MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by caseyy | 2025-04-10 08:52:32+00:00
My first client in video games was the same. They rarely paid their contractors on time (the payment was months late), or it wasn't the entire agreed sum. We kept sending in late payment notices to their finance guy, and they fired us all for being troublemakers. I believe I had a notice period of two weeks, but they fired me with one day's notice.

Suing them was out of the question. For me, as for others, it would have been international. The company was in Italy, and the contractors were all over Europe. We'd probably each spend over 10k euros on the proceedings and representation in Italian courts. And the company wasn't overdue by much more than that. Besides, even if we won and the court ruled our legal expenses were to be paid, we weren't sure the company was solvent enough. So no one sued.

I believe it was their modus operandi. The company continued firing their contractors when it got into arrears before a lawsuit made sense. Sometimes, it's just their business plan.

I agree with the article's author—no pay, no work. Before starting contract work, one should think about the line they won't cross regarding late payments. For me, it's when an invoice becomes overdue, and it's plainly a breach of contract. I will never again cross that line and keep working.
by jurgenaut23 | 2025-04-10 08:52:37+00:00
I think most people miss the bigger picture on the impact of AI on the learning process, especially in engineering disciplines.

Doing things that could be in principle automated by AI is still fundamentally valuable, because they bring two massive benefits:

- *Understanding what happens under the hood*: if you want to be an effective software engineer, you need to understand the whole stack. This is true of any engineering discipline really. Civil engineers take classes in fluid dynamics and material science classes although they will mostly apply pre-defined recipes on the job. You wouldn't be comfortable if the engineer who signed off on the blueprints of dam upstream of your house had no idea about the physics of concrete, hydrodynamic scour, etc.

- *Having fun*: there is nothing like the joy of discovering how things work, even though a perfectly fine abstraction that hides these details underneath. It is a huge part of the motivation for becoming an engineer. Even by assuming that Vibe Coding could develop into something that works, it would be a very tedious job.

When students use AI to do the hard work on their behalf, they miss out on those. We need to be extremely careful with this, as we might hurt a whole generation of students, both in terms of their performance and their love of technology.
by JimDabell | 2025-04-10 08:53:54+00:00
Vanilla CSS already has support for nesting and variables that are more flexible than this, cascade properly at runtime, and are available to alter with JavaScript at runtime. I don’t think it’s a good idea to reinvent that with a preprocessor.

Vanilla CSS doesn’t have mixins, but generally speaking those aren’t all that helpful anyway, there’s often a better way to achieve what you want using some combination of other HTML/CSS features.

I’m more inclined to write vanilla CSS and use Lightning CSS (also implemented in Rust) to transcode for backward compatibility with older browsers. Lightning also supports mixins via the compose property if you really want them, although that’s not standard CSS.

https://lightningcss.dev
by piva00 | 2025-04-10 08:54:29+00:00
That's one use case where LLMs really help me, one-off scripts where I know exactly what I need done, know it's possible but would take me much longer to brush off my Bash, Python, etc. skills to write it. Give the LLM a prompt, let it write the scaffolding, do the tweaks I need, and iterate over with the LLM if I forgot how exactly it was to write a for-loop in Bash.
by jjani | 2025-04-10 08:54:39+00:00
Would be interesting if they'd add another one on non-fiction creative writing. For example, turning a set of investigative notes and findings into a Pulitzer-prize winning article that wouldn't be out of place in a renowned, high-quality newspaper.

IME, for LLMs (just like humans) this skill doesn't necessarily correlate with fiction writing prowess.

This is probably harder to judge automatically (i.e. using LLMs) though, maybe that's why they haven't done it.
by palata | 2025-04-10 08:55:14+00:00
> Sweeney wrote in a follow-up post on X. "But competition will ultimately lead to companies producing the best work they’re capable of given the new tools, and that tends to mean more jobs."

Genuinely wondering: have they heard of enshittification? And would they say that competition is leading e.g. Disney to produce the best work they're capable of? Disney is re-making old classics (like Beauty and the Beast, Lion King, Aladdin, Mulan) as worse versions just because it brings money. Not convinced it creates more jobs, but it most definitely isn't the best work they're capable of.

Software is noticeably getting worse every year, I'm actually having a hard time finding companies that produce the best work they're capable of because of competition.

> And Carmack closed with this: "Will there be more or less game developer jobs? That is an open question. It could go the way of farming, where labor-saving technology allow a tiny fraction of the previous workforce to satisfy everyone, or it could be like social media, where creative entrepreneurship has flourished at many different scales. Regardless, “don’t use power tools because they take people’s jobs” is not a winning strategy."

So he gives an example where it removed jobs (which is generally a bad thing) and compensates by giving an example where it created jobs (which is the optimistic one), right? And his optimistic example is... social media? "It has created a completely toxic industry that is ruining the life of many, but look, it created jobs, that's what matters".

