MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by PlatoIsADisease | 2026-01-15 21:51:12+00:00
Yeah I thought that was weird, along with joining ethnic organizations. I don't really need to explain the religion thing, but ethnic organizations are weird since you are forming an identity based on your unchoosable parent's DNA. I've seen both used by leaders to weaponize their members at their members detriment.

Although, if you are doing politics, I can see this being pragmatically useful.
by palmotea | 2026-01-15 21:51:33+00:00
> Any sarcastic comments about these numbers?

I'll give it a try: Germany also sent 5,000 military hats.

More seriously: I don't even think such a tiny contingent of troops would even work as a tripwire if Trump invades. Trump and his people probably don't have the self control, but if they did it seems like they could just bypass those troops and literally ignore them. I'm reminded of the 2014 Russian invasion of Crimea: my recollection is many of the Ukrainians just surrendered without shots being fired, because their numbers were too small and their positions completely untenable.
by Nevermark | 2026-01-15 21:51:50+00:00
I thought the same thing, ... where is the "and Greenland!"?

The amount of hard, soft and economic power that are being burned for the bedtime stories of one person is unreal. As are all the cooperators and lobby harnessing conspirators whose actual dreams are getting implemented.

It isn't the fall of the USSR, but it is still a dramatic ceiling bounce.
by caycep | 2026-01-15 21:51:58+00:00
the sad part of this is that volume/priority at TSMC shifting from consumer chips that get sold to you and me, to corporate chips which likely will get sold to OpenAI/Amazon/MS or some other corporate datacenter, means that the un-democratization of computing power is well underway....

mirroring, come to think of it, the movement to un-democratize of modern governments...

(I would be happier if the news behind Nvidia's strength was sales of good, reasonably priced consumer GPU cards...but it's clearly not. I can walk down the street and buy anything from Tim Cook, but 9 out of 10 times, I cannot buy a 5080/5090 FE card from Jenson Huang).
by soulofmischief | 2026-01-15 21:52:19+00:00
I can assure you that there was nothing performative or hollow about my comment. OP said something that resonated with me, and so I shared my story in an attempt to bridge and find commonalities.

It's possible you are just projecting biases onto my comment. I'm not sure what "over-engaging" is, but you're free to ignore my comment if you feel that it was too personal or too long. I don't however, understand the contempt, or insinuations that I am attempting to take some kind of shortcut with personal connection.

You can connect quickly with strangers if both parties are receptive. And as I just mentioned to OP, I have made life-long friends from this site, who I have met multiple times in person. I reach out to people often, and people often reach out to me, over email.

That is why I shared my story and mentioned to OP that my inbox was open: to develop or at least explore a possible connection. This is as intentional as it gets with making connections, but your priors are causing you to misunderstand my intentions and paint my comment in an insultingly negative light.
by mindslight | 2026-01-15 21:52:19+00:00
At this point where the brownshirts are openly attacking civil society - driving their cars into protestors, crashing into other motorists, kidnapping lawfully present immigrants, murdering uppity women in the street, and even escalating their violent attacks after citizens speak out against them - it's patently obvious that "illegal immigration" is nothing more than a rallying cry for overt fascism, red in tooth and claw.
by ben_w | 2026-01-15 21:52:23+00:00
Interesting. But until we have a better understanding of the mechanisms of qualia (like, what mechanism makes ours switch off while we sleep?), I don't see how we're going to be able to differentiate between these two hypotheses.

Well, not unless the researchers made the same mistakes as Blake Lemoine did with LaMDA, not noticing the transcript was describing experiences that were genuinely impossible for it to have had, like being left alone for days: https://insiderpaper.com/transcript-interview-of-engineer-le...

I am very not surprised that "Several versions of the models scored above diagnostic thresholds" for conditions. Given we got here by cargo culting*, it would have been surprising if it had been otherwise, even if it turns out they have anything that it's like to be.

