MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by zoogeny | 2025-04-14 18:32:29+00:00
Interestingly, my criticism is exactly the opposite of yours. I think as LLMs become more and more capable (and crucially multi-modal) we will need the external tools less and less.

For example, why would I want an MCP that can drive Photoshop on my behalf? Like I say to the LLM "remove this person from the photo" and it opens Photoshop, uses the magic wand select tool, etc. That is silly in my mind. I want to say "remove this person" and the LLM sends me a perfect image with the person gone.

I extend that idea for just about any purpose. "Edit this video in such and such a way". "Change this audio in such and such a way". "Update this 3d model in such and such a way". No tool needed at all.

And that will lead to more multi-modal input. Like, if I could "mark up" a document with pen marks, or an image. I want tools that are a bit better than language for directing the attention of the model towards the goals I want them to achieve. Those will be less "I am typing text into a chat interface with bubbles" but the overall conversational approach stays intact.
by klabb3 | 2025-04-14 18:32:48+00:00
In my rather small code base I’ve been quite happy with ”unknown” instead of any. It makes me use it less because of the extra checks, and catches the occasional bug, while still having an escape hatch in cases of extensive type wrangling.

The other approach, having an absolutist view of types, can be very constraining and complex even for relatively simple domain problems. Rust for instance is imo in diminishing returns territory. Enums? Everyone loves them, uses them daily and even write their own out of joy. OTOH, it took years of debate to get GATs implemented (is it now? I haven’t checked), and not because people like and need them, but because they are a necessary technicality to do fundamental things (especially with async).
by bsimpson | 2025-04-14 18:32:51+00:00
Ruth and Fiona aren't Patrick and Laszlo.

It feels like there was leadership turnover in the late 2010s where "conventional company" people assumed the reins of power and started managing it like one.

The founders are complicit too. People like to think "before Larry and Sergey stepped down…" but the founders still control the board (tacitly or explicitly approving of the company's current behavior). Plus, there's Sergey's "60h/w or GTFO" note from a few months back.
by bondarchuk | 2025-04-14 18:33:12+00:00
The points "Viewpoint Diversity in Admissions and Hiring" and "Discontinuation of DEI" seem inconsistent. Enforcing "viewpoint diversity" is a DEI practice in all but name. Actually, it is even in the name. Also with the merit-based stuff, of course. What if people of merit skew towards certain viewpoints? Then hiring/admissions won't be merit based after all?
by paganel | 2025-04-14 18:33:27+00:00
> But by any objective measure, the tools make Google's developers wildly productive,

That’s the thing, they might be winning all the productivity battles there are (and I genuinely believe that they do, on top of great tools Google employs good-enough programmers to make use of those tools), but at the same time they’re losing the general war. Because, with rare exceptions, the last war Google the company won when it came to launching something of lasting value happened in the late 2000s, give or take a few years.

The botched Google+ launch broke them in that department, or maybe that was just a symptom of how badly-broken things already were inside the company. They’re still making lots and lots of money, though, so that’s still a good thing for them.
by rfoo | 2025-04-14 18:33:41+00:00
> Codebase Divergence: Our engine is based on an early fork of vLLM from over a year ago

If you are in the same boat you'll see how much changed in vLLM compared to one year ago. Also, this meant that they haven't rebased for over a year, I don't believe that's because they don't want, it's because they effectively can't.

Yeah, surely they can maintain it as-is. But it will be increasingly hard to port over anything community has.
by mezentius | 2025-04-14 18:33:44+00:00
With respect, I have no personal investment in defending the quality of PKD’s prose; I wouldn’t even count him among my favorite authors. I’m a professional writer—and while that doesn’t make my opinion authoritative, as writers disagree on many points large and small, and there are fewer professional rules to observe than your high-school English teacher would have you believe— I’m offering a technical appraisal of his sentences, in the same manner that a mechanic may tell you, “no, your timing belt is fine—you have at least another fifty-thousand miles on it. Whoever told you otherwise was trying to cheat you.”

