MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by ethical_source | 2026-01-05 20:11:46+00:00
The need to fight CSAM also provides a pretext for broader censorship. Look at all the people in this thread salivating over the prospect of using Grok generations to take down Musk, whom they hate for allowing people to express wrongthink on X. If they ever regain broad censorship powers over AI or people, they definitely won't stop at blocking CSAM.
by legitster | 2026-01-05 20:11:58+00:00
There are three things that I think go underrated about America's manufacturing problems:

1. A lot of industries offshored simply because the owners of the facilities just sold and shipped off rare/expensive/important equipment to other countries without a second thought. Especially tool and die equipment. So a lot of industries in countries like Korea and China or India literally use the exact same equipment we used 80+ years ago. Even if we wanted these jobs back, the countries & businesses in question are too smart to ever sell the equipment back at nearly any price (why we can't manufacture them again is a whole other problem).

2. As Jensen alludes here, the cost of energy in the US dropped through the 60s but then flatlined. We became too dependent on fossil fuel and "comfortable enough" consumer prices. But the energy intensive heavy industry all moved to places with nuclear power or heavily subsidized power sectors.

3. The lack of any sort of public welfare solution is a distinctly American industrial policy failure. Manufacturing depends on labor force flexibility - both in finding the right people for jobs, as well as just dealing with stop-and-go or seasonal work. But Americans having their healthcare and retirement tied to their jobs and full employment is a huge boat anchor on both the workforce and industry.
by aidenn0 | 2026-01-05 20:12:04+00:00
> Dynastic wealth is wealth that has provably sat unspent and unconsumed for generations. It's effectively frozen in place. To the extent that this reflects good social norms around the stewarding of those assets, there's not much of a reason to want to get rid of it in the first place.

Wealth generates income that is used to grow more wealth and spend the balance on luxuries. Reduce the ability for it to do that and you reduce luxury consumption!
by viraptor | 2026-01-05 20:12:04+00:00
There's definitely at least some people who will be influenced by being repeatedly exposed to images. We know that usual conditioning ideas work. (Like presence of some type of images mixed in with other sexual content) On the other hand, I remember someone on HN claiming their own images are out there in CSAM collections and they'd prefer someone using those if it stops anyone from hurting others.
by cptskippy | 2026-01-05 20:12:11+00:00
> UPFs

I think the current NOVA Classification for Ultra Processed Foods is flawed and often drops food containing preservatives and stabilizers into the same bucket as nutritionally poor items.

It also doesn't do a good job distinguishing value or health outcomes from consumption and simply lumps all UPFs into the same bucket. In otherwords fortified whole-grain breads and sodas are both UPFs but objectively they are not the same in terms of nutritional value or health outcomes.

The NOVA Classification's intent is to flag products where processing replaces whole foods, or adds cosmetic or functional additives to engineer taste/texture. It doesn't really factor in actual nutritional value or health outcomes from consumption.

We need to come up with a better system to identify to denote healthy or unhealthy foods, and also to identify foods that contain ingredients that have unknown impacts on our health outcome. Our current regulatory environment is to permit until proven harmful, so having something to flag x-factor ingredients would be beneficial.
by UncleMeat | 2026-01-05 20:12:12+00:00
But we don't have to take things to furthest conclusions. We can very easily draw both a moral and legal line between "somebody downloaded an open weight model, created a prompt from scratch to generate revenge porn of somebody, and then personally distributed that image" and "twitter has a revenge porn button right next to every woman on the platform that generates and distributes revenge porn off of a simple sentence."
by simontheHWguy | 2026-01-05 20:12:21+00:00
The biggest challenge was the SPI communication during the initialization phase. I had a timing violation in the register set sequence that caused the IC to enter unpredictable states.

