MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by semiquaver | 2026-02-10 18:22:23+00:00
Because it’s important context for understanding what the “point” of the article is. It could be any of:

- reporting on google’s violation of privacy laws or handing over info they weren’t required to

- reporting on the US government’s abuse of existing process that Google was legally required to comply with but ought to have challenged

- calling attention to investigatory legal practices that are normal and above-board but the author of the article wishes they were otherwise.

Some of these are motives are closer to the journalism end of the spectrum and some of them are closer to advocacy. I interpret this article as the third bucket but I wish it were clearer about the intent and what they are actually attempting to convey. The fact that the article is not clear about the actual law here (for example, was this a judicial subpoena?) makes me trust it less.
by quietsegfault | 2026-02-10 18:22:37+00:00
Plagiarism is claiming someone else’s specific work as your own. Using a generative tool is closer to using a compiler, an IDE, or a library. I’m not copying a person’s code or submitting someone else’s project with the name filed off. I’m directing a system, reviewing the output, editing it, and taking responsibility for the result.

If I paste in a blog post verbatim and pretend I wrote it, that’s plagiarism. If I use a tool to generate a starting point and shape it into what I need, that’s just a different kind of authorship.
by skissane | 2026-02-10 18:22:46+00:00
> SCOTUS has found non-protected categories can still be protected because they are "proxies" for protected categories. One of the classic examples of this are zip codes[0], which was found to be a proxy for race, because it has a "disparate impact" on people of particular races.

I realise it may be somewhat beside your point, but that was a Kennedy+liberals vs conservatives ruling in 2015 - so the current SCOTUS would likely have ruled the other way, and decent odds they overrule it sooner or later. Scalia’s dissent was objecting to the entire idea of disparate impact analysis under the Fair Housing Act, so more likely that gets overruled than this specific application of that idea.

This was a statutory interpretation case though, so if SCOTUS overturns the decision, Congress could reverse that with ordinary legislation, no constitutional amendment required. But who knows whether that will turn out to be politically feasible.

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

(Also, you need to change the last period in the URL to %2E to stop HN from mangling it.)
by engelo_b | 2026-02-10 18:22:57+00:00
this is the quietest crisis in the us right now. our entire insurance and social safety net system (especially ltc and social security) is mathematically dependent on a forever growth pyramid.

once that population curve flattens or flips, the risk pooling math just breaks. you can’t underwrite a 30-year health or life liability for a cohort when the generation behind them is 20% smaller. we’re looking at a fundamental failure of the actuarial models we've used since the 50s.
by mmooss | 2026-02-10 18:22:58+00:00
Knowledge is the output of a person and their expertise and perspective, irreducibly. In this case, they seem to know something of what they're talking about:

> Starting 2022, I am now the John Cardinal O’Hara Professor of Logic at the University of Notre Dame.

> From 2018 to 2022, I was Professor of Logic at Oxford University and the Sir Peter Strawson Fellow at University College Oxford.

Also interesting:

> I am active on MathOverflow, and my contributions there (see my profile) have earned the top-rated reputation score.

https://jdh.hamkins.org/about/
by Terr_ | 2026-02-10 18:23:02+00:00
> horrifying.

IMO it's worth distinguishing between different points on the spectrum of "email object", ex:

1. Here is an Email object with detailed properties or methods for accessing its individual portions, changing things to/from canonical forms (e.g. lowercase Punycode domain names), running standard (or nonstandard) comparisons, etc.

2. Here is a immutable Email object which mainly wraps an arbitrary string, so that it isn't easily mixed-up with other notable strings we have everywhere.

__________

For e-mails in particular, the first is a nightmare--I know this well from recent tasks fixing bad/subjective validation rules.