If by “ELRON” you mean L. Ron Hubbard—well, the shocks are worn out, the muffler’s falling off, and the tires are flat. The car’s totaled, and unless you have some personal attachment to it, I’d have it hauled off to the junkyard. (My opinion on King is more complicated—it’s a fine car, I suppose, if you’re partial to that make, but the brand ain’t what it used to be.)

This isn’t a great venue for sentence analysis, but reading PKD’s early, extremely funny, short story, “Oh, To Be A Blobel!” is instructive. [1] Read it aloud, if you can. Note the little details he throws away, the way he sneaks ironic jokes into seemingly objective descriptions. It’s a Borscht Belt routine masquerading as a science-fiction story, and perfectly constructed. But if this seems like “bad” writing to you, consider that you may not have entirely passed through his veil of irony.

[1] https://sickmyduck.narod.ru/pkd038-0.html
by citizenpaul | 2025-04-14 18:34:18+00:00
Ah yes. I got to do that once after a layoff. The manager tried to guilt me or something into working after I was layed off. "Because they were given me severance so I should be ok with doing the work"

I told them. No you are wrong. I was given severance to sign an NDA and non-disparagement agreement. That is what the severance bought the company, but I'll be glad to discuss a consultant role on an hourly basis.
by taeric | 2025-04-14 18:34:35+00:00
I mean, this isn't that different from any number of things you do in real life? You took a car to some destination. It is assumed you didn't change the engine. Took it to a mechanic, maybe they did?

More, many modifications are flat out expected. You filled out a job application, you probably don't expect to change the job it is for. But you do expect that you can fill out your pieces, such that it is a modifiable document while you have it. (Back to the car example, it is expected that you used fuel and caused wear on the tires.)

As annoying as they were to deal with, the idea of having "frozen" objects actually fits really well with how many people want to think of things. You open it to get it ready for use. This will involve a fair bit of a setup. When done, you expect that you can freeze those and pass off to something else.

Transactions can also get into this. Not surprising, as they are part of the vocabulary we have built on how to deal with modifications. Same for synchronization and plenty of other terms. None of them go away if you just choose to use immutable objects.
by Hizonner | 2025-04-14 18:35:29+00:00
> You’re never going to find a binary function that tells you if something is legal or not, in the end it’s up to a human judge to decide.

... but the whole point of cryptocurrency, or at least of smart contracts and "DeFi", is to reject that and try to build a parallel system. That's presumably based on a belief that you can write code that behaves the way you intend, regardless of whether you really can do that or not.

So perhaps the judge should decide "Well, you signed up for that when you tried to opt out of having human judgement govern your deals. Have a nice day.".

And in fact perhaps there should be formal statutory law that makes it clear that's what the judge is supposed to decide in any case that isn't itself "borderline" somehow. Which the case at hand shouldn't be.
by miles | 2025-04-14 18:35:36+00:00
> [A]t least [Gitmo] was mostly people accused of truly terrible crimes.

Factsheet: The Human Cost of Guantánamo Bay Detention Camp https://bridge.georgetown.edu/research/factsheet-the-human-c...

> Since its founding in 2002, Guantánamo Bay military prison has held 780 adults and minors from around fifty different countries, all of whom are Muslim. As of 2022, 732 of them (or 94 percent) have been released without ever having been formally charged. Nine men have died in custody, seven by apparent suicide and two due to illness. Of the thirty-nine remaining, thirteen have been recommended for release but remain imprisoned. Twelve out of the original 780 (or 1.5 percent) have been charged with or convicted of crimes and remain in Guantánamo. The remaining fourteen individuals continue to be held without trial in indefinite detention.
by loremm | 2025-04-14 18:35:36+00:00
For gmail, there's also an amazing thing where you can hook it with pubsub. So now it's push not pull. Any server will get pubsub little webhooks for any change within milliseconds (you can filter server side or client side for specific filters)

This is amazing, you can do all sorts of automations. You can feed it to an llm and have it immediately tag it (or archive it). For important emails (I have a specific label I add, where if the person responds, it's very important and I want to know immediately) you can hook into twilio and it calls me. Costs like 20 cents a month
by tptacek | 2025-04-14 18:35:44+00:00
Because you're more or less starting over. The technical work you do would carry over, to a large extent, at a new company with a clean cap table. All the "real" work is customer discovery and early GTM. Your investors signed on for an earlier company, that company didn't pan out, they're adults, they get that, they don't get a claim on your next company.

