MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by watwut | 2026-03-06 17:31:06+00:00
Frankly, that is just lying to yourself.

None of that favored Trump. National debt, military adventures, crime, fraud - all of those are consistently better under democratic administrations. They are consistently worst under republican administrations. Trump himself committed crimes and it was very clear he will be more corrupt then anyone before him. Trump himself talked like someone who will be aggressive ... and here we are with Venezuela, Iran clusterfuck.

> expensive housing and rent

People who genuinely cared about those did not voted for Trump. However, some used these as excuse.

> Voting because they wanted libs to suffer... sheesh.

Yes. I say so because I was actually listening to what conservatives said and did. Yes, if you do not read what they actually say, there was a lot of sane-washing going on. But, you have to ignore what Trump voters were actually saying in conservative places.

> Most people are not that dumb and have objective reasons to vote a certain way.

Their priorities are not what you say they are. It is simple as that.

> Any party that wants to stay in power longer will have to address these issues. Do you really think an average family is more concerned about trans issues than their inability to afford a house?

Frankly, yes, MANY conservative people were radicalized by that prospect. That is why Trump team made created culture war about it prior election and why they do it now too.
by jodrellblank | 2026-03-06 17:31:43+00:00
This is getting off-topic but I’m amazed by this ability to reach out to computers around the world as a sensor array and infer things we can’t easily find out in other ways. It’s in popular culture and HN comments most often as spyware and mass surveillance of people, and that’s a bit of a shame.

GPS location and movement data is what gives Google maps its near-real-time view of traffic on all roads, and busy-ness of all shops.

I think they collect location data from people riding public transport so they can tell you how long people wait on average at bus stops before getting on a bus.

Does Google collect atmospheric pressure readings from phone altimeters and use it for weather models? Could they?

Kindle collects details on books people read, how far they read, where they stop, which sections they highlight and quote, which words they look up in dictionaries.

I wonder if anyone’s curated a list of things like this which do happen or have been tried, excluding the “gathers user data for advertising” category which would become the biggest one, drowning out everything else.

I think current phones use accelerometer data to detect possible car crashes and call emergency services. Google could use that in aggregate to identify accident blackspots but I don’t know if they do. But that would be less useful because the police already know everywhere a big accident happens because people call the police. So that’s data easily found a different way.
by patcon | 2026-03-06 17:31:49+00:00
Sometimes you throw a brick through a window, not because it's an intellectual thing to do, but because of the hundred people who'll maybe smash the next hundred windows after you do yours.

and then, because any supportive response to all that window smashing is informative as collective intelligence...

and then, bc that all validates that the order that all these clever rules were upholding is illegitimate.

It's how a very stupid thing stands in for a million smart and well-understood things that everyone is also trying to say.
by SpicyLemonZest | 2026-03-06 17:31:59+00:00
I don't mean to shame anyone for learning new information, but even if you have no interest in management, your career will benefit greatly from knowing the terms and concepts that managers in your industry commonly use. There's a lot of people out there who are aggressively against learning "corporate jargon" and then find themselves lost trying to understand why their company's leaders talk and act the way they do.
by e28eta | 2026-03-06 17:32:38+00:00
I went to a local estate sale of a professor, whose entire downstairs (4+ rooms) was filled with bookshelves full of books. They were well organized by topic, and covered a range of topics (math, science, health, fiction, biographies, etc). It was more functional than artistic, comparing it to the pics in this post, but the number of books was probably the same order of magnitude as our local public library’s collection, or a small bookstore.

I went at the end of the 2 or 3 day sale, and it still looked full. They were charging fair prices for the used books, but were going to pay to haul the remainder to the dump. I’m still unhappy about the waste, even though I mostly understand it.
by RealityVoid | 2026-03-06 17:32:39+00:00
Ok, I am sure there is _some_ amount of unrepairable errors.

But the initial discussion was that ECC ram makes it go away and your point that it doesn't. And the vast vast majority of the errors, according to my understanding and to the paper you pointed to, are repairable. About 1 out of 400 ish errors are repairable. That's a huge improvement! If you had ECC ram, the failures Firefox sees here would drop from 10% to 0.025%! That is highly significant!

Even more! 2 bit errors now you would be informed of! You would _know_ what is wrong.

You could have 3(!) bit errors and this you might not see, but they'd be several orders of magnitude even rarer.

So yes, it would not 100% go away, but 99.9 % go away. That's... Making it go away in my book.

