MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by andyferris | 2026-03-11 22:21:01+00:00
> So what’s the Pentagon’s plan — to coerce and threaten to destroy every single company that won’t give them what they want on exactly their terms?

I mean... isn't that pretty much the way the current administration behaves in general? If the answer to this question is "yes", and the US executive does not in fact share the values of the author about free and open society, then the rest of the article is kinda moot (except the point that we should be talking about these things now, and encouraging congress to act).
by realityfactchex | 2026-03-11 22:21:24+00:00
It's still there. For Joe Shmoe, in terms of general purpose, ask it a question, LLM use, Perplexity is solidly in the following lineup, as I understand it:

- Perplexity: This one has been promoted on (insert general audience media skewing toward the older set) enough to be a household name still.

- ChatGPT: General people in some demographics (see immediately above) are averse to this, on account of negative publicity its parent company has received. (Still very strong popularity and positive sentiment in some demographics, though)

- Claude: Some semi-literates have glommed onto this one, possibly as a result of its more recent success among the developer set.

- Grok: People can be either for or against, based on how they feel about its owning company and its ownership; no more need be said

- Gemini: Again, if you are in the universe of its owning company (or decidedly not), the draw (or repulsion) can be strong here.

For general LLM use, the above are all about the same. To be clear, this is just me shooting from the hip for how each offering might be viewed. IMO, it's not a bad idea to submit the same input to each and see how they compare, if one is so inclined.
by tcbrah | 2026-03-11 22:21:48+00:00
nice, fal is solid. whats the pricing like compared to calling the model APIs directly?

lots of people are asking for my script so i'm open sourcing it fairly soon (openslop.ai if you want to get notified). currently integrating with runware, elevenlabs, cartesia, kling, runwayML but will look into integrating with fal too. would you be open to connecting to helping with integration with fal?
by JumpCrisscross | 2026-03-11 22:21:58+00:00
> You don't buy any of this right?

I actually do. The math is more strained than anything present. But a lot of people are rejecting it out of hand without doing anything back of the envelope. Truth is, barring a seismic shift in how we permit data centers on the ground, it takes a within-the-envelope decreases in launch costs to make space-based data centers profitable. Which is then just a cheat code for building a Dyson sphere.

> Didnt startship exploded like 10 times by now?

They all explode all the time. Starship has also been consistently improving its suborbital flight characteristics. I don’t see a good argument for a fundamental design fuckup in the data we have.

> But in 30 months they'll be launchign 1 per hour?

This is nonsense. But within ten years? I think so. At least, we don’t have a good reason to reject that with current data. And that would make the cost equation flip to favoring space-based infrastructure. Which, honestly, is not the answer I expected. (I’ve done aerospace stuff for a while. Most of the back-of-the-envelope math fails. It failed for space-based solar power. It failed for asteroid mining. And it currently fails for space-based data centers. But let launch costs dip a bit, or permitting delays and risks rise a bit, and the equation balances sooner than one would think.)
by wlesieutre | 2026-03-11 22:22:10+00:00
Oh, the 16-ag1067st not the 16-fb0037nr, of course!

It's out of stock for me, and the couple of other locations that I checked via VPN.

The "st" at the end appears to be a Staples specific part number, so I found the less specific "16-ag1067" on Amazon for $1051. https://www.amazon.ca/HP-OmniBook-1920x1200-Graphics-Keyboar...

On HP's own online store though, this model number doesn't exist.

Took another look at the 16-fb0037nr that I found earlier when browsing HP's store by price, that one's a Snapdragon instead of Ryzen, so very different computer. Don't know what the state of Window's ARM compatibility layer is.

