MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by SpicyLemonZest | 2026-01-29 21:25:17+00:00
Maid services are generally expected to handle "everything" for a pretty expansive definition of everything. They pick up scattered stuff and put in a sensible location, they arrange everything visible in an aesthetically pleasing way, they take out the trash, if there's some weird dirt that's hard to clean they creatively problem solve to find a way to get it off. I don't think there's a market for a service that can only handle basic cleaning.

(Will someone eventually invent a machine that can do all of that and more? Yes, probably, and they'll make billions when they do. But Tesla has offered no reason to believe this is on their horizon, and the focus on a humanoid form factor strongly suggests that they're optimizing for media appeal over practical capabilities.)
by imtringued | 2026-01-29 21:25:52+00:00
As far as I know, static recompilation is thwarted by self modifying code (primarily JITs) and the ability to jump to arbitrary code locations at runtime.

The latter means that even in the absence of a JIT, you would need to achieve 100% code coverage (akin to unit testing or fuzzing) to perform static recompilation, otherwise you need to compile code at runtime at which point you're back to state of the art emulation with a JIT. The only real downside of JITs is the added latency similar to the lag induced by shader compilation, but this could be addressed by having a smart code cache instead. That code cache realistically only needs to store a trace of potential starting locations, then the JIT can compile the code before starting the game.
by ibejoeb | 2026-01-29 21:26:21+00:00
Yeah. Legal will need to catch up to deal with some things, surely, but the basic principles for this particular scenario aren't that novel. If you're a professional and have an employee acting under your license, there's already liability. There is no warrant concept (not that I can think of right now, at least) that will obviate the need to check the work and carry professional liability insurance. There will always be negligence and bad actors.

The new and interesting part is that while we have incentives and deterrents to keep our human agents doing the right thing, there isn't really an analog to check the non-human agent. We don't have robot prison yet.
by silisili | 2026-01-29 21:26:49+00:00
Samsung has really fallen behind the last couple years IMO. They use very different chips in different regions, and refuse for some reason to embrace bigger batteries.

Phones out of China these days are all sporting ~7000mah batteries, even in smaller form factors. Samsung's biggest phone only has 5000, and that's not a small difference in battery life.

Maybe they're still reeling from the Note 7 fiasco?
by sailingparrot | 2026-01-29 21:26:57+00:00
> you don't need to make a video model. You probably don't need to decode the latents at all.

If you don't decode, how do you judge quality in a world where generative metrics are famously very hard and imprecise?
How do you go about integrating RLHF/RLAF in your pipeline if you don't decode, which is not something you can skip anymore to get SotA?

Just look at the companies that are explicitly aiming for robotics/simulation, they *are* doing video models.
by crazygringo | 2026-01-29 21:27:40+00:00
I mean, I'm not an expert on any of this, but I'm looking it up and you seem to be quite wrong:

> Looking closer, this was not some isolated UN estimate. Instead the UN was generating estimates every year, and the 2022 study was conducted differently because of covid.

It seems it was indeed an isolated UN estimate, done in conjunction with the University of Southampton, conducted because the country's census was cancelled, supposedly due to COVID. Yes the UN provides yearly estimates, but it looks like this was a separate, one-off research project.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Papua_New_Guin...

You can see the sources Wikipedia links to.

> Subsequent UN estimates also went back to the original numbers. Also it wasn't a report that was buried, the numbers were released in 2022, they were revised down in 2023 after the UN conducted its next study. Seems like quite the omission.

No, it looks like the report's numbers were never officially adopted at all. You can see the yearly figures here, there's no bump at all:

https://population.un.org/dataportal/data/indicators/49/loca...

As far as I can tell, all reporting states that the report remains publicly unavailable. The numbers weren't "released", they were leaked. That certainly seems "buried" to me.

> While arguments presented without evidence can be dismissed without evidence, sure here's the CIA estimate for the population which is in close agreement with both PNG's internal estimate and the actually adopted UN estimate.

The CIA World Factbook isn't trying to independently maximize accuracy using new techniques. They're mainly relying on official data provided by the countries themselves:

> Estimates and projections start with the same basic data from censuses, surveys, and registration systems, but final estimates and projections can differ as a result of factors such as data availability, assessment, and methods and protocols.

https://www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/about/faqs/

Again, I'm not an expert in any of this. But nothing in the article appears to be contradicted by public reporting I can find. It provides additional information, you're right that I don't know how the author got it. You say you "can find contradictory evidence with a 30 second google search." But you haven't, you've actually given a bunch of wrong or irrelevant information.
by Dstaudigel | 2026-01-29 21:28:30+00:00
I've been super annoyed by the various solutions to the "mother may I" thing with Claude code, and I haven't really had a solution I liked - because I really just want to specify my preferences in human-readable versions. This is an attempt at that, but I'm not sure if I'm exposing myself horribly with this pattern? Is there some simple way to improve it?
by Imustaskforhelp | 2026-01-29 21:28:35+00:00
I have written in one of my comments here about how slow teh website is in one interacton

Then I scrolled even more in the website and the amount of lag, my my, I don't even know what to say but the amount of lag is something I have genuinely never witnessed in any website. This is like a new low. I really just want to archive this website to preserve how abysmally slow the website is and its aniations and everything. image literally loading 10% and everyhting.

