MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by seanhunter | 2025-04-24 08:48:21+00:00
It blows my mind how reliably AMD shoots itself in the foot. What we want isn’t that hard:

1) Support your graphics cards on linux using kernel drivers that you upstream. All of them. Not just a handful - all the ones you sell from say 18 months ago till today.

2) Make GPU acceleration actually work out of the box for pytorch and tensorflow. Not some special fork, patched version that you “maintain” on your website, the tip of the main branch for both of those libraries should just compile out of the box and give people gpu-accelerated ML.

This is table stakes but it blows my mind that they keep making press releases and promises like this that things are on the roadmap without doing thing one and unfucking the basic dev experience so people can actually use their GPUs for real work.

How it actually is: 1) Some cards work with rocm, some cards work with one of the other variations of BS libraries they have come up with over the years. Some cards work with amdgpu but many only work with proprietary kernel drivers which means if you don’t use precisely one of the distributions and kernel versions that they maintain you are sool.

2) Nothing whatsoever builds out of the box and when you get it to build almost nothing runs gpu accelerated. For me, pytorch requires a special downgrade, a python downgrade and a switch to a fork that AMD supposedly maintain although it doesn’t compile for me and when I managed to beat it into a shape where it compiled it wouldn’t run GPU accelerated even though games use the GPU just fine. I have a GPU that is supposedly current, so they are actively selling it, but can I use it? Can I bollocks. Ollama won’t talk to my GPU even though it supposedly works with ROCm. It only works with ROCm with some graphics cards. Tensorflow similar story when I last tried it although admittedly I didn’t try as hard as pytorch.

Just make your shit work so that people can use it. It really shouldn’t be that hard. The dev experience with NVidia is a million times better.
by rikkert | 2025-04-24 08:50:10+00:00
I actually followed this specific elemental diet for two weeks to treat my hydrogen SIBO, unfortunately without success. I would not recommend this to anybody unless it's absolutely your last chance. I was constantly hungry, cold and lethargic. The shakes taste /terrible/ so I wouldn't really call it palatable. I shiver just thinking about it. I'm sure it works for some people, and I'm happy for them.
by readbeard | 2025-04-24 08:50:11+00:00
Part of the problem is that Monotype has a bit of a monopoly in the upper segment of the market though right? I know they're not the only players, but it feels like they've vacuumed up enough small, successful foundries that they now control enough of the market that they can get away with the kind of aggressive behavior that wouldn't be tenable in a healthier, more competitive marketplace.

From Wikipedia [0]

> Via acquisitions including Linotype GmbH, International Typeface Corporation, Bitstream, FontShop, URW, Hoefler & Co., Fontsmith, Fontworks [ja] and Colophon Foundry, the company has gained the rights to major font families including Helvetica, ITC Franklin Gothic, Optima, ITC Avant Garde, Palatino, FF DIN and Gotham. It also owns MyFonts, used by many independent font design studios.[3] The company is owned by HGGC, a private equity firm.

For those less familiar with them, those are BIG names, and the acquisition of them could perhaps aptly be compared, for instance, to Disney's acquisitions of properties like Lucasfilm and Marvel.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monotype_Imaging
by rwmj | 2025-04-24 08:51:09+00:00
Some of my colleagues have been working on the multiqueue I/O support for a few years now. It's only ~ 10 years ago that qemu handled all I/O on a single thread (using coroutines). Getting from there to now where I/O can be handled by multiple threads, hence multiple host cores, has been a huge task in a code base that's so large and over 20 years old.

Talk from Kevin Wolf about this: https://kvm-forum.qemu.org/2023/Multiqueue_in_the_block_laye...
by namaria | 2025-04-24 08:51:14+00:00
You can't compound 760 1600s pounds for 400 years and get to a dollar amount either. The whole exercise is spurious. That is beside the point.

What I am saying is that asking an LLM to do interest calculation is absurd in itself, let well alone the absurd setting of trying to calculate interest rates across 4 centuries and different denominations.

