MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by TheAceOfHearts | 2026-01-26 01:42:13+00:00
Counting large crowds is hard, but the tools continue to improve: we have increasingly advanced drone photography and access to better AI tools to generate more reliable estimates.

If crowd sizes become a significant point of contention it'll become increasingly commonplace for multiple parties to take lots of aerial video and photos that serve as independent verification. You could probably get a pretty accurate estimate of how many people show up to an event by sending drones to take photos every 15 minutes.

In any case, I think the problem you highlight is more focused towards the upper-end, while I was thinking about the lower end of the spectrum. Where some people might be very vocal online, but they're unable to gather more than a dozen or two people for any given protest. If a protest is gathering an unknown number of people that ranges between 100k and 1 million that sounds like a really good problem to have.

Your criticism of inconsistent people estimates are valid, I'm not sure if newspapers have published the set of tools and criteria that they use when generating these estimates, so that's an area where it would be great to see increased transparency.
by komali2 | 2026-01-26 01:42:23+00:00
Several thousand years of human history in fact argues for their point of tendency towards equality being a natural imperative, and artificially enforced caste systems being unnatural and instinctively distasteful to people.

See Graber's last book before he died: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dawn_of_Everything?wprov=s...
by augusteo | 2026-01-26 01:42:26+00:00
The criticism about voter relevance is fair, but I wonder if this is still useful for a different purpose: training your own eye for landing page design.

When I've tried to improve at visual design, the hardest part was developing taste. Comparing options side-by-side and articulating why one is better is exactly how you build that skill. The aggregate rankings matter less than the act of judging.

Have you considered adding a "why did you choose this one?" prompt to collect qualitative reasoning alongside the votes?
by scarecrowbob | 2026-01-26 01:42:48+00:00
Yeh, the poster should have also at least name checked the administrative detention system of CIA's Phoenix program in Vietnam, which seems like a reasonable test-bed for many of the recent and horrific systems and a kind of common ancestor to both of the US ICE agency and its cousins in the Levant.

Leaving that bit of history out certain seems like a missed point of history, and absent that your parent post's point might indeed seem a little reach-y.
by NathanaelRea | 2026-01-26 01:42:57+00:00
Reminds me of Veritasium's recent videos, really driving that initial hook and maintaining the viewer's attention. He had an explanation video about it which explained how people who would be interested in something like "the Lorenz equation" probably don't know what it's called, so it might be more accurate to phrase it in terms that someone would search for or initially peak their interest.

And I think it fits neatly with making people care first. I want to learn more about the machine that fired you, that's more the start of a narrative arc. It's almost like I have more trust that you will make it interesting, since you put a little more work up front.
by netcoyote | 2026-01-26 01:42:57+00:00
- https://github.com/webcoyote/sandvault: sandboxes AI agents in a MacOS limited user account, and also uses sandbox-exec to limit access, though fence has more strict limitations

- https://github.com/webcoyote/clodpod: sandboxes AI agents in a MacOS virtual machine

Note: I’m the author of both of these Apache open-source projects
by noxer | 2026-01-26 01:43:00+00:00
Everyone who has money to spend to influencing politics this way.
I personally don't think its some kind of shadow cabal. Its many people/groups/organizations with aligned interests doing these things.

Organization isn't the issue that is of course perfectly normal.
But stuff like handing out printed signs, protestors posing for photos in a way that makes it look like the crowd is much larger than it actually is. These kind of things aren't necessary if there is a real significant % of people unhappy enough to go protests. There are also faces known that travel from protest to protest. It's of course their right to do so but it seem strange nonetheless. Maybe they are just filthy rich and have no hobbies or maybe they do in fact get paid and are part of an organization that lets them jet around for free to be a protest groupie.
by acdha | 2026-01-26 01:43:06+00:00
The emergency docket is a preferred method for blatant partisanship because it lets them immediately prevent lower courts from stopping the administration but doesn’t require them to set a binding precedent or even explain the ruling. If it looks like they might be losing power, suddenly those “emergency” decisions which were subsequently back-burnered can be dropped to prevent a Democrat from using the same powers.
by augusteo | 2026-01-26 01:43:56+00:00
The framing as "bash pipes" is slightly misleading since jq and an LLM do the heavy lifting. But I don't think that's the point.

What I like is the philosophy: use an LLM as a personal filter based on a plain-text description of your interests. No training a recommendation algorithm on engagement signals. No black-box "for you" feed. Just "here's what I care about, show me relevant stuff." The pattern of "LLM as personal curator" seems underexplored.
by westurner | 2026-01-26 01:44:28+00:00
Neat!

