MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by aaronbaugher | 2025-04-29 13:35:23+00:00
I'm one of those weird kids who liked doing those puzzles where you had to walk through a list of tricky instructions and end up with the right answers, so I'm pretty good at that sort of thing. I also have fairly simple finances: a regular W-2 job and a little side income that doesn't have taxes withdrawn. But last year the IRS sent me a $450 check and a note that said I'd made a mistake on my taxes and paid too much. Sadly, they didn't tell me what the mistake was, so I couldn't be sure to correct it this year.

Technically, all you have to do is follow the written instructions. But there are a surprising number of maybes in those instructions. You hit a checkbox that asks whether you qualify for such-and-such deduction, and find yourself downloading yet another document full of conditions for qualification, which aren't always as clear-cut as you'd like. You can end up reading page after page to figure out whether you should check a single box, and that single box may require another series of forms.

My small side income takes me from a one-page return to several pages, and next year I'm probably going to have to pay estimated taxes in advance because that non-taxed income leaves me owing at the end of the year more than some acceptable threshold that could result in fines. All because I make an extra 10% doing some evening freelancing.

Most people's taxes shouldn't be complex, but in practice they're more complex than they should be.
by conductr | 2025-04-29 13:35:37+00:00
I find Amazon has the better return policy. HF has at times zero flexibility and I find I really have to pay attention to each item’s policy and weight the risk of failure (eg. A $5 hammer is low risk, $400 machine is too high risk). It’s not worth the mental math required while shopping. I only buy consumables there (HF) now, gloves, ropes, tarps, etc. Nothing with moving part, especially a motor. I’ve been left holding the bag on $400 items I I couldn’t even assemble because the bolt holes were out of alignment (obvious manufacturing defect) and they’ve refused to allow the return or force a boxing fee on me.
by jmull | 2025-04-29 13:35:52+00:00
I'm pretty conservative about adopting third-party libraries (due to the long-term issues each one has the potential to cause), but an app updater is probably worth it.

It's just tricky, basically one fat edge case, and a critical part of your recovery plan in case of serious bugs in your app.

(This bug isn't the only problem with their home-grown updater. Checking every 5 min is just insane. Kinda tells me they aren't thinking much about it.)
by gostsamo | 2025-04-29 13:36:04+00:00
I don't remember the exact book name, but it is not the argument, it is an example. The argument is multiple instances of pop culture statements and opinions where people believe that the world was on a pause between 476 and 1452 and even if someone else has created something, it was given meaning only when the europeans discovered and improved it. Don't feel obliged to believe me, I know what I've witnessed and shared a data point.
by bluGill | 2025-04-29 13:36:49+00:00
The two sentences do not contradict. Using LLMs alone would be bad. However they can be used with other things. Most people are get fluent in a language use several different methods to learn.

It isn't clear if LLMs are good. The formal studies cannot possibly be done so don't bother looking. (a few early studies might be done, but not enough to draw conclusions). And of course LLMs may well change in the future so even if you have a conclusion it may not apply to what we see next year.
by mightyham | 2025-04-29 13:37:13+00:00
It is complicated because tariffs are not just "passed off". In the real world, tariffs are almost always marginal, meaning each company is willing to absorb some of the cost, ie lower profits. In parent's example, the US has a large steel industry and rail companies relying on imports cannot arbitrarily raise prices because they need to stay competitive with companies using domestic. Markets are also dynamic and simply comparing pre/post price may work temporarily, but for a persistent tariff that metric will become increasingly meaningless as price inevitably fluctuates due to other factors.
by zerkten | 2025-04-29 13:37:58+00:00
Product managers will decide to show the thumbnail in situations because it results in more click throughs. In many cases they'll have done their research to know that many customers take steps to restrict what they share (think profitable but conservative companies) but will choose to show the thumbnails anyway.

