MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by glengGlenR | 2025-12-05 20:50:56+00:00
Look who is running corporations and benefiting from the stock market the most:

CEO that jacked up EpiPen prices? GenX

Insurance CEO that was shot? GenX

Musk and Thiel, Satya Nadella, Sundar? GenX

Senior leadership and C-suite types are predominantly GenX now. Boomer leadership is tied up in Wall Street.

Backlash is just re-iterating the need for Boomers and GenX to cede stewardship of politics and the economy.

Biology is self-selecting. People who won't be around to deal with the fallout of their choices have little reason to change course.

It's on the next generations to invert the obvious ageism-driven decision making to prefer and over-value the walking dead.

Edit: Elon agrees it's best if older generations move on https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-believes-it-is-imp...
by morleytj | 2025-12-05 20:51:32+00:00
The reason it pays for that is through redistribution though, right? If they weren't receiving a monetary benefit from advertising, they wouldn't run them, and the monetary benefit needs to be larger than the cost to fund those things, otherwise it wouldn't be cost-efficient to run it.

By definition it shows an issue where we have a process that tricks human minds into thinking they aren't paying for something, when as a collective, we pay more for a worse service than we would have if it existed in a alternate framework.
by Forgeties79 | 2025-12-05 20:51:48+00:00
We can argue back and forth about the specifics but there is no denying we are way too far in the wrong direction currently. Buy a car? The dealership slaps their name on it. Every screen at every stage bombards you. Radio, music streaming, ads everywhere. Billboards, benches, bus stops, it never stops. I still occasionally see those tacky trucks with bright ads displayed on them just driving around.

A cursory search shows that the average person is exposed to ~5000 ads a day in the US. Everyone is screaming for your attention. It's not healthy.
by btilly | 2025-12-05 20:52:24+00:00
With all due respect, I disagree.

You are providing the standard excuse. It is our job to advance knowledge. It is someone else's job to communicate it to a broader audience. It's just too bad that nobody is stepping up and doing that other job.

I don't buy it. In my experience, most scientific papers can easily be rewritten into simpler language. The act of trying to do so often catches mistakes - thereby immediately improving how well we are advancing knowledge. The resulting paper is easier to read. This makes it more likely to become better known. Both within its subfield, and in a broader audience.

The habit of doing this makes us better communicators. Which also helps academics in various other parts of their job. Including teaching the next generation.

Furthermore, easier to read papers are easier for science popularizers to understand. Which makes it more likely that the work will be popularized.

Yes, it is tempting for academics to deflect responsibility for their role in being understandable. But it is a mistake for them to do so. Their ability to communicate in an understandable way is their responsibility. The few that take up that responsibility benefit themselves.
by sroerick | 2025-12-05 20:52:58+00:00
Thanks, I appreciate this.

Speaking for my own beliefs, banning the use of VPNs is a huge problem, and it seems like basically anybody who understands the technology would be against it.

I have no problem with banning or age gating pornography at all. Personally it seems weird to me that that's the red line for people.

But this is a good point, which is that lawmakers who don't have a clue what they're regulating will see VPNs as undermining the laws they've made. Thanks for this
by Aurornis | 2025-12-05 20:53:06+00:00
> Snorting adderall does not typically cause brain damage

"Brain damage" isn't a binary yes-or-no thing that happens to you.

It's not even clear that regular as-prescribed usage of amphetamine is without some harm potential. With regular doses and route of administration it's obviously limited or negligible, but someone insufflating (snorting) it routinely is exposing their brains to much higher concentrations and much faster onset.

Note that dopamine itself is toxic when metabolized normally, but your body is equipped to mostly handle that. Using drugs that disrupt dopamine flows in high doses can overwhelm the systems designed to keep dopamine metabolism from doing damage.

> Typical cocaine use also does not result in meaningful harm.

The works "typical" and "meaningful" are doing a lot of work here. One of my friend groups has a lot of ER nurses. They see a non-trivial number of people coming to the hospital from casual cocaine use. These cases are generally waved away as other conditions by drug users (e.g. heart attacks, etc) and therefore they don't "count" in some people's minds. Yet it's a common finding for them on blood workups for people, including young people, arriving with cardiovascular problems.