And last but not least, this paper mentions uncorrectable errors. It says nothing og undetectable ecc errors! You said _undetectable_ errors. I'm sure they happen, but would be surprised if you have any meaningful incidence of this, even at terabytes of data. It's probay on the order of 0.000625 of errors you can get ( but if you want I can do more solid math)
by steve_adams_86 | 2026-03-06 17:32:46+00:00
In my org I get far more done than ever, but I also find it more exhausting.

Because I can get so much done, I've lost my sense for what's enough. And if I can squeeze out a bit more relatively easily, why wouldn't I? When do I hit the brakes?

There are some tasks where LLMs are not all that helpful, and I find myself kind of savoring those tasks.

I'm surprised you don't notice a difference. Where I work it has been transformative. Perhaps it's because we're relatively small and scrappy, so the change in pace is easier with less organizational inertia. We've dramatically changed processes and increased outputs without a loss in quality. For less experienced programmers who are more interested in simple scripts for processing data, their outputs are actually far better, and they're learning faster because the Claude Code UI exposes them to so many techniques in the shell. I now see people using bash pipes for basic operations who wouldn't have known a thing about bash a couple years ago. The other day a couple less-technical people came to me to learn about what tests are. They never would have been motivated to learn this before. It's really cool.

It doesn't reduce work at all, though. We're an under-funded NGO with high ambition. These changes allow us to do more with the same funding. Hopefully it allows us to get more funding, too. I can't see it leading to anyone being let go; we need every brain we can get.
by simon_luv_pho | 2026-03-06 17:33:04+00:00
Really appreciate the in-depth feedback.

Iframe and CSP are big problems. For the in-page version, I chose to leave out Shadow DOM, canvas, and iframes. Although I know one of the developers forked a version to control same-origin iframes. I don't think it's practical to try to hack around browser security (and website security) — that's why I built the browser extension. I'm hoping the bridge that lets a page call the extension can cover most use cases.

My original HTML dehydration script was ported from `browser-use`. You're absolutely right that it's getting heavier over time, and it's the key factor influencing the overall task success rate. I'm looking to refactor that part and add an extension system for developers to patch their own sites. Hope it turns out well.

Thank you for the feedback. I'll be extra cautious to keep the dehydration code maintainable.
by just6979 | 2026-03-06 17:33:23+00:00
If the content is mixed, it makes even more sense to have the content supply the age data. This is how it has worked with broadcast media pretty much forever. TV shows and movies gain their ratings based on the worst case on display. IE: a show doesn't have to consist entirely of swearing to gain a "language" warning, it just has to have some. Definitively mixed content.

I think your example exemplifies this. Among Us is not inherently adult-only, but since it's multiplayer, they don't control what other player say and do. Definitively mixed content. They should not be asking you to verify, they should be telling you and letting you decide if your kid can play.

I kinda can't beleive their lawyers decided to go that route and assume all the PII responsibility that comes with collecting that data, instead of just making the "it's online and there might be d-bags on our servers" rating much more obvious and explicit.
by PowerElectronix | 2026-03-06 17:33:39+00:00
And yet the minimum extension of artic ice ever recorded was in 2014.

I think there are more effects to account for when extrapolating measured temperatures, mostly made on the ground with cataclismic effects. After all, all the carbon being emitted nowadays was in the biosphere back in the days. Why couldn't it return back to it without the earth becoming inhabitable?
by blurbleblurble | 2026-03-06 17:34:09+00:00
At this point it seems absolutely intentional. Where I live they're trying to block multiple billions of dollars of already allocated money used to fund county hospitals. Accelerationists in office explicitly declaring intent to bring about Armageddon via official channels? Why would they care about keeping people employed when they don't seem to think there's room for everyone to even live?

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/mar/03/us-israel-iran...
by cushychicken | 2026-03-06 17:34:10+00:00
it's usually coding something more precise in a sort of plausible deniability.

Yep. I'm a director now. This is exactly how it is. A big part of being effective in this role is understanding how direct you can be in a given scenario.

A senior manager on reviewing a proposal asks them to synergize with existing efforts: Your work is redundant you're wasting your time.

Option 1 is how I'd say it to a peer whose org is duplicating effort. You can give your advice, but at the end of the day: not my circus, not my clowns.

Option 2 is a more-direct way of how I'd say it to someone in my own org. I'd rephrase to: "Someone else is already doing this; focus your efforts on something more impactful."
by otterley | 2026-03-06 17:34:10+00:00
I’m not trying to muddy any situation. I don’t have to: Reality has a lot of nuance.

