skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Sourceforge wasn't the only offering at the time.

Lots of companies were doing Git and Mercurial "forges" at the time. Many of them were better than Github.

Everything was evolving nicely (including Git and Github) until Github used VC money to offer everything for free to blow everybody out in order to lock people into their product (for example--export of anything other than code is still hit or miss on Github).

At which point, everything in the source control space completely collapsed.
Just want to say how amazed I am that people are still using Bunnie’s Chumby!!
I just want to emphasise two things, which are both mentioned in the article, but I still want to emphasise them as they are core to what I take from the article as someone who has been a fan boy of Nicholas for years now

1. Nicholas really does know how badly machine learning models can be made to screw up. Like, he really does. [0]

2. This is how Nicholas -- an academic researcher in the field of security of machine learning -- uses LLMs to be more efficient.

I don't know whether Nicolas works on globally scaled production systems with have specific security/data/whatever controls that need to be adhered to, or whether he even touches any proprietary code. But seeing as he heavily emphasised the "i'm a researcher doing research things" in the article -- I'd take a heavy bet that he does not. And academic / research / proof-of-concept coding has different limitations/context/needs than other areas.

I think this is a really great write up, even as someone on the anti-LLM side of the argument. I really appreciate the attempt to do a "middle of the road" post which is absolutely what the conversation needs right now (pay close attention to how this was written LLM hypers).

I don't share his experience, I still value and take enjoyment from the "digging for information" process -- it is how I learn new things. Having something give me the answer doesn't help me learn, and writing new software is a learning process for me.

I did take a pause and digested the food for thought here. I still won't be using an LLM tomorrow. I am looking forward to his next post, which sounds very interesting.

[0]: https://nicholas.carlini.com/papers
you forgot to add Latin America, Africa, South East Asia. Basically 90% of the world.

One of the geographical trick question is "Which country has the US NOT bombed?" and not many people can answer this.
What's the role of ceramics in SCWO?

My only familiarity with that is a quick skim of the Wikipedia article, though that makes no mention of ceramics.
> How does this project prevent that I as an attacker insert random garbage or rewrite the downloaded pages to be wrong in specific ways?

It doesn't, but in practice, it's not a problem. The goal is to with minimum turnaround rescue as much data as possible before a site goes down. Getting 1% garbage is more preferable than losing 30% to inefficiency in archiving because you're paranoid.

> For HTTPS, who does the TLS termination?

The Warrior literally just runs wget and saves to warc files that are uploaded to a tracker server.
How to get started with digital estate planning [pdf]
The introverts are winning
It is overhyped. If you don't know much about what you're trying to do, then you're not going to know how bad or suboptimal the the LLM's output is. Some people will say it doesn't matter as long as it gets the job done. Then they end up paying a lot extra for me to come in and fix it when it's going haywire in prod.
Under "Risk Control":

> Avoiding risk for these farmers comes in two main forms: there are strategies to reduce the risk of failure within the annual cycle and then strategies to prepare for failure by ‘banking’ the gains of a good cycle against the losses of a bad cycle.

> If you only farm one crop (the ‘best’ one) and you get too little rain or too much, or the temperature is wrong – that crop fails and the family starves. But if you farm several different crops, that mitigates the risk of any particular crop failing due to climate conditions, or blight (for the Romans, the standard combination seems to have been a mix of wheat, barley and beans, often with grapes or olives besides; there might also be a small garden space. Orchards might double as grazing-space for a small herd of animals, like pigs). By switching up crops like this and farming a bit of everything, the family is less profitable (and less engaged with markets, more on that in a bit), but much safer because the climate conditions that cause one crop to fail may not impact the others.

Under "Banqueting the Yields":

> The most immediate of these are the horizontal relationships: friends, family, marriage ties and neighbors. While some high-risk disasters are likely to strike an entire village at once (like a large raid or a general drought), most of the disasters that might befall one farming family (an essential worker being conscripted, harvest failure, robbery and so on) would just strike that one household. So farmers tended to build these reciprocal relationships with each other: I help you when things are bad for you, so you help me when things are bad for me.

