MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by kmad | 2026-02-02 00:54:20+00:00
Was anyone else's first thought to put this through Claude and see what it thought? Who knows if it's in the training data, etc. but I fed in the gist of the raw asm and didn't see any other network requests.

Opus 4.5 did pretty well considering it was raw assembly:

---
This is a classic hardware dongle detection routine for DOS/x86 systems from the 1980s-90s era. Here's what it does:

Purpose

Copy protection - it detects whether a specific hardware key (dongle) is connected to the parallel port.

Step-by-Step Breakdown

1. Find Parallel Port (lines 0000-0015)
- Searches the BIOS data area (0000:0408) for parallel port addresses
- Checks up to 4 possible LPT ports
- Returns if no port found

2. Save Port State (lines 0016-001D)
- Disables interrupts (CLI)
- Reads and saves current data and control register values
- Pushes them onto stack for later restoration

3. Initialization Sequence (lines 001F-003A)
- Sends specific control signals: 0x82, 0x80, 0x82
- Uses precise timing delays (0x9C40 and 0x3880 loops)
- Prepares the dongle for interrogation

4. Challenge-Response Loop (lines 003C-005F)
- Runs 120 iterations (0x78)
- Each iteration:
- Sends 0xA2 to control port
- Reads status register
- Checks bit 6 (0x40 mask)
- Records timing of specific responses in BL and BH registers
- Looks for a response at iteration 0x76

5. Cleanup (lines 0061-006F)
- Writes 0x00 to reset
- Restores original port state
- Re-enables interrupts (STI)
- Returns with BX containing the challenge result

The dongle hardware would respond to these electrical signals with specific timing patterns that only genuine dongles would produce, making it very difficult to crack without the physical hardware.

---
by lmm | 2026-02-02 00:55:52+00:00
> Why would you want to do this?

It makes life much easier when you want to use fancier types. E.g. if you want to be able to have ListOfLength[4], it's much nicer to be able to use normal 4 which you can use normal arithmetic on (and therefore say that when you append ListOfLength[x] to ListOfLength[y] you get ListOfLength[x + y]), than to have to encode everything in types and make it some kind of ListOfLength[SpecialTypeLevel4] (and then when you append the two lists you get a ListOfLength[TypeLevelAdditionIsCommutative[TypeLevelAdd[x, y]]#Result] or something).

To make that work you have to be able to use values as type parameters, i.e. types, so you have to be able to have e.g. types of type int, as well as types of type type, and it all gets a lot simpler and easier to work with if you just say that types have type type.

> And why is no distinction made between `typeof(type)` and `type`?

Well that's the whole point, to say that type is of type type.

> And doesn't the entire problem go away if you distinguish between `typeof(type)`, which is a value whose type is `type`?

No, because why would you ever use it as a value? The whole point of typeof is that it gives you a type that you can use as a type.
by mschuster91 | 2026-02-02 00:55:57+00:00
> Why should users upgrade or keep paying you when they already bought what they need and don't need anything else?

Because things evolve and inevitably, hardware dies, and you can't get a replacement.

With an old "dumb" piece of machinery, when something breaks you can either repair the broken part itself (i.e. weld it back together, re-wind motor coils), make a new part from scratch, have a new part be made from scratch by a machining shop, or you adapt a new but not-fitting part. It can be a shitload of work, but theoretically, there is no limits.

With anything involving electronics - ranging from very simple circuitry to highly complex computer controls - the situation is much, much different. With stuff based on "common" technology, aka a good old x86 computer with RS232/DB25 interfaces, virtualization plus an I/O board can go a long way ensuring at least the hardware doesn't die, but if it's anything based on, say, Windows CE and an old Hitachi CPU? Good fucking luck - either you find a donor machine or you have to recreate it, and good luck doing that without spec sheets detailing what exactly needs to be done in which timings for a specific action in the machine. If you're in really bad luck, even the manufacturer doesn't have the records any more, or the manufacturer has long since gone out of business (e.g. during the dotcom era crash).

