MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by owlcompliance | 2026-03-11 21:37:29+00:00
Karm isn't the indicator by which one can be judged. There is an entire world outside of Hacker News. All you have to do is create an account and make a comment others disagree with and bam -- negative Karma.

There's a saying in Spanish that says, "Don't make firewood out of a fallen tree." You could learn a lot from that saying.

Maybe some will call me a troll or wierdo, but there's one thing I will never be: someone who makes firewood out of a fallen tree.

God bless you, as a person. I know we hide behind these screennames, but if I were standing in front of you, I would extend my hand and from the bottom of my heart, ask God to bless you, as a person, in real life.

I'm not perfect, so I can't blame you for addressing me as a troll. But I speak from the heart brother.
by camel-cdr | 2026-03-11 21:37:42+00:00
OK, look.

Since my previous attempt to measure the impact of trap on signed overflow didn't seem to have moved your position one bit, I thought I'd give it a go in the most representable way I could think of:

I build the same version of clang on a x86, aarch64 and RISC-V system using clang. Then I build another version with the `-ftrapv` flag enabled and compared the compiletimes of compiling programs using these clang builds running on real hardware:

runtime: x86 | aarch64 | RISC-V (RVA23)
Zen1 | A78 A55* | X100 A100 !!! all cores clocked to about 2.2GHz, Zen1 can reach almost 4GHz
clang A: 3.609±0.078 | 4.209±0.050 9.390±0.029 | 5.465±0.070 11.559±0.020
clang-ftrapv A: 3.613±0.118 | 4.290±0.050 9.418±0.056 | 5.448±0.060 11.579±0.030
clang B: 8.948±0.100 | 10.983±0.188 22.827±0.016 | 13.556±0.016 28.682±0.023
clang-ftrapv B: 8.960±0.125 | 11.099±0.294 22.802±0.039 | 13.511±0.018 28.741±0.050

As you can see, once again the overhead of -ftrapv is quite low.

Suprizinglt the -ftrapv overhead seems the highest on the Cortex-A78. My guess is that this because clang generates a seperate brk with unique immediate for every overflow check, while on RISC-V it always branches to one unimp per function.

Please tell me if you have a better suggestion for measuring the real world impact.

Or heck, give me some artificial worst case code. That would also be an interesting data point.

Notes:

* The format is mean±variance

* Spacemit X100 is a Cortex-A76 like OoO RISC-V core and A100 an in-order RISC-V core.

* I tried to clock all of the cores to the same frequency of about 2.2GHz. *Except for the A55, which ran at 1.8GHz, but I linearly scaled the results.

* Program A was the chibicc (8K loc) compiler and program B microjs (30K loc).

binary size:
x86 aarch64 RISC-V
clang: 212807768 216633784 195231816
clang-ftrapv: 212859280 216737608 195419512
increase: 0.24% 0.047% 0.09%
by joe_mamba | 2026-03-11 21:37:42+00:00
You break several HN rules and in general arguing in bad faith and engaging in whataboutism:
> https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html > In Comments > Be kind. Don't be snarky. Converse curiously; don't cross-examine. Edit out swipes.

Also, from my comment, did you read anywhere that I'm OK with Israel to have nukes? And yes, just like Israel can get away doing whatever genocide they want precisely because they have nukes so they can't be stopped, do you think it's a good idea to also let Iran have them too?
by shadowgovt | 2026-03-11 21:37:45+00:00
My layer of cleanup is AI assisted. It's the spellchecker integrated into my web browser. That was definitely "AI" technology when it originally came out.

But I think you and I are on the same page: we both know this isn't a rule that's there to be hard-and-fast enforced because that's completely infeasible. The definition of "AI" is a moving target, as is "generated."

It's a rule that's there to have a rule so when the real problem is "Hey, your content is too low-quality but you dump volumes of it and it's clearly following a procedural template" the mods can call that "AI" and justify limiting or banning the account on prior-stated rules. Which is fine, but I'm glad to call it what it is.

