MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by inkysigma | 2026-01-12 20:28:19+00:00
It's the frictionless aspect of it. It requires basically no user effort to do some serious harassment. I would say there's some spectrum of effort that impacts who is liable along with a cost/benefit analysis of some safe guards. If users were required to give paragraph long jailbreaks to achieve this and xAI had implemented ML filters, then I think there could be a more reasonable case that xAI wasn't being completely negligent here. Instead, it looks like almost no effort was put into restricting Grok from doing something ridiculous. The cost here is restricting AI image generation which isn't necessarily that much of a burden on society.

It is difficult to put similar safeguards into Photoshop and the difficulty of doing the same in Photoshop is much higher.
by johnnyanmac | 2026-01-12 20:28:19+00:00
>actually verifying if its a "real" child or not, is not really relevant.

It's entirely relevant. Is the law protecting victims or banning depictions?

If you try to do the latter, you'll run head first into the decades long debate that is the obscenity test in the US. The former, meanwhile, is made as a way to make sure people aren't hurt. It's not too dissimilar to freedom of speech vs slander.
by scelerat | 2026-01-12 20:28:24+00:00
similar observation here, with a 2.33-year old. In small doses we've exposed him to videos[1], never unsupervised, never as a parental substitute, but there are a class of them (which happen to be the lowest-effort, highest-contrast, most insipidly soundtracked CGI dreck I can possibly imagine) which are absolute baby crack. He watched some a few months ago and now he can't get them out of his head. It has gotten to the point where we are simply at a hard "no" about any videos because it always devolves into an inconsolable tantrum tearfully begging for more video crack.

[1] kid loves trucks and garbage trucks and trains, and so for a while it was fun to pull up a video of real life trucks and trains and watch them and talk about them. We'd read a book about trucks. He'd point and say, "what's that do," and I'd explain, then say, "wait! I can show you." Which was fun, until it became triggering.
by RiverCrochet | 2026-01-12 20:28:37+00:00
You can only boil the frog until it dies. If there isn't a true dependency relationship then at some point the industry will die.

In the 2010's, when short on money, I noticed my cable+Internet package was above $200. I took a look at things and cut the TV service, keeping the Internet.

Movies and theaters thought they were untouchable until they weren't. Games can keep increasing their subscription fees until people just stop playing them. There was a world before video games, after all.
by EMM_386 | 2026-01-12 20:28:52+00:00
> Claude is definitely not taking screenshots of that desktop & organizing, it's using normal file management cli tools

Are you sure about that?

Try "claude --chrome" with the CLI tool and watch what it does in the web browser.

It takes screenshots all the time to feed back into the multimodal vision and help it navigate.

It can look at the HTML or the JavaScript but Claude seems to find it "easier" to take a screenshot to find out what exactly is on the screen. Not parse the DOM.

So I don't know how Cowork does this, but there is no reason it couldn't be doing the same thing.
by ImPostingOnHN | 2026-01-12 20:29:03+00:00
If you generate CSAM, whether using LLMs, photoshop, or any other tool, you are breaking the law. This would apply if you could somehow run Grok locally.

When you use a service like Grok now, the service is the one using the tool (Grok model) to generate it, and thus the service is producing CSAM. This would also apply if you paid someone to use Photoshop to produce CSAM: they would be breaking the law in doing so.

This is setting aside the issue of twitter actually distributing the CSAM.
by pests | 2026-01-12 20:29:05+00:00
> is entirely self-contained in the weights produced at the end, right?

Yes, and the knowledge gained along the way. For example, the new TPUv4 that Google uses requires rack and DC aware technologies (like optical switching fabric) for them to even work at all. The weights are important, and there is open weights, but only Google and the like are getting the experience and SOTA tech needed to operate cheaply at scale.
by ack_complete | 2026-01-12 20:29:11+00:00
Typically intersection checks outnumber updates, so it's better to optimize the former. Also, that only works if the object's pivot is at the center of the bounding box or you're accumulating movements without an explicit position.