You might notice that this is exactly what I said above. What did you want me to see?
Related Suspicious data pattern in recent Venezuelan election (886 points, 3 days ago, 514 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41123155
If I know technology which I am using llm for then llm helps me to do it faster. If I am not familiar with technology then llm helps me to learn it faster by showing me win the code that it generates which part of technology is important and how it works in real examples. But I do not think it is helpful and I would say it may be dangerous depending on task you do if you do not know technology and also do not what to learn it and understand how generated code works.
Isn't the point of being smart human beings is that we do things better than what occurs in nature?
Yes, this program spans three administrations, and spiritually the push to use commercial contractors dates back to at least 1984.
I've used EADF (not s) for years, and will never go back.
Does "tried" imply they weren't successful?
> the research team I work with has about 1/20th the compute that a Google researcher has. This gives them a massive advantage

The search space could easily be so large that a less disciplined approach might yield fewer useful outcomes even with the compute advantage. Being forced to be focused and disciplined might actually be a big advantage to you.
Nothing would do more to get the US out of the PRC's backyard than if the TW crisis is resolved amicably with an EU-style arrangement.

I think the PRC is aware that if there is a PRC-TW war, there is nothing that will stop Japan from ramping up their military and acquiring a nuclear deterrent. The situation on the Korean peninsula is even easier to destabilize.

I'm reassured by the fact that the PRC has not taken steps to convert its economy to internal demand. It's still in export-led growth mode (not coincidentally the same industrialization model used by TW and HK.)

Except for TW, no one would lose more economically than the PRC if there is war.
I know nothing of the history, but I always imagined part of this was wanting control over the chip factories.

If I were China, I'd be infuriated watching all the best tech get made just offshore and having it all under pretty much western control.
This reads like something generated by AI. Or at least heavily using it in the writing process.
Nicholas worked at Matasano, and is responsible for most of the coolest levels in Microcorruption.
I spent so many hours reading books as a child and feel that my world is larger and richer for it. But even so I'd like to go back and whisper in my little ear, put down the book for a while and go outside and read the world with every sense and then write on it with every tool you can find or make. I love books but have hidden in them as much as built on them. All good things can be abused.
What your dog sees [video]
I also use LLMs similarly. As a professional programmer, LLMs save me a lot of time. They are especially efficient when I don't understand a flow or need to transform values from one format to another. However, I don't currently use them to produce code that goes into production. I believe that in the coming years, LLMs will evolve to analyze complete requirements, architecture, and workflow and produce high-quality code. For now, using LLMs to write production-ready applications in real-time scenarios will take longer.
> Boeing's F-15 and F/A-18 derivatives (F-15EX Eagle II and F/A-18E/F Super Hornet) have utterly failed to generate sales outside the US military, being defeated namely by Lockheed Martin's F-35 at every turn.

Every assertion in that sentence is false. Indonesia, of all countries, intends to buy a couple dozen export versions of the F-15EX [0] and the RAAF is supplementing its F-35s with Super Hornets and plans to fly them until the 2040s. [1] And Kuwait will replace its Hornets with the Super Hornet as well. [2]

But it's a different kind of mistake to ascribe failure to the F-15EX because it's not selling a lot of foreign copies. The thing you need remember about the F-15EX: it is a younger brother to the Saudi Arabian F-15SA and Qatari F-15QA, and in turn the Israeli F-15IA is newer still, but they are all really similar. The F-15EX includes a second seat that will never be used operationally, and funny little ears under the canopy which hold sensor equipment on the F-15SA but are completely superfluous on the F-15EX, and an engine that is not state of the art for that form factor, because the US military's intent was - to the fullest extent practical - to minimize development time and costs by using equipment whose development and testing had already been paid for. [3]

I expect the trend of countries wanting to supplement fifth gen fighters with 4th and 4.5th gen fighters, for cost as well as operational reasons, will continue to take away from potential F-35 sales. Although back to your original point, that doesn't necessarily hurt Lockheed Martin too much: they do sell a fair number of F-16s, after all, and the newest ones command a high price.

