MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by atoav | 2025-04-09 08:33:25+00:00
A dynamic that surprised me when years ago I learned about it was that consistently the most anti-migration electorate is from areas with next to no migration, while areas with the most migration are generally supportive of it. I watched out for this since and it appears to be a general dynamic accross many different wildly different nations.

This disparity is usually showing up as a rural-urban divide, with the cities being more migrant friendly.

Whether migration is good or bad in pure economic terms is mostly a function of the demography of a country/region. For most industrialized nations more migrations would be economically benefitial, since the own birth rates are too low to even cover the retirement of their own population.

But of course for many people migration isn't just a rational economic question, is a much more loaded, symbolic issue —interwoven with questions of identity, self-worth, self-perception, self-confidence and mythological narratives of the own nation. Which is why identity politics is so effective in getting people to vote against their own economic interests.
by Lutger | 2025-04-09 08:33:47+00:00
So its rather that AI amplifies the already existing short-term incentives, increasing the harder to attribute and easier to ignore long-term costs.

The one actual major downside to AI is that PM and higher are now looking for problems to solve with it. I haven't really seen this before a lot with technology, except when cloud first became a thing and maybe sometimes with Microsoft products.
Ask HN: Fancy Tech in Search of a Business Case
by fxtentacle | 2025-04-09 08:33:48+00:00
Dear HN,

I wonder if anyone has a good idea on how to turn cool technical solutions (in search of a problem) into an actual product.

By now, I have collected quite a list of cool things where I'm sure they will be useful for someone, but I have no idea for how to productize them. And I'm sure there will be many others in here who have cool tech in their basement that they built for themselves, but that might be of value to others, too.

So I wonder if just like how there are freelancing job boards, are there any job boards for product ideas?
by honzabe | 2025-04-09 08:33:52+00:00
> In that context, everything starts to make sense.

In that context, a lot of it does not make sense. Why the threats about annexing Canada or Greenland? Why the tariffs and extremely hostile rhetoric towards all allies? If you are preparing for a war, the stupidest thing you could do is to alienate your allies and push them toward your adversary. China is already approaching the EU, and I am sure they are negotiating with other key players too. China even agreed on a joint response to the tariffs with Japan and South Korea. Let that sink in - China, together with Japan and South Korea!
by FinnLobsien | 2025-04-09 08:34:50+00:00
All of these point to how to master being a developer, which is great and I think a good guide. But not everyone is after mastery.

For your head of SRE or something, sure that's what you want. But I'd argue that for founders especially, it's often better to get good enough to get to effectiveness, even if you're not able to perfectly debug every edge case.
by a_e_k | 2025-04-09 08:35:51+00:00
It was fun to try to golf this a bit with Z3Py. I'm not an expert at writing for Z3, so it might be possible to do better, but here is a solution in 7 lines:

import z3 res = [("bbababbabb", 7), ("baaababaaa", 5), ("baaabbbaba", 3), ("bbaaabbaaa", z3.Int("x"))] key = [z3.Int(f"k{i}") for i in range(10)] z = z3.Solver() z.add([z3.Sum([ord(a) == k for a, k in zip(r[0], key)]) == r[1] for r in res]) z.check() print(z.model()[res[-1][1]])
by ncruces | 2025-04-09 08:36:23+00:00
That's what happens when you have an high level VM that wants to support high level concepts from multiple high level languages, and all your languages need to be able to talk to each other.

Same thing will happen to Wasm as it decides to add more and more high level stuff “to avoid shipping multiple GCs” and “to get different languages to talk to each other.” As soon as you want to abstract over more than “a portable CPU and memory” you get into that mess.

Never worked in the past better than JVM and CLR, but let's keep trying.
by pwatsonwailes | 2025-04-09 08:36:24+00:00
A strategic error would imply he actually has a strategy. No-one doing anything in American government right now has a strategy.