But also, even then, if we presume for the sake of argument that they're deserving of being called "minds", the minds that they are, are alien. I am unsure if there's even a way to be sure whether or not "all showed levels of worry that in people “would be clearly pathological”" means for them what it means for us.

* Just because you don't know why planes land when you clear a runway strip and build an observation tower and march up and down in clothes modelled on WW2 pacific theatre clothes, doesn't mean planes won't land out of curiosity a decade after the war finished.
by Alupis | 2026-01-15 21:52:28+00:00
TFA's claim is offshore wind prices are 40% cheaper than gas.

The parent comment stated "actual cost has to price in the impact of using it". Most people would agree on this. However, for both claims to be true, the collected tax revenue must be spent offsetting the impact of that gas usage - not simply reducing gas usage (ie. that consumed gas isn't being compensated for).

If the UK government is spending that tax revenue on anything it wants, then it's not the actual cost, is it?
by mosura | 2026-01-15 21:52:28+00:00
What came first, Trump or failing to enforce laws regarding mass illegal immigration? With a multi decade head start too.

You cannot expect institutions that selectively ignored laws for decades to think it is legal for anyone to stop them from doing so, despite not being able to pin anything concrete to anyone at all. In fact you expect the kind of “ha!” you are trying to pull here.

Trump would not be close to the presidency without the historic selective enforcement by people you happen to have aligned interests with who opened pandora’s box. It is only now you feel on the wrong side of it that you have a problem.

As it stands they are in power, for almost another three years. It seems odd that they could manage this were their position as illegal as you claim. Somewhat reminiscent of the British declaring the American Revolution illegal.
by 0x457 | 2026-01-15 21:52:31+00:00
My experience with Claude (and other agents, but mostly Claude) is such a mixed bag. Sometimes it takes a minimal prompt and 20 minutes later produce a neat PR and all is good, sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes it takes in a large prompt (be it your own prompt, created by another LLM or by plan mode) and also either succeed and fail.

For me, most of the failure cases are where Claude couldn't figure something out due to conflicting information in context and instead of just stopping and telling me that it tries to solve in entirely wrong way. Doesn't help that it often makes the same assumptions as I would, so when I read the plan it looks fine.

Level of effort also hard to gauge because it can finish things that would take me a week in an hour or take an hour to do something I can in 20 minutes.

It's almost like you have to enforce two level of compliance: does the code do what business demands and is the code align with codebase. First one is relatively easy, but just doing that will produce odd results where claude generated +1KLOC because it didn't look at some_file.{your favorite language extension} during exploration.

Or it creates 5 versions of legacy code on the same feature branch. My brother in Christ, what are you trying to stay compatible with? A commit that about to be squashed and forgotten? Then it's going to do a compaction, forget which one of these 5 versions is "live" and update the wrong one.

It might do a good junior dev work, but it must be reviewed as if it's from junior dev that got hired today and this is his first PR.
by jongjong | 2026-01-15 21:52:55+00:00
The moat is marketing and social media algorithms. These tech companies are subsidized by investors and drive up the CPC to levels that don't make financial sense this is the moat.

If a superior product launches without marketing, it will not get a single customer; it's incredibly hard to spread through word of mouth these days... With paid advertising, you end up paying Facebook inflated CPC to get bot traffic!
by sidgarimella | 2026-01-15 21:52:56+00:00
We’ve been building rule engines for a while and had the fun idea lately to see what happens when we use our decision table UI with Claude’s PreToolUse hook.

