MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by constantcrying | 2025-04-13 21:20:36+00:00
>I just missed writing code.

Even before AI really took of that was an experience many developers, including me, had. Outsourcing has taken over much of the industry. If you work in the west, there is a good probability that a large part of your work is managing remote teams, often in India or other low cost countries.

What AI could change is either reducing the value of outsourcing or make software development so accessible that managing the outsourcing becomes unnecessary.

Either way, I do believe that Software Developers are here to stay. They won't be writing much code in any case. A software developer in the US costs 100k a year and writing software simply will never again be worth 100k year. There are people and programs who are much cheaper.
by arghwhat | 2025-04-13 21:20:48+00:00
This is a clickbait article. More towers mean that existing triangulation somewhat more accurate, and "anyone with access" is the cellular service provider.

5G does not always result in more towers, it just supports closer towers for better performance.

"Anyone with access" to Google or Apple data also knows exactly where you are. "Anyone with access" to <social media app of choice> knows exactly where you are. "Anyone with access" to police databases know exactly where you drove. "Anyone with access" to VISA/Mastercard data knows exactly where you've shopped. "Anyone with access" to Find my data will know exactly where your phones, headphones, and other trackable items are at any point in time.

This isn't a complaint about 5G, but about cellular anonymity which has never existed.
by brudgers | 2025-04-13 21:21:08+00:00
you are not an independent agent, but where the corporate politics dictate what time you do what, when, who you can hire and fire, what your team versus another team does, who gets called when something breaks, and what priorities are what

Having clients is doubling down on all that, not an escape from it.

With the added stress of irregular income and a real possibility for not being paid at all.

And probably for less money because you don’t have good clients.

The biggest red flag is you are here on HN playing house instead of getting rejected by cold calling…everything is easier to stomach than rejection — including failure of the business.

If you can’t see why things are the way they are at your employer, how are you going to understand why things are the way they are at a client business?
by gwern | 2025-04-13 21:21:47+00:00
> Forty-six percent of the global population lives on less than $5 per day. In some countries, more than 90% of the population lives on less than $5 per day. If agentic AI code generation becomes the most effective way to write high-quality code, this will create a massive barrier to entry. Access to technology is already a major class and inequality problem. My bitter prediction is that these expensive frontier models will become as indispensable for software development as they are inaccessible to most of the world’s population.

Forty-six percent of the global population has never hired a human programmer either because a good human programmer costs more than $5 a day{{citation needed}}.
by NickNaraghi | 2025-04-13 21:21:52+00:00
I’ve gotten to study a lot about hat making recently, and a little known fact about is that the use of mercuric nitrate in the felting process poisoned many workers in the hat factories, creating a condition called erethism, also called "mad hatter disease."

The exposure resulted in slurred speech, tremors, stumbling, and, in extreme cases, hallucinations.

It’s pretty likely that Corbett was exposed to the same!
by rstuart4133 | 2025-04-13 21:22:45+00:00
> That can only happen if you ban all imports of anything those small business manufacturers would made, and be content with the prices going up so those Americans can really be paid who make those products. ... then it is either slavery, poorly paid illegal immigrants or back to some other low-wage country like we’ve done for the past decades.

Counterpoint: About 1/3 of Australia's GDP is small business. We have very few tariffs. We have a high minimum wage (about USD$16/hr) and it's enforced, so slavery yada, yada isn't a factor.

What you said sounds like it might be true, but in reality it ain't so.
by nvarsj | 2025-04-13 21:22:55+00:00
The creators thought that having 50% of your codebase be `if (err != nil) { ... }` was a good idea. And that channels somehow make sense in a world without pattern matching or generics. So yeah, it's a bizarrely idiosyncratic language - albeit with moments of brilliance (like structural typing).

I actually think Java is the better PL, but the worse runtime (in what world are 10s GC pauses ever acceptable). Java has an amazing standard library as well - Golang doesn't even have many basic data structures implemented. And the ones it does, like heap, are absolutely awful to use.

