skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Changing some details form obvious reasons: a friend was a postdoc in biology at a top tier UK university. Her boss was a hotshot professor, tons of revolutionary publications under his belt.

Her first job when he hired her was to hammer into shape a paper one of his PhD students was writing. Normal stuff, right? Adding literature, polishing off rough edges etc. Except the PhD student seemed really uneasy about the paper, kept talking about issues with the data that needed fixing. At face value, all was great - nice small p-values, great effect sizes etc. Eventually it transpired the PhD student was doctoring the data (these were the issues), was deeply uncomfortable with it, but also understood this is what my friend will be helping her with.

At this point my friend goes to the professor to inform him, nicely but firmly, of academic fraud. The prof comes down on my friend like a ton of bricks: who do you think you are, what do you know, I am the hotshot superstar and you are a no-name. All is well with the research and if you press on with the ridiculous accusations, she will be ruined in academia.

Well, my friend is a feisty one. She complained of bullying to the university, as an employment thing. The university was desperate not to touch it and in fact encouraged her to lie low, but she wouldn't. The whole thing kept escalating in really nasty ways, but eventually wound its way to an employment tribunal. Notably, at this point this isn't even about the academic misconduct, it's about the professor bullying his employee.

At the eleventh hour, the prof quits his job and goes to another, also top tier university. Since he is no longer my friend's boss, the case is dropped - no boss, no case. Still, however, no academic misconduct case! My friend, against all advice, wrote a letter to the new university, informing them verbatim of her findings. No response, to this day. The guy is still a top honcho there.

Whereas my friend finished her postdoc, didn't get another academic position and got an industry job, where frankly, she seems happier.
Mild Tesla protests = "far left" losing their minds completely

Beating up cops and breaking into the Capitol Building with the intent to stop an election = normal patriotic behavior that deserves a collective pardon

Wat.
See also:

https://www.science.org/content/article/after-honesty-resear...

https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/24107889/francesca-gino-l... "In response, Gino — who has maintained her innocence — sued Harvard and the bloggers who first published the allegations, claiming she’d been defamed. "
It's probably not going to detect a well-disguised but fundamentally flawed argument
oh stop it. quit trying to stir up this nonsense. who even cares if he IS a nazi? he's acting like one and encouraging them. i know you are trolling, so no need to ask if you are able to understand this or not.
I replied above "Kardashian [and Mark Cuban, and others] endorsing Prenuvo".

GQ 8/2023 "Full Body Scan: Kim Kardashian Endorses Them. But Are They Worth It?" https://www.gq.com/story/kim-kardashian-endorses-full-body-d...

r/Radiology: Explaining the whole Prenuvo mess to the layman...
https://www.reddit.com/r/Radiology/comments/17sdguu/explaini...

r/PeterAttia Anyone have regrets over doing the Prenuvo scan/Full body MRI? https://www.reddit.com/r/PeterAttia/comments/1fievpc/anyone_...
multiple negative reviews, including one experience by Historical-Sail-3636: "I regret getting a full body prenuvo scan ! It’s a scam ! Don’t do it. The radiologists reviewing and signing the scans are not properly licensed. They are the rejects of the medical community. Check the license of the radiologist that read your scan! You’ll be surprised."

"We Tried Prenuvo's $2,500 MRI Scan. Here's What We Learned and Why It's Not for Everyone"
https://www.verywellhealth.com/prenuvo-full-body-mri-scan-76...
My doc said there is no scientific proof that Mg works against cramps. Is that true?
Excess B12 is also very easily excreted in urine being a water-soluble vitamin so it's really hard to "overdose" on
Exactly. An AI-web based on the principles of HATEOAS is the next step, where instead of links, we would have function calls.

As you said, HATEOAS requires a generic client that can understand anything at runtime — a client with general intelligence. Until recently, humans were the only ones fulfilling that requirement. And because we suck at reading JSON, HATEOAS had to use HTML. Now that we have strong AI, we can drop the Hypermedia from 'H'ATEOAS and use JSON instead.

