MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by gruez | 2025-04-07 16:55:12+00:00
You're making the claim, so it's your job to prove it, not ask some AI and get your opponent to do the legwork. Moreover I skimmed ECMA-376[1] and it doesn't mention anything about locale-invariant encoding for function names. The only mention was for the CELL function, which could accept multiple values depending on locale.

[1] https://github.com/QtExcel/ecma-376-5th/blob/master/ECMA-376...
by thuanao | 2025-04-07 16:55:35+00:00
It does if you're actually incorporating (C or S corp). You'll need to at least file both federal and state returns. And in many cases you'll need to pay money even if your business earned $0.

An LLC setup as a passthrough can get away with filing personal returns, but that only works for small freelance operations. Once you've got payroll or investors it's constant paperwork hassle.
by vdupras | 2025-04-07 16:55:39+00:00
Ah, so that's what happened. I guess they killed 2 birds with one stone with Kevin Hassett falsely saying that in confidence to some overambitious dumb guy.

First, they identify a snitch, second, if they have strong suspicions already, they buy on the dip, sell on the rebound and make a killing.

Stock markets are fully rigged by insider trading. More than ever.
by avidiax | 2025-04-07 16:55:39+00:00
There's a mentality that isn't uniquely American, but definitely permeates the culture, and it explains why people would support something like this against their own interests. It has facets with some combination of:

* Rugged individualism: I stand on my own as an upright citizen made morally righteous by my (or my ancestor's) contributions. I have never needed nor would have accepted welfare (and all the welfare I actually did accept was not actually welfare and was mine by right).

* Moral indignation: there are freeloaders, scammers and grifters everywhere that are unfairly dependent on the welfare state. There's little agreement on who these freeloaders are, other than it's not the wealthy or powerful or people like themselves.

* Religiosity: America was founded as a Christian country and should return to its roots. Often, all the bad things happening in America are God's punishment, the work of the devil, or the natural consequence of wickedness and deviance.

* Anti-intellectualism: Book learning and higher education are just a program of radicalization to promote moral relativism and unjust authority of "elites", and a "culture war". Moreover, all the intellectuals/elites are equally suspect, even those that claim to be helping everyone by advocating for environmentalism, cures and prevention of disease, sound economic policy, social advocacy, etc.

* A desire for positional authority, both above them and for themselves: A sense that people that are rich or powerful are rightfully so. The pastor of your church is the positional moral authority. Your boss is the positional fiscal authority. The police are the criminal authority. The supreme court is the positional judicial authority. The president is the positional executive authority. A father has positional authority over his children. And (unstated), "real Americans" have positional authority over marginalized groups. Any sense that the authority must be earned, maintained or justified is rejected.
Show HN: Timezone Converter in Map Form
by ifz | 2025-04-07 16:55:42+00:00
I often need to convert times between time zones, so I built this tool to convert between them quickly and efficiently.

1. Add the cities you want to convert between (this is saved in the browser).

2. Drag on the map until the time on the source city is the time you want.

3. Look at the time at the other city.

It's even more helpful to use on a phone since it doesn't require typing to convert between time zones or look up the time in another city (assuming you already added the cities you care about).

If you need to convert a time far in the future, you can input the date and time in the picker next to the city, and it will handle any DST shifts as well.
by AstroBen | 2025-04-07 16:56:16+00:00
I'm not sure that's the best advice unless you're looking to build a career in marketing

If you're looking at your long term career trajectory you're probably better off taking a (maybe much) lower paying job in the area you want to end up in. Grow relevant skills and gain experience

Of course this is irrelevant if you just need money to survive today
by johnisgood | 2025-04-07 16:56:21+00:00
I use either 2 spaces or tab for indentation for most languages, and I never go beyond 80 (actually, 79). It works well for XTerm, and most utilities that I use.

For git commits, I do not go beyond ~69 characters per line, so it looks neat when I am viewing the commit history.

