MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by vv_ | 2025-04-03 08:02:44+00:00
> The US doesn't have the people to do the actual manufacturing

The core issue is that, historically, experienced workers have passed down their knowledge to new generations, ensuring a steady accumulation of expertise. However, when factories close and seasoned workers retire or move to other fields without training successors, a vast amount of valuable knowledge is lost. Rebuilding this expertise is both difficult and time-consuming. Subsidies will be required to support local production - initially yielding lower-quality or significantly more expensive goods - until the Western world relearns how to manufacture at scale.

Furthermore, if you want to build something, you likely won’t do it by hand. You’ll need machines to automate the process or enable complex material operations. Rebuilding this capability from scratch will take time, as existing manufacturers lack the necessary capacity. Additionally, similar equipment is produced much more cheaply in China, creating another challenge that must be addressed. What’s likely to happen is that Chinese manufacturers will establish companies in the United States that replicate their production facilities elsewhere (e.g. mainland China). They’ll ship in parts, and final assembly will take place in the U.S. This approach allows them to bypass trade restrictions while maintaining cost advantages. I already know of several cases where this is happening.
by veltas | 2025-04-03 08:03:24+00:00
The issue with the current system is it gives a lot of money and power to banks, and finance.

The issue with the proposed system, is that debt is actually a good thing for normal people. For example if you are young, productive, and come from a poor background, then you might buy a house with a mortgage. If debt is more expensive, then you are less likely -- and older people (and rich kids) are more likely -- to be able to afford these houses.

You might say that the current system is unfair, because wealthy people won't need loans and can put their money to work exploiting poor people. But in a system where we redistribute wealth this way, the impact is harshest on the poorest people. The things that are limited in supply and high in demand will immediately go up in price. The things they wish they could buy, and plan long-term, will become unattainable. And I've not even gotten onto how this would affect productivity.

Everyone is focused on how the rich are getting richer. This is inevitable in liberal societies. The goal should instead be to stop the poor getting poorer, and I'm going to need some serious convincing that handing people a CBI, instead of providing debt, is going to actually benefit and not hurt them and the whole economy.
by forgotoldacc | 2025-04-03 08:03:36+00:00
The guys on TV told them the people who supported it were communist and unions are for lazy people and welfare queens. They were told by the people on TV that if they vote against this, then those people will have worse and they'll have it better.

45 minutes down the road was a town with a large black population. When people talked about "those people in (town name)" being lazy or "those people" getting jobs or "those welfare queens" somehow benefiting from anything, everybody knew what they were talking about. It was better to be racist instead of caring about the future of their children

Now, decades later, it's still the same. "Welfare queen" isn't the word that's used much anymore--everyone knows it's used as a substitute for various racial slurs and it's hard to deny it. Instead, they complain about DEI and woke. They replaced the word, but the meaning is the same. They still deny that it's meant to refer to "those people", but they always mention "that" town name when talking about it.
by deaddodo | 2025-04-03 08:03:53+00:00
I wouldn't even bother with this one.

Either 100% not hiring (they've been posting the same role for over two years now) or the post is a misdirect. I applied two years ago when it was "US remote, San Francisco/PST preferred" and was told I wasn't in the "target region" (I was in California), with no follow-up when asking for clarification. I've known associates who've applied since and they've gotten similar vague/odd rejections.
by 01100011 | 2025-04-03 08:04:17+00:00
People are sticking up for LLMs here and that's cool.

I wonder, what if you did the opposite? Take a project of moderate complexity and convert it from code back to natural language using your favorite LLM. Does it provide you with a reasonable description of the behavior and requirements encoded in the source code without losing enough detail to recreate the program? Do you find the resulting natural language description is easier to reason about?

I think there's a reason most of the vibe-coded applications we see people demonstrate are rather simple. There is a level of complexity and precision that is hard to manage. Sure, you can define it in plain english, but is the resulting description extensible, understandable, or more descriptive than a precise language? I think there is a reason why legalese is not plain English, and it goes beyond mere gatekeeping.
by shmichael | 2025-04-03 08:04:53+00:00
Inventing the automobile has clearly made humanity less fit. Should we stop driving?

No. Going back to the stone age is not the solution. For the majority of our day, commuting without a vehicle will be impractical. So will coding without AI, especially as AI improves.

To retain human competency, we will have to find a novel solution. For walking, we created concentrated practice time - gyms/outdoor runs. Some evolution of leetcode, or even an AI guided training, might be the solution for coding skill preservation.
by rich_sasha | 2025-04-03 08:05:10+00:00
Well, they are saying, EU market is harder to operate in (because everyone pays VAT) than the US market (no VAT, also lower regulatory barriers it seems), and also EU firms have a "home advantage" benefit, for example the regulation is written for their benefit.