The result is a surprisingly useful policy/gating layer– these tables let your team:

- Write multi-factor, exception-friendly policies (e.g. deny rm -rf / when --force; allow cleanup only in node_modules; ask on network calls like curl/wget; block kubectl delete or SQL DROP, each with a clear reason)

- Roll out policy changes instantly (mid-run, flip a risky operation from allow → ask; the next attempt across devs and agents is gated immediately– no git pull, restart, or coordination)

- Adopt lightweight governance that survives churn (MCP/skills/etc): just add columns/rules as new tools and metadata show up

- Get a quick central utility to understand which tools are being used, which tools get blocked most often, and why
by mathisfun123 | 2026-01-15 21:53:10+00:00
Bro you people must be mind-readers (or just poor readers) - the guy said I should stay and "fight" because I have "generational responsibility". I said no thanks I have no generations in the US (I am first gen). I am also a naturalized citizen which means the US will tax me bigly when I move abroad no matter who I work for and even renouncing the citizenship will cost me money. I said all this not because I'm a victim but to explain why I'm only willing to take at most a 50% pay cut. Are we clear now?
by Retric | 2026-01-15 21:53:31+00:00
I’m anti nuclear on cost reasons but that’s excessively pessimistic. Nuclear can use seawater for cooling, and being colder offsets the cost premium of using salt water.

Your 2050’s comment assumes a level of dysfunction that’s presumably exaggerated. Averaging 10 years puts you at 2036 and is itself somewhat pessimistic.

The cost of canceled nuclear projects is generally quite low compared to lifetime subsidies of nuclear. Nuclear may be an inefficient use of government resources, but it’s also offset a staggering amount of emissions.
by shadowgovt | 2026-01-15 21:53:46+00:00
Based on what I've read, this generation of LLMs should be considered remarkably risky for anyone with suicidal ideation to be using alone.

It's not about the ideation, it's that the attention model (and its finite size) causes the suicidal person's discourse to slowly displace any constraints built into the model itself over a long session. Talk to the thing about your feelings of self-worthlessness long enough and, sooner or later, it will start to agree with you. And having a machine tell a suicidal person, using the best technology we've built to be eloquent and reasonable-sounding, that it agrees with them is incredibly dangerous.
by burnte | 2026-01-15 21:54:20+00:00
> How does OpenAI get it so wrong, when Anthropic gets it so right?

I think it's because of two different operating theories. Anthropic is making tools to help people and to make money. OpenAI has a religious zealot driving it because they think they're on the cusp of real AGI and these aren't bugs but signals they're close. It's extremely difficulty to keep yourself in check and I think Altman no longer has a firm grasp on what it possible today.

The first principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool. - Richard P. Feynman
by blackqueeriroh | 2026-01-15 21:55:38+00:00
I love sprites. I’m currently trying g to figure out how to best launch and connect to sprites from iOS. I’ve tried several things - vibe coding a terminal app is a little wild and not the best way maybe to handle this.

I believe currently the sprites CLI is using websockets to handle the connection, and the external proxy when you make a sprite public doesn’t handle websockets correctly?

Does that sound right?
by ynac | 2026-01-15 21:55:47+00:00
I've been restoring my old daily driver, a 1985 Mercedes 300TD (the model has appeared in over 1000 films) for the past year. It's a funny questions to ask what is fully restored, is it all original, or OEM. One day I'm flexible about a piece of plate steel used for the fuel pedal mounting bracket and then the next day I'm feeling like a fraud for replacing the floor mats with after market. Either way, it's a rewarding process to bring anything back to a useful state. My Fixit shelf in the basement is a huge draw for my free time.
by rahimiali | 2026-01-15 21:56:20+00:00
Good q. The method computes Hessian-inverse on a batch. When people say "Newton's method" they're often thinking H^{-1} g, where both the Hessian and the gradient g are on the full dataset. I thought saying "preconditioner" instead of "Newton's method" would make it clear this is solving H^{-1} g on a batch, not on the full dataset.
by phtrivier | 2026-01-15 21:56:22+00:00
Demography. They're soon going to run out of "young" workers, which mean they have to invent the robotics of the 2100s to ensure the few remaining people will have machine to harvest crops and wage wars.

Also, they're soon going to run out of women, so they need to perfect artificial wombs.

The few remaining party elites will want to live practically forever, so biology will be on the programs once fusion and robots have been cracked.

And it doesnot even seem like china will make ussr-level mistakes.

