MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by Terr_ | 2025-04-07 04:34:45+00:00
Related: https://www.stilldrinking.org/programming-sucks

> Every friend I have with a job that involves picking up something heavier than a laptop more than twice a week eventually finds a way to slip something like this into conversation: “Bro,1 you don’t work hard. I just worked a 4700-hour week digging a tunnel under Mordor with a screwdriver.”

> They have a point. Mordor sucks, and it’s certainly more physically taxing to dig a tunnel than poke at a keyboard unless you’re an ant. But, for the sake of the argument, can we agree that stress and insanity are bad things? Awesome. Welcome to programming.
by mmooss | 2025-04-07 04:35:19+00:00
That's right from the dictator's basic playbook:

They never say 'I'm jailing / prosecuting these people to suppress my enemies', they accuse them of fraud, corruption, etc. Xi Jinping did it in China, the new dictator in Saudi Arabia did it, ... it's an old one.

Note that dictators are vulnerable - they still need to justify themselves to the public.
by veridies | 2025-04-07 04:35:23+00:00
This concept is worthwhile, but the author is so focused on malice that he neglects real examples. For example, I think many people agree with vegans about animals’ capability for suffering, and don’t WANT to increase it, but just don’t consider it worthy of moral consideration. The factual beliefs are the same, but the moral choices are diametrically opposed.

Similarly, many (not all!) conservatives and liberals basically agree about the effects, positive and negative, of immigration. But one side doesn’t want those people here, and one does. You don’t need to have different beliefs about the world to be on exact opposite sides of that issue.
by wpm | 2025-04-07 04:35:32+00:00
We’re stuck with plenty of non-optimal stuff because of path dependency and historical baggage. So what? Propose something better. Show that the benefits of following the happy path of historical baggage don’t outweigh the outrageously “arcane” and byzantine syntax of…double quotes, brackets, dollar signs, and other symbols that pretty much every other language uses too.
by g00z | 2025-04-07 04:35:35+00:00
Simple views sure, but tools like the driller or debugger are great examples of what I'm trying to highlight about when I say having the views work over actual objects is really important.

Because if it wasn't for the fact the graphical stack was implemented as smalltalk objects, you couldn't build tools like the driller or debugger since they would have to be implemented as a secondary piece of software that loses the original context.

Like for example, I built a custom tool for myself when I was working on this p2p network and had a section of the codebase with some non obvious control flow, since it was handling multiple different p2p networks at the same time. Normally this is where you include a diagram in the docs, but in about an hour I built a custom code editor for the class, that visualized all the control flow and explained the cases in a flow diagram by simply introspecting on the methods defined in the class. And this tool never fell out of sync like a static diagram, since it wasn't hardcoded by me. And from that point on, I worked within this tool whenever hanlding anything related to this.

And fwiw, the python story is pretty seamless from my usage of it a few months ago. I was able to integrate and use python libraries into this project without much hassle.
by epidemian | 2025-04-07 04:36:16+00:00
This a thread about imagining a world without ads. If we're trying to envision that, it surely is not too hard to imagine how such a useful service for society as a search engine could be funded by other means, right?

There are many many examples of useful services (both private and public) in our own world that manage to exist without the need to get plastered by obnoxious ads.
by arcticbull | 2025-04-07 04:37:04+00:00
Sure they do.

But again when supply and demand meet there’s no use for rent control anyways. Rent control is favoring some people at the expense of everybody else on the basis that they happen to get there early. It’s not a rational policy. It’s the same irrational policy that guarantees existing landowners a massive return.

Btw a 2M house in SF these days is a mansion. You can get a 3bed 2bath for like $899K.

Take $400K off and you’re cooking with gas.

https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/148-Peralta-Ave-A-San-Fra...