Ship fast and break things is shying from what I am witnessing in here. Sfabt (ship fast and break things) is gonna use your service to talk to the agent which created this project to ask it personally to slow down

I can't view your website in 16 gigs of a computer... Weird where the world's progressing in this sense and how it got (YC funded?)

Quite frankly I am out of words for how slow the website is. Its really just that bad to be in its own league. Sorry to say.
by godelski | 2026-01-29 21:28:37+00:00
I think what confuses me is that Apple is taking so much profit that it reduces their profits.

It's a classic direct-indirect management problem. Think about Android for a second. It costs nothing to put an app on their app store. People can make apps for themselves and then just publish because either "why not" or it's an easy way to distribute to friends and family. So basically it is making app creation easy. Meanwhile Apple charges you $100/yr to even put something up on the store, makes it hard to sideload, and consequently people charge for apps, which Apple rejoices as they get a 30% cut (already double dipping: profiting from devs, profiting from the devs' customers).

BUT WE'RE TALKING ABOUT SMARTPHONES

A smartphone is useless without apps! People frustrated they can't find the apps they want on iPhone? They switch to Android. People on Android want to get away from Google but they can't do half the shit they want to on iPhones (and the other half costs $0.99/mo)? They bite their tongue or rage quit to Graphene.

The only reason this "fuck over the user" strategy works is because there's an effective monopoly.

All of this is incredibly idiotic as the point of a smartphone is that it is a computer that also makes phone calls. We have made a grave mistake in thinking they are anything but general purpose computers. All our conversations around them seem really silly or down right idiotic when you recognize they are general purpose computers. And surprise surprise, the result is that seeing how profitable and abusive the smartphone market can be leads to a pretty obvious result: turn your laptops and desktops into smartphone like devices. Where everything must be done through the app stores, where they lock you out of basic functionalities, where they turn the general purpose computer into a locked down for-their-purposes computer.

The thing that made the smartphone and the computer so great was the ability to write programs. The ability to do with it as you want. It's because you can't build a product for everyone. But the computer? It's an environment. You can make an environment that anyone can turn into the thing they want and they need. THAT is the magic of computers. So why are we trying to kill that magic?

It doesn't matter that 90% of people don't use it that way, and all those arguments are idiotic. Like with everything else, it is a small minority of people that move things forward. A small percentage of players account for the majority of microtransactions in videogames. A small percentage of fans buy the majority of merchandise from their favorite musicians. And in just the same way, it is a small number of computer users (i.e. "powerusers") that drive most of the innovation, find most of the bugs, and do most of the things. I mean come on, how long did it take Apple and Google to put a fucking flashlight into the OS? It was the most popular apps on both their stores for a long time before it got built in. Do you really think they're going to be able to do all the things?
by merlindru | 2026-01-29 21:28:41+00:00
yes but i keep wondering if that's just the game of chance doing its thing

like these models are nondeterministic right? (besides the fact that rng things like top k selection and temperature exist)

say with every prompt there is 2% odds the AI gets it massively wrong. what if i had just lucked out the past couple weeks and now i had a streak of bad luck?

and since my expectations are based on its previous (lucky) performance i now judge it even though it isn't different?

or is it giving you consistenly worse performance, not able to get it right even after clearing context and trying again, on the exact same problem etc?
by noitpmeder | 2026-01-29 21:29:10+00:00
The point of signing contracts is you explicitly set expectations for service, and explicitly assign liability. You can't just reverse that and try to pass the blame.

Sure, if someone from GCP shows up at your business and breaks your leg or burns down your building, you can go after them, as it's outside the reasonable expectation of the business agreement you signed.

But you better believe they will never be legally responsible for damages caused by outages of their service beyond what is reasonable, and you better believe "reasonable outage" in this case is explicitly enumerated in the contact you or your company explicitly agreed to.

