MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by MMAFRAZ | 2025-12-18 14:58:54+00:00
Hey HN,

We built the Vect AI Conversion Killer Detector because we noticed a recurring pattern: Founders build incredible products but write copy that speaks to themselves, not their customers. We call this the "Maker's Blind Spot."

You know your product too well. You can't unn-know it to see it through the eyes of a busy, skeptical stranger who has no idea what "scalable synergies" mean.

We didn't want another "AI copywriter" that generates fluff. We wanted a ruthless auditor that simulates your most cynical prospect.

How it works: The Detector prompts an LLM to adopt a specific hostile persona (e.g., "Skeptical CTO", "Exhausted Parent") and reads your landing page, email, or ad. It looks for psychological friction points, not just grammar errors.

It generates a "Panic Report" containing:

The Panic Score: A raw 0-100 metric of how likely a user is to bounce. The "Inner Monologue": What your customer is thinking but not saying (e.g., "This looks expensive and I don't see a price"). The 3 Silent Killers: Specific barriers like Cognitive Load, Trust Gaps, or Vague Value Props. The Fix: A concrete checklist to turn "bouncers" into buyers. You can read the full breakdown of how we engineered the prompt chains and the psychology behind it in the guide.

Afraz Founder, Vect AI
by jkaplowitz | 2025-12-18 14:58:58+00:00
> You can reliably reconstruct a SSN that is missing the first digits, if you know where the person lived when they filed for it, but that's not the same thing.

This used to be true, but isn’t for SSNs assigned since I think 2011 - the exact year could be wrong, that’s from memory. Since that switch, the component that used to be geographical is assigned randomly.
by squigz | 2025-12-18 14:59:02+00:00
> commanding a particular behaviour tends to encourage the opposite behaviour

No, it really doesn't. Look at Prohibition in America, or the "War on Drugs", or abstinence-only sex education.

What does tend to reduce harmful behavior is actual education about the risks and tackling the sources of those risks. In this case, that would look like addressing the addictiveness of these platforms, instead of, say, requiring an ID to use it. The latter will only encourage kids to go to other platforms, or bypass the ID checks, to say nothing of the privacy risks to everyone else.

Furthermore, the kids most in need of protection from those platforms, because their parents aren't protecting them, will likely just get their parents to ID them and let them on anyway.

> I specifically mentioned a culture disconnected from reality

In what way is it disconnected from reality? It seems to me that it is in fact exquisitely linked to reality by the very nature of a significant part of the population being on the Internet, as opposed to 20-30 years ago, where the culture was more of a subset of the general culture.

Also, I didn't "command" you to do anything. I suggested something. A "command" would look more like, say, a law saying you can't use certain websites because of your age. A "suggestion", on the other hand, might look like, say, schools educating kids about why certain websites are harmful to them.
by corimaith | 2025-12-18 14:59:13+00:00
No. Mossadegh was appointed by the Shah (who was still head of state), but his own autocratic actions such as dissolving parliament and giving himself autocratic powers pushed most political forces against him that a confrontation was inevitable. There is a reason the military stood back as he was disposed. Furthermore, the Shah did actually have the legal right to fire Mossadegh, when je ignored that the situation was already extra legal.

I don't know where you are reading history from but listening to random factoids rather than a comprehensive understanding is the worst way to do so.
by burnerRhodov2 | 2025-12-18 15:00:15+00:00
Well, because crypto has been a crime for it's entire lifetime. Any of my friends who got funding to work on crypto got debanked, fined, jail time etc. Throughout the entire Obama-Biden era. Only under the latest Trump admin are there new VC funding and things like ETF's, stablecoin settlements, and crossborder regulation being "Accepted" even though we have no legal framework.

So... Crypto is illegal so anyone using is defacto a criminal by definition.

Also, for this particular instance this is the best bug bounty program i've ever seen. Running a monero node that hits your daily budget cap is not that bad... It could be way worse like steal you DB creditials and sell it to the highest party... So, crypto actually made this better.
by ackfoobar | 2025-12-18 15:00:29+00:00
Your scenario is sth like: guy sees bad AI, good AI, and genuine content in his feed. Bad AI gives him confidence in his ability to detect slop, but he thinks the good AI is genuine content. Here the higher the quality of the slop, the harder it is to detect.

