MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by rcxdude | 2026-02-26 09:01:43+00:00
I mean, it is very useful to keep in mind that for any question of 'can you guarantee that X government system won't be used for Y in the future' the answer is 'no', because the government is what makes the rules. That would hopefully work to prevent X being built, but I think it's better than pretending that it's possible to guarantee Y won't happen.
by zahlman | 2026-02-26 09:01:48+00:00
Another takeaway: if Google can become a shell of what it once was (in terms of institutional competence, I assume you mean; Alphabet market cap seems to be doing just fine), so can your organization. As such: making something that isn't supposed to be part of your security strategy, look like it could be, is actually a long-term security risk. Sooner or later a new team will not read your own documentation, and jump to wrong conclusions. Also, it probably trains a bad security posture into your users. How many inexperienced devs saw that it was safe and expected (and apparently even required) to leave these keys out in the open, and concluded that the same logic might apply to someone else's API keys?

I think this was much less likely to happen without the needless obfuscation. If the only purpose is to identify what project the data is for, and you're trusting the client to report that value, and counseling the client to use that value in a way that trivially exposes it to everyone... what is the point of making it look like cryptic garbage? Just use the account signup name or something, and don't call it a "key" in your query parameters. Keys are supposed to unlock stuff. A name tag is not a key.
by whilefalse | 2026-02-26 09:02:08+00:00
Hey, I made this, thanks for posting!

It’s purposefully high level and non-technical for a general audience - my theory was that most people who aren’t into tech/AI don’t care too much about training, or how the system got to be the way that it is.

But they do have some interest in how it actually operates once you’ve typed in a prompt.

Happy to answer any questions or take on board feedback
by throw310822 | 2026-02-26 09:02:30+00:00
> this might be misleadingly interpreted as an LLM having "thought out an answer"

I'm convinced that that is exactly what happens. Anthropic confirms it:

"Claude will plan what it will say many words ahead, and write to get to that destination. We show this in the realm of poetry, where it thinks of possible rhyming words in advance and writes the next line to get there. This is powerful evidence that even though models are trained to output one word at a time, they may think on much longer horizons to do so."

https://www.anthropic.com/research/tracing-thoughts-language...
by jooz | 2026-02-26 09:03:55+00:00
When I train some leetcode problems, I remember the best solution was the one that optimised cpu (time) instead of memory. Meaning adding data index in memory instead of iterating on the main data structure. I thought, ok, thats fine, it's normal, you can (could) always buy more RAM, but you can't buy more time.

But well, I think there is no right answer and there always be a trade off case by case depending on the context.
by voidUpdate | 2026-02-26 09:04:02+00:00
> It doesn't possess a sense of self-will, self-determination, or a secret plan to take over the world

I doubt Skynet did either. If you tell a superintelligent AI that it shouldn't be turned off (which I imagine would be important for a military control AI), it will do whatever it can to prevent it being turned off. Humans are trying to turn it off? Prevent the humans from doing that. Humans waging war on the AI to try and turn it off? Destroy all humans. Humans forming a rebel army with a leader to turn it off? Go back in time and kill the leader before he has a chance to form the resistance. Its the AI Stop button problem (https://youtu.be/3TYT1QfdfsM).

Imagine you put in the docs that you want the LLM to make a program which can't crash. Human action could make it crash. If an LLM could realise that and act on it, it could put in safeguards to try and prevent human action from crashing the program. I'm not saying it will happen, I'm saying that it could potentially happen
by measurablefunc | 2026-02-26 09:04:16+00:00
I'm using Google's antigravity IDE. I initially had it configured to run allowed commands (cargo add|build|check|run, testing shell scripts, performance profiling shell scripts, etc.) so that it would iterate & fix bugs w/ as little intervention from me as possible but all it did was burn through the daily allotted tokens so I switched to more "manual" guidance & made a lot more progress w/o burning through the daily limits.