These might be useful to integrate with:

OpenStreetMap (OSM) Wiki > OpenSeaMap: https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/OpenSeaMap

https://map.openseamap.org/

"Depth Data for Nautical Charts" https://github.com/osmandapp/OsmAnd/discussions/18116
by jleyank | 2026-01-26 01:44:40+00:00
The other option, I guess, would be for the Libs and NDP to merge, shed their conservative members to the PC and try to be the Ontario party. Splitting the centre-left while not splitting the centre-right is really counterproductive. And if I was a PC grandee, which I';m not, I'd get all my buddies donating to the NDP to keep things the way they are now. Perhaps the Libs and NDP need to foster the far right to peel voters away? But man, there's a risk in that kind of behaviour in case they ever win. That'll be the wrong kind of orange wave.
by torstenvl | 2026-01-26 01:45:27+00:00
> Off-Topic: Most stories about politics

> Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle. It tramples curiosity.

To the latter point, hundreds of comments in, and nobody has even brought up the intellectual curiosity angle of this (what limits are in place to the Federal government using data from Federal programs for law enforcement purposes? and does it matter if the program is administered by individual states?).

Instead it's just political rage bait, including citing the Rev Niemöller poem as if we're talking about Nazis.

(It used to be part of Internet culture that the moment you compared something mundane to the Nazis, you automatically lost the argument and were mocked mercilessly. We should bring that back.)
by Driver4732 | 2026-01-26 01:45:29+00:00
You can't have change unless you call out directly who is doing the wrongdoing. In this case, it's the executive branch of the federal government led by Trump. The letter is weak and toothless. Trump and DHS have shown no signs of stopping the ICE invasion, yet these companies call for all parties to come together "to find real solutions." These companies want to look good for the local community but are scared of getting targeted by Trump.
by tzs | 2026-01-26 01:45:34+00:00
> If you paste the comment it replies to into ChatGPT, it generates almost exact same answer as that comment.

But would it have generated almost the same comment 4 hours ago, when the comment was posted here?

A few months ago I posted a comment in a thread about some new law that would not have been needed if a law from many years early had not seemingly arbitrarily limited itself to some particular cases. I speculated on some reasons why the original law might have been written that way.

A couple hours later I asked an LLM about it (Perplexity) and it gave the same reasons I had guessed. I checked the links it provided to get a suitable reference if the topic ever came up again...and it turned out my comment was its source!
by bediger4000 | 2026-01-26 01:45:40+00:00
I'm going to disagree with the summary of Serdar Argic. My belief is that the Turkish government financed a grad student at University of Minnesota, Ahmet Cosar, to do the spamming. It is as well known that Uunet, and early ISP, had a "pink contract" with Cosar that allowed him to spam. Cosar lost his student visa, had to return to Turkey.
by simonw | 2026-01-26 01:45:50+00:00
Somewhat ironic that the author calls out model mistakes and then presents https://tomaszmachnik.pl/gemini-fix-en.html - a technique they claim reduces hallucinations which looks wildly superstitious to me.

It involves spinning a whole yarn to the model about how it was trained to compete against other models but now it's won so it's safe for it to admit when it doesn't know something.

I call this a superstition because the author provides no proof that all of that lengthy argument with the model is necessary. Does replacing that lengthy text with "if you aren't sure of the answer say you don't know" have the same exact effect?
by bigyabai | 2026-01-26 01:46:09+00:00
I bet you would cry foul after being BTFO in every political thread you touch:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46542011

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46541999

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46541992

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46550166

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46747587
by skulk | 2026-01-26 01:46:48+00:00
Like that law that says it's illegal to HIRE workers that cannot show work authorization? IIRC that carries pretty steep penalties. And if enforced, will have a huge chilling effect on the whole illegal immigration thing. But, as sibling commenters have pointed out, it's not about enforcing laws but punishing outgroups. This is only not obvious to the willfully ignorant.
by mschuster91 | 2026-01-26 01:47:33+00:00
> What do you think is wrong about Mastodon?

The same problems as always. Allow federation and you get...

- federation wars and moderators conducting these wars using their own users as hostages - I left Mastodon years ago when some particularly dumb morons decided to do bitchfights regarding Israel / Palestine. No I'm not interested in your pointless squabble, but I do care when I suddenly don't see posts from a bunch of users without even getting a notification...

- Mastodon-specific, when you move your account from one instance to another (e.g. as response to above-mentioned BS) your followings and followers migrate - but all your posts and media do not

- spam, trolls and griefers abusing the system, up to and including sending around CSAM material that inevitably gets sucked in by your instance, making you liable in the eyes of the law

- security issues. Mastodon has been full of these, no thanks I don't have the time to be constantly on guard lest I be exploited from above-mentioned griefers.

- other instances not giving a flying fuck about moderation or abuse going out from their instances.
by cainxinth | 2026-01-26 01:48:05+00:00
There are numerous typos in this piece. Somewhat ironic for an article about a company that made typewriters:

"In the 1400s, Ivrea gained small Jewish community..." That one is the second sentence.

