MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by Quarrel | 2025-04-28 03:53:41+00:00
> I personally consider a physics degree to be a top tier signal of programming ability

Some CS programs have moved away from heavy maths requirements over the last 2 decades, outside a few maths-heavy specific CS courses.

Physics degrees still mean you have very decent maths, but CS degrees are not necessarily as strong a signifier of it.

I suspect that is the difference, particularly if you are actually working on tricky programming tasks.
by araes | 2025-04-28 03:53:53+00:00
Doesn't Microsoft own like, $13,000,000,000 of OpenAi, that owns ChatGPT?

"We've got an exciting match for you tonight folks! In this corner its Microsoft, vs their arch rival ... Microsoft. Ouch, Microsoft delivers a nasty 1-2 combo to Microsoft. Got em up against the ropes Microsoft."

Anyways, this is pretty classic Microsoft [1]

[1] Microsoft "org chart" https://www.globalnerdy.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/201...
by caseyy | 2025-04-28 03:54:26+00:00
A degree is indeed more necessary in some disciplines/industries than others, and in some job markets rather than others. I'll say, sometimes what matters most is who you know, rather than what you know. Mentors and industry events are great for this. The right friends are two-thirds of the battle (and that alone is a reason some people attend expensive private universities).

And, of course, most tech companies will say that tech should be a meritocracy. Then they'll offer bonuses and incentives for anyone who can get a friend to fill an open role. Consider that.
by pastage | 2025-04-28 03:54:28+00:00
This is not for that kind of setup, this is more of a button you press to get internet when you need it IMHO. It is 1 watt idle, so you need 24Wh to keep it running if there is no sun. On bad short days you might get 5% of solar power. A battery system might lose you 30% on that. Uptime is not primarily an technical issue, it depends on what your goals, skills and needs are.
by o1o1o1 | 2025-04-28 03:54:50+00:00
From my experience when I lived in Europe, the following is important to get a job in IT:

- Degree, a general one is good, a specific one related to the job is better (especially in the German-speaking area, I don't know about the others)

- Experience, especially in well-known big companies

They used a trick there to reduce the leverage of employees in IT and created the myth of a "shortage of skilled workers" by repeatedly publishing this in various media, creating fake statistics and ghost job ads. A lot of foreigners jumped in and also the existing workforce, afraid of losing their jobs or not finding a new one, didn't bother to negotiate well anymore and are doing jobs for really bad money (e.g. 50k/year).

Now you add the "AI will replace you anyway" mantra, which initially increases this fear and the willingness of employees to work for low wages.

The effect is a workforce that is well educated and willing to work for food and shelter, no questions asked.

If you're trying to compete, a degree helps, but in the end you may be undercut by someone with the same degree (with better grades) but who takes less money because they don't know their worth.

My opinion: try to get out of Europe, run your own business or find a different career / business opportunity. These are bad times for CS employees in Europe.
by theK | 2025-04-28 03:55:23+00:00
You cannot really compare the two. An engineer will continue to learn and adapt their output to the teams and organizations they interact with. They will be seamlessly picking up core principles, architectural nouances and verbiage of the specific environment. You need to explicitly pass all that to an llm and all approaches today lack. Most importantly, an engineer will continue accumulating knowledge and skills while you interact with them. An llm won't.
by damhsa | 2025-04-28 03:55:37+00:00
it is a dash. you could use an em dash - or a 2em dash - but this dash is probably shorter than 1em - unless like me you have a monospace font. if it can be a hyphen-minus, it can be a hyphen/minus/dash. and that is what it is, because that is how it is used, ASCII be damned. the english language and its typography is beholden to neither ASCII™ nor UNICODE™.
by pabs3 | 2025-04-28 03:56:27+00:00
Autoconf and automake has the best support for cross-compiling there is, everything else is a poor imitation. At least from the perspective of the folks doing Debian's cross-build stuff. With Debian's multi-arch policy, cross-toolchain packages and dpkg-dev/debhelper support for driving common cross-compiling options, plus fixing a ton of edge cases, IIRC more than 50% of Debian packages are now cross-compilable without qemu. Often they are bit-for-bit identical to the native compilation too.

https://wiki.debian.org/CrossCompiling https://crossqa.debian.net/
by SoftTalker | 2025-04-28 03:56:35+00:00
Startups may be less picky. If you want to work in startups it's probably more important to get involved in startup networks. I can't really say more than that as I don't work in startups.