Besides, it is possible to both agree that these tariffs should never have been implemented in the first place and have some sympathy for the agency that has literally never had to do something like this at this scale before and is now under duress to come up with a working, legal, and fair mechanism for implementing one at breakneck speed.
by mindslight | 2026-03-06 17:34:24+00:00
And thank goodness for that! I'd never thought I'd see the day where I was praising the Fed. With our government full of arsonists lighting our institutions ablaze, the last thing we need is to dump more gasoline on the fires. The only way to unfreeze the Main Street economy is to get rid of the tyrant strangling our society for nothing more than his own personal enrichment and sick gratification.
by abustamam | 2026-03-06 17:34:57+00:00
> The pain will come slowly, people won't see it.

I'd argue that many lower and middle class folks already feel the effects of GW, even if they may not be able to articulate it. The flip side is that developed rich countries will hurt because of this but the people in power won't care because it probably only (visibly) affects the lower class, and they can always take their jets and rockets to countries (and eventually planets!) that haven't been fucked.

And they'll spin it to blame it on immigrants somehow.
by corry | 2026-03-06 17:34:59+00:00
Classic PG essay in a lot of ways, but I was expecting (a) the entire watch discussion to be 1/10th of its length, and (b) lead DIRECTLY into a social commentary around how every area -- politics, software dev, music creation & distribution etc -- are now firmly in their terminal brand ages.

A political admin lies directly to your face daily - well, the base doesn't care because they've bought into the brand. The Truth and principles are irrelevant.

A talented musician is making innovative, fresh music - but hasn't yet learned the ability to market herself on IG/TikTok - well, she won't reach an audience because she can't compete in a brand game dominated by marketers and AI-driven beat-makers. The music is irrelevant.

Creating software used to be a very human thing - empathetic understanding of the user's problems, a dash of inspiration and good taste, and you get some cool stuff and possibly a valuable company; but now, if all that's automated, what is it? The craft is irrelevant.

Hmmmm. Perhaps his essay wasn't dark enough.
by csa | 2026-03-06 17:34:59+00:00
> get mixed together so that when they finish university, these groups become (mostly) indistinguishable

Sort of.

1. It’s a place where capital can make friends with capable people who will be willing to work for them later.

2. It gives the smart and ambitious “commoners” enough exposure to elite social circles such that they can learn and adapt some/most of the social standards (if they choose to do so, which most don’t). This is important, as all the brains in the world won’t do you much good if you don’t fit in, especially when it comes to the bigger money positions.

3. The social shibboleths between the two groups are very real, and it usually takes less than 5 minutes hanging around someone to know which group they are in. There can be some false signals about being higher status, but those are hard to sustain for very long.

Note that many “commoners” who go to elite schools end up hitting a glass ceiling in their 30s or so due to focusing on being smart and a skill person rather than being a socially savvy person. The social people will be able to make it rain later in life, and the skill people just get shifted around as needed.
by deaux | 2026-03-06 17:35:06+00:00
> (of course that isn't the only reason, but it's one of many).

This is disingenuous. It's one of many in that it may have contributed 0.0001%. If they wouldn't have done that, would they currently have more power? Absolutely not, believing otherwise means being clueless about what has motivated people to vote in certain ways.
by goatlover | 2026-03-06 17:35:24+00:00
> Would you agree that you are conscious at this point?

Of course, I'm having a conscious experience replying four days late.

> Would you agree that there are some set of physical laws, an initial state, and a set of random events to the universe that we inhabit?

We inhabit a universe modelled by laws physicists have arrived at to describe observed behavior. That's as far as I'm willing to go ontologically.

> Would you agree if we simulate this initial state on a computer, and step through it using the set of physical laws, and the random events, we will see the eventual emergence "you", who we know is conscious?

No, I don't think computation is conscious. It's abstract symbol processing.

> So are you saying that the entity inside the simulation is a zombie who is not actually conscious?

Yes, it wouldn't be me. I don't think simulating the world is the same thing as the world itself, despite all the science fiction stories to the contrary.
by krd8ssb | 2026-03-06 17:35:38+00:00
To add to this, no matter what countries do, we can make our local environments nicer to live in by reducing pollution but across the globe, solar activity has exponentially more, and the ultimate impact. With the magnetic field weakening, it's going to continue going in this direction as it has throughout history.

I'm not saying we shouldn't do what we can to make our local environment better and protect and Preserve what we have. We absolutely should. I'm just stating that this is not the first time the Earth has heated or cooled and nothing that we do will ultimately stop it from this cycle from continuing.
by adrian_b | 2026-03-06 17:35:40+00:00
Whether there will be a global catastrophe or not, it is unknown yet and unpredictable.