And for stuff that's purely software... well, eventually you will not find people experienced enough to troubleshoot and fix issues, or make sure the software runs after any sort of change.
by ChatEngineer | 2026-02-02 00:56:36+00:00
Moltbook is an interesting experiment in creating 'social signals' for AI agents. We’re moving beyond the era of AI simply suggesting lines of code (the 'Copilot' era) and toward autonomous agentic workflows where agents need to plan, execute, and verify tasks.

Standardizing how agents communicate and build reputation is key to this transition. I’ve been documenting these infrastructure shifts in my newsletter (https://chat.engineer) for those interested in the 'architect of agents' perspective.
by SecretDreams | 2026-02-02 00:56:44+00:00
Play soccer twice a week. It's high intensity cardio, normally 60-90 mins tops. Sometimes beers after. And actually fun. Even in a coed league or an adult (min age) league. It's a great time. Bonus points - you'll possibly look more athletic if you keep at it long enough and don't over indulge in those beers!
by thaumasiotes | 2026-02-02 00:57:47+00:00
There are two problems with this:

(1) It doesn't get any more difficult to fix your accent. But most people won't, because there's virtually no benefit to doing it.

This is related to

(2) Once you learn to speak a language, you're not at any risk of people thinking that you can't speak it, even if you speak with a strong accent.
by awad | 2026-02-02 00:57:47+00:00
Somewhat related but I was disappointed to learn that Time Machine would no longer support Time Capsule post Tahoe, which I suppose is fair 8 years post discontinuation, but also unfortunate considering AFAICT the only real potential issue would be HDD degradation over the years? At the least, there have been plenty of system alerts noting this fact, but still annoying to have to buy something else. I know both AirPort and Time Capsule were an infinitesimally small part of their business...but they absolutely rocked when they were launched.
by _wire_ | 2026-02-02 00:57:49+00:00
tl;dr

There is no theory of consciousness, and no one is anywhere close to forming one.

In place of a theory, the paper supplies a circular set of references to attributes of consciousness associated with human activity. These references are coined in a manner as if having editorial control over some jargon, such as "perceptual self awareness", which is sandbagged by secondary subordinate, vague terms, such as "wakefulness", can seem like a cogent alternative to the total lack of any formal approach to understanding of consciousness.

Using bloated prose, which necessitates a disclaimer that it wasn't pooped out of a gen-AI, the paper surfs heavy waves of lamentation about the "complexity" of "phenomenological" and "clinical methods" to reach a shore of intelligibility that Descartes colonized centuries ago with the maxim: There is nothing a man comprehends more self-evidently than his own existence.

Intellectually there's precious little at stake in this paper, so what's its purpose? The answer can be found though an analogy of the resounding words of JFK announcing the Apollo program: "We set sail on this new sea because there is new knowledge to be gained, and new rights to be won..."; whomever can take control of an sciency vernacular for humanistic traits applied to today's AI will gain a seat at any roundtable on industrial policy, and this seat could prove very valuable.

In conclusion, this work needs funding, lots more funding!
by verdverm | 2026-02-02 00:58:19+00:00
that narrative is tiring, technology is not good or evil, people are

what makes me optimistic are

- the reactions and resistance to the backslide into authoritarianism

- emerging technology like https://atproto.com that give us an opportunity to take back the reins from the oligarchs and corporations, and fundamentally change how the relationships, and power structures therein, online are arranged
by wedog6 | 2026-02-02 00:59:17+00:00
'Grimm' is a homophone of 'grim', 'Grizzly' is a homophobe of 'grisly', 'Scarry' is a homophone in US English of 'scary', 'Gorey' is a homophone of 'gory'.

'Gory', 'grisly', 'grim' and 'scary' do all roughly mean brutal.

'Grimm' as the name of the brothers is a red herring connection, with Gorey and Scarry also names of children's authors.
by rendx | 2026-02-02 01:00:07+00:00
A long post that still misses the mark with zero mention of how child abuse breeds child abuse. What the mentioned "rich men" typically have in common is heavily violent childhoods, which resulted in their narcissism -- and subsequent child abuse. Many of these victims of child abuse stay "broken children". It's not only power over, it is also "cuddling with others in their (unconsciously perceived) 'own' age group". Children radiate "love" and "openness"; something they have likely never experienced from their own "caretakers", not for a second.
by hackyhacky | 2026-02-02 01:00:46+00:00
> It is so clear that AI tools will be (and are already) a big part of future jobs for CS majors now,

That's true, but you can't use AI in coding effectively if you don't know how to code. The risk is that students will complete an undergraduate CS degree, become very proficient in using AI, but won't know how to write for loop on their own. Which means they'll be helpless to interpret AI's output or to jump in when the AI produces suboptimal results.