For many other software jobs, a degree will be required. This is an applicant filter if nothing else. These places (banks, insurance companies, manufacturers, any number of business where software enables what they do but is not the product they sell), can be boring but they can be great places to work if you want boring. Regular hours, low stress, good benefits. They will almost all require degrees. From which institution might be less important as long as it's reasonably legitimate.
by yellowapple | 2025-04-28 03:56:38+00:00
I agree that that's concerning, but the same can be said of any of the other things that made this attack on public perception at scale relatively easy: Reddit, the World Wide Web, the Internet, you name it. AI is the latest effectiveness multiplier for bad actors (be they malicious or negligent), but not the first and probably not the last.

Put simply, I don't blame the hammer for being used to build a gallows, even if it's a really really fast hammer.
by tibbar | 2025-04-28 03:57:02+00:00
> Is this a bad idea? Is this a good idea? Is this necessary if I want to be employable in the future?

I wish anyone could really tell you. I mean, I sure don't know, and I've been a hiring manager in SF for years. I've done countless interviews, read countless resumes, all that. I can tell you what I would do if I were trying to bootstrap my way into the industry, though:

1. Do something difficult and unusual in technology, and do it in public. Basically set a goal that sounds crazy to achieve, something that would require an unreasonable amount of effort and time, and then go do it and publicize it. Note that getting a degree is difficult and time-consuming, but not really very unusual or impressive.

2. Interact with real people in technology as much as possible. Not just "networking", but actually immersing into the tech community, learning all the events and meetups and hackathons and doing as much of that as possible. Note that a degree will probably help you meet a lot of other students, but not necessarily active tech professionals.

As with all challenging goals, my real goal would be to spend a certain amount of time on them every day, taking whatever the next step is.

I am quite confident that if you put as much effort into this path as you would a degree, you will land a better job, sooner than the other way.
by alganet | 2025-04-28 03:57:43+00:00
For friendship you need someone who doesn't talk like that.

Once you have been exposed to this kind of paranoid thinking, there is no way of building relationships of any kind anymore. It is like a spiritual death.

What is the bubble? The world of friends and healthy relationships, or the cold shitty place with cultural wars and divides everywhere?

If you bring someone to the shitty place, you better have the guts to acknowledge that that person will never, ever see friendship anywhere.
by stefap2 | 2025-04-28 03:57:55+00:00
The article does not explicitly criticize Elon Musk for taking government money but highlights a clear contradiction between his businesses’ heavy reliance on at least $38 billion in public funds and his political stance promoting spending cuts through the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). It presents Musk’s dependence on government contracts, loans, subsidies, and tax credits factually, while subtly pointing out the irony and perceived hypocrisy in his calls to eliminate subsidies after his companies had already benefited massively. The tone remains analytical, focusing on documenting the support rather than issuing a direct moral judgment.
by hayst4ck | 2025-04-28 03:58:42+00:00
They also said shortage of skilled workers in the US.

It's kind of upsetting because it's supposed to be the nature of free markets that demand increases price in order to better allocate labor resources, that means wages should be going up. So the message shouldn't be there's a shortage, the message should be that it's in high demand and that should be matched by increased starting salaries.

