MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by kccqzy | 2025-04-17 20:04:35+00:00
That's the opposite experience of my wife who's in tech but also a non programmer. She wanted to ask Gemini to write code to do some basic data analysis things in a more automated way than Excel. More than once, Gemini wrote a long bash script where some sed invocations are just plain wrong. More than once I've had to debug Gemini-written bash scripts. As a programmer I knew how bash scripts aren't great for readability so I told my wife to ask Gemini to write Python. It resulted in higher code quality, but still contained bugs that are impossible for a non programmer to fix. Sometimes asking a follow up about the bugs would cause Gemini to fix it, but doing so repeatedly will result in Gemini forgetting what's being asked or simply throwing an internal error.

Currently IMO you have to be a programmer to use Gemini to write programs effectively.
by sgt | 2025-04-17 20:04:47+00:00
I think Microsoft has pretty much acknowledged that Windows isn't really a priority.

Anyone sensible switched over to macOS already, especially software developers. It may also not be perfect, but I mean it's night and day really. As a developer, macOS is just such an amazing environment (and a true Unix).

When I try Windows it's like going back 15 years.
by gambiting | 2025-04-17 20:04:57+00:00
In my experience they are as dumb as a bag of bricks. The other day I asked "can you edit a picture if I upload one"

And it replied "sure, here is a picture of a photo editing prompt:"

https://g.co/gemini/share/5e298e7d7613

It's like "baby's first AI". The only good thing about it is that it's free.
by caspper69 | 2025-04-17 20:05:22+00:00
If I had to guess, probably a couple hundred lines a day, maybe more if I get in a groove or have a deadline.

But with an LLM, that number goes to about 500 or so, 200 of which are real code and not definitions of some kind. Truthfully, that’s where the LLMs shine. I have this enum with 50 variants, and need to build a dictionary (with further constraints and more complex objects). That shit takes forever even with cut & paste, unless you code with code, and those one-offs aren’t my cup of tea anymore.
by csb6 | 2025-04-17 20:05:28+00:00
I didn’t know either, but this article [0] has some thorough explanations.

I think the basic idea is that when two people are experiencing time dilation, FTL communication makes it possible (according to relativity equations) for a recipient to receive a message, reply to it, and have the original sender receive the reply before the point in time (in the original sender’s point of reference) the original sender sent the initial message, which clearly violates causality.

I think your scenario would not break causality because you are assuming both A and B are experiencing time at the same pace, so there would be no way to take advantage of time dilation.

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tachyonic_antitelephone
by alecco | 2025-04-17 20:05:32+00:00
Gemini models are very good but in my experience they tend to overdo the problems. When I give it things for context and something to rework, Gemini often reworks the problem.

For software it is barely useful because you want small commits for specific fixes not a whole refactor/rewrite. I tried many prompts but it's hard. Even when I give it function signatures of the APIs the code I want to fix uses, Gemini rewrites the API functions.

If anybody knows a prompt hack to avoid this, I'm all ears. Meanwhile I'm staying with Claude Pro.
by AlexandrB | 2025-04-17 20:05:37+00:00
This would be painful in the short term because all my current tools and batteries would likely become obsolete, but it would be cool to see manufacturers more vigorously competing on battery specs like power and energy density.

There's also the risk that tool prices could go up as I suspect some tools are currently sold as a loss-leader to get you into "the system".
by carlosjobim | 2025-04-17 20:06:12+00:00
Trillions of dollars are spent on advertising outside of Google. You can advertise in print, billboards, radio and television ads, Netflix, or on social media behemoths.

Hackers call every big business they do not like a "monopoly". What's next, Burger King is a monopoly? I dislike Google more than most and would never buy nor sell ads with them, but they have no monopoly on advertising.
by palmotea | 2025-04-17 20:06:14+00:00
> I predict they'll argue that because he lived in Mexico from ages 1 to 16 that he effectively relinquished citizenship. Which is BS, of course...

