MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by kleiba | 2025-04-07 19:28:27+00:00
I think you're wrong.

Anyone who argues that LLMs are "just stochastic parrots" fundamentally doesn't understand what neural networks do. The power does not come from sampling from a distributions over words but from the multi-dimensional representation. And it is that that enables LLMs to be more than just mechanisms that produce copies of material previously seen in training.
by PaulRobinson | 2025-04-07 19:28:41+00:00
Only psychopaths with other people's money to burn want to produce OpenAI or Space X.

I think if you want to produce a sustainable business that lasts a long, long time, and provides a good product to a lot of customers, and employ a lot of good people and provide them with a good living, you want to do this, not that.
by morgango | 2025-04-07 19:28:46+00:00
There is a fundamental business challenge at work -- games these days are "worth less".

Not having no value, but being of less worth to investors and companies to invest in. This is simple fundamental economics, since game prices are not growing as fast as their input costs. For example, I spent $30 for Atari video games in the 1980s and it was a lot less expensive to produce. That game would cost $90 today with inflation.

For a comprehensive breakdown, see https://www.gamesindustry.biz/are-video-games-really-more-ex...

If your costs are increasing and you can't raise your price then your industry is being commoditized, or at least in a real quandary about how to move forward. AI could be a way to slow the huge, up-front costs that go into AAA games and help limit the risk to making new ones.

If this subject interests you, there is a great long-form interview with Matthew Ball on Stratechery: https://stratechery.com/2025/an-interview-with-matthew-ball-...

Anyway, Carmack is right on the money on this one.
by rdtsc | 2025-04-07 19:29:31+00:00
https://www.linkedin.com/help/linkedin/answer/a1338436/repor...

> If you feel that a profile may be fake or that it is inappropriate, you can report it. A profile may be fake if it appears empty or if it contains profanity, fake names, or impersonates public figures

They may use a real name and they may have worked some of those companies just lie about their technical level, experience, what part of the projects they worked on, etc. Those may not be covered by the reporting guidelines.
by IAmBroom | 2025-04-07 19:30:17+00:00
This is classic deck-chair reorg, instead of actually helping the environment.

China outputs gigatons of coal smoke. The US ships goods by individual trucks that could travel by train for a fraction of the fuel usage. We dispose of millions of plastic, floating pieces of trash in our oceans.

But if we slightly decrease the carbon footprint of a Hershey's bar, we'll be OK.

I use a stainless steel straw, so I'm doing my part!
by Alive-in-2025 | 2025-04-07 19:30:17+00:00
Yes. The crucial issue to me is the increasing frequency of attacks where some piece of open source gets an update - leading to endless hidden supply chain attacks.

I don't see anything that is going to block this from getting worse and worse. It became a pretty common issue that I first heard about with npm or node.js and their variants, maybe because people update software so much there and have lots of dependencies. I don't see a solution. A single program can have huge numbers of dependencies, even c++ or java programs now.

It's not new, here's one from 6 years ago on c++ - https://www.trendmicro.com/en_us/research/19/d/analyzing-c-c...

Don't forget log4j - https://www.infoworld.com/article/3850718/developers-apply-t..., points to this recent paper https://arxiv.org/pdf/2503.12192
by codethief | 2025-04-07 19:30:21+00:00
> > Most tech startups need a limited liability structure like GmbH (similar to LLC) or UG.

> Meh, do they really? Only if they want to go the VC route.

Funnily enough, a German friend of mine and his buddy got accepted into YC some years ago and apparently YC handed them the funds before they had even incorporated or anything, so at least from the point of view of German law they were essentially a partnership (GbR). Not sure how that even worked, especially in terms of delineating what the entity actually was that they and YC owned together. Did YC own 7% (standard deal) of… them? (Without incorporating you are personally liable after all.)