You can get a 5bed 4bath for $1.8

https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/1959-19th-Ave-San-Francis...
Show HN: Uncurl.dev – Convert curl commands to a shareable, executable UI
by darubramha | 2025-04-07 04:37:19+00:00
Hey HN,

I built uncurl.dev to scratch my own itch: I kept getting curl commands in API docs, bug reports, or Slack messages and wanted a quick way to visualize, run, and debug them without firing up Postman or writing code to dissect them. It was also sometimes painful to create a test page specifically for non-tech users to consume an API. I originally vibe-coded this over a weekend just to make it easier for myself to debug API requests shared as curl commands. It slowly grew into something I found surprisingly useful in my workflow, so I decided to clean it up and share it.

uncurl.dev takes a curl command and: - Converts it into a visual representation - Lets you edit and inspect all parts of the request - Allows sharing via a unique link - (Optionally) executes it from the server, so business or non-technical users can see results

Execution is currently behind login, with a cap (5/min) to avoid abuse and manage costs. Non-logged-in users can still build and share curl commands—they just can’t execute them. The server runs each request in a Docker sandbox with strict resource/time limits (cpu, memory, timeout, no network access outside the request).

It’s not meant to replace full-featured tools like Postman or Hoppscotch. It’s more of a “CLI-to-UI bridge” for fast sharing and debugging, especially in dev workflows where curl is the starting point. Think of it like Pastebin or JSFiddle, but for curl commands.

If you’ve ever copied a curl from an API doc and wanted a cleaner way to see it or send it to someone else, I’d love your feedback.

Thanks! (You can try it without signup here: https://uncurl.dev)
by shadowgovt | 2025-04-07 04:37:51+00:00
While not owed a job for life, the arrangement of government as stable employer was a beneficial arrangement for the public: it let the government hold onto employees they might have otherwise had to pay more for their skillset because "If you're competent we won't fire you; our pockets are infinitely deep and we don't need to save money" was a perk.

Take that perk away, and now they have to compete on other things to find similarly-competent staff. Things like salary. Paid by your taxes.
by apical_dendrite | 2025-04-07 04:37:55+00:00
I have trouble believing that someone at the level of a PI at NIH would just quit with no notice (unless there was some kind of misconduct and they decided to leave rather than get fired). They are running a lab. They direct all the projects that the lab is doing and they are ultimately responsible for all the grant funding. A PI quitting without notice would be incredibly disruptive to everyone else in the lab. I'm not sure how it works with NIH intramural research, but at a university or a hospital you'd have to figure out how to transfer any grants, what to do with equipment paid for by the grants, and what will happen to the grad students, postdocs, and everyone else in the lab. It would be incredibly irresponsible to leave suddenly without addressing those things.
by odo1242 | 2025-04-07 04:38:38+00:00
~~This is kinda ridiculous, especially considering the bill wouldn’t even affect OpenAI itself (that would make it an ex post facto law) but just close the loophole for the future.~~ (edit: I misread)

I say this as a user of AI, I’ve seen the nonprofit structure get abused way too much for my liking. Not that I have any solutions to the problem though.
by TaurenHunter | 2025-04-07 04:38:39+00:00
The global energy market uses the U.S. dollar for pricing and settling transactions since the 70s - the "petrodollar" system.

If they EU push hard for it, they may get someone like Norway to accept Euros.

However, there are energy contracts locked into dollar-based pricing and many exporters need dollars because they hold dollar-based debt, buy goods in dollars or have a currency peg.

For them to accept the relatively unappealing Euros they might ask for a premium to offset conversion costs or risks.
by system7rocks | 2025-04-07 04:39:09+00:00
In general, Apple has had such a positive influence on both hardware and software that I welcome their particular approach. It may not be ideal from a pure Linux perspective, but it does open the door to a variety of approaches. And truly, that is the key - there should always be multiple licenses and approaches to the work of open source.

So, thank you, Apple.

But please open source System 7.
by dkjaudyeqooe | 2025-04-07 04:39:19+00:00
There's no methodology at work, it's just indiscriminate firings to cull as many people as possible.

This is clear from other other departments where they fired everyone they could.

