these modes are incredibly slow thinking. Conciously shifting from thinking in concepts to thinking in words is like slamming on brakes for a school zone on an autobahn.

I've gathered most people think in words they can "hear in their head", most people can "picture a red triangle" and literally see one, and so on. Many folks who are multi-lingual say they think in a language, or dream in that language, and know which one it is.

Meanwhile, some people think less verbally or less visually, perhaps not verbally or visually at all, and there is no language (words).

A blog post shared here last month discussed a person trying to access this conceptual mode, which he thinks is like "shower thoughts" or physicists solving things in their heads while staring into space, except "under executive function". He described most of his thoughts as words he can hear in his head, with these concepts more like vectors. I agree with that characterization.

I'm curious what % of folks you've scanned may be in this non-word mode, or if the text and voice requirement forces everyone into words.
by trhway | 2025-12-08 23:44:27+00:00
>if you're going to argue that robots are objectively worse, I'm not so sure.

Robots are becoming worse. I've been living in Mountain View for more than 2 decades, and Waymo cars have been around for years. They never been an issue until recently. I already wrote how several weeks ago our car was almost front-rammed by a Waymo, we had to swerve to avoid it. And recently i saw, and today was myself cut by a Waymo when i was driving in a left turn lane with the Waymo very aggressively crossing the solid white line to get in front of me. I can't remember actual humans cutting it that close, and it was the first time in many years i expressed my frustration by using horn while especially feeling how stupid that horn for AV. That my anecdotal experience much dovetails with some autonomous companies recently stating about increasing of the "assertiveness" of their AVs.

I mean i've been predicting that robots on the battlefield will soon push people out as people can't compete on speed, precision, etc. Yet, it seems that it may happen on public roads faster than on the battlefield. Don't get me wrong, i'm not objecting against such unavoidable robot future (it would be stupid and pointless to object to unavoidable), i just want parity, i.e. the law should allow me to outfit my car with similar (or may be for the old time sake of being a human - with better) sensor and mechanical capabilities and to allow me to for example cut the same way in front of humans and robots like those robots do.
by AnthonyMouse | 2025-12-08 23:44:40+00:00
> Payments which you can't make today inside a legal system are two types. And if you enable system you automatically enable both types. For libertarians that is a clear 100% positive. For regular centrist citizens, not so much.

The problem with this argument is that cryptocurrency now exists whether it's legal or not and using it for illegal things is already illegal. Drug dealers are committing a felony by selling drugs and if that hasn't deterred them then neither will making something else they're doing a crime too.

So all of the negative uses are going to happen regardless of whether you also ban the positive uses. At which point, what are you gaining by making it illegal or inconvenient for innocent people to use it for something that isn't otherwise illegal?

> Since blockchain is public, you can always trace "bad" or real bad payment to the source wallet. That i one issue, and another is that since BTCs are non-fungible, the tokens used in such payments are forever tainted.

People keep making this claim and it keeps not making sense.

You don't need someone's permission to send them Bitcoin. Meanwhile large exchanges keep billions of dollars in a single wallet and have single wallets that do billions of dollars in transactions over a short period of time.

So let's consider the two possible ways this can work: First, if you get coins directly from a tainted wallet then you get in trouble, but if it was several steps back then it doesn't matter. This is, of course, useless, because then people would just transfer the coins through a couple of other wallets first.

Second, any wallets that receive any tainted coins become tainted forever. Then immediately the vast majority of the chain is tainted because the coins have made the rounds through a large exchange at some point. Worse, it's pointless to try to defend against it by refusing tainted funds, because you can't actually refuse funds. Your billion dollar wallet or freshly mined Bitcoin can be tainted by any troll who sends you a dollar from a tainted wallet without your permission, and trying to treat coins as non-fungible is probably a good way to get someone to troll you like that.

Which gives you two alternatives again. The first is that all coins can be tainted by trolls, which will in practice cause exactly that to happen and thereby make the premise meaningless. The second is that you can try to say that it doesn't count if someone sent them without your permission, but now you can't tell if something is tainted by looking at the chain because it can't tell you which transactions were unauthorized by the recipient, and moreover you would then have a mechanism for getting dirty coins into a clean wallet.

In other words, when anyone can send you money without your permission, your options are "everything is dirty" or "everything is clean".
by romanows | 2025-12-08 23:44:45+00:00
I've seen a few in Lakeview but my experience hasn't been entirely the same as yours. I haven't noticed blinding lights at night. They seem to move relatively slowly and cautiously.

I came upon one as I was jogging last night and was worried about getting around it. It, or someone driving it, seemed to notice me coming and it waited at a spot where it was easy to pass.

That said, these are a bad idea. Like another commenter mentioned, these are going to obstruct people with mobility issues or devices, or obstruct everyone when all but a narrow strip of sidewalk is snow and ice.
by nomel | 2025-12-08 23:44:52+00:00
Even if that's were true, I would be very surprised if this caused a loss of even 0.0000001% annual revenue. Going to need more 9's in that number.

edit: If you don't understand why this is actually important, realize that they're burning billions. They don't focus their devs on things that generate revenue, or the light will go out.
by helpfulclippy | 2025-12-08 23:45:28+00:00
for 1), seems like you could do a proxy encryption solution.

edit: wrong way to phrase I think. What I mean to say is, have a message key to encrypt the body, but then rotate that when team membership changes, and "let them know" by updating a header that has the new message key encrypted using a key derived using each current member's public key.
by crubier | 2025-12-08 23:45:57+00:00
If you have the right tooling (e.g. Streamlit.io) then yes, literally.