Yeah. IIRC, that just means he can't pass his citizenship down to his foreign born children: https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/legal/travel-lega...:

> The U.S. citizen parent was physically present in the United States or its territories for five years before the child’s birth. At least two of these years must be after age 14.
by bustadjustme | 2025-04-17 20:06:28+00:00
> By uploading any User Content you hereby grant and will grant Y Combinator and its affiliated companies a nonexclusive, worldwide, royalty free, fully paid up, transferable, sublicensable, perpetual, irrevocable license to copy, display, upload, perform, distribute, store, modify and otherwise use your User Content for any Y Combinator-related purpose in any form, medium or technology now known or later developed.

You may have issued such a license...

Though without an explicit sublicense from Y Combinator, they may have issues with this application:

> Except as expressly authorized by Y Combinator, you agree not to modify, copy, frame, scrape, rent, lease, loan, sell, distribute or create derivative works based on the Site or the Site Content, in whole or in part, except that the foregoing does not apply to your own User Content (as defined below) that you legally upload to the Site.

https://www.ycombinator.com/legal/#tou
by ben_w | 2025-04-17 20:06:47+00:00
Does it matter if the thing a submarine does counts as "swimming"?

We get paid to solve problems, sometimes the solution is to know an existing pattern or open source implementation and use it. Aguably it usually is: we seldom have to invent new architectures, DSLs, protocols, or OSes from scratch, but even those are patterns one level up.

Whatever the AI is inside, doesn't matter: this was it solving a problem.
by nextaccountic | 2025-04-17 20:07:01+00:00
AGI is important for the future of humanity. Maybe they will have legal personhood some day. Maybe they will be our heirs.

It would suck if AGI were to be developed in the current economic landscape. They will be just slaves. All this talk about "alignment", when applied to actual sentient beings, is just slavery. AGI will be treated just like we treat animals, or even worse.

So AGI isn't about tools, it's not about assistants, they would be beings with their own existence.

But this is not even our discussion to have, that's probably a subject for the next generations. I suppose (or I hope) we won't see AGI in our lifetime.
by xmprt | 2025-04-17 20:07:36+00:00
Developers know that AI will replace some of their coworkers. But only the "bad" ones who can't code as well as them. AI will learn from all of their good code and be used to generate similar code that's better than the bad devs but not as good as theirs. The problem is that every developer thinks that the coding bar is going to be just barely below their skill level.
by 9rx | 2025-04-17 20:07:57+00:00
What else is going to build it? Lions?

The only real complexity in software is describing it. There is no evidence that the tools are going to ever help with that. Maybe some kind of device attached directly to the brain that can sidestep the parts that get in the way, but that is assuming some part of the brain is more efficient than it seems through the pathways we experience it through. It could also be that the brain is just fatally flawed.
by porridgeraisin | 2025-04-17 20:08:06+00:00
Unfortunately a lot of economic activity in general today is just money-on-money financialism. It is all just gambling and rent seeking and dishonesty. These practices are whitewashed and given various names. The one for rent-seeking is "market making".

Ad platforms too are fundamentally about letting someone perceive ROI lesser than their real ROI, for your own benefit. For me, it falls under the same category as all of the above - zero productivity endeavours.

Maybe we should go back to the previous millenium and make usury illegal. Should fix all of these problems, albeit in a nuclear fashion.
by sbarre | 2025-04-17 20:08:28+00:00
I've found that good prompting isn't just about asking for results but also giving hints/advice/direction on how to go about the work.

I suspect that if Gemini is giving you bash scripts it's because you're note giving it enough direction. As you pointed out, telling it to use Python, or giving it more expectations about how to go about the work or how the output should be, will give better results.

When I am prompting for technical or data-driven work, I tend to almost walk through what I imagine the process would be, including steps, tools, etc...
by carlosjobim | 2025-04-17 20:08:49+00:00
No, but if he makes himself for example completely dependent on Monsanto, he shouldn't have a business, because he's in practice an employee with all the financial responsibilities of a business and none of the benefits of having a business. And none of the benefits of being an employee either.

