MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by Fischgericht | 2026-01-29 20:31:27+00:00
I can only provide anecdotical evidence, which is ... not evidence, really.

Within my peer group of people on the spectrum (which very often comes with a depression, which is logical) we've discussed Vitamin D studies for years. And multiple of us decided to give it a try for a couple of months. And neither those who tried it INSTEAD of an SSRI, nor those that took both (SSRI + D) could report any measurable difference.

I have a theory on why is that: It is known that low levels of Vitamin D is one likely cause for depression - in Northern Europe, where during winter time people do not get enough sunlight, that correlates very clearly with the suffering of depression.

But potentially it simply does not work the other way round: I moved to near the equator, and I therefore basically have sunlight shining out of my butt, but still am depressed. It makes sense that in this case Vitamin D makes no difference at all.

In summary my theory would be: Vitamin D only has an effect on a depression that was caused by a lack of Vitamin D.
by 9rx | 2026-01-29 20:31:38+00:00
> It’s funny that perfect capitalism (no payroll expenses) means nobody has money to actually buy any of the goods produced by AI.

When you remember that profit is the measure of unrealized benefit, and look at how profitable capitalists have become, its not clear if, approximately speaking, anyone actually has the "money" to buy any goods now.

In other words, I am not sure this matters. Big business is already effectively working for free, with no realistic way to ever actually derive the benefit that has been promised to it. In theory those promises could be called, but what are the people going to give back in return?
by rpdillon | 2026-01-29 20:31:46+00:00
I've probably deleted 15 apps from my phone in the past year as I steadily move over to the web for everything.

My chat agent, file transfer tool, Grubhub, Amazon, YouTube, news, weather are all deleted in favor of a set of armored browsers that suppress the trash and clean up the experience. Its been an amazing change, as those companies no longer get a free advertisement on the application grid of my phone, making my use of them much more intentional.
by araes | 2026-01-29 20:31:56+00:00
So, they're suing Anna' Archive for $13T...

- The combined market cap of NVidia ($4.35T), Apple ($3.88T), and Google (Goog, $1.9T+Googl, $3.62T) shares combined.
- An amount larger than Every world stock market on Earth, except the NYSE and NASDAQ (the next closest is Shanghai at $9T)
- ~5 months worth of all trades (market volume) on the NYSE ($2.685T/month)
- ~1/10th of ALL world stock markets market capitalization.
- ~1/2 the United States yearly Gross Domestic Product
- 130x Spotify's own market capitalization (total stock value outstanding)
- ~766x Spotify's own yearly revenue for 2024 ($16.96B)

Just sue them for a gazillion quadrillion dollars or something. "Yes, judge. We estimate our damages at 1/10th of the entire world stock market, or approximately half the United States total economic output" Be difficult not to laugh at these people.
by clueless | 2026-01-29 20:31:58+00:00
Could Q.ai be commercializing the AlterEgo tech coming out of MIT Lab?
i.e. "detects faint neuromuscular signals in the face and throat when a person internally verbalizes words"

Update: Yep, looks like that is it. Patent from one of the founders: https://scholar.google.com/citations?view_op=view_citation&h...
by Qwertious | 2026-01-29 20:32:45+00:00
The DeLorean was a stupidly-expensive car that had a lot of maintenance problems, decided to use an unpainted stainless steel exterior and had corrosion issues as a result, but is remembered despite all of this engineering mediocrity due to its unusual stylistic choices.

I'm guessing Tesla's cybertruck will be the DeLorean of the 2020s.
by noosphr | 2026-01-29 20:32:49+00:00
Neither do most doctors. No gp will get disbarred for giving the wrong diagnosis on a first consult.

They have 15 minutes and you have very finite money.

Medical agents should be a pre consult tool that the patient talks to in the lobby while waiting for the doctor so the doctor doesn't waste an hour to hear the most important data point and the patient doesn't sit for an hour in the lobby doing nothing.
by guidum80 | 2026-01-29 20:33:03+00:00
About two years ago, when OpenAI launched custom GPTs, I built a small one for myself. It role-played a Silicon Valley VC and ran a real fundraising meeting.

