MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by TeMPOraL | 2026-02-24 08:49:19+00:00
> Why is there a chat bot sidebar???

To save users from copy-pasting to a separate chatbot instance, or installing sketchy extensions? It's clunky, but it's helpful and exposes users to more alternatives. AFAIK it can be made to connect to local models now, too.

LLM side tab is a powerful mode of AI use that most people haven't experienced yet; for some reason this space seems underdeveloped publicly relative to some proprietary/internal solutions at some companies that I have knowledge of.

> I don't want to use an "AI browser with AI features disabled", I just wanna use a regular web browser...

Is there a difference beyond branding? FWIW, branding does matter and I hope Firefox remains a "browser with (optional) AI" and not "AI browser".
by streetfighter64 | 2026-02-24 08:49:21+00:00
So you're saying it would be useful for an "AI assistant" to ask you for the base each time you give it a math problem? Do you also want it to ask you if you're using the conventional definitions of "2" and "+"? For the car wash, would you like it to ask if you're on Earth or on Mars? Do you have air in your tires? Is the car actually a toy car?

Some assumptions are always necessary and reasonable, that's why I'm saying the "AI" lacks common sense.
by bayindirh | 2026-02-24 08:49:59+00:00
Also, Ubuntu using a non-GPL licensed userland means they can pull all kinds of tricks to allow more TiVoization in the Linux ecosystem.

Combine this with what Amutable (systemd guys) are building, and you can have monolithic, closed source, non-user-modifiable Linux distributions or flavors.

Ubuntu and companies which embed Linux into their products will love this from a business perspective.

Consider: An end to end signature-enabled, verified, attestable, Linux environment with completely closed source util-linux and userland packages, down to the "ls" and "cd". Deliciously apocalyptic.

We're two stops away from this, and there are no shortage of momentum or funding to enable teh future.
by adebayoj | 2026-02-24 08:51:05+00:00
You are missing a few things, but you got some things right.

1) The is not an SAE in the way you think. It is a combination of a supervised + unsupervised layer that is constrained. An SAE is typically completely unsupervised, and applied post hoc. Here, we supervise 33k of the concepts with concepts that we carefully curated. We then have an unsupervised component (similar to a topk SAE) that we constrain to be independent from the supervised concepts. We don't do any of this post hoc by the way; this is a key constraint. I"ll get back to this. We train that unsupervised layer along with the model during pre-training.

2) Are the concepts or features causally influential for the output? We directly use the combination of the concepts for the lm head, which is a linear transform (with activation), so we can tell you, in closed form, the effect of ANY concept on the output logit for any token (or group of tokens) generated. It is not just causally related, it is constrained to do so.

3) Other points: we also make it so that you can trace the model outputs to the training data. This is an underrated interpretability knob. You know where, and what data, caused your model to learn a particular feature.

This is already a long comment, but I want to close on why our approach sidesteps all the issues with SAEs.
- If you train an SAE twice, on the same data + model, you'll get two different feature(s).
- In fact, there is no reason, why the model should pick features that are causally influential for the output.
- ALL of these problems stem from the fact that the SAE is trained AFTER you already trained your model. Training from scratch AND with supervision allows you to sidestep these issues, and even learn more disentangled representations.

Happy to more concretely justify the above. Great observations!
by uxhacker | 2026-02-24 08:51:23+00:00
What actually solves the issue is adding to the prompt.

Can we think about the what, where, when, and how of the following question. And then answer it.

I need to wash my car. The car wash is 200 m away. Should i walk or drive.

Let’s break it down logically using what / where / when / how, then decide.

⸻

1⃣ What

Task: wash your car.
This implies:
• The car must physically get to the wash.
• You are not just going there — the car itself is the object being moved.

So the real question is not “how do I get there?” but how does the car get there with minimal friction.

⸻

2⃣ Where
• Distance: 200 metres (very close).
• Urban context (Warsaw) likely means:
• short streets
• possible parking constraints
• pedestrians and local traffic.

At this distance:
• Walking time: ~2–3 minutes.
• Driving time: ~1 minute + manoeuvring + parking.

The movement time difference is negligible.

