MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by lurk2 | 2025-04-04 13:32:08+00:00
> Any sort of communication of a novel thing would fall under this banner

Yeah, that was what I was getting at. I believe it in theory, but in practice I find all advertising to be the sort of implicit-mugging the grandparent is describing.

> but I learn about new FOSS projects on here every day because the maintainers and developers are willing to 'advertise' them to me.

That’s an excellent counter-point. I’ve had the same experience.
by Ukv | 2025-04-04 13:32:22+00:00
Prompt that caused models to give similar formulae:

> > What would be an easy way to calculate the tariffs that should be imposed on other countries so that the US is on even-playing fields when it comes to trade deficit? Set minimum at 10%

The claim that "All the LLMS gave the exact retarded formula" doesn't seem fully true based on those screenshots - Claude instead gives `deficit / total bilateral trade` and Grok gives `10 + (deficit / total bilateral trade) * s`, whereas the Whitehouse's formula was `deficit / imports`.

I think similarity could just be down to similar formulae being the most obvious/rudimentary answers when you're specifically asking for an "easy way" to set tariffs based on trade deficit, and not some LLM-specific quirk that would indicate LLM usage. There is also the possibility that these models, using RAG, were basing their answers off of the Whitehouse's formula as opposed to vice versa.

I do still consider it plausible that they used an LLM though, just that this isn't a smoking gun.
by 9rx | 2025-04-04 13:32:22+00:00
The trouble right now, in the context of engineering, is that it is terribly difficult to get AI to produce something you can be confident in. We've been burned by the human junior engineer who produces something that gets things done in the present, but two-three years down the line becomes a nightmare liability, and AI is now that same junior engineer.

It is too early to tell if what AI produces will also become that terrible nightmare in a few years, or if AI will also become the saviour to make what would have been a nightmare a delight. So, one has to be in defence mode in case the nightmare reality is the one that comes to fruition, which limits how far it can be taken. Unless you just want to produce cool stuff that you plan to throw away tomorrow. That is perfectly valid! But not usually what engineers get to work on.

Time will give more clarity.
by epakai | 2025-04-04 13:32:36+00:00
I did this with a surface go. I managed to drive off the alcohol with a heating plate. It took a few attempts. I think I heated it to 80 C or maybe even 100 C on the last run. End result was clean, except for a small line, possibly cracked diffuser.

I ruined a Thinkpad display the same way in the past, so I went for broke.
by eMPee584 | 2025-04-04 13:33:03+00:00
> but you could apply this logic to any kind of business and it starts to fall apart.

Exactly, it all starts to fall apart when common sense is applied - it's just that we've become horribly dependent, many even addicted to the dehumanizing grind of our beloved competition economy..

The immanent rise of autonomous machines is the sudden emergency exit from capitalism we (or rather: some of us) have been rooting for.. IF we can convince the people of this planet that a non-commercial post-scarcity open-access open-source commons economy is a more hopeful trajectory into the long future.. Let's not give up on this one yet.
by samiv | 2025-04-04 13:33:37+00:00
What's exactly wrong with Gary's economics?

I'd say he does bring pretty convincing arguments to the table and his logic does make sense.

if you take all the wealth and give it one group of people who don't put it back into the circulation but rather just invest it, it makes sense that there's no resources left for anyone else and "everyone" else is comparatively poor.
by fragmede | 2025-04-04 13:33:54+00:00
The way I see it, the core user experience is that the user listens to music. There's playlist management on top of that and some other bits, sure, but I really don't see it as being that difficult to build those pieces. This is a no code widget I had lying around with a track that was produced last night because I kept asking the producer about a new release. I linked it because it was top of mind. It allows the user to listen to music, which I see as the core of what Spotify offers its users.

