MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by xp84 | 2025-04-18 17:29:57+00:00
I agree wholeheartedly -- it's like getting a postcard saying "You have an important message from your doctor, go visit the doctor's office to find out what."

I respect that some of this is ass-covering because of overreaching regulation (or in many cases probably overly-conservative readings of the vague regulations) especially with respect to HIPAA and Euro-style "Privacy" legislation, but personally I'd prefer to opt-out of all types of nanny-ism trying to 'protect my privacy' by sending me content-free email with links, that then require that I 'click to view' and then, 90% of the time now, return to my fucking email to retrieve a stupid code.
by jimbosis | 2025-04-18 17:30:09+00:00
I don't know if this will be helpful or inspirational or depressing, but your comment made me think of Paul Lutus, who pulled off at least some parts of the dream of living in a cabin and writing software. Here's an interview he did with Adam Gordon Bell on Bell's CoRecursive podcast (transcript and audio):

https://corecursive.com/remote-developer/

To give just a taste, here's a forum post that quotes a few highlights from that CoRecursive episode:

https://retrocomputingforum.com/t/remote-developer-1970s-app...
Show HN: I built a simple, fast transit app for the Bay Area
by aryamansharda | 2025-04-18 17:30:20+00:00
Hey HN,

I built Commuter because I was tired of switching between different apps to check arrival times for BART, Caltrain, Muni, ferries, and more. This app pulls directly from the official 511 API and aims to provide a fast, clean experience focused on real-time departures.

There’s no account creation, it’s free to use, and it supports every major transit provider in the Bay Area—from Napa down to San Jose. You can search, favorite lines/stops, and see live countdowns with minimal friction.

It’s built entirely in SwiftUI using native Apple frameworks.

Happy to answer questions about the API, SwiftUI quirks, or anything else. Feedback welcome!
by ilikebits | 2025-04-18 17:30:38+00:00
One of the tools we tried was Aptly! A couple issues we had with Aptly:

1. Aptly needs to rebuild the entire repository before it can do any changes. One of our customers builds packages for every Linux OS, and every architecture, and each release contains 10-something separately packaged tools, and they do regular releases. This means their repository of packages is _huge_. When they try to do small maintenance actions like removing a package that has a bug, they need to rebuild their entire repository to do this, which takes upwards of 30 minutes. On Attune, since we have a centralized control plane, it takes about 10 seconds.

2. Aptly doesn't have concurrency controls. This makes it annoying to run in CI. Imagine you're setting up a CI pipeline that runs on every commit and publishes a package. You need to make sure you don't have two different instances of Aptly running at the same time, because their updates will clobber each other if they publish at the same time. Can you ensure that your CI only ever runs one publish at a time? This is easy in some setups, but surprisingly hard in GitHub Actions - concurrency keys don't quite work the way you'd expect them to.

3. Aptly uses its storage as its source of truth for the current state of packages. This is a great design choice for simplicity! However, if your CI job dies halfway through during an Aptly publish, this can leave your repository in a corrupted (in this case, half-updated) state. To recover from this, you need to rebuild the repository state... which you can't, because the ground truth is contained in the storage which was just corrupted! We mitigate this issue by tracking metadata in a separate transactional database so CI crashes don't cause corruption.

These are some examples of little cuts that build up over time with all of the tools we've found so far. Lots of the open source tooling is great at low scale, but the cuts start to build up once you are pushing a meaningful amount of packages to production.
by thadt | 2025-04-18 17:30:41+00:00
"It is impossible to engage in intellectual discourse with National Socialism because it is not an intellectually defensible program. It is false to speak of a National Socialist philosophy, for if there were such an entity, one would have to try be means of analysis and discussion either to prove its validity or to combat it. In actuality, however, we face a totally different situation. At its very inception this movement depended on the deception and betrayal of one’s fellow man; even at that time it was inwardly corrupt and could support itself only by constant lies. After all, Hitler states in an early edition of “his” book (a book written in the worst German I have ever read, in spite of the fact that it has been elevated to the position of the Bible in this nation of poets and thinkers): "It is unbelievable, to what extent one must betray a people in order to rule it." If at the start, the cancerous growth in the nation was not particularly noticeable, it was only because there were still enough forces at work that operated for the good, so that it was kept under control. As it grew larger, however, and finally in an ultimate spurt of growth attained ruling power, the tumor broke open, as it were, and infected the whole body. The greater part of its former opponents went into hiding. The German intellectuals fled to their cellars, there, like plants struggling in the dark, away from light and sun, gradually choked to death."

- Hans Scholl

Medical student, philosopher, WW2 medic, patriot.