That being said, a lot of tricks work better with center/extent instead of min/max, such as computing the AABB around an OBB or doing separating axis tests with abs() tricks. A bounding box and bounding sphere can also be stored together as center/extent/radius with only one additional value needed. Min/max works better for accumulation, though.
by pklausler | 2026-01-12 20:29:13+00:00
> There are thousands of contributors and the distribution is relatively flat (that is, it’s not the case that a small handful of people is responsible for the majority of contributions.)

This certainly varies across different parts of llvm-project. In flang, there's very much a "long tail". 80% of its 654K lines are attributed to the 17 contributors responsible for 1% or more of them, according to "git blame", out of 355 total.
by caconym_ | 2026-01-12 20:29:28+00:00
How is having cameras on every street corner that identify you based on your face and height and weight and gait and the clothes you're wearing and anything you're carrying, or the car you're driving by its license plate and make and model and color and tires/rims and any visible damage, accessories, etcetera, and taking all these data points and loading them into a database that cross-correlates them with your credit bureau data and bank records and purchase history and social media and other online activity and literally every single other scrap of available data everywhere, and builds a map of everything about you and everywhere you ever go and everything you do and have ever done, makes it trivially queryable by any law enforcement officer in the country with or without a valid reason, retains it all in perpetuity, and does all this for every single person in the country without consent or a warrant issued by a judge, different from a police department assigning an officer to tail you if you are suspected of being involved in a crime?

We are going to be in some serious fucking trouble if we can't tackle these issues of scale implied by modern information technology without resorting to disingenuous (or simply naive) appeals to these absurd equivalences as justification for each new insane escalation.
by gausswho | 2026-01-12 20:29:47+00:00
When the only winning move is corner-the-market, the only way for the customer to win is not to play the game. I'll take my token-money elsewhere.

That said, the author is deluding themselves if they think OpenAI is supporting OpenCode in earnest. Unlike Anthropic, they don't have explicit usage limits. It's a 'we'll let you use our service as long as we want' kind of subscription.

I got a paid plan with GPT 5.2 and after a day of usage was just told 'try again in a week'. Then in a week I hit it again and didn't even get a time estimate. I wasn't even doing anything heavy or high reasoning. It's not a dependable service.
by lvl155 | 2026-01-12 20:29:50+00:00
They keep adding features without maintaining the core. I stopped using it when they started selling plans. The main reason for Opencode was to use multiple models but it turns out context sharing across models is PIA and impractical right now. I went back to using Claude Code and Codex side by side.

Having said that, there is definitely a need for open platform to utilize multiple vendors and models. I just don’t think the big three (Anthropic, OAI and Google) will cede that control over with so much money on the line.
by malshe | 2026-01-12 20:29:51+00:00
This is a bizarre complaint. There are more Mac users than Linux users but still far fewer than Windows users. As such, there are so many examples of hardware and software that are incompatible with Mac. Our IT dude keeps telling me to switch to Windows because of better support from third party vendors.

My comment was specifically about the HP dock. I have nothing for or against Linux as I have never used it, don't know anybody who uses it, and I have no plans to use it. I am simply not qualified to comment on Linux.
by giardini | 2026-01-12 20:30:10+00:00
johnFen says >" They just weren't tossing aside things like basic human dignity, respect for the law, and due process when doing so.
"<

And those who enter the country illegally: where is their respect for the law and where was their acceptance of due process in entering the country? They broke the laws while others did it the legal way.

