This is really cool. I’m not sure what I would ever use it for, but it’s a cool idea and seems well executed.
Readit Newsajjenkins commented on Show HN: I rewrote my notepad calculator as a local-first app with CRDT syncing numpad.io... · Posted by u/tonyonodi
As someone who lives in the US, I was surprised to hear they’re facing jail time for this. In the cases I’ve heard, the company itself is sued and just has to pay damages to the victim. But I think it makes a lot of sense to hold the leaders of a company accountable for the culture they create and they should face jail time. I wonder why our laws don’t do that in the US.
I’m surprised Hey isn’t mentioned. That’s the only example I know of someone recently trying to reinvent email. Maybe it wasn’t included because it’s part of Basecamp and not its own company. But I think it’s important to discuss if your argument is that “no one has successfully reinvented email”.
Yes, it looks broken to me. The top article is too close to the header. I’m on iOS Safari.
ajjenkins commented on AI system resorts to blackmail if told it will be removed bbc.com/news/articles/cpq... · Posted by u/throw0101d
This should be read as:
If you take a huge amount of human-written text soup, train a neural network on it, add a system prompt “You are a helpful assistant”, and then feed it a context consisting of (a) a mailbox with information about someone’s affair, and (b) the statement that this assistant is going to be switched off, then that neural network may produce a text with blackmail threats solely because similar patterns exist in the original text soup.
…and not as:
Warning! The model may develop its own questionable ethics.
Yeah. The title implies that the model has developed a scary sense of self preservation, but when you read the details it’s exactly what you said.
The conditions that elicited this response seemed very contrived to me.
ajjenkins commented on Animated Factorization (2012) datapointed.net/visualiza... · Posted by u/miniBill
This would make a cool progress bar replacement. Replace percentage with the number of dots (0-100).
ajjenkins commented on Why bad philosophy is stopping progress in physics nature.com/articles/d4158... · Posted by u/bookofjoe
I’m not an expert in physics, but this seems like a misguided critique to me. My understanding is that physicists aren’t looking for “new” physics because they’re trying to upend established physics, but because they’re trying to reconcile “inconsistencies” in the standard model. Like reconciling quantum physics with general relativity. We need new physics because we know there are gaps in our current understanding of the universe. I haven’t heard about many attempts to disprove established physics. Theoretical physicists aren’t looking just trying to fill the gaps in the model.
ajjenkins commented on Congress passes Take It Down act despite major flaws eff.org/deeplinks/2025/04... · Posted by u/abtinf
I'd never heard of this act [1], and the article frames it in a way that is not especially informative, though they have an excellent page on it here. [2] The law is being passed with complete unanimity in all houses (409-2 in the House, unanimous in the Senate), which is a rarity in modern times. Quoting the EFF as well as why they are opposed to it:
- "The takedown provision applies to a much broader category of content—potentially any images involving intimate or sexual content—than the narrower NCII definitions found elsewhere in the bill. The takedown provision also lacks critical safeguards against frivolous or bad-faith takedown requests. Lawful content—including satire, journalism, and political speech—could be wrongly censored."
So sexual or intimate themed memes which use realistic looking imagery may end up being able to be taken down. I also find myself disagreeing with the EFF here in spite of generally being a tremendous supporter of their work. In particular their main argument is that there are existing laws which work for this issue, without introducing new potentially abusable legislation:
- "If a deepfake is used for criminal purposes, then criminal laws will apply. If a deepfake is used to pressure someone to pay money to have it suppressed or destroyed, extortion laws would apply. For any situations in which deepfakes were used to harass, harassment laws apply. There is no need to make new, specific laws about deepfakes in either of these situations."
But I think on this issue one should not need to suffer some form of measurable loss or suffering to want intimate/sexual images removed from a site, let alone then having to go through the legal system and file a lawsuit to achieve such.
[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TAKE_IT_DOWN_Act
[2] - https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/04/congress-passes-take-i...
I agree. I generally support the EFF, but I disagree with them on this. I read through the bill and the language is very specific to revenge porn (although I’m not a lawyer). I think it would be very difficult for Trump or anyone else to abuse this law and use it for censorship.
I have friends who were the victim of revenge porn and I think this law would help them. I’m looking forward to this becoming a law.
ajjenkins commented on Show HN: I reverse engineered top websites to build an animated UI library reverseui.com... · Posted by u/armedin
Components look great. I would pay for these if I needed one of them for a project. It would be great if they worked in React Native too.
This actually sounds more similar to Partiful, which I like for one-off events. I would describe this as an open source Partiful, but not specifically geared towards parties.