In contrast, the second provides a lot of bang for your buck. It won't guarantee your e-mails are all valid, but you get much better tools for tracing data-flow, bugs, and for implementing validation/comparison rules (that might be context-specific) later when you need them.
by bonesss | 2026-02-10 18:23:11+00:00
Looking at the most popular agent skills, heavily geared towards react and JS, I think a lot of the most breathless reports of LLM success are weighted towards the same group of fashion-dependant JavaScript developers.

The same very online group endlessly hyping messy techs and frontend JS frameworks, oblivious to the Facebook and Google sized mechanics driving said frameworks, are now 100x-ing themselves with things like “specs” and “tests” and dreaming big about type systems and compilers we’ve had for decades.

I don’t wanna say this cycle is us watching Node jockies discover systems programming in slow motion through LLMs, but it feels like that sometimes.
by nickjj | 2026-02-10 18:23:18+00:00
> Cost-of-living ~$36k excluding housing

When you say housing, are you excluding utilities or just not direct rent / mortgage / property taxes?

Either way, that's a good example of how different things are without kids and maybe why folks are choosing not to have them.

As someone without kids who lives in NY (not NYC), I couldn't even imagine spending 36k / year (minus rent). Even if I took a 3 week international vacation every quarter I wouldn't come close to that amount after factoring in my normal costs.
by Freak_NL | 2026-02-10 18:23:24+00:00
> Whatever they come up with, I hope it doesn't tie you to a Google or Apple smartphone.

The article starts with Wero right off the bat, which a pan-European rebrand and continuation of the Dutch Ideal. The Dutch have been using Ideal everywhere, and you usually use that to pay online. It redirects you to your bank to acknowledge the transaction, and most bank have auth methods where a smartphone is optional. Most often used for sure, but optional, and you can complete the transaction with a hardware reader and your debit card as well.

The only exception are the neobanks like Bunq, which actually are smartphone-only. That one in particular is great if you appreciate the CEO and staff keeping a personal eye on your transactions (no kidding).
by ExoticPearTree | 2026-02-10 18:23:27+00:00
A major win would be if this would be adopted at some point in the future outside of the EU.

In Asia you can pay with Alipay in most countries. In South America you can pay QR codes via Mercado Pago (for example).

Or at least make this new system interoperable with the more established players worldwide without the need for a Visa/Mastercard.
by hearsathought | 2026-02-10 18:23:50+00:00
> I never invited the extra surveillance middleman

What's an extra layer of surveillance? Why accept the "credit and debit" surveillance middlemen but not the google/apple middlenmen?

What the world needs are "cash cards". Something equivalent to cash not tied to your identity that you can use in the real and virtual world.

I simply do not understand why governments or the private sector do not provide such options.
by gjsman-1000 | 2026-02-10 18:24:05+00:00
This is an assertion... but it's only a hope, a statement of faith, an assumption, not an objective analysis whether the parts can be made in any reasonable time frame. The most complex part of an EUV photolithography machine is the EUV light source, manufactured in the US; good luck reproducing that overnight. China's been trying for years.

Similarly, it also excludes any scenario where the US government, if there is some sort of blockade action, decides to take a visit to San Diego and see how the sausage is made. Should that occur, the US government could potentially be back in business before ASML.
by alexgarden | 2026-02-10 18:24:07+00:00
Thanks... It was magical at the time... I've thought a lot about why it was magical over the years... I think if you boil away all the space stuff, Homeworld was a story about people who knew in their hearts that they were special and destined for something greater than the universe was willing to allow. And they went through hell to discover that they were right. Looking back, I think that's a story a lot of us on this thread (inc. me) can relate to.

Here we are. Looks like the dorks won.
by flohofwoe | 2026-02-10 18:24:08+00:00
> WebGL worked perfectly fine without them

Except it didn't. In the GL programming model it's trivial to accidentially leak the wrong granular render state into the next draw call, unless you always reconfigure all states anyway (and in that case PSOs are strictly better, they just include too much state).

The basic idea of immutable state group objects is a good one, Vulkan 1.0 and D3D12 just went too far (while the state group granularity of D3D11 and Metal is just about right).