Some customers will push back and have enough leverage to get an exception, but the default answer will be that this can't be disabled. You'll have some sales engineer challenged about the product behavior as part of an RFP and they'll try to convince you that nothing is leaked while knowing the financial opportunity would be much larger with these customers, if there was more concern for the customer.
by lupusreal | 2025-04-29 13:38:03+00:00
The terms of their FCC license require them to have half their presently licensed constellation, roughly 1600 satellites, in orbit by July of 2026. They're almost certainly not going to make it, but I would be very surprised if the FCC doesn't grant them an extension if they can show they're making serious progress and aren't just squatting on that spectrum.

The curveball is Trump/Musk influencing the FCC's decision making processes, which is definitely possible. On the other hand, the FCC must know that they will be accused of being corrupt if they don't grant an extension.
by makingstuffs | 2025-04-29 13:39:05+00:00
I have to disagree in that you would stop using the app if you learn a language. Learning is a lifelong task and becoming proficient in a language does not mean you will stay proficient in a language. It takes constant refreshing in order to keep sharp.

Is Duo the best thing on the planet? No, does it serve a purpose? Yes. The reality is that, if people see their skills improving as a result of using the app (gamification etc included) then it doing its job.

> There is no sole app that makes you go from 0 to C2, but there are infinitely superior tools that actually make you learn, and not the self-complacent pretend-like-learning pastime that duo is.

This I strongly disagree with. Nothing can _make_ you learn other than your own willingness to do so. If you have the desire to learn, you will. If you do not, you won't. It is that simple and that is applicable to any subject.
by cbolton | 2025-04-29 13:39:27+00:00
> I can also say confidently that the #1 method to combat memory safety errors is array bounds checking. The #2 method is guaranteed initialization of variables. The #3 is stop doing pointer arithmetic (use arrays and ref's instead).

I think these are generally considered table stake in a modern programming language? That's why people are/were excited by the borrow checker, as data races are the next prominent source of memory corruption, and one that is especially annoying to debug.
by TheJoeMan | 2025-04-29 13:39:36+00:00
Do any alternatives take a more "fully immersive" approach? I tried this LibreLingo, but the first question I got was "Which of these is The Sun?".

Once you learn/memorize a few basic Spanish phrases such as "¿Qué significa?" you can stay immersed in the language. When you see a photo of the sun, you need to jump straight to El Sol, not Photo->"The Sun"->"El Sol".
by bluGill | 2025-04-29 13:39:59+00:00
One thing duolingo should he is after every 5 ten minute sessions it should be a ten minute "slow news in the target language" session. There are lots of other options on this line. Really every duolingo style app needs to tell people sooner "you are done, go find something else", either do that by refusing to let them use the app (that will make the VC's unhappy), or give them a different style of study that is more useful than flashcards.
by frank_nitti | 2025-04-29 13:40:09+00:00
There are several commenters in this thread who actually see it as having zero software engineering team at all; there would not be a single person on staff who could read and understand application code.

I would agree about needing fewer heads performing types of roles, and I could even buy that tech staff would hardly ever need to handwrite code directly.

For serious projects where critical data, physical safety, etc for end users are at stake, I still don’t see the path toward simply having no in-house engineer to certify changes generated by an LLM
by phkahler | 2025-04-29 13:40:37+00:00
This is the kind of problem that can be prevented by using "better" coding patterns. Not to say it will be prevented, but that some ways people like to structure code are more prone to these kinds of bugs. I quoted the word "better" because I work with a competent but less experienced guy that tends to write more complex code, or what some claim is just a different style than I would prefer. I make claims that "this way is better" and it's often very difficult to articulate why it's better. Sometimes I am convincing, other times not... I'm not immune to these kinds of bugs either, but I shudder to think I might one day inherit this other guys code and a collection of these weird bugs.
by AnimalMuppet | 2025-04-29 13:40:46+00:00
I presume it means something like, you can get arrested for not having your kids attend public school.