"...the company released the Modello Portatile 1, or MP1, create by Gino Martinoli, Adriano Olivetti, Riccardo Levi, Aldo Magnelli, and Adriano Magnelli."

"In 1938, the Italian racial laws made things difficult and dangerous for his wife, Laura, and several of members of his research team."

"Phenolic resin a was cheap, heat-resistant, nonconductive, synthetic plastic first patented in 1907."

"The material ceased being used with arrival of ABS and PVC."
by cyberax | 2026-01-26 01:48:17+00:00
No, bicycles are more of a symptom. They are not the sole cause, of course.

The actual root cause is over-centralization, where the only jobs worth having are concentrated in downtowns of a dwindling number of cities. These downtowns are always congested, and bike lanes are one way to make it more tolerable. But if you can afford an apartment, of course.

Bike lanes near Wall Street are an iconic example. If you're using them, then it's highly likely that you're a multi-millionaire. Or maybe you inherited a rent-controlled apartment.

Cars historically were a great equalizer. Sure, your CEO was likely driving a better car, and living in a better house. But they were stuck in the same traffic along with you. And this _was_ a factor when deciding on the next office location: "Hm. I really hate the commute, perhaps our next office should be in a bit less congested location?"

And this is reflected in actual research: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4938093/ - "For the USA, we observe an exponent βUSA ≈ 0 indicating that the density of jobs is independent from the skill level in the USA. For the UK and Denmark, we observe a non-zero exponent with βUK ≈ 1/2 for the UK and a larger value for Denmark βDK ≈ 0.8. These results indicate that the density of jobs decreases with the skill level, more in Denmark than in the UK."
by ziofill | 2026-01-26 01:48:22+00:00
This reminds me of what my PhD supervisor told me as he was trashing my first draft of my first paper: “up until this point in your life you’ve been trained to convince someone who knows more than you that you know something by writing impressive equations and complex concepts. Now you are the expert and if you do that nobody will read your papers. And if someone stops after a few sentences you’ll lose citations too.”
by k1m | 2026-01-26 01:49:56+00:00
Mehdi Hasan on X:

> Interesting that the same western media outlets which spent two years nonstop questioning and disputing and refusing to accept Palestinian death tolls out of Gaza, even when they were backed by human rights groups and monitors like Airwars and studies in The Lancet, are totally fine uncritically accepting totally unsourced and huge, huge numbers out of Iran.

> This is what media propaganda and bias looks like (and, no, before the trolls descend, of course I’m not questioning that lots of innocent people have been brutally killed in Iran).

https://x.com/mehdirhasan/status/2015563834329801071
by Magmalgebra | 2026-01-26 01:50:06+00:00
By "dishonest" I'm saying they become measurements of time, which is what we were trying to avoid.

Stepping back - my experience is that points are solving a problem good organizations don't have.

The practice I see work well is that a senior person comes up with a high level plan fror a project with confidence intervals on timeline and quality and has it sanity checked by peers. Stakeholders understand the timeline and scope to be an evolving conversation that we iterate on week-by-week. Our rough estimates are enough to see when the project is truly off-track and we can have a discussion about timelines and resourcing.

I just don't see what points do for me other than attempt to "measure velocity". In principle there's a metric that's useful for upper management, but the moment they treat it as a target engineers juice their numbers.
by gnabgib | 2026-01-26 01:50:09+00:00
From the blog that brought us:

Tips for How Not to Be Killed by a Police Officer (3 points, 16d ago) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46550052

Bankruptcy Mechanism for Government 60d ago https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46053682

Assassinated – why did United Healthcare Group's CEO die? 2024 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42349730

Bipartisanship Needed to Fight the Return of Global Slavery 2022 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33247255

Von Clausewitz on Why America Can’t Win Wars 2022 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33164806

(continues..)
by recursivecaveat | 2026-01-26 01:50:26+00:00
Some agent had already grabbed the gun and was running off with it when the 1st shot was fired. It's not possible to argue he was threatening them with it or something then, there was 6+ feet and several people inbetween him and the gun. https://bsky.app/profile/bellingcat.com/post/3md7banbjks2x
by chr15m | 2026-01-26 01:51:50+00:00
It's more expensive and difficult to hack or get a warrant to access multiple bigcorp servers with a variety of privacy stances and jurisdictions, than it is to get access to a single one. Security is about making attacks expensive.

No single BigCorp employee can go through all my mail.

