MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by ookblah | 2025-04-24 14:37:14+00:00
yes, that is one aspect of it.

1) refactoring. copy paste, re-arrange, extract, delete and rebuild the connection. i have the mental model and tell the LLM do do it across multiple files or classes. does it way faster and exactly how i would do it given the right prompt which is just a huge file that dictates how things are structured, style, weird edge cases i encountered as time goes on.

2) new features or sections based on existing. i have a service class and want to duplicate and wire up different sections across domains. not easy enough to just be templated, but LLM can do it and understand the nuances. again, generate multiple files across classes no problem.

i can do all these things "fast". i can do them even faster when using the LLM, it offloads the tediousness and i save my brian for other tasks. alot of times i'm just researching my next thing while it chugs away. i come back, lint and review and i'm good to go.

i'm honestly still writing the majority of the code myself, esp if it's like design stuff or new features where the requirements and direction aren't as clear, but when i need to it gives me a huge boost.

keeps me in the flow, i basically recharge while continuing to code. and it's not a small script but a full fledged app, albeit very straightforward architecture wise. the gains are very real. i'm just surprised at the sentiment on HN around it. it's not even just skepticism but outright dogging on it.
Show HN: Time Tracking directly from a calendar, inspired by conventional commit
by sergentrif | 2025-04-24 14:37:19+00:00
Hi HN,

When I started freelancing, I needed a time tracking tool to calculate the hours spent for each of my clients, to easily generate their invoices at the end of the month.

But I really didn't want to add another tool/SaaS to the list I already use daily. Especially since I use my calendar constantly to organize myself and know what I need to do.

I would have ended up with my work information (and tracked time) in two different places, which wasn't ideal for me.

So, I developed Timescanner: a Time Tracker that analyzes an iCal URL (.ics file) and sums up work time based on a simple pattern: [Client][Project] Event's name.

In fact, it's more than just a Time Tracker; it's essentially an event naming standard, kind of like conventional commits.

I've put zero effort into design (including the landing page), but I'm looking for your feedback on the app and its concept!

Thanks,
by ranger_danger | 2025-04-24 14:37:23+00:00
> Buying or not buying a Tesla is very unlikely to influence Elon at all.

But it can certainly influence other people's perception of you... I think what we all have to decide though is how much that matters to us, should we decide to buy one anyway.

> Do you also need to individually vet every one of their opinions before you enrich them by buying a Tesla?

I think most people's negative image of a company/project tends to come from the leadership, or the most public leader, and not all the individual employees.

To that end I would consider Linux to be a tool mainly led by a habitually emotionally abusive person (Linus). Or when people mention Kitty I point out to them Kovid's many personal attacks on end-users, etc.

For some reason a lot of people in tech (and probably everywhere) seem to have real issues with staunch dogmatism and god complexes. I know people make mistakes and that's fine, but I'm talking about the ones that show consistent and daily life-long problems with usually no remorse.

You don't know everything, none of us do, and there can actually be other valid perspectives if you allow yourself to be wrong occasionally. Definitely not enough introspection/self-reflection going on IMO.

I'm sure people will downvote this but I don't think people should be forced to (or shamed when they don't want to) separate the art from the artist.
by yjftsjthsd-h | 2025-04-24 14:37:27+00:00
> I'm aware that 8GB Vram are not enough for most such workloads. But no support at all? That's ridiculous. Let me use the card and fall back to system memory for all I care.

> Nvidia, as much as I hate their usually awfully insufficient linux support, has no such restrictions for any of their modern cards, as far as I'm aware.

In fact, I regularly run llamafile (and sometimes ollama) on an nvidia dGPU in a laptop, with 4GB of VRAM, and it works fine (ish... I mostly do the thing where some layers are on the GPU and some are CPU; it's still faster than pure CPU so whatever).
by blibble | 2025-04-24 14:37:34+00:00
yeah, this is what the article is describing as to what it was like in the early 2000s (assuming no moronic key reuse)

the problem is they "improved" the usability

it was safe when you had to push a button, but now roles are flipped so the car is the initiator, and doing it constantly

the protocol is now subject to a whole entire extra class of attacks it was never designed to deal with
by dismalaf | 2025-04-24 14:38:10+00:00
> Excel

Yeah, I'm really missing Excel and VBA...