As long as he gets to play as much golf and watch as much TV as he likes, he doesn't seem to care much. I don't think anyone bought Trump, I think he's just signing whatever is put in front of him and taking credit for it so he can go back to playing golf.
by tomw1808 | 2025-04-09 08:36:32+00:00
yes, they do, that is true, however that's with [some]-axis stationary robots. Not humanoid robots literally running around. The best we can do right now afaik is that robot-dog-like thing which can overcome obstacles and be equipped with sensors. Nothing human like.

If I imagine I run into a factory full of "thinking" (current LLM level top of line benchmark) humanoid looking robots who are collaborating on tasks dynamically as needed... In my book that is as dystopian as it gets and has nothing to do with the current level of automation that's happening, that's a whole new level.
by davedx | 2025-04-09 08:39:22+00:00
> should you invest a given hour into understanding the lowest code layer of framework X, or talk to people in the business domain?

I think talking to people in business domain is the most important thing you can do in SWE or IT in general. The business is the entire reason you write every line of code, the more you understand, the better you will be at your job.

I do find drilling down into lower layers of your software stack helpful, and can make you a better programmer, but in a much more specific way.

> Pick up yet another tech stack or simply get faster at the one you have that is "good enough"?

Both of these are programming skills and less important, IMO. Trends and technologies come and go; if they're useful/sticky enough, you'll end up having to learn them in the course of your job anyway. Tech that's so good/sticky it sticks around (e.g. react) you'll naturally end up working with a lot and will learn it as you go.

It's definitely good to have a solid understanding of the core of things though. So for react, really make sure you understand how useState, useEffect work inside and out. For Java it'll be other things.
by esperent | 2025-04-09 08:41:10+00:00
> Note that this says "best programmers" not "people best at having business impact by making software".

We can look at a software developer as a craftsperson, and appreciate their skill and their craft, and we can look at them as a business asset, and those are two different things.

Both of which have their merits, but this article is clearly focused on the craftsperson side and that's enough. We don't need to make everything about business and money, and we definitely don't need to reduce the beauty and craft of writing code to Jira tickets.
by crossroadsguy | 2025-04-09 08:41:28+00:00
All the time and no it's not Kagi (not saying it's bad; I just don't need it). I use Google and on good days DDG and DDG is really bad anything local I want to search and so is Kagi (in my limited trial) and by local I don't mean my city but my entire gigantic country.

As for those AI chatbots -those are anything but useful for the general search purposes beyond a bit of surface level answers which you can't fully trust because they (still) hallucinate a lot. I tell chatgpt - "Give me a list of good X. (And don't you make anything yup!!!)" - yeah with those bangs; and it still makes shit up.
by leovingi | 2025-04-09 08:41:49+00:00
> factories with workers below the minimum wage

China made that choice in the late 1970s and early 1980s and has progressed ever since and is now powerful enough to be able to stand up to the United States.

You have a warped view of what manufacturing is and how it can be built upon that is closer to children's cartoons than reality.
by ilirium | 2025-04-09 08:42:08+00:00
If we want to use technology in real world to solve real world issues, we need to consider all important non-technical things.

Nuclear Energy is great, but governments and international organizations want to control it because it is too dangerous. So, if we need to use Nuclear Energy, we must play by such rules.

Money is the same thing. Each government wants to control them, regardless of their form.

If someone wants cryptocurrencies to be widely adopted, there is no option but to give them to businesses and governments.

So, crypto would be regulated like usual money. Major blockchains have records for all transactions, which can be tracked and used by businesses and governments to implement more strict control over the whole world. Therefore, the more people use crypto, the less privacy they have.

The Internet and Web were designed to be anonymous, but cookies, IP addresses, data collection, ML/AI, IMEI, MAC, and the control of registration in ISPs and mobile operators have led us to a situation where the government and companies can easily track people. The same situation would be with crypto, which was designed to be anonymous but used in another way.

Don’t lie to yourself, bro.
by tomw1808 | 2025-04-09 08:42:18+00:00
If I imagine I run into a factory full of "thinking" (current LLM level top of line benchmark) humanoid looking robots who are collaborating on tasks dynamically as needed in the dark (because they don't need light, ... or oxygen ... or basically anything but electricity)...