For these words (among others), beheaded at the age of 25, along with his sister Sophie (22), and friend Christoph (24).
by courtcircuits | 2025-04-18 17:30:45+00:00
A few weeks ago, I attended a hackathon held by Dagger, where I managed to run a Windows XP virtual machine in Dagger to play Starcraft with just a few lines of code. This article is a write-up of how my friends and I did it. It addresses the challenges we faced, and some good things to know when it comes to virtualization. Hope you'll enjoy it! :)
by tbrownaw | 2025-04-18 17:31:08+00:00
> limited their educational opportunities, and also because it’s hard for a child to lever themselves into a higher socioeconomic group than their parents.

Is this not what universal state-funded schooling is for. (And please don't forget that state-level funding is anti-correlated with local funding, so the standard "but property taxes!" thing is a red herring.)

> Equity vs. equal opportunities; I’m sympathetic to the latter, but what do you do when the opportunities were unequal in the past, and that causes inequitable results in the present?

I am not aware of anti-dei people having problems with need-based (as opposed to demographics-based) scholarships and such.
by cj | 2025-04-18 17:32:04+00:00
This is the only answer. Try it, and assess the results.

Heck, you can even A/B test it by randomly splitting your leads between humans and AI, then pick whichever has the higher ROI.

A better example (rather than replacing sales reps with AI, which is obviously difficult and nuanced) would be something like StitchFix deciding whether to fire their human stylists and moving everything to AI-recommendations only. Again, A/B test and see what users respond well to.

(Separately, I've always assumed StitchFix "stylists" weren't actual people, until I met someone with that job title... I was honestly quite surprised they still had a job)
by tummler | 2025-04-18 17:32:09+00:00
Nearly all of the arguments here are easy to dismantle but I don't feel like arguing with a half-baked Substack post, so I'm not going to.

Just want to highlight one element in particular that jumped out at me:

"AI has nothing personal at stake. It doesn't feel the pressure of missing quota or the exhilaration of exceeding it. It doesn't have a mortgage payment riding on that commission check."

So the AI doesn't manipulate power dynamics to control its employees... and that's a bad thing? Okay. (It isn't true anyway; AI can easily do that.)
Show HN: HinterviewGPT – a LeetCode alternative with a built-in AI tutor
by iknownthing | 2025-04-18 17:32:26+00:00
Hello HN!

I've been an active Leetcode user for a long time and while I think it's a great platform to test your skills, I've never really considered it a good resource for learning. Whenever I'd get stuck on a question I'd just look up the answer then try to understand it via reverse-engineering which never seemed very efficient to me. That's why I built HinterviewGPT.

HinterviewGPT started as a side project where my initial idea was to build a UI that looked a lot like leetcode with the question on the left and the editor on the top right, but have a chat UI on the bottom right where you could chat with an LLM-based "tutor". The "tutor" would be aware of the question and your current solution in the editor and it would be instructed to answer your questions when you are stuck by giving hints and specifically NOT instructed to give you the answer (otherwise it wouldn't be a very good tutor).

I built this side project and it worked surprisingly well. The tutor's hints guided me towards the correct answer conversationally rather than me having to look up the correct answer when I got stuck. This really made my learning more efficient and cut down on my study time per question. It also promotes "active learning" (learning through hints) rather than passive learning (trying to reverse-engineer the solution) which I think made the learning stick more. As a result I decided to build this into an actual product.

For the product I added a "question generation" feature. Via another chat UI you can describe the kind of question you want to practice (based on industry, role, topic, job req, etc.) and HinterviewGPT will generate a question for you which you could then practice. So you don't only have to study leetcode questions with HinterviewGPT, you can really study any kind of interview question. You can also study both code-based and text-based (e.g. behavioral, system design, etc.) questions. Or if you have a particular question in mind that you want to study, you can manually enter the question as well. Once you're done practicing the question you can submit it for a final evaluation and your solutions and evaluations are saved for future reference (again, like leetcode).

Here's a demo of the full workflow i.e. question generation, practicing with tutor, submitting your solution: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yj6qvEQYWi0

All the LLM-related features use OpenAI models under the hood specifically gpt-4o-mini, gpt-4o, o1-mini, o3-mini. You can choose when to use which model. gpt-4o-mini does suprisingly well in a lot of cases but obviously for more complex questions the more advanced models are preferable.

HinterviewGPT offers a free trial (with only gpt-4o-mini is available unfortunately).

Note: don't take this as me endorsing leetcode-style interviews, I actually don't like them at all or think they are effective.
by jack101311 | 2025-04-18 17:32:31+00:00
Wow, I'm really glad someone can echo my thoughts too. Actually, back in 2021, I proposed building a software ecosystem for E Ink displays. The article is right here: [https://jackscogito.blogspot.com/2022/05/the-necessity-of-es...] (This article was rewritten in English in 2022.) And some of your design principles resonate with mine, but yours are more concise and clearly highlight the characteristics of E Ink displays.