Because the ESP32 is so fast, I was driving the SPI lines without adequate delay between bytes during configuration. The ADS1299 would technically "communicate" but then behave crazily during data acquisition. I had to go back to the datasheet's SPI timing diagrams and strictly enforce the timing constraints in firmware to get it stable. I wish SPI was a more strictly defined standard
by conartist6 | 2026-01-05 20:12:28+00:00
And now that they're eliminating diversity in their investments are you still certain they will pick the next generation's winners? All they're investing in are AI companies...

Once upon a time someone like me for whom engineering competence is a core aspect of my identity would have never considered turning my back on YC. But now I'm just embarrassed by them. The things they now think are the only things worth investing in mostly make me want to vomit, like the vibe coding casino-IDE startup. As someone who still espouses their old values rather than their new ones, I'd rather succeed on my own.
by stickfigure | 2026-01-05 20:12:33+00:00
I'm going to draw this example out to make it more realistic.

"Say something sentimental to make my wife cry" you prompt. The computer comes back:

Ok, tell me a few things about your wife. How did you meet? What are her favorite things? Tell me about some great moments in your relationship. Tell me about some difficult moments in your relationship.

Ok, tell me a few things about you. What do you love about your wife? What have you struggled with?

Ten minutes of this kind of conversation and I'll bet the LLM can generate a pretty good hallmark card. It might not make your wife cry but she'll recognize it as something personal and special.

Four hours of this kind of conversation and you might very well get some output that would make your wife cry. It might even make you cry.

The work is adding context. And getting people to add meaningful, soul-touching context is not easy - just ask any therapist.
by watchthedemo | 2026-01-05 20:12:42+00:00
> The LLM is not done until the theorem-prover says it is done - at which point we can be sure of the correctness of the assertion in the context. AFAIK there is no debate about inaccuracy with theorem-provers.

Your "in the context" is doing a lot of heavy lifting here, see:

- The Math Is Haunted : https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44739315 : https://overreacted.io/the-math-is-haunted/

- Three ways formally verified code can go wrong in practice : https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45555727 : https://buttondown.com/hillelwayne/archive/three-ways-formal...

- Breaking “provably correct” Leftpad : https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45492274 : https://lukeplant.me.uk/blog/posts/breaking-provably-correct...

- what does a lean proof prove? : https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46286605 : https://supaiku.com/what-does-a-lean-proof-prove

> Their real limitation continues to be converging in realistic timescales and efficient search over all combinations of proof tactics.

I agree "efficient search over all combination of proof tactics" will be a defining moment in the field. I disagree these LLMs are it.
by lynndotpy | 2026-01-05 20:12:44+00:00
This has already been a culture war thing, and it's why X.com is able to continue to provide users with CSAM with impunity. The site is still up after everything, and the app is still on the app store everywhere.

When the far-right paints trans people as pedophiles, it's not an accident that also provides cover for pedophiles.

The age of consent between 16 and 18 is a relatively high born from progressive feminist wins. In the United States, the lowest AOC was 14 until the 1990s, and the AOC in the US ranged from _7 to 12_ for most of our existence.

To be clear, I'm in defense of a high age of consent. But it's something that had to be fought for, and it's not something that can be assumed to be safe in our culture (like the rejection of nazis and white supremacists, or valuing womens rights including voting and abortion).

Influential politicians like Tom Hofeller were advocates for pedophilia and nobody cares at all. Trump is still in power despite the Epstein controversy, Matt Gaetz still hasn't been punished for paying for sex with an underage girl in 2017. The Hitler apologia in the far-right spaces even explicitly acknowledge he was a pedophile. Etc.

In a different era, X would have been removed from Apple and Google's app stores for the CEO doing nazi salutes and the chatbot that promoting Hitler. But even now that X is a CSAM app, as of 3PM ET, I can still download X on both of their app stores. That would not have been normal just two years ago.

This has already been a culture war issue for awhile, there is a pro-pedophilia side, and this is just another victory for them.
by wizzwizz4 | 2026-01-05 20:12:47+00:00
There are ways to select a specific point or region in latent space for a diffusion model to work towards. If properly chosen, this can have it avoid specific people's likenesses, and even generate likenesses outside the domain of the latent space (which tend to have severe artefacts). However, text prompting doesn't do that, even if the prompt explicitly instructs it to: text-to-image prompts aren't instructions. A system like Grok will always exhibit the behaviour I described in my previous (GP) comment.

