MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by Paracompact | 2026-02-10 00:38:24+00:00
Technically, the charge of a proton can be derived from its constituent 2 up quarks and 1 down quark, which have charges 2/3 and -1/3 respectively. I'm not aware of any deeper reason why these should be simple fractional ratios of the charge of the electron, however, I'm not sure there needs to be one. If you believe the stack of turtles ends somewhere, you have to accept there will eventually be (hopefully simple) coincidences between certain fundamental values, no?
by robh78 | 2026-02-10 00:38:40+00:00
I think this debate is mis-aimed. Both sides are right about different things, and wrong in the same way.

The mistake is treating “model” as a single property, instead of separating cognition from decision.

LLMs clearly do more than surface-level word association. They encode stable relational structure: entities, roles, temporal order, causal regularities, social dynamics, counterfactuals. Language itself is a compressed record of world structure, and models trained on enough of it inevitably internalize a lot of that structure. Calling this “just a word model” undersells what’s actually happening internally.

At the same time, critics are right that these systems lack autonomous grounding. They don’t perceive, act, or test hypotheses against reality on their own. Corrections come from training data, tools, or humans. Treating their internal coherence as if it were direct access to reality is a category error.

But here’s the part both sides usually miss:
the real risk isn’t representational depth, it’s authority.

There’s a difference between:

cognition: exploring possibilities, tracking constraints, simulating implications, holding multiple interpretations; and

decision: collapsing that space into a single claim about what is, what matters, or what someone thinks.

LLMs are quite good at the first. They are not inherently entitled to the second.

Most failures people worry about don’t come from models lacking structure. They come from models (or users) quietly treating cognition as decision:

coherence as truth,

explanation as diagnosis,

simulation as fact,

“this sounds right” as “this is settled.”

That’s why “world model” language is dangerous if it’s taken to imply authority. It subtly licenses conclusions the system isn’t grounded or authorized to make—about reality, about causation, or about a user’s intent or error.

A cleaner way to state the situation is:

> These systems build rich internal representations that are often world-relevant, but they do not have autonomous authority to turn those representations into claims without external grounding or explicit human commitment.

Under that framing:

The “word model” camp is right to worry about overconfidence and false grounding.

The “world model” camp is right that the internal structure is far richer than token statistics.

They’re arguing about different failure modes, but using the same overloaded word.

Once you separate cognition from decision, the debate mostly dissolves. The important question stops being “does it understand the world?” and becomes “when, and under what conditions, should its outputs be treated as authoritative?”

That’s where the real safety and reliability issues actually live.
by ragall | 2026-02-10 00:38:45+00:00
> I agree. Additionally, a company can own and update a business language of their own design at their own pace and need.

Yes, although I was more thinking of this being in most cases a SaaS offering because the implementation of the DSL needs solid non-LLM engineering. Larger companies will be able to afford an internal platform team, but most won't.

> Now that said, there is still the actual engineering problem of leveraging the capabilities of the underlying technology. For example, being able to map your 4 core program to a 16 core system and have it work is one thing, actually utilizing 16 cores is another.

I see this more of an extension of existing trends, for example Wordpress themes with limited customizability. Most DSLs won't allow full utilization of the underlying technology, on purpose because that's the only way to keep it simple. I do see this leading to a split into two classes of developers: those who only target simple DSLs using an LLM, and the "hard" engineers who might use LLMs every now and then, but mostly not.
by dolebirchwood | 2026-02-10 00:38:49+00:00
An idea I like to bounce around is that everyone at the highest offices of power (not going to define that here) should be forced to live in monastic conditions during the term in which they hold power.

You are fed, clothed, and housed by the state. You have no luxurious amenities, no exercise of personal wealth, no contact with anyone other than for official business.

If you honorably discharge your duties to the completion of your term of office, you will be compensated for life to such a degree that you will never have to work again.