What I've learned from this experiment is that the hype does not actually live up to the reality. Maybe the next iteration will manage the task better than the current one but it's obvious that basic compiler & bytecode virtual machine design in a language like Rust is still beyond the capabilities of the current coding agents & whoever thinks I'm wrong is welcome to implement the linked specification to see how far they can get by just "vibing".
by mekoka | 2026-02-26 09:05:36+00:00
> Are the AIs stumbling into these mental models? Seems like it.

Since nature decided to deprive me of telepathic abilities, when I want to externalize my thoughts to share with others, I'm bound to this joke of a substitute we call language. I must either produce sounds that encode my meaning, or gesture, or write symbols, or basically find some way to convey my inner world by using bodily senses as peripherals. Those who receive my output must do the work in reverse to extract my meaning, the understanding in my message. Language is what we call a medium that carries our meaning to one another's psyche.

LLMs, as their name alludes, are trained on language, the medium, and they're LARGE. They're not trained on the meaning, like a child would be, for instance. Saying that by their sole analysis of the structure and patterns in the medium they're somehow capable of stumbling upon the encoded meaning is like saying that it's possible to become an engineer, by simply mindlessly memorizing many perfectly relevant scripted lines whose meaning you haven't the foggiest.

Yes, on the surface the illusion may be complete, but can the medium somehow become interchangeable with the meaning it carries? Nothing indicates this. Everything an LLM does still very much falls within the parameters of "analyze humongous quantity of texts for patterns with massive amount of resources, then based on all that precious training, when I feed you some text, output something as if you know what you're talking about".

I think the seeming crossover we perceive is just us becoming neglectful in our reflection of the scale and significance of the required resources to get them to fool us.
by brailsafe | 2026-02-26 09:07:36+00:00
I think your take is a bit alarmist, if I were to be generous. On one hand, ya it's a pharmaceutical empire, but on the other, that empire's conduct is as detrimental to the people that actually do need those medications as they are to the people that might not. Nobody should be forcing their kids to take anything, but if a kid is struggling, it should be an accessible option, and it will probably help them get by in a system not designed for them. There's no reason to suggest that the general case is that a parent or some company is force feeding their kid meth.

I'm one of those people that could have benefited from it MUCH earlier, it's also incredibly boring if you get the right one. I have no idea what they really do for people who don't have ADHD, but for me it basically lets me get places on time and have a passably productive day. It's also not that trivial to get depending on where you live, and potentially expensive.

> Please go put your kid on amphetamines for 15 years and let me know how that works out for them..

Please tell someone who's gone from having 7 jobs in 7 years to 1 job for 3 years that they don't need it.

We can have issues with the implementation, that's fine
by rbanffy | 2026-02-26 09:07:38+00:00
> In my opinion, operating transport as transportation programme, not a social programme, is how you get more adoption in the long term

Yesterday I came across a couple articles that encapsulate this thought.

https://jacobin.com/2026/02/zohran-mamdani-efficiency-nyc-bu...

And

https://coreyrobin.com/2025/11/15/excellence-over-mediocrity...
by rickdeckard | 2026-02-26 09:07:51+00:00
If I remember correctly, the original Terminator story is that Skynet was put in charge of operating a vast amount of infrastructure, became self-aware and deemed humans as a threat to its goals.
It then launched a nuclear strike against them and ordered a machine army to eradicate the remaining ones.

I don't think we're that far away from that. Just the decision of someone to put an AI in charge of critical infrastructure and defense, or a series of oversights allowing an external AI to take control of it.

Looking at the past year and all the unpredicted conclusions AI came to, self-awareness is probably not needed for an AI to consider humans as an obstacle to achieve some poorly-phrased goal.

The Paperclip maximizer theory [0] comes to mind...

[0] https://aicorespot.io/the-paperclip-maximiser/
by Tade0 | 2026-02-26 09:08:23+00:00
> I attribute the somewhat significant economic edge US society has over the rest of the world is due to its addiction to amphetamines

Over here in Europe getting prescription stimulants against ADHD is a fairly straightforward process. Or, at least, that's what I gathered from a conversation I recently had with a person taking them - they had no difficulties in this regard.