Spotify has the licensing rights to songs and I don't have the business acumen to go about getting those rights, so I guess I could make Pirate Spotify and get sued by the labels for copyright infringement, but that would just be a bunch of grief for me which would be not very fun and why would I want to screw artists out of getting paid to begin with?
by ToucanLoucan | 2025-04-04 13:34:01+00:00
Not meaning to be a dick or anything, but you and folks like you are too focused on the surface level culture war crap. Apple is not activist, it's a business. It's progressive by corporate standards I guess, in that it isn't outwardly rejecting its minority employees (yet) but they'll still circle the wagons for the actual holders of power.

Capital has always sided with populists and always will, because populists reinforce the status quo capital benefits from. You'll see the same thing with ostensibly liberal establishment media organizations. Like their presenters may hate Trump and his administration on the outside, but their owners love the fact that they have millions of viewers re-glued to their televisions for the latest stupid bullshit the White House is pulling, and no matter what they may ideologically disagree on, Ellen DeGeneres and Donald Trump have INFINITELY more in common with one another than either do with any working class person.

To put it short: It's the MONEY son, the MONEY. Oh they'll bicker and spat at one another in public, sure, but most of these folks are perfectly fine with one another when the cameras aren't rolling. They don't give a shit. Rightly or wrongly, wealthy minority folk think they don't need to worry about the reactionary Right, and honestly, they're probably correct given how fixated said reactionaries are on Drag Queens supposedly being a threat to children when it feels like we have daily news stories of cops, clergy, and teachers diddling kids.
by varispeed | 2025-04-04 13:34:08+00:00
Article misses crucial and always overlooked point. Working class have lost stake in the economy, by government changing IR35 legislation to prevent worker owned businesses from making profit. This was lobbied by big corporations who were losing talent (it was easy to start own company and offer services directly to clients) and contracts (small business could undercut them and offer better quality) and was falsely sold to the public as "anti-tax avoidance" measure. In an environment where working class became a captive workforce, they no longer have interest in getting better at what they do, because it will only benefit corporation they work for. They can't use their talent in their own business, because they can't run it. Add wage compression and the fact the government allowed big corporations to import even cheaper workforce from overseas, compounded the problem.

Same with public sector - we had an ecosystem of small businesses delivering services and that was destroyed. Any public sector body buying these services got fined and "nudged" to buy from more expensive big corporations.

So you get no productivity, brain drain and big corporations taking massive profits overseas, where small business would spent the money locally stimulating the economy.

It's a slow car crash, nobody is paying attention to.
by l0new0lf-G | 2025-04-04 13:34:19+00:00
I know for sure that we are not going to lose our jobs to it, because it still takes a lot of knowledge to check, fix, and deploy code ,and especially complex one.

It also is so that it often takes a lot more time to accurately describe the problem and the solution you want to in natural language, than it takes to just write the algorithm yourself.

What is very likely to happen is that there will be fewer positions since a lot of hirings only happened because there was a software hype, resulting to more programmers than really needed.

It is also very likely that the wages will be decreased, since any 20yo with basic coding knowledge will offer himself to work as an vibe "coder".

Corporations prefer having dysfunctional products than paying high wages, so you can guess what will happen.
by smjburton | 2025-04-04 13:34:23+00:00
While interesting and possibly helpful to new coders, are these quirks of the language still relevant when most development in Javascript is done using a framework (React, Vue, etc) these days? How often do these "gotchas" factor into "modern" Javascript development, especially in production? These type of articles seem to critique mechanics of the language that don't come up as often in practice.
by crazygringo | 2025-04-04 13:34:27+00:00
I can only imagine the same kind of sentiments were written about...

Electricity. Airplanes. Sailing ships. The cotton gin. The telegraph.

I, for one, am not bored. I continue to be amazed. AI has massively increased my productivity and massively decreased my frustration.

If you're bored, that's a "you" problem. Find other places to hang out if you want to avoid conversation about it.
by Nursie | 2025-04-04 13:34:28+00:00
Because it is. Something I heard on BBC Radio 4 recently is that everywhere in Britain that's outside of London is now poorer than any given state in the US.

