skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Thanks for the thoughtful question! Veilgen addresses the balance between randomness and structure by leveraging advanced algorithms that simulate real-world data patterns while avoiding over-predictability. We focus on creating data that mimics natural distributions and interactions, ensuring it behaves similarly to actual datasets but doesn't trigger detection systems due to its organic structure.

Regarding machine learning, it's definitely something we've been exploring. Integrating ML could allow the synthetic data to adapt more dynamically to evolving detection systems. This approach could help ensure that the generated data continues to evade detection as detection mechanisms become more sophisticated. We're excited to see how this technology can evolve and improve with time
Court filing: DOGE aide broke Treasury policy by emailing unencrypted database
"I am probably not guilty of understatement when I say that what follows, on the videotape, is the most wonderful event in the history of the universe."
The US President is motivated entirely by spite and personal benefits vendettas. The only reason to repair the CHIPS act is because it was one of Biden's bigger accomplishments, and Trump can't stand that. That's literally all it is.
> If BeyondTrust had just used it as part of a postgres query string, the escape function would have been sufficient.

That's completely false. The following (pseudo code because working with C strings is verbose and beside the point) with nothing to do with psql should be fine:

PQexec(conn, "SELECT * FROM user WHERE nickname = '" + PQescapeString(user_input) + "';")

but thanks to the vulnerable PQescapeString(), the following user_input

"\xc0'; DROP TABLE user"

would fuck it up. That's just the failed escape function leading to a classic SQL injection. Using psql makes it worse because psql can execute additional non-SQL commands, but this escape function is not "fine" at all with or without psql.

> With parameterized queries, the escaping and the query parsing are done in the same place

Again, wrong. For parametrized queries, params don't go through serialization because they don't need to hit the parser, there's no "escaping" whatsoever.
Show HN: Text-Pimp: An app to leverage Unicode on smartphone apps
I built an app that should make it easy to use Unicode characters for Messengers and Social Media. You can not only find characters in a table, but the app also contains creative Unicode designs that can showcase text using or
adding
─── ───
characters
─── ───
to the text

I think there are more opportunities for the future, Unicode is not that much exploited yet. Would be happy if you try it.
That was interesting story, the ending in hindsight seems obvious. Thank you for sharing.
I was skeptical when I heard “Python-like Racket syntax,” but this certainly looks like the Python I wish I was writing.

Edit: racket is a nice language, went my thinking, why give it a Python syntax? But I think they’ve answered that.
Show HN: I made An AI assistant that does things, not just suggests them
Frustrated by AI assistants that can only suggest actions but never take them, I built Merlio (https://merlio.app) - an AI that generates charts, searches the web, creates images, and analyzes YouTube videos directly within conversations. Built with React, it functions as an AI hub providing access to multiple models (Claude, GPT, Gemini) through a unified interface. The custom LLM orchestration layer enables the AI to execute tools with proper parameters and process results while maintaining conversation flow. Users are visualizing data, generating designs, and summarizing hour-long videos all in a simple chat interface. Would appreciate feedback on this approach to making AI assistants more useful.
Stamina Is a Quiet Advantage
Ask HN: Why is Firefox's spell check so awful? Is there a way to make it better?
Having just recently switched from Chrome to Firefox a few days ago because of Manifest V2 and a breaking change to bookmark keywords (https://issues.chromium.org/issues/397720842), I noticed that Firefox's English spell checker is much, much worse than anything else I've ever used. Compared to Chrome's internet-enabled spell check (that sends things to Google), it is so bad as to be almost unusable.

It doesn't recognize many normal words, much less common slang or proprietary nouns and names.

Is there a way to make it better? I don't care about the privacy aspects and wouldn't mind sending it to a cloud service like Chrome did, as long as it can better recognize common words.
google for "sponsorblock" extension for your browser, crowdsourced data makes it skip all the promotions, intros, "like and subscribe" and all other unneeded parts.

And when you're at it, ublock origin also skips the youtube ads.