I wrote about that exact thing in Part 2: https://www.ondr.sh/blog/ai-web
You would think somebody accused of vile nazi political world views would avoid linking himself to antisemitic tropes, but then Musk does as Musk wants. He doesn't care what people think.
I have a strange relationship with psilocybin where microdoses reliably give me an almost unbearable headache, but a large dose will reliably get rid of a headache (even a migraine in one case).

I haven’t tested it in many years (boring parent mode engaged) but that was my first experience with bizarre dose response relationships where one effect was very acutely inverted.

It took me months to figure out the source of headaches. I felt certain it couldn’t be the psilocybin because it was so good at fixing my headaches prior to that. Sure enough, I could turn the headaches on and off like a switch by taking a tiny dose or not taking it.
> excellent developer experience (DX)

My experience with next.js has been it’s like working with struts or enterprise java beans or something. It’s a giant, batteries included framework whose primary purpose is to lock you in to the Vercel ecosystem. There are some bright spots - next-auth is decent - but all this SSR spaghetti with leaky abstractions dripping out (try rendering emails in the backend of a next app) make it really not worth it.

Also compile times when working on it locally can get astronomical with relatively modest applications for no obvious reasons. Like Scala but less predictable.

I suspect the % of apps built with next.js that actually genuinely get a lot out of SSR is tiny, it’s mostly the darling of B2B SaaS companies.
Rust vs. Go: Battle for the Back End
It's interesting to me how this is rather opposite from the way I use LLMs. I'm not saying either way is better, just that there are such different ways to use these tools. I primarily use Claude via its iOS app or website, and I explicitly have in my settings explicitly to start with a high-level understanding of the project. I haven't found LLMs to be good enough at giving me code that's written how I want and feature-complete, so I'd rather work alongside it, almost as a pair programmer.

Starting with generating a whole load of code and then having to go back and fix it up feels "backwards" to me; I'd rather break up the problem into smaller pieces, then write code for each piece before assembling it into its final form. Plus, this gives me the chance to "direct" it at each step, rather than starting with a codebase that I haven't had much input on and having to form it into shape from there.

Here's my exact setting for "personal preferences":

"If I'm asking about a larger project, I would rather work through the answer alongside Claude rather than have the answer given to me. Simple, direct questions can still get direct answers, but if I'm asking about a larger solution, I'd rather start with high-level steps and work my way down rather than having a full response given immediately."
A smaller company like Hiveworks, for example?
Previously on source: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43285384
> Excess B12 is really bad. Neuropathy.

Do you have any source for this? I can find some "it-might-be-bad" studies through a quick googling, but in general the idea seem to be that excess B12 is thought to be unproblematic ("it's just peed out").
> The incentives to investigate and call out fraud are non-existent. In fact, the opposite is true: If you find something fishy in a paper, your mentor, colleagues, and friends will most likely suggest that you keep quiet and move on (or as I have learned the hard way, they might even try to bully you into silence).

I can’t help but wonder if these mentors are also guilty of fabricating data and don’t want to cause issues that might lead to people looking at their own work more closely.
Example on a smaller scale - I remember how at uni people who did none of the work could end up with better grades. I remember toiling weeks on a hard "group" project alone, and then my groupmates who contributed nothing got better grades - because from project we all got the same one, and from exams I got worse ones as I had no time to study well.
Context length, context length, context length. LLM architectures (there are rare exceptions) inherently get worse at answering problems given too much context. From a user point of view, these appear as just idiosyncrasies to each model's ability to stay coherent - you just have to hope the devs are cognizant of this behavior in distributions of data close to yours.

Keep the input minimal. Keep a set of gold standard tests running in a loop to catch problems quick. Don't tune out. Debate whether you really need to use that new model you haven't worked with that much yet just because it's newer. And double check you aren't being sold e.g. a quantized version of the model.
A device that randomly distributes pills into two chutes.
Regarding 'cad-bloggers from Columbia:

Woit does do a bit of grey area coverage. Likewise, his academic pubs are more interesting to me, personally! His reputation, however, is mixed at best. A real hero!