"Coding error" is just a modern version of "the dog ate my homework". Lame but people will swallow it. They knew what they were doing, they just regret getting caught.

Sadly, once the firings, rehirings, refirings, court cases, and compensations are done, there won't be any money saved at all, probably more wasted.

That public servants do important work under less than ideal circumstances and funding is entirely ignored.
by _kst_ | 2025-04-07 04:41:09+00:00
A conforming implementation could make string literals modifiable, and (obviously non-portable) code could rely on that. I don't know whether any current compilers do so. I suspect not.

Apart from that, it's not about actually modifying string literals. It's about currently valid (but admittedly sloppy) code that uses a non-const pointer to point to a string literal. It's easy to write such code in a way that a modern conforming C compiler will not warn about.

That kind of code is the reason that this proposed change is not just an obvious no-brainer, and the author is doing research to find out how much of an issue it really is.

As it happens, I think that the next C standard should make string literals const. Any code that depends on the current behavior can still be compiled with C23 or earlier compilers, or with a non-conforming option, or by ignoring non-fatal warnings. And of course any such code can be fixed, but that's not necessarily trivial; making the source code changes can be a very small part of the process.

Any change that can break existing valid code should be approached with caution to determine whether it's worth the cost. And if the answer is yes, that's great.
by milesvp | 2025-04-07 04:41:29+00:00
The way I understand it is that some people put off filing as long as possible because they get a better return on other investments. They’re willing to pay interest and other fees on their taxes in order to pay as late as possible. I haven’t looked into this personally because I tend to be risk averse enough to pay off relatively low interest rate loans, but I’ve heard at least one personal anecdote once removed to this effect.
by Spivak | 2025-04-07 04:41:50+00:00
This is something that's always bugged me because, yes, this is a real problem that produces real bugs. But at the same time if you really care about this issue then every arithmetic operation is unsafe and there is never a time you should use them without overflow checks. Sometimes you can know something won't overflow but outside of some niche type systems you can't really prove it to the compiler to elide the check in a way that is safe against code modifications— i.e. if someone edits code that breaks the assumption we needed to know it won't overflow it will err.

But at the same time in real code in the real world you just do the maths, throw caution to the wind, and if it overflows and produces a bug you just fix it there. It's not worth the performance hit and your fellow developers will call you mad if you try to have a whole codebase with only checked maths.
by timr | 2025-04-07 04:42:28+00:00
> The market is still pricing in the optimistic scenario of tariffs being repealed

"The market" has no idea what the impact of the proposed changes are. Setting aside the obvious questions about whether or not this stuff will even happen, it's just not possible for something this complex to be evaluated so quickly.

This is panic. People are wildly guessing about the "worst case scenario", without any detailed understanding (or even data) on what might happen [1,2]. It's all speculation, but lots and lots of people love to write horror stories for clicks and points.

[1] Just for example: what does it even mean for an "X% tarrif on all products from country Y" to be imposed? The Harmonized Tariff Schedule is hundreds of thousands of line items, each with a different rate. Are they all being replaced with a single number? Is that line item number being multiplied by a factor? Something else? I guarantee that almost nobody knows the answer to that question right now. I'm not even sure an answer exists.

[2] This is the only thing I've found that comes close to answering the question: https://hts.usitc.gov/reststop/file?release=currentRelease&f...

Starting just from the first line item leads to a branching set of changes, many of which have exceptions and dependencies on other changes:

https://hts.usitc.gov/search?query=9903.01.25

Working through that changeset is a non-trivial operation, and then, working through the impact on something as detailed as a supply chain for any non-trivial product is immensely complicated. Now do it for every product.
by sanswork | 2025-04-07 04:43:20+00:00
People get upset at the idea of using government money to feed the starving. Why do you assume they would be ok with spending billions to create a search engine?

The reality is you can choose to have your dream reality right now. Pay for Kagi, pay for ad free streaming or buy bluerays, stay of social media or subscribe direct to your content providers in patron.