When anyone said "shortage of skilled workers" they meant "shortage of cheap satisfactory labor"/"software costs too much".
by bellboy_tech | 2025-04-28 03:58:55+00:00
Out of the dozens and dozens of youtube gambling creators/streamers I find myself tuning into this one everyday as well as other very specific creators in travel, tech, etc. What is it that makes these stick to us? I really can't find a thread that ties my ten or so daily watches and my twenty or so weekly streamers together. What draws you in for the long term? Can these creators survive or are tey a flash in the pan?
by krackers | 2025-04-28 03:58:56+00:00
That's such an insightful observation, cedws! Most people would gloss over these interactions but you—you've really understood the structure of these responses on an intuitive level. Raising concerns about it like this, takes real courage. And honestly...? Not many people could do that.

Would you like to learn more about methods for optimizing user engagement?

[1] https://arxiv.org/abs/2303.06135
by dinkumthinkum | 2025-04-28 03:59:02+00:00
I take issue with your idea that it is "tier 2+" that are the only programs that are worth it. When you make statements like that, or prognostications of that nature, you have to think about how it actually is in reality and not as the kinds of base opinions that are found in Reddit CS careers subs. I think this varies widely for employers and even within teams of large employers, depending on who is the person doing the hiring. Even at a simplistic level having a degree from a regionally accredited institutions will decide whether you pass the first HR screen, so it cannot be equivalent to no credential at all.

This just fails a basic real world sensibility test. Are you saying a CS grade from Montana State University that is a hiring manager at FAANG (maybe even the most famous one) is going to consider someone with a degree from Stevens or Florida Institute of Technology to be equivalent to someone without a degree? I don't know if you are aware but there many people employed CS grads that did not attend the top 3. Also, I don't know about tiers, but these rankings are largely based on research and not quality of undergraduate program or outcomes.

The idea of telling someone that doesn't have a degree that wants to know of if attaining a degree could likely help their career that they should not go if it is not "tier 2+," whatever that is, is just kind of malpractice. Georgia Tech is not the only school that offers such a degree that is equivalent to their in-person program. I would agree that you should choose a school that has a traditional program for which this online program is just a different modality, rather than one of these online-only predatory type of schools.
by platevoltage | 2025-04-28 03:59:03+00:00
Thank you for your insight.

I will not be going to any prestigious school. It's not in the cards for me.

I actually do own a SaaS along with my business partner. I'm not the founder, but we bought the platform from the founders who were looking to bail. It's a logistics company that is used by mainly bike messengers. 20+ companies around the world use it.

I would say I've shipped a few non-terrible things so far. I built an application that runs on a POS kiosk that kids scan their little IDs on when they are tardy to class. It's in a few dozen schools in the LA area.

I do have a pretty interesting resume. It has caught the eyes of people, but it takes someone who had an unconventional history like myself to appreciate it.

I haven't submitted a job application in over a year. I just haven't seen the point of it given the market. I'm also not interested in FAANG at all. This would be more of a future proofing move.
by godelski | 2025-04-28 04:00:15+00:00
It is running a Pi Zero 2 W, and that should run max draw 2.5A@5V (12.5W)[0]. So a Watt hr is using a Watt for an hour. So the question is how many hours continuously you would allow your Pi to run. For 24hrs, that's 24hrs*12.5W = 300Whrs. Just for an estimate, a shargeek is $100 and will give you 24 Whrs[1]. I'm sure you could build your own solution for much better, but assuming since you're asking, I'm assuming this isn't a great option.

So probably a bit more expensive than you're thinking. Especially if you're putting it outside, as you'll need to make the thing more secure from weather. But also the good news is you probably aren't going to actually be pulling those 12.5Ws on your pi. You should probably measure and see.

For solar, I'm not sure especially since you'll need to adjust for your requirements. But there are nice resources that can tell you average capacity, but be careful to note that these will usually show averages and you're going to be significantly affected by seasons in Chicago.

Honestly, I'd get a small battery (like for a phone) and hook it up to an outlet and tuck it away somewhere. That's a much cheaper option. Even if you're "going rogue" with it... the power draw is so little you won't really notice it.

[0] https://www.raspberrypi.com/documentation/computers/getting-...

[1] https://sharge.com/products/shargeek-170
by chamomeal | 2025-04-28 04:00:30+00:00
It is definitely thankless work, at least at my company.