Let's hope for the best then! Let's hope that AI creates a lot of job by making the world a worse place, just like social media did! /s
by yfontana | 2025-04-10 08:56:00+00:00
It's absolutely not crazy, and I don't know how a car could only cost you 1k/year. This is just an example but has the average cost of motoring in Ireland in 2019 at almost 11k€/year : https://www.theaa.ie/motoring-advice/cost-of-motoring/.

One of the issues with trains is that people often severely underestimate the true total cost of car trips.
by Robertste123 | 2025-04-10 08:56:24+00:00
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by nbevans | 2025-04-10 08:56:36+00:00
I love the Java code sample:

```

// It works, but we have no idea how to send an HTTP request in java.

// If you do, send us a nice example to support@errortexts.com.

// You just need to POST JSON with the keys `api_key` and optionally `message`.

```

That's brilliant. But it does make me wonder why the LLM couldn't have provided you a suitable Java code example?
by alxlaz | 2025-04-10 08:57:26+00:00
This isn't about expecting "people" to communicate to you in a language they don't speak, it's about expecting state institutions to communicate in their citizens' language. French public institutions definitely use languages other than French where it's regionally relevant. It's not mandated (only French language is mandated) but they do it because when you take taxpayers money to function and provide services to them, you don't get to be fussy when they show up and ask that you speak their language.

France is in a league of its own in this regard, since French is not just the official state language (and has been for some time, not a few weeks like in the US), but it's also the mandated language for commercial and business use. However, the French state doesn't just mandate that, it also creates the conditions for it, for instance by providing (and requiring) free, universal French-language elementary education for all its citizens.

And even so, they're still not universally French-only, even though they're probably the most centralist of all EU countries in this regard.
by DAOctor | 2025-04-10 08:57:26+00:00
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by Tor3 | 2025-04-10 08:59:16+00:00
Just for the record, in my country (which isn't France, but I suspect it's not very different there) interpreters have to be provided by law, by hospitals and the like, where needed. And for residents (temporary or otherwise) who don't have a good grasp of the language (or should I say, languages, as there are more than one official one), interpreters have to be provided for a wide range of services. This is pretty common to various degrees across Europe. As for weather forecasts or other kinds of non-critical announcements there won't be any interpreters, but some of those are provided in several languages as well, just not on the main forecast shown on TV. Around here weather forecasts aren't normally particularly critical, but in those cases where they actually are, warnings are provided in several languages including English. And snow avalanche warnings and the like.
by matheusmoreira | 2025-04-10 09:00:42+00:00
I seriously doubt Brazil will keep it up if Trump follows through with his threat. Honestly I'm surprised Brazil hasn't been hit hard yet. Brazilian taxes on american products can approach 100%. One for me and one for the government, as we say. A "reciprocal" 10% tariff against brazilian goods is just comical to me. I wish I was paying just 10%.
by _DeadFred_ | 2025-04-10 09:00:57+00:00
Not sure how your personal experience in Sweden with your parents applies other than that the label doesn't apply to your parents.

My mom was very pro-Palestinian. She came to it from midwestern U.S. Irish/German Catholic doctrine. It very much had an anti-semitic component in that context. And it became apparent to her when I called out some of the attitudes/things people were saying as a kid. It's part of what caused me to adopt a default 'I'm going to challenge the popular narrative' position even though I'm not jewish, because even my mom unintentionally had accepted it and incorporated it into herself.
by meheleventyone | 2025-04-10 09:02:01+00:00
Could also be marketing hype! The MMO space tends to be full of this, most famously in the VC funded arena with Improbable. This also suffers from the same problem that Improbable did that there are just not that many people making MMOs but maybe it'll find a niche elsewhere.

I've been making multiplayer games professionally for twenty years from fast-paced shooters to spaceship MMOs and to me this isn't really crazy. If you wanted to make a comparison it's like having SQLite in memory but with the added infrastructure to support networking to clients and persisting state to disk. Obviously there is more work involved than that but conceptually thats where things are at. How nice it is to actually develop a game with is a pretty open question, and almost certainly the most important one when evaluating this sort of product, but you'd be surprised at the range of stacks in existence.
by nkrisc | 2025-04-10 09:02:25+00:00
You seem to be forgetting that English is commonly the lingua franca of Europe.

When I went to Norway I was a little disappointed that I hardly needed any of the Norwegian I took the time to learn. Though it did come in handy when I was able to read the sign stating the tram stop we were waiting at was actually closed and to go to a different one.
by casey2 | 2025-04-10 09:03:37+00:00
Why do people keep repeating this nonsense? 2008? Every "recession" for the last 50 years? Nobody was under the impression that the US was economically stable. Go press max on the 10 year bond yields and tell me what you see. The "crash" puts it to where it was not even a year ago. For 10-year bonds.
Lessons Learned Building MCP for Video Infrastructure Startup
by ashu_trv | 2025-04-10 09:03:43+00:00
Hey HN,

We've been deeply immersed in building chat-based video interactions for nearly two years.