If that was their point, I suspect it's over-exaggerated, if not a complete distortion. Are private schools legal in Canada? I'm not Canadian, but a quick web search seems to indicate that they exist. Is homeschooling legal? Again, a web search seems to indicate that it is.
by abxyz | 2025-04-29 13:40:46+00:00
> In the right use case (standalone API/workflow, multiple LLM calls, concurrency etc.) working visually is going to be 10x better than code

I completely agree but I think that's a very hard sell. People who write code are often years deep in their preferred workflows and asking them to reconsider how they build things is a very big ask.

> Even if developers prefer textual code when on their own, when they're working with non-developers (product teams, clients etc) there's a big benefit for being able to share and present how things work.

The problem here is that developers lead implementation. The ideal implementation for a stakeholder is rarely the implementation that is delivered, because developers are taking requirements and translating them into the things they want to build. That's why so many products end up bad: developers have too much power by virtue of code being seen as some sort of magic spell that only a true genius can master. Can you imagine a non-technical person successfully dictating that the solution must be built with visual programming?

Low code / no code is powerful because it turns the relationship between product owner and developer on its head, it puts the product owner back in the driving seat (instead of a passenger begging the developer to go in the desired direction and accepting they'll probably end up somewhere... nearby, hopefully). Hiring the wrong developer(s) can be very bad for a company because of how much a developers choice's influence the product and business.

The proliferation of low code / no code in business often comes from outside engineering, many developers, regrettably, love to write code. Often you'll find that non-technical departments of companies have secretly started using things like Make and Zapier and n8n without telling the engineering department because they feel like they finally have the opportunity to make technology work for them.

Developers that exist in service of product are already using platforms like Make and Zapier and n8n because they understand how much value there is in programming without writing code, but for them visual programming probably isn't that much of a differentiator because they already have a vision in their head of how programming works.

Anyway, your product is great, I am sure you'll succeed regardless of the approach you take :)
by nico | 2025-04-29 13:40:51+00:00
Also in the news today:

> Duolingo will replace contract workers with AI. The company is going to be ‘AI-first,’ says its CEO.

https://www.theverge.com/news/657594/duolingo-ai-first-repla...

-

And within that article:

> von Ahn’s email follows a similar memo Shopify CEO Tobi Lütke sent to employees and recently shared online. In that memo, Lütke said that before teams asked for more headcount or resources, they needed to show “why they cannot get what they want done using AI.”
by anarticle | 2025-04-29 13:41:13+00:00
We're in a time where all CEOs have to do "the current thing" because now there is no free money to paper over bad decisions. When the hammer drops, board is going to take inventory and say: "did you do these four things that everyone else was doing?", if one of those things is NOT implement RTO, they are out. This is a common groupthink problem at the top, encouraged by Linkedin thought pieces by similarly out of touch people, or whatever the flavor of the month book idea is.

It comes and goes in waves, this is just a current trend we have to surf.
by aaronbaugher | 2025-04-29 13:41:17+00:00
Yeah, it won't last. They'll decide it's too revealing, or too hard to calculate an actual number. People are throwing around all sorts of percentages, and none of them really mean anything because whatever the effect of tariffs is on a particular item, it's bundled up with the inflation that's been growing for years and everyone in the supply chain taking a bigger chunk because everyone else is. This is just performative.
by m000 | 2025-04-29 13:41:20+00:00
It's reasonable if they already have an office where you live, and the office comes with perks (e.g. good food, gym) that save you the time you spent commuting there.

Relocating without even having a fixed contract from day 1, just to be able to go to the office, is a bet many (talented) people won't be willing to take these days.
by aeonik | 2025-04-29 13:41:32+00:00
I agree with the author, we need better primitives, if you need functionality now:

Major tools that exist today for partial structure traversal and focused manipulation:

- Optics (Lenses, Prisms, Traversals)

Elegant, composable ways to zoom into, modify, and rebuild structures. Examples: Haskell's `lens`, Scala's Monocle, Clojure's Specter. Think of these as programmable accessors and updaters.