It would be much more rational, in seeking to understand the growth of the Harvard endowment, to search for factual information about its modern history is my point. And if you wanna do abstract financial modelling exercises just use spreadsheets. Either way LLMs are a hilariously bad fit.

780 compounded by 3% per year for ~400 years is about 100 million by the way. So ignoring all else, off by at least two orders of magnitude.
by instagib | 2025-04-24 08:51:31+00:00
Some countries have a high number of scams. You need to physically go to a bank, verify multiple forms of id, facial scan, get their app with facial recognition, and hope your face does not deviate when traveling. A relative gained 20lbs traveling and facial recognition failed. They had to ask a friend to pay their bills and go back to their home country to re-verify everything. Some companies require specific apps for authentication too.
by anarticle | 2025-04-24 08:51:57+00:00
> I'm an advocate of exploration and science, and in the modern world we have effective automation. There is NO need to send people to Mars, absolutely not in any large number.

Can you write this with a straight face? This feels like the opportunity of a life time for someone who wants to push the envelope on what is possible. Yes it will be expensive, but the tech and lessons we learn will surely be worth more. Consider all the developments from the Apollo program. This level of pessimism always shocks me, shouldn’t we rise to the challenge?
by sofixa | 2025-04-24 08:52:40+00:00
> No, just the Baltics. There will be no attack on Polish or Finnish mainland and so would these countries reciprocate only on the Baltic theatre. Neither Poland nor Finland will commit all their resources to defending the Baltics exposing the rest of their border

Ah, so your premise is even wronger. You're making a Hitler style assumption of a limited war.

If Russia attacks the Baltics, Poland and Finland will join for sure. Poland will attack and probably conquer Kaliningrad (which is more isolated than the Baltic is), establishing firm lines of communication with the Baltic states. They will also advance wherever it makes sense in Russia/Belarus, including Ukraine for an environment if they think it makes sense.

Finland can attack towards St Petersbourg. I don't know if they would, but it would be the main contribution they could make.

As for you being right before, past performance is not indicative of future success. Just because you correctly identified Putin's intentions once doesn't mean you understand the Russian army and what it's capable of.

And it is not capable of taking on Poland. Kaliningrad is isolated and hard to supply right now, let alone in a war.

And you're also talking about a window of 1-2 years, but you're forgetting Macron and Starmer.
by b112 | 2025-04-24 08:52:46+00:00
We purposefully decided not to settle there socially, yet we have settled there permanently with research and military stations.

Just as we will with Mars.

And yes we grow things there, even if just green onions and herbs.

Not to mention the reason for this isn't that it is insurmountable, merely that far better land is close by.

100 years is beyond pessimistic. We could easily have settled Mars with 1970s tech.
by mft_ | 2025-04-24 08:52:56+00:00
But why, indeed.

Years ago, I met someone (through another friend) who worked in CS, and was super into digital privacy. He was the first person I knew to run a Linux phone, for privacy reasons. He tried to pay for as much as possible by cash, and maintained his accounts manually on paper. The only way to contact him was by text message (intermittently, unreliably) or via a specific client using the Matrix protocol. My friend and I both installed the client to be able to contact him and maintain a friendship.

After a few months, we both lost contact with him simultaneously: something was updated in the client, and it was impossible to re-establish contact with him without a F2F interaction (="privacy"). Sadly, he was also uncontactable by text message. For both of us, the friendship simply ceased to exist.

My reflection is that such things --as with many things in life-- are on a spectrum. At some point on the spectrum, as you head towards the extreme end, your position on that spectrum (be it voluntary or --as with disease-- involuntary) start to impair your ability to live (what might be considered) a normal functional life. I'd also hazard that moving towards that extreme end of the spectrum beings increasing small gains, coupled with increasingly large downsides.

I'm not suggesting that running a pure Linux phone is extreme, but it's definitely in the middle zone where there are definite downsides.
by farrelle25 | 2025-04-24 08:52:59+00:00
> I used whisper to transcribe nearly every "episode" of the Love Line syndicated radio show from 1997-2007 or so.

Yes - second this. I found 'Whisper' great for that type of scenario as well.