I really just view Golang nowadays as a nicer C with garbage collection, useful for building self contained portable binaries.
by the__alchemist | 2025-04-13 21:23:23+00:00
I am starting to think of fiction from the past few decades. Two things stand out:

The Neal Stephenson Novel Fall, or; Dodge in Hell. One of its themes was an internet saturated with bots to the point where people need special filters. A hacker assaulting the internet with "apes", etc. Post-truth society.

The Talos Principle, Chatbots.html: >

"Jenny77: chatbots are becoming increasingly sophisticated nigel_pyjamas: true, but hardly relevant to this discussion Jenny77: are you sure? Jenny77: how do you know that I'm not a bot? samschwartz: don't be ridiculous Jenny77: i'm not ridiculous Jenny77: honestly, how would you know? veganwarrior: haha troll Jenny77: i'm not a troll veganwarrior: yeah right Jenny77: is there anything I've written so far that could not be written by a bot? Jenny77: i responded to simple insults like "ridiculous" and "troll" with very basic negations Jenny77: and i detected that none of you use proper orthography so i also avoided capitalization veganwarrior: what's the capital of France? Jenny77: paris Jenny77: even the simplest script could pull that info from the net nigel_pyjamas: what's the capital of Croatia? Jenny77: Zagreb nigel_pyjamas: OK she's a bot, lol Jenny77: i'm not a bot Jenny77: i'm European Jenny77: we learn these things in school samschwartz: i've seen you in this chatroom many times samschwartz: bots can't participate in discussions samschwartz: at best they can interject random comments veganwarrior: sam is right veganwarrior: stop trolling nigel_pyjamas: uhh, veganwarrior nigel_pyjamas: sam is a bot"

I suppose my point is, people have been discussing this for a decade +, including in an era of more primitive bots. I am not sure there will be away to stop the flood... and mitigation will be mandatory, in the vein of Dodge.
by wcarss | 2025-04-13 21:23:39+00:00
If you have any links or book recommendations to share on that history, I for one would love to know them.

I find the history of the interactions of SF authors strangely compelling -- e.g. the book "Hell's Cartographers" is a personal favourite, and it's just a set of autobiographical essays from NY 40s-70s SF authors talking about their time in the scene.
by TeMPOraL | 2025-04-13 21:24:08+00:00
I too used to think TV is dead and no one is paying for cable anymore, but every now and then I keep hearing it's still alive and well, and that's always in association with some big sportsball events; I can believe that their customers nowadays are almost entirely sports fans, but then the pull they have with that segment is still strong. In my mind, the term "ESPN" registers as "something to dangle in front of US customers to get them to buy some TV plan".
by Aloisius | 2025-04-13 21:24:58+00:00
How green an orange is when ripe has to do with the climate they are grown in. In warm climates with little variation in temperature between day or night, oranges will remain green on the tree even when ripe. If nights get cold enough (~55 F), they will turn orange.

That said, in the US, oranges destined for markets de-greened for aesthetic purposes since customers won't generally buy them otherwise.
by missedthecue | 2025-04-13 21:25:05+00:00
In 12,000+ years of anthropological record, there are zero advanced civilizations (defined as having written language, urban centers, and some form of state apparatus) that didn't have the institution of marriage. Zero.

I'm worried a lot about the declining rates of marriage and family formation. I don't see a lot of good that can come from it.
by droopyEyelids | 2025-04-13 21:25:07+00:00
(Not an AI stan) I would like to see the evidence that the AI contributed to the suicide.

Without seeing the evidence this feels like a cynical attempt to make political hay out of a tragedy.

The person whose AI companion forms their most important social connection is already not doing well psychologically. And from what I’ve seen, they only offer salubrious advice.
by YZF | 2025-04-13 21:25:07+00:00
Fair enough. I missed that while scanning through it. The evidence of one Palestinian but sure. Could have happened.

I know this is a tough one but the question is what are the norms. One anecdote (including one unit where this is practiced) doesn't answer the question. The anecdotes are just that. This practice could have happened 10 times out of 100K, could have happened 100 out of 100K, could have happened 1000 out of 100K.