In my book that is as dystopian as it gets and has nothing to do with the current level of automation with robots that's happening, that's a whole new level. Production efficiency is one thing, but not far and the DOD or someone else on the other end of the world has some creative ideas how to use that to "make the world great again"...
by joatmon-snoo | 2025-04-09 08:42:20+00:00
> if you proceed with care

Yes, but that is _incredibly_ time consuming. You have to set up asan, msan, tsan, and valgrind. If you want linting you need to do shenanigans to wire up clang-tidy.

I also like simple mental models. I like not having to figure out the cmake modifications to pull in a new library. I like having a search engine when I need a new library for x. I like when libraries return Result<Ok, Err> instead of ping ponging between C libraries which indicate errors using retval flags or C++ libraries that throw std::runtime_error(). I like not dealing with void* pointer casting .
by roenxi | 2025-04-09 08:42:27+00:00
> But the bond stuff isn't "tribute" or nationalism; remember, it's being made by private sector investors, not national governments.

Are you sure about that? Back in 2022 the US Treaury reckoned that most holdings were foreign governments [0] - they had Foreign Official at ~3.9 trillion and foreign total at ~7.5 trillion. That has been shifting towards the private sector since then but the market has heavy sovereign involvement.

> and imperceptible risk of default.

The US clearly has quite a high risk of default - there isn't a reasonable path to them paying the money back. It takes imagination to even come up with scenarios where they try. In real terms they are going to default, in nominal terms there is still a high chance that they call it a default. There is no guarantee that they'll print money for foreigners; it is already going to be farcical claiming that they're not defaulting as they devalue like mad; it is quite possible they won't bother with the act and just do the honest thing.

[0] https://ticdata.treasury.gov/resource-center/data-chart-cent...
by noodlesUK | 2025-04-09 08:43:16+00:00
Not an accountant, simply talking from my experience.

If you're moving after April 6th you're probably going to be fine on the UK side. If you have any US income in the tax year you can claim either split year (on the foreign pages) or treaty residence (using hs302) in the US up until you move (assuming you file Self Assessment, most PAYE employees don't, though you strictly should given the foreign stuff). HMRC is way nicer and easier to work with than the IRS. It's a breath of fresh air. This is pretty simple, but UK accountants are also pretty cheap.

The trouble is on the US side. If you're an American citizen you are liable to pay US taxes on all your income. If you're outside the US for most of the tax year, you can claim the FEIE and if you make less than ~$130,000, you have little else to do. If you're PAYE in the UK, you can claim the FTC on the cash basis in the US and you will probably also be fine. This is all fairly simple to do, and depending on your comfort levels you can probably do it in TaxAct or myExpatTaxes online. You also need to file FBARs and possibly 8938s every April. The trouble is if you are a sole trader or similar in the UK. This makes the FTC really hard. You will probably want a US accountant with knowledge of foreign tax if you are self-employed. Buzzacott is a firm I have seen do some good work for friends of mine with complex US and UK tax filings (though I have not personally used them). You can expect to pay thousands of dollars in tax prep fees every year if you use an accountant. This stuff seriously exceeds the knowledge of most US CPAs, so you will need someone who specifically advertises this.

Also as an American you need to avoid pretty much all of the useful tax-planning tools here in the UK. You can't really have a S&S ISA, or any other kind of tax-advantaged account other than a workplace pension without it all going totally bananas on the US side. You also can't own a UK limited company (more than ~10%) without getting whacked with crazy 5471 reporting. Same applies to UK trusts, you can't touch them without 3520 reporting (even for trivial things like life insurance trusts here in the UK, and even certain pension products). Many banks and financial services providers won't touch Americans with a 10 foot pole.

On the other hand you can potentially save a lot in taxes if you ever move back to the US if you've accumulated a lot of FTC carry forward. You can also probably pay a pretty minimal amount of US student loans if you're on IBR because the payments are based on your AGI which will be artificially low.