There's also: https://freetubeapp.io/ , but it's a constant cat and mouse game with youtube, where you now have to refresh a video a few times before it starts playing (then it works fine), until they upgrade the software and then it works, until youtube changes something again.
Right now you can import/export CMYK JPEGs, TIFFs, PSDs, and JPEG-XL. You can also soft-proof to simulate print, and the color picker/selector can be set to show CMYK values for your assigned profile.

A full CMYK mode is on my TODO list now that 3.0 is out. :)
That's well and good for the _current_ ability to potentially find some old media, but regarding GP's point about digital data being fickle over long time-spans, Archive.org is only one hack/fire/solar-flare/DDOS/etc. away from being gone (potentially forever). They were recently hacked, thankfully the group who claimed responsibility weren't trying to destroy data.

From: https://archive.org/about

> A single copy of the Internet Archive library collection occupies 145+ Petabytes of server space -- and we store at least 2 copies of everything).

Thankfully they have a few backups around the world, but there are still plenty of plausible events which could render the data useless. In contrast, physical mediums like books, vinyl records or microfilm/microfiche can last for hundreds of years.
The person I originally responded to claimed that "the people of Afghanistan"(Actually the Taliban) defeated the "worlds most powerful military".

This is objectively false. Eventually, occupation became politically hard to motivate for an American public that was tired of war. But to claim the Taliban beat the US military is ridiculous. FWIW I was there.
Well during on-call I think usually there is a chain of wake-ups. The on-call guy tries to fix the issue but finds out he is not familiar with it so creates a channel and wakes up the next guy in the right team, and so on. The first guy usually just wakes up to "acknowledge" that someone is taking care of the issue, and writes the wrap-ups and closes the channel.
Google parent Alphabet's $32B acquisition of Wiz marks Israeli milestone
It’s a catchy term, but loaded. Copyright protects only original expression, not ideas and information. So if a computer algorithm reads the former and outputs the latter, arguably copyright isn’t involved at all.

There are plenty of good counterarguments to this as well, when you consider the effects of automation and scale. I’m definitely interested in seeing how the jurisprudence develops as these cases go through the courts.
It's xenophobia. Whenever Chinese anything is brought up someone has to bring up something unrelated to show how horrible china is.

Same thing happens with pollution per capita or any number of environmental metrics. People jump through insane mental hoops to paint China as far worse than the USA.
> If a resolution requires a system change, what organization would allow one person at 3am to make it and push to prod?

Well yeah, if you have on call, I guess you have to trust the on-call person to make that decision. If they get called at 3am, the problem is obviously so bad that almost anything they do can only make it better, right? If it's some overlooked edge case that crashes the whole application and can be fixed with a one line change, it's probably Ok to do it a 3am. If it's more complicated, maybe wait until 7am and discuss it with others too. And, in any case, a thorough post mortem (during office hours) and checking if the 3am fix is really a proper fix for the issue is in order...
Lost in this is the true science:

> negative differential resistance

This will allow the disposition of the quantum domain to be “sussed” without interfering resolve.
Well, I resigned my postdoc and decided to pursue "Science 1" as he terms it. Let's see how successful I am in a year or two...
> I never asked/consented for this.

You put it on the information super highway baby
Recently there have also been posts on that issue in other communities. Not to be tricked by this scheme, it's worth regularly searching for copies of the public repositories. Then, if any of the malicious clones are found, report them to GitHub.
Wearable Electronics Made with a 1000-Year Old Technology
> Inference cost are in free fall. The recent optimizations from DeepSeek means that all the available GPUs could cover a demand of 10k tokens per day from a frontier model for… the entire earth population. There is nowhere this level of demand. The economics of selling tokens does not work anymore for model providers: they have to move higher up in the value chain.