Anyway, from what my friend told me they had a whole bunch of cash lying around on a personal account for quite some time lol

Then again, this was before covid – money was incredibly cheap back then.
by mjh2539 | 2025-04-07 19:30:42+00:00
The author made two mistakes:

1. Disclosing the existence of the speed bump they installed. 2. Disclosing that they installed the speed bump.

If they had "forgotten" to do at least the first of these things, in all likelihood the speed bump would still be there.

Sometimes the right thing to do is to break the rules.
by fullshark | 2025-04-07 19:31:11+00:00
I've thought of that, but there is a trend of a retreat from newer music, this isn't just a generation gap speaking.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/01/old-music-...

A lot of what's happening is imo is just there's so much more competition for attention, and music has lost value as a cultural force beyond the music itself for younger people than it used to have, when young people would develop parasocial relationships or "crushes" or build their self-identity on pop stars and their fandom. A lot of this power culturally has been balkanized.

Speaking of the music itself, once the economic incentive is removed to create great songs (we are there already) we will get fewer great songs. That force is countering the fact that we have more tools and distribution channels than ever to create great songs, and those two forces are in opposition and to me, it seems like the fewer great songs force is winning (subjective).
by bb88 | 2025-04-07 19:31:13+00:00
CERN is a big proponent of KiCad, so it wouldn't surprise me.

I didn't see an Open Source Hardware Logo on it, or any marking suggesting it's CERN Open Hardware License, but it might also be on the back.

The big issue is that it's tough to collaborate with something like Altium Designer when its $460/mo (and no one else can open your design unless you pay the fee).
by WalterBright | 2025-04-07 19:32:25+00:00
Around 2002 or so, I had an idea to tag every part of a project with a unique hash code. With a hash code, one could download the corresponding file. A hash code for the whole project would be a file containing a list of hash codes for the files that make up the project. Hash codes could represent the compiler that builds it, along with the library(s) it links with.

I showed it to a couple software entrepreneuers (Wild Tangent and Chromium), but they had no interest in it.

I never did anything else with it, and so it goes.
by aerostable_slug | 2025-04-07 19:32:46+00:00
> introducing a lookalike in the wild will do anything to fill the gap left by the real thing

The dire wolf may not fill a valuable niche, but I believe it's at least plausible that herds of engineered woolly mammoths would have a positive environmental impact.

I personally don't care if they "really" restore an extinct animal or not (perfect clone vs. hairy elephants). Their creations are cool proofs of concept for the genetic engineering tooling that they're creating and captures public/investor imagination much more than more mundane (but monetizable) aspects of the work, like working with massive amounts of data, gene editing tools, etc.
by andrewfromx | 2025-04-07 19:32:55+00:00
"based" is a slang term that originated from internet culture, particularly associated with certain online communities. It generally means something that is authentic, unfiltered, or grounded in truth, often with a connotation of being bold or unapologetic. The term was popularized by rapper Lil B, who used "based" to describe a mindset of staying true to oneself, regardless of societal norms or criticism.

I had to look it up.
by cadence- | 2025-04-07 19:33:20+00:00
It's working now with the 0.1.0 for me. But I will let you know if I experience any issues once I get updated to 0.1.1.

Thanks, great job! I like it overall, but I noticed it has some issues entering text in forms, even on google.com. It's able to find a workaround and insert the searched text in the URL, but it would be nice if the entry into forms worked well for UI testing.
by 0x20cowboy | 2025-04-07 19:33:23+00:00
Using AI tools in a professional code base, currently, seems a bit dangerous to me. However I have changed my mind on using it for vibe coding.

I used to type in program source code from magazines and had no idea what I was doing until something broke then I had to fix it. If I am honest, that was how I learned how to code.

AI will either teach that kind of thing to the new generation, or coding will become irrelevant. Either way, I think that’s good.

But I still don’t want my bank or airplane guidance software using it.
by Nemi | 2025-04-07 19:33:39+00:00
10M to 20M in what amount of time? This is not incidental, it is critical to determining IRR (Internal Rate of Return).

