MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by eszed | 2026-03-11 20:35:56+00:00
I think you're right, and I don't know what to think about it. I enjoy writing, aim to write clearly - a skill or discipline that took a lot of time to learn, and ongoing effort to maintain.

I've never sent or posted anything AI-written, beyond a pro-forma job description - because I don't know the domain-specific conventions, and HR returned my draft to me with the instruction to use ChatGPT, which I think amusing, but whatever: the output satisfied them, and I was able to get on with my day.

I occasionally experiment with putting something I've written through an LLM, and it's inevitably a blandifying of my original, which doesn't really say what I intended. But maybe that's good? My wife thinks I'm sometimes too blunt, and colleagues don't always appreciate being told technical details.

I also appreciate individuated writing - including the posts by people on this board are not native speakers. Grammatical mistakes seldom inhibit understanding when the writing has been done with care.

I'm rambling at this point, but it's because I'm truly uncertain how these cultural changes will turn out, and (an old man's complaint, since time immemorial!) pretty sure I'll end up one of the last of the dinosaurs, clinging to my manually written "voice" long after everyone else in the world has come to see my preferences quaint.
by spiddy | 2026-03-11 20:36:05+00:00
yes you can.

each citizen gets an anonymized private key via a secure channel (eg. postal) and use that to vote.

votes are double enveloped:
outer envelop: anonymized id
+ inner envelop: vote.

mixnet separates the votes and cryptographically shuffles them to decouple relationships.

only at the end the shuffled votes are decrypted using the private key of the election itself that was split using shamir secret sharing (eg 5 out of 7 shares to reconstruct)

the thing that’s not clear from the article and it’s a shame is that it seems the failure was the hardware (the 3 USB keys) not the election software. This could be simply avoided by having redundancy on the hardware (2 USBs per share) or more shares themselves (5 out of 9 shares)
by Kim_Bruning | 2026-03-11 20:36:06+00:00
LLMs were -in part- designed as translation tools. It's one thing they do really really well.

https://arxiv.org/html/1706.03762v7 (Attention is all you need) "Experiments on two machine translation tasks show these models to be superior in quality while being more parallelizable and requiring significantly less time to train."

Ok, looking that up, that was quite literally one of the main design goals.

And they're really quite good at translating between the languages I use. They're the best tool for the job.
by JumpCrisscross | 2026-03-11 20:36:07+00:00
> What if English is my second language?

Write it broken.

Broken and true is more authentic than polished and approximately so. When I see an AI-generated comment or email, I catch myself implicitly assuming it is—best case—bullshit. That isn’t the case if the grammar is off. (If anything, it can be charming.)
by jacquesm | 2026-03-11 20:36:09+00:00
It's not about the rules. It is about intent. The rules are just there to alert newcomers and repeat offenders to the fact that they are in fact not operating according to the rules. That way there is something to point to. Then they can go 'oh, I didn't know that, sorry', and then it is all fine or they can do an 'orf'[1] and persist and then you throw them right out.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47321736
by strbean | 2026-03-11 20:36:13+00:00
These are the worst. I'm fine with you dumping your own half formed thoughts into an LLM, getting something reasonably structured out, and then rewriting that in your own voice, elaborating, etc.

But the "This is what ChatGPT said..." stuff feels almost like "Well I put it into a calculator and it said X." We can all trivially do that, so it really doesn't add anything to the conversation. And we never see the prompting, so any mistakes made in the prompting approach are hidden.
by munchler | 2026-03-11 20:36:18+00:00
If things have a similarity as you change scale and if things also reduce to strings, then we would expect to see strings at all scales, which we definitely don't.

That said, she makes the following observation at the end of the interview: "Asymptotic safety could be compatible with these other approaches. Perhaps at the fundamental scale there are strings or loops or something, but then as you zoom out you hit a realm where things change so slowly for a while that it looks as if you’re at a fixed point."