I'm pretty sure this is not the norm. I.e. that all/most/many IDF units advance in Gaza by capturing Palestinians, putting them in IDF uniforms, and sending them in the front. Very very far from it.

I would rather we had zero stories like this one.
by arandomusername | 2025-04-13 21:25:23+00:00
> the value of not having their entire economy (or telecommunications &etc) be vulnerable to the whims of one person, be that the richest person in the world or a president nobody in Europe voted for.

.

> Could also rope in the Chinese to help

This is pretty funny. That's just switching who you rely on.

> Europe could easily allow them to go over there and practice their skills on a Europe First initiative

In Europe we prefer unskilled labour from third world countries so that they can do uber eats for cheap
by UtopiaPunk | 2025-04-13 21:26:58+00:00
We're talking about Seattle because it is in the headline (the source is the Seattle Times). But there are 10 cities in the USA that have a higher percentage of "never-married single men." So this is a trend that is not unique to Seattle.

I just wanted to call that out since many of the comments seem focused on diagnosing what it is about Seattle specifically to lead to this trend.

IMO, it is mostly a housing issue. It seems like most new construction goes towards apartment complexes where the units are all 1-2 bedrooms, or else they go to more "luxury" big houses. I personally would love a 5 bedroom apartment in a dense, walkable city, but good luck finding it.

So I'm currently in the suburbs with my kids, even though I hate the suburbs.
by giraffe_lady | 2025-04-13 21:27:05+00:00
I would love to see a stripped back ML-style language that targets lua, just something like ocaml's type system and exhaustive pattern match right on top would be all I need. There have been a few attempts but nothing I know of that got usably far and is maintained.

There might be a way to get standard ML to output lua or something but I'm not that familiar with it. I think it would be an incredible fit for a third backend for gleam, but they say they aren't adding any more beyond erlang and js.
by esaiohotpvld | 2025-04-13 21:27:49+00:00
What surprises me the most is the cost. This is considered to be one of the most expensive endeavors in science… but the first stage costs just about a billion a year?

Jeff Bezos (or any other billionaire) could pay for the whole of it, and it would be like me going for a coffee. The yearly cost is 1% of what DOGE allegedly saved, three Marvel movies, and less than the GDP of San Marino.

If one of the costliest ever scientific enterprises is this cheap, how many scientific advances are we leaving on the table? It makes me extremely sad.

*Disclaimer: I enjoy Marvel movies and don't particularly believe DOGE claims about saved money. But I wanted to give some scale of what a billion francs (now about 1.2 billion USD) are.
by xkcdz | 2025-04-13 21:29:24+00:00
I’ve been mulling over how tricky it can be to coordinate across time zones—scheduling meetings, syncing software, or even just chatting with friends globally. It got me thinking about a possible idea: the Global Pulse Time System (GPTS). Basically, it’s a universal time system that splits each day into 100,000 "pulses," starting at midnight UTC. Each pulse is about 0.864 seconds, and it resets daily (so you’d see times like P000000 to P099999).

You might be wondering why it’s called "pulses." The name "pulse" evokes a sense of rhythm, much like a heartbeat—a fundamental, repeating beat we all know. In GPTS, each pulse lasts about 0.864 seconds, which is remarkably close to the average human heartbeat at rest (around 0.83 seconds). This heartbeat analogy makes the system feel intuitive, almost like time is ticking along with our own natural rhythm.

Beyond that, GPTS might actually feel more natural for tracking time progression. Unlike our traditional system of 24 hours, 60 minutes, and 60 seconds, it uses a straightforward decimal setup: 100,000 pulses per day. That means P050000 is exactly half a day, and P025000 is a quarter—simple fractions that are easy to grasp without mental gymnastics. Plus, with a daily reset at midnight UTC, there’s a universal starting line that keeps time consistent worldwide.

The thought is to ditch time zone math altogether. If I say, “Let’s meet at P050000,” that’s the exact same moment for everyone, no matter where you are. It could make scheduling a breeze, cut down on coding headaches with time zones, or even give systems like blockchain a consistent global clock.