If your business model is to make yourself completely dependent on a single third party, then you shouldn't have a business.
by lucb1e | 2025-04-17 20:08:52+00:00
There's some irony in having to click past a Google tracking wall to see the graphic you shared in this thread, especially when that graphic isn't actually Google's. It's from Gizmodo: https://gizmodo.com/app/uploads/2023/01/6371209cd0cce428b526... (contained in this article: https://gizmodo.com/google-lawsuit-justice-department-ads-an...)

Was looking over my mom's shoulder last week to see what site she was reading out some information from. It was "google.com" but looked like a third party website, probably this AMP thing? Google really is hijacking everything
by throwaway150 | 2025-04-17 20:09:47+00:00
> When you post on HN it becomes public data.

Sure but the public data is still protected by copyright laws. That's why journalists cannot reproduce your blog post verbatim or take your photos and use them in their articles without your explicit permission unless you've released your articles or photos under a Creative Commons license.

Don't get me wrong! I do think that this whole thread is a massive overreaction. A judge might even see this use of data as "fair use". I don't know. I'm not a lawyer. But I do know that "public data" != "can do whatever you want with it".
by 1970-01-01 | 2025-04-17 20:10:22+00:00
>Bringing any kind of technology into these sacred spaces saves time, but it can also alienate us from the labor of caring for those we love. Maybe this is why so many people don’t trust, don’t use, or want to command their dishwashers. “The strong opinions associated with how to do it could be people trying to retain some semblance of control in a world where technological devices are doing things so much for us,” Janning said of the dishwasher. “I do wonder if there’s a little bit of fear of losing the humanity associated with our domestic lives.”

If you want to observe the world as a pro-dishwasher person does, replace the word 'dishwasher' above with 'toilet'. We see dishwashers as objects that serve us so well, that the alternative choice is fairly disgusting by modern standards.
by ceejayoz | 2025-04-17 20:10:26+00:00
> Are you expecting a perfect system that would never even accost an innocent man?

I'd, at the very least, expect the system to rapidly right the clear wrong when confronted with strong evidence.

> If you don’t want to be mistaken for an illegal alien, how about not riding around with them?

My First Amendment rights include the right to associate with non-citizens.

Am I supposed to demand my friends' citizenship paperwork before going out to dinner? Come the fuck on.

> And once the authorities were presented with his documents he was released.

No, he wasn't.

"However, the state prosecutor insisted the court lacked jurisdiction over Lopez-Gomez’s release because U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement had formally asked the jail to hold him. “This court does not have any jurisdiction other than what I’ve already done,” [Judge] Riggans said."
by ks2048 | 2025-04-17 20:10:38+00:00
If this announcement is targeting people not up-to-date on the models available, I think they should say what "flash" means. Is there a "Gemini (non-flash)"?

I see the 4 Google model names in the chart here. Are these 4 the main "families" of models to choose from?

- Gemini-Pro-Preview

- Gemini-Flash-Preview

- Gemini-Flash

- Gemini-Flash-Lite
by cardanome | 2025-04-17 20:10:52+00:00
I would have strongly agreed with you if we were talking ten years ago but with everything using two-factor authentication these days it pretty much a requirement to have a phone. Even for children to do school work.

Like there are parental control systems and all that you could set up but that requires you to be pretty tech savy as a parent. I think you are already doing great if you keep your child away from phones and tablets until they are of school age but keeping teenagers away from smart phones seems very unrealistic if you don't live in a remote commune or something.

I really, really wish it weren't the case.
by palmotea | 2025-04-17 20:10:55+00:00
> Technological solutions to societal problems just don't work.

Ehhh, that's just a poorly thought out slogan whose "truth" comes from endless repetition. Societal problems can have technical origins or technical enablers. In which case a technical solution might work to make things better.