Between Google Sheets, Gnumeric (Python "macros" are so much better than VBA), R Studio, I definitely don't miss Excel an iota.

Google Sheets is a better choice for average Joe spreadsheet user, make a spreadsheet, some nice graphics, share it. Gnumeric has better scripting and better maths functions. R Studio is better for data analysis. I have a degree in economics and didn't touch Excel for any of it (Stata, R, Python got me through).

In fact, I could go further and write an entire dissertation about how Excel as a program is cursed and a net negative to society. The amount of times I've seen broken spreadsheets lead to real business problems is way, way higher than it should be. So much of what people do in Excel should just be handled by a Python script or something. Whoever thought it was a good idea to couple data and functions and then to put that in the hands of Jane from accounting did a massive disservice to all of society.
by tanjtanjtanj | 2025-04-24 14:38:12+00:00
About couple years ago I logged onto Facebook for the first time in nearly a decade to sell something on marketplace. I took a peek at my feed and the set up was:

Post from some guy I barely knew in high school talking about giving all at his job with zero comments or likes followed by Ad, Ad, Ad, Ad endlessly. I just kept scrolling and scrolling and hitting more pages of ads.

I refreshed and got a different single post followed by more ads. I took a short video of the feed to show my friend who worked at Facebook at the time and he said “oh it might do that when it doesn’t know what to show you, if you use it more it will get better”

I asked how it would learn what I liked when it was just showing me ads and he didn’t have a good answer. I guess nobody cares there.
by MOARDONGZPLZ | 2025-04-24 14:38:17+00:00
Ok I am going to click on FB for the first time in a month or so. Here we go, not expecting much.

I have two notifications, one is about a birthday today, one is about someone I don't know asking me to like an AirBnB page. Let's go to the feed.

1. Sales thing from some group

2. A Boomer looking "reel" of a classic car (I don't like classic cars and nothing I have done suggests I do)

3. People You May Know (I've seen these same suggestions over the last several years, still don't know any of them and still don't want to connect)

4. Friend post, death in the family

5-9. Also friend posts

10. That exact same Boomer reel again

11-15. Friend posts or people I follow

16. "Memes Daily," which I don't follow so must be an ad

17-20. Friend posts and a group post from a group I follow

Overall, this really isn't bad, surprisingly. At one point, which is when I stopped checking it for months at a time, it was literally post after post after post from people I don't follow of the most garbage AI generated slop, like the sloppiest you can imagine. For example, the AI generated ones with the wounded soldier and a birthday cake with some message like "it's my birthday and no one came" level of slop, or an AI generated lady with an AI generated picture saying something like "this is my first painting but no one liked it," each with tens of thousands of likes and Boomers commenting things like "It's ok I am giving you a like happy birthday," just maddeningly ad infinitum and nausea-inducing.

So, maybe they fixed the above. Still, I can live without Facebook so am not planning on going back.
by diggan | 2025-04-24 14:38:20+00:00
> Businesses evolve or die, no?

What I constantly see, are businesses that would be just fine continue doing the same, but die instead because they tried to evolve into something and alienated all their existing customers/users and couldn't attract new ones because what they evolved into made no sense. But no, businesses want to take over the world (or at least have a large slice from the pie) so they "evolve" no matter what.

Case in point: Facebook.
by roelschroeven | 2025-04-24 14:38:23+00:00
That solves part of the problem, but doesn't help when you're in a supermarket or any other event where you're moving around.

My previous cars had keys that I could manually switch off and on, which is also not a full solution because it only works for people who take the effort to always do that, but at least it gives people to opportunity to complete prevent relay attacks.