To 'deploy' an Excel file I go to Office365 and create my excel file and hit share

To 'deploy' a Streamlit file I go to Streamlit and write my single file python code (can be a one liner) and hit share
by adventured | 2025-12-08 23:46:10+00:00
They continue to improve significantly year over year. There's no reason to think we're near a plateau in this specific regard.

The bottom 50% of software jobs in the US are worth somewhere around $200-$300 billion per year (salary + benefits + recruiting + training/education), one trillion dollars every five years minimum. That's the opportunity. It's beyond gigantic. They will keep pursuing the elimination of those jobs until it's done. It won't take long from where we're at now, it's a 3-10 year debate, rather than a 10-20 year debate. And that's just the bottom 50%, the next quarter group above that will also be eliminated over time.

$115k + $8-12k healthcare + stock + routine operating costs + training + recruitment. That's the ballpark median two years ago. Surveys vary, from BLS to industry, two to four million software developers, software engineers, so on and so forth. Now eliminate most of them.

Your AI coding agent circa 2030 will work 24/7. It has a superior context to human developers. It never becomes emotional or angry or crazy. It never complains about being tired. It never quits due to working conditions. It never unionizes. It never leaves work. It never gets cancer or heart disease. It's not obese, it doesn't have diabetes. It doesn't need work perks. It doesn't need time off for vacations. It doesn't need bathrooms. It doesn't need to fit in or socialize. It has no cultural match concerns. It doesn't have children. It doesn't have a mortgage. It doesn't hate its bosses. It doesn't need to commute. It gets better over time. It only exists to work. It is the ultimate coding monkey. Goodbye human.
by eek2121 | 2025-12-08 23:46:30+00:00
They used to not even need an email.

You can use 3rd party apps/tools to get around this, FWIW.

I use OpenHue on Linux. On iOS I've not had much luck finding a quality app, however a long time ago I did find a good one for Android...(I just don't remember the name, sorry.)

The account login crap is ridiculous, considering you don't even need internet to use their stuff. The lack of needing a login was the whole reason I bought into the ecosystem to begin with.
by thethirdone | 2025-12-08 23:46:41+00:00
You did not actually address the core of my points at all.

> It isn't a case of ratio it is a fundamentally different method of working hence my point of not needing all human literary output do the the equivalent of an LLM.

You can make ratios of anything. I agree that human cognition is different than LLM cognition, though I would think of it more like a phase difference than fundamentally different phenomena. Think liquid water vs steam, the density (a ratio) is vastly different and they have different harder to describe properties (surface tension, filling volume, incompressible vs compressible).

> Humans provide the connections, the reasoning the thought the insights and the subsequent correlations THEN we humans try to make a good pattern matcher/ guesser (the LLM) to match those.

Yes, humans provide the training data and benchmarks for measuring LLM improvement. Somehow meaning about the world has to get trained on to have any understanding. However, humans talking about patterns in number is not how the LLMs learned this. It is very much from just seeing lots of examples and deducing (during training not inference) the pattern. The fact that a general pattern is embedded in the weights implies that some general understand of many things are baked into the model.

> This common retort: most humans also makes mistakes, or most humans also do x, y, z means nothing.

It is not a retort, but some argument towards what "understanding" means. From what you have said, my guess of your definition makes "understanding" what humans do and computers are incapable of (by definition). If LLMs could out compete humans in all professional tasks, I think it would be hard to say they understand nothing. Humans are a worthwhile point of comparison and human exceptionalism can only really hold up until being surpassed.

I would also point out that some humans DO understand the properties of numbers I was referring to. In fact, I figured it out in second grade while doing lots of extra multiplication problems as punishment for being a brat.

> My digital thermometer uses an algorithm to determine the temperature. ... The paper will not be thinking if that is done.

I did not say "All algorithms are thinking". The stronger version of what I was saying is "Some algorithms can think." You simply have asserted the opposite with no reasoning.

> In fact at the extreme end this anthropomorphising has led to exacerbating mental health conditions and unfortunately has even led to humans killing themselves.

I do concede that anthropomorphizing can be problematic, especially if you do not have a background in CS and ML to understand beneath the hood. However, you completely skipped past my rather specific explanation of how it can be useful. On HN in particular, I do expect people to bring enough technical understanding to the table to not just treat LLMs as people.
by dabockster | 2025-12-08 23:46:51+00:00
> the last pre-subscription version

Heads up that you can still buy perpetual licenses to Office either directly from Microsoft or through other sellers throughout the internet.

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/p/office-home-...

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/p/office-home-...
by timonoko | 2025-12-08 23:47:31+00:00
Well if you ask Grok to make a simple program in assembler it does it errorlessly. I tried Recursive Fibonacci once.

If we really want to make a program that uses only bytes in range 0x20..0x7E we need an environment, where Grok can verify the code. Gemini-Cli can read assembly listing and maybe also run the code in Dosbox, so it could easily do it.

Gemini just made me Linux GCODE displayer just by repeatedly viewing the picture and modifying the code, all by itself.
by crote | 2025-12-08 23:47:31+00:00
> Second, all that electricity, even if you generate it with nuclear reactors, have to be delivered via copper wires.

This is indeed a massive red flag. You need conductors, but the material they are made of is pretty much irrelevant.

These days you'd have to search quite a bit to find not-ancient copper conductors in the larger electric grid. Aluminium might have a slightly higher resistance, but when you can just use a thicker wire it's almost always the more attractive choice.

If you don't even know that the grid mostly uses aluminium, you probably shouldn't be making big claims about what is and isn't possible with copper wiring.