So while asymptotic safety is not fully compatible with string theory, the physical difference between them could be very small.
by dhosek | 2026-03-11 20:36:35+00:00
Indeed, it’s a simple matter to figure out what you want if you’re buying a Mac. Laptop vs desktop. For desktop: integrated screen or not, for laptop, screen size, weight, then pick your processor, memory and storage and it’s done. There aren’t confusingly named and positioned overlapping models that it’s unclear what you’re gaining or losing for each one.
by birdsongs | 2026-03-11 20:36:36+00:00
I hate the comments, they're just low effort and soul-less. I even was reading a github article recently that was so obviously LLM written. This was from Microsoft.

Just pay a fucking technical writer. I just went straight to the documentation and poured through it myself.

I feel like my days are numbered though. All my coworkers are writing documentation with AI. Half the PRs I see are heavily LLM to the point the author can't explain it. Management praises the velocity.

I think I have to accept it and start myself or find a new career. I hate this so much. What the fuck did I spend the last decade for, curating my niche skillset for? So a data scientist can start making 1000 line PRs into our embedded repo in a language he doesn't know and can't explain, and I'm considered problematic for pushing back on it, and asking for tests and basic engineering practices? Enjoy the stack overflows, memory fragmentation, and segfaults I guess.

Yeah. It may be a bias but I have it too.
by rincebrain | 2026-03-11 20:36:55+00:00
Both things are true, though.

The fact that gacha games are so popular is _why_ they had enough attention to explicitly ban the most toxic patterns at the time. [1]

There's an interesting question of how far to push the bans, though - "in theory" your goals should probably be "don't let people prey on addictive behaviors" and "minimize people impulse buying more than they can afford", but the latter especially is...very hard to make an empirical rule for, and then you get into logistics like people just making additional accounts to get around it...

[1] - http://www.vg247.com/2012/05/18/kompu-gacha-freemium-systems...
by peterabbitcook | 2026-03-11 20:37:09+00:00
I am curious, did you check how much your benchmarks moved (time and errors) if at all if you told the compiler to use —-use_fast_math or -ffast-math?

There’s generally not a faster version of inverse trig functions to inline, but it might optimize some other stuff out.

Unrelated to that, I’ve seen implementations (ie julia/base/special/trig) that use a “rational approximation” to asin, did you go down that road at any point?
by m348e912 | 2026-03-11 20:37:16+00:00
There are a number of similarities between applying for a job and looking for a partner (typically through online dating). In both cases, the process is impersonal, rife with rejection, and heartless.

The best tactic is to avoid the formal process, whether it's applying via the company website, or swiping right on a profile. Instead use an inside source, an employee you know at the company you are interested in, or a mutual friend who can play matchmaker in dating.

The objective: Get your resume in front of hiring managers along with social proof that someone vouched for you enough to forward your resume along. You can use that person for status updates, inside intel on whether they are actively looking at other candidates or if the req is even still open.

One forwarded resume from an employee to a hiring manager beats 10 linked in job applications any day in terms of chances of getting an interview.
by nkh | 2026-03-11 20:37:17+00:00
What a welcome post. The whole reason I come here is to get thoughtful input from smart people, and not what I could get myself from an LLM. While we are at it; Think your own thoughts as well :) I know how easy it is to "let it come up with a first draft" and not spend the real effort of thinking for yourself on questions, but you'll find it's a road to perdition if you let yourself slip into the habit. Thanks to all the humans still here!!
by aprentic | 2026-03-11 20:37:22+00:00
I think we're going to have to make some choices.

A completely anonymous stranger has no way to prove that they're human that can't be imitated by an AI. We've even seen that, in some cases, AIs can look more human to humans than real humans do.

The only solution I can think of to that problem is some sort of provenance system. Even before AI, if some random person told me a thing, I'd ignore them; If my most trusted friend told me something, I'd believe them.