If the company goes to 20M in 10 years, that sounds great, but is only a 7% compound rate of growth. I can get that with much less risk by investing in the S&P 500. And don’t discount the risk. It is critical. A small business has a very large chance of 100% total loss. Compare that to the 500 index, which has a very small chance of a 50% loss, max.

To count for risk, I would look for a doubling (10M to 20M) in at least 2-3 years, min.

You also have to think about liquidity. If you want to cash out, who is going to buy your shares at the price you want? This might not be as easy as you might think. I can liquidate 500 index shares in seconds. It might take a year or more to find a buyer for your 10% at the price you want.
by manmal | 2025-04-07 19:34:00+00:00
> For example, I spent $30 for Atari video games in the 1980s and it was a lot less expensive to produce. That game would cost $90 today with inflation.

And the Nintendo Switch has sold 5x as many consoles as did Atari. Likely a similar scale for games sold. Nintendo very likely makes more in total than Atari did, even with lower prices.
by HighFreqAsuka | 2025-04-07 19:34:19+00:00
> Here’s what we’ve found out: It’s not about the cocoa-beans, but about the way they are treated during the manufacturing process.

I eat a lot of high end single origin chocolate bars, and I simply don’t believe this. Two bars from the same brand at the same percentage of cocoa content using different beans taste completely different. In exactly the same way as wine or coffee. It’s one of the most interesting parts of eating good chocolate. I just don’t believe this approach will ever replace my chocolate consumption, but may have a shot at the larger market of bad chocolate bars.
by Juliate | 2025-04-07 19:34:20+00:00
You (don't) think a lot of things. It's probably. So you think.

What about some data, then?

> I don't even think most world population has a tattoo.

Tattoo is a booming business (around 9% growth in 2024). There are stats.

Quoting https://www.ibisworld.com/united-states/industry/tattoo-arti...

"A Pew Research Study conducted in 2023 shows that 32.0% of Americans have tattoos. 41.0% of individuals under 30 have at least one tattoo, as do 46.0% of individuals aged between 30 and 49."

That's not "most" in the sense, 50%+. It's still pretty significant.
by lrvick | 2025-04-07 19:35:22+00:00
Great coverage, however it failed to mention code review and artifact signing as well as full source bootstrapping which are fundamental defenses most distros skip.

In our distro, Stagex, our threat model assumes at least one maintainer, sysadmin, or computer is compromised at all times.

This has resulted in some specific design choices and practices:

- 100% deterministic, hermetic, reproducible

- full source bootstrapped from 180 bytes of human-auditable machine code

- all commits signed by authors

- all reviews signed by reviewers

- all released artifacts are multi-party reproduced and signed

- fully OCI (container) native all the way down "FROM scratch"

- All packages easily hash-locked to give downstream software easy determinism as well

This all goes well beyond the tactics used in Nix and Guix.

As far as we know, Stagex is the only distro designed to strictly distrust maintainers.

https://stagex.tools
by A_Duck | 2025-04-07 19:35:42+00:00
I used to watch sci-fi films and think: "well this isn't realistic, people simply wouldn't accept eating Soylent Green or a nutrient paste ration"

Now I realise that these things will come to us branded up as desirable and high-status. It isn't ultra-processed pea protein, this is a 'vegan steak'

Human beings evolved to eat whole foods. If you're going to eat something else, you better be very, very sure about the long-term effects.
by dreghgh | 2025-04-07 19:36:31+00:00
It's not a setting which determines how a value stored in a sheet is interpreted. It's a setting which determines how inputs are interpreted before being stored.

When you type eg "4/4", "4-Apr", "2025-04-04" or whatever, it is converted to a number based on your local date format. The cell has a date format applied to it so that the number appears as a date. If you send the sheet to someone else, it will display the same numeric value, using their settings to display it as a date.
by LeFantome | 2025-04-07 19:36:42+00:00
What I really wish about this article is that the author would say if they tried any other video card in this system.

A DEC Alpha should load SROM and then jump straight into SRM (firmware - BIOS essentially) or ARC (Windows NT firmware).

Any VGA capable PCI video card should work in an Alpha well enough to get into SRM, even if the RAM and/or SCSI controller are dead.