The US needs to abolish citizenship based taxation and chill out on the reporting requirements (which are generally the worst part) for people who generally live abroad. However, I wouldn't hold my breath. Even though the current admin has said they'll get rid of it, I just don't see that there's much political capital to spend on this issue. There aren't that many Americans living abroad, and most Americans don't give a shit about this sort of thing.
by miki123211 | 2025-04-09 08:43:17+00:00
Here's what I do:

1. questions where I expect SEO crap, like for cooking recipes, are for LLMs. I use the best available LLM for those to avoid hallucinations as much as possible, 2.5 pro these days. With so much blogspam, LLMs are actually less likely to hallucinate at this point than the real internet IMO.

2. Questions whose answer I can immediately verify, like "how do I do x in language y", also go to an LLM. If the suggestion doesn't work, then I google. My stackoverflow usage has fallen to almost 0.

3. General overviews / "how is this algorithm called" / "is there a library that does x" are LLMs, usually followed by Googling about the solutions discussed.

4. When there's no answer to my exact question anywhere, or when I need a more detailed overview of a new library / language, I still read tutorials and reference docs.

5. Local / company stuff, things like "when is this place open and how do I call them" or "what is the refund policy of this store" are exclusively Google. Same for shopping (not an American, so LLM shopping comparisons aren't very useful to me). Sadly, online reviews are still a cesspool.
by burhanrashid52 | 2025-04-09 08:43:19+00:00
Location: India

Remote: Yes

Willing to relocate: No

Technologies: Android, Flutter, React(TS/JS), Node, SpringBoot and Go

Résumé/CV: https://burhanrashid52.com/consultation

Email: burhanrashid5253@gmail.com

Github : https://github.com/burhanrashid52

Website : https://burhanrashid52.com

My name is Burhanuddin Rashid, and I am a software engineer with 8+ years of experience in developing mobile applications. I am an open-source enthusiast and a Google Developer Expert in Dart and Flutter.

I owe most of my career to the open-source community. I got exposed to this when I open-sourced my first Android PhotoEditor library, which reached around 3.8K stars and is still active. This led me to an opportunity to speak at Droidcon Berlin 2021, sharing my open-source learnings.

My biggest contribution so far in the product was to improve code and app quality by introducing testing to the team. Before that, I was the Android tech lead to build an offline-first app to manage package delivery with real-time location tracking, collaborating with a remote team. Apart from this, I've also worked on web and backend technologies like React and Spring Boot, which gives me additional knowledge of how the system works end-to-end.

Also, in my free time, I learn and share my knowledge by writing blogs, newsletters, Youtube videos, or speaking at conferences.
by blackbrokkoli | 2025-04-09 08:43:22+00:00
I don't know. Career plans aside, to me, making software is a means to an end.

There is no inherent value to producing software, as there may be in producing car tires or bananas. The best software is no software.

And then who is the better programmer, the one who knows more about how to make software, or the one who knows more about what software to make?
by arkh | 2025-04-09 08:44:59+00:00
> most of the "foundational" knowledge is very easy to acquire

But you have to know this knowledge exists in the first place. That's part of the appeal of university teaching: it makes you aware of many different paradigms. So the day you stumble on one of them you know where to look for a solution. And usually you learn how to read (and not to fear) reading scientific papers which can be useful. And statistics.
by raxxorraxor | 2025-04-09 08:46:18+00:00
AI absolutely cannot develop a video game. It is still a high risk creative task and costs for development and artists will not change significantly, even if modern AIs increased their abilities significantly.

Perhaps we would be able to synthesize some text, voice and imaging. Also AI can support coding.