Our only hope for beating China, at this point, would be to recreate an "opium wars" situation where the whole population becomes dumb and stop caring. (A bit like what tiktok and X are doing to use at the moment, but with much more social control.)
by GrowingSideways | 2026-01-15 21:56:43+00:00
Are you suggesting that the AfD is not popular?

> Workers at US-tech companies are responsible for the unchecked bombardment of our citizens with propaganda and fake news.

They're also responsible for the propaganda and fake news targeting the center and the left. It just works most effectively to drive people right because of.... widely-distributed personality quirks, shall we say. It's not clear this dynamic would disappear if social media disappeared, but I do think it would slow down.
by jacobgkau | 2026-01-15 21:56:44+00:00
> or into the first floor of your apartment complex.

I wouldn't trust a cafe built into an apartment complex. I'd expect it to be low-quality, over-priced food placed specifically to try and make a quick buck off people who don't know any better or who physically can't get somewhere better.

You're right that it goes beyond car culture (and zoning laws are part of car culture), but I think it also goes beyond zoning laws. A lack of a social contract between people (individually) and businesses these days is probably involved, too. All these things are interrelated.
by ceejayoz | 2026-01-15 21:57:01+00:00
"We have the problem" and "it's not a problem" aren't the same thing.

https://www.cnn.com/2026/01/08/tech/elon-musk-xai-digital-un...

> Publicly, Musk has long advocated against “woke” AI models and against what he calls censorship. Internally at xAI, Musk has pushed back against guardrails for Grok, one source with knowledge of the situation at xAI told CNN. Meanwhile, his xAI’s safety team, already small compared to its competitors, lost several staffers in the weeks leading up to the explosion of “digital undressing.”
by NonHyloMorph | 2026-01-15 21:57:20+00:00
What? You know someone in thisbthread made the argument, that it is not smart to shoot at someone driving at you because it won't stop the car. The truth of that can be seen in the recording of the video where renne nicole is being shot by that ICE person. The car is driving right on till it crashes into a mast or post or whatever these things are called. At this point her brain must be blown all over the interior of the car, since he had that gun on her head before the car started. You know. The guy was standing to the side of the car, and that woman must have been scarred for her life. I mean when you're so close, you must feel what is going on. And I think it is clear where the car will be going by the point that man decided to pull the trigger. Watch the video closely again. Imaging standing there with the gun. You would feel the rotation of her boy propagating through the pistol that is elongating your hand. You feel how the car is movjng away from you, even so you want it to stop and want the dooe to open up. You must see the thoughts and emotions of that woman running over her face as she decides to disobey and flee.
What I see is someone who wants someone else to obey and to control them and is so entitled to the idea that the woman in the car should do, that when she doesn't do as he wants, the inhibition that a person who is representing the state doesn't work anymore and the impulse to take control and to take power is taking over. And he pulls the trigger.
I mean that is what I think I see when I watch the video. You described your perception. (That isn't even to contadicting. You argue that starting the car and (potentially) fleeing, is legitimage reason to kill someone.
To me that is insane but so is everybody carrying weapons, so there is that. Especially non police having these privileges that are normally reserved for highly trained and sworn in police (that have in my understanding absolutely have to weigh the risk to their life against the certainty to end that of someone they are there to protect, even if that person acts against there will. Where I live it is assumed that the impulse to flee is and to preserve yourself is extremely strong in every individual so, that attemptimg to do so does not constitute a crime/felony or whatever)
Anyways: to get from disagreements in perspective and assumptions about what is right and wrong to something that can be the foundation of a civil society (as opposed to the "lawless wild west" as the sayinf goes) there is written law and independent judical processes in which these assumptions and perspectives are weight againsg each other. So that is what should be happening.
People not having to undergo this scrutiny after such an act hat ended someone elses life means and being protected from that is so inlawfull I miss the right terms to qualify it. Something about lynching, mobs, lawlessness and disregard for humaan life and dignity all sanctioned by the highest political authority of your country.
by PlatoIsADisease | 2026-01-15 21:57:21+00:00
As someone who was a libertarian as a child, I assure you the idea of relaxing regulations is quite unpopular.