(One unfortunate oversight: we haven't added "posts sounding like they are AI-generaed" to the "Please don't complain about" set. So expect that to become a common refrain now since the incentives to make the complaint against disliked comments are obvious... At least until that becomes annoying enough to justify a rule).
by jMyles | 2026-03-11 21:38:34+00:00
The obvious way to keep human spaces is via webs-of-trust.

If you play bluegrass or old time (or beopop or hip-hop / proto-hip-hop) or other traditional styles of music where the ensemble is a de facto web-of-trust, join us on pickipedia to build and strenghten it. https://pickipedia.xyz/
by jjk166 | 2026-03-11 21:38:50+00:00
> They're cut from hardened steel using wire EDM, a process that erodes metal with controlled electrical sparks, achieving tolerances within a few microns.

They're made by sinker EDM, not wire. The physics are similar but it's a radically different process.

> But in an assembly system like LEGO's, small errors accumulate. Stack ten bricks end-to-end and the cumulative tolerance is ten times larger.

That's not how these tolerances work. The super tight tolerance is the interference fit on the stud. This is a diameter. You don't stack diameters together. Each connection is independent. Where you can get tolerance stackup is brick height and stud spacing. Although even here random errors tend to cancel out as you mix lots.

>LEGO's system reveals timeless truths about manufacturing. Process control beats precision machining. A stable, repeatable process produces better results than chasing the tightest possible mold tolerances. Invest in monitoring rather than just tighter specs.

The whole article says the opposite. Lego relies on precision machining and tight tolerances. Process control is necessary in addition to these.
by Jtsummers | 2026-03-11 21:39:10+00:00
> Traditionally that meant armed forces, their bases, their supplies and so on.

That definition actually isn't traditional, it's recent and was created due to what was seen in both the World Wars last century. Fire bombing Dresden? Not a legitimate military target by modern definitions (parts of Dresden perhaps, but not the way the attack was conducted). The rockets fired at the UK by the Germans almost blindly? Not legitimate by today's standard.

Prior to the Geneva Convention, there was much less debate about legitimacy, it was just done.
by NewsaHackO | 2026-03-11 21:39:19+00:00
No, I get your point. Unfortunately, alot of people here try to act high and mighty like they are posting here for some altruistic reason. The reason why I, you, and everyone else posts here is the human reason that we want others to engage with our posts. In order to do that, you have to put your best foot forward, which includes making sure the spelling and grammar of your posts is correct. While I do not use an LLM for this, I think that it is vaild to use these tools to make sure nothing gets in the way of whatever point you are trying to make.
by ang_cire | 2026-03-11 21:39:21+00:00
The author is naive.

> The whole background of this AI conversation is that we’re in a race with China, and we have to win. But what is the reason we want America to win the AI race? It’s because we want to make sure free open societies can defend themselves. We don’t want the winner of the AI race to be a government which operates on the principle that there is no such thing as a truly private company or a private citizen.

In the US currently, there are private citizens, and there are 'not-the-1%' citizens, where a Kavanaugh stop is legal, your voter information may be (or may have already been) seized by the DoJ or FBI, you may be tracked by out of state or federal agents on ALPRs with no warrant, for any reason, and where attending a legal protest may have your biometrics added to a database of potential domestic terrorists.

Or maybe your tax money will just be used to blow up unidentified boaters or bomb girls' schools and homes, and you'll get no say in whether that's the case because the elected body that is there to issue a declaration of war (or not) as representatives of you, has abdicated that power to a cabinet of unelected white nationalists.

But go off about how we're such a better country that believes in freedom and goodness.
by cedws | 2026-03-11 21:39:31+00:00
The only potential benefit I can think of is getting results faster, but it's really not important enough to optimise for.

Maybe a dual system of paper ballots and e-voting could be good so that they cross check each other. Can't stuff paper ballots without manipulating the digital counter, can't manipulate the digital counter without stuffing ballots. A digital counter also enables meta analysis which could identify suspicious patterns, like a wave of votes for a particular candidate.
by Krasnol | 2026-03-11 21:40:03+00:00
This "ownership" or rather "identification" is a significant part of the service though.

It wouldn't have been so successful if everybody be called "Anonymous" meaning that they wouldn't be able to make money with it.