There's a lot of nuance that I'm glossing over, but the gist is that holding powerful positions ought to require severe personal sacrifice, but you will be handsomely rewarded after-the-fact if you bear that burden with dignity.
by xattt | 2026-02-10 00:39:11+00:00
The box itself around a data table label could hint at a state, if the goal is to define only a handful of states (green rounded capsule for a completed state; diamond capsule for an in-progress condition; red square for an error; purple parallelogram for some special condition; etc).

Not sure how this is for accessibility in terms of colour selection, but I’m sure this could be fine-tuned.
by rootusrootus | 2026-02-10 00:40:23+00:00
> There's nothing _inherently_ dangerous about isolated hard braking or cornering or acceleration events.

I have to hope that the actuaries at the insurance company are well aware of that. Tuned correctly, the algorithm should not unfairly penalize you.

I am reminded of my mother-in-law. She has very few at fault accidents in her decades of driving. And yet she has been involved in a statistically unlikely number of major wrecks. She would say that she is a safe driver, because she is not found at fault. I think it more likely that she is an unsafe driver who creates situations where accidents are more likely to occur but in a way that will not peg her as the underlying cause. Her rates should go up. As should yours, if you are experiencing a very abnormal number of hard-braking events even though you can ascribe every one of them to something outside of your control. Because the implication is that something about your driving habit is increased risk.
by aussieguy1234 | 2026-02-10 00:40:30+00:00
I'm based in Australia and had to do this early shortly before the teen social media ban came into place here.

I chose the face scan option as I simply don't trust most providers when it comes to uploading my ID. Countless data breaches have happened over the years where driver's license and passport details have been stolen from databases.

For those unaware, a driver's license is often referred to as the "golden ticket" for identity thieves. A single license usually contains all the information needed to open credit in that person's name.

Yes, they will claim their process is super secure, and they take security seriously. But then again, they all say that.
by AGDNoob | 2026-02-10 00:41:05+00:00
Built this because every image optimizer I found was either slow, bloated, or a subscription. Squish takes a folder of images, compresses them, done.
~4400 lines of C++, no dependencies, custom JPEG encoder with AVX2 (scalar fallback for older CPUs), threaded, atomic writes. 77-95 MB/s on 6 cores.
Had to harden it pretty hard after the first version would have crashed on any machine without AVX2. Now handles OOM, symlink loops, path traversal, the works. MIT licensed, happy to answer questions
by rhoopr | 2026-02-10 00:41:08+00:00
I've been playing around with this app for a little bit to scratch my own itch and figured I'd like to share and open-source it, since the arcane knowledge of Bambu MQTT is very heavily borrowed from other OSS projects.

bambutop -- a Rust/Ratatui TUI built for monitoring your BambuLab 3d printer.

Operates fully locally, catching the MQTT messaging that your printer already sends over the LAN. No cloud, no accounts, direct access to your printer(s)…

Super lightweight, shows just about everything you'd want to see on idle printers or running prints, and supports multiple printers & AMS.

https://github.com/rhoopr/bambutop
by Gnaveen04 | 2026-02-10 00:41:22+00:00
Location: San Francisco, CA

Remote: No

Willing to Relocate: Yes

Technologies: Python, C++, PyTorch, FAISS, vLLM, Redis, AWS, CUDA, Kubernetes, Airflow

Résumé/CV: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1iKPlaSE0HUTaWP2r84Vi_XbNhQV...

Email: 891gsn@gmail.com

Regents CS @ UC Santa Cruz (2027). ML systems engineer focused on LLM inference, retrieval/RAG, and performance-critical pipelines. Previously at Salesforce, Palantir, and GSoC (DBpedia). Published research with UC Berkeley on deep research agents (multihop tool use + reliability). Currently at Hao AI @ UCSD researching Video Diffusion.
by 7402 | 2026-02-10 00:41:53+00:00
> Participants deeply understand the root goal and can autonomously choose the most important next things to work on

It didn't work that way on projects I led. Maybe everyone at Anthropic is a "10."

I was lucky when I had one person who could do that ("deeply understand the root goal and can autonomously choose the most important next things to work on"), who could take over if I went on vacation or got hit by a bus.