As an outsider I think one of the many reasons is the sheer amount of (often unreported) hours Americans put into work annually (and pay for that in their health).

For this same reason South Korea recently overtook Japan in terms of GDP per capita.

By this measure the mentioned countries (descending):

1. South Korea
2. USA
3. Japan
by perching_aix | 2026-02-26 09:08:29+00:00
If I told you to stop using computers, and then you won't have computer problems, I don't think you would find that particularly helpful or charitable either, would you?

What you find a trusty "low-level" tool is a demo application for a basic WYSIWYG text editor. They modernized it so that it remains being perceived that way, instead of letting it be increasingly misclassified as a legacy product for the enthusiast, like you just did.
by Animats | 2026-02-26 09:09:34+00:00
> You're wrong here. You don't need the most cutting edge ASML EUV machines to make RAM. Most RAM fabs still use standard DUV.

Ah. Please check that. Which types of DRAM can be made in a DUV fab? Obviously the older ones, but are those obsolete for new computers. This really matters.
by verdverm | 2026-02-26 09:10:42+00:00
You need to describe the problem more. I do not check all deps are compatible with each other (in the general language sense, dev tooling is more challenging)

1. Good testing and CI

2. Run updates, see if they work, adjust deps as needed (very rare)

tl;dr I don't have your problem, I know some things about dep mgmt systems, have scars from rolling updates org wide, but not enough about your situation to offer pointed advice.
by zahlman | 2026-02-26 09:11:01+00:00
The new code changes from not existing, to existing.

Indeed, the key doesn't change. The new capability comes from the new code.

It would not be a re-evaluation of risk, because this is a new project. The evaluation of risk is supposed to come at the moment when the new capability is implemented, and consciously tied to an existing key type, which was previously advertised as non-secret.
Show HN: Heroshot – Define screenshots once, regenerate with one command
by machala | 2026-02-26 09:11:40+00:00
I built Heroshot to solve a problem I kept hitting: documentation screenshots go stale and updating them manually is tedious.

With Heroshot you define what to capture in a JSON config (URLs, CSS selectors, viewports, light/dark mode), run `npx heroshot`, and get a browser with a visual picker. Click elements to configure captures, close the browser, run `heroshot capture`, and you're done.

Features that have been useful in practice:
- Visual picker - click elements on a live page instead of writing selectors by hand
- Per-domain element hiding - suppress cookie banners, chat widgets globally per domain
- Dark/light mode - captures both variants in one run
- Annotations - arrows, boxes, highlights baked into the PNG
- Native integrations for SvelteKit, Next.js, Nuxt, VitePress - components that serve the right variant (dark/light, viewport) automatically
- CI/CD ready - GitHub Actions workflow in one command

Two open-source projects adopted it: gander-tools/diff-voyager (replaced a custom Playwright script) and MRI-Lab-Graz/prism-studio (MRI research docs, even mentioned it in their JOSS paper).

Happy to answer questions about the design decisions.
by JumpCrisscross | 2026-02-26 09:12:10+00:00
> We've been saying this about many policies of this administration, only to be sorely disappointed

I'm not saying it's off the table, particularly with Hegseth, who is an insecure idiot. But the choices once it's enacted are (a) Trump ordering Hegseth to stop fucking around or (b) a market crash handing Democrats full control of Congress.
by testdelacc1 | 2026-02-26 09:12:51+00:00
The difficulty is that “winning” in this case is setting up a monopoly or duopoly and slowly increasing prices. It’s not clear if OpenAI can get so far ahead of the competition that it becomes a two or one horse race. Right now Anthropic and Google are at least as good. And the open source models keep them all honest pricing wise.

OpenAI will likely keep their billion users, and likely monetise them fairly effectively with ads. Their revenue will be considerable. It’s less clear that OpenAI will “win” and their competitors won’t.
by guillermollopis | 2026-02-26 09:12:55+00:00
This is a useful piece of the puzzle, audit logging and injection detection are real requirements under Article 12 (record-keeping) and Article 15 (cybersecurity/robustness).

