MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by WorldMaker | 2026-02-14 18:43:04+00:00
The uncertainty is actually an interesting behind-the-scenes story that the mini-TV Channel hoping to grow up into a full TV Channel that B5 was distributed under was PTEN [0] and leading up to and during Season 4 of Babylon 5 PTEN split in a weird divorce to form the WB TV Network and the UPN Network. (It got its wish, it grew up into not one but two competing TV networks.) Season 5 was a last minute pick up/rescue by one of WB's cable networks, TNT. (TNT wanted more than just one season which led to the mess that was Crusade. As a Crusade fan, TNT was both the best and the worst of what could happen to B5.)

(History repeating itself, and Babylon 5 being cursed to ironic timing, the WB Network and UPN eventually remerged to become The CW. A Babylon 5 reboot project development was started at The CW this decade, just before WB Discovery decided to get out of the broadcast TV business and start a fresh divorce at The CW somewhat resembling the PTEN divorce.)

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prime_Time_Entertainment_Netwo...
by scylx | 2026-02-14 18:43:17+00:00
I posted my print studio Axisophy on here years ago under a different name. I've recently relaunched it and have been spending most of my GPU time on the Mersenne series - strange attractors, phase portraits, Weyl symmetry projections from E8 root systems, that kind of thing.

The renders are done on A100s and RTX 4090s via RunPod. Each piece is computed at 200+ megapixels (enough for 40-inch square prints at 300dpi) with thousands of seed trajectories iterated through millions of steps. The detail at full resolution is genuinely interesting - you get computational artefacts in the convergence regions that look almost like brushstrokes.

I realise most of you are using this hardware for LLMs and diffusion models. I'm using it to plot billions of points on a plane and make nice pictures from it. Different priorities...

Also on the site are some vintage computer and tech illustrations from a book I have coming out in May with Laurence King (https://www.laurenceking.com/products/gizmo) - a few of those might scratch an itch around here.
by amluto | 2026-02-14 18:43:27+00:00
One could modify this experiment to have very obvious effects. For example:

- Run the amplifier output through a banana or mud. Even if this somehow works and you can hear the sound, you’ll probably smell it as you cook and/or electrolyze your conductor :) (The banana likely works because the load impedance is very high in the experiment they did. The load impedance with an actual speaker is typically in the ballpark of 8 ohms. I admit I haven’t stuck a pair of multimeter probes in a banana lately, let alone done a proper I-V or AC impedance measurement.)

- Use really long cables. It’s not especially rare to be able to hear and even understand AM radio that gets accidentally picked up on a long cable and converted to baseband by some accidental nonlinearity in the amplifier.

- Use the actual outdoor mud on a rainy day as your conductor. I bet you can get some very loud mains hum like that.

Even audiophiles can probably identify these effects!
by lich_king | 2026-02-14 18:43:37+00:00
It really depends on what you want to do. Start with a list of projects you want to build. Are they really robotics or just home automation? If you have no experience with embedded programming, I'd start with home automation or other simple hardware stuff first. Learn how to read sensors and operate lights or motors before you get any deeper into the craft.

There are three reasons why "real" robotics is harder. First, to navigate unconstrained environments by means other than wheels, you need to learn a fair amount of kinematics and control theory. Second, your robot will need to build a map of the operating environment, which often requires complex sensing (lidars, cameras) and a lot of compute power. Even something as basic as a Roomba is no small feat, and these things get stuck a lot. Third, it's just hard to come up with practical applications for simple robots outside of industrial production lines.

Once you have that figured out, decide how much you want to learn. Do you want to do it the hard way, which would mean moving more slowly and working your way up from first principles and probably 3D printing or machining your own parts... or do you want to get results as soon as possible, in which case, you probably buy a Linux single-board computer and put it on top of an existing robot kit? The trade-off with the first approach is that it will take you months or years to get where you want to be. The downside of the second is that you're limited to premade kits and software components, and once you exhaust the possibilities there, you kinda hit a wall.
by ozim | 2026-02-14 18:43:38+00:00
I am quite sure live band will definitely sound worse than most sound systems.

