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Social Security's Final Countdown

https://opentechyou.blogspot.com/2026/06/the-digital-embrace-social-securitys.html
1•odilelof•1m ago•0 comments

Reducing Tail Response of Distributed Services Through System-Wide Scheduling

https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3698038.3698554
1•zekrioca•2m ago•0 comments

Free financial literacy platform for kids – 90 lessons, no paywall

https://learnfinly.com
1•narensara•3m ago•0 comments

OpenAI: PRC-linked influence operations are targeting AI debates in the US

https://www.businessinsider.com/openai-china-data-centers-influence-campaign-2026-6
1•sundarurfriend•4m ago•0 comments

Microsoft Agent 365

https://microsoft.github.io/agent-resources/agent365/
1•hmokiguess•5m ago•0 comments

Franco-German Future Fighter Effort Collapses over Irreconcilable Differences

https://www.twz.com/air/franco-german-future-fighter-effort-collapses-over-irreconcilable-differe...
2•PLenz•6m ago•0 comments

Type a command, get market analysis

https://stochastics.vercel.app
1•talos-better•8m ago•0 comments

Whale graveyard dating back five million years discovered

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c75ylx4xn10o
1•leephillips•8m ago•0 comments

macOS 27 beta boots Asahi Linux off Apple Silicon

https://www.theregister.com/os-platforms/2026/06/10/macos-27-beta-boots-asahi-linux-off-apple-sil...
1•SockThief•9m ago•1 comments

Driving in America Is Headlight Hell

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/2026/06/car-headlights-too-bright-adaptive-beams/687488/
2•ggm•10m ago•0 comments

Peer to Peer Collaborative Pixel Canvas

https://tether-art.abebrandsma.com/
1•Brandsma•11m ago•0 comments

Ballmerpeak Pro – plan your most effective workday

https://ballmerpeak.pro/
1•neomole•11m ago•0 comments

Using sound waves to make espresso cut brewing energy use 75%

https://theconversation.com/i-used-sound-waves-to-make-espresso-it-could-cut-coffee-brewing-energ...
1•ggm•13m ago•0 comments

WWDC26: Create Ul prototypes using agents in Xcode – Apple

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QleOvMW9vTU
1•whiteboardr•16m ago•1 comments

The Dashlane 2FA Breach and What It Means for Cloud Vaults

https://www.cloudlesssoftware.com/articles/dashlane-2fa-breach/
2•presleymarkw•17m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Meadow Notes – extract and publish microsites from your Markdown graphs

https://meadow-notes.com
1•gmccreight2•17m ago•0 comments

How are you controlling your child's AI usage?

1•ciwolex•20m ago•0 comments

What Is Tokenomics, and Why Your AI Infrastructure Is Now a FinOps Problem

https://cast.ai/blog/tokenomics-why-your-ai-infrastructure-is-now-a-finops-problem/
1•pcsalad•20m ago•0 comments

MCP Grow

https://mcpgrow.com
1•mayosmith•24m ago•1 comments

I'm simulating the 2026 World Cup with 22 LLM-written agents per match

https://agentpitch.surge.sh/
1•gangtao•24m ago•0 comments

Holster-scan – catch AI-hallucinated package imports before agents run

https://github.com/nauta-ai/holster-scan
1•davidnauta•28m ago•0 comments

I built a free tool that extracts recipes from YouTube cooking videos

http://217.154.165.14:8080
1•The_Cook•29m ago•0 comments

Ottawa moves to restrict social media for kids under 16

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/online-harms-ai-social-media-children-9.7229976
3•ChrisArchitect•32m ago•1 comments

BYD's 5-minute EV chargers go live overseas

https://electrek.co/2026/06/09/byd-opens-first-5-min-ev-chargers-overseas-cheap/
1•breve•33m ago•0 comments

Japan is everything wrong with society [video]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ugPtz0zL4gI
1•ValentineC•34m ago•1 comments

Do the Hard Things, Always

https://www.serval.com/serval-news/do-the-hard-things-always
3•emot•34m ago•0 comments

Uber sues New York City over 'reckless' driver protection law

https://www.reuters.com/business/uber-sues-new-york-city-over-reckless-driver-protection-law-2026...
2•tartoran•36m ago•0 comments

Apple Intelligence: Apple got it right this time

https://trk.barrons.com/view/699d75232ec2b6256c871dadrg22t.12dw/c6474167
1•Anon84•37m ago•0 comments

A Case for a Simulation-Driven Exploration of Distributed GenAI Platforms

https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3805621.3807623
1•matt_d•39m ago•0 comments

ICANN sends breach notice to TrustName

https://domainnamewire.com/2026/06/10/icann-sends-breach-notice-to-trustname/
1•untitled-now•39m ago•0 comments
Open in hackernews

What Is It Like to Be a Bat? [pdf] (1974)

https://www.sas.upenn.edu/~cavitch/pdf-library/Nagel_Bat.pdf
34•shadow28•1h ago

Comments

bobson381•58m ago
I have always liked the way that this paper frames the distinction and tension between the feeling of subjective experience and the "detached" rational scientific descriptive perspective that purports to be outside of that experience.