120 characters may be fine if I only care about coding in VSCodium, for example, so sometimes I might go above the 80 column width when I am programming Go using VSCodium, but I try to not do that, because I still use "less" and whatnot, plus I have an old 17" monitor. I do not like wide monitors, I want to be able to look at the whole screen all at once, with wide monitors I would either have to be too far away, or move my head / neck / eyes too often.

So... my fonts are small, I limit to 80 column width, and I am quite happy with it. :P

To each their own, although I would have issues with Java code that not only requires me to have many files open, I would have to switch back and forth files, and I would have to horizontally scroll a lot.

I hope you realize what I am trying to say, if not, I will elaborate.
by collingreen | 2025-04-07 16:56:26+00:00
It's all those pesky authoritarian democrats working together in lockstep to crush the heroes!

I love seeing takes like this because they require both an extreme sense of being a victim and a self justification of revenge. It's never "we're trying to do the right thing" but instead "someone did something evil to me so now I am justified in doing evil to others".

Somehow the democrats are simultaneously one giant, authoritarian hammer smashing freedom, a disjoint bag of losers, idiots doing whatever George Soros tells them, and weak gays or gay supporters. Doesn't it ever make folks stop and think when the narrative switches between these very different "enemies" depending on whatever actions "the good guys" are trying to justify?
by giraffe_lady | 2025-04-07 16:56:52+00:00
> You’re early in your career. This current period of turmoil doesn’t mean that much

Is that true? I seem to remember data showing that the 2008-2010 graduate cohorts never overall caught up to the ones that came immediately before or after them.

Like sure sure OP has an engineering degree from MIT they're more like the ones that did catch up. But I'll bet there are a lot more people reading this who are about to graduate with degrees from perfectly adequate state schools and I'm not sure this unalloyed optimism is exactly correct for them. I don't think it turned out to be for their 2008 predecessors.
by lolinder | 2025-04-07 16:57:23+00:00
Collosal would face less pushback if they were upfront about the fact that they aren't a serious attempt at solving any ecological issues but that maybe they could push the tech forward enough that someone else could use it to solve real problems.

There's nothing wrong with building cool proof-of-concept tech as a prestige project that might actually lead to real solutions some day, but Collosal's dire wolf lookalike and mammoth lookalike and whatever else lookalike aren't a serious solution to a problem nor a direct path towards a solution, so they get valid criticism for pretending that they are.
by Volundr | 2025-04-07 16:57:42+00:00
Exactly this. If it's a novel test, it might cost $50,000 a person to do the test, while if it's mainstream and your doing millions, it might cost $50. Doing the test on one person at $50k may prevent you from ever having to reach the scale where you can do it for $50 (but have millions of infections).
by oflannabhra | 2025-04-07 16:57:52+00:00
Musgrave Pencil Co [0], in Shelbyville, TN is one of the only other ones in the country I'm aware of.

The biggest challenge for a lot of these is that they essentially require full-time machinists to keep the old machinery running, as the manufacturers typically have gone out of business decades ago. Tremont Nail Co [1] is another one I'm aware of, because they manufacture nails with old processes (cutting instead of wire).

Which really tells the story of US manufacturing decline. When all supporting functions of an industry no longer exist, or have migrated to other countries, or have been surpassed by new technology, why should we romanticize and pine for an era that has been passed by? Why shouldn't we have a vision for a new era and double down on the things we are best at?

[0] - https://musgravepencil.com [1] - https://tremontnail.com
by patch-n | 2025-04-07 16:58:17+00:00
> all of us who did have been in absolute awe of the new capabilities and tools that AI can deliver to augment our skills, crafts, and fill in our gaps.

Am I fundamentally missing something about the experience upper management has with AI versus the experience of a mid/senior level developer in the trenches? I also have access to Cursor and a few other LLMs.

They're handy for bouncing ideas around and for some simple tasks, but I've hardly felt like it was a force multiplier.

When it comes to coding, the amount of times it's hallucinated a function that didn't exist or used a deprecated implementation has felt like a net neutral at best.

> We will add AI usage questions to our performance and peer review questionnaire.

> AI must be part of your GSD Prototype phase.