My experience is I hanged out with one band in a garage where they were practicing and I attended couple live music shows in pubs.

Main upside of those live music shows is that they are not "perfect" like playing a record and each one of the gigs will be off here or there, tempo somewhere will be off or a tune will be off - or you are just having enough beers you don't care pick your way :)
by instagib | 2026-02-14 18:44:09+00:00
I have a script that creates a hash based on all files in a directory - photos 2004. Then save the hash separately to a text file.

I have 3 copies so I can check the archive version, active storage volume, and local version to see if any lost integrity in the transfer process.

I’m curious how it would compare against my old CDs and DVDs that were previous backups. My work does something similar for tape drive data.
by phil21 | 2026-02-14 18:44:24+00:00
I'm not sure it's a really great experiment though?

Outside of the hyper-crazies, no one is really stating that a 6-12 inches of conductor is going to make a giant difference in audio quality. Yes, I'm aware of the super-premium-gold-plated-platinum-encrusted 12" audio patch cords available. But almost no one really makes serious arguments those do anything.

I don't think running a 50ft banana is going to have similar performance to a 50ft properly-sized copper conductor though.

Where you get into the "debate" is the difference between buying a spool of 12ga stranded copper wiring from Home Depot, or buying the same thing only with de-oxygenated or whatever silliness some audiophile brand is selling for 10x the cost.

There are levels to things. I imagine copper speaker wire to be essentially fungible. Just size it to your length of run and max power needs. Calculate the total resistance for your wire run and done/done. All professional level sound installations for venues and what-have-you do this already.

This sort of test just seems to prove nothing in either direction other than provide bait for folks to point and laugh (or defend) in comment sections. Consider me baited, I suppose!
by rayiner | 2026-02-14 18:44:38+00:00
You’re comparing apples and oranges. These administrative warrants are very limited in scope. They are closer to the subpoenas that even ordinary civilian lawyers can send third parties in the course of litigation. They don’t give the government the power to bust into Google’s data center. The target has to respond or else challenge the warrant in court, but ordinary civilian subpoenas function the same way.
by svilen_dobrev | 2026-02-14 18:44:59+00:00
... personal psychology aside (btw somehow i have never seen anyone taking on the top-winners but anyway)

but what i see, organisational-health-wise, is a way-too-long and totally broken communication chain. A Director presents a vision and does not communicate it to related/interested internal parties, someone on the floor invents something or develops something by the spec and does not show a preliminary versions / check ground / seek feedback while in-process, and how many levels in-between those, just one - or more - doing nothing to facilitate the information flow?

> "Why do I keep creating the same dynamic?"

add, in that same sort of corporative jungle..
by Youden | 2026-02-14 18:45:10+00:00
The text of the initiative is here: https://www.bk.admin.ch/ch/d/pore/vi/vis555t.html

It's primarily an attempt to control immigration.

At 9.5M, the government has to start limiting the issuance of residence permits and start renegotiating international commitments that drive population growth.

At 10M, the government has to terminate the free movement agreement with the EU.

The right-leaning parties bring up something like this every few years. They always get shot down.
by spectre3d | 2026-02-14 18:45:43+00:00
Seems like they’re locking every forum thread that is opened on this topic. I think it’s unreasonable for us to have to wait until Tuesday for an answer, this should be treated much more seriously.

As well, at least one ars forum member (whoisit, 22y, Subscriptor, natch) doesn’t understand what “angry screed” means:
see
https://arstechnica.com/civis/threads/um-what-happened-to-th...