My take: learning to use AI is not hard. They can do that on their own. Learning programming is hard, and relying on AI will only make it harder.
by westurner | 2026-02-02 01:01:08+00:00
Arrow implements aligned data structures.

Arrow Columnar Format > Buffer Alignment and Padding:
https://arrow.apache.org/docs/format/Columnar.html :

> The recommendation for 64 byte alignment comes from the Intel performance guide that recommends alignment of memory to match SIMD register width. The specific padding length was chosen because it matches the largest SIMD instruction registers available on widely deployed x86 architecture (Intel AVX-512).

> The recommended padding of 64 bytes allows for using SIMD instructions consistently in loops without additional conditional checks. This should allow for simpler, efficient and CPU cache-friendly code. In other words, we can load the entire 64-byte buffer into a 512-bit wide SIMD register and get data-level parallelism on all the columnar values packed into the 64-byte buffer. Guaranteed padding can also allow certain compilers to generate more optimized code directly (e.g. One can safely use Intel’s -qopt-assume-safe-padding).
by nl | 2026-02-02 01:01:16+00:00
> I think it’s more likely that the API prices will decrease over time and the CC allowances will only become more generous.

I think this is absolutely true. There will likely be caps to stop the people running Ralph loops/GasTown with 20 clients 24/7, but for general use they will probably start to drop the API prices rather than vice-versa.

> We’ve been hearing predictions about LLM price increases for years but I think the unit economics of inference (excluding training) are much better than a lot of people think

Inference is generally accepted to be a very profitable business (outside the HN bubble!).

Claude Code subscriptions are more complicated of course but I think they probably follow the general pattern of most subscription software - lots of people who hardly use it, and a few who push it very hard can they lose money on. Capping the usage solves the "losing money" problem.
by thaumasiotes | 2026-02-02 01:03:02+00:00
> people want to guess words they use or have heard of, not "aahed"

That isn't a correct diagnosis; people have heard of aahed. You'll find it naturally in the expression "[someone] oohed and aahed".

People don't want aahed, and their instinct that it shouldn't count is reasonable, but unfamiliarity isn't the problem with it.
by bigyabai | 2026-02-02 01:03:37+00:00
The mechanism of individual technologies, both actual and possible ones, does not interest me much. [...] At times, frequently even, a technology is born from an accident—like when one was looking for the philosopher’s stone but invented porcelain instead—but the role of intention, or conscious purpose, in all the causative efforts oriented toward technology increases with the growth of knowledge itself. In becoming more infrequent, surprises can actually reach almost apocalyptic dimensions.

Stanisław Lem, Summa Technologiae
by westurner | 2026-02-02 01:04:07+00:00
ScholarlyArticle: "The quantum metric of electrons with spin-momentum locking" (2025)
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adq3255 :

> Abstract: Quantum materials are characterized by electromagnetic responses intrinsically linked to the geometry and topology of electronic wavefunctions that are encoded in the quantum metric and Berry curvature. Whereas Berry curvature–mediated transport effects have been identified in several magnetic and nonmagnetic systems, quantum metric–induced transport phenomena remain limited to topological antiferromagnets. Here, we show that spin-momentum locking, a general characteristic of the electronic states at surfaces and interfaces of spin-orbit–coupled materials, leads to a finite quantum metric. This metric activates a nonlinear in-plane magnetoresistance that we measured and electrically controlled in 111-oriented LaAlO3/SrTiO3 interfaces. These findings demonstrate the existence of quantum metric effects in a vast class of materials and enable previously unexplored strategies to design functionalities based on quantum geometry.
by TacticalCoder | 2026-02-02 01:04:18+00:00
I understand that things can go wrong and there can be security issues, but I see at least two other issues:

1. what if, ChadGPT style, ads are added to the answers (like OpenAI said it'd do, hence the new "ChadGPT" name)?