We're going to need a digital equivalent. If I see a post/article/comment I need my tech to automatically check the author and rank it based on their position in my trust network. I don't necessarily need to know their identity, but I do need to know their identity relative to me.
by pathartl | 2026-03-11 20:37:30+00:00
It's simple, I can buy some IEMs that sound better, cost less than a third of a barely-even-comparable wireless earbud, and roughly conforms to market standards so I can swap out the cable and tips. And I never have to charge them.

I have a pair of Airpod Pros that I use solely for audiobooks and podcasts when I'm doing chores or shopping, but the audio quality is so garbage that's all they're really good for.
by cf100clunk | 2026-03-11 20:37:31+00:00
Right up into the 1980s, a new, basic-level North American truck usually had 2 doors, a straight six engine with a single barrel carburetor, and a manual transmission with a three-on-the-tree stick shift or maybe four-on-the-floor (an inconvenience for dating couples). Power steering and brakes? Not standard until the 1970s. Radio? Maybe an AM prior to the 1980s. If you wanted a bigger engine, an automatic trans, 4x4, tinted glass, air conditioning, cruise control, power door locks and windows etc. the price went up and up. My point is that you could still buy a ''buckboard'', like my old 1971 GMC of long ago. It was affordable back then and was good enough for what I needed.

The Japanese manufacturers stepped in to the small truck niche, with the most basic models having minimal standard equipment, and by the 1970s were having great success. Now, those ''small buckboard'' class of trucks is long gone.

Nowadays, unless you can buy a new fleet model truck in white with minimal equipment, you're faced with a long list of standard items that all combine to raise the price, regardless of whether you do not desire all that stuff.
by layman51 | 2026-03-11 20:37:37+00:00
I had a couple of experiences where I suspected I was hearing LLM-generated/edited text being read aloud. It was at two different webinars about that were about roadmaps or case studies about some products that I use. It was a bit uncanny because I could detect the stylistic patterns ("It's not X, it's Y" and "No X, no Y, just Z"), but it was kind of jarring to see them spoken by a person on a video call. It makes me think this kind of pattern might be engaging, but for a lot of people, it now sticks out for the wrong reasons.

Once LLM generated speech or content start getting into the live answers of Q&A sessions, that would be sad. I know some people try to get through interviews, but I think that might be a bit harder to not detect.
by eikenberry | 2026-03-11 20:37:43+00:00
> then the beholder is trusting not just the correctness of that one sentence but all of the experiences and insights from the author.

This implies they know the author and can trust them. If they don't know the author then there is no trust to break and they are only relying on the collective intelligence which could be reflected by the AI.

That is to say that trusting a known human author is very different from trusting any human author and trusting any human author is not that much different from trusting an AI.
by unsignedint | 2026-03-11 20:37:56+00:00
I think the only practical litmus test here is whether you can stand by the text as your own words. It’s not like we have someone looking over commenters’ shoulders as they type.

Ultimately, this comes down to people making a good-faith judgment about how much AI was involved, whether it was just minor grammatical fixes or something more substantial. The reality is that there isn’t really a shared consensus on exactly where that line should be drawn.
by yjftsjthsd-h | 2026-03-11 20:38:18+00:00
This is NOT a production C interpreter:

Subset of C (no preprocessor, typedefs, unions, enums, function pointers)
No optimization or JIT compilation
Limited standard library (only built-in functions)
No file I/O or external system interaction
Fixed memory sizes

Still probably a good learning tool, but that does limit it to toy/teaching codebases, not real existing programs.
by throwaway5752 | 2026-03-11 20:38:40+00:00
That's not really enough, is it? I didn't say we shouldn't have proof of identity.

First, do we not have proof of identity? How often should we have proof of idenity? How many cases of fraud are there per year? How large is the problem?

Second, who should issue a different proof of identity? How much should it cost? Should the requirements be left to states or the federal government?

Third, who would administer this system. Would it be public or private, or left to states? What criminal and civil law should exist for misusing this law for witholding the right to vote on this basis? Would you trust a non-Republican leadership if DHS still was the agency verifying identity documents and storing soft-copies of them?