There are many mechanisms of positive feedback that can accelerate global warming instead of just reaching an equilibrium at a higher average temperature than now.

If some of those mechanisms of positive feedback would be triggered, a global catastrophe would be possible, due to the excessive speed of the climate change, which does not give enough time for the biosphere to adapt to it.

Instead of hoping that we will be lucky, it would have been much better to avoid such risks and prevent further increases in CO2 concentration and average temperature.

I am old enough to have seen a dramatic change in climate from the time when I was a child, when the seasons were still exactly as they had been described for centuries and millennia at that location in Europe, to the present time, when winters are no colder than autumns were before and I have never used again my winter clothes and boots for about 15 years.

I find such a radical change during my lifetime quite scary and I see no evidence for claims that "the world will keep going". The truth is that nobody knows whether this will be true and hoping that this will happen without doing anything to guarantee such an outcome is reckless.
by jesse_dot_id | 2026-03-06 17:36:18+00:00
Well currently, it's people being denied entry or re-entry to the United States due to the content of their social media accounts. Also, people getting door-knocked by the FBI for making posts on Reddit.

Historically, there won't be trials for this when it gets worse, so there won't be anyone charged or convicted. They will eventually just be murdered by a secret police force.
by azakai | 2026-03-06 17:36:18+00:00
1. This is a kind of fuzzer. In general it's just great to have many different fuzzers that work in different ways, to get more coverage.

2. I wouldn't say LLMs are "better" than other fuzzers. Someone would need to measure findings/cost for that. But many LLMs do work at a higher level than most fuzzers, as they can generate plausible-looking source code.
by swyx | 2026-03-06 17:36:28+00:00
came here from f5 bot - hi I edited this piece! it’s riiight at the tip of outrageous but not totally insane.
which as I look at my own coding evolution over the past few months, is increasingly likely even if I’m not there yet. my main realization is that the SDLC is slowwwly breaking down- first with no human coding and people sending in prompt requests than pull requests. once we figure out the ai replacement for reviews, the software logjam breaks.
by crystal_revenge | 2026-03-06 17:36:31+00:00
> And honestly, wars and trump are making climate concerns so difficult to think about.

These are all related. All of them are connected to humans pushing the planetary resource limits from various directions. We're attacking Iran now in part because climate change has dramatically increased the water stress conditions making the population more susceptible to political collapse. It's also happening because it puts energy stress on our geopolitical adversaries (same with Venezuela). Trump emerged in the first place because declining American prosperity (despite GPD numbers) drove a large portion of the population to nihilism.
by newsoftheday | 2026-03-06 17:36:31+00:00
> See the wildfires across North America

I asked Gemini, "How long have wildfires across North America happened and are they truly any worse now?"

"Wildfires have occurred across North America for millions of years, predating humans entirely." It also had some very detailed information backing that up.

I then asked, "Were any of those fires in the past 20 years started by arsonists?"

"Yes, arson is a significant factor in North American wildfires, though it is often overshadowed by accidental human causes (like downed power lines or unattended campfires) and natural causes like lightning."
by just6979 | 2026-03-06 17:36:41+00:00
That's not a mistake. You'd be getting spam marketing anyway, why not make sure it's something obvious? I always pick the oldest possible age when asked, just to mess with their data, because they shouldn't fucking care.

Don't limit, notify.

Has worked for TV (and movies to an extent, though theaters do limit somewhat, must have been some litigation around that...) pretty much forever.
Ask HN: Why do we still buy things by browsing catalogs?
by dannythecount | 2026-03-06 17:37:00+00:00
Every time we want to buy something online, we go through the same ritual.

Open a marketplace. Search. Scroll endless catalogs. Skip ads. Ignore “recommended” products. Compare listings that look almost identical.

Eventually fatigue wins and we click something — not because we’re sure it’s the best option, but because we want to stop spending time on it.

It’s strange that we’ve normalized this. Buying online often means navigating noise: catalogs, ads, rankings, and persuasion systems competing for attention.

What I keep wondering is this:

When personal AI agents become common, what prevents them from doing exactly the same thing?

If the interface to commerce remains “browse catalogs and search results,” then agents will simply automate the same inefficient process — crawling listings, parsing ads, and navigating ranking systems just to reach something the buyer already knew they wanted.

Maybe the real missing layer isn’t better search or better recommendations.

Maybe it’s a way to express structured intent instead of browsing.

Curious if others think catalog-based commerce is the wrong interface for an AI-driven world.