Sure they might give you free credits for the outage, but that's just to stop you from switching to a competitor, not any explicit acknowledgement they are on the hook for your lost business opportunity.
by AndrewKemendo | 2026-01-29 21:29:31+00:00
This is consistently true across all human organizations larger than a handful of people. Its a limitation of human communication and alignment

I saw that happen to the ultramarathon subReddit which I founded and I’m the lead moderator. And when I was running a radio station it was consistently the same people who would call in. I see it even in some of the smaller group chats that I’m in

You cannot have a stable community without these types of issues coming up beyond a few or so dozen people
by Spivak | 2026-01-29 21:29:32+00:00
Yes you. The parts being expanded upon happen after the shim is authenticated by SecureBoot and are fully in your control. The scary part has already happened, Linux distros support SecureBoot right now and have for a while. Right now the current state of the Linux boot process is all the downsides (in your view) of SecureBoot with none of the upsides because very little is authenticated after that.
by Imustaskforhelp | 2026-01-29 21:30:03+00:00
honestly, I have been thinking about it. But I feel like it would be a fun little side project if people actually try it out. (maybe you mention that you can build it)

So let's see how many people actually build it. Let's make it the new browser test instead and launch many open source solutions instead and see what's the best perhaps.

It would be a really great experiment imo.
by altairprime | 2026-01-29 21:31:43+00:00
At some point children are capable of pursuing Darwin Awards. Parents may enable this, but ultimately if one’s child does something stupid contrary to one’s guidance and restrictions, they may end up with a Darwin for it. Two hundred years ago the child mortality rate was half, as in you lost one child per two, and most of those were not the fault of the child or parents. Society for quite some years has been pushing that down, to the point that a near-death involving a neglectful parent and a witless child is apparently (?) newsworthy — but the number of deaths will never reach zero, whether humans or robots or empty plains and blue skies. There will always be a Veruca Salt throwing themselves into the furnace no matter how many safety processes we impose onto roads, cars, drivers, and/or robots.

If you want to see an end to this nonsensical behavior by parents, pressure your local city into having strict traffic enforcement and ticketing during school hours at every local school, so that the parent networks can’t share news with each other of which school is being ‘harassed’ today. Give license points to vehicles that drop a child across the street, issue parking tickets to double parkers, and boot vehicles whose drivers refuse to move when asked. Demand they do this for the children, to protect them from the robots, if you like.

But.

It’ll protect them much more from the humans than from the robots, and after a few thousand rockets are issued to parents behaving badly, you’ll find that the true threat to children’s safety on school roads is children’s parents — just as the schools have known for decades. And that’s not a war you’ll win arguing against robots. (It’s a war you’ll win arguing against child-killing urban roadway design, though!)
by giancarlostoro | 2026-01-29 21:31:59+00:00
I held on to my 13 Pro until the 17 pro came out, so I wouldnt be surprised if a lot of this is people finally going "ok maybe now" and the 16 just lands on the biggest group.

I found myself using both phones as I transitioned off the old one and barely noticing the difference mind you, which is a good sign in my eyes. I think Smartphones for the last 6 to 8 years are finally very stable. More stable than a Windows 11 laptop on Hardware people in the 2000s could only dream of.
by jbm | 2026-01-29 21:31:59+00:00
It's a growing market, although it might be because of shifting goal posts. I had a friend whose son was placed in French immersion (a language he doesn't speak at all). From what I was understanding, he was getting up and walking around in kindergarten and was labelled as mentally divergent; his teachers apparently suggested to his mother that he see a doctor.

(Strangely these "mental illnesses" and school problems went away after he switched to an English language school, must be a miracle)

I assume the loneliness epidemic is producing similar cases.
by derefr | 2026-01-29 21:32:55+00:00
My point was that one of the devices would be your (cold) backup — you'd e.g. get an (ideally passphrase-protectable) smart-card; read off its pubkey; register that pubkey with all your remote systems/services; and then put the smart-card itself into a fire safe / safe-deposit box at a bank / leave it in trust with your lawyer / etc.

Note that you would never need to go get the smart-card just to perform incremental registration between it and a new remote host/service. You just need its pubkey, which can live in your password manager or wherever.

And yet, if your house burns down, you can go get that smart-card, and use it to get back into all your services.

And yet also, unlike a backup of another of your keys, if you find out that someone broke into your house and stole your safe, or robbed your bank, etc, then you can separately revoke the access of the pubkey associated with the smart-card, without affecting / requiring the rolling of the keys associated with your other devices. (And the ideal additional layer of passphrase protection for the card, gives you a time window to realize your card has been taken, and perform this revocation step, before the card can be cracked and used.)

Indeed, as the sibling comment mentions, this is vaguely similar to a (symmetrically passphrase-encrypted) backup of a unique extra KPI keypair onto a USB stick or somesuch.