We don't need to remove free access just so a few people can go ad free. Those people can already do it they just choose not to
by scottyeager | 2025-04-07 04:43:50+00:00
The undotted small "i" character comes from the modern Turkish alphabet. It's perhaps only slightly disorienting for an English reader to slightly shorten some letters that are just lines in a sans-serif font. In Turkish though, a millimeter of line can make an entirely different letter.

Being able to render a variety of line lengths with different meanings is a cool and useful thing.
by _bin_ | 2025-04-07 04:45:03+00:00
Did anybody actually “trust” other countries to start with? I’m reminded of the cynical yet accurate quote that nations don’t have friends, they have interests. I expect the American feds to pursue the best interests of Americans (though these policies aren’t in those best interests, it seems admin doesn’t know?) and foreign nations to do the same.

This point is especially hollow because it is true that many countries have maintained asymmetric tariffs on us. Trade deficit aside, we shouldn’t let others collect a larger % of their imports from America than we collect of our imports from them. I’d take their cries of “lost trust” more seriously if they hadn’t shown with their actions they will pursue their own advantage too.
by motorest | 2025-04-07 04:45:52+00:00
> If you can figure out how to use D1 as a frontend dev, you can use a hosted Postgres solution and get much more power and performance.

After a cursory glance at Cloudflare D1's description and service limits, I was left with the impression that the usecases are not that of a generic RDBMS. I mean, the limit for each database is 10GB, and apparently a D1 database resides in a single location. Of course this means >200ms to even hit the server when requests don't come from the same data center.

Perhaps this is one of those things where a underperforming implementation is released to minimize time-to-market, and then they work on performance. However, for a distributed service this suggests to me that this solution only works as an ad-hoc storage of complex relational data for high-read, low-write scenarios, where you have Cloudflare Workers query D1 but either aggressively cache the response or store queries in Cloudflare KV to avoid the roundtrip cost.
by wodenokoto | 2025-04-07 04:45:57+00:00
I recently travelled on Ethiopian Airlines, whose safety video is a good mix between the 90s and someone's nephew who know how to edit videos.

It very literally showed everything talked about happening inside an actual airplane. Masks actually deploying and dropping from the ceiling and people putting them on, etc.

What was interesting for me was, it was the first time I saw _where_ under the seat the life jacket is and it made me realize that despite having watched 100s of these videos I actually never knew how to get the life jacket.
by lambda | 2025-04-07 04:46:00+00:00
In this article: https://www.reuters.com/markets/deals/musks-xai-buys-social-...

"Musk did not ask investors for approval but told them that the two companies had been collaborating closely and the deal would drive deeper integration with Grok, the investor said."

Now, he may have only been talking about xAI investors here, but it seems pretty clear from his actions that Musk pretty much demands full control of his companies, and if he does involve the other investor's they're likely rubber-stamping without much opportunity to push back.
by BLKNSLVR | 2025-04-07 04:46:01+00:00
Such cruelty from the top of any organisation is a sign of impending failure. Leading by that example will only retain the vultures, who will pick the carcass of the best parts then move on. Let the ants and dung beetles deal with the shit parts once we're done.

It's going to get worse before it gets better, and I hope the majority of the "worse" will remain contained in the US. The rest of the world is still going to get some in it's mouth though.
by mbforbes | 2025-04-07 04:46:09+00:00
Same. North America performance (US and Mexico) had ~200ms+ latency per query, spiking to 500ms or higher in the test application I made using workers and D1. Their support channel was a discord, so I posted in it and never got a reply.

I was surprised because Cloudflare’s central messaging is that their network is fast, and disappointed becuase I’m a happy user of their other products (domains, DNS, pages, and R2).
by mmooss | 2025-04-07 04:47:41+00:00
> I suspect we could cut the DOD budget by 10-20% and maintain current capabilities

What is that based on? Just suspicion? (At least that honest!)

DoD before the rise of China (and Russia) could afford to cut back. But China is an enormous problem, and an enormous problem of resources.