That’s a really over-the-top response to a reasonable post, almost to the point of trolling.
Is there any way to discuss this egregious use of gen AI without getting banned or the topic locked?
by justin66 | 2026-02-14 18:45:46+00:00
It’s been a while so I just viewed a video of the ending of the game. I don’t know that he ever really “got” it (either version of him, at the end). It would have been a more emotionally complex game if he’d made his peace with the reality of the situation mid-game (as almost any player would have done by that point) and had a choice about whether he uploaded himself to the Ark, or alternatively perhaps just helped Catherine finish her project and then stayed behind. Just a thought.
by pjmlp | 2026-02-14 18:45:55+00:00
In the end it is a matter of which industries the Rust community sees as relevant to gain adoption, and which ones the community is happy that Rust will never take off.

Do you know one industry that likes very much tossing closed-source proprietary blobs over the wall?

Game studios, and everyone that works in the games industry providing tooling for AAA studios.
by kubb | 2026-02-14 18:46:03+00:00
Its about the mental model of the codebase, mentioned by the GP.

Somehow my experience is that no matter how much documentation or context there is, eventually the model will do the wrong thing because it won't be able to figure out something that makes sense in context of the design direction, even if it's painstakingly documented. So eventually the hardest work - that of understanding everything down to the smallest detail - will have to be done anyway.

And if all it was misinig was more documentation... Then the agent should have been able to generate that as the first step. But somehow it can't do it in a way that helps it suceed at the task.
by nozzlegear | 2026-02-14 18:46:08+00:00
IMO it's because people have learned not to trust LLMs. It's like using AI code generators – they're a useful tool if you know what you're doing, but you need to review the material it produces and verify that it works (in this case, verify that what it says is correct). When they're used as a source in conversations, we never know if the "dev" has "reviewed the code," so to speak, or just copy and pasted.

As for why people don't like LLMs being wrong versus a human being wrong, I think it's twofold:

1. LLMs have a nasty penchant for sounding overly confident and "bullshitting" their way to an answer in a way that most humans don't. Where we'd say "I'm not sure," an LLM will say "It's obviously this."

2. This is speculation, but at least when a human is wrong you can say "hey you're wrong because of [fact]," and they'll usually learn from that. We can't do that with an LLM because they don't learn (in the way humans do), and in this situation they're a degree removed from the conversation anyway.
by mytailorisrich | 2026-02-14 18:46:31+00:00
I think you are being purposedly obtuse.

To give up being an independent and sovereign country to become a province of a federal EU is indeed national suicide, literally. It's choosing death as a country.

Facing he "Russian threat" obviously does not require this, this is a transparent fallacy and scare tactic to push the EU narrative. Europe faced a worse Russian threat during the Cold War without giving up national sovereignty. Cooperation and military alliances do not require national suicide.

Your replies are very good illustrations of the dellusion and, really post-truth disinformation we are constantly fed in Europe, unfortunately if you do believe what you write. This is becoming very sinister.

The Baltic states used to be in the USSR so I doubt that they would be willing to surrender their sovereignty again. Perhaps that's exactly why the people are never asked if that's what they want!
by ninjagoo | 2026-02-14 18:46:32+00:00
Publishers like The Guardian and NYT are blocking the IA/Wayback Machine. 20% of news websites are blocking both IA and Common Crawl. As an example, https://www.realtor.com/news/celebrity-real-estate/james-van... is unarchivable, with IA being 429ed while the site is accessible otherwise.
by x0x0 | 2026-02-14 18:46:33+00:00
Everyone's dancing around the problem. People refuse to pay the cost of producing high quality news. Advertising doesn't come close to cutting it.

You can see a new generation of media that charge subscribers enough to make a modest profit, and it's things like Talking Points Memo ($70 base cost per year), Defector ($70 or $80 I think), The Information ($500), 404 ($100), etc.
by WhitneyLand | 2026-02-14 18:47:37+00:00
One question is should the writer be dismissed from staff. Or can they stay on at Ars if for example, it was explained as an unintentional mistake while using an LLM to restructure his own words and it accidentally inserted the quotes and slipped through. We’re all going through a learning process with this AI stuff right?