When you break the law and you don't submit to the legal system you are a criminal.
Ask HN: Observed a behaviour amongst my peers around Fitness
by nemath | 2026-01-12 20:30:14+00:00
So I have a big friend circle mostly from the tech. Recently, I have observed some interesting patterns. 3 of my friend groups have whatsapp groups for accountability of working out daily and it seriously has transformed couple of people in my group. Also monthly leaderboards seem to be really driving them. Do any of you have experienced similar patterns in your circle? I don't own a fitness trackers so haven't particularly participated in any fitness challenges and I'm thinking if I should get one. Also I'm fairly active person in good shape so I don't feel the need as much. But still open to trying for further improvements, maybe (?)
by nicbou | 2026-01-12 20:30:20+00:00
When talking about ADHD medication, a doctor asked me why someone would choose not to wear glasses if they could see well with them.

There are some flaws with this argument, but I keep it in mind when I feel like others are "cheating" by getting a good trait that I was born with. We should not insist on people getting things the hard way.
by hypfer | 2026-01-12 20:30:51+00:00
No, of course not.
Well.. apart from their API. That is a useful thing.

But you're missing the point. It is doing all this stuff with user consent, yes. It's just that the user fundamentally cannot provide informed consent as they seem to be out of their minds.

So yeah, technically, all those compliance checkboxes are ticked.
That's just entirely irrelevant to the point I am making.
by simianwords | 2026-01-12 20:30:55+00:00
i think you have a point but consider this hypothetical situation.

you are in 1500's before the printing press was invented. surely the printing press can also reduce the friction to distribute unethical stuff like CP.

what is the appropriate thing to do here to ensure justice? penalise the authors? penalise the distributors? penalise the factory? penalise the technology itself?
Ask HN: Should I shutdown my 20 year old SaaS sideline?
by pohwp | 2026-01-12 20:31:02+00:00
I have a 20 year old saas sideline in the UK which makes about $10k a year (very little work). It is a vulnerability nightmare. I'm in my 50s now and decided I don't have the energy or desire to rewrite the code. I've tried to do so over the last 6 months but never get anywhere. I work in a full time job. My head is a muddle. What questions should I be asking myself about whether to put it to bed or keep it going?

Ps. I'm a one man ltd company
by elric | 2026-01-12 20:31:07+00:00
Is government intervention even necessary? IANAL, and I don't know shit about US law, but if this this crap on X is illegal, then surely the courts can handle this and ban/fine/jail the responsible parties?

If this isn't illegal, then sure, government intervention will be required, laws will have to be amended, etc. Until that happens, what are realistic options? Shaming the perps? A bit of hacktivism?
by hairofadog | 2026-01-12 20:31:31+00:00
Real question as I don't use ChatGPT or Gemini: They publish images of women in bikinis or underwear in response to user prompts? Where do they publish them? I'm looking at Gemini and I don't see any sort of social aspect to it. I just tried the prompt "picture of a dog" and I don't see any way that another person could see it unless I decided to publish it myself.
by kennykartman | 2026-01-12 20:31:37+00:00
It boils down to what one considers to be relevant for humans: I think that well being is more important than freedom. Historically, freedom was not a predominant part in human societies. On the contrary: slavery, kingdoms, empires, took part in human history more than freedom. Authoritarian government is not wrong per se, as long as people are well. In the same way, freedom of knowledge anything at any time is not necessary good. Actually, the ability to immediately access any content, beneficial or not, is something that humans acquired very recently in their history, and it's absolutely not clear that this is in fact something good in the long term. I think it is, but it's just speculation. Being conservative and NOT giving free communication is, I think, a more sensible default for a government. Also, there are cases where we already know that freedom doesn't help: CSAM, revenge porn, and other nasty stuff.
by usefulposter | 2026-01-12 20:31:52+00:00
This would make a great blogpost.