All in all I'm not a big fan of key-less entry. Having to press a button on a key to gain entry can maybe be a bit of an annoyance, but in my opinion it's not a big deal compared to the advantage of completely preventing relay attacks.
by reverendsteveii | 2025-04-24 14:38:38+00:00
>Meta’s counter-argument is, in a sense, that social media per se doesn’t exist now in the way that it did in the twenty-tens, and that what the company’s platforms are now known for—the digital consumption of all kinds of content—has become so widespread that no single company or platform can be said to monopolize it.

Sure, and as long as people are making things Ford can't monopolize the auto industry. As long as people talk to each other Bell can't monopolize telephones.

This thing where people just generalize the conversation into meaninglessness is so frustrating. Everyone knows what social media is and does until it's time to do something about it then all of a sudden like a Roman salute no one actually has any idea what this is and really telephones are also social media but also social media doesn't exist anymore at all and also some social media is an existential threat to democracy and human rights but not the one that I own which, again, doesn't exist but still somehow makes me enough money that I can put the president on layaway.

I generally trend away from authoritarianism but I can see the appeal in just saying "Jesus Christ shut up we all know what's actually going on here" and just doing something
by tialaramex | 2025-04-24 14:38:45+00:00
You can write a genuine uninitialized local variable in Rust, it's just that you wouldn't do it out of laziness because while in C that's the default in Rust it's a lot of extra work to say "No, I really don't want to initialize this variable" and Rust is like "I mean, if you insist, all I can do is warn you that's a terrible idea".

int k; // C makes an uninitialized variable named k - probably bad idea let k: i32 = unsafe { MaybeUninit::uninit().assume_init() }; // Rust, same bad idea

If we say "I will initialize it - later" that's fine in Rust and you just write the name (and where appropriate type) of the variable and go about your day. The compiler will reject your program if, in fact, it can't see why you're fulfilling that promise, and sometimes that might be because the compiler is dumb (but often it's because you are) but there's no problem technically with this and if the compiler agrees that we do, in fact, initialize it later then it compiles and works and everybody is happy.

But to actually make a variable and not initialize it, as we saw above, is a lot of extra work in Rust because like... that's a bad idea, why would you be setting out to do that?

This is such a bad idea that Rust's unsafe std::mem::uninitialized, which is how they did this before MaybeUninit existed, was de-fanged (giving it poor performance by actually writing a pattern to RAM every time) and deprecated so you get a warning if you try to use it even though it was already marked unsafe. See, people (and I'm sure many C programmers are like this) tend to imagine it's OK for say an integer to be uninitialized because surely any possible value is OK, right ? Nope. Your operating system knows that data was never written, and so it feels entitled to fuck you about if you expect it to stay unchanged, because it never promised that will work - as a result rarely but sometimes you get kicked in the head by the OS and you get a seemingly impossible bug.
by yawnxyz | 2025-04-24 14:39:14+00:00
if anyone's ever worked in a lab, it's abundantly clear even when you know Every single step / have a well-defined protocol for any assay, most ppl including PhDs and Postdocs regularly mess it up.

There are so many things go wrong for even the most basic things it's amazing how anyone gets microbiology done in the first place
by Cthulhu_ | 2025-04-24 14:39:29+00:00
Yeah I haven't heard of lightning actually causing damage to buildings or property in years, last times were old thatched rooves or homes that generally don't have lightning rods. But it mainly hits trees these days. It feels like a solution looking for a problem, however as someone else pointed out, a drone being able to withstand lightning strikes is pretty neat.
by HEmanZ | 2025-04-24 14:39:57+00:00
All loyalty is a risk. Even loyalty to your spouse is a risk. Just like how all love and human trust is a risk.

To feel human you have to take these emotional risks. You shouldn’t bet your life that a mega-corp has absolute and utter loyalty to you. You shouldn’t bet your entire life that your spouse has absolute loyalty to you (we have divorce, pre-nups, and post-nups for a reason). But it strikes me as a pretty soulless existence to have no loyalty to your place of work, in the same way it would be a pretty soulless existence to never form loyalty with the people in your life, even if it isn’t absolute loyalty.
by bayindirh | 2025-04-24 14:40:14+00:00
> So what?

Think before you act. The machine has no brain. Use yours.