That said, I’m not blind to the downsides. People love their local sunrise and sunset cues, and getting everyone to switch would be a nightmare. I’m just curious if something like this could ever make sense in our digital age, or if there’s a better way to tackle global time chaos. What do you all think? Rip it apart or build on it—I’d love to hear your takes!
by YZF | 2025-04-13 21:29:38+00:00
Thanks for giving it a read though.

I think it's an interesting question of how we measure bias.

For me, as an Israeli (who hasn't lived there for decades), who has some first hand knowledge of the situation, much of the reporting appears to be extremely biased. I know there are claims from the other side the bias goes in the other direction. What's the ground truth? I think using AI to crunch the large amount of data is a decent first order approximation.

Ofcourse bias depends on ideology. For some people if a Palestinian guns down an Israeli in a Tel-Aviv bar simply reporting this fact is biased towards Israel. And I mean, from their position that is understandable. And indeed we can see some media outlets that would not report these events at all, which I would consider an anti-Israeli bias.
by crote | 2025-04-13 21:29:46+00:00
I think the main thing to remember is that you should assume they are worthless.

There's probably something like a 99% chance they are worthless, a 0.9% chance they are worth a decent holiday, a 0.09% chance it'll let you retire early, and a 0.01% it'll make you somewhat rich. Worst of all, unless you're the CxO you have very little control over the outcome.

Equity is a nice bonus, but you might just as well treat it like the company giving you a lottery ticket for Christmas. Nobody is going to take a significant pay cut or work 80 hours a week for a lottery ticket, so don't do it solely for the stock options either.
by EffrafaxOfWug | 2025-04-13 21:29:50+00:00
You are right, it may have been a unusual bug that hardly occurs, but it definitely happened to me. I also agree that having a unlocked bootloader is a security risk (how big of security risk depends on one's thread level I would say).

I can't remember disabling any core system components, executing low level adb commands or any other unusual things which may have let to update breaking.

I think the error message that I got was the "No valid operating system found" one. Maybe the issue would have resolved itself, if I had rebooted my phone a few times more, through the A/B slot mechanic. I honestly didn't know all this in that situation and only found some vague forum posts about it. I think it would have helped if there was a bit of official documentation about boot loops and what to do when one occurs on the graphene os website.

The experience was for me a bit off putting because I lost some personal data (shame on me for not having proper backups), but after reading these comments I might try Graphene os again.
by torginus | 2025-04-13 21:30:34+00:00
I do not understand the appeal of LISPy languages. I get that the parser is simple and elegant, but I believe the developer (of the compiler in this case) should serve the convenience of the user, not the other way around.

Writing code like this is cumbersome and unnecessarily symbol heavy, and reading it isn't really nice as well.

I'd rather have the language add that extra complexity into the parser than have me stare down these endless paretheses. Parsing something C-like is not that, hard, trust me, I've done it
by _sbrk | 2025-04-13 21:30:46+00:00
F = Field P = Programmable G = Gate <---- important A = Array

You aren't "programming", you're "wiring gates together". In other words, you can build custom hardware to solve a problem without using a generic CPU (or GPU) to do it. FPGAs are implemented as a fabric of LUTs (Look-up Tables) which take 4- or 6- (or more) inputs and produce an output. That allows Boolean algebra functions to be processed. The tools you use (Vivado / ISE / YoSys / etc.) take a your intended design, written in a HDL (Hardware Design Language) such as Verilog or VHDL, and turn it into a configuration file which is injected into the FPGA, causing it to be configured to into the hardware you want (if you've done it right). FPGAs are a stepping stone between generic hardware such as a CPU or GPU and a custom ASIC. They win when you can express the problem in specialized hardware much better than writing code to do something on a CPU/GPU. Parallelization is the key to many FPGA designs. Also, you don't have to spend >$1MM on a mask set to go have an ASIC fabricated by TSMC, etc.
by cj | 2025-04-13 21:30:53+00:00
> Definitely look at them as worthless untill they're worth something

One (of numerous) problems with stock options is almost all stock option contracts require you to exercise within 90 days of leaving the company.