Gelman: maybe he's trying to subdue the neuroticism*. I look forward to more compassionate, less overtly "curiosity"-driven grey-area coverage (not to mention stats papers) from him!

Here is recent one, sadly also about psychologists (would be more interesting to do it to card carrying statisticians)

http://stat.columbia.edu/~gelman/research/published/healing3...

*Not many people describe themselves as an exponent of radical self-honesty since radicality isn't a palatable, much less enjoyable, thing. It takes a real saint (or logician) not to reflexively flinch from the imagined tsunami of incoming pity.

Grey areas-- you can safely explore
Exactly. No matter how well-intentioned a system is at the start, once the data exists, it will be accessed for purposes beyond what was originally promised
This is great! Just like infallible AI detectors for university essays, I anticipate no problems.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-01-08/vitamin-b6-toxicity-p...

I got my Bs mixed up it's Mg + B6
Another thing why magnesium oxide could not be the optimal compound for you: It's a laxative. That might be good to know before you start daily supplementation. Personally, I have bisglycinate.
--- start quote ---

prompt engineering is nothing but an attempt to reverse-engineer a non-deterministic black box for which any of the parameters below are unknown:

- training set

- weights

- constraints on the model

- layers between you and the model that transform both your input and the model's output that can change at any time

- availability of compute for your specific query

- and definitely some more details I haven't thought of

--- end quote ---

https://dmitriid.com/prompting-llms-is-not-engineering
Placebo is such a curious thing. If you can prove to yourself that your effects are placebo-effects, then those effects should disappear, because you no longer believe in them.

So if it's working for you, you probabaly should NOT start a study to find out if it works or not. It might stop working (for you). What good would that do?
the phrase you're looking for is touch grass
What, you don't like the current dystopia?
I'd always believe a doctor over anonymous internet experiences. If your doctor thinks it's not helpful, follow their advice. I found my cramps stopped, but anecdata is not evidence.
Someone didn't send a large enough campaign contribution.
B6 not B12. My bad.
Assuming elections will still be thing.

Look to the countries Trump worships.

If the population doesn't react during this year, it might be too late in four years.

In Portugal it took us 30 years, and elections were happening.
I have been using a makefile where each target executes a shell script snippet to build, push or deploy containers. The problem is that with simple docker build it doesn't recognize modified code files and uses cached layers. To pick up changes in the code I always have to build with --no-cache which is inefficient. I wonder if Airo can detect changes in the code and rebuild only the image layers that need to be rebuild.
Any difference between this and
https://www.focusmate.com ?
And once trust is broken, it's almost impossible to restore.
Good, the market is wrong. As a trader I can only profit when there is a disparity of information like this.
It's not really required. Android comes with a separate webview (that cannot be overridden). Sure it's based on Chromium but that means there should zero reliance on Chrome the product, and those known working login portals can continue working without Chrome.

It's well known that Google requires manufacturers to install their apps and requires it to be uninstallable. This includes Gmail, Google, and others.
Google Maps timeline history vanishing for users
kind of like the AWS tools only really work if you use them with Amazon Web Services...
The thought experiment reflects an obvious truism. Your ability to disprove it just a demonstration of your inability to reason about stock-to-flow. You prove too much here. I think this will become evident by the end of this halving period.
This is great. The author defines their own metrics, is doing their own A/B tests and publishes their interpretation plus the raw data. Imagine a world where all health blogging was like that.

Personally, I have not published any results yet, but I have been doing this type of experiments for 4 years now. And collected 48874 data points so far. I built a simple system to do it in Vim:

https://www.gibney.org/a_syntax_for_self-tracking

I also built a bunch of tooling to analyze the data.

I think that mankind could greatly benefit from more people doing randomized studies on their own. Especially if we find a way to collectively interpret the data.

So I really applaud the author for conducting this and especially for providing the raw data.