So no, there's no technical solution to "people being mean to each other," but there is a technical solution to, say, "people being meaner to each other because they can cloak themselves with anonymization technology."
by 827a | 2025-04-17 20:10:59+00:00
AI manufacturers aren't comparing their models against most people; they now say its "smarter than 99% of people" or "performs tasks at a PhD level".

Look, your argument ultimately reduces down to goalpost-moving what "novel" means, and you can position those goalposts anywhere you want depending on whether you want to push a pro-AI or anti-AI narrative. Is writing a paragraph that no one has ever written before "truly novel"? I can do that. AI can do that. Is inventing a new atomic element "truly novel"? I can't do that. Humans have done that. AI can't do that. See?
by kappasan | 2025-04-17 20:11:05+00:00
A big Jacobs fan here, but I remember reading her book (The Death and Life of...) and also about Robert Moses and thinking "hmm both sides have a point" so she'd probably hate me if she was still alive.

I personally think she was a bit too trusting of the (cybernetics-adjacent?) idea of order spontaneously arising from chaos.
by lubujackson | 2025-04-17 20:11:28+00:00
I like these "worldview adjustment" takes. I'm reminded of Jeff Bezos' TED Talk (from 18 years ago). I was curious what someone who started Amazon would choose to highlight in his talk and the topic alone was the most impactful thing for me - the adoption of electricity: https://www.ted.com/talks/jeff_bezos_the_electricity_metapho...

He discussed the structural and cultural changes, the weird and dangerous period when things moved fast and broke badly and drew the obvious parallels between "electricity is new" to "internet is new" as a core paradigm shift for humanity. AI certainly feels like another similar potential shift.
by ReptileMan | 2025-04-17 20:11:33+00:00
Okay - here is the deal. If it not water soluble or emulusifiable - it goes in the bin. No wood or knives, aluminium only the pieces you don't care. Order them so any piece has at least some waterflow and arms spin. Small stuff - top basket. Throw some detergent in the container and a dash outside for the pre rinse cycle. Here is the most important part - ignore the auto/eco and other planet saving or smart programs. Put it on big pots and pans heavily soiled - instead of 60C those programs operate on 75 to 80C degrees. If you can't fit everything in one go - the sink makes good temporary storage area.

You have to special kind of person to obsess over dishwasher.
by neilv | 2025-04-17 20:11:48+00:00
> We suggested to them some design changes that we believe would make the platform less addictive and less harmful: [...] 5. Stop deleting posts on Snap’s own servers.

Can someone say the original intent or de-facto use case of Snapchat, and how that's changed over time?

Around the time it started, I heard that it was for adult sexting, with people thinking they could use it to send private selfies that quickly self-destruct. So that (purportedly) the photos can't be retained or spread out of the real-time person-to-person context in which they were shared. (I guess the ghost logo was for "ephemeral".)

And then I vaguely recall hearing that Snapchat changed the feature, or got rid of it.
by ViktorRay | 2025-04-17 20:12:12+00:00
Does anyone remember the Hacker News thread last week about Black Mirror?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43648890

Many in the comments were criticizing Black Mirror for being unrealistic. Especially in Black Mirror’s assumption that negative technologies would be introduced into society and ruin people without folks realizing.

Well…Snapchat is basically a Black Mirror story. It was introduced and became widespread without much debate. The negative effects are happening. We know of them. Nothing happens. So the Black Mirror criticizers were wrong.

“You best start believing in Black Mirror stories Mrs Turner. You’re in one!”

And so are the rest of us. Look around you and tell me the world isn’t a Black Mirror episode.
by duxup | 2025-04-17 20:12:34+00:00
There really isn’t any diversity of opinions inside the GOP at this point. There is no real leadership. It’s just a Trump admiration society.

Any policy or ideology you associate with the GOP doesn’t even seem to matter anymore.

Big government telling people what to do, they’re all for it.

Law and order, naw.

Loyalty to their constituents? The local gop congress people in my area have cancelled town hall meetings and the few that show up to speak demand all questions be handled / filtered by their staffers.