And yes, the Osprey is dogshit.

[0] https://boeing.mediaroom.com/news-releases-statements?item=1...

[1] https://www.flightglobal.com/defence/australian-f/a-18fs-to-...

[2] https://www.airforce-technology.com/news/boeing-consolidates...

[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vbOB7KlbcZI
Apple has 10% of the PC market and has been at that level for years. The ARM transition didn't move that number.

> if you're NOT making ARM processors then your fab is not making as much money as the competition.

Nope. The profit margin on ARM processors is at least an order of magnitude less than x86, probably close to two orders of magnitude. If you are making x86 profit margins, making ARM processors is business suicide. This is true for both Intel and AMD.
Depends on your development and per-action cost. And on the possible latency. It also changes your whole stack from "send a request" to "emulate each step in a browser while taking screenshots at (hopefully) the right event/delay" - that's a huge difference.
Castle Wolfenstein, MUSE Software, 1981, used a variation of WASD for movement: https://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/1qrynf/terrifying_c...
Sounds like you’re not looking for an app since a text file works well, but I’ve been using Godspeed and it’s been amazing for this kinda workflow.
Programming with Punch Cards [pdf]
My guess is that the fabs would turn to rubble pretty quickly in a conflict (and we might not even find out who did it.)
Thank you, that makes sense. The feedback control system that positions a head can only guarantee that the head for a specific platter is in the right location.
That assumes that rain falling on leaves serves no purpose.
One hesitates to criticize the great man but, as mmastrac has already pointed out, it's really difficult to parse out a conclusion, especially a straightforward probability estimate.

I was hoping for something like; "The probability of these apparently fake numbers being genuine is in the range 1/1500 to 1/130,000, depending on what other assumptions we make".

Maybe that's impossible in the same way that talking about the improbability of a shuffle revealing some specific series of cards says nothing about the reality of one such sequence after it's revealed.
> this took a while to parse out

Andrew Gelman's post on the counts is better written: https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2024/07/31/suspicious...

(The description and the conclusion aren't different; it's just easier to read.)
One of the other factors preventing people from starting small businesses is lack of affordable health insurance. They can buy coverage through state exchanges but those are still more expensive that group health plans offered by large employers.
Swampland (Physics)
It may not be verifiable, but is it possible to do some kind of macroeconomic analysis/modelling to estimate it?
I think it’s the difference in frequency. There’s likely other factors too, I’d suppose rain purges mold spores from the air for example, as it does with particulate pollution.
The backlash is the norm in history.

Info asymmetry can't be "solved" when different groups mentally start diverging having different models of reality in their head. This is happening much faster than in the past with access to info, misinfo, disinfo.

The older gen has not been taught the history and sociology that shaped them, the way the next gen has. There is such a wide gap in this knowledge, people have no control over it. Some people are already busy, night and day blaming school teachers and profs for teaching that history and sociology, but the truth is that is just 1 of 2 options.

To understand the second option look at history and sociology of orthodox populations, and how they survive inspite of all the changes happening, and the rate of change accelerating, the number one reason is they control the flow of info into their communities.

The internet will produce the digital amish and digital ultraorthadox and the digitial taliban. There is no escaping the confrontation with them unless they are all moved to a separate continent or planet.
> We live in the southeast US now, the climate is helpful for farming. I lived in Seattle for a few years and that climate would have been much harder to work with.

Because of (a lack of) winter sunlight? Or something else?
He also worked at Google. I don't think that negates my point as he was still doing research there :shrugs:

> academic / research / proof-of-concept coding has different limitations/context/needs than other areas.
Clearly hasn't learned to use the palm for left ctrl!