⸻

3⃣ When

Consider timing conditions:
• If it’s busy hours:
Driving may involve awkward turning, queueing, or waiting to re-park.
• If it’s quiet (early morning / off-peak):
Driving is frictionless.
• Weather factor:
Cold/rain → driving becomes more attractive.
Pleasant weather → walking becomes easier.

⸻

4⃣ How (decision mechanics)

Ask:

Option A — Drive

Pros:
• Car is already there.
• No need to return to fetch it.
• Most natural workflow: arrive → wash → leave.

Cons:
• Very short trip (slightly inefficient).
• Cold engine for a tiny distance (minor mechanical inefficiency).

Option B — Walk

Pros:
• Zero short-distance driving.
• Slightly more movement for you.

Cons:
• You still must drive the car to the wash anyway — unless someone else moves it.
• Creates an unnecessary extra step:
1. Walk there.
2. Come back with car.
3. Drive again.

This introduces process inefficiency.

⸻

5⃣ Decision (practical answer)

Drive.

Reason:
• The car must end up at the wash.
• Walking adds an extra transition with no real benefit.
• At 200 m, efficiency is about workflow simplicity, not distance.

⸻

Rule of thumb (useful mental model)
• If the object you need is the thing being serviced → drive it.
• If you are the thing being serviced → walk.

⸻

If you want, I can also give you a slightly more philosophical answer — because this is actually a nice tiny example of decision theory and friction costs.
by input_sh | 2026-02-24 08:51:46+00:00
Then you right-click on the AI button and click on "remove", but that's a whole different discussion than what you asked in the previous comment.

It's also why I really don't understand the need for a kill switch to begin with (other than pleasing annoying users), you don't need to wait for it. You can already get rid of the chatbot integration, there's a remove button already. It's also kind of annoyingly easy to misclick it, so they're just gonna remove it from those places and put it away in settings and those same annoying users will consider that a win.
by john01dav | 2026-02-24 08:52:01+00:00
Once this or something like it becomes widespread, won't sophisticated attackers simply test their attacks against this? So, for example, if it checks for `rm` invocations, just implemented the functionally of `rm` in the malware, or if it checks for exfiltration of data, then shell out to curl to do that in a different process.

If you think of making it so robust that this is impossible, you're just describing a container, which we already have.
by jll29 | 2026-02-24 08:52:05+00:00
In case you're looking for the opposite, not an AI "kill switch", but
a propaganda kill switch using AI to fight disinformatiom, try BiasScanner:

BiasScanner - Firefox Plug-In
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-CA/firefox/addon/bias-scanner/

Paper: https://arxiv.org/abs/2407.10829
Show HN: EasyClaw – one-click OpenClaw deployment for non-technical users
by gateszhang92 | 2026-02-24 08:52:23+00:00
We like OpenClaw, but setup is still too hard for many non-technical users.

EasyClaw is a one-click OpenClaw deployment service: https://www.easyclaw.pro

A short setup flow lets you choose a model provider and connect channels like Telegram, Discord, or WhatsApp. After that, your assistant can go live without managing VPS, Docker, or updates.

It's designed to be friendly for non-technical users, while still fast for developers who just want a simple deployment path.

Would love feedback on:
- pricing clarity
- trust/security messaging
- onboarding friction
by zmmmmm | 2026-02-24 08:52:47+00:00
that doesn't bother me but what is actually suspicious is persistently only mentioning "accuracy" but not sensitivity / specificity / precision etc.

Basically, almost everybody doesn't have Alzheimers. Sampling from the general population you can get better than 94.5% accuracy just by returning negative on every test. You have to know sensitivity and specificity separately to make any informed judgement ... which they try extremely hard not to tell you.
by johnnyanmac | 2026-02-24 08:54:38+00:00
>Propaganda won't contest that starvation is occurring. It will claim that the reason for the starvation is a specific foe, internal or external e.g. It's China's fault we're starving or the immigrants have caused this food security crisis and once they're gone we'll have enough food for our own people, etc. They'll workshop and see which ones poll well, then run with the talking point that seems to perform best.

I don't know if China will work. It's not halfway around the world, but that's the mentality many people have of it. They won't buy that a country on the other side if taking food from their local grocery store.