> The vast majority of people I know, whether they’re 25 or 65, will not say no when offered.

Significant drug users often don't realize how much of a bubble they're in. Also, the goalposts for having a drug problem tend to be moved around a lot when everyone you know is using drugs regularly. Typically, being unable to say no when offered a drug is a sign of having a problem.
by Ancapistani | 2025-12-05 20:53:20+00:00
> How do you see this being resolved?

At a much higher level, this court seems to be attempting to slowly and carefully reign in the power of the federal government.

I expect that there will be enough of a headline here for the Trump administration to hold it up as a victory, while being so narrowly defined that it will only apply to a relative handful of individuals.

The court's interest here is most likely a precedent that will be applicable in subsequent cases. It could conceivably end up establishing a new, weaker form of Chevron deference where ambiguity is interpreted in the light most beneficial to the People.
by AndrewDucker | 2025-12-05 20:53:28+00:00
I believe the worry was twofold:

1) That people who couldn't be vaccinated would get the virus later in life (because it would be less common), when it's a much more serious illness.

2) That there was a protective effect against shingles from having people regularly encounter the disease by encountering children with chicken pox.

But it turns out that the latter isn't actually an issue.
by jfengel | 2025-12-05 20:53:42+00:00
As far as I can tell, being born here is the only reason that I'm considered a citizen. My parents were also considered citizens for the same reason. But if we go back a few generations, I don't think the paperwork exists to prove that their great-grandparents were citizens. There might be a copy in some Ellis Island archive, but I'd be hard pressed to locate it.

So... lacking that documentation, does the recursion unwind? Being descended of not-provably-naturalized-citizens, am I at risk of deportation?
by dralley | 2025-12-05 20:54:10+00:00
Regulation changes are pretty common (they happen every couple of years, 2014, 2017, 2022, 2026 etc.) and basically yes they do serve to intentionally shake things up. Regulation changes are not typically as large as this though - this is definitely the biggest change in more than a decade.

All the regs changes since 2014 have mostly left the engines alone and changed only the aerodynamic rules, whereas 2026 combines a huge change to both engines and aerodynamic rules.

Part of the appeal of F1 is the constant technological development arms race aspect so it's not just that it shakes up the order but that it's pushing the arms race in a direction that manufacturers (e.g. Honda, Ford, Audi, Mercedes, GM) are interested in. The 50/50 hybrid split was aimed at attracting manufacturers and keeping them interested in the sport and it has been basically successful at doing so, so long as it doesn't turn into a disaster lol.

Active aerodynamics is controversial but somewhat necessary to make the 50/50 split work, because otherwise the cars would be too draggy.
by wizzwizz4 | 2025-12-05 20:54:11+00:00
For the new system to be approved, you need to document the properties of the software component that are deemed relevant. The software system uses dynamic allocation, so "what do the allocation patterns look like? are there leaks, risks of fragmentation, etc, and how do we characterise those?" is on the checklist. The new developer could try to figure this all out from scratch, but if they're copying the old system's code, they're most likely just going to copy the existing paperwork, with a cursory check to verify that their modifications haven't changed the properties.

They're going to see "oh, it leaks 3MiB per minute… and this system runs for twice as long as the old system", and then they're going to think for five seconds, copy-paste the appropriate paragraph, double the memory requirements in the new system's paperwork, and call it a day.

Checklists work.
by daft_pink | 2025-12-05 20:54:53+00:00
I’m really disappointed, because Netflix doesn’t sell any of their content. You have to subscribe.

I own Soprano’s, White Lotus, Batman Movies, etc on regular media, but I can’t get shows like Black Mirror outside of a subscription for the rest of my life.

I really hope they continue to offer physical and digital sales of their media for those who perfer to buy instead of renting.