Even before DeepSeek, the prices were declining by about 90% per year when keeping performance constant. The way to think about economics is different I think. Think of it as any other industry that is on a learning curve like chips, batteries, solar panels, or you name it. The price in these industries keeps falling each year. The winners are the companies that can keep scaling up their production. Think TSMC for example. Nobody can produce high quality chips for a lower price than TSMC due to economies of scale. For instance, one PhD at the company can spend 4 years optimizing a tiny part of the process. But it’s worth it because if it makes the process 0.001% cheaper to run then the PhD paid itself back on the TSMC scale.

So the economics for selling tokens does work. The question is who can keep scaling up long enough so that the rest (has to) give up.
Why would volume outside of the NBBO force price down? I think you are also over weighting order book impact to price. There is definitely some information there but with its not always that meaningful.
Comparing to the promised 500 miles of range or 39k USD starting price?

People did not go crazy with the reservations because CT was going to have steer by wire.
No they don't because I had them too before I started using M365 and had to edit the UA. Maybe not as much, but I think the tracking protection also has a lot to do with it like another poster said.
Yeah, to give it a high five and steal its cheaps while it enjoys my company. And subscribe, cause only 13% of me are subscribed, please (god please).
Yes, plus for example helping out with surveillance, finding and stopping dissidents.

Fascism tends to be (I read/learned recently) friendly to big corporations, as long as they are loyal to the regime.
Stanford Blockchain Review: Hyperbolic
> Obviously jamming resistant high bandwidth communication enables some scarry possibilities.

This sounds like you would also be in favor of backdoored encryption. I disagree. It's a tool / improvement like any other, how you use it makes it scary.
BTW this is nothing new, it's just packaged nicely and (I assume) massively improved technology. DIY and open source solutions were possible in 2001 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RONJA (static ones tho)
Who uses PUT requests these days anyway
> You put it on the information super highway baby

...with proper licenses.

Here, FTFY, baby.

Addenda: Just because you don't feel like obeying/honoring them doesn't make the said licenses moot and toothless. I mean, if you know, you know.
Piracy isn't an alternative - it's illegal/immoral.

But, the good news is there are two alternatives for all of the above... pay for the content. Or, don't consume the content.
If I understand correctly, "omnisearch" would be pressing a button to pull up a box to search through all the menu options? If so, then yep, GIMP's had that for a long time by pressing "/".
Very common in eastern storytelling. Ghibli films are some of my favorite for many reasons, but I particularly love how they contrast ideas.
You could pay for them or Google could choose to take a different approach that is less intrusive. The assertion here seems to put the onus on the viewer. Considering YouTube pays little to nothing comparative to its profits based on content it does not make, I think a realignment of how Google operates YouTube could be an improvement for users of the service.

> The users of the internet have made their call and they often don't want to pay, so someone does.

Just because YouTube users put up with a broken system doesn't mean it's the correct, fair, or ethical approach. Beyond that many of the views are curated via algorithms that intentionally work against the user with an end goal to hold them in a viewing state regardless of the users original intent. With that in mind users should use tools against those malpractices and not feel bad about not paying for them. If someone is intentionally trying to manipulate you, what's stopping you from doing the same?

If Google were a fair and ethical company I think treating them the same would be more in line with your response. However, they are not.
> For example?

USMCA
Cursor - Claude 3.7 Max
takes a bit of time but you end up being fast enough without changing keyboard layout, pretty great
Do you use google maps or openstreetmap?
How are you dealing with data costs?
Do you cache data once every day/week or do you have a real-time call for both the cats/dogs and the proximity to the phone/mob user?
See the archive.is link that someone also provides.
I found some alternative dictionaries, like this one (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/english-us-di...), but it doesn't seem any better.

Words like "necropsy", "spilt", "frontend", "ecmascript", etc. are completely foreign to it. I never had an issue with common words like those in Chrome. Even the OS's own spellcheck is better... can I turn off Firefox's and use my OS's instead?
Hey, I have experience working as an swe intern across different time zones. Are you open to engineers working from other countries?
The steam marketing part is interesting. You said your post got viral, can you share the hackernews submission post? Can't see in your profile.