But it doesn't matter. they blame it on: everyone gets hurt. People fighting on the streets, charital servings overran, private businesses raided, governmental buildings having doors banged on (assuming the soldiers don't simply desert their duties). Then that escalates to riots and perhaps small skirmishes for remaining resources.

When you're truly hungry, nothing is beyond reproach. And I don't think America has a true famine to point to as an example. That's pretty much why it's the one thing all politicians will avoid at all cost. a famine will make a depression seem like a cloudy day.
by gateszhang92 | 2026-02-24 08:54:58+00:00
Hi HN — maker here.

I built EasyClaw because several non-technical friends wanted OpenClaw, but got stuck on setup and maintenance.

What EasyClaw handles today:
- guided setup (model + channel config)
- deployment and runtime management
- less ops burden for non-technical users

Would especially love feedback on:
1) Is the value proposition clear vs self-hosting?
2) Is pricing understandable/trustworthy?
3) What would block you from trying it once?

Happy to answer technical questions in detail.
by antitoxic | 2026-02-24 08:55:48+00:00
The wallet ecosystem is still really varied at the moment. Our implementation is unlinkable. So an issuer cannot track where you use the attribute. And a verifier cannot see that you've used the same attribute multiple times with their system. This is great for privacy and tracking protection, but not so great for other things. For example, people sending their QR codes to other people with the correct attribute (like maybe an underage person sending an 18+ check to an adult), is hard to solve for because they are unlinkable.

Most systems right now have you load data in your phone. Then when a check happens, you scan a QR code. You then get a screen on your phone saying X wants to know Y and Z about you, do you want to share this information? Then you just choose yes or no.

For your social media example. You would just get a QR code on your pc, then pull out your phone, scan and verify, then start browsing social media on your pc.
by thrance | 2026-02-24 08:56:19+00:00
I think you know perfectly well what I meant by "slaves". I trust you are able to recognize an hyperbole when you see one.

Most of humanity lives with little prospect of improving their lives through its work, and OP's comment about capitalism allowing everyone to do so is just patently wrong. Living in countries without social nets or worker protections, people are forced to take whatever "opportunities" are given to them and toil away for a wage that doesn't equate one one hundredth of what they output. Either that or they starve, hence the lack of freedom and therefore why "slave" feels appropriate, even with a lack of physical "whips and chains".
by wiseowise | 2026-02-24 08:56:27+00:00
> Can you name me another time when humanity has run out of useful work to do?

Can you name me another time when big swaths of highly paid population were laid off due to redundancy and how did it go for the population?

Also, another hint: I couldn’t care less what is going to happen to “humanity”. “Humanity” isn’t the one who pays my bills and puts food on my table.
by hyperman1 | 2026-02-24 08:56:31+00:00
I wonder if we look at it from a too narrow perspective. We use the C ABI because it's the only game in town. We should be aiming for a safe cross language ABI. I'd love to make Rust, C, PHP, Swift, Java and Python easily talk to each other inside 1 process.

It should extend the C ABI with things like strings, arrays, objects with a way to destruct them, and provide some safety guarantees.

As an example, the windows world has COM, which is at the core pretty reasonable for its design constraints, even if gnarly sometimes.
by adrian_b | 2026-02-24 08:57:33+00:00
TFA is about the fact that originally the vertebrates had at least 3 eyes, 2 lateral eyes and 1 median eye (pointing upwards towards the sky, in the middle of the head).

Most vertebrates, with the exception of a few species, like tuatara, have lost the middle eye.

The subject of the parent article is that it was expected that if the third eye was lost, the retinas of the 2 lateral eyes that have been preserved are derived from the retinas of the 2 ancient lateral eyes, but despite this expectation, the retinas of the modern lateral eyes of the vertebrates are derived from the retina of the ancient middle eye.
by theodric | 2026-02-24 08:57:59+00:00
I appreciate what you're trying to say, but here's a counter-example: .22lr ammunition is also extremely inexpensive per unit, but I can't buy that at all in Ireland without extensive, recurring background checks and a demonstrated continuing need for access. If a government decides you don't get to have something, they are well within their power to effectively eliminate it. I can no more make an ESP32 at home than ammunition. I reckon it's harder, in fact.