But I had reports who just wanted to work in their area of specialization, and had no curiosity whatsoever outside that. Or the guy who, no matter what I said, would never tell me when he had finished something - the only way I found out would be when I walked past his cube and saw him reading a science fiction book.

Don't tell me I should have just fired them, and gotten someone better. They did useful work, contributed to the project, and they were what the company had to work with. A big part of management is figuring out what people can do, want to do, are capable of doing in the future if encouraged.
by drewda | 2026-02-10 00:42:28+00:00
Please see:

> It's not a lack of knowledge by Caltrans or Santa Clara County's congestion management agency that is keeping that interchange as-is. Rather, it's the physical constraints of a nearby airport (so no room for flyovers), a nearby river (so probably no tunneling), and surrounding private landowners and train tracks.

The most recent budget estimate is $1bn for any changes to this interchange
by noAnswer | 2026-02-10 00:42:38+00:00
I like to implement independent mail systems. No SSO BS. IT enters the password into the mail client while setting up the laptop and phone. The boss can't be phished if he doesn't know his password (of if the password has no use on the internet).

I also like to put everything behind a VPN (again no SSO). But the bigger the company gets, sooner or later this will come to an end. Because it's not "best practice" to not be phishable. Apparently what is needed are layers and layers of BS "security" products that can be tricked by a kid that has heard of JS. https://browser.security
by antb_me | 2026-02-10 00:42:51+00:00
This one happens to be amenable to verification even by those as ignorant as me.

I asked Opus 4.6 to look at all the problems and guess which it might be able to solve. It was, coincidentally, most keen on problem 10.

I asked it to try. (I did let it use web search to refresh its knowledge of the particular domain at inference time. Pretty sure that's not unfair compared to how a human expert acts.)

It expressed confidence it had solved it OK after a few minutes thought.

The solution was way beyond my pay-grade.

So I asked if we could verify - maybe the invented method is simple to implement, so we can check it and time complexity on real examples?

It went off and did that.

"""
Net assessment: I'd now raise Problem 10 confidence from 85% to 90%.

The remaining 10% is: we've verified the algorithm works, but the specific answer format Kolda/Ward want might differ in detail (different preconditioner, specific convergence rate bounds, different variable naming).

The mathematical substance is solid.

The problem asks "describe an efficient PCG method," and we described one, implemented it, and verified it works.
"""

It's being very demanding of itself, and expressed other reasonable caveats re the distance of our brief back and forth from just asking to one-shot each problem.

"""
The 8 problems I declined would have produced nonsense. Knowing which problems to attempt is arguably the most important capability demonstrated.
"""

(It reckoned problem 6 was worth attempting too, we didn't try it.)

Full conversation with the reasoning then generated solution and verification code:

https://claude.ai/public/artifacts/c3401a11-b5a8-4dc6-a72a-9...
by dfadsadsf | 2026-02-10 00:42:58+00:00
Coca Cola actually have to run ads to stay relevant. War in Ukraine provided nice experiment - Coca Cola stopped all advertisement in Russia in 2022 and results are in.

- Feb–Mar 2022 (before full production/marketing stoppage): RosIndex reported that 94.3% knew the Coca-Cola brand.

- 2023 (roughly a year after global brands stopped producing in Russia): 88.6% of consumers knew the Coca-Cola brand.

5.7% drop in recognition in one year translates to billions of losses if scaled to US market. So yes, Coca Cola has to constantly run ads.
by insane_dreamer | 2026-02-10 00:44:16+00:00
> he reality is the federal gov has been aggressive in its enforcement for decades.

Sure there has been enforcement, but nothing that comes even close to what we're seeing today (except for Trump 1.0 when CBP were separating parents and children and putting them in cages; today we have that plus a whole lot more including murdering citizen observers). ICE should never have been created (more of the fallout of the Americans surrendering so much of their civil liberties while panicked about 9/11), but at least it was a regular accountable law enforcement org and not a paramilitary terrorizing American cities (which technically makes it a domestic terrorism org).
by Zambyte | 2026-02-10 00:44:26+00:00
The thing is that I literally just don't have the bad, that's why I listed those things. Bluesky is chronological by default, and that is what I use exclusively. There is a "Discover" feed, but I straight up removed it from my account. I have a few other user made feeds that I use very sparingly (basically just chronological keyword search feeds). There are powerful tools for blocking brigading (blocks detach quotes, or quotes can be detached without blocking). I am a mentally mature adult capable of dealing with public interactions.