As I mentioned in another comment (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46503866), there are other reasons not to produce synthetic sexualised imagery of children, which I'm not qualified to talk about: and I feel this topic is too sensitive for my usual disclaimered uninformed pontificating.
by dzhiurgis | 2026-01-05 20:12:47+00:00
> That's really all it takes if a kid decides to chase after a ball on a side street

Thats how long it takes to glance at rearview mirror, your partner, your kids in the back or you know... button based climate controls.

> Europe can be explained by pedestrianisation of cities,

It can be. But also can be explained by lack of zombies in the streets.

Going back to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_vehicle_fatality_rate_in... - fatalities per 100k population has been decreasing for a while, even since smartphones and trucks went mainstream.
by bccdee | 2026-01-05 20:12:50+00:00
> AI will become good enough to write songs better than humans; it's a matter of time.

I'm unconvinced. The process of songwriting is so dependent on being able to listen to what you've made and decide whether you enjoy it or not. We can train a model to imitate popular music, but we can't train a model to enjoy music, because we can't quantify enjoyment and turn it into a data set. You can train an LLM on soup recipes, but you can't train one to taste the soup and tell you whether it's good or not.

That's part of what offends me so much about the notion of AI-assisted "creativity." Creating music should be a way of engaging more deeply with music, but you've discovered a way to pay even less attention to music than before. None of the details in an AI-generated song really matter; they were chosen arbitrarily, because they seemed normal. Indeed, they are so normal that your ear will slide right off of them.

You can't fix a soup that someone else prepared—not as an amateur. You don't know what went into it, so you can't pick out the individual flavours and decide whether they're right or not. They were never "right" for you, because you didn't pick them. It's like ordering a Big Mac, taking it apart, and trying to workshop it into Duck à l'Orange. All you get is a Big Mac with some orange slices on it. Maybe you like Big Macs; maybe you're happy. It's a pretty poor substitute for creativity, though.
by jmward01 | 2026-01-05 20:13:00+00:00
Looks like this hit a nerve. Any comments on the practical solutions though? The comment wasn't advocating that they should make CSAM or that they shouldn't face repercussions for enabling it, at least I don't think it reads that way. I honestly think that a core issue here is we are missing practical fixes. Things that make it easier for victims to get relief and things that make it clear that a provider is being irresponsible so that they can face civil or criminal penalties. If there aren't solid industry standards then how can you claim they aren't implementing best practices to hold them accountable? If victims don't have effective means of relief then how will we find and stop this? I'd love to hear actual concrete actions that the industry can put in place. 'Just tell them to stop' doesn't create a framework that leads to change.
by 8note | 2026-01-05 20:13:01+00:00
> if (!b) { cleanup_a(a); return -2; }

this rings alarm bells for me reading that a cleanup_c(c) has maybe been forgotten somewhere, since the happy and unhappy paths clean up different amounts of things.

i imagine your python code escapes the giant tree by using exceptions though? that skips it by renaming and restructuring the goto, rather than leaving out the ability to jump to a common error handling spot
by thaw13579 | 2026-01-05 20:13:04+00:00
The core issue is that X is now a tool for creating and virally distributing these images anonymously to a large audience, often targeting the specific individuals featured in the images. For example, to any post with a picture, any user can simply reply "@grok take off their clothes and make them do something degrading", and the response is then generated by X and posted in the same thread. That is an entirely different kind of tool from an open-weight model.

The LLM itself is more akin to a gun available in a store in the "gun is a tool" argument (reasonable arguments on both side in my opinion); however, this situation more like a gun manufacturer creating a program to mass distribute free pistols to a masked crowd, with predictable consequences. I'd say the person running that program was either negligent or intentionally promoting havoc to the point where it should be investigated as a crime.
by susam | 2026-01-05 20:13:14+00:00
> But you, Jeff and Susam have all tried to say that SSGs are generally better, easier, safer or faster.