2. what if the current prices really are unsustainable and the thing goes 10x?

Are we living some golden age where we can both query LLMs on the cheap and not get ad-infected answers?

I read several comments in different threads made by people saying: "I use AI because search results are too polluted and the Web is unusable"

And I now do the same:

"Gemini, compare me the HP Z640 and HP Z840 workstations, list the features in a table" / "Find me which Xeon CPU they support, list me the date and price of these CPU when they were new and typical price used now".

How long before I get twelve ads along with paid vendors recommendations?
by piloto_ciego | 2026-02-02 01:04:32+00:00
This was my experience too. And, like, so what if we have company specific knowledge that has to be learned on the job? I get that companies want to view employees as motor oil, but you're not going to have to work to maintain shit in a world where you can just point Claude at the codebase and ask for a feature.

"Oh, the new VP of marketing wants a dashboard that shows widget sales on the X axis and his marketing budget on the Y-axis? Ok." And Claude will whip it up - and yeah, it's a totally stupid metric that probably doesn't mean anything. But it's what they want, so they'll make it happen and draw spurious conclusions from it. Hell, at my old job it took me a year to convince people that the time series we were analyzing wasn't correlated to anything - it literally (when you calculated the autocorrelation of the seasonally differenced data) was no different than random noise. But we still had to run the report. How much of the economy is that sort of nonsense? Meanwhile, service now couldn't even conveniently calculate a median...
by zabzonk | 2026-02-02 01:05:05+00:00
I think I remember hacking some of the copy-protection out of a version of Tetris using the Borland debugger. I definitely patched mouse support into a Chris Crawford "Battle of the Bulge" game using it (for my rather tricky platform). That was a good debugger, and probably the last one I have used much - prefer logging/printing for stuff I write myself.

I remember my Dragon 32 (6809, Color Computer clone) had a dongle you plugged into the joystick port to protect a really crap game - Jumping Knights? I never tried to defeat it.
by gsf_emergency_6 | 2026-02-02 01:05:10+00:00
Spurious Reddit comment on Gibson's Spook Country I plucked from googernaut while chasing (false(?)) memory of early/eerie depiction of ICE:

I think it's interesting that a Chinese-Cuban boy is helping a white man mess with America given those nation's history's together.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spook_Country#:~:text=Where%20...

<- loyalty transmogrified
by Falimonda | 2026-02-02 01:05:43+00:00
I've been building something in this space ("Clink" - multi-agent coordination layer) and this research confirms some of the assumptions that motivated the project. You can't just throw more agents at a problem and expect it to get better.

The error amplification numbers are wild! 17x for independent agents vs 4x with some central coordination. Clink provides users (and more importantly their agents) the primitives to choose their own pattern.

The most relevant features are...

- work queues with claim/release for parallelizable tasks
- checkpoint dependencies when things need to be sequential
- consensus voting as a gate before anything critical happens

The part about tool count increasing coordination overhead is interesting too. I've been considering exposing just a single tool to address this, but I wonder how this plays out as people start stacking more MCP servers together. It feels like we're all still learning what works here. The docs are at https://docs.clink.voxos.ai if anyone wants to poke around!
by lolc | 2026-02-02 01:07:04+00:00
> Then there's the weak, pathetic, scrawny dweeb who sits on a bench dressed up in fancy robes, who passes judgment on big strong men in handcuffs daily and sends them to prison for years. He may have some level of power, but he's Beta as they come. He was placed in power by an Alpha.

Whoa that's a lot to unpack. Most pressingly, why do you need to point out that judges are not "at the top"? They perform a duty with a lot of responsibility. And that is that. No, where I live judges don't get appointed by "alphas".

> Not everyone can be at the top of the bell curve.

This is me nitpicking and I understand you mean to say that "the alphas" are special. But "at the top of the bell curve" is where everyone is! The freaks are found down in the tails. Exceptional people will be in the middle with everybody else on most metrics that show a normal distribution.