> Part of every development job is learning the product domain.

Yes.

> In that case devs become comfortable with reading standard/law/regulations and anticipating when software implementation might interact with the areas covered.

This is what I'm saying, too. A developer needs to think whether what they are doing is OK by the regulation they're flying against. They need to ask for permissions by asking themselves "wait, is this OK by the regulation I'm trying to comply?".

> But trying to isolate the development team from it is just asking for micromanagers.

Nope, I'm all for taking initiatives, and against micromanagement. However, I'm also against "I need no permission because I'm doing something amazing" attitude. So own your craft, "code responsibly".
by LPisGood | 2025-04-24 14:40:46+00:00
They don’t really have a monopoly on local events or marketplace.

Facebook is popular for these things but that’s because Facebook had a big user base, not because they keep competitors from forming.

They have a network effect that smaller competitors don’t. Thus, at the end of the day it’s the user’s choices that keep Facebook a sort of monopoly in those areas.
by BlueTie | 2025-04-24 14:40:50+00:00
The sad fact is that the people best suited to thrive in a context where relationships are transactional and mostly dependent on continued usefulness to both parties - are sociopaths/machiavellian types.

And these are precisely the people who are most okay with shouting from the rooftop that their company is the best in the world - then doing so from a different company 2-3 years later.

It's good for mental health to understand that. These people do not have better jobs or work for better companies on average - they just say they do because it's better for their career and have no shame or accountability in doing so publicly.
by dasil003 | 2025-04-24 14:41:36+00:00
I agree with your first paragraph, but I don’t really like the exploitation framing for tech jobs. Sure there is exploitation but there is also a lot of rest and vest going on. When you look at who’s delivering value in software it’s very unevenly distributed and only loosely correlated with raw work hours. A big part is collaboration and team dynamics. The ground dynamics are much more relevant than HR narratives when it comes to how a job feels and whether high expectations are motivating or seem exploitative.
by runeblaze | 2025-04-24 14:41:46+00:00
I write from a new grad perspective, but as said, put your well-being and the well-being of those you care about above all.

Meanwhile don't beat yourself up if you are young (bonus if you just relocated for work) and spent too much time at work or feel "loyal" to your employer. Wind down, of course, but don't beat yourself up.
by Marsymars | 2025-04-24 14:42:28+00:00
Right, but I'm saying comparing like-for-like models of big truck vs. EV for commuting is a bad/weird comparison. You can cut your fuel costs by like 2/3 by moving from a big truck to a compact ICE car for commuting. (Or even a smaller/more efficient truck - e.g. a hybrid Ford Maverick costs about $25 in gas for 300 miles.)

And sure, you might have a legit reason to need a full-size pickup for commuting, but that doesn't apply to 90% of people who actually commute with full-size pickups.
by ranger_danger | 2025-04-24 14:42:42+00:00
> the desire for it to be the same as their previous OS

I think most FOSS developers completely miss this point, assuming their goal is to get more people to use their software.

Sure GNOME can be usable if you learn a different way, but you can't force everyone to do that. Not even most people. So I think if they really cared about doing what's necessary to get a lot more users, they're going to have to make their product more like what the potential new users expect, whether the developers like it or not.
by insane_dreamer | 2025-04-24 14:42:51+00:00
I don’t find the anecdotes very interesting—people with great power are or turn out to be assholes; sure, what else is new?—but this little gem stood out to me. Not that I’m surprised, just that it’s the first I heard of it:

> According to Wynn-Williams, Facebook actually built an extensive censorship and surveillance system for the Chinese state – spies, cops and military – to use against Chinese Facebook users, and FB users globally. They promise to set up caches of global FB content in China that the Chinese state can use to monitor all Facebook activity, everywhere, with the implication that they'll be able to spy on private communications, and censor content for non-Chinese users.
by fullshark | 2025-04-24 14:43:31+00:00
I think this will be the case, part of the charm of early social media was everyone was authentically oversharing. That got people in trouble or they embarrassed themselves. That's why snapchat with automatically deleted posts got a foothold, there wasn't a permanent record of your embarrassing fuck ups.