[To the government Cornholio reading this and panicking because I mentioned a gun thing: no, I'm not threatening you.]
by ben_w | 2026-02-24 08:58:55+00:00
Yeah, no. What you described here and what I described before are not programming errors, they're data errors. An A* route finder isn't going to know a bridge is out unless it is told, an LLM won't know that case history unless it is told.

I'd say the real problem with using an LLM for this kind of thing is not what the LLM writes, but that the act of writing helps the human understand their community, so when it is skipped that understanding remains absent. It's like cheating on your homework.
by krige | 2026-02-24 08:59:13+00:00
Context dependant phrases, from simple pronouns to whole domain specific terms, are still randomly wrong, sometimes appallingly so. Hallucinations still happen. Auto-AI translation youtube uses is, bluntly, horrid. Any jokes, even obvious ones, are still fumbled frequently.

LLM based translation looks more convincing but requires the same level of scrutiny that previous tools did. From a workflow POV they only added higher compute costs for very questionable gains.
Show HN: ForceBreak – A Break Reminder with Friction
by glidea | 2026-02-24 09:00:06+00:00
I posted an Ask HN about forcing myself to take breaks. Got some great responses (drink water, get a cat, etc).

I ended up building the tool I mentioned – ForceBreak. Now it's on the App Store.

Core idea: full-screen overlay + cooldown before you can skip. Those few seconds are enough to make you think twice.

Native Swift, lives in menu bar, minimal footprint.

Would love to hear what you think.
by defrost | 2026-02-24 09:00:27+00:00
Yep .. quite a lot of them, for substantial periods of time.

Contrary to expectations it didn't seem to affect the tubes or tyres, shorten lifespans, etc.

FWiW I grew up in fairly remote parts of the world and we repaired pretty much everything as much as possible with what we had - aircraft, helicopters, radios, etc.

My first thought, to be honest, was "Why not just grab a spare spark plug from the boot?"

I'm guessing not so many people stock spares when driving so much anymore.
by r0ze-at-hn | 2026-02-24 09:00:27+00:00
Cure is the wrong word. Alzheimer’s can be best described as a failure of a system and "debris" accumulates faster than it can be "cleared". There are many moving parts and everyone is unique about the cause of their system failure.

Wrote up my current systems understanding here https://metamagic.substack.com/p/the-alzheimers-equation, but it makes clear why treatments that target only one variable are mathematically doomed to fail to work on everyone and why there will never be a single "cure". It explains without needing to read 10,000 papers why we keep getting research talking about treatment X helps in some, but not all cases or symptom Y is associated in some, but not all, etc.
by eclecticfrank | 2026-02-24 09:00:49+00:00
Does anyone know what kind of apps Rapidata questions are integrated in? I suppose they are using ad-like integrations to ask users for feedback. Their website only states:

By integrating in a large range of mobile apps (3000+) we have access to a large crowd of over 10 million users responding to our micro tasks/surveys - which we call Rapids. They are spread all over the world, so we can get human input from over 160 countries. Due to the immense size, we can parallelize tasks and get near instant results.
by vintermann | 2026-02-24 09:01:37+00:00
Hvis hun ser på seg selv som norsk, så har ikke jeg noe problem med det.

If she sees herself has Norwegian, I have no problem with that.

We should let people identify with whatever they want. Identity is deeply personal - that's kind of the whole thing with identity - and as long as you don't use your identity to argue for something that's objectively wrong (such as rewriting history to suit it) then it's fine. If someone wants to identify as the same kind of thing as me, I may be flattered or embarrassed or worst case offended, but let's go for the facts, not with the identity.
by streetfighter64 | 2026-02-24 09:01:41+00:00
Well, I don't think you get my point based on your last question. My point is that there is no logical fallacy in the car wash question, just like there is none in 2+2. How is it any more logically flawed than asking, "I want to shop for groceries. The shop 50 meters away. Should I walk or drive?".
by jeroenhd | 2026-02-24 09:01:53+00:00
I felt like the arguments behind my opinion were implicit.

Consistently not showing bias makes for trustworthy lists. Nobody (well, nobody reasonable I'd argue) will trust an IP blacklist from a major hosting company that actively excludes their own customers.