In this case some slop is hacked and exposed. I check them out to see if they're good yet. The quality of the slop is unrelated to whether they'd get hacked.
by DannyPage | 2025-12-18 15:00:36+00:00
> Update 18 December 2025: We’re back! A lovely man from Singapore, working for Apple Executive Relations, who has been calling me every so often for a couple of days, has let me know it’s all fixed. It looks like the gift card I tried to redeem, which did not work for me, and did not credit my account, was already redeemed in some way (sounds like classic gift card tampering), and my account was caught by that. Obviously it’s unacceptable that this can happen, and I’m still trying to get more information out of him, but at least things are now mostly working.

It’s great that it has been resolved, but I’m still baffled by a number of things:

1) Why would redeeming a bad gift card result in a complete shut-down of the account? 2) Why is it seemingly impossible to get any support now unless you drum up a ton of press? 3) Should companies be restricted from growing too large where they can’t support their customers?

In my personal and professional experience, banks are the only companies that seem to actually know how to handle these issues appropriately when it comes to fraud or access. Rather than move to outright banning the account, there are intermediate steps that can be taken. Personal example, my Facebook account was recently banned because a hacker accessed my account uploaded a bad ID when FB requested an ID verification. Despite the request coming from a country I have never visited and would likely be on any high-risk list, my 20 year old account was banned literally overnight without having any recourse. There’s no number or even any email to use. Maybe I can see if the Register will write it up… (I do have all the info from my Facebook account download to show how it was compromised, and any internal support should have been able to see the same… if they cared.)
by crote | 2025-12-18 15:00:47+00:00
The problem is that they are charging a per-minute fee, and a fee at the same order-of-magnitude as actually running the tests. If you're offering cloud-hosted runners for $0.002/minute, asking that same $0.002/minute as an orchestrator fee for self-hosted runners is just insulting.

Charging for self-hosted runners is indeed not a huge deal, and I bet they wouldn't have gotten the same kind of backlash if they charged for it via a per-seat, per-run, per-gigabyte, or per-log-line fee. And if GHA hadn't been so poorly maintained...
by vel0city | 2025-12-18 15:00:54+00:00
You're comparing firing someone who serves a statutory term limt at the pleasure of a position that gets changed out every 4-8 years also with statutory term limits compared to trying to fire someone serving for life who takes 218 House members and 67 Senators to fire.

Yes, its far easier for that one person to make that decision to fire someone than have two hundred and eighty five people agree at the same time to fire someone. That person with a term limit will be replaced more often than the person with a lifetime appointment. I don't understand how you're even making that argument otherwise. Incredibly illogical.

And before you say "bUt I dIdn'T SaY tHaT!", yes you did make the argument its just as easy to fire a SC justice as a regulator.

> So rather than one being easier/harder, it's just that the process is different.

The process is different, yes, and that process makes it a hell of a lot harder.

> Given your likely ideological perspective, I assume you would vehemently insist it's not. Why?

Projecting an identity on to me and asking me to defend a position I have not taken. Really arguing in bad faith there. Depending on what exactly you're talking about I probably would say those are essentially bribes. Like a President receiving gold bars to have him change trade policy. Pretty extreme corruption wouldn't you say?
by pjc50 | 2025-12-18 15:00:56+00:00
> Back to this story, here we have legislators doing their job of scrutinising, and their open scrutiny is held up against the country.

> We could instead have a system where people vote on bills without knowing their contents like the US does.

UK MPs are quite capable of voting on things they haven't read, and indeed their individual opinions are irrelevant due to the whip system. Voting against the party is a rare, major event and can be punished by expulsion. The US traditionally had less party discipline, as can be seen from certain non-party-line Democrats.
by znpy | 2025-12-18 15:01:23+00:00
> It may well be. Books have tons of useful expository material that you may not find in docs

Books often have the "scam trap" where highly-regarded/praised books are often only useful if you are already familiar with the topic.