Paramount, Disney, NBC Universal, etc all still sell their content even though they operate subscription services and I wish Netflix would do the same.
by vimwizard | 2025-12-05 20:54:55+00:00
> especially in the age of TikTok

Shouldn't grey beards, grizzled by years of practicing rigorous engineering, be passing this knowledge on to the next generation? How did they learn it when just starting out? They weren't born with it. Maybe engineering has actually improved so much that we only need to experience outages this frequently, and such feelings of nostalgia are born from never having to deal with systems having such high degrees of complexity and, realistically, 100% availability expectations on a global scale.
by tempfile | 2025-12-05 20:55:10+00:00
No, it isn't.

For example, I do not have an obligation to let people into my house. I can choose to let them in or decline them entry. But there are certain preconditions I cannot apply. I cannot, for example, say "you may come into my house only if you murder my neighbour". That's because I'm legally bound not to induce people to commit murder. It would obviously be disingenuous to say this means I have an "obligation to admit" them.

It's the same with immigration. They actually are legally bound in certain ways - an immigration official can't assault you for instance. It's not hard to imagine them being legally bound not to search people's phones. That doesn't mean "they have to admit people".
by 0xbadcafebee | 2025-12-05 20:55:12+00:00
Keep in mind you'll be using a different language in the future. All software is maintained for a given amount of time and then sunset. What matters is the lifecycle of the thing you're making now. Pick whatever is maintainable for that application and time frame.

Throwaway script? Use anything. A mobile app? Whatever gets it on the devices you're targeting today, that works for the life of the device/OS/etc. A backend API that will power a large platform? Something maintainable (by people other than yourself) for 3-5 years. Firmware for IoT that will remain in industrial systems for 20 years? Something that is well established and supported with a good number of other people who can fix it in the long haul.
by gwbas1c | 2025-12-05 20:55:28+00:00
IMO: We should be using AI for the common good, IE, lower the cost of living, increase our living standards, improve health, improve access to food and shelter, ect.

I still have yet to see any LLM that appears to do that. They all seem to allow me to have a conversation with data; IE, a better Google search, or a quick way to make clip art.
by sharkweek | 2025-12-05 20:55:46+00:00
Yes, this should be required viewing in high school imo.

As someone who used to think I was generally “immune” to advertising, I have come to realize the influence goes so much deeper than “see ad on TV, go buy product” and is instead a much, much darker sense of “the only way to get rid of this anxiety is to Buy More Stuff.”

His more recent Can’t Get You Out of My Head is also fantastic about how we got from There to Here from WWII to present day.
by yyyyuuuuiiiii | 2025-12-05 20:55:55+00:00
> a Pew Research center survey found that nearly one in five Americans saw AI as a benefit rather than a threat. But by 2025, 43 percent of U.S. adults now believe AI is more likely to harm them than help them in the future, according to Pew.

Am I stupid or is this a stupid line that proves the antithesis of what they want? It went from 4 in 5 being negative to less than half?

What even is journalism now.
by InitialLastName | 2025-12-05 20:55:55+00:00
If you were born in 1970, you (and presumably the people you grew up with) are ~55. The sample set in this particular study are 71-88 years old (plus 7 years after), so 16+ years older than you (years that also coincide with increased prevalence of noticeable dementia and neurodegeneration).
by vunderba | 2025-12-05 20:55:55+00:00
In fact, one of the tests I use as part of GenAI Showdown involves both parts of the puzzle: draw a maze with a clearly defined entrance and exit, along with a dashed line indicating the solution to the maze.

Only one model (gpt-image-1) out of the 18 tested managed to pass the test successfully. Gemini 3.0 Pro got VERY close.

https://genai-showdown.specr.net/#the-labyrinth
by morleytj | 2025-12-05 20:56:01+00:00
Currently I think it is difficult to argue that advertising in its most visible forms have any serious benefit to people looking to obtain a service.