It's not like this is an iron rule, but it's something you should be thinking about. If the only things in common between your new direction and your old one is your cofounder and some of your tech stack, you should have a good reason to keep the investors on, right?
by pcthrowaway | 2025-04-14 18:36:46+00:00
There were a lot of shortcomings.

- The woman playing what I think was an Erhu[1] seemed to be imitating traditional music played by that instrument, but really badly (it sounded much more like a human voice than the actual instrument does). Also, I'm not even sure if it was able to tell which instrument it was, or if it was picking up on other cues from the video (which could be problematic, e.g. if it profiles people based on their race and attire)

- Most of the sound was pretty delayed from the visual cues. Not sure why

- The nature sounds were pretty muddy

- (I realize this is from video to music, but) the video with pumping upbeat music set to the text "Maddox White witnessed his father getting butchered by the Capo of the Italian mob" was almost comically out of touch with the source

Nevertheless, it's an interesting demo and highlights more applications for AI which I'm expecting we'll see massive improvements in over the next few years! So despite the shortcomings I agree it's still quite impressive.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erhu
Show HN: I made a Free internal SEO monitoring tool
by standardfloat | 2025-04-14 18:36:49+00:00
TLDR: add websites you wish to monitor to the tool and get notified when issues are detected

I manage multiple websites and was having issues with handling all small SEO errors that can happen in the lifecycle of a website (broken links, missing meta tags, bad page hierarchy etc.), so I created this tool which monitors the website every few hours.

Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster provide some of these, but I've found both to be lacking, and not user-friendly.

Planning on adding more features, let me know what you personally would like to monitor on your website!
by chungy | 2025-04-14 18:37:07+00:00
It's hard to know whether anything is actually uploaded, but thankfully SQLite databases are plentiful that don't contain sensitive data (and this, also, is why there is a sample database included).

I loaded up my Star Trek database into the program to toy with: https://chiselapp.com/user/chungy/repository/startrek-db/uvl...
by MrSandman | 2025-04-14 18:37:18+00:00
Murthy was previously a CTO at Verizon Media, and held executive roles at Gap, American Express, eBay, and Yahoo.

“I’ve been deeply inspired by Varo’s mission to make financial inclusion and opportunity a reality for all — empowering everyone with the tools to move their lives forward,” Murthy said on LinkedIn.

Murthy was at Expedia for three years, helping the Seattle-based travel juggernaut integrate AI into its platform.
by modeless | 2025-04-14 18:37:19+00:00
Huh, seems like Aider made a special mode specifically for Gemini[1] some time after Google's announcement blog post with official performance numbers. Still not sure it makes sense to quote that new score next to the others. In any case Gemini's 69% is the top score even without a special mode.

[1] https://aider.chat/docs/more/edit-formats.html#diff-fenced:~...
by chrisfosterelli | 2025-04-14 18:38:18+00:00
Agreed, "all" is an unfair word. Thanks. It's more accurate to say the majority of it is returned to the atmosphere. Less than 1% of burned fuel typically becomes organic carbon, but also not all of the biomass exposed will actually burn either. There's also trace amounts of other content and a lot of particulate matter (which one may or may not consider as carbon 'returned to the atmosphere' I suppose)
by latexr | 2025-04-14 18:39:27+00:00
I agree they should be removed from the profession. What I’ve been told is that it isn’t easy to do. As in, they would have to do something egregious, someone would have to lodge a complaint, and it would have to be proven they were negligent. Hard to do when you’re “just” ordering unnecessary and expensive procedures or prescribing the wrong medication which while ineffective might not be outright dangerous.
by basfo | 2025-04-14 18:40:59+00:00
I worked for a well-known SaaS company for 4 years. A few months after we were acquired, I decided it was time to move on. I gave a 3 week notice to ensure everything was properly handled before my departure.