For example: i fell for the scam of buying "Advanced Programming in the unix environment" and a lot of concept are only shown but not explained. Wasted money, really. It's one of those book i regret not pirating before buying, really.

At the end of the day, watching some youtube video and then referencing the OS-specific manpage is worth much more than reading that book.

I suspect the case to be the same for other "highly-praised" books as well.
by CGMthrowaway | 2025-12-18 15:01:38+00:00
You know what's crazy too is that in colonial America all the brick buildings you see in Boston, etc were also all painted? Well, limewashed technically. You never would have left a bare brick facade. You would put 10-20 coats of thin whitewash on it, or if you wanted it to look like raw brick you would tint the limewash red, and then go in and touch up the mortar lines trompe l'oeil style with white.

Bare brick as an aesthetic choice did not emerge until the late 19th century.
by esperent | 2025-12-18 15:02:08+00:00
I'm sorry to say I don't have any answers for you, at least nothing better than you'd get from searching on to r/sourdough or r/baking.

Like I said, I'm not a baker. My partner is. My focus is on other parts of the business, I was just sharing what I have picked up (via osmosis mostly) about different temperature profiles for different products.
by basisword | 2025-12-18 15:02:18+00:00
>> They are also increasing prison capacity and the two tier system is a genuine thing with public services collapsing.

What utter nonsense. The prison system was so full that when the current party got into power they had to start releasing people years early to free up space for newer offenders. That is why they're trying to improve capacity and that's not expected to happen for several years.
by mark_l_watson | 2025-12-18 15:02:27+00:00
I only use commercial LLM vendors who I consider to be “commercially viable.” I don’t want to deal with companies who are losing money selling me products.

For now the venders I pay for are 90% Google, and 10% combination of Chinese models and from the French company Mistral.

I love the new Gemini 3 Flash model - it hits so many sweet-spots for me. The API is inexpensive enough for my use cases that I don’t even think about the cost.

My preference is using local open models with Ollama and LM Studio, but commercial models are also a large part of my use cases.
by pjc50 | 2025-12-18 15:02:40+00:00
Cities are generally worse because that's where the organized crime is, and a nasty spiral of people carrying weapons because other people are carrying them.

Scotland used to have the worst reputation for stabbing until the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Violence_Reduction_Unit incredible success. You won't hear about it in England because it reflects well on the SNP.
by mothballed | 2025-12-18 15:03:46+00:00
From a very young age when I wondered around the rural midwest, I had a gun. Usually a 20ga shotgun or a .22 rifle. Don't think my parents were too worried about me getting kidnapped or murdered. I used it for hunting but I knew what to do in the case of self defense.

Another one of those things that aren't allowed now.
by mikeyouse | 2025-12-18 15:03:59+00:00
I know we’re all numb to the laughable amount of corruption but the President running a penny stock pump and dump while in office is some next level nonsense. It would be less galling if everyone associated with this administration and every major news apparatus hadn’t spent the prior 4 years pretending to care about the low-level grift that Biden’s son was engaged in.
by selcuk | 2025-12-18 15:04:03+00:00
Hi HN!

I built Type to Race, a browser-based typing game inspired by TypeRacer, but with real-time movement and obstacles (think Subway Surfers mechanics driven by typing).

The core idea was to make typing feel physical and reflex-based instead of just speed-based. Words control forward momentum, while left/right inputs let you dodge obstacles in real time.

Tech-wise: • Runs fully in the browser • Real-time input → movement mapping • Designed for very low latency and instant restarts

I built this as a small experiment and would love feedback on: • gameplay feel • difficulty curve • whether this is fun beyond novelty

Link: https://typetorace.com

Happy to answer any questions about the implementation.
by CGMthrowaway | 2025-12-18 15:04:12+00:00
> The idea that these marvels of artistry were painted like my 10th birthday at the local paint-your-own-pottery store always seemed incongruous, at best.

Have you seen medieval art though? https://www.artistcloseup.com/blog/explaining-weird-mediaeva...