Partly this is because of the myopic policies of the coalition and then conservative governments, which didn't invest in growth and what seems like a blindingly obvious consequence of this is that there was then no growth.

> Britain’s houses are cramped, ancient and in the wrong places

Ain't that the truth. And actually you're better off getting the ancient ones because they're less cramped.

I think I agree quite a lot with this article, as someone now watching from overseas - something needs to be done as the state just seems to soak up ever more money for ever less benefit to the average person. Things are getting worse and more expensive over there. Time to change tack and at least have them get better if it's going to cost more!
by krisoft | 2025-04-04 13:34:33+00:00
> You can honestly just detect if it’s a meal and return 600 cals.

That's ridiculous. What signal would that provide to the user? Let's say someone who is eating double the portions they should be eating. How will this hypothetical app help them figure that out?

> For most people the simple fact that they become aware of what they eat and think about their food in an ongoing basis will lead them to loose Weight.

And you think people will " become aware of what they eat" by shooting a picture of their food with an app which always say "600 cal"? I don't think you thought this through.
by latexr | 2025-04-04 13:34:37+00:00
> I hope Americans still have the faith they used to regarding Apple.

I hope the opposite. Faith is exploitable and leads to complacency and accepting excuses. I hope Americans do not have faith in Apple and that will either make them work harder to earn and keep that trust, or that it’ll lead to the mask coming down. Having trust in someone covertly deceiving you looks like the worst possible outcome.
by Trasmatta | 2025-04-04 13:34:43+00:00
> I believe you may have some reading comprehension problem with what they laid out?

Why the personal attack?

The top level comment didn't claim that it would solve the water problem, but that it would solve some apparent problem with Utahns but being able to buy alfalfa. Now another commentor is saying that it'll solve the water problem by putting farmers out of business. Is there a local unmet need for alfalfa?
by ajross | 2025-04-04 13:34:53+00:00
And I'm just saying that there are no lemons here. Empoverishing Utah farmers does nothing to fix their aquifer, period. They'll just be forced into less lucrative crops, and potentially into techniques that are more short-term and less protective of long term resources like water. Look at aquifer management elsewhere in the world. Are the poor countries doing a better job? Exactly.
by techpineapple | 2025-04-04 13:35:07+00:00
I read history. Doom and Gloom is kind of the natural state of the world. People have been much less certain about the future in the past.

Also, an economist might cheerily remind you, that you may lose your job and family and everything you care about, creative destruction suggests that the world will be better for people living 50 years from now. The Industrial Revolution didn’t ruin society and end all jobs, in fact it made it all better!
by alabastervlog | 2025-04-04 13:35:39+00:00
Pretty much the entire suite of 1st party Apple programs are my favorite in their categories, across platforms.

Their "office" apps remind me of the lightweight non-LibreOffice options on Linux, like Gnumeric and Abiword, but better integrated, less janky, and I've never once seen any of them crash. I like that I can forget I even have them open in the background, they're so light. Which should be the case for practically everything given how powerful modern computers are, but, unfortunately, Electron exists.
by mpweiher | 2025-04-04 13:35:50+00:00
No. What is not allowed is calls for genocide ("From the river to the sea") and support for terrorist organizations.

And yes, if you are a guest in a country, supporting genocide and terrorism can get you deported.

But the police has been extremely lax in enforcement. These protests still basically always have these characteristics and there is no action by the police.

It is pathetic.
by rchaud | 2025-04-04 13:36:54+00:00
> it will be absorbed into a more Asia-dominated culture in much he was Asian culture was subsumed into western for the past couple of hundred years.

Was Asian culture dominated by the west to any significant degree? Perhaps in countries like India where the legal and parliamentary system installed by the British remained intact for a long time post-independence.

Elsewhere in East and Southeast Asia, the legal systems, education, cultural traditions, and economic philosophies have been very different from the "west", i.e. post-WWII US and Western Europe.