Reading through the article and the comments here on HN, I wish there was more focus on the interpretation of the experiment. Pretty much all comments here seem to be anecdotal.

Let's look at the author's interpretation. Personally, I find that part a bit short.

They calculated 4 p-values and write:

Technically, I did find two significant results.

I wonder what "Technically" means here. Are there "significant results" that are "better" than just "technically significant results"?

Then they continue:

Of course, I don’t think this
means I’ve proven theanine is harmful.

So what does it mean? What was the goal of collecting the data? What would the interpretation have been if the data would show a significant positive effect of Theanine?

It's great that they offer the raw data. I look forward to taking a look at it later today.
Very little if anything is ever proven to be absolutely true in all circumstances. The author did a decent job of controlling variables and blinding so their evidence for a lack of effect is substantially more robust than any number of personal anecdotes claiming an effect.

We’ve known for centuries now that people are absolutely terrible at knowing if medical interventions work beyond placebo unless you use rigorous protocols to remove bias and account for reversion to the mean. Yet it seems the message just doesn’t get through to vast swathes of otherwise intelligent people.
Yeah but this just means that you can get better performance if someone else handles 70% of the requests.
We’ve had cars for over a hundred years. Go drive a 1990s-era car and you’ll see how intuitive and tactile the controls are. Everything added since then are basically frills and conveniences.

A car is not a 3D modeling or game world building system. They’re functionally much simpler and don’t really benefit from added control complexity.
Trump will go away at some point (hopefully he does not seek a 3rd term). However, i am concerned about the fact that the GOP has been mired in the MAGA culture for a decade now, and what that does to the people seeking membership and the people being promoted to leadership. When Trump leaves, the people which have been promoted and been successful in GOP under him still stays. For what virtues are you being promoted for in the GOP? The entire structure is corrupted.
> Don’t you think Russia is similarly concerned about getting nuked?

No, because they are..

> the most heavily-armed country in the world

Russia threatens nuclear war all the time. They’re not concerned about it at all. Most of what they do as a country is tell other countries how big their nuclear missiles are in a menacing tone.
As sensationalist as this sounds I agree. I think a major turning point was when tech became a big business by charging nothing.

1. It’s impossible to compete with free so business that do add real value are at a disadvantage

2. A future where tech adoption slowly was accepted and people eased into being comfortable actually paying for things the value never happened and now feels impossible, as free is expected.

3. It’s created bad incentives. Like keeping people on their devices as much as possible and only show them things that enrage them or confirm their prejudices.

4. None of it is really free because someone pays for it all and those costs are born by society anyways, while having less choice.

5. I think over time this ethos has become mainstream and it’s essentially a fraud mindset. Nothing matters as long as the line goes up.

(This process and the end results are surprisingly similar to academic fraud. “Everything is free” is the same thing as inventing whatever results people want to hear. Both will ultimately lead to the same, unsustainable end result, as people will no longer trust research because everything is fake.)
Kardashian allegedly was not paid to promote Pronuvo [on Instagram] and was not an investor. Other celebrities who have endorsed Prenuvo include Paris Hilton, Kate Hudson, and Kris Jenner. However Mark Cuban who promoted it was an investor.

As to prior boom-and-bust waves of full-body scan business (self-correction: I shoud have said the previous wave was CT scans, not MRI), GQ 8/2023 [0]
"Almost 20 years ago, there was a boom and bust of body-scanning clinics, as The New York Times [1][1-archive] covered in 2005. It was a “a sort of medical gold rush,” boosted by direct-to-consumer advertising that got thousands to cough up out-of-pocket payments -- sometimes up to $1000 ... It began as a sort of medical gold rush, with hundreds of scanning centers, with ceaseless direct-to-consumer advertising, and with thousands of Americans paying out of pocket for the scans, which could cost $1,000 or more.
It ended abruptly with the wholesale shuttering of businesses."