The technique is quite different from the "old masters" of later periods that we often think of as fine art.
by belorn | 2025-12-18 15:04:14+00:00
Their definition of parked domain is a bit odd, with "expired" domain names and typosquatting” domains. I work at a registrar and the absolutely vast majority of parked domains for us are domains owned by customers that register alternative versions, campaign, products and misspellings of their primary domain. Parked in that sense mean an almost empty zone with occasionally a default landing page, sometimes as a paid DNS service at the registrar, and sometimes as a free service (There are still registration and renewal fees).

Putting a redirect onto such domain would be a major bad faith act by the registrar and a reason to avoid that registrar at all costs. The customer is the owner of that name, has their name attached as the registrant, and generally hold some legal risk while doing so. It also goes directly against the primary reason why the customers bought the domains in the first place.

The ones that hold advertisement two specific cases. One is "expired" domains which are not actually expired but where the registrar holds on to it in the hope that the old or new customer will buy it for an extra cost. The other is names which a customer or the registrar itself bought as an investment in hope to auction out. That kind of behavior was historically frowned at but is fairly common practice for a smaller number of domains. Usually you don't put redirects on those since you want to expose the fact that the domain is for sale.

So I am very confused where they got their 90% number from, but then I would not call typosquatting as parked domains if its registered by a malicious actor and used for a scam on their own servers (or hacked servers as it may be).
by Jakob | 2025-12-18 15:04:40+00:00
Contemporary historic preservation sees itself as the guardian of historical substance. The content of a monument is bound to the preservation of the inherited material.

Georg Dehio’s principle of "conserving, not restoring" is often invoked as a synonym for this self-conception. Old and new need to be clearly separated.

It is a counter-movement to the 18th century historicism which ”destroyed” a lot of old monuments beyond repair.

Personally, I think we went too far on the conservation angle (at least in Germany, not sure about other countries), and should restore a bit more again with the knowledge we have. But much more intelligent people have debated that for centuries, so I guess their answer would be the same like https://askastaffengineer.com/.
by pona-a | 2025-12-18 15:04:45+00:00
Do you understand what transit encryption is? The point of TLS is the ISP can't inspect the traffic.

They can of course refuse to carry all encrypted traffic, but 1) stenography exists, so have fun writing DPI filters to detect suspicious noise in the note velocities of MIDI data; 2) turns out the free market didn't adopt HTTPS just to hide drug dealers -- I don't know if you heard, but there's this itty bitty thing called e-commerce, and unless you want people's credit card numbers flying in cleartext left right and center, it is better the padlook stays on.

Now what they can do is mandate their own root CA be installed on all the devices in the country, a tactic actually adopted by real regimes like Russia and Kazakhstan. Unfortunately, so far all they could do is beg and plead over SMS and refuse connections to the online government portal without the CA, while Mozilla and even Google blacklisted their certs.

If certificate transparency becomes universal, now the browser won't even connect until the feds politely check their little spy op into an immutable ledger. So the only remaining point of failure is the browser itself, but by that point it might as well send a clear copy on its own.
by 9rx | 2025-12-18 15:04:56+00:00
> Your job is to deliver code you have proven to work.

Your job is to solve customer problems. Their problems may only be solvable with code that is proven to work, but it is equally likely (I dare say even more likely) that their problem isn't best solved with code at all, or even solved with code that doesn't work properly but works well enough.
by LexGray | 2025-12-18 15:05:25+00:00
Make the failure billable for failures in the contract as it is a significant downtime.

For every false alarm you need to pay the salaries that were wasted and the snacks and therapists for the kids.

Likewise for every missed gun hazard pay for teachers and therapists for kids.

If they aren’t confident enough to back a service that has such a mental impact on failure they should not be selling it.
by mytailorisrich | 2025-12-18 15:05:52+00:00
Well...