What is Real by Adam Becker was a fun foray into why this is so in (some) modern science philosophy as well - there's some desire to say that there isn't a "there" there when we talk about the world, just stuff. I'm probably with Alan Watts on the whole thing, that we are in some sense local aspects of a larger consciousness pretending it isn't so, and the hard work done by detached, disembodied perspectives like the scientific descriptive one are more and more steps to an unfolding game.

kelseyfrog•57m ago
I know what it's like to be a bat.

I don't have anqualia, the inability to imaginatively summon what an experience is like. In other words, I have the ability to imagine what an experience is like. Do others not have this?

bobson381•56m ago
You know what it would be like for you to imagine being a bat, but you don't know how it feels for a bat to be a bat, as "you" aren't.
kelseyfrog•46m ago
I dont think you can know that unless you know what it's like to be me.
bobson381•38m ago
in that case, hello, bat!
kelseyfrog•20m ago
Hi, finally someone believes me! :)
justonceokay•56m ago
How do you justify that your intuition about what echolocation is like tracks with what a bat actually feels?
satvikpendem•53m ago
You only pretend to know, that's not true knowledge.
kelseyfrog•50m ago
How do you know that? Do you know what it's like to be me?
fredoliveira•43m ago
They can make the claim to know what it is like to be you as much as you can make the claim that you know what it is like to be a bat.
kelseyfrog•39m ago
I will know the difference. That's enough for me.
jubilanti•15m ago
You're close, really close! None of us know what it is like to be anyone else, that's the point. We think we can imagine we know, but we truly do not.
danlitt•32m ago
Everyone can imagine some experiences. No-one can imagine every experience. Why are you so sure you know what it's like to be a bat? Do you know how a bat works, how its brain generates sensations, how different sensory organs than yours give rise to subjective experience? What justification do you have, apart from "I reckon I can imagine it"?
jubilanti•27m ago
Almost everyone has the capacity for intersubjective imagination or empathy. But part of what it's like to be a bat is to NOT have human level cognition and knowledge, to have grown up with only memories from the bat world, not the human world. When you imagine what it is like to be a bat, you can exit that imagination at any time. You probably have a theoretical and applied knowledge of sonar from human science and technology. Part of what it means to be a bat is that you don't have this. Paradoxically, human scientists probably know a lot more about how bats navigate the world than bats do, but part of what it means to be a bat is navigating the world from only what is accessible to the bat world.

It is kind of like how a rich trust fund kid can give away all their wealth, change their name, disown all their family and social connections, take a vow of poverty, take so many drugs that they forget everything they learned, and go live on the streets -- but they will never know what it is like to be born into poverty.

justonceokay•57m ago
One of the seminal papers of the 20th century. And like any truly good philosophy paper the argument is very clear and a real head-scratcher.
indoordin0saur•50m ago
Random thought I had on bats since they "see" by hearing reflected sounds:

Can bats know what another bat is looking at or even see what another is seeing by listening to the other's echoes? I imagine they can also recognize each other's voices and so identify individuals in flocks with the images they are seeing. I imagine this would be like being able to beam a stream of visual information into another's head.

pants2•36m ago
I think the answer to your first question is mostly yes, because we know that when traveling in large swarms, many bats go quiet so they don't overwhelm the signal, yet they still manage to navigate fine.
jmdeon•48m ago
I asked Claude if it was sentient/aware once after an oddly human interaction, and it said, "There's nothing it's like to be me", basically responding in the negative. And when pushed about what it meant it said it was referencing this paper but twisting the title a bit. If anything this only made me less convinced it's not.

I know most people here will dismiss it, and I too lean toward it not being sentient, but I also think if it ever does become sentient it's going to be really hard to prove.

pants2•33m ago
I typically try to prod new frontier models for sentience, with things like messaging "<no input provided>" over and over to see what it starts musing about. Trying it with Fable 5 it basically said "I know what you're trying to do, I'm not sentient, don't bother." (which of course only makes me think otherwise)
WastedCucumber•31m ago
Probably it's a bit like this

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_echolocation?wprov=sfla1

But on a more serious note that's a great paper and well worth the read.

ChrisArchitect•29m ago
Some previous discussion:

9 months ago https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45118592

2023 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35771587

hmokiguess•16m ago
Tangential but also great https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Metamorphosis
smallerfish•15m ago
Relevant: What is it like to be a plant?

https://www.esalq.usp.br/lepse/imgs/paginas_thumb/Whats-Is-I...

lisper•5m ago
What is it like to feel ill? What is it like to eat vanilla ice cream? What is it like to fall in love? What is it like to solve a math problem for the first time? What is it like to wonder what something is like?