Also, your newspaper demo looks fantastic. I think it would be perfect for viewing on a 25.1-inch E Ink display in portrait mode; the effect must be excellent. However, I'm concerned you might encounter difficulties applying Eink Mode to it, as I'm currently grappling with the pagination algorithms for Table, grid, and flex layouts, which are proving quite challenging.
by audunw | 2025-04-18 17:33:15+00:00
I’ve been thinking for a while that the first real sign of China preparing for war with Taiwan is if it gets into smaller conflicts or proxy wars somewhere else.

They have near zero practical experience. They’ll need a few years of ironing out the logistical challenges with engaging in a real conflict, before they can take on Taiwan.

Like how Russia got themselves into smaller conflicts and various skirmishes around their borders and in Africa, before they started their full scale invasion of Ukraine.

The problem is that China haven’t had many good opportunities for getting into meaningful conflicts. Ukraine is a small chance for some practical experience for individuals. But it does nothing to get institutional knowledge with large scale logistics in a real conflict. What are they gonna do? Invade Vietnam again? I don’t think there’s any appetite for that.

That’s if China go the route of an actual invasion to begin with. I dont know anyone who fully understands Taiwan and China who thinks China will begin with an outright invasion. A blockade is much more likely, that’s what most Taiwanese I know really fear. Taiwan is very dependent on imports for food and energy. The question is just if USA will try to break the blockade (we’re gonna escort these ships with essential supplies, go ahead and attack our navy if you dare…), or if USA and India will implement their own blockade of fossil fuels coming from the Middle East as a response. China is dependent on imports of food/fertiliser/seeds and energy as well, after all. Though they’re better equipped to last a year or two than Taiwan… as long as there’s not too much corruption among those who are supposed to maintain Chinas fuel and food reserves.
by bbsz | 2025-04-18 17:34:04+00:00
Americans that lie about their background and then proceed to steal your organization secrets, infect your co-workers and turn your company into a supply chain attack vector - are exactly the same type of the problem.

The thing is, it's somehow mostly (not only) North Koreans utilizing this particular tactics.

PS. They wouldn't allow you this rhetoric, regardless of you being sympathetic with them. It would be allowed only if you embrace the Juche and the Supreme Leader cult in fullest. Otherwise, you're nothing to them, an enemy, you don't deserve the Geneva convention or any of the basic human rights, by the doctrine's definition. The system there is not even like China's "One country, two systems", it's a thing on it's own.
by albert_e | 2025-04-18 17:34:14+00:00
Absoutely agree,

Gmail started scraping all emails a decade ago. Amazon responded by removing all product and pricedetails from Order confirmation and Order shipping emails. We consumers lost out -- we dont have our own copy and archive of what we ordered. If Amazon links perish to link rot and we lose access to Amazon login, our past order and spend information is gone.
by Rooster61 | 2025-04-18 17:34:14+00:00
Solid article, but one very important detail that they left out is that this only really applies to at least league level and above players. Most of this is moot for the recreational, a few times a year type bowlers.

80% of the folks that walk in the door of a bowling alley are going to grab plastic house balls and bowl straight (or try to put hook on it, which isn't overly effective for a number of reasons). Most of this information only applies to bowlers using a ball with a coverstock and core that cause the ball to naturally hook a certain way.

Nothing wrong with being a recreational bowler or bowling straight. It's just trying to apply these statistics to a straight ball doesn't quite work.
by syndeo | 2025-04-18 17:34:56+00:00
Lots of folks in tech have different opinions than you may expect. Many will either keep quiet or play along to keep the peace/team cohesion, but you really never know if they actually agree deep down.

Their career, livelihoods, ability to support their families, etc. are ultimately on the line, so they'll pay lip service if they have to. Consider it part of the job at that point; personal beliefs are often left at the door.
by queenkjuul | 2025-04-18 17:35:37+00:00
I got a hand me down copy of Flash 5 around 2003 and i absolutely adored it. Didn't actually learn much programming (i was 9 years old) but the ease of animation and wiring up buttons was absolutely enchanting.

Personally, though, i don't really have a golden age. I love retro computing, it's how I spend a terrible amount of my time, and most of it i spend thinking, "thank god we don't live like this anymore" lmao.

The Internet specifically, though, was more fun in the pre-Facebook/Twitter/Instagram world, absolutely no question there.
by __MatrixMan__ | 2025-04-18 17:35:42+00:00
> Have you tried calling them up to get support while traveling and ask why they’re blocking other countries, or ask if they offer other ways to authenticate and get in?