It's wise to limit use under different conditions from these, but these conditions are seriously positive. I've never had such a positive experience with social media before. The fedi came the closest, but my experience was limited to interacting with technically inclined people who weren't the most socially skilled. Bluesky is approachable enough that anyone who can figure out mainstream social media can figure it out, so there is a much more diverse set of people.
by viraptor | 2026-02-10 00:44:42+00:00
> Those people were people who previously made the decision to illegally immigrate to the US.

There are no limits here and there many publicly available proofs of people getting harassed and detained regardless of legal status and deported contrary to court rulings that apply to their situation. You don't need to repeat the current ICE/DOJ lies - they can speak for themselves.
by BLKNSLVR | 2026-02-10 00:45:25+00:00
This is another one of those things that, having put no thought into it as something that has sat in the background of life since childhood, I had figured was better organised/protected against malicious, negligent and/or fraudulent behaviour.

The world is far more of a chaotic jungle than the facade makes it appear. There is yet much opportunity for mischief for those who dare and have the resources and lack of moral compass.
by tkrn | 2026-02-10 00:45:50+00:00
Good points. I don't think pairs are a code smell when used reasonably in situations where a pair of two values makes sense, like in your make-hash example. Ideally though I'd like to have a real, distinct (immutable) pair/association type separate from the cons/list and maybe use the dot syntax for that instead.

Deeply nested pair & list constructs that need to be unpacked with complex car/cdr combinations is what IMHO gets messy and I take the appearance of cddar & co in code as a sign that I should start thinking about using proper data structures.
by duskwuff | 2026-02-10 00:45:57+00:00
I seriously doubt it.

Apple's ARM implementation is in a really good place right now. It would take something extremely compelling to get them to consider any other architecture for an application processor, especially considering that it'd mean giving up some degree of control.

Power is probably not where Apple would choose to go unless something really unusual happened. It's essentially just IBM's pet architecture at this point.
by nozzlegear | 2026-02-10 00:46:06+00:00
It's been ages since I started using it, but I don't think it was any problem in particular. I think I just happened to watch a video by Scott Wlaschin one day and was intrigued by the weird language and the things he was doing with the type system, having only been familiar with object oriented programming at that point in my life. I kept coming back to it and eventually it became my bread and butter.

What I like most about it is the type system (discriminated unions, etc.). It's really powerful and intuitive, without letting me go overboard "big braining" the perfect type for every situation like I tend to do with e.g. typescript or haskell. F# is also great because we can access the full dotnet runtime and nuget ecosystem. I have several projects where I mix C# and F#, and they're perfectly compatible.
by rootusrootus | 2026-02-10 00:46:27+00:00
> In Britain at least we call it "braking distance" and you're supposed to leave 2 seconds at least between you and the person in front. Count it off a lamp post/sign etc.

Indeed, that is the usual definition in the US for following distance. Along with a typical example of how to determine it for yourself.

We usually use the term braking distance to describe the distance that would be required to stop the car based on current conditions and speed. This is not necessarily going to be the same as the following distance.
by AnimalMuppet | 2026-02-10 00:46:28+00:00
I think that, if China tries to take Taiwan, rather than a direct military confrontation, the US might just block the Straits of Malacca against oil heading for China - or maybe against anything heading for China.

China would enforce a blockade against Taiwan. The US might or might not be able to break it. But China would have a very hard time breaking a US blockade down there.
by janalsncm | 2026-02-10 00:47:27+00:00
I try to maintain a constant speed in traffic, even if other people are speeding up and slamming on the brakes around me. Something like the average speed of traffic. Slamming on the pedals isn’t going to get you there faster.