I recently revisited and vibe coded it into a small web app called VC Deal or No Deal.

How it works:

1- Upload a PDF pitch deck or paste a description

2- Get interviewed by a VC persona (data-driven, vision-first, pattern-matching, etc.)

3- Answer up to 15 questions

Either get a term sheet, or a detailed explanation of what broke conviction. The VC personas are intentionally biased, opinionated, and adversarial by design.

I’m curious whether this kind of practice-by-failure tool is useful.
by tasty_freeze | 2026-01-29 20:33:21+00:00
It is more clunky and less polished than android. On the other hand, it is far more secure.

I was a user of android for 15+ years, and I had been using a pixel 4a when the battery issue came up last year. Google handled that so terribly I bought a used pixel 7a and installed Graphene.

Installation is quite easy. The lack of native voice-to-text was a pain; I installed a 3rd party utility (FUTO) for that, but unlike the native one where it translates while you talk, FUTO waits for you to finish then translates everything.

The messaging app is less integrated too. Android finally fixed things up with Apple such that emoji responses (heart, thumbs up, +1, etc) would appear as an annotation after the text message I sent, but now I'm back to getting "So and so likes your comment <full text of my comment>".

Some of the other pain was because I have tried to cut down on other google properties. I use "here we go" for mapping instead of google maps. Due to the scale of things, the real time traffic updates on google maps is far better than on here we go. I use fastmail instead of gmail and I'm 100% happy with that solution.
by baxtr | 2026-01-29 20:34:19+00:00
The moat around TV shows feels gone with TikTok/YT.

I am 99% certain I could reach parity in a weekend by publishing content on public networks, without the old distribution or pricing constraints.

I think it would all run on infrastructure that is effectively free to use.

I am not certain I have the bandwidth to handle distribution, sustained attention, and moderation once the content starts flowing.
by octorian | 2026-01-29 20:34:24+00:00
I'm very happy that the "base model" of cars now has a lot of the modern tech. Not because I'd personally buy a base model, but because its what you get whenever you travel and need to rent something.

In the past, when traveling, I'd be shocked at just how bare the rental cars were compared to my normal home experience. Fortunately that's no longer the case.
by JohnFen | 2026-01-29 20:35:08+00:00
> Where do you think the line should be drawn between AI assistance and human judgment?

I 100% don't want genAI to be making any medical decisions, nor do I want a doctor who just accepts what genAI says as reliable fact.

But for me, when it comes to this kind of thing, that's not even the question. There's no chance I'd be willing to trust my sensitive personal information to a genAI system in the first place out of security/privacy concerns. I don't want it to even take notes because that would require it to be given sensitive information.

So I don't get far enough for "where is the line" questions to be important to me.
by eugeneevstafev | 2026-01-29 20:36:26+00:00
I built Molt.tech to make running your own molt.bot instance dead simple. You get a dedicated VPS (4 vCPU, 8GB RAM, 150GB SSD, 200 Mbit/s) with molt.bot already installed; you just configure it and connect messengers like WhatsApp/Telegram. It's $10/month. Capacity is limited (usually 1-2 new slots at a time) while I scale:)
by 3rodents | 2026-01-29 20:36:30+00:00
I agree that absolute deference to doctors is a mistake and that individuals should be encouraged to advocate for themselves (and doctors should be receptive to it) but I'm not so convinced in this specific case. Why do high blood sugar levels matter? Are there side effects associated with the alternative treatment? Has ChatGPT actually helped you in a meaningful way, or has the doctor's eventual relenting made you feel like progress has been made, even if that change is not meaningful?

In this context, I think of ChatGPT as a many-headed Redditor (after all, reddit is what ChatGPT is trained on) and think about the information as if it was a well upvoted comment on Reddit. If you had come across a thread on Reddit with the same information, would you have made the same push for a change?