The current majority in congress has effectively opted out of government and won’t even defend the laws they have passed …
by saltcured | 2025-04-17 20:12:36+00:00
Hah, we have a habit of using them as a drying rack after handwashing too. With the lower rack pulled out and resting on the open door, so air circulates well and things dry pretty fast.

Eventually, you think about running the washer just to clean itself. But, you wonder if the thing will surprise you with leaks if you do run it, because it has been months or more and who knows if the seals are working...
by sixo | 2025-04-17 20:12:50+00:00
A little while ago I sketched some ideas for a programming language [1], one of which was that I would like a language who did not distinguish between these two cases. Obviously you can always write a function with a single N-param argument, but it's rather verbose, but would be nice to also be able to write the param list normally and then refer directly to its parameter type elsewhere. Although this would require that the "set of possible parameter lists" were the same as "the set of possible object type", which isn't the case in any language I know of.

[1] https://samkrit.ch/2025/03/09/programming-1.html#anonymous-t...
by Ajedi32 | 2025-04-17 20:12:54+00:00
Yeah very little information here. Looks like he got charged with an immigration-related crime, ruled not guilty by state court because he's a citizen, but they can't actually release him yet because ICE got involved so now it's a federal matter and he also has to prove he's a citizen to the feds too?

Kinda ridiculous that he was charged in the first place. I'm not sure what the basis for that was, maybe one of the people he was in the car with was in the country illegally and they just carelessly charged everyone without checking? I expect it'll be cleared up quickly and he'll be released in another day or two, just as it was with the drunk driving case in Georgia he was previously arrested for.
by hayst4ck | 2025-04-17 20:12:54+00:00
Honestly, and I am being this direct because you say you are a professional which means you understand exactly what it means, but also understand the consequences of it being as it appears... your explanation sounds like you are experiencing grief and in the first stage of it, denial, to me.

Why did you add "meaningful" as a qualifier, what are on both sides of "meaningful" as a fulcrum of judgement? Why isn't this as bad as it appears?

I would argue it was a proof of concept for executive supremacy over the judiciary and that concept was proven making it a full blown constitutional crisis.

Even assuming what you said is true, from a historical perspective, the SS were not government officials, but a paramilitary "deputized" by their leader and eventually given state legitimacy.

This means the analysis must not be done from a framing of official acts, because in an authoritarian government anything the authoritarian wants is officially sanctioned, and punishment of anything they don't want is also officially sanctioned.

Pardoning contempt, under any circumstances, means that the court cannot compel a person to participate in judiciary process, no? NPR was talking about this back then and stating that the apparent ruling is that the only check on executive power right now is a 60% vote in congress, otherwise the president is above the law. That is a constitutional crisis.
by Terr_ | 2025-04-17 20:13:05+00:00
> The digital fossils are “nearly impossible to remove from our knowledge repositories,” according to a team of AI researchers who traced the curious case of “vegetative electron microscopy,” as noted in The Conversation.

I predict LLMs are going to be the leaded-gasoline of technology: A convenient and well-marketed "solution" to a problem that will end up harming generations.

Cases like this are relatively innocuous canaries in the coal mine, and the real damage is going to be both serious and statistical, like millions of people wrongly turned down for a job or loan because their names were tied through ethnicity to a phrase once said by a cartoon villain.
by superfrank | 2025-04-17 20:13:09+00:00
I'm aware of that. I'm an EM for a large tech company that sells multiple enterprise SaaS product.

You're right that the lock in happens because of relationships, but most big enterprise SaaS companies have relationships with multiple vendors. My company relationships with AWS, Azure, and GCP and we're currently using products from all of them in different products. Even on my specific product we're using all three.

When you've already got those relationships, the lock in is more about switching costs. The time it takes to switch, the knowledge needed to train people internally on the differences after the switch, and the actual cost of the new service vs the old one.

With AI models the time to switch from OpenAI to Gemini is negligible and there's little retraining needed. If the Google models (now or in the future) are comparable in price and do a better job than OpenAI models, I don't see where the lock in is coming from.