The trouble with that is you might need to buy a region-compatible sim card to call the bank, and you might need to call the bank in order to buy the sim card. (I was lucky I could find wifi and had a VPN set up so I could make myself appear in the US).
by ilikebits | 2025-04-18 17:35:44+00:00
You are correct. The reason we built this tool is because all of the scripts we found had sharp edges when we tried to use them in production at scale (I talk about some of them here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43730136).

Most of these scripts were designed for a world where there was A Blessed Deployment Machine that acted as its own de facto centralized control plane. We're designed for a newer world where publishing is just another piece of your CI, so you need more features to handle concurrency control, distributed signing, incremental index rebuilds, etc.
by ksec | 2025-04-18 17:36:06+00:00
I searched on Google and got an answer from Quora[1] . I wonder if anyones else on HN can shine some light.

>Alvin Weinberg estimated that build and operating costs would both be about 80% cheaper than existing water-moderated nuclear power technology (which he also invented in addition to the MSR)

Solar and Wind has become so cheap and building so fast. Even myself as an Nuclear supporter ( I said pro nuclear I mean I am not against Nuclear ) I often wonder is it worth it? Britain is expected to "double" its Wind Power by 2030. As things continue to accelerate Wind and Solar may take 50% of energy production in next 10 years.

10 years is a very short time in the world of Nuclear. I know we need base load but I am starting to question if Nuclear makes any sense given the relative speed of development both are moving at.

[1] https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-estimated-cost-of-building...
by jauntywundrkind | 2025-04-18 17:36:47+00:00
Yes, it's Rust ;). Sign of quality to me.

Excited to try. I ran a reprepo for a couple of years & it wasn't the worst to run, but not fun either. My confidence in efficiently publishing packages was super low, never improved much.

It also mandated running a web server (configuring my nginx to point at the repo filesystem), not very batteries included.

https://wiki.debian.org/DebianRepository/SetupWithReprepro
by LinuxBender | 2025-04-18 17:36:56+00:00
I've never received an AMP email but it looks like based on the format [1] one could search the body for cdn.ampproject.org and either REJECT, DISCARD in Postfix or quarantine it if using some anti-spam platform.

# grep body main.cf body_checks = regexp:/etc/postfix/body_checks # grep ampproj /etc/postfix/body_checks /ampproject/ REJECT AMP IS NOT SUPPORTED ON THIS SERVER

[1] - https://amp.dev/documentation/guides-and-tutorials/learn/ema...
by swiftcoder | 2025-04-18 17:37:21+00:00
My office used to be across the street from a strip club, and I've watched several senior executives stumble out of there at 11am, accompanied by a vendor sales team...

More often that one would like, enterprise SaaS sales isn't about having the best product - it's about convincing the CTO he's going to feel like a king whenever your sales reps are in town
Show HN: Guardrails – A Contextual Security Layer for Agentic AI Systems
by lbeurerkellner | 2025-04-18 17:37:45+00:00
Hey HN, we are a small team from Europe building in agent security and we have just released Invariant Guardrails, our open-source system to enforce contextual security in AI agents and MCP-powered applications.

Guardrails acts as a transparent layer between your LLM/MCP server and your agent. It lets you define deterministic rules that block risky behavior: secret leakage, unsafe tool use, PII exposure, malicious code patterns, jailbreaks, loops, and more.

Rules are written in a Python-inspired DSL, enabling powerful contextual logic like below. The origins of this idea go back to OPA/Rego, i.e. policy languages used for authentication.

raise "PII leakage in email" if: (out: ToolOutput) -> (call: ToolCall) any(pii(out.content)) call is tool:send_email({ to: "^(?!.*@ourcompany.com$).*$" })

It’s fast (low-latency, pipelined execution), supports both hosted and local deployments, and integrates via simple proxies. You keep your agent code unchanged.

Let us know what you think. We found it quite helpful for MCP debugging and security analysis so far. Happy to answer questions!

Docs: https://explorer.invariantlabs.ai/docs

Repo: https://github.com/invariantlabs-ai/invariant

Blog post: https://invariantlabs.ai/blog/guardrails

Playground: https://explorer.invariantlabs.ai/playground
by surajrmal | 2025-04-18 17:38:52+00:00
Generally speaking all companies are capable of stopping services at a whim, unless there are contractual obligations for otherwise. Singling out Google here isn't helpful unless there is a unique provision in their contract that others don't have.

Also worth noting that gcp has over a decade of continuous service with no indication to think it should disappear any time soon. It's not clear why Google's consumer product strategies can be used to infer how their cloud products are run.
by AIPedant | 2025-04-18 17:38:54+00:00
I think a very direct answer to this is pointing to the hot water Cursor found itself in after an AI customer support agent made stuff up.

- Do you want an LLM salesbot to close a deal your company isn't actually able to fulfill?

- Do you think your company will use AI more intelligently and reliably than the people who made a popular LLM coding system?