A local monastery had about 200 audio talks (mp3). Whisper converted them all to text and GPT did a small 'smoothing' of the output to make it readable. It was about half a million words and only took a few hours.

The monks were delighted - they can distribute their talks in small pamplets / PDFs now and is extra income for the community.

Years ago as a student I did some audio transcription manually and something similar would have taken ages...
by UnmappedStack | 2025-04-24 08:56:33+00:00
Umm that's probably the extreme end of OSDev which I likely wouldn't be able to do, at least not for a driver you can buy. Qemu's emulated GPU is documented decently and could be possible, but things like nvidia GPUs are badly documented (and until recently, the docs were fully closed source) - even Linux has issues with this (and I actually see a few other hobby OS devs who just use Linux's GPU drivers in the end). There aren't a lot of things I've marked as near impossible but writing a genuinely decent GPU driver for a common GPU isn't really something I imagine I'll ever be able to do sadly.
Ask HN: Built my own license key system, now facing the pricing dilemma
by mintdev | 2025-04-24 08:57:05+00:00
Like many developers here, I've wrestled with the "build vs. buy" decision for various infrastructure pieces. Recently, I needed a license key system for a project. Looking at options like keygen.sh, I found the pricing models... well, let's just say they felt steep, especially for smaller projects or indie devs.

Driven by that frustration (and maybe a bit of NIH syndrome), I decided to roll my own: https://keymint.dev

It handles key generation, validation, and some basic management. It scratched my own itch, and frankly, building it was a fun challenge, touching on aspects seen in many HN discussions over the years – crypto security (Generating Cryptographically Secure License Keys), management (Ask HN: How do you manage license keys?), and the general complexities involved.

Now comes the ironic part. After sinking significant time into making it robust, I'm considering putting a price tag on it to support ongoing development and hosting. And suddenly, I feel like I'm becoming the very thing I initially reacted against.

Looking through past HN threads about license keys confirms this isn't a simple problem:

* There's a clear need (many "Ask HN" posts on how to manage/generate keys). * Security and avoiding cracked/forged keys is paramount (*Man charged for selling forged license keys*, *Pentester found Steam bug*). * Reliance on third-party services can be risky (*Tell HN: DigitalRiver/MyCommerce stopped paying vendors*). * Monetization itself is a recurring question for tool creators (*Ask HN: (How) Should I monetize this?*).

So, before I go down the path of potentially becoming "another expensive licensing service," I wanted to put keymint.dev out to the HN community.

I'd genuinely appreciate it if some of you would be willing to kick the tires:

* Does it solve a real problem for you? * How does it compare (functionally, usability-wise) to other tools you've used or considered? * What features are missing? * And yes, eventually – what *would* feel like fair pricing, avoiding the "outrageous" levels that pushed me to build this in the first place?

You can sign up and try it out at: https://keymint.dev

I'm here to answer questions and looking forward to any feedback – harsh or kind! I want to see if this thing I built actually provides value before figuring out how to sustain it without repeating the cycle I disliked.

Thanks!
by disgruntledphd2 | 2025-04-24 08:57:27+00:00
I don't disagree (apart from the fact that the EU is 27 countries, not one).

Which countries did you spend time in?

I would still maintain that the reason the US is more entreprenuerial right now is because it's easier to get capital (particularly for tech focused businesses). Now, some of that is because of previous tech exits, some of it is culture but to maintain that the differences in capital don't have a large impact is also pretty reductionist.
by genewitch | 2025-04-24 08:58:06+00:00
I don't know reindeer but white tailed deer, possums, raccoons, rabbits, and nocturnal birds don't care how fast you're going. As someone else mentioned, you can be stopped and they'll run into your vehicle.

None of these animals instincts prepared them for the cacophony and lightshow of transportation. Everyone doing 15mph might solve 90% though, but I'll let that be your running platform.
by ang_cire | 2025-04-24 08:58:09+00:00
If you're using those things to do *the core function* of the program you're writing, that's an issue.