So US is easy to sell in for everyone, EU is "hard" to sell in for everyone, but maybe less so for EU car makers. So there is something to this argument, it's not entirely without merit.

Additionally, US car tariff used to be 2.5%, whereas EUs is 10%. The imbalance is short in justification, though across the board, EU and US charge each other similar tariff amounts altogether, so there are other areas where the US charges more.

Whether that justifies broad brush enormous tariffs in everything, and whether US does the same in other industries (defence for example) is an exercise I leave for the trader.
by notepad0x90 | 2025-04-03 08:05:10+00:00
Cheaper code-signing certs would be great. I don't like how the CA/B is so focused on TLS only. PKI is a slightly wider landscape. I sincerely hope PKI-centric code and package signing makes its way to the Linux world where most influential people in these discussions live, so they can appreciate the importance of having a "letsencrypt" for other types of PKI usage like S/MIME and Authenticode.
by vaylian | 2025-04-03 08:05:25+00:00
It is correct that training 1 model is a lot more expensive than running that same model 1 time. But when you have many people using AI, then you also get a lot of emissions.

The key challenge with greenhouse emissions is that the sources are so diverse and so distributed. We need to look at all the emitters, even if they are only in the range of 0.1-1.0% of global emissions.
by aurareturn | 2025-04-03 08:05:26+00:00
Now control the SEC so the privileged won't get investigated for insider trading.

That's how you devolve into a 3rd world country by the way. I've lived in 3rd world countries and seen this over and over again. That's why 3rd world country stock markets don't go up - because locals and international investors have a distrust in them. Locals know insider trading is rampant.

Once this kind of corruption is accepted in society, everyone will need corruption in order to stay ahead.
by cardanome | 2025-04-03 08:05:36+00:00
The perspective of the article is completely delusional. The idea that the author thinks they are above the petty "tribe" politics and have based their views on rationality and scientific evidence is complete bollocks.

The author has less self-awareness that the classic "I voted for the guy everyone else is voting for" guy. At least the later has a hint of consciousness about his own limitations.

Every ideology under the sun thinks they are based on objective truth. In reality our political views are shaped by the friends we have, our family, our upbringing, our social class, the media we consume, the experiences we made, our deep core vales and so much more. Most of it is not even conscious.

If you think you are above it all, you are just deluding yours. You just enjoy being in the enlightened centrist tribe or whatever.

Not choosing a stance is also choosing stance. If you see injustice and decide to stay neutral you decided to side with the oppressor.

In the end it is up to you to decide which tribe you want to belong. Do you want to march with those that fight for human dignity and social progress or those that want to oppress the many for the benefit of the few. Or do you want to sit by the sidelines while other people are striped of their human rights?
by mkleczek | 2025-04-03 08:05:43+00:00
There are two issues with this thinking:

1. It is authoritarian. Democratically elected leader's duty is to present the policies he plans to implement so that voters can decide if they want them implemented.

2. It is based on the "4D chess" myth - that the leader is way smarter than the rest and is capable of outsmarting other countries. The history shows that it is never true. The leaders are normal people. And the institutions are as good as the founding principles that are honored by them.
by namaria | 2025-04-03 08:05:43+00:00
Abstracting away the software paraphernalia makes this more clear in my view: our job is to understand and specify abstract symbolic systems. Making them work with the current computer architectures is incidental.

This is why I don't see LLM assisted coding as revolutionary. At best I think it's a marginal improvement on indexing, search and code completion as they have existed for at least a decade now.

NLP is a poor medium for specifying abstract symbolic systems. And LLMs work by finding patterns in latent space, I think. But the latent space doesn't represent reality, it represents language as recorded in the training data. It's easy to underestimate just how much training data were used for the current state-of-the-art foundational models. And it's easy to overestimate the ability these tools have to weave language and by induction attribute reasoning abilities to them.

The intuition I have about these LLM-driven tools is that we're adding degrees of freedom to the levers we use. When you're near an attractor congruent with your goals it feels like magic. But I think this is over fitting: the things we do now are closely mirrored by the data we used to train these models. But as we move forward in terms of tooling, domains, technology, culture etc, the data available will become increasingly obsolete, relevant data increasingly scarce.

Besides there's the problem of unknown unknowns: lots of people using these tools are assuming that the attractors they see pulling on their outcome is adequate because they can only see some arbitrary surface of it. And since they don't know what geometries lie beneath, they end up creating and exposing systems with several unknown issues that might have implications in security, legality, morality, etc. And since there's a time delay between their feeling of accomplishment and the surfacing of issues, and they will be likely to use the same approach, we might be heading for one hell of a bullwhip effect across dimension we can't anticipate at all.
by sam_lowry_ | 2025-04-03 08:05:48+00:00
I think it is deeper than the theory of class struggle.