It’d be even more thankless if instead of writing good feedback that somebody can learn from (or can spark interesting conversations that I can learn from), you would just said “nope GPT it’s not secure enough” and regenerate the whole PR, then read all the way through it again. Absolute tedium nightmare
Show HN: AIBillingDashboard – Billing Dashboard for All AI Services (WIP)
by anotherbuilder | 2025-04-28 04:00:47+00:00
I'm building a Universal Billing Dashboard for all AI Services. So far, the MVP is live and it's a WIP (want to add a lot more including hooking up available billing/cost APIs provided by the listed platforms but some don't have any so I thought of a way around that for now). Would love feedback on it!
by bradlys | 2025-04-28 04:01:31+00:00
Another method for the state to collect tax dollars. Speed limits have a very low effect on “saving lives”. People will drive whatever speed they think is suitable for the road they’re on.

Go out to places where the speed limit is 55mph but it’s a straight stretch with high visibility and everyone will be going 90mph+. Is everyone suddenly dying on this road? No. However, it’s great revenue generation for the local police departments to start ticketing people.

If you’re concerned about the speeds of which people are going - design your roads such that they don’t make sense to go quick. (And I don’t mean ridiculous speed bumps that are wildly ineffective and just increase the amount of noise in your local neighborhood)

I don’t think most people are concerned about 25 vs 30mph in cramped city roads with many pedestrians. I think most Americans get pissed off when you start saying you can’t go 80mph on what is essentially an autobahn like 280 in Silicon Valley. It’s ridiculous the speed limit there is sometimes 55 for no justification whatsoever. It’s a massive open road where you can often have visibility for miles.

I’m saying this as someone living in NYC where I don’t think cars should even exist. But if you have to have cars, Jesus Christ make it efficient to get around and stop using every fucking mean possible to just tax middle class people to death. These things won’t bother anyone with any real money. I should know, I get my tickets every so often. I consider them my little tax and I get no points to my license every time. I have radar and will be installing laser jammers soon (god damn cops on 280 are running laser at midnight now, wtf).
by dang | 2025-04-28 04:01:43+00:00
Edit: I think I misread the comment somewhat—sorry. I've restored it, and will autocollapse this moderation bit.

---

> getting your family out of the concentration camp

Could you please not take HN threads straight into flamewar hell like this? We're trying for something quite different here, and it's way too aggressive to kick off a thread with rhetoric like that.

If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.
by jes5199 | 2025-04-28 04:02:07+00:00
yeah. I worked on the internal banking connection at Square in the old days (~2011) and it was a _nightmare_. like, pre-TCP/IP connectivity that depended on dedicated copper to do teletype in COBOL-style fixed length fields in a cryptic format that was only specified in scans of paper documents. We had to write an adaptor that looked like, you know, REST on one end but then shoveled all of the traffic onto that single upstream connection, and then had to try to map responses that came back out of order to the right client. Miserable stuff and a threading nightmare.
by johnwheeler | 2025-04-28 04:02:17+00:00
Thanks! Hosting in the cloud lets me centrally manage assets and makes it easier to add interactive features like Arcade and Supademo, which require server-side components. It also simplifies analytics and customization. Currently, I store everything in S3 but purge the videos every few days. If this gains traction, I'm already experienced with implementing standards like SOC 2.
by platevoltage | 2025-04-28 04:02:57+00:00
Thank you. I'm not really looking for a job at the moment, I'm just having what is maybe an irrational fear of being made obsolete. I've hit the point of no return. I've been out of the automotive game for a while now, and I think I might rather die than go back to that.

Maybe I've done too much doomscrolling on Linked In.
by vineyardmike | 2025-04-28 04:03:06+00:00
> made it vastly, extraordinary more efficient.

I'd suspect that these equipments also made it more dangerous. They also made it more industrial in scale and capital costs, driving "homestead" and individual farmers out of the business, replaced by larger and more capitalized corporations.