Lots of factors cause this. Obviously established businesses hate competition. There seems to be a tendency for politicians to make more laws as a bandaid rather than remove old(but this isnt universally true). And finally and probably most importantly, people like the status quo. Change is scary.

Also I live in the suburbs and we have a coffee shop within 2 minutes walking. I just have a hard time paying $4 for a coffee to meet people when most people are on their laptops anyway.

My friends come from sports clubs, parties, and the parents of my kids via birthday parties.
by 1shooner | 2026-01-15 21:58:12+00:00
No, I've been turning it over in my mind since this question started to emerge and I think it's complicated, I don't have an answer myself. After all, the first option is really just the correlate to today's web traffic, it's just no longer your traffic. You created the value, but you do not get the user attention.

My apprehension is not with AI agents per se, it is the current, and likely future implementation: AI vendors selling the search and re-publication of other parties' content. In this relationship, neither option is great: either these providers are hammering your site on behalf of their subscribers' individual queries, or they are scraping and caching it, and reselling potentially stale information about you.
by neutralino1 | 2026-01-15 21:58:26+00:00
Asking people to change their ways is pointless. When something is systemic, only a systemic solution can work.

I have become intimately convinced that engagement-based feeds are the root of many evils of our time, loneliness included.

Here are some of the perverse effects (if ever they needed be told), and how they relate to the loneliness epidemic

- they incentivize individuals from a young age to find stimulation from scrolling mindless content through short dopamine loops instead of seeking satisfaction through longer-term endeavors (e.g. projects, board games, bands, sports teams, etc.) which tend to foster connections with friends, neighbors, family, strangers

- they radicalize and polarize into extreme niche communities (political extremes, conspiracy theories, manosphere, etc) so that it's more difficult to find common ground with a random average person, giving you the impression that everyone is your enemy

- they reflect a skewed version of reality where societal standards (beauty, intelligence, success, wealth, etc) are distorted and artificial, which drives people to believe they are insufficient and ostracized

I firmly believe that engagement-based feeds should be heavily regulated, the same way that other addictive behaviors have (e.g. tobacco, gambling, etc.).
by marginalia_nu | 2026-01-15 21:58:43+00:00
The weird graphics is mostly because they used extreme low poly models with low res textures compared to contemporary titles. This is a bigger complaint with the relatively late System Shock 2, which was just a few months apart from e.g. Deus Ex.

Compare:

SS2 unmodded: https://imgur.com/psb30TT

Deus Ex unmodded: https://imgur.com/TWjoNSV

Obviously neither game is a marvel of graphical fidelity, but SS2 has these weird distorted proportions that make the characters look like weird inflatable sex dolls that with were stored in the same supply closet as the Necronomicon and now they're all weird and whispering of incomprehensible horrors. Like the polygons don't really correspond to the anatomy of the character at all, which is something that contemporary games were beginning to figure out.

I really like SS2 (and Thief 1 & 2, and Deus Ex for that matter), and I don't really mind them not looking that great. But man they did not look that great by late 90s early 00s standards..
by FloorEgg | 2026-01-15 21:58:49+00:00
That's only a problem for people who want to find a spouse and have kids. You're going one step further down the "how" chain.

My point had more to do with the fact that a lot of people are either undecided about kids or have decided not to have kids, and are then struggling with loneliness.

Deciding you want to start a family and prioritizing it (the why) can come before the how.

I'm no expert in dating, but generally in life I've learned that it's easier to get my wants satisfied if I am clear about them.

"I want to start a family and find a partner who also wants to have kids" is a lot less abstract than "I want to feel less lonely".

So, no, I don't think I missed a step. I just think that the best way to find a partner in parenting will depend a lot on the specific person, where they are, how old they are, what they do, etc and isn't conducive to general advice, and maybe HN is not the best place to figure it out?