Two days later, I couldn’t log in to my PC. I was, for all intents and purposes, fired from my actual work. Technically, I was still employed and paid for those remaining days, but I was locked out and never got the chance to say goodbye. It was the worst experience I’ve had, and I never had any issues with any manager or anyone before that. Apparently, it was just the new company policy.
by ben_w | 2025-04-14 18:41:23+00:00
Both are issues, for different people.

Art as nice things, vs. art as a peacock's tail where the effort is the point.

Fast fashion vs. Ned Ludd.

Queen Elizabeth I saying to William Lee, "Thou aimest high, Master Lee. Consider thou what the invention could do to my poor subjects. It would assuredly bring to them ruin by depriving them of employment, thus making them beggars."
by mschuster91 | 2025-04-14 18:41:58+00:00
> Windows 11 officially supports computers from 2017 too

... assuming they have TPM 2.0, which is far from a given.

> And Apple has poor backwards compatibility. You can't run 32-bit Intel binaries on anything newer than 10.14.

Fair point. Apple is indeed more aggressive on backwards compatibility in software... which is both a blessing and a curse. At the very least, it forces app developers to stay at least somewhat current, which means that Apple has far less legacy garbage to drag around - unlike Windows, where Microsoft went through at least half a dozen completely different programming frameworks and paradigms alone relating to "how to draw a window on the screen" which it has to support to this day simply because otherwise the complaints would be endless. And Linux is even worse in that regard.

> PPC has been out of the question for over 15 years. Meanwhile even on Windows on Arm you can run stuff made with XP or even Windows 98 in mind.

If you really have such old software and a need for it... run it on a VM.
by beernet | 2025-04-14 18:42:07+00:00
My hunch is it would work somewhat, but poorly.

Languages encode similar human experiences, so their conceptual spaces probably have natural alignments even without translation examples. Words for common objects or emotions might cluster similarly.

But without seeing actual translations, a model would miss nuances, idioms, and how languages carve up meaning differently. It might grasp that "dog" and "perro" relate to similar concepts without knowing they're direct translations.
by nobleach | 2025-04-14 18:42:27+00:00
The entire JVM ecosystem is built around "we all know you're using an IDE, right?" I among most folks who use Kotlin are aware of the Community Edition of IntelliJ. The price isn't the thing keeping me from using it. 1. an employer _should_ be covering that cost. 2. The tools is truly outstanding and well worth the 500 bucks (I'd argue it's not worth 500 bucks a year but...) With all of that said, I really don't enjoy the IDE experience. I do tend to write Kotlin + Quarkus in NeoVim... but the LSP is a volunteer effort. Meanwhile Rust and Go's LSPs are incredibly.

My biggest complaint against the JVM community will alwyas be, "don't expect that we can auto-import... document where methods/constant/imported vars come from".
by plaguuuuuu | 2025-04-14 18:43:17+00:00
I agree that his situation doesn't meaningfully threaten his actual personal security. But this isn't the point of his post and like, shit dude, have a heart. It's not the misery olympics.

He has clearly invested a lot of his identity in his work at Google on Chrome etc - essentially his life's work. To have it flushed down the toilet via some opaque corporate process, cost-saving a company that basically prints its own profit has a terrible psychological impact... irrespective of whether investing one's personal dreams in a faceless multinational corporation was a rational idea in the first place.

Honestly, it's not as if the PMC classes have truly transcended the confines of generating someone else's profit, pushing them offside is probably quite unhelpful for solidarity in the labor movement, but whatever.
by CamperBob2 | 2025-04-14 18:44:03+00:00
Again: you guys are missing my point. Whether you like it or not, or agree or not, they had no choice. Being rich as hell only leaves them that much more vulnerable to Trump.

If your business relies on the USPS as much as Amazon's still does, you want to have a seat at the table when the administration decides how they're going to kneecap the USPS. Same with tariffs, when half of the crap they sell comes straight outta Shenzhen. See also NASA and Musk. Being locked out of the rooms where these decisions get made is potentially fatal for them.
by derefr | 2025-04-14 18:44:17+00:00
> I do not know why doctors are so hesitant to link the immune system and mood disorders.