There are quite a few subreddits for specific medical conditions that provide really good advice, and there are others where the users are losing their minds egging each other on in weird and whacky beliefs. Doctors are far from perfect, doctors are often wrong, but ChatGPT's sycophancy and a desperate patient's willingness to treat cancer with fruit feel like a bad mix. How do we avoid being egged on by ChatGPT into forcing doctors to provide bad care? That's not a rhetorical question, curious about your thoughts as an advocate for ChatGPT.
by cjbarber | 2026-01-29 20:37:39+00:00
In general, starting with the products you love to use, or looking at where your favorite people you've ever worked with currently work, is probably the best move.

In case helpful, I collected some startups I find interesting, see the startup lists section: https://chrisbarber.co/start-here/.

Though I think the ideal would be:

* What are the products you find most enjoyable to use?

* Of those, which ones do you have ideas for improvement based on your usage?

* Who are the best people you've ever worked with or collaborated with?

* Where do they work today?
by Aurornis | 2026-01-29 20:38:32+00:00
I'm glad the charges were dismissed, but to be honest the original reporting shows the story was actually more nuanced than this article led me to believe. 2019 article: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2019/11/how-a...

I'll probably get downvoted for even questioning the narrative, but here are some of the nuances that stood out to me:

- When the police contacted someone listed on the authorization letter, that person denied that they had been authorized to conduct physical intrusions. Another contact didn't answer their phone. What are the police supposed to do if the people supposedly authorizing the intrusion are actively denying the authorization?

- The contract had vague language that say they couldn't "force-open doors". The two men told police they had used a tool to open a locked door. The language should have been more specific about what was and was not allowed.

- The contract said "alarm subversion" was not allowed, but supposedly the police had evidence that they were trying to manipulate the alarm. They deny this.

- The men had been drinking alcohol before the break-in. By the time they were breathalyzed it was at 0.05, meaning the number was even higher when they started the break-in. Drinking alcohol before you do a professional job guaranteed to get the police responding is a terrible idea.

- After they tripped the alarm and the police showed up, they didn't immediately identify themselves and end the exercise. They hid from the police, claiming that they were "testing the authorities' response" which seems obviously out of scope for their agreement.

So I agree that the charges were excessive and the Sheriff was in the wrong on a lot of things, but after reading the details this wasn't really a clear cut case. The pentesters weren't really doing everything "by the book" if they thought that testing the police response by hiding was in scope of their contract and doing this job after a few alcoholic beverages is a bizarre choice.
by nyellin | 2026-01-29 20:38:52+00:00
HolmesGPT maintainer here: our benchmarks [1] tell a very different story, as does anecdotal evidence from our customers- including Fortune 500 using SRE agents in incredibly complex production environments.

We're actually struggling a bit with benchmark saturation right now. Opus does much better in the real world than Sonnet but it's hard to create sophisticated enough benchmarks to show that in the lab. When we run benchmarks with a small number of iterations Sonnet even wins sometimes.

[1] https://holmesgpt.dev/development/evaluations/history/
by orc00 | 2026-01-29 20:38:58+00:00
I was looking for this and finally found it in the comments.

Derek Smart [1] is the indie developer behind the ambitious (and buggy) space sim Battlecruiser 3000AD [2]. He is known for his legendary Usenet presence in the 90s, and engaged in massive, aggressive flamewars with anyone who criticized his game or physics engine. He adopted the "combative game dev" archetype long before social media existed.

Now that he has been mentioned, there's a small chance he will drop by.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derek_Smart

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battlecruiser_3000AD
by octorian | 2026-01-29 20:39:08+00:00
I still think there's a benefit to sticking with EVs from companies that are actually "all in" on EVs. Otherwise you're buying the product that the company (or really the sales/service channel) really doesn't want to sell you.

In this space, Tesla does have competition (e.g. Rivian and Lucid), but nowhere near as much as they should.
by keeda | 2026-01-29 20:39:19+00:00
Yeah, it apparently damages the weatherstripping (and maybe the window and other things) and is meant to be used only in an emergency /facepalm. Which is probably why your friend was alarmed.

I didn't care, I still tested it out the day I picked up mine to see where the manual handle is and make sure it works, because just a couple days earlier two people had gotten trapped in a burning Tesla, were unable to figure out the mechanism, and died.
by alexjplant | 2026-01-29 20:39:42+00:00
> most doctors don't actually listen to you.