I think for some people this could be a redeemable mistake at their job. If someone turns in a status report with a hallucination, that’s not good clearly but the damage might be a one off / teaching moment.

But for journalists, I don’t think so. This is crossing a sacred boundary.
by AngryData | 2026-02-14 18:48:07+00:00
The biggest problem with audio hardware businesses is 95% of what they say about their products is marketing bullshit. It doesn't take a lot of money to get really good gear, if you put in the research, but its very easy to get ripped off if you don't, spending multiple times more than you need to get a worse result.

Just look at the boxes for half this stuff, quoting peak power for speakers instead of RMS, which is the equivalent of saying "This LED hits 50 watts for .00001 seconds during startup! Wow so amazing! (but don't look at the average 1 watt of output past that)"

The speakers, the cables, the AMPs, even digital source cables nearly all have 90% marketing budgets which drive up the price of many products without increasing quality at all.
by general1465 | 2026-02-14 18:48:53+00:00
Translation:
Google has criticized the European Union’s intentions to achieve digital sovereignty through open-source software. The company warned that Brussels’ policies aimed at reducing dependence on American tech companies could harm competitiveness. According to Google, the idea of replacing current tools with open-source programs would not contribute to economic growth.

Kent Walker, Google’s president of global affairs and chief legal officer, warned of a competitive paradox that Europe is facing. According to the Financial Times, he said that creating regulatory barriers would be harmful in a context of rapid technological advancement. His remarks came just days after the European Commission concluded a public consultation assessing the transition to open-source software.

Google’s chief legal officer clarified that he is not opposed to digital sovereignty, but recommended making use of the “best technologies in the world.” Walker suggested that American companies could collaborate with European firms to implement measures ensuring data protection. Local management or servers located in Europe to store information are among the options.

The EU is preparing a technological sovereignty package aimed at eliminating dependence on third-party software, such as Google’s. After reviewing proposals, it concluded that reliance on external suppliers for critical infrastructure entails economic risks and creates vulnerabilities. The strategy focuses not only on regulation but also on adopting open-source software to achieve digital sovereignty.

According to Google, this change would represent a problem for users. Walker argues that the market moves faster than legislation and warns that regulatory friction will only leave European consumers and businesses behind in what he calls “the most competitive technological transition we have ever seen.” As it did with the DMA and other laws, Google is playing on fear. Kent Walker suggested that this initiative would stifle innovation and deny people access to the “best digital tools.”

The promotion of open-source software aims to break dependence on foreign suppliers, especially during a period of instability caused by the Trump administration. The European Union has highlighted the risks of continuing under this system and proposes that public institutions should have full control over their own technology.

According to a study on the impact of open-source software, the European Commission found that it contributes between €65 billion and €95 billion annually to the European Union’s GDP. The executive body estimates that a 10% increase in contributions to open-source software would generate an additional €100 billion in growth for the bloc’s economy.
by jauntywundrkind | 2026-02-14 18:49:34+00:00
I had a very productive useful day, but was working on ~8 things at once.

I guess I do prefer slow but better than fast but ok. GLM-4.6 was pretty alright, but I had a hard time trusting it, felt like it took a lot of my time in any trickier area.

Now yes the time to first token is being somewhat brutal. Its hard to wait for. But damn is the output just so much better. It's so much better about really digging in to reference materials, is more aggressively seeing the lay of the land, and the output quality is so much higher.

It sucks, yes, is definitely a bit annoying especially when compared to how fast so many other services are. But I still will say, I treasure that step up in output enough that I would absolutely not go back, if this is just how it is now. On the net the trust ability I have here now with GLM-5 makes that generally a pretty easy tradeoff for me!

I should probably try adding a Flash model to my OpenCode though!! Cause sometimes I just need the thing done and it's not hard!!!!
by adrian_b | 2026-02-14 18:49:58+00:00
Platinum was worked mainly in the territory of present Colombia and Ecuador.

Some jewelry may have been traded until North America, but they would have been certainly rare by the Mayan.