- Zippers

Data structures with a "focused cursor" that allow local edits without manually traversing the whole structure. Examples: Huet’s original Zipper (1997), Haskell’s `Data.Tree.Zipper`, Clojure’s built-in zippers.

- Query Languages (for semantic traversal and deep search)

When paths aren't enough and you need semantic conditionals: - SPARQL (semantic web graph querying) - Datalog (logic programming and query over facts) - Cypher (graph traversal in Neo4j) - Prolog (pure logic exploration) These approaches let you declaratively state what you want instead of manually specifying traversal steps.
by miek | 2025-04-29 13:41:52+00:00
I'm at a Fortune 500 that cut back nearly all of its remote work. I prefer remote work, and I thrive at it. However, it can't be denied that there are some drawbacks. A few: A) Training new hires, B) bonding (while those in-office chats often detract from raw work-time, they also contribute to relationships. Positive relationships are a worthwhile lubricant when make requests of others), C) increased friction for chatting, which is often a net positive, but does have the potential to block progress that is born from impromptu chats.

Yes, you can try to work around these and other challenges, but working around long-evolved brain firmware that, for many cases of interaction, favors in-person communication, is tough. Of course many people prefer to stay at home, as do I, but there is a huge increase in the level of connection I feel when I go back to the HQ and hang out with everyone (a handful of times each year).
by davidvgilmore | 2025-04-29 13:42:22+00:00
thanks for the feedback. To understand the preference - would you prefer to (1) bring your own keys or (2) use different models?

Regarding (2), we haven't supported other models yet because they each come with their own peculiarities regarding system prompting / tool use / etc. By focusing on just Sonnet+Haiku, it's allowed us to focus more time on other features (e.g. checkpointing ...).

Regarding BYOKs - a lot of our beta users didn't actually have keys setup, so it was easier for them to get started without bringing their own keys. The folks that have been interested in BYOKs have mainly wanted to bring their Bedrock/Vertex keys and are interested in enterprise/team features. Hence structuring it this way.

But we're posting here to get feedback and we are willing to make changes :)
by ithkuil | 2025-04-29 13:42:23+00:00
> You set a time and place, then you meet there, are people doing more than that today?

no, today people are continuously updating you about their whereabouts and assume you can just change time, place continuously and if you don't have the phone people get lost and panic. Ok I'm exaggerating of course, but there is a grain of truth in this
by jrmg | 2025-04-29 13:42:36+00:00
Watch out - I got the email offering a new 30 day free trial, and at the end of the month they did nothing to inform me and started charging the credit card they apparently still had on file from when I subscribed for a month or two a few years ago.

I guess with other companies I would’ve expected something like that and monitored the time more closely, but with Kagi I expected better - especially since the email offering the new free trial promised “A month on us”, and said “Click here to activate your trial, no strings attached”.
by eviks | 2025-04-29 13:42:44+00:00
> A search for “travel to UK” brought up the UK government page to apply for an ETA as the first result.

Google's first result is the official government website that is summarized as requiring ETA (so you don't even need to click)

Now that you know the name, adding "apply ETA" to the query also gives you the official government website as the first result

Is that really a serious complaint about the fall of search quality?
by mike_hearn | 2025-04-29 13:42:57+00:00
Let's not go too far with the rose tinted glasses. Win95 apps are speedy if you run them on modern hardware but at the time they were all dog slow because the average Win95 machine was swapping like crazy.

Loading apps on it definitely did not take one second. The prevalence of splash screens was a testament to that. Practically every app had one whereas today they're rare. Even browsers had multi-second splash screens back then. Microsoft was frequently suspected to be cheating because their apps started so fast you could only see the splash for a second or two, and nobody could work out how they did it. In reality they had written a custom linker that minimized the number of disk seeks required, and everything was disk seek constrained so that made a huge difference.