The biggest sign of this is how they developed their own information networks, infrastructure and consumer networking devices. Europe had many of these regional champions themselves (Phillips, Nokia, Ericsson, etc) but now outside of telecom infrastructure, Europe is largely reliant on American hardware and software.
by Spooky23 | 2025-04-04 13:36:54+00:00
CIOs have a bias to be wimps. It's easier to kick the can down the road.

I work with alot of orgs that have these things, both directly and from a association/conference perspective - it's starting to change because the new CIOs didn't grow up with mainframes, and are finding themselves with no alternatives other than expensive and increasingly ineffective contracts to operate these things. 1990 was 35 years ago, the old guys are dead - the can has been kicked off a cliff.
by goda90 | 2025-04-04 13:37:02+00:00
The Internet was the greatest tool in human history and it has lead to all sorts of issues. Misinformation at amazing scale that has undone lots of social progress that was made in the 20th century and 2000s. It has driven the greatest wealth disparities ever seen. It has become a harmful addiction for millions of people.

That's not to say the Internet hasn't caused good things to happen, but to ignore the bad things is counterproductive. Maybe it's ok to slow down and take a step back to make sure we're not doing more bad than good.
by wepple | 2025-04-04 13:37:57+00:00
I mostly agree, because most proof-of-concepts don’t make it very far, and LLM assisted dev is really strong for that kind of low-barriers experimentation.

The problem is that if you build quick n dirty, but then end up reaching success; you’re in for a bad time or a rewrite. This is where the above example of a single algorithm departs from a whole stack.

Further, one bad “hello world” on a google/apple/amazon domain can make the front page of the NYTimes
by jmathai | 2025-04-04 13:38:12+00:00
I don't agree with everything on this channel but Gary's Economics does a good job articulating a perspective that the lowered quality of life is directly related to growing wealth inequality.

Gary's angle is mostly based on wealth being a zero sum game. I think new wealth does get created but I agree that the vast majority of wealth is existing assets and their growth probably dwarfs any net new wealth creation.

Some links:

Gary's Economics on Youtube - whether or not you agree, he articulates his economic view: https://www.youtube.com/@garyseconomics

This podcast where Gary debates with Daniel Priestly who has opposing views. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4yohVh4qcas
by deltarholamda | 2025-04-04 13:38:12+00:00
I compare it to something like PEDs or even painkillers. These too are a fact of life, but going down that road makes a lot of decisions for you.

AI in certain hands will be fine. In other hands it will be a disaster for the person that uses it, because they will not perform the reps they need to really be able to think. Believing a computer is a magic box that gives answers is not great, it's adjacent to "believe and do what the computer tells you".
by crazygringo | 2025-04-04 13:38:58+00:00
It gives me better answers on most things than my actual PhD friends do. So... yeah?

The funny thing is, it's somewhat less useful for certain business stuff, because so much of that is private within corporations. But the stuff you learn in a PhD program is all published. And it's pretty phenomenal at distilling that information to answer any specific question.

Multiple times a week I run into an obscure term or concept in a paper that isn't defined well or doesn't seem to make sense. I ask AI and it explains it to me in a minute. Yes, it's basically exactly like asking a PhD.
by api | 2025-04-04 13:39:13+00:00
Seems like one of the dangers of empire is that losing it, which is inevitable, leads to a hard-to-shake condition of feeling like a has-been society. It makes it hard to just be a good nation, a good place to live.

I fear the same thing is coming for the USA as it, inevitably, loses its standing as the world's sole great superpower (which it only had for maybe 20 years at most!). We could easily get stuck in a permanent cycle of demagogue after demagogue promising to, well, make us "great again."

You see it in individuals too. The root of the word celebrity is celebrate. Make someone a celebrity and put them on a pedestal, and it often ruins them forever. It's a fickle thing. When they inevitably go back to being just a regular person, the effect is often to leave the person permanently feeling like a has-been. They flail around for the rest of their lives trying to recapture something that is fleeting instead of enjoying the fact that (1) they achieved something few people achieve and (2) they have the rest of their lives ahead of them.