Because the South-Americans did not have iron or iron alloys, but they had rather abundant gold and silver and platinum, the usage of precious metals was not confined to decoration and currency. For instance the use of nails made of gold-copper-silver alloy was frequent and also various tools were made from such a gold alloy.

Pure gold, silver or copper are extremely soft, but their alloys can have a decent strength, even if not comparable to steel.
by suzzer99 | 2026-02-14 18:50:05+00:00
> 75% of welfare is going to immigrants

This is complete nonsense. Immigrants use less social services than the average American. Here's the not remotely liberal Cato institute: https://www.cato.org/blog/immigrants-still-use-much-less-wel...

"There is a persistent myth that the United States lacks an extensive welfare state, despite all the evidence to the contrary. One look at this brief will disabuse you of any such belief. Total spending on means-tested welfare and entitlement programs climbed to about $3.4 trillion in 2023. About $823 billion went to means-tested programs such as Medicaid, SNAP, SSI, TANF, and refundable tax credits, while approximately $2.3 trillion was spent on old-age entitlement programs like Social Security and Medicare.

Native-born Americans use an average of $7,134 in old age entitlements and $3,638 in means-tested benefits in 2023. By comparison, immigrants used $4,864 in old age entitlements and $3,370 in means-tested benefits. If native-born Americans had consumed the same per capita dollar amount of means-tested welfare and entitlement benefits as all immigrants, the total expenditures on these programs would have been about $715 billion less in 2023. That’s a tremendous savings, even for the federal government, considering it is approximately 42 percent of the federal budget deficit in 2023. We are tempted to suggest that native-born Americans should start assimilating toward immigrant levels of welfare and entitlement consumption.

Across nearly all major welfare and entitlement programs, immigrants consume less per capita than native-born Americans, but not uniformly so. They use much less Social Security and Medicare, but only slightly less Medicaid. Immigrants also use SNAP, SSI, and TANF at lower rates and lower dollar amounts per person, but those programs are relatively small compared to Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. Immigrants receive more per capita through the relatively small Earned Income Tax Credit and the Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) program. For the latter, immigrants use $3 more per year on a per capita basis than native-born Americans. Immigrants are less likely than native-born Americans to use any welfare program and, when they do, use fewer of them for a shorter period. The typical lifetime abuser of welfare was born in this country."
by Arainach | 2026-02-14 18:50:13+00:00
>it was a bit too much of the social stuff

Because clearly none of the other series focused on social stuff, except...

TOS, which featured an interracial cast (and kiss) in the 1960s, where nearly every episode was thinly-veiled commentary on communism, where they visited a literal Nazi planet, where they had a black woman as a bridge officer (in the 1960s)...

TNG, which went into deep moral arcs, looked into military tribunals, witch hunts, had entire movies about mindless bloodlust and environmentalism/colonianism, and so much more...

VOY which.....honestly, if you don't get the point by now I'm not going to spend more time listing examples.

Star Trek was BORN "woke" and has always been there, and anyone who claims otherwise was never really paying attention. Star Trek EXISTS because Gene Roddenberry put social commentary into his show "The Lieutenant" which was too controversial for the actual US Military so he had to make a new show set in the future to make all the same points but with less oversight from crusty generals.
by ndriscoll | 2026-02-14 18:50:36+00:00
Wouldn't a referendum to limit immigration be the way to reveal their preference? Obviously immigrants would tautologically prefer to move there. How is a citizen to "vote" against that via the market? Discriminate and refuse to rent/sell to any immigrants? Charge them more to try to offset their perceived loss of utility? What portion of the country is even in a position to be asked the question via the market?
by ziml77 | 2026-02-14 18:51:38+00:00
Did that actually have hard data to back that up? Because publications that don't use subscriptions still need people to show up and look at ads. So they are motivated to publish the clickbaitiest things possible. Maybe the difference in that case is that they will publish content that attracts people from various political extremes? That certainly wouldn't make them less polarized though.