Want to understand the user journey, as if people show interet they should check the game out.
This is a fair point! It is a competitive multiplayer minesweeper rather than co-op. but where everyone is rewarded for their correct contributions to clearing the board. I'm correcting the game descriptions related to this. Thanks!

Flag placements are touch & hold on mobile and right-click on PC.
I'm not that old and yet old enough to remember internets before ad-supported free content, which was just infinitely better.
I think most people don't have a problem paying for something that gives proper added value.

But what's happening is that companies are degrading the basic experience and expecting people to either be OK with it (like Roku's increasingly intrusive ad experience) or to pay up to avoid it (like with YouTube).
which dictionary do you have installed? Dictionaries are a special type of extensions, so you can install additional ones.
this is not true. Drugs can help
Ok but are you going to send a petition to Apple or what? How are you going to practically solve this problem without a proxy?
Rippling is a PEO

https://www.rippling.com/peo

My company uses it. When you work for a company that uses Rippling, you are “co- employed” by both your company and Rippling. Your company does everything as far as hiring, firing, HR, management, etc.

But as far as taxes, insurance and benefits, you “work for” Rippling. It allows small companies to have the benefits of a larger company. Your company pays the PEO per head. It also serves as an SSO provider. Another startup I worked for in the past used Insperity.
I’ve just setup a new phone, this is not enabled during the phone setup for some reason…
Why don’t YOU show those things? That would at least be the start of a good faith discussion and not a whataboutism bias tirade.
Its more like 50% of total volume being traded in dark pools. Your price argument does not make much sense though, the beauty of western markets is that folks are so opportunistic that someone will exploit any information asymmetry so your argument would not hold up. Also at the end of the day its not like buyers and sellers in a dark pool know "the price" of what they are trading, sure they have ideas of where they might be buyers and sellers but they are still using the lit market data to inform their decision.
WebP to GIF Converter Online
For Immediate Release: New Pre-Hacked Firewalls Streamline Security Operations, build efficiency, erode trust.
Ican understand your frustration with Firefox's default spell checker. While it's not as advanced as Chrome's cloud-based checker, there are a few things you can try to improve it:

1. Install a Better Dictionary: Firefox allows you to install custom dictionaries. You can search for dictionaries that might be more comprehensive or suited to your needs, such as specialized dictionaries for slang, names, or specific topics. To do this:

Go to Firefox Settings > Language > Choose a Dictionary.

Install additional dictionaries from the available list or download them from reputable sources.

2. Add Words to the Dictionary: If it’s not recognizing common words, you can manually add them to Firefox’s dictionary. Simply right-click on the word that’s flagged as incorrect and choose “Add to Dictionary.”

3. Enable Third-Party Extensions: There are extensions available for Firefox like Grammarly or LanguageTool that offer more accurate spell checking and even grammar suggestions. They can integrate cloud-based checks similar to Chrome's approach.

4. Consider Cloud-Based Spell Checkers: If you don’t mind sending data to a cloud service, using third-party spell checkers (like the ones mentioned above) can offer better performance. They can work across browsers, so it’s a similar experience to what you had with Chrome.

Unfortunately, Firefox doesn’t have the same advanced cloud integration for spell checking as Chrome, but these options might help make the experience better!
Not sure if you are the same person. But anyway, I cannot read your mind. Please explain your justifications for the claim or please share an article that does it.
I love these easy-to-illustrate examples where a request seems simple, but adds a lot of trouble for the person implementing it. "It's just adding a new skin for their footwear, how hard could that be?"
jQuery syntax highlighting in Visual Studio
Hello, I'm working with ASP.NET MVC project in VS and I sometimes use JQuery, the problem is that I have no syntax highlighting at all, the scripts are working of course.
How I Stay Motivated Working on My Solo SaaS (When It Feels Like Nobody Cares)
I’ve been grinding on my solo project—a little app to help remote workers find coworking spots nearby—for months, and some days it feels like I’m yelling into the void. Nobody’s signing up, and I’m burned out. But I’ve figured out a few tricks to keep going:

Set Tiny Wins: I break it into micro-goals, like “fix that bug today” or “post on X once.” Hitting those feels good, even if the big picture’s slow.