/s

I do use the palm though, it is weird, lol
Basically GAN but for LLMs? Neat
Than previously believed.
I have a garden that I enjoy, but after years of trial I've learned to only plant hardy native plants and wild flowers because I have a black thumb for vegetables. My main issue is a lack of patience -- I don't want to go out to water everything or monitor if things are getting as much sunlight as I thought they would. But for the last couple years I'd been considering setting up a raspberry pi, some moisture sensors and some kind of drip system as a fun summer project to add on top of my flower garden, so that'd be a journey for me.
This page has a section titled "Cups, Not Calories".

It hurts my soul that anybody producing a table such as that is using something as vague as a "cup" in their calculations.
You could have a pseudonymous voting system where you pick a unique username and when votes are published, you make sure your username is included in the data. That wouldn't prevent someone from inserting fake votes though.
Streams, Calculational Proofs and Dafny
That’s exactly the conclusion, except it’s 1 in 100 million.

You’d need to run that election 100 million times to expect an outcome with vote totals that landed on percentages that all rounded to exactly 0.1.
This article is about how someone who DOES know a lot about what they’re trying to do can get huge value out if them, despite their frequent mistakes.
There are voting protocols where every voter can check that their vote is correctly represented, without breaking anonymity.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/End-to-end_auditable_voting_sy...
The vast majority of UB usually considered problematic has been in the standards for decades, long before compilers took as much advantage of it as they do now (and the reasons for including said UB back then were actual hardware differences, not appeasing compiler developers).

Are there even that many UB additions? The only thing I can remember is realloc with size zero going from implementation-defined to undefined in C23.
China is actually dumping US treasuries, as of the start of 2023. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SSbzefh0VEM They've found new ways to trade in dollars without using US or European banks, so their assets can't be frozen (such as by the use of Tether) so US banks aren't getting paid. As for cross-border trade, 53% of it is now conducted in RMB, with USD falling to 41% (and continuing to decline). US economic policy towards China is backfiring on many fronts, the worst being that Chinese companies have adapted and now produce what they used to import, even advanced technologies. If the export controls were lifted, Chinese companies would not resume business with US companies, because they don't need them anymore.

https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/start-de-dollarizatio...
To be clear, I assume there is a difference based on depth?

I remember playing a waterpolo match in a pool for diving (really deep and long double the usual), it felt like a slog and it felt like drowning
Nat Hairpinning
Water on the leaves isn’t bad if you’re watering in the morning where it’ll soon evaporate in the sunlight.
You should list them. Ya know, cause you asked for a list, we gave a list (of which this is one item) and now you're claiming that there's an unnamed "dozen reasons [why not.]"

Don't just stand there posturing, argue your point like the rest of us or get off the stage.
You either meant Visual SourceSafe or Team Foundation Server for the Microsoft product.

SourceSafe did get abandoned... because your source wasn't actually safe in it.

Its replacement, Team Foundation Server got rebranded as Azure DevOps; but the product's still around, 19 years later.
I think the idea is that using the CNC style design for everything makes it a simpler system? Watering from the soil may be better, but harder to automate to such an extreme? Automating the setup of irrigation lines with a CNC head seems like a pretty cool project though.
I'm Back, Ruby on Rails
Very cool. Do you have a way to see the farm live (via video streaming) in the app or the web?
He wasn't talking about subsidizing people. Letting companies pay people too little is subsidizing those inefficient unproductive companies. Society might subsidize inefficient people because of humanity. Subsidizing inefficient unproductive companies is just dumb.
Anonymous elections aren't working either.
Ask HN: Have You Used a Zone Files Service?
I am wanting to create a zonefile service that is really good. Does anyone have experience in being a customer of any zonefile services and are looking for any critical features? Plmk :)

Examples are CZDS, zonefiles.info, etc.
Yes, but that does not change the fact that compilers writers have control of the standard, have had that control since probably C99, and have introduced new UB along with pushing the 00UB worldview.
> XC2064 FPGA best starting point for moving logic away from the CMOS paradigm

What makes you think that? The architecture of the XC2064 is fairly unremarkable; what makes it special is simply that it was Xilinx's first FPGA.