>I'm always going to be paranoid that I miss some opt-out somewhere

FYI, Anthropic's recent policy change used some insidious dark patterns to opt existing Claude Code users in to data sharing.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46553429

>whatever vague weasel-words the lawyers made you put in the terms of service

At any large firm, product and legal work in concert to achieve the goal (training data); they know what they can get away with.
by steve_adams_86 | 2026-01-12 20:32:06+00:00
My HN comment history shows I've been worried about macOS for quite a while now, too. I'm a bit less optimistic than you, but I hope you're right. I'd really prefer to be wrong.

macOS has been an incredible productive OS for me since I was 15. I'm now 39. In the last few years is the first time in that period that I've seriously begun to wonder if it would be wise to get off the platform. I've already dropped iOS, watchOS (Garmins are actually amazing these days, for what it's worth), and iPadOS. I still use macOS daily along with tvOS when I happen to watch something, but the days seem numbered now. I'm pretty disappointed. I hope it turns around, but I'm slowly preparing myself to be on Linux primarily.
by drob518 | 2026-01-12 20:32:18+00:00
Exactly. The bots are probably saving lives at this point just being more reliable than humans on the basics, but if they make mistakes that lead to outsized payouts, then the market won’t be insurable and will fail for legal reasons, not for technical reasons. I suspect we’ll figure it out in the long run because it’s worth it to do so, but the short run might be pretty rocky.
by scoofy | 2026-01-12 20:32:22+00:00
In the US, it used to be that if you made credible threats against people you could/would be prosecuted. Social media made it so common in that no district attorney goes to the trouble of actually finding prosecuting people for doing this.

We can expect the same level of institutional breakdown with regards to various types of harassment, misappropriation, libel, and even manufactured revenge porn from AI.
by p337 | 2026-01-12 20:32:54+00:00
Maybe I'm not understanding the scenario well. I'm imagining an autonomous agent as a sort of baseline. Are you saying the agent says "I need to write a tool", it takes a snapshot, and once it's done, it rewinds to the snapshot but this time, it has the tool it desired? That's actually a really cool idea to do autonomously!

If you mean manually, that's still interesting, but that kind of feels like the same thing to me. The idea is - don't let the agent burn context writing tools, it should just use them. Isn't that exactly what yours is doing? Instead of rewinding to a snapshot, I have a separate code base for it. As tools get more complex, it seems nice to have them well-tested with standardized input and output. Generating tools on the fly, rewinding, and using tools is just the same thing. You even would need to provide some context that says what the tool is and how to use it, which is basically what the mcp server is doing.
by jrapdx3 | 2026-01-12 20:32:59+00:00
Chicken indeed interoperates with C quite easily and productively. You're right that the generated C code is mostly incomprehensible to humans, but compiles without difficulty.

The Chicken C API has functions/macros that return values and those that don't return. The former include the fabulous embedded API (crunch is an altogether different beast) which I've used in "mixed language" programming to good effect. In such cases Scheme is rather like the essential "glue" that enables the parts written in other languages to work as a whole.

Of course becoming proficient in Scheme programming takes time and effort. I believe it's true that some brains have an affinity for Lispy languages while others don't. Fortunately, there are many ways to write programs to accomplish a given task.
by ffsm8 | 2026-01-12 20:33:37+00:00
This is the "og definition" of vibe coding

https://x.com/karpathy/status/1886192184808149383?lang=en

He knows how to code, as such your personal definition does not agree with how the term was coined.

Now, 1 year later and people interpret a lot into the term.

in that context I could accept your perspective to that term, but it's certainly not the original meaning
by etempleton | 2026-01-12 20:33:40+00:00
Americans don’t despise public transit. They despise poorly maintained / insufficient public transit. Outside of New York and San Francisco, public transit is really not sufficient to get you where you need to go.

Many cities could do better to have more robust public transit, but the reality is America is vast and people commute long distances regularly. The cost of deploying such vast amounts of public transit would be prohibitively expensive.
by arter45 | 2026-01-12 20:33:49+00:00
> but I’d love to read more about when to know it’s time to replace my synchronous inter service http requests with a queue. What metrics should I consider and what are the trade offs. I’ve learned some answers to this question over time, but these guys are theoretically message queue experts. I’d love to learn about more things to look out for.

Not OP but I have some background on this.