How often does an actual random advertisement shown on a billboard or a preroll youtube ad actually lead to a quality product? I think it is fairly common for people who are acquiring the best versions of things to do so primarily through research in forums or reviews, which is coming from the user looking from the product, rather than the product forcing itself into the mind of a given user to convince them to consume it.
by Rover222 | 2025-12-05 20:56:14+00:00
I just tried to get Gemini to produce an image of a dog with 5 legs to test this out, and it really struggled with that. It either made a normal dog, or turned the tail into a weird appendage.

Then I asked both Gemini and Grok to count the legs, both kept saying 4.

Gemini just refused to consider it was actually wrong.

Grok seemed to have an existential crisis when I told it it was wrong, becoming convinced that I had given it an elaborate riddle. After thinking for an additional 2.5 minutes, it concluded: "Oh, I see now—upon closer inspection, this is that famous optical illusion photo of a "headless" dog. It's actually a three-legged dog (due to an amputation), with its head turned all the way back to lick its side, which creates the bizarre perspective making it look decapitated at first glance. So, you're right; the dog has 3 legs."

You're right, this is a good test. Right when I'm starting to feel LLMs are intelligent.
by giancarlostoro | 2025-12-05 20:56:17+00:00
Honestly, after years of various physical notebooks full of sermon notes that get lost, digital notes that got left behind in old unused android phones that have their own flavor of a note taking app (yet another reason why I switched to iOS too) I like the idea of having a unified app like this one to store recorded sermons, the summaries seem nice, I did notice there's also things like Flash Cards, Journaling for bits and pieces and even just an all around notes section.

The UI might need some touching up, but its pretty obvious what things are for and where they go, its not ultra bad. Still pretty nice for a product launch. I love finding new unique Bible apps. There's one for the iPad I really enjoy called Pencil Bible, lets you write all over your translation via Apple Pen its really neat.

Disclaimer: I know the app developer, but I always do my best to give the most honest review of something I can, even if I have to be critical.
by margalabargala | 2025-12-05 20:56:18+00:00
Considering there have been over 7 million deaths directly from covid, saying "covid deaths measured in the thousands before X" is another way of saying "X happened right at the beginning of covid".

Plus, there's a big difference between "young people tend to have less risk of death" and "young people have a 0% chance of death" like the person I replied to claimed.
by jgeada | 2025-12-05 20:56:19+00:00
Word of mouth. If you make happy customers, they'll readily tell others.

But the truth is most modern products aren't good enough to earn word of mouth.

A good example of how to work it right is Steam: while it is not perfect, most discussions give them benefit of doubt because most of the time they do work for the best interest of their customers, not just themselves.
by thewebguyd | 2025-12-05 20:56:30+00:00
> for some, it's just a paycheck. I am not sure what has happened over the decades regarding actually being proud of the work you produce.

Hard to be proud of the work you produce when you have no ownership over it, and companies show less and less loyalty and investment in their employees. When, at any random time, you can be subject to the next round of layoffs no matter how much value you contributed, it's hard to care.

So yeah, for most it's just a paycheck unless you are working for yourself, or drank a gallon of the koolaid and seriously believe in whatever the company's mission is/what it's doing.

I'm proud of my own work and projects I do for myself, tech or otherwise, and put great care into it. At $dayjob I do exactly what I am paid to do, nothing more nothing less, to conserve my own mental energy for my own time. Not saying I output poor work, but more so I will just do exactly what's expected of me. The company isn't going to get anything extra without paying for it.

Didn't used to be that way, but I've been burned far too many times by going "above and beyond" for someone else.

If employees had more ownership and stake in the companies they work for, I think the attitudes would change. Likewise, if companies went back to investing in training and retention, loyalty could go both ways again.
by starkparker | 2025-12-05 20:56:34+00:00
> The WikiFlix tool is hosted on Toolforge in the US. Toolforge is operated by the Wikimedia Foundation. All WikiFlix content is generated from Wikidata and maintained by that community.

https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Help:WikiFlix

Network's WikiData entry is https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q572165, which includes the Archive link and lacks a copyright status. This is also linked to from the barcode icon at the top of the movie's WikiFlix page: https://wikiflix.toolforge.org/#/entry/572165