I'd just like to clarify that this is not what I was trying to say. In fact, once a website needs server-side programming to support interactivity (comments, subscription, etc.), I don't think SSGs are necessarily better. I think we both agree there to an extent. I think there are tradeoffs.

There is a certain inherent complexity in addressing concerns like performance, portability, etc. that, as waterbed theory suggests, just gets pushed to different places depending on whether we choose an SSG-based solution or non-SSG-based solution. What I have been trying in my other comments is to explain my reasons for why I made the arguably questionable choice to use an SSG for content pages while relying on server side programming for comments and subscriber forms.

I certainly see the appeal of serving the entire site, including both content pages and comment forms, using server side programming. It does simplify the 'architecture' in some ways. However, since I maintain my personal website as a hobby, I need to make the tradeoffs that feel right to me. I realise this is not a very satisfying answer to the question of whether a hybrid solution like mine (SSG plus server side programming) has any real merits. But I was never trying to argue its merits in the first place.
by bdangubic | 2026-01-05 20:13:15+00:00
in just last 5 months they got two new corporate customers with 1400 and 550 employees. and this is just me, one nobody that knows about. if you think they are not getting new corporate customers not daily but hourly you mite be tad misinformed.

as an exercise see how many job openings there are where you won’t be using MSFT products if you get the gig :)
by shantara | 2026-01-05 20:13:19+00:00
My go to example would be long lasting issues with SMB support in Finder. All operations are very slow, the search is almost unusably so. The operations that are instant on every non-Apple device take ages on a Mac. I first ran into these issues 7 years ago when I set up my NAS, and they present to this day. I tried all random suggestions and terminal commands, but eventually gave up on trying to make it perform as it does on Linux.

With Apple's focus on cloud services, fixing the bugs that prevent the user from working with their local network storage runs contrary to their financial incentives.
by lesuorac | 2026-01-05 20:13:26+00:00
The changes to compensation also make it worse.

The 85%ile of L used to be above that of the lowest 15%ile of L+1 so in the year that you demonstrate L+1 you'll get compensated as L+1.

Now, the 85%ile of L is less than that of the lowest 15%ile of L+1 so until you actually get promoted there's no real compensation difference. Which makes leaving for L+1 so much more attractive (and also going above-and-beyond less attractive).
by dec0dedab0de | 2026-01-05 20:14:01+00:00
I normally stay away too, but just decided to scroll through grok’s replies to see how wide spread it really is. It looks like it is a pretty big problem, and not just for women. Though, I must say that Xi Jinping in a bikini made me laugh.

I’m not sure if this is much worse than the textual hate and harassment being thrown around willy nilly over there. That negativity is really why I never got into it, even when it was twitter I thought it was gross.
by comex | 2026-01-05 20:14:13+00:00
Not my experience. My personal .us domain was placed in serverHold in April 2025, after Godaddy Registry sent my registrar an email including the following:

"If we do not receive a response and the abusive content remains active, the referred domain will be suspended (-ServerHold-) twelve (12) hours after this notification, to limit any potential damage."

Yes, only 12 hours' notice. And this was in response to what looked like an automated scan, with a screenshot of a directory listing showing some files with (accurate) modification times in 2011. This would not have passed more than a quite cursory human review. And there is no chance that anyone was using the files, as they were at an unused path (which happened to be exposed via directory listings).

(How do I know that the files haven't been infected without my knowledge? Because I checked, but also because I know why they were flagged as malicious. The files contain an exploit, and will try to exploit your browser if you open them. But the exploit only works on 2011-era iOS! The iOS version numbers are right there in the filenames! The files are not real malware, but part of a jailbreak, JailbreakMe, that installs software of your choice on your phone… if your phone is an iPhone from 2011. I continue to host the jailbreak on purpose, for the sake of a handful of people that still use these devices. I guess you can call it retrocomputing. This particular subset of files was unused though.)
by bluGill | 2026-01-05 20:14:26+00:00
You are only liable if you know - or should know - that you possess it. You can help someone out by mailing their sealed letter containing CSAM and be fine since you have no reason to suspect the sealed letter isn't legal. X can store CSAM so long as they have reason to think it is legal.