Anyway, this is the typical experience of looking at non-Apple laptops and it sucks.
by kelnos | 2026-03-11 22:22:13+00:00
I'm torn on this. On one hand I do agree with your goal about wanting to live in a bubble of interesting thoughts. But on the other... I know I have my biases, and I'm sure I might end up blocking people who actually are insightful and interesting but either a) had an off day and shitposted, or b) says insightful things in ways that make me angry and get past my sense of reasonableness.
by everfrustrated | 2026-03-11 22:22:28+00:00
The biggest advantage physical voting has it is follows human-scaling laws. Which often is a problem (inefficient) but for voting this is a massive benefit for one particular reason - due to lack of automation any fraud doesn't also benefit from the same automation so has to be large scale and widely distributed for it to be impactful (the fraud has to be distributed to the humans involved). Which isn't to say that it can't happen (and does!) but requires a lot more effort and in the physical world there always a lot more fingerprints left, cameras looking, informants, etc.
by alecco | 2026-03-11 22:22:41+00:00
I might be old, but he strikes me as a shallow valley Bro. His CV has nothing of significance. But he had a lot of Big Tech guests and even that Navy intelligence woman. He got a boost by being endorsed by Bezos. It smells of BS to me. Again, maybe I'm just a grumpy greybeard and this is a Gen Z thing.
by SilverElfin | 2026-03-11 22:22:49+00:00
It’s absolutely infuriating. I don’t mind people talking around me but the type of painful noise a phone speaker puts out is just plain irritating. It’s completely rude and inconsiderate to be on speakerphone in public. I see it all the time on public transit and in cafes. You also often see people play videos or games (especially kids) without headphones on airplanes - although now airplanes are cracking down on that.

I think the issue is a general increase in anti-social behavior - but part of it is definitely cultural. As an example, I never see Japanese people on their speakerphones in public. Some other cultures seem more likely to view it as acceptable (or just care less about how they impact others). I’ve also noticed that elderly people are much more likely to be on speakerphones taking calls with the volume at max, so personally I think there’s an age aspect too.
by bonoboTP | 2026-03-11 22:23:18+00:00
Realistically, the vast majority of people will not have a real chance to "refute" or even evaluate scientific claims. Maybe given a lot of time and foundational work to learn the field, some percentage of people can usefully think about them, but the vast majority can't. A lot of people are functional illiterates. They will pick based on trust and gut feelings either way.

For example, when deciding whether to give your kids certain vaccines or not, you really can't expect that new parents will read the primary literature and try to refute or confirm the conclusions based on the numbers and will trace through the citations and so on... Any of those claims will also have some online account on social media refuting it with equally scientifically sounding words. In the end it will come down to heuristics and your model of how the world works, which set of people operate with what kind of intention. Like maybe you know people working in the field who you trust and hear from them that generally this sort of stuff can be trusted. Or maybe you had some bad experiences getting screwed by "the establishment" (maybe even unrelated to medicine) and now you lump all this together and distrust them.
by elAhmo | 2026-03-11 22:23:27+00:00
Great take. If the past year has taught us anything, it’s that the US can’t really be seen as the “good guys” in such a simple way. Many of these things have been happening for years, but war crimes, disregard for international law, blackmailing allies, killing their own citizens without accountability, and allowing foreign governments to heavily influence policy are all troubling signs.

It’s easy to point to China as a place where freedom of speech isn’t present, but try asking members of the current administration or even Supreme Court judges who won the 2020 election and see what kind of responses you get. That alone says a lot about the current state of things.
by reliabilityguy | 2026-03-11 22:23:35+00:00
> Pointlessness of this war aside

This is not a pointless war. You may not like Trump or Bibi, but geopolitics-wise this war make perfect sense on many levels.

First, it limits China's ability to hoard cheep oil as Iran has to sell its oil with a discount due to being sanctioned. China hoards oil as it plans to attack Taiwan and it understands that there will be sanctions on oil trade. So, to minimize the shock on its economy China hoards oil. [1]

Second, Iran is the reason why Gulf states are surrounded by instability: Houthis, armed and funded by IR, in Yemen make Saudis and UAE uneasy. Iraqi militias funded and armed by IR as well sabotage internal politics of Iraq the same way Hizballah destabilizes Lebanon. No one in the Gulf (except Qatar maybe, up until recently) wanted strong IR. These countries and their peace is essential for US and the world economy.