France rebuilt its educational system under Napoléon to teach science to bright kids from all backgrounds.

Fast-forward 200 years, it degraded into a system that teaches anachronistic humanities to smart and docile kids of upper middle classes.

P.S. For non-French, I am talking about the system of Grandes écoles [1]

[1] https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grande_%C3%A9cole
by aredox | 2025-04-03 08:06:06+00:00
There are literally dozens of links in these threads showing how wrong you are.

>Name one person who can legally vote but was prevented from voting from this.

Literally thousands of people were barred to vote by last-minute voting roll purges. Virginia, Georgia...

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.cbsnews.com/amp/news/eligib...
by lynx97 | 2025-04-03 08:07:37+00:00
32 years after my father died, I still only get 1.9x the pay he used to get for manual labour. Given that inflation goes roughly double every 20 years, its clear I am getting less pay then he did. I also had to leave my village, because there were simply zero good opportunities to work in IT. The young leaving rural villages are pretty much common, and has almost nothing to do with how people vote. Neither in which country they actually reside. Its a downward trend, everywhere.
by 55555 | 2025-04-03 08:07:42+00:00
Factories are not coming back to the USA in large number, for a lot of reasons, at least not until full automation + tariffs makes them economical. But the biggest reason is that what's going to happen is that the average joe is going to suffer a bit, then will vote against these policies in the next election, and that's only 3.5 years away. If it takes a year to build a factory -- and frankly these tariffs could be adjusted again or removed in a few months -- and then they're likely to be fully removed in 3.5 years, I'm just not sure it makes sense to invest in a factory.
by domysee | 2025-04-03 08:07:49+00:00
Totally agree with all of your points. Specifically the framing of information. Simply checking if facts are true is not enough, it also depends on how they're presented.

It might be possible to extend this approach with the question "What else is important to understand the full context?" or something similar, and then search for that and present it.

One example I keep hearing about is the Trump<>Zelenskyy conversation, where news (at least in Europe) almost exclusively reported on the last 7min of a 1h conversation. Would be great to have something to cover these things too. But right now the cost seems prohibitive.
by jstimpfle | 2025-04-03 08:07:51+00:00
const is weird and I see no way of getting it right. Making const transitive in the way described in tha Dlang reference certainly sounds weird. It prevents totally valid use cases. Why wouldn't I have a const pointer to a mutable thing?

The real problem is that it's not defined what is an object, and where, in a web of memory-objects pointing to each other, a conceptual object begins and ends. It's arbitrary. Also, what is const from one standpoint is not const from another. It's fluid. Type systems generally don't play well with that. The weirdness of the original `strstr()` C API showcases that problem well.

The only thing that makes some sense here is to keep it simple -- any struct-like thing is an individual object. Embedded objects of course inherit const-ness, but pointed-to objects do not.

I think the C++ model is also somewhat right -- any class can define individually through which indirections const-ness follows through. But the C++ way causes lots and lots of boilerplate.

In any case, my solution is to use const very sparingly, it can hardly be gotten right in practice beyond basic use. Being more rigid of const may have prevents 2-3 bugs in my life, but cost sooo much more time and required many rewrites to make it fit somehow.

I use const mostly for

- static const data - some string-slice datatypes (these are often initialized from static const data like string literals). - read-only function parameters passed by reference (Foo const *thing).
by malzter | 2025-04-03 08:07:59+00:00
Love this. I know that the view on vibe coding is pretty scattered online. Personally i got into this type of coding about 3-4 months ago. My background is 6 years in university becoming an engineer, where my master was aimed towards people in projects, organizational structures and management. I combined these studies with a couple of programming and DB courses. I feel that due to "vibe coding tools" i can adopt a project management approach to my fleet of coding agents. I draft plans, development phases and so much more. I can add that i am nowhere near a professional software engineer. I can say that where these tools are today, they require this type of management.

All these coders trying to tell the AIs what to do when they have the "design picture" already in their head's become frustrated cus the Agent can't read their minds and dig into their intuitive ideas developed from years of coding experience.

I don't say that this is "the way" but rather an approach to AI-coding that has worked for me. With little to no coding experience, i have managed my coding agents in a way that they have build a saleable and pretty complex solution for me, that will kickstart my business this summer. I have professional software engineer friends that have revied it and they are amazed of the quality of the code.
by 01100011 | 2025-04-03 08:08:00+00:00
This is obviously a MUD and not really the same thing, but I can't help think of Citadel BBSes after reading the description.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citadel_(software)

Funny this is maintained by folks at UW. The PNW had quite a robust BBS scene back in the 80s. Not exactly surprising that tech flourished with such inclement weather.
by johnisgood | 2025-04-03 08:08:50+00:00
I have an IBM T42, but I have the supervisor password set that I have long forgotten. I know about ways to clear the password (if they indeed work) but I have not gotten around it. If anyone knows a solution that does work, feel free to share.