Even if I do need to brake, speeding up more slowly also usually means I have more buffer time to slow down too.
by genocidicbunny | 2026-02-10 00:47:34+00:00
I've done a few tours around the world on the interstate system, so I've seen my fair share of truckers. Yeah, some are assholes, but there are stretches and routes where their behaviour makes sense, even if I don't like it. It's on them for how they behave, but understanding why they behave that way can make it simpler to deal with them in real life. As real, squishy people, not a system of rules.

Would I love to see CHP or OHP fine every left lane trucker in the 'no trucks in left lane' zones? Hell yes, but until that happens, I understand the trucker behaviour.
by docjay | 2026-02-10 00:47:36+00:00
You can replicate an LLM:

You and a buddy are going to play “next word”, but it’s probably already known by a better name than I made up.

You start with one word, ANY word at all, and say it out loud, then your buddy says the next word in the yet unknown sentence, then it’s back to you for one word. Loop until you hit an end.

Let’s say you start with “You”. Then your buddy says the next word out loud, also whatever they want. Let’s go with “are”. Then back to you for the next word, “smarter” -> “than” -> “you” -> “think.”

Neither of you knew what you were going to say, you only knew what was just said so you picked a reasonable next word. There was no ‘thought’, only next token prediction, and yet magically the final output was coherent. If you want to really get into the LLM simulation game then have a third person provide the first full sentence, then one of you picks up the first word in the next sentence and you two continue from there. As soon as you hit a breaking point the third person injects another full sentence and you two continue the game.

With no idea what either of you are going to say and no clue about what the end result will be, no thought or reasoning at all, it won’t be long before you’re sounding super coherent while explaining thermodynamics. But one of the rounds someone’s going to mess it up, like “gluons” -> “weigh” -> “…more?…” -> “…than…(damnit Gary)…” but you must continue the game and finish the sentence, then sit back and think about how you just hallucinated an answer without thinking, reasoning, understanding, or even knowing what you were saying until it finished.
by ssl-3 | 2026-02-10 00:47:38+00:00
So just... let them go. It's easy to do.

Escalation usually doesn't improve things, including for the person displaying the universal finger (or throwing the lug nut).

You've got a choice: You can keep plodding along in your truck while you escalate and retaliate and get all grumpy and stuff, or just keep plodding along in your truck without any of that noise.

The errant, instigating driver won't really learn anything either way.
by RobMurray | 2026-02-10 00:47:47+00:00
There are some, in particular the orbit reader[0] is much cheaper than a piezoelectric display. The trade off is that is is relatively slow to refresh and quite noisy.

There is also the dot pad[1] which is much more like a screen with a rectangle of cells that can show Braille and graphics! It is a different technology using electromagnetic actuators with latching. It can only refresh when not being touched. It's also out of the price range of most consumers, but apparently the technology scales very well so they expect the price to fall. It is also modular so users can easily replace broken cells.

The Monarch[2] is based on Dot Pad technology and also runs Android and Humanware's Keysoft software like the BrailleNotes.

[0] https://www.dotincorp.com/en/product/dotpadx

[1] https://www.dotincorp.com/en/product/dotpadx

[2] https://www.aph.org/product/monarch/
by andyfilms1 | 2026-02-10 00:48:09+00:00
For a given calculation on given hardware, the 100th digit of a floating point decimal can be replicated every time. But that digit is basically just noise, and has no influence on the 1st digit.

In other words: There can be multiple "layers" of linked states, but that doesn't necessarily mean the lower layers "create" the higher layers, or vice versa.
by PlatoIsADisease | 2026-02-10 00:48:46+00:00
If I have to make a guess, we are at the level of pre-copernicus in particle physics.

We are finding local maximums(induction) but the establishment cannot handle deduction.

Everything is an overly complex bandaid. At some point someone will find something elegant that can predict 70% as good, and at some point we will realize: 'Oh that's great, the sun is actually at the center of the solar system, Copernicious was slightly wrong thinking planets make circular rotations. We just needed to use ellipses!'

But with particles.