People who call themselves doctors — e.g. neurologists — generally aren't hesitant to do this. But psychiatrists — and even moreso, therapists — generally are. And psychiatrists+therapists lead the conversation on mood disorders, since that's who everyone is talking to about their mood disorders.

IMHO it's just the hammer-and-nail thing. To a cardiologist, every medical problem is seen through a potentially cardiovascular lens; to an oncologist, every problem is a question of what type of cancer could cause it.

Psychiatrists are technically medical doctors, but they spend their entire careers (after a few short years of school) focusing on psych cases; where these patients' problems either are purely psychological (e.g. conditioned-response, traumatic-response, coping/defensive, attachment-related, etc.), or at best "we don't know" the degree to which they're psychological vs organic. (If we can recognize a problem as purely organic from the outset, that problem doesn't end up in the hands of a psychiatrist!) And either way, they usually see good results in clinical practice from treating the patient's mind, rather than addressing organic signs/symptoms directly. Even when they prescribe medication, they're measuring their success on a mental basis (using questionnaire-based instruments used to gauge mental changes) rather than observing changes in e.g. measurable behavioral signs. The problems they're faced with, and the successes they have via these models, reinforce in psychiatrists a mind-centered mental model / worldview for psychiatric disease. (A model which is "the right one" to use in many psychological diseases! But not for many others.)

And therapists aren't even medical doctors. They never learn much-at-all in school about potential organic causes of psychological (or medical) problems. They focus purely on this lens of "the mind", ignoring the lens of "the brain as an organ" entirely. This means that in clinical practice, when confronted with a problem that has both mental and organic aspects, a therapist will tend to ignore the organic aspects; and when confronted with a problem where the organic aspects are too large to ignore, the therapist will simply refer to a psychiatrist (or neurologist, maybe) — with no follow-up, and thereby, no way to end up learning what the patient's problem actually was and thereby evolving the neurological side of their understanding.
by Onawa | 2025-04-14 18:44:38+00:00
I agree, I made my peace with Raindrop.io as well. Being able to use it on any system and most any browser, plus a full API for interacting with my bookmarks. Nothing free and open source compared and now I have 6k+ bookmarks in Raindrop that I would like to move elsewhere, but I'll have to check out the project linked here.
by BrenBarn | 2025-04-14 18:44:54+00:00
I agree it's a mindset, I just mean that that mindset has kind of coevolved with a bunch of other stuff.

Even Microsoft seems to be slipping. It seems like these days the (unstoppable!) Windows updates may actually change functionality and UI, which was much less common in the past. And of course the new versions of Windows are more aggressive about updating. They still maintain backwards compatibility for running third-party programs, but I feel like their mindset used to include more stability in their own software as well.
by iteria | 2025-04-14 18:45:53+00:00
I disagree. It's easier to get the non-technical in my life to remember one password than many. And most of them can't even manage that. I too have failed many times with 1password. It's literally one password and they can't remember it. It makes me understand why I keep seeing new email addresses: the moment their phone dies, they are out of luck because they don't remember their email passwords. At least magic link is one less password for them to forget.
by denvrede | 2025-04-14 18:46:03+00:00
Not true. They can remove you from the company grounds and block access to all systems the moment you get fired or you hand in your resignation. But they have to pay you (if there is no "good reason" for firing you) for a varying amount of time (depending on your contract and some minimums by law).

Of course, most of the time, you can / need to stay at the company for that above mentioned varying amount of time.
by YalebB | 2025-04-14 18:46:25+00:00
I made an app for this actually, called Showcase. You can bookmark any content——Youtube videos, websites, Tweets, Instagram posts—— and store it all together. You can use it on browser where you can paste directly onto the canvas (+ chrome extension coming) or iOS that has a Share Extension too.

It's also free ;)

Demo for Showcase: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ehGolVAHm8U

App Store link: https://apps.apple.com/gb/app/showcase-co/id6740991352?platf...