I can understand asking your devs and other employees to try out AI in their workflows in an attempt to get some productivity gains. Sounds like a responsible CEO trying to milk some value out of his existing headcount. But, it sounds absolutely dystopian to tie performance metrics or changing the project planning process to be AI-centric.

I doubt every project fits that paradigm.
by shadowgovt | 2025-04-07 16:58:19+00:00
These aren't even concerns limited to genetic engineering. There was a good (if memory serves) Radiolab story ages ago about the conservation efforts on the Galapagos islands. The relevant part is that Lonesome George's genome died out with him, and as a result there aren't any tortoises left that can fill the fauna niche on his island of origin. But since the tortoises on other islands are closely genetically related (even given the separation between them), ecologists started a multi-generational breeding program to attempt to select the key traits of Lonesome George's strain so they can introduce a new population to the island that will do the same job his lineage did in the food web.

... which begs the question: when you're doing Bene-Gesserit-style eugenics on tortoises to get the perfect specimens, what's the nature of the nature you're trying to preserve?

Humans cannot interact with the natural world without changing it, because it is the nature of life (and human life in particular) to change things. The question isn't how we don't make an impact; it's how do we manage that impact responsibly?

(I have no idea if breeding dire-wolf-alikes with genetic modification is responsible or not. Let me know if they get out of the lab and become an invasive species, I think).
by ajross | 2025-04-07 16:58:33+00:00
> Any vulnerability that can be characterised as "pass contents through parser, full RCE" is a 10/10 vulnerability for me

And I think that's just wildly wrong sorry. I view something exploited in the wild to compromise real systems as a higher impact than something that isn't, and want to see a "score" value that reflects that (IMHO, critical) distinction. Agree to disagree, as it were.
by LikeAnElephant | 2025-04-07 16:58:34+00:00
My broader point is that if you want to build a business there's a ton of opportunity if you're not overly picky on what that opportunity looks like. B2B, B2C, mobile, web, node, Python, PHP. None of it really matters.

> You are looking at a business-to-business.. which is where we said there is still opportunity, in large part thanks to those collecting angel money.

You might be mixing up opportunities within the tech industry with using tech to build a business within other industries. Angel money isn't really a "thing" for the latter, and that's where I'm pointing to opportunity.

But by all means keep on pushing B2C if that's your passion
by hn_throwaway_99 | 2025-04-07 16:58:40+00:00
> From last time around: The people who kept pushing and took any job, anywhere turned out okay. This translated to a lot of people taking jobs below what they expected to get or having to move when they didn’t want to, but it was ultimately temporary.

I'm going to challenge this as you didn't give specific data to back it up. I read an article recently that did have data, and it made the argument that first jobs, and first salaries, tend to be remarkably "sticky". That is, if you are desperate for a job out of college so take one that causes you to be underemployed and underpaid, that doesn't just stick with you for your first job, but data showed that people were underemployed and underpaid for at least a decade after college.

The advice in this article was to hold out as long as possible for a desirable job, which meant a ton of networking, taking internships if possible, and also possibly additional schooling.

Apologies for not having the article on hand, but here's another one I found in 30 seconds of googling that makes the same argument, with research:

https://www.highereddive.com/news/half-of-graduates-end-up-u...
by stefl14 | 2025-04-07 16:59:30+00:00
Shameless plug of personal blog post, but relevant. Still not fully edited, so writing is a bit scattered, but crux is we now have the framework for talking about consciousness intelligently. It's not as mysterious as in the past, considering advances in non-equilibrium thermodynamics and the Free Energy Principle in particular.

https://stefanlavelle.substack.com/p/i-am-therefore-i-feel
by xmodem | 2025-04-07 16:59:37+00:00
I spent four years working at a European fintech that serviced millions of end-users, and we had a self-service GDPR portal for users to export or request deletion of the data we had on them. (In some cases we were required to hold onto certain data due to other laws). Any feature that stored new user data had to get integrated into the tool, and then signed off from legal and the team that maintained the tool.