They've started to take this away now. Today it's some account with obviously few words. Tomorrow it might be one with wrong words. What you counted as value is nothing. It might be lost tomorrow, so why bother?
by applfanboysbgon | 2026-03-11 21:41:19+00:00
can we please not play stupid. obviously you don't legally own it. but there's something of a grand social contract that keeps the concept of accounts on websites working, that literally all of the global internet has followed for decades. it is absolutely insane to normalize yanking people's accounts. why would you ever want to use a website where you can lose access to everything you have because someone else decided they want your account? for public figures, imagine how much reputational damage can be done by letting some rando buy your account? i think reclamation of unused years-old handles is one thing and maybe fair game, especially for things lower-importance and with less longevity than twitter, but selling them goes beyond the pale and incentivizes perverse and destructive behaviour from the "owners" of your account

then i'm sure we'll get to the trite "just don't use twitter" argument, but for anyone with a presence online (artists, open-source developers, game studios, journalists, any kind of business at all, etc. etc.) that's essentially playing life with a handicap. twitter is a piece of infrastructure used by a thousand millions of people, with a compounding network effect that makes it impossible for alternatives to gain real traction because viewers go where the content is and content goes where the viewers are. it should, ideally, not be allowed to be enshittified to this degree. after achieving a certain degree of global monopolization, "just use something else" fails to be a working solution
by ceroxylon | 2026-03-11 21:41:24+00:00
I think a lot of Dwarkesh's mentality about AI being inevitable / ubiquitous comes from the same part of him that thinks that artificial things are "good enough", e.g. the way he allows his production team to use fake plastic plants on set. Is he correct? I'm not sure, but I know there are at least a few people who notice the difference.
by altairprime | 2026-03-11 21:41:36+00:00
> even if you do send an email and the mods eventually read it and take action, by the time that happens, it's likely that bunch of users will have already wasted their time unknowingly

That’s certainly a consequence of how the site operators choose to accept user reports to by mods, yes, but it’s sometimes treated as an excuse not to write the emails to the mods. They can flag off the thread, autocollapse it so it doesn’t take up discussion space for future readers (such as those at work offline for a 3-day IT shift in a secure bunker or whatever), et cetera.

> commenting something like "this is a bot account" is done primarily to inform other users that might not notice

It’s a nice sentiment, but that’s also expressly forbidden by the guidelines/faq (“Please don't post insinuations”, which I’ll suggest to them should be extended to include AI something or other), and I tend to report those accusations as the ‘opening’ guidelines violation so that mods can step in before mobthink kicks in and make their own judgment about the matter. A repeated pattern of accusations of guidelines violations in comments is eventually going to attract mod censure, and so I advise against it, no matter how kindly the intent.

> it's finally time to consider some sort of on-site report system

I do agree that it’s clumsy and I make a point of saying that to them about every year or so. Perhaps your email to them about it will be the one that persuades them! I remain ever optimistic.
by SimianSci | 2026-03-11 21:41:39+00:00
Iran has always lacked an ability to project power at a distance.
Outside of sympathetic lone operators, there really isnt much to suggest they can do anything more than ramp up rhetoric and calls for violence.

The reason why I call it empty threats is because it accomplishes its goal no matter the outcome.
If a sympathetic lone operator uses this as an excuse to start shooting, they can claim the credit. But if all it does is stoke fear that "Something somewhere might happen" then it's still a win for them.
by pear01 | 2026-03-11 21:42:02+00:00
It would be pretty dangerous to attribute such a thing (if it ever happened) to Iran without concrete evidence. Some stateside lone wolf nut might claim to be acting on behalf of Iran, but it doesn't make it true. It's pretty easy in America for anyone to get a gun and attempt a murder. It doesn't mean any government provided any meaningful capability, nor should we believe so until confronted with strong evidence.
by awesome_dude | 2026-03-11 21:42:11+00:00
I think that when some people talk about "AI" they have "AGI" in mind, and when others talk about "AI" they have "latest computer does the smarts" in mind.