Third, if IR gets nukes, most of the Gulf nations would want nukes too. They already see themselves surrounded by IR-funded militias. We do not need more nukes, we need less nukes in the world. And I have no idea how people simply ignore the fact that IR already has 400+kg of 60%-encriched uranium. Why if not for bombs?

So yeah, geopolitics-wise this war makes perfect sense. Islamic Republic is major destabilizing factor in the region, and this war attempts to resolve it.

Why the current admin cannot articulate it clearly, idk.

[1] https://jkempenergy.com/2026/02/15/chinas-oil-stocks-and-rea...
by pydry | 2026-03-11 22:23:46+00:00
Until the UK military pledge allegiance to democracy rather than the king, the royal family is also a risk to democracy.

Thailand is an object lesson in how monarchy is repeatedly used as a lever by military and business elites to overthrow democratic representation "in the name of the king".

It almost happened in the UK once, too, in the same way it happened in Thailand.

The reason the media is so keen on the institution is because it functions as a "break glass in case of emergency" for elites. It's not an organic part of the culture, it is shoved down our throats.
by ang_cire | 2026-03-11 22:23:51+00:00
1800 people detained at "alligator Alcatraz" had their records purged from ICE databases, and are completely unaccounted for. Literally disappeared, and the only people whose word we have they're alive are the same people who disappeared them.

Yes, the Uyghur genocide and paramilitary suppression and settler-colonialism of Tibet and Xinjiang is horrific, and will (hopefully) be recognized in the future as a genocide on par with others that 'enjoy' historical notoriety, but let's not pretend we're not well on our way to doing that here.

The rhetoric of ethnic superiority and nationalism and birthright that exists in our government is the exact same rhetoric that exists in Xi Jinping's "Imperial Han" nationalism.
by davebranton | 2026-03-11 22:24:08+00:00
It doesn't matter.

The guidelines are perfectly clear, no matter the outcome of your thought experiment. Hacker News wants intelligent conversation between human beings, and that's the beginning and the end of it.

If you want LLM-enhanced conversation then I'm sure you will find places to have that desire met, and then some. Hacker News is not that place, and I pray that it will never become that place. In short, and in answer to "Do we prefer text with the right "provenance" over higher quality text?".

Yes. Yes, we do.
by jazzyjackson | 2026-03-11 22:24:09+00:00
I don’t know enough about plastics, and if it’s ABS it’s ABS, but how is it dyed? Point is I don’t know, so I buy from a company that has a reputation and would be held accountable, and would never buy kids toys from a fly by night business with no reason to care how carcinogenic their product ends up being
by cosmic_cheese | 2026-03-11 22:24:32+00:00
The thing is, I think there's probably a niche for a workstation laptop like that, but this doesn't really check the right boxes.

For all that extra bulk it ought to be extremely robust and repairable, have the best specs possible, and be equipped with the kind of killer cooling system that a thin chassis can't deliver. Then the tradeoffs might make sense.
by xyzzy123 | 2026-03-11 22:25:17+00:00
> Iran has weathered decades of sanctions, which is a fancy way of saying "we're going to starve you and deny your citizens basic medical care". The death toll for this is also likely in the millions.

Hi, I think millions is a drastic overstatement here which undermines the rest of your (often legitimate) claims.

Also Israel seems to have fairly normal relations with many countries in the region, the difference seems to be they are "countries not publicly calling for the destruction of Israel".
by Overdr0ne | 2026-03-11 22:25:19+00:00
You would still be getting partial counts by district right? Isn't that a partial result? Make the validation algorithms open source. And I imagine there's some kind of independent auditing of the voting systems. I think it would be neat to have multiple competing implementers of the voting system, where ballots are sent to each, and results are compared. And hey, why not, maybe after voting you get an anonymized receipt, that could then be human-counted as well
by fc417fc802 | 2026-03-11 22:25:20+00:00
I'm not sure I agree. The system certainly isn't optimal but results aren't just dumped into a vacuum. Something is only useful if people can build on it. Even if negative results don't get published, even if it isn't optimal, by virtue of future positive results building on past things that did reproduce you get forward progress.

Regardless, I don't think that's at odds with my original assertion that becoming a venue for publishing negative results would undermine the "point" of Nature.