> Similarly, WebGPU could have done without that static binding mess.

This I agree with, pre-baked BindGroup objects were just a terrible idea right from the start, and AFAIK they are not even strictly necessary when targeting Vulkan 1.0.
by dogleash | 2026-02-10 18:24:32+00:00
> otherwise we would have heard complaints about the last 200 paradigm shifts in the industry over the past thirty years.

We have though. And they all received some version of "piss off, geezer."

Have you not noticed how the hype cycles and counter-hype haters buried most of the meaningful considered conversations about new technologies and methodologies across your career?
by tsimionescu | 2026-02-10 18:24:45+00:00
This completely misses the point of why the complex numbers were even invented. i is a number: it is one of the 2 solutions to the equation x^2 = -1 (the other being -i, of course). The whole point of inventing the complex numbers was to have a set of numbers for which any polynomial has a root. And sure, you can call this number (0,1) if you want to, but it's important to remember that C is not the same as R².

Your whole point about Taylor series is also wrong, as Taylor series are not approximations, they are actually equal to the original function if you take their infinite limit for the relevant functions here (e^x, sin x, cos x). So there is no approximation to be talked about, and no problem in identifying these functions with their Taylor series expansions.

I'd also note that there is no need to use Taylor series to prove Euler's formula. Other series that converge to e^x,cos x, sin x can also get you there.
by jstummbillig | 2026-02-10 18:24:46+00:00
> I always find it entertaining to hear people try to argue that what these companies do is soooooo difficult and that's why they're valuable. It's just multiple computers keeping a balance.

Roughly nobody argues that part is difficult.

> It's not complicated.

It's very complicated, for the reasons that all complex real world systems are. It's an absolute mess.

> Time to do away with these foreign entities.

I don't really mind the "foreign" part, but it's fairly wild that essential financial infrastructure is privatized, so let's!
by stego-tech | 2026-02-10 18:24:48+00:00
This is delightfully unhinged, spending an amazing amount of time describing their model and citing their methodologies before getting to the meat of the meal many of us have been braying about for years: whether the singularity actually happens or not is irrelevant so much as whether enough people believe it will happen and act accordingly.

And, yep! A lot of people absolutely believe it will and are acting accordingly.

It’s honestly why I gave up trying to get folks to look at these things rationally as knowable objects (“here’s how LLMs actually work”) and pivoted to the social arguments instead (“here’s why replacing or suggesting the replacement of human labor prior to reforming society into one that does not predicate survival on continued employment and wages is very bad”). Folks vibe with the latter, less with the former. Can’t convince someone of the former when they don’t even understand that the computer is the box attached to the monitor, not the monitor itself.
by mothballed | 2026-02-10 18:24:55+00:00
>I find this to be another under-discussed challenging of parenting: you can never even entertain the idea that "maybe this wasn't what I wanted"

Because there's no point in thinking about it. Your wife will ask if you want to leave, your children will hate you, and society will hate you, it will make you feel depressed, and meanwhile it won't accomplish anything. It's a dialogue only for yourself, once you acknowledge that, it becomes far less challenging to deal with and you can move forward with dealing with challenges in solvable ways.
by jnwatson | 2026-02-10 18:25:04+00:00
It is happening in embedded as well. I noticed just the upgrade from Gemini 2.5 to 3.0 Pro went from "I can get the assembly syntax mostly right but I don't understand register lifetimes" to "I can generate perfect assembly by hand".

I just saw a Reddit post yesterday about somebody that successfully one-shot in Gemini 2.5 the bare metal boot code for a particular board with the only input being the board's documentation.
by boca_honey | 2026-02-10 18:25:20+00:00
I don't socialize on Discord, I use it for work. That's why I don't care. I said that from the perspective of the people that are crying about Discord's move.