Wealth drives victory in war more than anything else, except maybe population. Obviously China far exceeds the US and allies in population. During the Cold War, the Soviet Union's economy was (much, I think) smaller than the US, and the Warsaw Pact's was smaller than NATOs. By 2050, with four times the population, if China is only half as wealthy as the US per capita, it would have an economy twice as large. The US has never faced a threat like that.

DoD already cuts and restricts many programs because they can't afford them. For example, the NGAD fighter plane - the next generation fighter plane, a big deal - faces great uncertainty (despite Trump's showboating) because the US can't really afford it. That's just one program of many.

Allies help share the burden, but we are alienating all of them.

> There are a lot of programs that are failing to execute and have for years

Which ones? And programs exist to solve problems - what better ways do you have for solving the problems? The problems don't go away.

> if they're already late then we aren't getting any value from them at this point

We should cancel every late program? Again, what better solutions do you have? Start a new program and lose the progress of the existing one?

Now these are all just words backed by suspicions. Give us some reason to believe!
by thaumasiotes | 2025-04-07 04:47:54+00:00
I would have liked to read something about the legal mechanics here. The bill has had the entirety of its text removed, and the text has been replaced with a thoroughly trivial change to the required procedure for selling aircraft under some circumstances. (Instead of posting public notice in three public places, you have to post it in five public places.)

Obviously, (1) the purpose of this is to withdraw the bill; and (2) nobody really cares about the adjustment to the sale procedure.

So I can infer that replacing the bill with an unrelated bill of the same name is easier than replacing it with nothing at all. But why is that?
by TheDong | 2025-04-07 04:48:28+00:00
> You can choose not to use any service that uses ads and only use ones that allow you to pay for ad free experiences.

Ads are so incredibly pervasive I effectively cannot.

There's stores I go to which only post their hours on instagram. There's friends I communicate with where my only communication avenue is instagram.

When I walk outside of my door I see billboards and ads, when I install an app required for my daily life, it's full of ads. iPhone, android, and windows all have ads by default littered throughout default apps.

We live in a society, and becoming a weirdo who refuses to use anything that doesn't run on my linux-phone will isolate me from that society. It's perfectly possible to criticize a thing and imagine alternatives without first becoming richard stallman.
by adrianmonk | 2025-04-07 04:49:32+00:00
Isn't that what the IRS has already been doing the last few years, and has been making good progress on, except that they have been doing it properly so it behaves right?

https://www.forbes.com/sites/andrewleahey/2024/09/06/from-co...

It seems more than a little silly to try to rewrite something when it isn't necessary since it has already been done. And that goes double if the goal is efficiency since it cost money to do something that doesn't need to be done.
by motorest | 2025-04-07 04:49:54+00:00
> unless you're saying they are significantly stupider, they can learn

I'm saying that there's a far larger portion of the population using computers, and they all benefit extensively from R&D going into UX design that allow people to use computers without having to "learn".

What kind of dissociation from reality leads anyone to believe your regular joe will even have the motivation to waste their time sitting in front a computer, open a terminal, and type commands? Some software engineers don't even want to touch a computer when they clock out, and you expect others to push themselves to "learn" something the have no interest in?
by _bin_ | 2025-04-07 04:50:13+00:00
The caveat being if you have even a coarse-grained sense of market timing, this works strongly against your own pnl. The optimal strategy is to long the bubble, short the correction, then long the recovery. It’s not possible to do perfectly but you can often sell for part of the way down and skip some of your losses before buying back in. This generally would increase vol but is personally advantageous if you can do it.

It is incredibly to “follow your lizard brain” and destroy your returns. Selloff? “Time to be greedy!” Whoops, caught that falling knife with your hand. Maybe it’s a V-shaped recovery a la corona. Maybe it’s a decade plus like the Nasdaq post-dot-com. Rally? “Time to be fearful!” Wait, it keeps going up? Do you get more fearful? Do you sit in cash for years amidst inflation and high returns?