That will not happen again, we won't be so collectively naive and any new social media will be taken over by PR + brand advertisers almost immediately. Just look at how threads started.
by fredophile | 2025-04-24 14:43:35+00:00
I will start by saying I don't have much experience with the latest AI coding tools.

From what I've seen using them would lead to more boredom. I like solving problems. I don't like doing code reviews. I wouldn't trust any AI generated code at this stage without reviewing it. If I could swap that around so I write code and AI gives me a reasonable code review and catches my mistakes I'd be much more interested.
by JohnFen | 2025-04-24 14:43:48+00:00
> “Advertisers want to be part of a good experience. They don’t want to be interruptive,” he told me.

I simply don't believe this. Advertisers clearly want to be as interruptive as people will put up with.

> “trying to figure out what’s going to be helpful for the user experience.”

Having no ads is helpful for the user experience. Anything else is detrimental to the user experience. What advertisers try to do, and have always tried to do, is to find where the line of "intolerable experience" begins and to stay just on this side of it.
by janv | 2025-04-24 14:44:28+00:00
Hey folks, article author here. First of all: I didn't submit it to HN.

As few people pointed out, this article was written in 2023 and it's intentionally focused just on pricing – I planned a follow up about accuracy and other aspects, but Superface pivoted away from multi-provider API abstractions and I was laid off.

So for me this is more of a time capsule of what Superface used to be about. I'm glad if you found the article still useful and the discussion here is really informative, but I won't be updating the article any further. Thanks for understanding!
by calderwoodra | 2025-04-24 14:44:35+00:00
Been there and done many of the things you described, have a family today and I still love being a founder and working very long weeks. I know not everyone is like this though.

The only unmet desire I have left to work towards is to serve others and improve everyone else's life. And building a big successful business is the best way to maximize that desire. The clearest derivatives of my work efforts are the great jobs and work created for everyone at the company and the improvement on our customers lives.
by gessha | 2025-04-24 14:44:42+00:00
> gov's case doesn't really correspond to reality

It does because if Facebook didn't monopolize the social media space maybe we would see innovation instead of blatant feature copying. Instead we have 3(4 if you consider Threads as one) platforms owned by the same company that push the same content - posts, reels, stories and actively try to unify and cannibalize each other. Breaking them down to individual companies will absolutely improve the market.
by memling | 2025-04-24 14:44:52+00:00
> If PB broke backwards-compat once then to me that's a very serious problem -- details?

Proto2 and Proto3 differ in how they handle default and required elements. Regarding these differences, I found a few references online:

https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/350443/why-protobuf-3-made-all-fields-on-the-messages-optional https://groups.google.com/g/protobuf/c/Pezwn5UYZss https://www.hackingnote.com/en/versus/proto2-vs-proto3/

I don't use protobuf regularly, and they claim that the wire formats are bidirectionally compatible. When I last evaluated them with another developer years ago, I don't recall this being the case. (It was not merely a difference between their syntaxes.) I'm not sure the semantics are preserved between the two versions, either (e.g., did I provide a default value? was this element optional and missing? etc.).

They have lately (this is news to me) moved to protobuf editions: https://protobuf.dev/editions/overview/. This provides some flexibility in the code generation and may require some maintenance on the part of the user to ensure that codec behavior remains consistent. Google, for their part, are trying to minimize these disruptions:

> When the subsequent editions are released, default behaviors for features may change. You can have Prototiller do a no-op transformation of your .proto file or you can choose to accept some or all of the new behaviors. Editions are planned to be released roughly once a year.
by rglullis | 2025-04-24 14:44:59+00:00
> If I'm hosting it myself I just want it to be my little corner of the internet, not a full fledged social media site that I have to maintain.

I think the problem is that OP is focused on developing a framework for AP, and he is dogfooding it by developing an application that other people can understand without too many new concepts.

This is good if you want people to get experiments, but it is terrible as a way to present the true potential of the protocol: https://cosocial.ca/@evan/113143389340566731