Often times employees leave a company, and then need to decide within 90 days whether they will spend anywhere from $5-50k+ to exercise the options to keep the stock, otherwise you forfeit the options after 90 days.

The stars really have to align for you to make money with options without risking/gambling your own capital by exercising them.

Unfortunately secondary markets only exist for very large companies like Stripe. I’m not aware of secondary markets for small < 100 person companies, which is where you see the most blatant hyping up of stock option value.
by frenchwhisker | 2025-04-13 21:30:54+00:00
This was mentioned in the article:

> Having spent much of his life in the hat industry, Corbett could have been succumbing to mercury poisoning. The ill effects of the mercury vapors used in finishing, Corbett’s specialty, had become public by this time, even part of folklore after Lewis Carroll introduced the country to the Mad Hatter in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland in 1865.
by whstl | 2025-04-13 21:31:47+00:00
Yeah, it's just consumption consumption consumption.

Post a photo of your new gizmo: 300 upvotes. Video of you using your widget: 4 votes.

And in subreddits dedicated to actually making things, it's just hustling hustling hustling. With a small percentage of self-help posts like "how I spent 4 years in my boring-ass generic video game and nobody wanted it".
by constantcrying | 2025-04-13 21:33:14+00:00
None of my argument has to do with global arbitrage. Local competition with robot labor is enough to drive wages to near zero.

Robot labor will first overtake where the greatest economic gain is. All human labor below that skill level will now be pushed down to lower levels.

Robot labor costs will be a hard upper limit for human wages for unskilled labor. There will be like 40% of the population in direct competition with robots. Human wages will drop hard and very fast. Thankfully things like package delivery are always cheaper for humans. Again minimum labor cost for humans is like 5 dollars a day. Robots can not compete with that, so the easiest unskilled jobs will remain human.
by j-krieger | 2025-04-13 21:33:39+00:00
> Reddit's algorithm of what to show you is based in part on what you've chosen to follow and in part on what is most likely to get you to stay on the site and engage with the conten

That's not the whole truth. Subreddit Moderation is the key point that's vulnerable to abuse. I block all political subreddits. My blocklist has 120 entries. 10 of those are of inherent political nature. The rest is just like /r/pics - enshittified rage bait about Trump.
by ants_everywhere | 2025-04-13 21:34:10+00:00
The main difference is that people often think they share a fate as a startup. They all have the same lottery tickets (in varying amounts) that pay out under the same conditions. After all, that's how managers often motivate the early employees.

But since there are different classes of lottery tickets, the payouts can change arbitrarily at the last minute depending on the specifics of the deals.

So even after accounting for the fact that most lottery tickets don't pay out, you need to account for the fact that some within the same startup might pay out while yours don't. And there's no perfect way of knowing ahead of time.
by nitwit005 | 2025-04-13 21:34:33+00:00
I think it's less "echo chamber" than under direct political influence.

It takes a lot of effort to moderate a subreddit. People will post stuff all day, in large volumes.

Who's going to be willing to do that? Sure, some will just be nice people with a ton of free time, but many will definitely be political activists (or even state actors at this point) who have something to promote.
by strcat | 2025-04-13 21:35:17+00:00
Only providing the Pro mode in Pixel Camera on the Pro devices is one of the only ways they're artificially segmenting them via software. The AI model differences are largely based on real differences in available memory and that doesn't have much impact on available OS features. That matters to LLM enthusiasts but probably isn't a selling point for most people at this point.

The base devices are better value but the Pro devices do mainly differentiate based on hardware. Better display, addition of the 5x telephoto camera, better front camera and more memory are the main selling points. Pixel 9a is similarly a downgrade for the screen, cameras, memory, wireless charging speed and cellular radio (back to a variant of the 7th/8th gen Pixel radio). Pixel 9a has very good value but the cellular radio downgrade is a big one which people may care about more than they realize due to how it impacts battery life when using 5G.