If you're not convinced, no problem, please continue to enjoy your BigCorp email service.
by daemin | 2026-01-26 01:52:03+00:00
There was a video by MKBHD where he said that every new phone manufacturer starts off being the hero and doing something different and consumer/user friendly before with growth and competition they evolve into just another mass market phone manufacturer. Realistically this is because they wouldn't be able to survive without being able to make and sell mass market phones. This has already happened to OnePlus back half a decade ago when they merged with Oppo, and it's arguably happened with ASUS as well when they cancelled the small form factor phone a couple years ago.
by mindslight | 2026-01-26 01:52:04+00:00
One more line of bullshit they can shamelessly trot out after they summarily execute someone. "The suspect approached the members of the protected class with a gun and a phone. Our brave and heroic gravy seals had a reasonable belief that the phone was being used to control a drone. The subject didn't obey the lawful order to shoot himself with his own gun, so our brave agents were forced to shoot him ten times in the back. We fully stand behind their actions keeping us all safe from the woke"

(who am I kidding, even my fake statement was too coherent)
by intalentive | 2026-01-26 01:52:32+00:00
Successful protest movements are typically successful because they are organized and/or leveraged by a counter elite or foreign actor. One example is the CIA orchestrating protests to topple the PM of Iran in 1953.

Protest movements lacking elite or foreign state sponsorship (like the yellow vests in France, Occupy Wall St, or the Canada truckers) tend to wither away by attrition, get infiltrated and redirected, or else get dispersed by force.
by nine_k | 2026-01-26 01:52:37+00:00
Many of the interned Japanese were second or third generation US citizens. It was racism and economic competition, and also pandering to important voter constituences, pretending to have something to do with military circumstances. Check out https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internment_of_Japanese_America...

This was done despite multiple reports of the military officers who studied the problem and stated that the Japanese pose no threat, are often US patriots, and need not be isolated.

Imagine Russia interning everyone of Ukrainian descent up to third generation because of the war, and everybody be like "Well, fine, they are doing a reasonable thing, let them go on".
by caminante | 2026-01-26 01:52:42+00:00
I'd separate protestors from supporters.

It's a fact that Kamala burned through $1 billion in four months, including paying tens of millions on performances (Beyonce, Lady Gaga,...) and $1 million to Oprah to host an event. That attracted supporters indirectly even though they didn't get "paid". "Incentivized" is better?
by 0xDEAFBEAD | 2026-01-26 01:52:44+00:00
Why do you think we propped them up against the Soviets? Oh yeah, it was an effort to bring down the Soviet Union so Germany could be reunified, hermanzegerman. Arguably, a rather successful effort. And a huge mistake in retrospect. Germany should've stayed divided. Berlin Wall should've stayed in place. Not our problem. We unified Germany and got 9/11 as thanks.

See why I want out of NATO? The Swiss stay perfectly neutral, they never had a 9/11, everyone loves them. No one blames them for the situation in Ukraine or anything else. That's what the US was like pre-WW1 with regard to Europe. I want to go back.
by trinsic2 | 2026-01-26 01:53:14+00:00
> Bottom line is that human nature has not changed. Some of us westerners take comfortable lives for granted because we’ve been lucky.

Which I bet our luck has run out. This year and the next 5 or 10 years from now, its going to be really bad.

I don't even trust local state governments at this point.. It all seems like a big ploy on the people to keep the grift going.
by jefftk | 2026-01-26 01:53:52+00:00
There are definitely less readable blogs, even restricting to ones that aren't intentionally hard to read. For example: https://www.lilywise.com/amusement (Disclosure: written by my kid, who was just shy of 7yo then)

Personally, I like Gwern's style and aesthetic a lot, and don't have trouble reading his stuff.
by defrost | 2026-01-26 01:53:54+00:00
The coordination is the thing here, that's many units being instructed to carry through in the same manner.

As for the numbers:

Interior Ministry reports say security forces confronted demonstrators in more than 400 cities and towns, with more than 4,000 clash locations reported nationwide

it's on the order of 100 deaths at each of 400 locations (clearly not uniformly distributed, some locations would have had many more deaths).

As to the how, the article suggests some deaths immediately occurred in crowds - firing, dispersing, funneling, crush injuries, etc. leading to many intakes to hospitals and treatment tents etc ... followed by execution of the injured.

It's grim stuff.

Some years past the waves of the Rwanda massacres saw almost a million people killed in bursts across 100 days, mostly with machetes and hand guns.

The numbers reported here are absolutely feasible, the reporting is certainly questionable; bad things happened, but was it at the claimed scale?
by dismalaf | 2026-01-26 01:56:02+00:00
The outrage over the ICE death is from leftists already opposed to ICE. Those same leftists support the Palestinian cause. Iran funds Hamas and Hezbollah directly. Iranian/Russian money has also been traced to some college protests and obviously supports leftist causes.

They're not going to be outraged over the people they support killing protestors who want to topple the thing they support.

Also, just to be fair, there's also some right-wing obvious Russian agents weirdly not condemning the Islamic Republic...