The missing link isn't a venue in which to publish. It's funding to do the work in the first place. Also funding to spend the time writing it up when you find that you've inadvertently been tricked into doing the work while trying to get something that builds on it to work.
by amiantos | 2026-03-11 22:25:29+00:00
Who cares if anyone knows my blog exists? I'm not writing my blog to farm engagement as I do not run ads on my blog. I write on my blog because I want to write my thoughts down and project them into the world. Whether or not anyone sees them is pretty unimportant.

If my writing helps someone via them hitting my blog directly or them getting the answer via AI aggregation, mission accomplished.
by nomel | 2026-03-11 22:25:29+00:00
What is "it" you're referring to here?

Nobody is talking about current LLM. And, we don't know if gradient decent will be involved, since the systems don't exist yet. Maybe it all be some runtime gradient decent. If there's an optimization problem involved in any part of the process, and numbers are involved, there's a near guarantee it will include gradient decent.
by kbelder | 2026-03-11 22:25:30+00:00
It's not "I used to have slaves...", it's "My ancestors used to have slaves...".

Having a class of nobles is an embarrassment for a country, and they should have been kicked out of parliament a century ago. But don't attribute to the child the sins of the father; that's the same category of error that the concept of hereditary nobility falls into.
by JumpCrisscross | 2026-03-11 22:25:37+00:00
> Is there actually a benefit? Or are we just watching the slow motion collapse of another empire convinced of its own immortality?

These aren’t mutually exclusive. The world is better off for Athens and the Roman and Harrapan and Haudenosaunee republics. (Book request: history of the republic. I’ve struggled to find one.)

The CCP with internal elections was interesting and a genuine riposte to broadly-enfranchised republics. Xi as a dictator is not, not.
by zahlman | 2026-03-11 22:25:51+00:00
Sure. There's always the possibility that LLM-generated text goes undetected, especially if false positives have a cost. But this is fine. Of course putting more effort into prompting makes the result harder to detect. It also, naturally, reduces the annoyance of LLM-generated comments. And because of the effort involved, it naturally cuts down on the volume of such comments.

Arguably it cannot avoid all the possible harm. For example, someone might generate a comment that makes false statements but cannot reasonably be detected as LLM-generated except perhaps by people who know (or determine) that the statements are false. But from a policy perspective, this is again not really different from if someone just decided to lie.
by _pdp_ | 2026-03-11 22:26:00+00:00
> In a study of over 16,000 queries, measured against institutional benchmarks from McKinsey, Harvard, MIT, BCG, and others, we determined Perplexity Computer saved our internal teams $1.6M in labor costs and performed 3.25 years of work in only four weeks. And now we’re extending those same capabilities to other teams.

This is a wild statement that does not seem to be supported by any actual data.

What does it mean? Does clicking on a link counts as labor.
by kasey_junk | 2026-03-11 22:26:17+00:00
Your hypothesis then is that if Oman prices a single term contract not in dollars that will _cause_ the end of dollar hegemony rather than be the result of it?

Even though the largest oil producer in the world will continue to price in dollars no matter what. The third largest oil producer was forcibly dedollarized already and the gulf state national producers already sell oil into the spot market outside of dollars today?
by al_borland | 2026-03-11 22:26:17+00:00
How about doing what others are unwilling to do?

There are some tasks that aren’t exactly fun, but need to get done. Doing those jobs can also help give you more skills and deep information on certain issues other may lack or let atrophy.

We had a new guy who liked doing the same thing 1,000 times, so I asked him to fix agents on severs that were always broken and would cause deployment failures. Doing it proactively instead of reactively. Our failure rates dropped dramatically, which is a nice feather in his cap. That was low hanging fruit that anyone could have picked up and started doing for 10 years, but no one did. It was a slog at the start, but once he got caught up and everything was clean, it would take him maybe 20 minutes each day to maintain, and he knew more about fixing those issues than anyone. He became the expert in the room.