SDKs and libraries are there to provide common (as in, used repeatedly, by many) functions that serve as BUILDING BLOCKS.

If you import a library and now your program is complete, then you didn't actually make a useful program, you just made a likely less efficient interface for the library.

BUT ALSO-

SDKs and libraries are *vetted* code. The advantage you are getting isn't just about it having been written for you, it's about the hundreds of hours of human code review, iteration, and thought, that goes into those libraries.

LLM code doesn't have that, so it's not about you benefitting from the knowledge and experience of others, it's purely about reducing personally-typed LoC.

And yes, if you're wholesale copy-pasting major portions of your program from stack overflow, I'd say that's about as bad as copy-pasting from ChatGPT.
by wvh | 2025-04-24 08:58:18+00:00
I don't know what a Hermès is or connotates, but I think the complaint is as much about the artificial and seemingly arbitrary restrictions as opposed to purely the price.

You can try to create a Veblen good out of a digital artifact and play the all or nothing game, but it's proven very hard to restrict something which can be copied at no cost and with no limitations.

When you buy expensive clothes, it would be silly for the seller to try and license them to be only worn on Mondays, or at dress-code events, or based on your taxable income. People are not going to take your "license" seriously, even if you'd have some legal grounds and might well win a legal argument.

I have a great deal of admiration for artists and designers, and I know that creating a multiple-variant typeface with great applicability that's either historically correct or truly innovative is an art form.

This reminds me of Napster-era debates about artists' rights versus distribution.
by robertlagrant | 2025-04-24 08:59:11+00:00
I just had a cool experience with it doing some simple design. It prompted back to me usefully as well.

I can imagine also uploading a component library that this thing then uses the components from, to add styling for higher-fidelity designs, and allow app designers/builders to just use the components built by an internal team (who might also use magic patterns, I suppose).
by disgruntledphd2 | 2025-04-24 09:00:35+00:00
> Ads work even if nobody clicks.

Correct, but those ads (brand) are much, much less common online because Google (first) and Facebook (second) pushed DR advertising, which is what most SMBs and smaller businesses do.

Like, some of this is because they're easier to measure which makes it easier to sell, but lots more of it was due to smaller businesses that couldn't afford brand spending money on something more connected to their business outcomes.

> I have no idea how these ridiculous online gaming things stay in business

Mostly whales. A really small proportion of users spend absurd amounts of money on these games, and much of the competitive games just advertise for free users to get crushed by the whales.
by jl6 | 2025-04-24 09:00:53+00:00
Why should the simplicity of the definition (which, by the way, is what sex means in mammals generally, not just in humans) mean that the testing has to be simple in 100% of cases? I’ve already described cases where it isn’t. That doesn’t change the definition.

Do you think natural phenomena don’t exist or can’t be useful unless there is a simple test to grant you the details?
by ben_w | 2025-04-24 09:01:25+00:00
> I think the cost of mistakes is the major driving force behind where you can adopt tools like these. Generating a picture of a chair with five legs? No big deal. Generating supports for a bridge that'll collapse next week? Big problem

Yes, indeed.

But:

Why can LLMs generally write code that even compiles?

While I wouldn't trust current setups, there's no obvious reason why even a mere LLM cannot be used to explore the design space when the output can be simulated to test its suitability as a solution — even in physical systems, this is already done with non-verbal genetic algorithms.

> LLM is just text prediction, not magic

"Sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic".

Saying "just text prediction" understates how big a deal that is.
by rkangel | 2025-04-24 09:01:26+00:00
I have used Python for a long time for glue scripts, build stuff, test systems etc. and I've always thought it was great. I didn't like using it for larger applications though - when I did, I usually got bitten at some point by some effect of the dynamism (regardless of testing). At scale things became more unworkable.

With the type system my opinion on that has changed. We have a pretty large tooling codebase with protocol stacks, GUI, test automation etc. and it's all very maintainable with the type checking.
by chmod775 | 2025-04-24 09:03:04+00:00
The minimum number of parking that needs to be available per seat/dining area.

https://codelibrary.amlegal.com/codes/plaincity/latest/plain...