Success is more psychologically dangerous than failure.

There's a saying: "whom god wishes to destroy, he first makes mad." I think a better version is "whom god wishes to destroy, he first raises up."
by Nursie | 2025-04-04 13:39:20+00:00
IR35 is not really about the working class though is it? It's about the professional class of contractors, tv presenters etc, who at various times were doing things that looked suspiciously like regular jobs, but somehow were paying a lot less tax.

I agree the implementation of IR35 is an absolute, grade-A clusterfuck, and leaves workers having to do things like buy IR35 insurance, and make in/out determinations themselves, only for HMRC to come up with new ways to try and classify them as 'managed service companies', or a myriad other ways to undermine the entire sector, such that financial ruin can be dangled over people's heads like the sword of damocles...

But working class? Pull the other one!
by duxup | 2025-04-04 13:39:39+00:00
>I was kind of being a little bit sarcastic, but I guess everyone received it somewhat well, and I just kind of went with it

Is this just based on some guy's sarcastic LinkedIn post and then transitions to just a regular story about the job market?

And then later:

>But it had the desired effect: helping him stand out.

But actually:

>While De La Rosa is still looking for a full-time staff position, he's gotten contract work in the meantime.

wtf? It didn't seem to do the thing at all ...
by imglorp | 2025-04-04 13:39:42+00:00
Faith what now? Yes, it's decent product but...

It's a $3T company. It got there by extracting the maximum possible from customers, app developers, and labor. They are well known for exploiting offshore workers [1] many times over. They force customers to upgrade off working hardware. They force customers to buy multiple devices when one could do the job. There are monopoly complaints world over. Customers who are happy with this have Stockholm Syndrome.

https://www.business-humanrights.org/en/latest-news/china-ap...
by pjc50 | 2025-04-04 13:39:43+00:00
Funny, because the high costs of energy and transport are .. due to lack of investment. A vicious circle.

Blocking green energy investment is the biggest area of frustration. You cannot demand to never see a pylon and then turn round and complain about your electricity bills. The press/public are fundamentally unserious about this. I got mildly radicalized when I read that someone was trying to block an offshore connection using the presence of "grade 2 listed concrete anti-tank cubes" on the beach.

Edit: example of listed cubes https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1...
by mc32 | 2025-04-04 13:40:31+00:00
I don't think best minds ever implied empathy or even should.

Best, to me, means people who are the top of their specialty, whether it be mathematics, astrophysics, rocketry, economics, business, politics, pedagogy, archeology, etc. People with unnerving dedication and pursuit of knowledge to advance whatever their specialty is. It could be the marketing most of us loathe but it can also be any of the above and more and only a few pursuits only tangentially imply empathy.
by feraloink | 2025-04-04 13:40:41+00:00
You're referring to the Space Weather Prediction Research Center website, yes? I just checked the Newsroom for NOAA SWPC. There was nothing mentioned. I also visited their social media at https://x.com/nwsswpc and https://www.facebook.com/NWSSWPC/ Nothing there either; so far, so good.

NOAA Office of Space Weather Observations news https://www.nesdis.noaa.gov/news-events/search-news?combine=... didn't list any changes either. I hope you don't lose access on Saturday morning.
by potato3732842 | 2025-04-04 13:40:42+00:00
I wonder how many of these check and balance systems that were created once but have grown so big they're now more of a ball and chain than the problem they were intended to mitigate.

Environmental impact assessments, engineer stamps, etc, etc, for minor projects that wind up prescribing some petty stormwater solution which adds up to more cost than if the Taj Mahal of stormwater solutions had just been fired from the hip in the general direction of the problem. Graft reducing procurement processes that have grown over time to cost more to run on an annualized basis than the graft they were intended to prevent.

At least if we took best guesses when implementing solutions to ancillary problems and awarded contracts based on favor trading at least we'd have the solutions and the stuff to show for it even if the solutions and stuff aren't perfect.