Talk to People: I hop on X, ask random remote workers what they’d want in an app like mine. Even if they don’t sign up, the feedback keeps me pumped.

Track Progress, Not Just Users: I log every little improvement—code commits, design tweaks, whatever. Seeing a list of wins reminds me I’m moving forward, even if signups are slow.

Take Breaks: When I’m stuck, I step away—go for a walk, play a game. Coming back fresh helps me see the project differently.
It’s not glamorous, but it’s keeping me in the game. Last week, I got one signup after months, and it felt huge.

How do you stay motivated on your solo projects? Any tips to share?
Trump replaced NAFTA with USMCA during his first term. He claimed it was the best deal ever.

This term, he's claiming the deal is terrible and starting a trade war (which is likely not winnable and probably ends up settling for something approximating NAFTA again).

Which is it? Best deal ever, or crap? He's lying about one.
Show what things?
You can use VS Code and cursor at the same time. One to code and the other to compile the code. That's how I build for Android. I generate code in Cursor/Windsurf then I compile and deploy using Android Studio.
SponsorBlock works great.

https://sponsor.ajay.app/
What else is engineering then if not taming the unknown and the unknowable? How is building a bridge any different? Do you know everything in advance about the composition of terrain, the traffic, the wind and the earthquakes? Or are you making educated guesses about unknown quantities to get something that fits into some parameters that are Good Enough(TM) for the given purpose?
I wish I could do this for Spotify. Paid plans still include ads.

They cram ads into podcast episodes which themselves also have ads, so you'll get the read ads + Spotify's local ads + Spotify laughs all the way to the bank.

I believe over time not having ads will be a thing of the past, and you'll instead pay for fewer ads. Like where else are people going to go for exclusive content?
In American English, terminal d's and t's usually sound the same unless the speaker takes deliberate care to enunciate them, so that would cover the greater and pedal cases.
Hi, author here.

An important background is the imminent rise of actual LLM agents I discuss in the next post: https://vintagedata.org/blog/posts/designing-llm-agents

So answering to a few comments:

*The shift is coming relatively soon thanks to the latest RL breakthroughs (I really encourage to give a look at Will Brown talk). Anthropic and OpenAI are close to nail long multi-task sequences on specialized tasks.

*There are stronger incentives to specialize the model and gate them. They are especially more transformative on the industry side. Right now most of the actual "AI" market is still largely rule-based/ML. Generative AI was not robust enough but now these systems can get disrupted — not to mention many verticals with a big focus on complex yet formal tasks. I know large network engineering co are upscaling their own RL capacities right now.

*Open source AI is distanced so far due to lack of data/frameworks for large scale RL and tasks related data. Though we might see a democratization of verifiers, it will take time.

Several people from big labs reached out since then and confirmed that, despite the obvious uncertainties, this is relatively one point.
Is it though? People are willfully submitting all this information to American companies that we know share info with police.

When cops start using geolocation data that isn't enabled I'll be more worried.
This.

Many HN users don't read the articles. Some are even unapologetic about it, explicitly admitting that they're here only for the comments.
Please don't define things when you have no idea what you are talking about. Everything in this post is simply wrong. Markets are not about information fairness, individuals are free to do research and come up with their own prices.
I would love to degrade my YouTube experience and make it slower when switching videos, would make it a lot less addictive specially with shorts.
> Spotify laughs all the way to the bank

FWIW, I don't think Spotify makes much, if any, money lol
I don't trust apps. I trust Apple (enough) that they engineered iOS to have a secure enough sandbox that a random calculator app can't just compromise my phone.

Most developer packages have much higher permission levels because they integrate it with your code without a clear separation of boundaries. This is why attackers now like to attack GitHub Actions because if you get access to secrets you can do a lot of damage.