> doctors mostly work with blinders on and don't listen

This has unfortunately been my experience as well. My childhood PCP was great but every interaction I've had with the healthcare system since has been some variation of this. Reading blood work incorrectly, ignoring explanations of symptoms, misremembering medications you've been taking, prescribing inappropriate medications, etc. The worst part is that there are a lot of people that reflexively dismiss you as a contrarian asshole or, even worse, a member of a reviled political group that you have nothing to do with just because you dare to disagree with what The Person With A Degree In Medicine said about your own health problems.

Doctors aren't immune to doing a bad job. I don't think it's a secret that the system overworks them and causes many of them to treat patients like JIRA tickets - I'd just like to know what it would take for people to realize that pointing this out doesn't make you a crackpot.

As an aside I use Claude primarily for research when investigating medical issues, not to diagnose. It is equally likely to hallucinate or mischaracterize in the medical domain as it is others.
by Spooky23 | 2026-01-29 20:40:13+00:00
The stories are written for a general audience and often lack detail or nuance. "Promising" doesn't mean "likely". "Possible breakthrough" is not a breakthrough. And it may just mean we learn something that we don't know today.

I lost my wife to metastatic melanoma a few years ago. Words used in reference to cancer are often terms of art that have a distinct meaning from the general meaning. Her particular cancer was pretty awful and lacked mutations that allowed for the use of targeted therapy that buy time. Even still, her chances of survival were about 65% in 2023 as compared to 0% in 2013. Unfortunately, the odds didn't end in her favor, despite the incredible efforts of a team of doctors at a national cancer center.

Anything with cancer research and treatment is an testament to standing on the shoulders of those who came before. Many people suffered to give my Molly those odds - she had hope where many others had nothing. And today, we have trials of custom vaccines that will offer others more hope and perhaps safer treatment. Perhaps in some small way her journey and ideal helped those or other developments. That's all we have.
by IncreasePosts | 2026-01-29 20:40:34+00:00
I don't know if I could trust AI for big things, but I had nagging wrist pain for like a year, any time I extended my wrist (like while doing a pushup). It wasn't excruciating but it certainly wasn't pleasant, and it stopped me from doing certain activities (like pushups)

I visited my GP, 2 wrist specialists, and physical therapist to help deal with it. I had multiple x rays and an MRI done. Steroid injection done. All without relief. My last wrist specialist even recommended I just learn to accept it and don't try to extend my wrist too much.

I decided to ask Gemini, and literally the first thing it suggested was maybe the way I was using the mouse was inflaming an extensor muscle, and it suggested changing my mouse and a stretch/massage.

And you know what, the next day I had no wrist pain for the first day in a year. And it's been that way for about 3 weeks now, so I'm pretty hopeful it isn't short term
by Manuel_D | 2026-01-29 20:41:04+00:00
Correct, but that means that publishers are choosing to distribute via Steam, despite the existence of other options, because Steam's superior features, user base, etc. justify paying that premium. They could distribute on Epic games, or even self-distribute like how Blizzard does, but they choose Steam.

It's not analogous to iOS that has no other options for distribution.
by Aloisius | 2026-01-29 20:41:09+00:00
A sailboat must alter course if a collision can't be avoided by the give-way vessel alone under the navigation rules:

Rule 17(b):

> When, from any cause, the vessel required to keep her course and speed finds herself so close that collision cannot be avoided by the action of the give-way vessel alone, she shall take such action as will best aid to
avoid collision.

If you somehow suddenly cut in front of a container ship in a sailboat where there isn't time for it to avoid you, you will be found at least partially at fault if you do not alter course. You'd also be violating Rule 2's neglect of precaution and consideration of limitations of the vessels involved.

Ultimately, it's the responsibility of all vessels to avoid collisions. That's why maritime law uses the comparative fault system where fault is shared between parties.
by noitpmeder | 2026-01-29 20:41:17+00:00
Did you even read the article or review the story? The police showed up, reviewed and even verified their documents (called the numbers on the form to confirm their authorization) and we're seemingly satisfied all was in order.