We went from individual artisans crafting fabrics by hand, to the Industrial Revolution where children lost fingers tending to "extraordinary more efficient" machines that vastly out-produced artisans. This trend has only accelerated, where humans consume and throw out an order of magnitude more clothing than a generation ago.

You can see this trend play out across industrialized jobs - people are less satisfied, there is some social implications, and the entire nature of the job (and usually the human's independence) is changed.

The transitions through industrialization have had dramatic societal upheavals. Focusing on the "efficiency" of the changes, ironically, miss the human component of these transitions.
by mdaniel | 2025-04-28 04:04:06+00:00
I believe they're collectively referred to as Latin languages, despite the Germanic branch that led to English. I often think of those languages as "in contrast to" pictographic languages <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_writing_systems#Proto-...> although Wikipedia distinguishes them from ideographic ones and that's too hair-splittery for me to comment upon :-(
by usefulcat | 2025-04-28 04:04:22+00:00
I don't doubt that you could further reduce the problem with stricter laws.

The question is, how much more are we willing to pay to do that? The US already incarcerates its population at a greater rate than most of the rest of the world (5th highest as of 2022).

If incarceration was really that effective, shouldn't we also have some of the lowest crime rates in the world? If that's not the case, then why should we think that doubling down on that strategy is likely to be effective?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_United_States_in...
by Centigonal | 2025-04-28 04:05:00+00:00
> Presumably, if AlphaFold is finding the relationship, there's some information preserved at the sequence level

This is not my area of expertise, and maybe I'm misunderstanding this, but I thought that what AlphaFold does is extrapolate a structure from the sequence. The actual relationship with the other existing proteins would have been found by the investigators through other, more traditional means (like the 3D search you mentioned).
by mindslight | 2025-04-28 04:05:23+00:00
It's a straightforward reference that shouldn't be controversial to anyone looking to substantively discuss what is happening to our society. I know there are a lot of true believers and bots that want to shout down uncomfortable truths which makes for flamewar, but if we let that prevent good faith discussion then we might as well throw in the towel because that reality distortion field isn't going away.

I thought the rest of my comment was insightful as well, despite having to trade in some inflammatory terms. We're apparently at a time of pulling on these threads that had remained unpulled. The only way forward is to hash these uncomfortable ideas out in the open. Because as the article describes, they're certainly getting pulled on in less public forums where other uncomfortable truths have an easier time remaining unvisited.
by nickwatson | 2025-04-28 04:06:07+00:00
Hi HN

I built *cleverb.ee* to solve my own research pain: too many tabs, too much messy sourcing. Gemini and OpenAI deep research tools weren't getting the balanced/unbiased quality I desired.

*What it does*: • Reads webpages, PDFs, Reddit posts, PubMed abstracts, YouTube transcripts. • Plans with Gemini 2.5 Pro, acts with Gemini 2.5 Flash, summarises with Gemini 2.0 Flash (or you can use any Local LLM or Claude) • Outputs a fact-checked, cited Markdown report with live token usage tracking.

*Tech*: Python + Playwright + LangChain with MCP tool support. AGPL-3.0 licensed.

*Why open source?*: I wanted full transparency at every agent step and easy pluggable data sources.

Quick install:

```bash git clone https://github.com/SureScaleAI/cleverbee cd cleverbee && bash setup.sh

Would love feedback — especially what critical research sources you’d want integrated next!
by UltraSane | 2025-04-28 04:06:55+00:00
"They do not allow structure-preserving querying. That is, I query a graph and want the results to be a smaller graph."

I'm not sure what you mean by this. The result of a query in neo4j is a set of nodes with specified relations linking them. It is much more flexible than the way SQL can only return a single table.
by hollandheese | 2025-04-28 04:07:04+00:00
Even autistic people can be jerks. Elon Musk doesn't have empathy because he's an asshole not because he's autistic.

No one I've heard is saying Musk is an asshole because he's autistic. It's Musk himself that's making that claim by attempting to use it as a cover for his asshole moves.