What you want isn't unreasonable, but you leave out so many details that your reasonable statement can be misused for ill intent and denying people their right to vote.

A fair follow up question for me to you might be "how do you feel about the additional requirements for married women to get reissued vital documents when they have changed their birth name to their husband's last name in the SAVE act?" When concerns like these aren't addressed in massive changes to voting laws, it makes lots of people uncomfortable that the changes aren't made in good faith.
by Freak_NL | 2026-03-11 20:38:57+00:00
Why exempt people who use English as a second language? Anyone with a level of proficiency sufficient for reading the comments here can manage writing English at a passable level. If that takes effort and requires looking up idioms or words, then good! That is how you learn a language — outsource that and you don't. It won't stick even if you see what is being output.

I don't care if they use an LLM to ask questions about grammar or whatever, as long as they write their own text after figuring out whatever it was they were struggling with.
by rdiddly | 2026-03-11 20:39:09+00:00
I don't believe that's always true, and I suspect it was left out of the guidelines deliberately, and I wish people receiving suggestions would stop interpreting it that way. Of course people suggesting grammar corrections and treating it like they just demolished and eviscerated your argument are part of the problem. But what about people out here just trying to help? Grammar is important, as it's the syntax of the programming language we all use with each other. People act as if bad grammar is something you're born with, and can't change. Like learning grammar is impossible, and those who don't bother should be a protected class. I'm just trying to help man. Or I was anyway, before I stopped. But if I'm trying to engage with someone's main point, it should be obvious. Whereas a quick grammar correction is just that. But it's a tangent, and not interesting (especially if you already know), and supposedly grammar is "not a technical topic" (despite daily use) so it ends up deemed a "low value comment" and gets downvoted to oblivion.
by nirava | 2026-03-11 20:39:10+00:00
> Even non-technical web browsing users will notice the sluggishness coming from that spec.

I'm sorry but this line invalidates most of your comment, to the point of looking like satire.

We have reviews and videos of people editing 4k videos with glee, launching and switching between all apps at once, and stuff like that.

I used the base M1 as a power user/developer for years when it came out, and the only reason I had to switch was the storage. Sluggishness wasn't on the top 10 issues I had with that device.
by mej2020 | 2026-03-11 20:39:16+00:00
We built Lava to handle the surprise bills part. It has two products that work well for agents. The gateway is a proxy you point your agent at instead of calling APIs directly, and every request gets logged with usage and costs automatically. Spend keys are pre-funded API keys with hard spend limits, so you can hand one to an agent and it physically can't exceed the budget you set. Only posting because I think it could be helpful for what you are describing!
by bonoboTP | 2026-03-11 20:39:32+00:00
I think it's difficult to relay to the public that a lot of this noise in "scientific publications" is not the same category as real research by reputable institutions. Yes, in certain cases the line can be blurry, fraudsters are sometimes caught in big-name institutions, maybe more in some fields than others, but serious researchers of the field know very well which publication venues and research groups are the real deal and what is bullshit. Overwhelmingly, these fraud papers and nonsense LLM-generated fake stuff are not published in serious journals or conferences.

It's a bit like how can we trust online shopping if I get all these emails trying to sell me aphrodisiac pills?
by fc417fc802 | 2026-03-11 20:39:37+00:00
Chip speed has increased faster than memory speed for a long time now, leaving DRAM behind. GDDR was good for awhile but is no longer sufficient. HBM is what's used now.

The last logical step of this process would be figuring out how to mix the CPU transistors with the RAM capacitors on the same chip as opposed to merely stacking separate chips on the same package.

A related stopgap is the AI startup (forget which) making accelerators on giant chips full of SRAM. Not a cost effective approach outside of ML.
by ericlevine | 2026-03-11 20:39:43+00:00
> Connecting your email is still a risk.