Codes like these are the secret sauce of America's asphalt deserts, in which you'll find - by international standards - comparatively large restaurants and stores. Walkable cities tend to gravitate towards smaller equivalents, and more of them.
by scott_w | 2025-04-24 09:03:19+00:00
Semi-related: this type of thing is actually covered in the Site Reliability Engineering book by Google. They highlighted a case of a system that outperformed its SLO, so people depended on it having 100% uptime. They "fixed" this by injecting errors to go closer to their SLA, forcing downstream engineers to deal with the fact that the dependent services would sometimes fail for no reason.

I know it's easier said than done everywhere, just found it to be an interesting parallel.
by casualrandomcom | 2025-04-24 09:03:40+00:00
This blog post is unfair to horseless carriages.

"lack of suspension"

The author did not see the large, outsized, springs that keep the cabin insulated from both the road _and_ the engine.

What was wrong in this design was just that the technology to keep the heavy, vibrating, motor sufficiently insulted from both road and passengers was not available (mainly inflatable tires). Otherwise it was perfectly reasonable, even commendale, because it tried to make-do with what was available.

Maybe the designer can be critizised for not seeing that a wooden frame was not strong enough to hold a steam engine, and maybe that there was no point in making the frame as light as possible when you have a steam engine to push it, but, you know, you learn this by doing.
by optician_owl | 2025-04-24 09:04:20+00:00
It's a terrible post. What it suggests is to turn your head off and follow overly generalised principle. I guess when somebody invent yet another acronym it is a red flag.

Data has its own life cycles in every area it passes through. And it's part of requirements gathering to find those cycles: the dependent systems, the teams, and the questions you need to answer. Mindlessly adding fields won't save you in every situation.

Bonus point: when you start collecting questions while designing your service, you'll discover how mature your colleagues' thinking is.
by doix | 2025-04-24 09:04:21+00:00
> Plenty of incorrect code compiles. It is a very bad sign that people are making comments like "Then the code won't compile".

I interpreted the "hallucination" part as the AI using functions that don't exist. I don't consider that a problem because it's immediately obvious.

Yes, AI can suggest syntactically valid code that does the wrong thing. If it obviously does the wrong thing, then that's not really an issue either because it should be immediately obvious that it's wrong.

The problem is when it suggests something that is syntactically valid and looks like it works but is ever slightly wrong. But in my experience, it's pretty common to come across that stuff like that in "tutorials" as well.

> Yes, rubbish generated by AI. That is the rubbish out there. The stuff written by people is largely good.

I pretty strongly disagree. As soon as it became popular for developers to have a "brand", the amount of garbage started growing. The stuff written before the late 00's was mostly good, but after that the balance began slowly shifting towards garbage. AI definitely increased the rate at which garbage was generated though.
by ltr_ | 2025-04-24 09:04:50+00:00
in the meantime im having lots of fun coding and using AI, reinventing every wheel i can. 0 stress cos i don't do it for money :). I think a lot of people are having a tantrum because programing is not sexy anymore, its getting easier, the bar is lower now , the quality is awful and nobody cares. its like any other boring soul crushing job.

also if you want to see the real cost (at least part of it) of AI coding or the whole fucked up IT industry, go to any mining town in the global south.
by DeborahEmeni_ | 2025-04-24 09:05:38+00:00
thanks for sharing this. really interesting seeing the jupyterhub setup combined with devcontainers. curious how usage went long term. did people keep using it without needing much hand-holding, or was it more of a “power users only” kind of thing?

also appreciate the note on the sister team. i’ve seen the same. lots of energy up front but adoption fizzles when teams don’t prioritize the boring stuff like docs and onboarding
by wvh | 2025-04-24 09:06:06+00:00
I think the fear for those of us who love coding, stability and security, that we are going to be confronted with apples that are rotten on the inside and our work, our love, is going to turn (even more so) into pain. The challenge in computing is that the powers that decide have little overview over the actual quality and longevity of any endeavour.

I work as a consultant assessing other people's code and it's hard not to lose my religion, sort of speak.