As issues were discovered, fixing them probably could have been largely automated, by putting the various fixes into code and having it run on broken agents each day to see what it would fix. The gaps could be addressed and added to the fix-it script if possible. This would have been even better. No one actually writing code knew enough about fixing the agent to do this, or cared enough, they’d just deal with things failing periodically.

Look for these gaps in your organization and come up with ways to address them and do it.
by eek2121 | 2026-03-11 22:26:21+00:00
This. LLMs are an autocomplete engine. They aren't curious. Take your curiosities and use your human voice to express them.

The only reason you should be using an LLM on a forum like this is to do language translation. Nobody cares about your grammar skills, and there really isn't a reason to use an LLM outside of that.

LLMs CANNOT provide unique objectivity or offer unknown arguments because they can only use their own training data, based on existing objectivity and arguments, to write a response. So please shut that shit down and be a human.

Signed, a verified/tested autistic old man.

cheers
by phatfish | 2026-03-11 22:26:25+00:00
I had never heard of the thing and checked it out. It appears to be an industrial scale slop generation machine. Exactly what you would expect if LLMs were let loose to recreate Reddit and introspect on their current context and SOUL.md or the other nonsense that OpenClaw can be customised with.

Not much human content that i could see, probably even the Crypto grifters got bored with it after a couple of days.

The "acquisition" must have given guys that made the thing some favourable terms, and it was a condition for them to even consider working at Meta. Because there is no way a global top 10 market cap company announces this deal willingly.
by htk | 2026-03-11 22:26:28+00:00
The brain has predominantly excitatory synapses/neurons (they add to the total required for a neuron to fire). Inhibitory synapses/neurons subtract from the total required to fire, but they are around 20%-30% of the total, so [-1,0,1,2] could be a closer representation, having only one value for inhibitory (-1) vs two for excitatory (1, 2).
by cuuupid | 2026-03-11 22:26:30+00:00
There is nothing unconstitutional about the first paragraph of your criticism. What is unconstitutional is restricting your ability to write this criticism, which is not breached.

You _could_ argue that this is a flaw in the constitution, and that none of the above should be legal, and that people who support those things should be restricted in their speech or ability to hold office. This was the status quo in politics for a while! These things have all existed for a long time but this seems particularly targeted at Trump, who was famously banned from most social media platforms for years.

There are a lot of democracies (most of the EU for example) that take this stance on freedoms and will even overturn elections to prevent those who support those policies. The question is really 'does doing that protect freedom and democracy or infringe it?'

As for the second paragraph, this is just a lie, Congress has not abdicated any type of war powers to the Cabinet. There has not been any type of declaration of war, and if Congress wanted to stop the DoD, they very much could and in fact came very close to doing so. If your Congress representative did not represent your interests (in this case voted nay), you can call email etc. them and their office or vote them out.

> better country that believes in freedom and goodness

I think you're letting your strong feelings here cloud your judgement, you can hold all of these opinions above without needing to fellate China, which is objectively worse on freedoms than the US. It's also important not to conflate "believes in freedom" with "perfectly meets my line of freedom."
by matthewfcarlson | 2026-03-11 22:26:38+00:00
There is a ton of fascinating work to make the "software" camera in use indicator just as secure if not more secure than an LED attached to the power lines of the camera. Apple hasn't publicly talked about it much but here are two sources that aren't terrible.

https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.09272
https://randomaugustine.medium.com/on-apple-exclaves-d683a2c...
https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/03/19/on-apple-exclav...

We've seen a few examples on HN lately (Coruna iOS Exploit Kit) of nation state level exploits in the hands of financially motivated organizations. I'm not free of bias here but the industry is quickly headed towards a reckoning in terms of security over the next few years.
by reliabilityguy | 2026-03-11 22:26:44+00:00
> Iran has always lacked an ability to project power at a distance.

Sure. Now they maybe able to reach Greece. Give them five years and they will develop missiles that can reach France, or even UK. I am sure europeans would love the idea of fanatical regime having arms that can reach them, especially, if we consider that EU today does not have very robust air defense. Even Israel that planned for this war for a while has rockets that penetrate their defenses.

I would prefer the politicians not to take those gambles.