An Erlang loss system is like a set of phone lines. Imagine a special call center where you have N operators, each of which takes calls, talks for some time (serving the customer) and hungs up. Unlike many call centers, however, they don’t keep you in line. Therefore, if all operators are busy the system hungs up and you have to explicitly call again. This is somewhat similar to a server with N threads.

Let's assume N=3.

Under common mathematical assumptions (constant arrival rate, time between arrivals modeled by a Poisson distribution, exponential service time) you can define:

1) “traffic intensity” (rho) has the ratio between arrival time and service time (intuitively, how “heavy” arrivals are with respect to “departures”)

2) the blocking probability is given by the Erlang B formula (sorry, not easy to write here) for parameters N (number of threads) and rho (traffic intensity). Basically, if traffic intensity = 1 (arrival rate = service rate), the blocking probability is 6.25%. If service rate is twice the arrival rate, this drops to 1% approximately. If service rate is 1/10 of the arrival rate, the blocking probability is 73.3%.

I will try to write down part 2 when I find some time.
by eudamoniac | 2026-01-12 20:34:00+00:00
I'm imagining a candidate saying something like, "I want to help America with x y z [blue team related] issues. I want to bridge the aisle with Republicans and voters. To that end, I vow to not support any measures for the expansion of abortion. I believe that right now it's more important to help Americans in other ways. This is a contentious issue, but if we can set it aside for the moment, I believe D and R can come together to solve x y and z."

Maybe Democrats would never vote for this, but that's kind of the problem.
by caminanteblanco | 2026-01-12 20:34:06+00:00
In light of David Bowie's recent birthday and the anniversary of his passing, I thought I'd remind people of the Mac app he made with Ty Roberts.

I don't think the original app is available, but this seems to be a fairly representative recreation.

https://www.vice.com/en/article/the-verbasizer-was-david-bow...
by rikschennink | 2026-01-12 20:34:19+00:00
> how is it different from other tools like doing it manually with photoshop

As others have said, mostly the scale and ease of it.

What I’d like to add is that I imagine the way this is set up with @grok further lowers the bar, they’re basically “daring” grok to do it.

“He did it, I only asked him to, he decided to actually do it”
by munk-a | 2026-01-12 20:34:32+00:00
I agree that in many ways self-driving cars are better than average. And I selfishly want to accelerate the adoption due to the fact that I'll appreciate it the most when other drivers are using it to reduce the chances to getting hit by a drunk or highly distracted driver.

However, I think that driving on tram tracks is unacceptably bad - it is something that a good driver would simply never do outside of really strange circumstances (like complete vision loss due to heavy storm weather). This example shouldn't be used as a single example to bar autonomous vehicles but it should also be properly recognized as unacceptable to be repeated.
by latexr | 2026-01-12 20:34:32+00:00
You don’t understand the difference between typing “draw a giraffe in a tuxedo in the style of MC Escher” into a text box and getting an image in a few seconds, versus the skill and time necessary to do it in an image manipulation program?

You don’t understand how scale and accessibility matter? That having easy cheap access to something makes it so there is more of it?

You don’t understand that because any talentless hack can generate child and revenge porn on a whim, they will do it instead of having time to cool off and think about their actions?
by amelius | 2026-01-12 20:34:34+00:00
I'd say let's first build an AI that can reliably read datasheets and technical drawings.

I've tried ChatGpt and Claude on datasheets of electronic components, and I'm sorry to say that they are awful at it.

Before that is fixed, I don't have high hopes for an AI that can generate CAD/EDA models that correctly follow some specification.
by potato3732842 | 2026-01-12 20:34:40+00:00
Most autonomous failures aren't failures in a way that make good video though. It's like your grandma or 16yo daughter that gets stuck at a yield for no good reason. Nobody is gonna watch that so nobody uploads it.

A robotaxi that has a "low enough to be acceptable" frequency of the above failure mode is likely to have enough occasional "full send" failure modes to make for Youtube fodder when deployed at scale.