He said the Matrox video card did not work in other systems. But how about other video cards in his Alpha?

This is an amazing write-up but I want to know if he really needs to get into mini-console or if he just needs a working video card to get into SRM.

Perhaps there is something of use in here… (it describes working with the mini-console for example) https://manx-docs.org/collections/antonio/dec/MDS-2000-01/cd...
by thenaturalist | 2025-04-07 19:37:03+00:00
Crazy, in looking up some info on the web and creating a Spreadsheet on Google Sheets to insert the results, it worked almost perfectly the first time and completely failed subsequently on 8-10 different tries.

Is there an issue with the lag between what is happening in the browser and the MCP app (in my case Claude Desktop)?

I have a feeling the first time I tried it, I was fast enough clicking the "Allow for this chat" permissions, whereas by the time I clicked the permission on subsequent chats, the LLM just reports "It seems we had an issue with the click. Let me try again with a different reference.".

Actions which worked flawlessly the first time (rename a Google spreadsheet by clicking on the title and inputting the name) fail 100% of subsequent attempts.

Same with identifying cells A1, B1, etc. and inserting into the rows.

Almost perfect on 1st try, not reproducible in 100% of attempts afterwards.

Kudos to how smooth this experience is though, very nice setup & execution!

EDIT 2: The lag & speed to click the allow action make it seemingly unusable in Claude Desktop. :(
by sysrestartusr | 2025-04-07 19:37:18+00:00
> Not having no value, but being of less worth to investors and companies to invest in. This is simple fundamental economics, since game prices are not growing as fast as their input costs.

Economics that are not that old and that have been reinforced via a 'tailor made' customer culture. Marketing and business culture fucked up consumers beyond any recognition, then quantified them and keep optimizing via peer-flagellation and sociopathic feedback loops.

Economists and leadership's ways are ugly.
by mikeyouse | 2025-04-07 19:37:20+00:00
They don't say he's a fascist, they say he cozied up with several people often described as fascists and then back up that accusation with plenty of individual data points..

If this paragraph is factual - and I have no reason to doubt that it is -- that's pretty fascistic behavior!

> Journalists were another target. In May 2017, Bass emailed Cassandra Fairbanks, a far-right activist whom the first Trump administration allowed into press briefings, to ask for the names and emails of reporters in the White House press pool. This would potentially enable Ton-That and his partners to surface social media accounts, pull photos, and, as Bass put it, investigate the “leanings” of the journalists. Fairbanks quickly sent the names and emails of eight reporters to Bass, who forwarded the details to Ton-That. “These shills are high-priority,” Bass wrote. “Dope this is going into smartcheckr,” Ton-That replied. The company later created a “Politicians – Academics – Journalists” category in its biometric database.

Likewise this one..

> Ton-That and Johnson quickly bonded. They brainstormed “alt-tech” ideas and a few months later, in early 2017, launched Smartcheckr, Clearview’s predecessor. Ton-That also got to know Duke and other radicals associated with Johnson, including Marko Jukic, a self-described extremist Catholic traditionalist who once argued that diversity is “corrosive to civilization”; Tyler Bass, a white nationalist who, according to his former girlfriend, attended the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia; and far-right influencer Douglass Mackey, who used a pseudonymous social media persona to disseminate Nazi propaganda and advocate for “global white supremacy.”

These are not good people..
by hayst4ck | 2025-04-07 19:37:40+00:00
This article is really worth a read and talks about the much deeper mechanics and institutional power behind what is happening now.

Clearview had compiled a massive biometric database that would eventually contain billions of images the company scraped off the internet and social media without the knowledge of the platforms or their users. Its AI analyzed these images, creating a “faceprint” for every individual. The company let users run a “probe photo” against its database, and if it generated a hit, it displayed the matching images and links to the websites where they originated. This made it easy for Clearview users to further profile their targets with other information found on those webpages: religious or political affiliation, family and friends, romantic partners, sexuality. All without a search warrant or probable cause.