It got very little usage - maybe a few hundred to a thousand requests per year IIRC. I shudder to think what you could have been doing that would attract that volume of requests. Was it Clearview AI?
by mesh | 2025-04-07 16:59:48+00:00
Proof of concept project to create AI Agents for Adobe tools (Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Premiere) by providing an interface to LLMs via the MCP protocol.

Video examples here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLrZcuHfRluqt5JQiKzMWe...

It has been really interesting playing with this, seeing how well the agents can control the apps, and understand what they should do. Ive been particularly surprised by how "creative" the agents can be, both in solving how to accomplish tasks, but also in seemingly creative choices in what they do. Really excited (and scared) about this space.
by throitallaway | 2025-04-07 16:59:50+00:00
Welcome to the machine. What sort of jobs are you applying for? If you haven't worked in your field at all yet, keep your sights low and apply for entry level positions or internships. IME there can be a large gap between what formal education provides and actually producing work. Also, soft skills are very important and often overlooked.

I've interviewed some PhD students that we deep in their field, but they had zero work experience. That, combined with the fact that they were applying to a non-entry level position, meant that I'd be taking a large-ish risk in my position if I were to hire them.
by SparkyMcUnicorn | 2025-04-07 16:59:53+00:00
For the times I need this type of tool, I sometimes reach for repomix[0]. It does have a webpage[1], although I've never used it.

It supports XML, Markdown, and plain text. XML is the default, and I've found it to perform well, but it might be a good tool to test differences for yourself.

If you're looking for an alternative to repoprompt, I'd recommend checking out Aider's copy-paste mode[2].

[0] https://github.com/yamadashy/repomix

[1] https://repomix.com/

[2] https://aider.chat/docs/usage/copypaste.html
by Aurornis | 2025-04-07 17:00:09+00:00
It doesn’t mean much in the course of an entire career.

Comparing to other cohorts isn’t useful because you can’t pick your cohort. You are born into one timeline and you play the hand you’re dealt.

There’s a lot of research that people who graduate into bad job markets are more cautious and less risk taking which can make them look like they’re behind peers who are more risk hungry when the market is up. I wouldn’t be surprised if it also makes them come out ahead in periods where the market is down.
by nyeah | 2025-04-07 17:00:22+00:00
This is an important point. But it doesn't conflict severely with the article.

Sure, to first order, and in the short term, engineering work is often valued more or less at random. The valuation is driven by factors that we can't predict (or that we would really rather not predict).

But to second order, and in the long term, engineering work is often valued according to whether it makes money. Often enough that it's worth paying attention to the article.
by nabla9 | 2025-04-07 17:00:25+00:00
I think Trump will cave in eventually if the pressure mounts. He will "make a deal" followed by 180 degree turn, and claim bullshit victory. He likes to bully, but when somebody pushes back he caves in.

Mark my words: Chinese tariffs may stay high, but most other tariffs will much smaller in 3 months.
by bluefirebrand | 2025-04-07 17:00:50+00:00
Personally I don't care what the bar is, honestly

Call it AI, call it LLMs, whatever

Just as long as we continue to recognize that it is a tool that humans can use, and don't start trying to treat it as a human, or as a life, and I won't complain

I'm saving my anger for when idiots start to argue that LLMs are alive and deserve human rights
by weard_beard | 2025-04-07 17:00:58+00:00
Talk to peers, friends, even people you do not know that well and ask about their plans. Don't be afraid to ask for help. Crash on a couch for a few months. Keep refining and sending out resumes. Take a job that you might be overqualified for. Early in your career you should accept and work for entry level positions and anticipate that you will be doing this same thing every 2-4 years in order to get to a salary range you are hoping for anyway.

Don't expect or even look for a dream job straight away. Lower your standards. That's what I did, and I ended up where I'm supposed to be in my career after a few years. I took an early risk on a personally important project early in my career and found myself broke and headed home afterward. I just committed myself to taking entry level work and moving jobs several times in order to catch up with my peers who went straight into industry.
by nosmokewhereiam | 2025-04-07 17:01:04+00:00
Service industry (waiting tables is my go to) doesn't pay well but it does pay...