I personally would prefer "AI" to be "AGI" but there's no point fighting the way people use language (see: every damned pedantic comment about English usage ever!! :-)
by chupchap | 2026-03-11 21:42:20+00:00
> People in other parts of the world tend to think that they are just as protected from their government as we are in the USA

No one in a modern democratic country thinks this way. US is not a benchmark in any form other than grandstanding about rights. Government snooping and overreach is as much a problem in US compared to other countries.

The difference is that something as simple as a traffic rule violation is not linked to constitutional rights because the repercussions of over speeding and jumping a signal is a catastrophic and could lead to deadly accidents. The problem that was solved with the linked verdict was that the process of proving innocence was not easy and this could have been easily solved with process change, without all the legal wrangling. It is just legalese porn and an over complication.
by Ensorceled | 2026-03-11 21:42:34+00:00
> If I wanted to read what an LLM thinks, I could just ask it.

and

> Or do I want an insightful, well-thought-out response, even if it is LLM-enhanced?

What is the difference? What's the line between these two?

The prompt: "Analyze <opinion> and respond" is pretty clearly "I would just ask it."
and, the prompt: "here's my comment, please ONLY the check the grammar and spelling" would probably be ok.

What about prompt:"I disagree with using LLMs for commenting at all for <reasons>. Please expound on this and provide references and examples". That would explode the word count for this site.
by caconym_ | 2026-03-11 21:43:01+00:00
> perhaps only in English

Wouldn't it work better to just write the thing in whatever language they can actually write in and then do a straightforward translation in a single pass?

> someone who is a lousy writer with deep domain knowledge going back and forth with the LLM to express some insight or communicate some information that the LLM would not produce on its own

This sounds reasonable on its face, but how often does it actually come up that somebody can't clearly express an idea in writing on their own but can somehow get an LLM to clearly express it by writing a series of prompts to the LLM?

And, if it does come up, why don't they just have that conversation with me, instead?
by TacticalCoder | 2026-03-11 21:43:07+00:00
> Members only comment blogs.

There, sadly, needs to be some gatekeeping and then it can work.

For example I'm member, since years, of a petrolhead forum where it works like that: a fancy car brand, with lots of "tifosi" (and you don't necessarily want all these would-be owners on the forum). To be part of the forum you must be introduced by some other members who have met you in real-life and who confirm that you did show up with a car of that brand.

If you're not a "confirmed owner", you can only access the forum in read-only mode.

It's not 100% foolproof but it does greatly raise the bar.

It's international too: people do travel and they organize meetups / see each others at cars and coffee, etc.

Or take a real extreme, maybe the most expensive social network: the Bloomberg terminal. People/companies paying $30K/year or so per seat each year probably won't be going to let employees hook a LLM to chat for them and risk screwing their reputation. Although I take it you never know.

It is the way it is but gatekeeping does exist and it does work.
by aprentic | 2026-03-11 21:43:43+00:00
The open-invite system works well in many cases. It works particularly well in-person but even there you can get drift over time. Our fraternity unanimously agreed on every single initiate who joined; the cohort today is still very different from the one 20 years ago.

In online systems the scales quickly get too big for open-invite. There needs to be a way to automatically update the trust network at a fine grain.

The one that jumps to mind is an inference system; when I +/- a comment, I'm really noting that I trust or distrust the author. It can be general or on a specific topic (eg I trust the author to tell the truth or I trust the author to make me laugh). I could also infer that other people with similar trust patterns are likely trustworthy. And I could likely infer that people who are trusted by people I trust are trustworthy.
by JoshTriplett | 2026-03-11 21:43:59+00:00
I think even when WebAssembly has access to every API that JavaScript does, it's still architected in a way that I think is less likely to lead to sandbox escapes. The thing doing the sandboxing doesn't have the full complexity of a programming language; some of that complexity lives either in the compiler or inside the sandbox. Some things that would be vulnerabilities in JavaScript become "it rather involved being on the other side of this airtight hatchway" problems in WebAssembly.
by xpe | 2026-03-11 21:44:04+00:00
I agree with much of what you say, but it isn't as simple as "post to LLM, paste on HN". There are notable effects from (1) one's initial prompt; (2) one's phrasing of the question; (3) one's follow-up conversation; (4) one's final selection of what to post.