Took about 2 minutes with no prior experience to remove the dead IA link and add the copyright status attribute to the WikiData item.
by pinkmuffinere | 2025-12-05 20:57:03+00:00
HN isn't a judge of software; it's a place to learn and be curious. So people are often interested in projects that do a novel thing in a normal way, or a normal thing in a novel way. Eg, stories fascinate us because something was built by a very lean team, or a group with no money, or somebody who is an industry outsider, or a parapalegic, etc. Overcoming these limitations is a sort of 'hacking'.
by inetknght | 2025-12-05 20:57:28+00:00
> By what other means would people with a product or service to provide reach other people who are interested in obtaining that product or service?

In my opinion, it would take quite a lack of imagination to ask such a question.

There's many many ways to reach people who want your product. Industry-relevant news publishers and conferences, professional/personal anecdotes (eg, blogs and recommendations), demonstrations and training offers, etc.

A different question would be: by what other means would businesses force their products on people who don't want them? Hopefully the answer is: none.
by doctorpangloss | 2025-12-05 20:57:36+00:00
this isn't a "credibility revolution" paper, it doesn't show causality, it doesn't use randomization anywhere, and it is very much a post hoc ergo proctor hoc sort of thing

some evidence of the contrary: DTC pharmaceutical ads about Zoloft, a depression medication, cause better health outcomes

https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/695475

not merely correlation but causation. the approach used here was part of a family of approaches that won the Nobel in 2012

another good one: advertising caused increases in treatment and adherence to medicine

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37275770/

there is also a great paper that scary lawyer ads about statins CAUSE lower adherence to statins, so negative advertising causes negative outcomes. unsurprising.

i'm not saying that these two papers generalize to the whole of digital advertising. it is as difficult to generalize about global digital advertising at it is to generalize about the US defense budget - they are comparable in size (about $800b/y both) and complexity of missions. it does feel good though. i'm glad this comment will get downvoted by people who are not interested in actually discussing the merits of the paper versus their vibes.

instead you could look at it as a victory for the FDA, it has done a great job at regulating drugs (at least since 1965 when the SSA created medicare and the regulations started to matter) such that advertising them is mostly a good thing. You can extrapolate from there to say, well we should regulate what you can advertise instead of delegating it out to upvotes and downvotes on Facebook, which is really how bad and good ads are controlled.
by eesmith | 2025-12-05 20:57:37+00:00
Yes, that's the meme. "We should improve society somewhat" doesn't mean the peasant has actionable proposals, only pointing out there's a problem.

My comment was instead highlighting how your analogy to the "car problem" might be right, in that where we see big shifts to reduce the car problem, like in Paris, it comes from systemic changes from a car-centric form to a diverse transit form, rather than an individual choice model.

My go-to these days is to heavily tax the rich, place a staggering tax on the the superrich, introduce meaningful UBI, put strict controls on housing rentals, etc.

Why waste time using ChatGPT to write work email slop when you don't need to work?

I presume the student is using ChatGPT for assignments in order to get the credentials (a degree) needed for a job - while companies off-load their training costs onto young people, who are then encourage to go into debt, resulting in a mild form of debt bondage.

Reduce the need for a job, so the students who go to college are more likely to be those who want the personal education, rather than credentialism.

But hey, I'm just a peasant programmer saying there are flaws, and we should do something about it. Talk to an actual expert, not me.

Those experts (I hear them on podcasts) will also say things like having strong consumer protection laws so people aren't forced to deal with AI (and human!) sludge.
by xriddle | 2025-12-05 20:57:38+00:00
Yet how many of our jobs wouldn't exist without advertising ... I'm not saying it's right or wrong just a fact. Advertising is foundational to many modern industries, especially digital ones. Social platforms, media companies, search engines, news, free apps, podcasts, streaming tiers. A ton of your daily internet exists because ads bankroll the whole mess. Without advertising, half the tech economy collapses into subscription-only fiefdoms. Unfortunately if advertising vanished tomorrow, lots of companies would die, tons of jobs would evaporate, and the economy would contort into something unrecognizable.