The major difference, though, is that because a backup of a key is truly "just data", an attacker can copy off the encrypted file (or image the raw bytes of the encrypted USB disk), and then spawn 10000 compute instances to attempt to crack that encrypted file / disk image.

Whereas, even when in possession of the smart-card, the attacker can't make 10000 copies of the data held in the smart-card. All they can do is attack the single smart-card they have — where doing so may in turn cause the smart-card to delete said data, or to apply exponential-backoff to failed attempts to activate/use the key material. The workflow becomes less like traditional password cracking, and more like interrogating a human (who has been explicitly trained in Resistance-to-Interrogation techniques.)
by oceanplexian | 2026-01-29 21:33:06+00:00
Yeah and the goal of Instagram was to share quirky pictures you took with your friends. Now it’s a platform for influencers and brainrot; arguably it has done more damage than drugs to younger generations.

As soon as this thing is hooked up to VR and reaches a tipping point with the general public we all know exactly what is going to happen. The creation of the most profitable, addictive and ultimately dystopian technology Big Tech has ever come up with.
by xqb64 | 2026-01-29 21:33:32+00:00
I mean, it's not like I'm going to forget how to write code any time soon. I'm currently recovering from the n-th tough burnout, and I feel like I need a shift toward something new and meaningful. When it comes to job opportunities, from my perspective, knowing the entire stack (not in the webdev sense, but rather both hardware and software) makes you highly attractive on the market, in both worlds. So, while I genuinely can't predict what I'll end up doing 5 years from now, I do feel like it's time to familiarize myself with the other side of the entire stack.
by 20k | 2026-01-29 21:34:03+00:00
Yes. Unfortunately the committee has completely abandoned safety at this point. Even memory/thread safety profiles have been indefinitely postponed. The latest ghost safety lifetimes thing is completely unimplementable

There literally isn't a plan or direction in place to add any way to compete with Rust in the safety space currently. They've got maybe until c++29 to standardise lifetimes, and then C++ will transition to a legacy language
by b00ty4breakfast | 2026-01-29 21:34:15+00:00
that darknet bot one always confuses me. The artists/programmers/whatever specifically instructed the computer, through the bot, to perform actions that would likely result in breaking the law. It's not a side-effect of some other, legal action which they were trying to accomplish, it's entire purpose was to purchase things on a marketplace known for hosting illegal goods and services.

If I build an autonomous robot that swings a hunk of steel on the end of a chain and then program it to travel to where people are likely to congregate and someone gets hit in the face, I would rightfully be held liable for that.
by dujuku | 2026-01-29 21:34:16+00:00
It would be awesome if this were to make it in core. Jelte did a bunch of work to improve query protocol changes. Having Postgres accept Otel trace propagation would be a gamechanger for debugging the clients and DB together. Especially since ~80%+ of DB related issues I see come down to some sort of long running open transaction which Postgres knows nothing about server-side.
by al_borland | 2026-01-29 21:34:34+00:00
In college you're pretty much always working in a greenfield (everything is new and you don't have to worry about any legacy). In a job, you'll almost always be in a brownfield (you have to work within the existing systems and legacy to make things work).

There could have been decisions made 30 years ago when the compute landscape looked very different that are still impacting decisions today. Many times you might think something is stupid, and the person telling you about it probably thinks it's stupid too, but it's what needs to happen to keep things working without upending the whole company. The person you can both yell at about it is probably retired or dead, and likely made the right decision at the time, given what they were working with at the time.

Even with projects I've had that are relatively greenfield, eventually they have to meet the existing infrastructure. When that happens, my perfect little applications has to get hacked to bits to cover various edge cases due to a company acquisition or some section of the environment that is non-standard for whatever reason. I find this part of the job quite painful, but it's necessary for the tools to actually work.

We've brought in some vendors from time to time who are supposed to write some code for us. They follow best practices and do everything by the book. There stuff doesn't work. We end up having to throw all of it out and re-write it the second they leave. Production code is much more ugly than anyone wants it to be.
by Veserv | 2026-01-29 21:35:10+00:00
Then you or Waymo can meet the burden of proof and present that more precise and better information. There is little reason to assume against safety at this point in time except as a intellectual exercise for how more accurate information could be found.

Until then, it is only prudent to defer snap judgements, but increase caution, insist on rigor and transparency, and demand more accurate information.
by koshergweilo | 2026-01-29 21:35:10+00:00
I think that's doing the article a disservice. "Some patients prefer the service of AI doctors to real doctors, even though they definitely do get a lot wrong" is what I got out of it.

Personally I think the article spends a lot of time trying to show that AI may be able to improve health outcomes, particulaly for rural patients, but IMHO it doesn't spend nearly enough time talking about the current challenges