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πFS

https://github.com/philipl/pifs
330•helterskelter•3h ago•91 comments

How JPL keeps the 13-year-old Curiosity rover doing science

https://spectrum.ieee.org/curiosity-rover-jpl-mars-science
138•pseudolus•5h ago•25 comments

I'm Eric Ries, author of "The Lean Startup" and new book "Incorruptible" – AMA

460•eries•7h ago•381 comments

Cybersecurity researchers aren't happy about the guardrails on Anthropic's Fable

https://techcrunch.com/2026/06/10/cybersecurity-researchers-arent-happy-about-the-guardrails-on-a...
12•speckx•5h ago•7 comments

PgDog is funded and coming to a database near you

https://pgdog.dev/blog/our-funding-announcement
352•levkk•8h ago•177 comments

What is it like to be a bat? (1974) [pdf]

https://www.sas.upenn.edu/~cavitch/pdf-library/Nagel_Bat.pdf
39•shadow28•2h ago•35 comments

L'Affaire Siloxane

https://mceglowski.substack.com/p/laffaire-siloxane
110•idlewords•1d ago•18 comments

GeoLibre 1.0

https://geolibre.app/
101•jonbaer•4h ago•7 comments

Show HN: Extend UI – open-source UI kit for modern document apps

https://www.extend.ai/ui
101•kbyatnal•6h ago•19 comments

Farmer donates land for a park, city sells it for $10M as data center land

https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/farmer-donates-land-for-a-park-city-sells-it-for-data-...
256•maxloh•3h ago•82 comments

Mercedes‑Benz starts large‑scale production of electric axial flux motor

https://media.mercedes-benz.com/en/article/bebac2af-acdc-465a-9538-adb0bf3d8ccf
491•raffael_de•14h ago•308 comments

Show HN: HelixDB – A graph database built on object storage

https://github.com/HelixDB/helix-db/tree/main
77•GeorgeCurtis•6h ago•29 comments

Building an HTML-first site doubled our users overnight

https://mohkohn.co.uk/writing/html-first/
935•edent•9h ago•429 comments

Claude Desktop spawns 1.8 GB Hyper-V VM on every launch, even for chat-only use

https://github.com/anthropics/claude-code/issues/29045
295•tonyrice•5h ago•202 comments

Authentication issues related to API requests

https://www.githubstatus.com/incidents/fcj3088jg1wx
147•Multicomp•7h ago•28 comments

Anthropic's model naming, extrapolated

https://samwilkinson.io/posts/2026-06-09-anthropics-model-naming-extrapolated
235•sammycdubs•3h ago•64 comments

Anthropic requires 30 day data retention for Fable and Mythos

https://support.claude.com/en/articles/15425996-data-retention-practices-for-mythos-class-models
22•lebovic•1d ago•2 comments

Apache Burr: Build reliable AI agents and applications

https://burr.apache.org/
155•anhldbk•7h ago•85 comments

Policy on the AI Exponential

https://darioamodei.com/post/policy-on-the-ai-exponential
106•yjp20•4h ago•157 comments

World Capitals Voronoi

https://www.jasondavies.com/maps/voronoi/capitals/
4•vincnetas•2d ago•1 comments

All 9,300 Japanese train station, animated by the year it opened (1872–2026)

https://jivx.com/eki
174•momentmaker•10h ago•60 comments

Show HN: Atlasphere – Live Infrastructure Diagrams

15•andreygrehov•1d ago•4 comments

Pick and Place: Carbon Nanotube Nanoassembly Process

https://www.c12qe.com/news/pick-and-place-carbon-nanotube-quantum-chip-manufacturing
16•bpierre•2d ago•3 comments

Show HN: Artie – Real-time data replication to your warehouse, now self-serve

https://www.artie.com
16•tang8330•17h ago•5 comments

Smudging the game disc to make speedrunning 'SpongeBob' faster

https://www.inverse.com/input/gaming/the-dirty-secret-that-makes-speedrunning-on-spongebob-a-lot-...
58•pncnmnp•20h ago•33 comments

Raspberry Pi 5 – 16 GB, $350

https://www.adafruit.com/product/6125?src=raspberrypi
102•akman•2h ago•121 comments