The weird thing is that you give your personal info, including your biometrics, to your government and your bank. You probably weren't thrilled when they asked you for your finger prints but eventually you gave them anyway because the alternative was not having a bank account. Everybody folds in the end.

What makes you think "corporations bad" but it's OK if governments and bankers do it? They're just as malicious and incompetent.

This is like being afraid to fly when you drive every day which is 200 times more dangerous.
by segmenta | 2026-02-10 18:25:42+00:00
Good question. We don’t pass the entire graph into the model. The graph acts as an index over structured notes. The assistant retrieves only the relevant notes by following the graph. That keeps context size bounded and avoids dumping raw history into the model.

For contradictory or stale information, since these are based on emails and conversations, we use the timestamp of the conversation to determine the latest information when updating the corresponding note. The agent operates on that current state.

That said, handling contradictions more explicitly is something we’re thinking about. For example, flagging conflicting updates for the user to manually review and resolve. Appreciate you raising it.
by randcraw | 2026-02-10 18:26:10+00:00
I don't think so. A decent C programmer could pretty much imagine how each line of C was translated into assembly, and with certainty, how every byte of data moved through the machine. That's been lost with the rise of higher-level languages, interpreters, their pseudocode, and the explosion of libraries and especially, the rise of cut-and-paste coding. IMO, 90% of today's developers have never thought about how their code connects to the metal. Starting with CS101 in Java, they've always lived entirely within an abstract level of source code. Coding with AI just abstracts that world a couple steps higher, not unlike the way that templates in 4GL languages attempted but failed to achieve, but of course, the abstraction has climbed far beyond that level now. Software craftsmanship has indeed left the building; only the product matters now.
by AndrewKemendo | 2026-02-10 18:26:12+00:00
Y’all are hilarious

The singularity is not something that’s going to be disputable

it’s going to be like a meteor slamming into society and nobody’s gonna have any concept of what to do - even though we’ve had literal decades and centuries of possible preparation

I’ve completely abandoned the idea that there is a world where humans and ASI exist peacefully

Everybody needs to be preparing for the world where it’s;

human plus machine

versus

human groups by themselves

across all possible categories of competition and collaboration

Nobody is going to do anything about it and if you are one of the people complaining about vibecoding you’re already out of the race

Oh and by the way it’s not gonna be with LLMs it’s coming to you from RL + robotics
by projektfu | 2026-02-10 18:26:17+00:00
While I think I see myself in the chart, I am not exactly sure what it says, especially the "Controlling for children under 5" and the time.

This seems like a good place for a study using matched subjects. Do 23 year olds of a certain generation spend more time with 7 year old children than another generation? Etc., etc., then you can calculate the baseline and excess for each generation
by yakshaving_jgt | 2026-02-10 18:26:17+00:00
> I don't like to title drop, but I am a Staff Data Engineer

I am a Chief Technology Officer[^1].

Your opinion here is common, and misguided.

Here is why: https://lexi-lambda.github.io/blog/2020/01/19/no-dynamic-typ...

---

[^1]: Literally nobody cares.
by mhurron | 2026-02-10 18:26:24+00:00
> Seems like a wonder drug to me

Not really, it's that hormones don't do just one thing in the body. GLP-1 isn't just some weight management hormone.

> The one that stuck with me from a few weeks ago went like 'I puked up my own poop.'

That happens if you let constipation go on far too long, and is not something unique to GLP-1 meds.
by scottious | 2026-02-10 18:26:33+00:00
> they are often purchased to carry around their kids' friends as well

but it requires an adult to drive that SUV. Car culture has made it so kids don't have autonomy to move themselves around anymore. When I was 8 I used to be able to walk/bike around the neighborhood to see my friends. Then we moved to car-dependent suburbia and things were so much worse. Having to depend on adults to go places added a lot of friction. The end result is that we'd usually just spend a lot of time inside the house.