I worked at Stinkies Fish Camp as a dishwasher fwiw after my 6 years as a Cyber Threat Operator in the AF (2012 government sequestration did wonders to clearance renewals). It sucked, but I lived. Well, survived.

Best of luck, always keep a candle of hope to a wildcard interview!
by stared | 2025-04-07 17:01:04+00:00
Once LLMs fully understand nullability, they will cease to use that.

Tony Hoare called it "a billion-dollar mistake" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tony_Hoare#Apologies_and_retra...), Rust had made core design choices precisely to avoid this mistake.

In practical AI-assisted coding in TypeScript I have found that it is good to add in Cursor Rules to avoid anything nullable, unless it is a well-designed choice. In my experience, it makes code much better.
by josefritzishere | 2025-04-07 17:01:11+00:00
I am a lifetime avid reader but there are very few books I come back to and re-read. I guess the books which impact you the most aren't the ones you'd expect. Here are some that come to mind:

*Novels in Three Lines* - Felix Feneon; like clever sarcastic haiku

*Riddley Walker* - Russell Hoban; It's written in an imagined language making it completely and utterly immersive

*Waiting for Nothing* - Tom Kromer; Great depression era destitution, and travel

*Days of Life and Death and Escape to the Moon* - William Saroyan; In an era of great writers, Saroyan remains wildly under appreciated.

*Really the Blues* - Mezz Mezzrow; Written in 1920s jive slang, it's emblematic of an era

*The KLF* - John Higgs; The book is subtitled "Chaos, Magic and the Band who Burned a Million Pounds" All those things are true and Higgs brilliantly tells the tale.
Ask HN: Will vibe coding make creating throwaway prototypes more common?
by complexworld | 2025-04-07 17:01:11+00:00
Fred Brooks wrote "Plan to throw one away" in the early 1970's.

But in my experience the opposite has been more common: a "prototype" ends up being used in production for a long time.

Now 50 years later, could we use vibe coding to make Brooks' idea come true?
by mandeepj | 2025-04-07 17:02:06+00:00
> You believe that, if it brings you comfort.

DOW hitting 100k+ and one of each in 'Magnificient 7' reaching 10T+ valuation, one day trip to Mars (conditionally, it has water and oxygen) - will bring me great comfort. It doesn't work that way, my friend!! Many times reality is harsher than it is not. We have to face it regardless of comfort.
by ein0p | 2025-04-07 17:02:07+00:00
Broaden your search. Apply to startups, for less money / more equity - there are plenty of them in the Boston area. Basically just do a sober assessment of how much you need to live on (perhaps with a roommate), add 30% to that and that's your minimal acceptable cash-side compensation. Do that for some time (a year or more), learn, move on. While you work, set aside some money for the rainy day. This is not optional, you have to do it even if you don't set aside a ton. Fundamentally, you have to stand out and you have to start building a track record. How much money you make in your first job is not very important. I'd say what you _do_ in your first job is more important. That's what people see in the resume. Good luck, and remember - you've got the very best education available. Do not sell yourself short in job 2 and so on.
by pembrook | 2025-04-07 17:02:16+00:00
> but I also think hiring someone for [government paperwork] would be the wise choice in most places anyway.

I’m not sure if you’ve ever tried founding a business or fundraising in any other non-Germany country, but this is an insane thing to say imo.

Is this why Germany has no globally relevant software (or hardware tbh) companies founded in the last 40 years?

Are we sure we want to be holding up this model as an example of “a good one”?
by bambax | 2025-04-07 17:02:25+00:00
You wish. I used to think that too. But it turns out, nowadays, every single exam in person is done with a phone hidden somewhere, with various efficiency, and you can't really strip students before they enter the room.

Some teachers try to collect the phones beforehand, but then students simply give out older phones and keep their active ones with them.

You could try to verify that the phones they're giving out are working by calling them, but that would take an enormous amount of time and it's impractical for simple exams.

We really have no idea how much AI is ruining education right now.