"Plaintiff argues the subject smart TV included a statement in the “License List” menu that it “may contain executable codes and libraries that are subject to the terms of the GNU General Public License (GPL), GNU Lesser General License (LGPL) … and other open source licenses. VIZIO offers to provide applicable source code upon request for a processing fee covering the cost of fulfilling the distribution….” (Motion, p. 8.) Plaintiff contends its representative accepted such offer by requesting the applicable source code in a live chat with a Vizio representative. (p. 9; UMFs 8-11.) "
by mbo | 2025-12-18 15:06:22+00:00
This is somewhat an unfounded theory of mine and I was hoping if anyone has any insight: but I sense that this is perhaps a construction of Western restoration/preservationist theory. A lot of effort seems to be taken to either preserve original material, not take liberties etc. While touring temples and museums in Japan, I got a sense that restorations were much more aggressive, and less regard was taken to the preservation of material (or building "fabric"), with a greater focus on the use of traditional techniques during restoration.
by everdrive | 2025-12-18 15:06:35+00:00
Just a note, airline seats are built in such a way that force you to hunch over. It's baffling. You can't sit with your shoulders back. They sit in a dip that is right below a decline which pushes your shoulders forwards and inwards. I never hear anyone mention this, but it's so self-evidently bad it must be done on purpose.
by kijin | 2025-12-18 15:06:40+00:00
> then we jump forward to Bernini and the total lack of paint, which makes it even more likely that there were competing philosophies around statuary

Most Greek and Roman statues had lost their paint long before the Renaissance. Early modern artists held up those paintless statues as the ideal form, which is why nobody from Michaelangelo to Bernini even tried to paint their sculptures. Instead, Bernini learned how to make marble itself interact with light to look alive. For centuries afterward, the purity of raw marble became the one true ideology. Diversity in this area collapsed, and took a long time to recover.

Even today, most people who are used to Western classical art will probably agree that marble statues look better without paint. We've been conditioned for generations to believe so. The ugly reproductions of painted statues aren't helping, either.
by e-khadem | 2025-12-18 15:06:44+00:00
Of course. Like embezzlement. I live in Iran and if you want a more detailed picture of the situation I find data provided in [1] well-researched. The executive summary is that one of the military branches really doesn't care about the environment as long as they get more power / money / anti-US proxies.

Also, that "Tehran will run out of water in two weeks" statement came from the president, and some neighborhoods really don't have water for several hours each day. The official advice is to "install water pumps and storage tanks."

[1] Why Iran is Rapidly Dying: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n8kSGH4I8Ps
by andy99 | 2025-12-18 15:06:48+00:00
I think the problem is in what “proven” means. People that don’t know any better will just do that all with LLMs and still deliver the giant untested PRs but with some LLM written tests attached.

I vibe code a lot of stuff for myself, mostly for viewing data, when I don’t really need to care how it works. I’m coming around to the idea that outside of some specific circumstances where everyone has agreed they don’t need to care about or understand the code, team vibe coding is a bad practice.

If I’m paying an engineer, it’s for their work, unless explicitly agreed otherwise.

I think vibe coding is soon going to be seen the same way as “research” where you engage an offshore team (common e.g. in consulting) to give you a rundown on some topic and get back the first five google search results. Everyone knows how to do that, if it’s what they wanted they wouldn’t be hiring someone to do it.
by shadow-ninja | 2025-12-18 15:07:07+00:00
I published a paper to solve the "unrestricted access" dangerous VSCode Extensions have.

The paper outlines a 3-part automated system: 1. Risk profile VS Code Extensions 2. Generate per-extension sandboxing policies automatically 3. Enforce sandboxing at runtime without disrupting existing system

The goal was an extremely low-profile system that doesn't require additional software. This could be an important asset in the increasingly dangerous and unregulated VSCode extension ecosystem.

Btw, the risk-profiling section is an evolution of my free extension scanner vscan.dev. If you any questions about vscan.dev, you can reach out at vscandevteam@gmail.com.
by dec0dedab0de | 2025-12-18 15:07:18+00:00
Other than some of the residents who don’t want to see empty storefronts, who is incentivized to push for a correction in this case?

That is a tad dismissive. Instead of not wanting to see empty storefronts, consider residents who would like to start a local business, but can not because the rent on commercial properties is prohibitively expensive. Then remember that there are residents who would like more jobs in the area.