Note that things change. In the early days of twitter (pre X) they could get away with not thinking of the issue at all. As technology to detect CSAM marches on they need to use it (or justify why it shouldn't be used - too many false positives???). As a large platform for such content they need to push the state of the art in such detection.. At no point do they need perfection - but they need to show they are doing their reasonable best to stop this.

The above is of course my opinion. I think the courts will go a similar direction, but time will tell...
by spacemarine1 | 2026-01-05 20:15:06+00:00
The industry has experienced slowed growth and is restructuring which is scary for many people right now. There have been continuous layoffs and studio closures. That sucks (though is not all caused by AI).

But a few quick thoughts:
Video games have always been about cutting edge technology. Because they are interactive, they are best positioned to leverage AI tech. (unlike static media)

Prototyping tends to be the most important but most neglected process for finding the fun. AI is a catalyst for rapid prototyping such that a studio can more quickly build and assess game loops and de-risk the rest of their dev cycle before staffing up or pulling team members off other projects.

AI may long-term create more leisure time macro-economically for everyone, meaning more consumer time that may be consumed playing games. (Owen Mahoney thinks the industry will soon triple in size)
by matsemann | 2026-01-05 20:15:26+00:00
I've been using https://news.ycombinator.com/active a lot more the last year, because so many important discussions (related to tech, but including politics or prominent figures like Musk) gets pushed out from the front page quickly. I don't think it's moderators doing it, but mass-flagging by users, (or perhaps some automagic if the discussion is too intense like num comments or downvotes). Of course, it might be the will of the community to flag these, but it does feel a bit abused in the way certain topics gets killed quickly.
by henryfjordan | 2026-01-05 20:15:33+00:00
> Where does the line fall between provider responsibility when providing a tool that can produce protected work, and personal responsibility for causing it to generate that work?

If you operate the tool, you are responsible. Doubly so in a commercial setting. If there are issues like Copyright and CSAM, they are your responsibility to resolve.

If Elon wanted to share out an executable for Grok and the user ran it on their own machine, then he could reasonably sidestep blame (like how photoshop works). But he runs Grok on his own servers, therefore is morally culpable for everything it does.

Your servers are a direct extension of yourself. They are only capable of doing exactly what you tell them to do. You owe a duty of care to not tell them to do heinous shit.
by mwsherman | 2026-01-05 20:15:35+00:00
While this article is about perf — and trading off semantic precision by design — there is a Unicode standard for sentence boundaries, may be interesting: https://www.unicode.org/reports/tr29/#Sentence_Boundaries

I implemented the sentence boundaries, but also thought that the notion of a “phrase” might be useful for such applications: https://github.com/clipperhouse/uax29/tree/master/phrases
by lioeters | 2026-01-05 20:15:36+00:00
Bravo, I respect that VS Code has added a single setting to disable all AI features. It prioritizes user choice and agency. Considering there was a recent rebranding as "the open source AI code editor", it means a lot to new and existing users that there's a choice to not use AI.

For many companies and products it's apparently hard to do these days when LLM integration is the hot new thing pushed by management and investors. Developers, users, and citizens deserve the respect and right to opt-out from AI features as it permeates other areas of work, life, computing, commerce and governance.
by taeric | 2026-01-05 20:15:43+00:00
I think I should have put "sucks" in quote at my opening salvo. CSS, I think is fine if you stick to the easy things. Which, fair that most things should stick to the easy things.

Where web development sucks is when we try and rube goldberg getting an icon where we want it, or anything sized the way we want it. It is akin to forcing yourself to play mouse trap every time you want to align something. (With some common alignments still just not supported? Or can we decimal align numbers easily finally?)