Just look at the dystopia we live in right now: some parents literally drive a Chevy Tahoe or equivalent SUV to school to drop their kids off. How many school-aged children can you fit into the blindspot of a car like that? Are we at all surprised that parents don't want their kids walking to school alone?

I literally have to tell my son to hold his breath as we bike by long lines of SUVs idling right next to a school

> People do what works for them within their budget, which often is a larger vehicle when you have kids

It's funny that I don't drive and I transport my 3 kids around almost exclusively by bike. Yet people who live in my neighborhood with kids insist that they need an SUV for all trips. (yes, I can afford any car if I wanted one).

I even organize bike trips so other parents can bring their kids to events by bike so we don't need to get cars involved.

I think we've fooled ourselves into thinking we need cars far more than we actually do.

Yes, there are dystopian places that are completely car-dependent and don't even have sidewalks, but even in places that aren't like that people still insist that they need cars for everything.
by inanutshellus | 2026-02-10 18:26:34+00:00
We avoid catastrophe by thinking about new developments and how they can go wrong (and right).

Catastrophizing can be unhealthy and unproductive, but for those among us that can affect the future of our societies (locally or higher), the results of that catastophizing helps guide legislation and "Overton window" morality.

... I'm reminded of the tales of various Sci-Fi authors that have been commissioned to write on the effects of hypothetical technologies on society and mankind (e.g. space elevators, mars exploration)...

That said, when the general public worries about hypotheticals they can do nothing about, there's nothing but downsides. So. There's a balance.
by btilly | 2026-02-10 18:27:03+00:00
Building off of this point, consider the polynomial x^4 + 2x^2 + 2. Over the rationals Q, this is an irreducible polynomial. There is no way to distinguish the roots from each other. There is also no way to distinguish any pair of roots from any other pair.

But over the reals R, this polynomial is not irreducible. There we find that some pairs of roots have the same real value, and others don't. This leads to the idea of a "complex conjugate pair". And so some pairs of roots of the original polynomial are now different than other pairs.

That notion of a "complex conjugate pair of roots" is therefore not a purely algebraic concept. If you're trying to understand Galois theory, you have to forget about it. Because it will trip up your intuition and mislead you. But in other contexts that is a very meaningful and important idea.

And so we find that we don't just care about what concepts could be understood. We also care about what concepts we're currently choosing to ignore!
by intended | 2026-02-10 18:27:06+00:00
Oh they absolutely know. I've had some tragi-comic interactions with trust and safety folk in tech. You aren't going to be very popular in the firm telling people their stuff is bad for users.

Its easiest to think of tech firms as a tale of 2 different dichotomies. Internally, the firm is split between the people who are told to do best for their users and the people who are told to do best for the next quarterly earnings call.

So you may have a bright and shiny idea, but its not really going to increase time on site. And if you don't increase ToS, then that other social platform which is nibbling at your lunch, will starve you into an early grave.

The other strange juxtaposition is between tech firms trying to suggest actually better policy, while also sitting on data that they dont want to share because they are afraid it will get used against them. Which it absolutely will, because when people understand how the sausage is made, they are absolutely aghast.

This leaves regulators mostly in the dark, and then they are forced to act. At which point lobbying comes into play once again.

You wouldn't be alone in thinking this whole story sounds similar to Big Tobacco and Big Oil.
by protimewaster | 2026-02-10 18:27:09+00:00
One of the things that really confounds me about Discord is that so many groups will just keep coming back, even after they're booted, like they're in an abusive relationship.

I used to follow some of the console homebrew / piracy Discord servers from a distance. (For some reason, this was where you had to go to get some of the homebrew, even if it wasn't related to piracy.) They would always complain about servers getting shut down and people getting banned, but for some reason the idea of just moving to a different service was unacceptable. They need to be on Discord to get their 7th account banned and set the server back up for the 10th time. They could just host it on some service that won't shut them down (or self host), but they'd rather just keep getting banned on Discord. Why?