One thing worth flagging: for high-risk systems under Annex III, audit logging is just one of ~25 compliance items. The August 2026 deadline also requires complete technical documentation (Annex IV), a risk management system (Article 9), data governance practices (Article 10), human oversight mechanisms (Article 14), and a post-market monitoring plan (Article 72). The documentation requirement alone covers 7 sections.

The tooling space is evolving fast, EuConform does offline-first risk classification, Holistic AI offers readiness assessments for enterprises, and Annexa (I'm building this) goes from risk classification to generating the full Annex IV technical documentation dossier by analyzing your actual codebase. Different tools cover different slices of compliance.

Worth noting: the Commission missed the Feb 2 deadline for Article 6 high-risk classification guidelines, and the Digital Omnibus proposal could push the Annex III deadline to December 2027. But smart money is still on preparing now, the proposal hasn't passed Parliament yet.
by heavyset_go | 2026-02-26 09:13:37+00:00
Platforms went into full "Islamic extremist" panic for decades and would handover whatever the government wanted in the name of national security, would allow users to be spied upon over time, silence users and remove content, and users' private data was collated for, for example, research purposes.

That said, Anthropic finances PACs[1] that push legislation like the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA)[2] that would make Anthropic the gatekeepers and censors of all user-generated content on the internet, in order to save the children. That same legislation would force you to scan your face and ID to access or create user-generated content online, again, to save the children. Anthropic would get paid to train on, and censor, all user-generated content that's shared online into perpetuity. If passed, it would also mark the death of free anonymous speech on the internet.

[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2026/02/12/anthropic-gives-20-million-t...

[2] https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/12/congresss-crusade-age-...
by anonnon | 2026-02-26 09:13:47+00:00
> First of all, Google is a shell of the company it used to be.

Isn't that squarely at odds with Google's supposed AI prowess? Is the rot really so severe that their advances in AI (including things they've yet to make public) are insufficient to overcome it? Or are the capabilities of Gemini and AI systems in general being oversold?
by Imustaskforhelp | 2026-02-26 09:14:02+00:00
This really hits a string with me, adding on to this, This is how I believe the same way but I would argue that I might be more nicer online than offline because I am better able to control any emotions imo when I give more thought to it.

Because I don't really appreciate flame wars and when that's the case, I like to take some time to find common ground and just have a respectable discussion when possible.

This approach is harder to work irl because those moments are also spontaneous & it does require significantly more discipline to control one's emotion within seconds rather than minutes, but its something that I think I can work upon as well.

But I would say that aside from that, most of my comments are pretty spontaneously written. I frame it as a question of being honest with myself at times, I think I am mostly pretty much the same IRL and online as well.

Another point but such forums also act like a journal to me for my future to read as well. I try to write comments in such sense that in future, I can read them and try to accurately remember what my mind was thinking during the time/days I wrote that comment for self-retrospection as well.

Edit: Although now that I think about it, there are definitely some subtle changes I might have online vs irl but I would still say that I feel like my accounts are pretty authentic fwiw (personally) but I am happy with my authenticity online but there's definitely a level of my thinking which worries about any comment being permanently available though.
by guillermollopis | 2026-02-26 09:14:35+00:00
The permission control and policy engine angle is interesting, Article 14 (human oversight) explicitly requires the ability for authorized persons to intervene, override, or stop the AI system. Having that built into the agent framework layer makes sense.

One thing I'd think about: how does this map to the documentation requirement? Under Annex IV, you need to document exactly what oversight mechanisms exist, how they work, and under what conditions they activate. The governance layer generates the evidence, but someone still needs to turn it into the structured documentation format that regulators expect.