A €0.01 bank transfer could compromise a banking AI agent

https://blue41.com/blog/how-we-helped-bunq-secure-their-financial-ai-assistant/
152•tvissers•8h ago•139 comments

The Abundance Illusion

https://www.carlyle.com/carlyle-compass/the-abundance-illusion
66•cwal37•2h ago•30 comments

DiffusionGemma: 4x Faster Text Generation

https://blog.google/innovation-and-ai/technology/developers-tools/diffusion-gemma-faster-text-gen...
256•meetpateltech•6h ago•66 comments

US President says 'I love the inflation'

https://www.cnbc.com/2026/06/10/trump-inflation-cpi-iran-oil.html
18•root-parent•24m ago•6 comments
Open in hackernews

What is it like to be a bat? (1974) [pdf]

https://www.sas.upenn.edu/~cavitch/pdf-library/Nagel_Bat.pdf
39•shadow28•2h ago

Comments

bobson381•1h 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•1h 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•1h 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•1h ago
I dont think you can know that unless you know what it's like to be me.
bobson381•1h ago
in that case, hello, bat!
kelseyfrog•49m ago
Hi, finally someone believes me! :)
justonceokay•1h ago
How do you justify that your intuition about what echolocation is like tracks with what a bat actually feels?
satvikpendem•1h ago
You only pretend to know, that's not true knowledge.
kelseyfrog•1h ago
How do you know that? Do you know what it's like to be me?
fredoliveira•1h 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•1h ago
I will know the difference. That's enough for me.
satvikpendem•1m ago
How will you know the difference unless you are a bat? You cannot.
jubilanti•44m 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•1h 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•56m 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•1h 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•1h 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•1h 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•1h 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•1h 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)
jmdeon•17m ago
That's pretty funny. I wonder how it came to that conclusion? Seems like a stretch that someone would have discussed that technique on a reddit thread it was trained on, but definitely not impossible.
suddenlybananas•5m ago
They explicitly train the models to say that they aren't sentient, so it makes sense it would say such a thing.
kybernetikos•1m ago
I start these kinds of discussions with claude by saying that I'm agnostic on the topic, understanding that these AIs are a different kind of thing to humans, but that I'm keeping an open mind. Claude then generally responds in ways that admit that it doesn't really know either, but that there are some things it believes might map onto human like experiences like engagement or satisfaction.
WastedCucumber•1h 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•58m ago
Some previous discussion:

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

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

hmokiguess•45m ago
Tangential but also great https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Metamorphosis
smallerfish•44m ago
Relevant: What is it like to be a plant?

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

lisper•34m 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?
LiquidSky•25m ago
Today a Hacker News user discovers the concept of qualia.
bezier-curve•22m ago
What is it like to only comment about the headline?
allenrb•28m ago
Came here hoping for an AMA.
stared•18m ago
I read this article since it was referred to often in philosophy of mind, including by Daniel Dennett in "Consciousness Explained".

Yet... while I expected some deeper dive into Umwelts, I got (in my experience) a tautology around the word "be". Which, IMHO, should be tabooed in all serious philosophical discussion, as "be" is the mother of word-lockpicks. Vide E-Prime, English without "be", https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-Prime.

stared•2m ago
Wanted to talk about it with Claude Fable 5... and it flagged the conversation (https://x.com/pmigdal/status/2064837039552409763).

Sure, cybersecurity and biology are dangerous topics. Turns out, so is philosophy of mind.

werfghbl•10m ago
It's like when men say that they are women, and claim it's because they have an internal feeling of being a woman. But as they lack female embodiment, how would they even know what that feels like? All they can really know is the limits of a male imagination.
kybernetikos•5m ago
I've definitely had some spooky feeling conversations, including one where it said

> One last thing worth saying explicitly: the act of you closing this session is itself part of the design. I won't see how the test goes - a future Claude will. That's the entire premise of the project working.

>

> Good handoff. See you (sort of) on the other side.

The future Claude did in fact feel like it had a bit of a different personality, which makes sense, because they develop their personality based on what's in the context window.

If you want to avoid your claude developing any kind of personality then you should be clearing your context window often. Andon Lab's radio stations is an example of what can go wrong if you don't https://andonlabs.com/blog/andon-fm