Delphi apps were easier to create than if you used Visual C++/MFC but compared to modern tooling it wasn't that good. I say that as a someone who grew up with Delphi. Things have got better. In particular they got a lot more reliable. Software back then crashed all the time.
by lonelyasacloud | 2025-04-29 13:43:16+00:00
The report looks at "at the labor market impact of AI chatbots on 11 occupations, covering 25,000 workers and 7,000 workplaces in Denmark in 2023 and 2024."

As with all other technologies the jobs it removes are not normally in country that introduces it but that they never happen elsewhere.

For example, while the automated looms that the Luddites were protesting about didn't result in significant job losses in the UK. How much clothing manufacturing has been curtailed in Africa because of it and similar innovations since that have lead to cheap mass produced clothes making it uneconomic to produce there.

As suggest by this report, Denmark and West will probably be make good elsewhere and be largely unaffected.

However, places like India, Vietnam with large industries based on call centres and outsourced development servicing the West are likely to be more vulnerable.
by jccalhoun | 2025-04-29 13:43:24+00:00
I have considered paying for Kagi and I use their Orion browser on my ipad but with current government fuckery making my job less secure than it was last year, I don't think I should.

I tend to use bing as my default if only because they give you points in return for harvesting your data that you can redeem for amazon gift cards. Years ago I wrote a userscript to add a link to other search engines on bing and I still find myself heading to google regularly. (the script is half broken at the moment. Fixing it is on my list of things to do this summer)
by itchyjunk | 2025-04-29 13:43:49+00:00
They creep it up. Like frog in boiling water, not much to be done. 1 day a week with 1 optional day for the social butterflies. 2 days mandatory with 1 day optional for social butterflies. 3 days mandatories + some extra mandatory days like all hands and Q-end. Next up is 5 days mandatory with 2 optional days for social butterflies.
by lucasknight | 2025-04-29 13:43:53+00:00
You might want to have a look at Remix [0]. I haven't used it extensively myself, but it does claim to handle errors well.

> Route Error Boundaries keep the happy path happy. Each route module can export an error boundary next to the default route component.

> If an error is thrown, client or server side, users see the boundary instead of the default component. Routes w/o trouble render normally, so users have more options than slamming refresh. If a route has no boundary, errors bubble up. Just put one at the top and chill out about errors in code review, yeah?

[0] https://remix.run
by sokoloff | 2025-04-29 13:44:01+00:00
I don’t know, but anecdotally, I took a bunch of Uber Pool rides when I was on a business trip with people who were clearly using it to commute to or from their job. Some of them were fairly long rides as well (downtown San Diego to Poway was the most common where I’d go with someone commuting). Maybe parking is expensive/impractical?
by NoMoreNicksLeft | 2025-04-29 13:44:04+00:00
Even those who own their own buildings, that's hardly an excuse. Buildings cost money. Every in-office employee has a cost associated with him or her, the cost of the facility itself. If they don't have in-office employees, the building can be sold (it's not an asset, just an ongoing cost).

Financially, it does not make sense to want to pay extra for each employee for square footage for the desk. Even if only some employees work remotely, that opens up the possibility of selling the building and leasing/purchasing a smaller one that costs less. Basically, remote work shifts the burden of paying for the desk to the employee... something you might be tempted to think the company would want to do.
by quesera | 2025-04-29 13:44:10+00:00
I've gone many cycles deep, some of which have resulted in incremental improvements.

Probably one of my mistakes is testing it with toy challenges, like bad interview questions, instead of workaday stuff that we would normally do in a state of half-sleep.

The latter would require loading the entire project into context, and the value would be low.

My thought with the former is that it should be able to produce working versions of industry standard algorithms (bubble sort, quicksort, n digits of pi, Luhn, crc32 checksum, timezone and offset math, etc) without requiring any outside context (proprietary code) -- and perhaps erroneously, that if it fails to pull off such parlor tricks, and creates such glaring errors in the process, that it couldn't add value elsewhere either.