For me, I care a lot about the quality of thinking, as measure by the output itself, because this is something I can observe*.

I also care -- but somewhat less -- about guessing as to the underlying generative mechanisms. By "generative mechanism" I mean simply "Where did the thought come from?" One particular person? Some meme going around? Some marketing campaign? Some statistic from a paper that no one can find anymore? Some dogma that has been around for years? Some LLM? Some combination? It is a mess to disentangle, so I prefer to focus on getting to ground on the thought itself.

* Though we still have to think about the uncertainty that comes from interpretation! Sometimes it feels like the universe is conspiring to make direct communication really hard!
by bawolff | 2026-03-11 21:44:26+00:00
Is a cyberattack a military action?

Like if you take over a control system to open a dam, sure i'd buy that as counting. But say ddos'ing a website? Its hard for me to picture that as counting as an armed attack.

> Traditionally that meant armed forces, their bases, their supplies and so on. But the line has gotten awful blurry. Tech companies have become entwined with the state and are fundamnetal parts of both domestic and foreign policy. Targeting of military strikes is an obvious example

The idea of having private companies form part of your defense industrial base isn't new. I would assume the same rules apply to tech companies contributing as a factory making dual use products for the war effort would.
by t0mpr1c3 | 2026-03-11 21:44:54+00:00
It's a prospective cohort study. That means, a group of people were followed over a long period. The temporal association means that some manifestations of reverse causality can be excluded. In other words, it is not the case that people with observable dementia mistakenly rated their screen time as higher.

What the study could not exclude is the possibility that people who reported high screen use at the earlier age already had some kind of unmeasured brain damage, what the paper calls "prodromal" dementia.
by detourdog | 2026-03-11 21:45:26+00:00
The last time (2005) I was faced with this issue and had to buy a Dell laptop. There were also Windows license issues to consider. I was going to be doing unattended installations and the Windows licensing required the original purchase be a particular SKU or I would need to buy second Windows licenses to install over a network.

Which is a whole other set of frustrations.
by toomuchtodo | 2026-03-11 21:45:44+00:00
This is old information. Japan's borrowing costs have spiked and are ~2.18% as of this comment. Yields are surging due to their debt load (currently ~240% of GDP).

Citations:

https://tradingeconomics.com/japan/government-bond-yield

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/18/business/jgb-trade-excite...

https://www.axios.com/2026/01/26/japan-bond-market-dollar-ye...

https://www.morningstar.com/news/marketwatch/2026012067/japa...

https://robinjbrooks.substack.com/p/how-japan-can-escape-its...

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c2dz11pykwno
by rekabis | 2026-03-11 21:45:51+00:00
Ecosystem integration is the shining difference between Apple and others, as it is radically better than any other available implementation.

I would argue that ecosystem integration is the only primary consideration that you need to use at the top/first-culling-step of the flowchart to either include or discount Apple products in any purchasing decision. Anything else is secondary, and has workarounds.

> UI has regressed

Honestly, I love the UI of MacOS 9.2.2 the most. But I don’t have a Time Machine or Elon Musk levels of wealth to chart a different course.

And sure, some UI decisions of late have been questionable. That is always the case with non-niche products that don’t have highly focused and largely conforming users. Apple moved out of that category back in the early 2000s, and it is forced to make the same UI tradeoffs that Microsoft makes.

I actually don’t mind the modern UI, and aside from a few warts I think they’re going in a very user-friendly direction even if power users feel slighted and abandoned.
by cvullit | 2026-03-11 21:45:58+00:00
I won't name where and which one for the obvious reason that you can and should learn to know better, but I observed a comment that was obviously and blatantly copypasted from an agent, with all the signature "it's not just X, it's Y" patterns, the emdash abuse, the "In summary,' section, generating dozens of replies in organic engagement from people who genuinely couldn't tell the difference between a real comment and an aggregation of a prompted, synthetic response.

Whatever happened to "knowing is half the battle?" Why do we accept this kind of intellectual laziness as exemption from a duty to learn and know better?