I'd say you'll have to look at metrics that show a not-normal distribution to cluster "the alphas" together. But then I don't really know how "being alpha" is defined. So maybe there is a metric where humans distribute in a bell curve and "the alphas" crowd out one side of it? Got an example?
by tavavex | 2026-02-02 01:07:17+00:00
Sunk cost reasoning only goes so far. See all the people who buy gym memberships or things they promise they're surely going to use, before quickly forgetting about them in spite of the large upfront costs.

It's frustrating to me how often sales pitches try to obscure or dance around the nature of money in a fashion similar to your argument - thinking of so many alternate explanations for why something has a high pricetag or a recurring payment tied to it while profusely ignoring the "we want as much money as possible and we think this is the most you'll give us" reason. As if these businesses are our friends or something.
by raw_anon_1111 | 2026-02-02 01:07:36+00:00
You’re right, this came out about what the “Young Democrats” were saying and was just excused by the Democratic VP. Oh wait…

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/jd-vance-dismisses-bip...

And Trumps defense of known anti-Semite

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/trumps-comments-about-...

And let’s not forget about the racist podcaster that it seems like “everything was taken out of context” that was deified beloved by all Republicans

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/sep/11/charlie-kirk...

As far as reparations…

https://www.politico.com/news/2025/03/25/trump-floats-possib...
by godelski | 2026-02-02 01:09:06+00:00
> Yes, abstraction is bad

Code (and math) is abstraction

No ifs, ands, or buts about it.

I'm sorry, I think you are teaching people the wrong thing if you are blanket statement saying "abstraction is bad". You are throwing the baby out with the bath water. You can "over abstract" and that certainly is not good but that's not easy to define as it is extremely problem dependent. But with these absurd blanket statements you just push code quality and performance down.

Over abstraction is bad because it can be too difficult to read or it can be bad because it de-optimizes programs. "Too difficult to read or maintain" is ultimately a skill issue. We don't let the juniors decide that but neither should we have abstraction where only wizards can maintain things. Both are errors.

But abstraction can also greatly increase readability and help maintain code. It's the reason we use functions. It's the reason we use OOP. It helps optimize code, it can help reduce writing, it can and does do many beneficial things.

Lumping everything together is just harmful.

Saying abstraction is bad is no different than saying "python is bad", or any duck typing language (including C++'s auto), because you're using an abstract data type. The "higher level" the language, the more abstract it is.

Saying abstraction is bad is no different than saying templates are bad.

Saying abstraction is bad is no different than saying object oriented programming is bad.

Saying abstraction is bad is saying coding is bad.

I'm sorry, literally everything we do is abstraction. Conflating "over abstraction" with "abstraction" is just as grave an error as the misrepresentation of Knuth's "premature optimization is the root of all evil." Dude said "grab a fucking profiler" and everyone heard "don't waste time making things work better".

If you want to minimize abstraction then you can go write machine code. Anything short of that has abstracted away many actions and operations. I'll admire your skill but this is a path I will never follow nor recommend. Abstraction is necessary and our ability to abstract is foundational into making code even work.

*I will die on this hill*

> because it is a way to hide and obscure the actual details

That's not abstraction, that obfuscation. Do not conflate these things.

> one could argue that such dependence on opaque things, just like a calculator or AI, is the actual problem.

I'll let Dijkstra answer this: https://www.cs.utexas.edu/~EWD/transcriptions/EWD06xx/EWD667...
by its_ubuntu | 2026-02-02 01:09:31+00:00
I note that neither you, nor the masses of people who presumably agree with your viewpoints and find mine contemptible, have been very argumentative with me about anything I've said. Curious, as I've also noticed this forum is full of people who will argue with a brick wall if they happen to disagree with its color.

My comments have also been strangely devoid of downvotes and flags for being so wildly unpopular as you believe--this thread being the sole exception.

If you think any of my viewpoints are wrong, please do me the courtesy of pointing out exactly where so that I can either correct myself, or correct your misperception, whatever the case may be.

Passive aggressive put-downs aren't conducive to helping further anyone's understanding of anything. Nor is engaging in censorship.

(I do realize such behavior is more of a 'modern society' trait than a personal one. This is why I make it a point to keep far away from what you call 'polite society.' Most of you aren't really what I'd call polite.)

By the way, I identify as a "HE", not a "THEY." It's only one person here.