> If you’ve built something agents want, please let us know. Comments welcome!

I'll bite! I've built a self-hosted open source tool that's intended to solve this problem specifically. It allows you to approve an agent purpose rather than specific scopes. An LLM then makes sure that all requests fit that purpose, and only inject the credentials if they're in line with the approved purpose. I (and my early users) have found substantially reduces the likelihood of agent drift or injection attacks.

https://github.com/clawvisor/clawvisor
by phs318u | 2026-03-11 20:39:54+00:00
> You could run the comments everyone else posts through an AI tool and ask it to rephrase it so that it is clean, and easy-to-read.

For those coming from a language other than English, you are more likely to lose information by using a tool to “reconstruct” meaning from poorly phrased English as an input, as opposed to the poster using a tool to generate meaningful English from their (presumably) well-written native language.
by artemonster | 2026-03-11 20:39:56+00:00
I think next step will be an isolated version of invite-only internet where you have to be physically present with your invitee to give them access. There will be a beautiful navigation widget where you can access a unified "addon" to any page: community moderated comment section, version history of that page, backlinks, carefully curated "related" section(so that you can continue browsing beautiful human written content on 1910 era steam locomotives, similar to 90s era webrings), donate button so that you can support he author and much more! Oh, the dream
by beeburrt | 2026-03-11 20:40:21+00:00
You sound like one of those federal employees who stay in the comments section on various sites to make sure and sow doubt about stuff like this.

[AJ - CIA Operative Breaks Silence on Directed Energy Weapons and Havana Syndrome](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u48nH_rLcAs)

https://lenbermd.substack.com/

and his:

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/398931431_Civilian_...

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-58091-7

https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/15/4/592

https://www.fcc.gov/general/radio-frequency-safety-0

Try harder
by NewsaHackO | 2026-03-11 20:40:34+00:00
No. It is against their TOS to attempt to jailbreak their models. While I don't agree that the models can recite longer periods of verbatim copyrighted material, even if it could, the person who is at fault is the person subverting the system, not the creator of the system. If I steal a library book and make copies of it to distribute illegally, it wouldn't make sense to hold the library at fault for infringing on the book publisher's copyright.
by mschuster91 | 2026-03-11 20:40:34+00:00
> Just because you found an item on the black market doesn't mean it exists in general

RF based energy weapons have been a thing since (at least) 2010 [1]. According to folklore, the initial "microwave" cooking appliance was a side effect from some radar researcher noticing either his testicles or some chocolate got warmer than expected.

The interesting thing is, the rumors about the Russians using RF weapons have been circulating for well over a decade. Why has no one gone ahead and installed RF spectrometers and radio direction finding gear in and around sites with suspicious activity?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active_Denial_System
by zarzavat | 2026-03-11 20:40:40+00:00
To err is human. Let's embrace our humanity in the face of this proliferation of insipid perfection.

I want the raw tokens straight out of your head. Even if they are lower quality, they contain something that LLMs can never generate: authenticity. When we surrender our thoughts to a machine to be sanitized before publication, we lose a little of what it means to be human, and so does everyone who reads what we write.

Part of the joy of reading is to wallow in a writer's idiosyncrasies. If everybody ends up writing the same way, AI companies will have succeeded in laundering all the joy from this world.
by danebalia | 2026-03-11 20:40:51+00:00
Senior engineering practitioners from major technology companies gathered for a
multi-day retreat to confront the questions that matter most as AI transforms software
development. The discussions covered more than twenty topics across breakout
sessions, but the most significant insights didn’t emerge from one single session. Instead,
they surfaced at various intersections; we found that the same concerns kept appearing
in different conversations, framed by different people solving different problems.
This publication synthesizes those cross-cutting themes, organized around the patterns
that senior leaders need to understand and act on now. The retreat did not produce a
single, unified vision of the future, but instead produced something more useful: a map of
the fault lines where current practices are breaking and new ones are forming.