A diehard Donald Trump supporter, Ton-That... Here, Ton-That appeared to conflate support for the Republican leader with American identity, proposing to scan migrants’ social media for “posts saying ‘I hate Trump’ or ‘Trump is a puta’” and targeting anyone with an “affinity for far-left groups.”

By the end of Trump’s first presidential term, Clearview had secured funding from right-wing billionaire Peter Thiel, one of Elon Musk’s earliest business partners, and signed up hundreds of law enforcement clients around the country. The company doled out free trials to hook users, urging cops to “run wild” with searches. They did. Many departments then bought licenses to access Clearview’s faceprint database.
by Zambyte | 2025-04-07 19:38:02+00:00
Speaking of git front ends, I want to give a shout-out to Jujutsu. I suspect most people here have probably at least heard of it by now, but it has fully replaced my git cli usage for over a year in my day to day work. It feels like the interface that jj provides has made the underlying git data structures feel incredibly clear to me, and easy to manipulate.

Once you transition your mental model from working branch with a staging area to working revision that is continuously tracking changes, it's very hard to want to go back.
by Workaccount2 | 2025-04-07 19:38:08+00:00
Just wait until we start creating user friendly IDE's that automate the technical moat needed right now to go from code to running program.

Recently I (Gemini 2.5?) created an android app that calculates options prices given different sets of parameters set by the user. The hardest part of doing that is doing all the android studio leg work to get the pieces in place to eventually compile the code into an app and put it on your phone.

No real reason that cannot be automated to "Paste the text the LLM gave you here, and the app icon will show up on your phone in a minute" right now. I'm almost positive it is already being worked on somewhere.
by sureglymop | 2025-04-07 19:38:21+00:00
I am not insisting anything. I wanted to point out that the "reason why browsers exist/came to exist" can be relevant in this discussion but is not a direct logical contradiction to their current complexity.

If I say, the pdf came to be in order to be a simple way to digitally represent printed/printable documents that may be correct but wouldn't actually express anything about the current complexity of the pdf format. Admittedly perhaps a bad example due to how similar it is.

It's possible I misunderstood though. If so, I apologize.
by jasonlotito | 2025-04-07 19:38:27+00:00
> Clearview AI is owned by fascists?

The article doesn't say that.

> What proof do they have?

They do provide links to information on the organization they refer to as fascist. You can draw your own conclusions, but it seems fairly comprehensive.

> I doubt what motherjones is saying.

Considering you're making up stuff about what they said, I can see why.

> I checked.

If you did, you failed.

> "That" (the founder of Clearview AI) is from Australia and seems to have been an artist.

I was not aware that an artist from Austria couldn't be fascist.

> MJ should be careful with their articles.

You should be careful with your comments.
by silkroadonln | 2025-04-07 19:39:16+00:00
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The site is ready today. It is a bit slow, I will add CDN soon.
by xnorswap | 2025-04-07 19:39:16+00:00
Counterpoint: Natural sorting likely will be orders of magnitude slower sorting than ordinal sorting.

For most situations, the better solution is storing the index separately to the name in another column or in metadata.

But for some stores, there isn't an easy way to do to store or sort on metadata, and so prefixing leading zeroes helps keep things stored more naturally while using the more efficient sort.
Big Tech's Unspoken Policy: Don't Rock the Boat, Even with Results
by TesterVetter | 2025-04-07 19:39:39+00:00
I work at a FAANG company and have consistently performed well above expectations. Instead of recognition or support, I’ve been rewarded with more work and zero help.

Management seems directionless — I’ve asked point-blank where we’re heading and get nothing in return. They ignore the initiatives that actually drive results and instead chase shiny, unproven ideas that "sound strategic." After years of trying to push things forward, I finally realized they don’t want impact — they want safe, predictable mediocrity. So I’ve stopped overperforming. There’s no upside in a system that punishes initiative and rewards inertia.

If you're wondering why big tech feels like it's stagnating, this is a big part of the answer.