More broadly, what do you mean by "moving logic away from the CMOS paradigm"? Whether you mean that in terms of logic families or something more fundamental, the starting point would probably be a few simple logic gates on a test wafer, not an entire FPGA.
I've been pleasantly surprised by GitHub's "copilot workspace" feature for creating near production code. It takes a GitHub issue, converts it to a specification, then to a list of proposed edits to a set of files, then it makes the edits. I tried it for the first time a few days ago and was pleasantly surprised at how well it did. I'm going to keep experimenting with it more/pushing it to see how well it works next week.

GitHub's blog post: https://github.blog/news-insights/product-news/github-copilo...

My first experience with it: https://youtube.com/watch?v=TONH_vqieYc
There's a running theme in here of programming problems LLMs solve where it's actually not that important that the LLM is perfectly correct. I've been using GPT4 for the past couple months to comprehend Linux kernel code; it's spooky good at it.

I'm a C programmer, so I can with some effort gradually work my way through random Linux kernel things. But what I can do now instead is take a random function, ask GPT4 what it does and what subsystem it belongs to, and then ask GPT4 to write me a dummy C program that exercises that subsystem (I've taken to asking it to rewrite kernel code in Python, just because it's more concise and easy to read).

I don't worry at all about GPT4 hallucinating stuff (I'm sure it's doing that all the time!), because I'm just using its output as Cliff's Notes for the actual kernel code; GPT4 isn't the "source of truth" in this situation.
A combination of a shorter growing season and less rainfall. Seattle has an interesting rap for being extremely rainy, but their average rainfall is around 38 inches while I get around 60 inches per year here.

We've had cattle on the land with us for the last two years, and though we have had to buy in hay its has been to supplement for 2-3 months rather than 5-6 months. We actually have the pasture space to grow and cut our own hay, that's just a comparatively big investment that we haven't taken on yet but is on the list to next year.

We don't own a tractor and aren't interested in getting one. That is our main blocker for producing our own hay, today everyone assumes you have a heavy tractor and all the implements needed to do the job.
No idea. Just saying, on security stuff, he's legit.
Just a piece of history of SGI:

When I went to school for Softimage in 1997 - my favorite thing was building with MetaClay -- I built an amazing Human Figure on an O2 SGI box -- and sadly I lost my dat backup years later - which I would have been able to bring into blender these days....

Metaclay in 1997 was unreal on SGI...

Now its in the Alien that is Free Blender...

(Softimage was[ $25,000 a license at the time](https://i.imgur.com/9gaeeQl.jpeg) - and an [SGI O2 was 15K and an Octane was 47K](https://i.imgur.com/aVQATfV.jpeg)

https://forums.sgi.sh/index.php?threads/sgi-hardware-and-sof...

---

So after going to school for 3D when it was only taught in 5 schools in the nation at the time - and you can see what a simple rig cost...

I later spent $1,600 on an Evans and Sutherland 32MB Full-Length ATX video card that could handle OpenGL... and run NT and Softimage...
"Merchants2 was the solution."
Free housing where? In one of the most expensive cities in the world? If you provide free housing, it has to be accompanied by a compulsion to accept it, even if it's not in the place you prefer to live. And lots of homeless prefer SF because they have easy access to drugs, can panhandle, etc.

But if there's free housing on offer, it has to be accompanied by a stipulation that setting up a tent and being a societal menace in a major metro does not entitle you to free housing in that metro.
> Did you buy Braid, Anniversary Edition? Tell us why in the comments

Nope. Never heard of it before, and it doesn't look interesting to me.