Only once the sheriff himself arrived on scene did he order the arrest that caused all the issues. If that didn't happen it wouldn't have been a story other than "security professionals doing their authorized job".
by analog31 | 2026-01-29 20:41:20+00:00
The reasons I can think of for learning to drive stick shift are subtle. Renting a stick shift car in Europe is cheaper. You might have to drive a friend's car. My kids both learned to drive our last stick shift car, which is now close to being junked. Since our next car will probably be electric, it's safe bet that it won't be stick.
by seba_dos1 | 2026-01-29 20:41:35+00:00
It cites a study about vitamin D toxicity where the range of cumulative intake causing it was identified to be 2.2 million - 6.3 million IU. When you take 6000 IU daily for a whole year you only reach the lower end of that range, and you definitely shouldn't do that without checking your levels somewhere in between. Taking it for a few months may get you above the recommended blood levels, but is very unlikely to cause issues unless you started with extremely high levels already.

Toxic levels of vitamin D can be life threatening, so do keep your levels in check, but you won't get there unless you really try, so if you can't get out of the bed to have your blood tested just start taking it and check it after 3 months when things get hopefully easier for you. Just make sure to get the number of zeros in the dose right.
by refulgentis | 2026-01-29 20:41:49+00:00
"...as even well tempered discussion about the rest would be against the guidelines anyways."

Didn't bother reading after that. I deeply respect you have the self-awareness to notice and spare us, that's rare. But it also means we all have to have conversations purely on your terms, and because its async, the rules constantly change post-hoc.

And that's on top of the post-hoc motte / bailey instances, of which we have multiple. I was stunned (stunned!!) by the attempted retcon of the app claim once there were numbers.

Anyways, all your bete noirs aside, all your Red Team vs. Blue Team signalling aside, using LMArena alone as a benchmark is a bad idea.
by arcfour | 2026-01-29 20:42:07+00:00
I'm not saying it's the most professional choice, but if I were about to burgle a courthouse as part of my work, I'd like a beer or two to calm my nerves beforehand.

Regarding force, this article says:

> The rules of engagement for this exercise explicitly permitted “physical attacks,” including “lockpicking,” against judicial branch buildings so long as they didn’t cause significant damage.

And later that they entered through an unlocked door, which they (it sounds like) kept unlatched by inserting something between the latch and the doorjamb. Not unreasonable.
by cryptonector | 2026-01-29 20:42:15+00:00
Reasonable people can also disagree as to the amount of pain and reasons for it.

If you have surgery that involves painful recovery, should the surgeon refuse to perform it? Only if it's elective? Or it's ok because you elect it? What about required surgery on a non-human animal? Is the painful recovery justified by the surgery's necessity [to achieve a human-desired goal]? What if it's necessary to extend the animal's life, or ameliorate other pain?

In the case of TFA the intervention is part of habitat management -- preserving the species in the face of human encroachment, or even just in the face of encroachment that occurred even if no further encroachment is allowed. That seems to me like a reasonable justification for the pain caused in that case, and this is also the case for cats and dogs even though the justification is slightly different there.
by sockaddr | 2026-01-29 20:42:17+00:00
Possibly related anecdote:

I have a family member that has struggled to hold jobs and keep relationships, and seems to have had a learning disability their entire life, and potentially had brain damage early in childhood (due to lack of oxygen at birth, and being tasked with burning the family's trash out back (self-reported)).

I recently moved them into my house because they had nowhere to go and they are now completely obsessed with preparing elaborate dishes, growing fermented foods and carefully curating their microbiome (by doing dubious stuff they find on YouTube). This syndrome feels very much like what this family member is doing but the rarity makes me think it's probably not this.

It's to the point where their room is full of jars of nuts, fermented items, and they go into detail describing the pleasure of the textures/tastes of food and how much of a treat it is for them to enjoy random everyday things normal people eat.

My wife and I physically cringe when they talk about it in the kitchen given that they put more energy into this than seeing their own grandchildren, keeping jobs, or helping around the house.