Prenuvo's CEO, Andrew Lacy appears to have zero medical credentials and zero scientific background; however he's big in marketing startups. Here are some very dodgy statements from his podcast [2] "How I Built This with Guy Raz - Full body preventive health care with Andrew Lacy of Prenuvo" where Raz asks his to "ask you about the science behind it, and also the criticsms... overwhelming oposition from the medical establishment... I have not found any official endorsement of what you're doing... many public health experts are like: people should not be doing this, it's very expensive... unnecessary procedures, false positives" [20:30] and Lacy replies [21:52] "I don't think you've fairly characterized what they say... not true, a lack of comprehensive, long-term evidence is not... [does not finish his sentence]... I think these statements also have been made about pap smears and mamograms, so this is a very very natural point in the journey from potentially breakthrough screening technology to a point at which it is inevitably adopted, and I hope it won't take thirty years..." [23:40] "... These are very new techniques... and you really need first-hand knowledge to be able to form an opinion that is informed, and there's noone that has really spoken out against these technologies that has experienced it first-hand(!)... in fact most of those people bring their family members in and then start referring their patients" [implies that any doctor who tries it will endorse it].

Disappointing that Raz didn't cut that off "there is zero medical or scientific evidence for your claim. Where are the peer-reviewed studies? Which doctors are you claiming endorse it?".

[0]: https://www.gq.com/story/kim-kardashian-endorses-full-body-d...

[1]: NYT 1/2005 "Rapid Rise and Fall for Body-Scanning Clinics" https://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/23/health/rapid-rise-and-fal...

[1-archive]: https://archive.ph/UcahO

[2]: 12/7/2023 https://one.npr.org/?sharedMediaId=1217778389:1217778391
He was also in a movie with Patrick Stewart.

This is awful news to me. I've driven a wagoneer that had the spinning knob for the shifter, and yeah, I wasn't a fan.
The real question is whether Chrome's dominance comes from unfair practices (bundling, aggressive prompts, discouraging competition, etc.) or simply being a product people want to use.
Caffeine sensitivity varies widely, as does sensitivity to most substances.
The very last line of your story is why the “Market for Lemons” paper (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Market_for_Lemons) remains so powerful.

If fraudsters cannot be found or punished, it is logical to assume that everyone in the field is a fraud.
Placebo only works on self perception though. If there are objective markers of disease they don’t tend to respond to placebo effects at all.
The fact that has already been normalized is so fucking wild
The fact that Go is considered a “modern” language and nil pointer exceptions are downright common blows my mind every day. Is there a static checker config that folks use to reduce this risk? Because coming from a TS background it’s legitimately bizarre to me that at $COMP insufficient nil pointer checking regularly causes major production outages.
Gotta escape those asterisks so you don't output italics.

f(*g(*x)) is just as good as f(g(x*)*)

Hmm, function names go before parentheses, that looks like a good reason for dereferencing to be prefix too, otherwise they end up a long way apart.

But in the back of mind I'm thinking "semantics cause pointless fussy arguments, all code is ugly, let's stop programming in text somehow".
Hey if anyone has strong experience with ad networks and configuring them to websites, give me an email at the address in my profile, I'd love to get freelance help with this. I'm new to it and realized it isn't as easy as just signing up the way it is for mobile apps. Apparently most sites can't get approved for adsense at ALL, let alone have it at time of launch before they have traffic. So yeah if anyone has a lot of knowledge/experience with this please holler.
As someone who has tried both, cursor is more powerful but I still somehow still prefer GH copilot because it’s usually less eager much cheaper (if you’ve already got a pro account). I’ve recently been trying Vscode Insiders and their new agent version which is analogous to some of the cursor modes, but it’s still very hit or miss. I’m expecting that in the long run all the great features from cursor (like cursor rules) will trickle back down to VS Code.
This could change in the future with the Mercury diffusion LLM... definitely keen to try if it can simply output results quickly.
It could get flagged by analytics script blockers.
Did I read it right, the article used Claude to get the performance stats?
Good compiler, poor syntax. I'm waiting for the TypeScript equivalent for Zig.
Do you have any suggestions for a free tool to query the reassigned numbers database?

Thanks for the help!