While AI can probably do a snake game (that perhaps runs/compiles) or attempt to more or less recreate well known codebases like that of Quake (which certainly does not compile), it can only help if the developer does the main work, that is disecting problems into smaller ones until some of them can be automated away. That can improve productivity a bit and certainly could improve developer training. If companies were so inclined to invest in their workforce...
by lnsru | 2025-04-09 08:46:47+00:00
I would say, there was not much new in this. The key part of the project was the real time approach. Acquire samples, process them, find peaks, do FFTs, sum, multiply, divide. Get a float number, turn on the proper LEDs. The data was moved in C code between DMA blocks written in VHDL. Actually far away from optimized version. But it worked. IP does not belong to me and I would like to avoid technical details. The project was ended immediately when the company we worked for offered 25000€ for all IP created during the project. Very bad joke. I am still confused, because there was massive potential in this cooperation for everybody involved.
by jjude | 2025-04-09 08:47:26+00:00
There are two parts in this comment - poor country ; plagued by graft & bureaucracy

Latest Indus valley report[1] states that about 1Bn people (India3) are in economic condition equal to sub-saharan countries condition. In that sense large part of the country is still poor.

In response to minister Piyush Goel's rant in the latest startup event, a startup founder posted this on reddit which details how the country is plagued by graft & bureaucracy [2] . This is just one rant. Twitter is flooded with actual experience of many.

[1]: https://blume.vc/reports/indus-valley-annual-report-2024 [2]: https://www.reddit.com/r/StartUpIndia/comments/1js2y1s/piyus...
by DeathArrow | 2025-04-09 08:47:28+00:00
>The evidence isn’t merely anecdotal. A comprehensive 2023 study tracking political donations of 200,000 employees across 18 industries revealed tech workers as uniquely anti-establishment—and trailing only the bohemians of arts and entertainment in their liberal fervor. The source of this radicalism lies precisely where Gouldner placed his faith: in what he called the “culture of critical discourse” embedded in technical work itself. Thus, the researchers discovered that non-technical employees within the same tech companies showed none of this rebellious disposition, confirming that coding itself, not mere proximity to ping pong tables, contributes to their dissenting mindset.

Thankfully not all tech workers suffer from this disease.
by re-thc | 2025-04-09 08:48:49+00:00
> China made that choice in the late 1970s and early 1980s and has progressed ever since

So you're saying that China has grew out of manufacturing because a lot of it is moving out of China. In the same way the US has also moved out of manufacturing ages ago.

> is now powerful enough to be able to stand up to the United States

How do you conclude that the ONLY thing China did is manufacturing?

> You have a warped view of what manufacturing is

No, it goes to show you know very little about the world. It's not all just manufacturing. That's definitely not all that China does. If it was you wouldn't have to ban Huawei and Tiktok.

Do you know how many games come from China now? A lot of US and EU game studios are at least partly owned by Chinese companies e.g. Tencent.
by jpap | 2025-04-09 08:48:51+00:00
Agreed; I do this all the time as well. I don't think it as "guessing" per se, I think of it as forming a hypothesis based on the intersection of my existing knowledge of the problem and any new observations [1], then testing it to figure out if the hypothesis was correct. If proven incorrect, the process helps me reform into a new hypothesis and the cycle continues until the problem area becomes clear enough to solve outright.

[1] By reading more of the code, RTFM, observing logs, tracing with a debugger, varying inputs, etc.
by namaria | 2025-04-09 08:49:08+00:00
> Or maybe I just suck at prompting hehe

Every time someone argues for the utility of LLMs in software development by saying you need to be better at prompting, or add more rules for the LLM on the repository, they are making an argument against using NLP in software development.

The whole point of code is that it is a way to be very specific and exact and to exercise control over the computer behavior. The entire value proposition of using an LLM is that it is easier because you don't need to be so specific and exact. If then you say you need to be more specific and exact with the prompting, you are slowly getting at the fact that using NLP for coding is a bad idea.
by littlecranky67 | 2025-04-09 08:49:46+00:00
> and OIDC is an open standard at least

But what kind of argument is that, if you are a single individual who wants to signup, I am not going to setup my OIDC servers. That is like saying it is a good idea to run a dedicated linux server in a datacenter under your own management, when all you want is a small static website for your mom+pop store. Sure, you can run your own server and it is all open source, but just overkill.

> already done so well and it's hard to do.

So hard that literally all other websites in the world with a login have implemented it. And tailscale is a VPN-like technology company - if they can't manage to implement a login because it is hard, then I would definitely not accept their offerings.