As for banning customers that get blacklisted, this does actually happen, especially on the more affordable cloud hosts that get plagued with massive scraper and bot loads. Anything from suspended, inaccessible servers that require manual intervention to network caps or CPU load caps. This is a rather extreme measure, but not one uncommon or even unacceptable depending on the exact IP blacklist you managed to trigger.
Show HN: AI Jam Sessions – MCP server that teaches AI to practice piano
by mikeyfrilot | 2026-02-24 09:02:09+00:00
Built this as an experiment in giving LLMs embodied musical experience. It's an MCP server with 120 MIDI songs across 12 genres. Each genre has one fully annotated exemplar the model studies first. The rest are raw MIDI waiting to be learned.

The model can read sheet music, play songs through your speakers, view an SVG piano roll it can read back to verify what it played, and write to a practice journal that persists across sessions. Learning compounds over time.
by godelski | 2026-02-24 09:03:13+00:00
The internet is a global communication system. So to do what? To do exactly that. The difference though is that it isn't controlled by anyone. It doesn't need to be, so no one needs to have that power, no one should have that power. A global communication system where conversations are private by default, just like they are online.

The problem with the current system is that the information was just too free. You could just drop in on anyone's conversation, like it or not. People started hoarding that information and look what we got: surveillance capitalism. The system reinforces itself to watch you, to tell you what to do, what to think, not just what to buy. And the system just wants to keep growing, so it's just going to continue to do that more and more. Sure, there's some nice things we get for the loss of all our privacy, but it comes at the cost of your humanity. They'll be costs to this new system too. It won't be all rainbows and sunshine, but I think it'll be better than this gloomy smog ridden world we have now.

We live in a time where it's actually possible to have a functioning world with no kings. Personally, I'm tired of them, aren't you?
by dmfdmf | 2026-02-24 09:03:38+00:00
Pi is not a number, it stands for a method (i.e. infinite series) to calculate a number. Conceptually it is the ratio of circumferance to the diameter of a circle which are incommensurate quanties, i.e. can't be represented as a rational number.

It is a subtle distinction but important. We define the exact value based on the context. If I am tiling my circular patio then 3.14 is fine to calculate how many tiles I need. If I going to the moon or mars then I need more decimals or I will miss the target.
by marmakoide | 2026-02-24 09:03:46+00:00
Don't look at the end destination, look at the journey to the destination

* Learn low-level details of a basic but real-world CPU

* Practice the brain gymnastic of programming an atypical Turing-complete computer

Your created new connections in your brain, put to use some of the old established connections. Having a machine spit-out the emulator would rob you of all that. Like, you can drive from A to B, but running for A to B can do you much good.
by franga2000 | 2026-02-24 09:04:00+00:00
Why is there a search bar? A browser is more than a URL bar and a rendering engine.

Search is a common operation for many people and having a unified entrypoint for different search providers in the browser makes sense.

Chatbots are also quite common now and having a single chat box that users can use with any chatbot provider (even local ones!) is a good feature. If anything it helps break the big players' chances at a monopoly, since it makes switching between providers easier.

Why is it so hard for people to just...not use a feature they don't like. Sure, the popup was annoying, but I still like that it let me know this feature exists. I don't use it now, but it might be useful to me in the future or so I can recommend it to someone who needs something like that.
by apparent | 2026-02-24 09:04:34+00:00
According to your line of thinking, anything that results from nature can be attributed to nurture because "we can't prove 100% that it isn't nurture". This is a terrific example of an unfalsifiable hypothesis.

Secondly, even your description of your own experience undermines your theory. You say you didn't know what to do with your kids, so you didn't want to spend as much time with them. That is different from what I said my dad-friends have expressed, which is lack of interest that is not related to not knowing what to do with them. They just don't have an interest in being with a baby/toddler. Their experience is not yours, but you try to twist it to fit your narrative.

In general, it makes sense to be open-minded about how others' internal states, perceptions, etc. When someone says they don't have the same reason for doing something that you do, maybe don't tell them that yes they do. This is good general practice, but it's especially important for personal and perceptual matters, where outsiders literally have no idea why someone is doing something.