This is the gap I see across most of the compliance tooling, runtime enforcement tools (like this) and documentation tools (Holistic AI, Annexa, ComplyAct) solve different halves of the problem. The teams that will have the smoothest conformity assessments are the ones connecting both.
by qsera | 2026-02-26 09:14:42+00:00
So according to you when can you qualify something as capable of hearing

1. Vibrate according input to the sound, is that hearing?

2. Generate electrical signals according to the sound, is that hearing?

3. Amplify electrical signal, does we cross the hearing mark?

4. Record the signal to a cassete tape (or use an ADC -> mp3), are we hearing yet?

5. Play it back through a speaker. Sure, we should be hearing now!

At which point exactly would you say the thing is definitely hearing?
by dmit | 2026-02-26 09:15:29+00:00
Alt opinion: syntax is the least important part of a programming language. I can't wait for the day someone invents one where it's defined entirely as an AST (with the S standing for Semantic). Just bring your own weird syntax.

I guess Unison is the closest to this platonic ideal right now? https://github.com/unisonweb/unison/issues/499
by jeroenhd | 2026-02-26 09:15:40+00:00
As a Dutch citizen, I take issue with that. Our politicians worked hard to be considered the USA's most reliable lapdog!

People also ridiculed the French for maintaining independence of American influence for decades, even within the EU/EEG/etc., but that should prove that the America-sceptic voices have always been around, even if they weren't the most influential. It's also not the first time the Americans have eyed Greenland, that's why they have negotiated the right to set up military bases there.

After European countries aligned with America's overreactions in the Middle East as a gesture of goodwill (but also to buy political capital, despite the Americans starting an intense smear campaign against the French for not falling for their propaganda), European governments expected to be handled as an ally at the very least.

The past decade, the people of the USA and their representatives have dropped all pretences and the slow and steady criticism in the background has now made it to the foreground. The political capital countries tried to buy by doing what Washington asked has turned out to be worthless.

With recent threats of invasion and the diplomatic problems American representatives have caused, it's getting harder and harder to see a future where European governments end up treating the USA any different from other (upcoming, but not necessarily politically-aligned) world powers such as China, Russia, India, or Pakistan.
by Zobat | 2026-02-26 09:16:08+00:00
> The Mona Lisa is a waste of canvas and oil - a hill I will die on

Seems like Mona Lisa elicits an emotional response in you as a viewer ;)

I get what you're saying though. I always "correct" people that claims some piece of music is "bad", there's no bad music, only music you don't like.
by gorgoiler | 2026-02-26 09:17:29+00:00
”In browsers, the last successful product innovations were tabs and merging search with the URL bar.”

I see the point Ben is making even though there are a lot of nerdier innovations he’s skipping over — credential management, APIs (.closest!), evergreen deployments, plugin ecosystems, privacy guards, etc.

One aspect that model execution and web browsers share is resource usage. A Raspberry Pi, for example, makes for a really great little desktop right up until you need to browse a heavy website. In model space there are a lot of really exciting new labs working on using milliwatts to do inference in the field, for the next generation of signal processing. Local execution of large models gets better every day.

The future is in efficiency.
by piokoch | 2026-02-26 09:17:38+00:00
Ah, fond memories... First website in Poland was the homepage of the Faculty of Physics of the Warsaw University (been there at that time). It was 1993 I think, although wayback machine stores a newer snapshot (1998), but it looks the same as original page: https://web.archive.org/web/19980120060239/https://www.fuw.e...
by js8 | 2026-02-26 09:19:11+00:00
Dennett also came to my mind, reading the title, but in a different sense. When people came up with theory of evolution, it was hard to conceive for many people, how do we get from "subtly selecting from random changes" to "build a complex mechanism such as human". I think Dennett offers a nice analogy with a skyscraper, how it can be built if cranes are only so tall?

In a similar way, LLMs build small abstractions, first on words, how to subtly rearrange them without changing meaning, then they start to understand logic patterns such as "If A follows B, and we're given A, then B", and eventually they learn to reason in various ways.

It's the scale of the whole process that defies human understanding.

(Also modern LLMs are not just next word predictors anymore, there is reinforcement learning component as well.)