It is in a mint condition, not a single scratch, and I don't want to throw it out for sure. I have an old OpenBSD on it, it is perfect for some light C coding using mg. :)
by arkensaw | 2025-04-03 08:09:40+00:00
I have an X201 (15 years old) and X220 (14 years) that I regularly use, running different flavors of linux. they've both been repaired and upgraded a few times. I'm spoiled by having an M2 Macbook as a daily driver - they can't match it for speed - but I love the ruggedness and resilience and I always will.
by pembrook | 2025-04-03 08:09:43+00:00
We’re talking many 10s of billions in “fines” specifically levied against US tech firms where there is no EU competitor.

I don’t necessarily disagree with all of the laws themselves (some are incompetent EU risk aversion, some are good protections) but given the massive never ending fines being applied in bad faith and constantly moving goalposts it is indeed a defacto tariff on US tech firms.
by Cthulhu_ | 2025-04-03 08:09:47+00:00
If someone is under rubble and needs to signal anyone, if they have the use of their hands, best thing they can do is get something solid and tap the SOS morse code on something. I thought that's what they did during the Kursk submarine accident but apparently that wasn't correct.

Anyway, SOS morse code will carry pretty well through concrete or steel or whatever.
by sunshowers | 2025-04-03 08:09:49+00:00
> They benefitted from it so hard they voted for the exact opposite with eyes wide open. Twice.

This conundrum, like so many others in public discourse, is downstream of the widespread but fundamentally incorrect belief in free will (which in turn is downstream of belief in supernatural powers, because free will sure as hell isn't explained by anything in nature).

Nothing is in anyone's control. There's no such thing as "eyes wide open". People's behaviors are 100% downstream of genetics and environment. Some people behave rationally some of the time, and to the extent they do so it is because the environment set them up to do that. There is absolutely no coherent reason to generalize that into the idea that most people vote (or do anything else) rationally.
by darawk | 2025-04-03 08:11:05+00:00
The reason for my "optimism" is that it's just as easy for him to undo this as doing it in the first place. If he keeps them in place as constructed for more than say, 3 months, without shooting them through with loopholes, then he might have a real unfixable problem on his hands, as businesses start to seriously reorient themselves. However, if over the next 3 months or so, he starts tactically peeling them back or being very "generous" with exemptions, the net economic impact could be relatively small, and maybe even moderately positive (depending on the details).

Fwiw I'd prefer the republicans win again, so my optimism is actual (not that I don't have substantial criticisms of the current admin's policies). However, it is refreshing to have a content-focused exchange on the internet about politics, so h/t to you :)
by GeneralMayhem | 2025-04-03 08:11:06+00:00
If you're sane and rational and decided that you liked Trump's promises (with "rational" implying that you were actually listening to what he'd do, and not blindly accepting his nonsense about "I'll make everything perfect immediately!"), that leaves only the possibility that you're evil. Or a Russian operative, I suppose.

His promises on things he can actually do are exclusively for things that are wantonly destructive and incomprehensibly stupid (tariffs, mass layoffs), hateful and incomprehensibly evil (mass deportations without due process), or straight up treason (pardoning J6 insurrectionists, breaking alliances). If you voted for this person, you have to either be so stupid that you believe his obvious lies, or so evil that the things that aren't lies are things you like.
by alterom | 2025-04-03 08:11:09+00:00
>If that is your goal, you couldn't be doing a worse job of it.

Well this comment of yours doesn't help either.

Genuinely curious if you've read the rest of what I wrote, and have any thoughts (objections? agreeing with anything?) regarding specific things that I said - or you just stopped at that first sentence to write this (content-free) response.

Please let me know.
by noobermin | 2025-04-03 08:11:51+00:00
This article is this xkcd in article form:

https://xkcd.com/610/

When you say people are "tribal," while as a fact perhaps has some truth, you're essentially saying you don't believe in democracy--which is a common sentiment these days. It ironically is a thought terminating cliche evidentiary of a bias; it necessarily implies you can ignore people's political instincts and impulses which requires a particular disposition (bias) towards others around you.

I know what social scientists say about tribalism but interpretation of those kinds of research is not meant for individuals you know personally. Individuals are not distributions, they're people. That is, they have agency, with a right to their own opinions that ought to be engaged with seriously and sincerely. Some people may not think too deeply and just hone to a particular opinion just by fiat. In my life, that really isn't anywhere near "most" people I come in contact with or talk to as the article puts it. Most people in my life just don't think too deeply about these things, that's it. It's a lot less mundane than "people are sheeple" and more like "people don't care" or at least "people only really care about X" where X might be something like their own job or life.