We recently launched VideoDB MCP as a practical exploration of MCP capabilities, and while there's plenty we're excited about, we've hit a bunch of interesting challenges along the way. We wanted to openly share some learnings with this community and invite discussion.

1. Friction Is a Killer

Manual setups involving servers, config files, and client restarts significantly slow down adoption. We tackled this by simplifying installation into just one command:

Install MCP for Cursor: `uvx videodb-director-mcp --install=cursor`

Install MCP universally (Cursor, Claude): `uvx videodb-director-mcp --install=all`

2. Single Interface Beats Complexity

Presenting users with numerous tools can overwhelm and complicate testing. We learned it's far better to offer one intelligent, context-aware interface (e.g., VideoDB Director), managing tool selection and reasoning internally. (open source link here — https://github.com/video-db/Director)

3. Remote Servers Improve Everything

Initially, local servers seemed straightforward, but centralizing MCP onto remote infrastructure boosted security, reliability, and computational capabilities significantly.

4. Early-stage Client Limitations Are Real

Current clients lack native video playback support. Our quick workaround has been browser-based playback, but we're actively developing the first open-source MCP-native client to address this properly.

5. API Keys: A Delicate Balance

Balancing secure tool access (via API keys) with frictionless use is challenging, especially since MCP must support both developers and non-developers. Clear, thoughtful separation is essential.

6. Rapid Prototyping is Crucial

Our team built a functional video editor using MCP in just 10 minutes. This highlights a shift from static SaaS to dynamic, customizable, rapid-development-friendly solutions.

We're genuinely curious to hear from this community. Have you experienced similar challenges? What approaches or insights do you have around MCP or LLM-integrated tooling?

Try our MCP : https://docs.videodb.io/videodb-mcp-server-109
by Philpax | 2025-04-10 09:03:58+00:00
You are both correct: the post-training stage of most new LLMs involves their identity being trained in, so that they "know who they are" without the system prompt. Without this step, most LLMs will respond with whatever identity most dominates their pre-training / post-training data, which is likely to be ChatGPT given its sheer prevalence.

There's some interesting anecdotal work on this with regards to self-recognition: https://josiekins.me/ai-comics
Ask HN: Running Local LLMs on MacBook Pro M1 Max?
by hhimanshu | 2025-04-10 09:04:13+00:00
Hello Community

I’m experimenting with running local LLMs and would love to learn from those of you who’ve spent more time in this space. I’m particularly interested in performance tuning, reasoning capabilities, and enabling agent-style workflows using local models.

My setup: • MacBook Pro (2021) • Chip: Apple M1 Max (10-core CPU: 8 performance + 2 efficiency cores) • GPU: Apple M1 Max (24-core GPU) • Memory: 64GB LPDDR5 (Hynix) • Main display: 3024x1964 Liquid Retina XDR • External display: Dell S2721QS (3840x2160) • Model Identifier: MacBookPro18,4

I use LM Studio, but even with quantized 7B models, my machine often slows down or hangs during inference. I’m hoping to get better performance and explore more advanced use cases.

My questions: 1. What local LLM software are you using successfully on Apple Silicon? 2. How do you improve inference speed? Any success with specific quantizations, runtimes, or swap/virtual memory tricks? 3. What reasoning models have worked well for you, especially for: • Coding • Understanding specific domains (e.g., health insurance, legal, science, finance)? 4. Which local models support agent-style workflows, including: • Function calling / tool use • JSON or structured output • Multi-step planning and reasoning 5. Could you share your setup, resources, or references that helped you get started or scale up? 6. If you’ve built a local inference box (outside your main machine), how did you approach it? DIY build advice, parts lists, or tutorials would be hugely appreciated!

I’m learning and iterating, and would love to go deeper into running capable models offline. Any guidance would be super helpful—thanks so much in advance!
by marenkay | 2025-04-10 09:04:13+00:00
If a product becomes unstable due to increased competition it's not exactly been stable before. Also the whole premium is quite off. You got good items for fair prices before factories started producing bread. Often at higher quality. I'm old enough to remember. Honestly seems like the current market is only working because of regulation and protections of all kinds. That to me is a clear sign of volatility.
by beloch | 2025-04-10 09:04:29+00:00
It's interesting that ILM went with a smoke chamber to shoot the underwater scenes in this film. It was probably a lot easier than shooting underwater and less likely to screw up the models. Some of the time this method looks fantastic but, at other times, it looks like a model in a room full of smoke. I've always found the underwater model scenes shot for Das Boot[1] to be more convincing.

[1]https://theasc.com/articles/das-boot
by foldr | 2025-04-10 09:04:51+00:00
As a sibling points out, recursive descent parsers have been mainstream for a long time. Higher order parser combinators are only moderately useful in an imperative language with regular looping constructs. (For example, the code to parse a list of Xs separated by Ys is a pretty straightforward loop.) A lot of parser combinator libraries also make the mistake of encouraging "short circuit" error handling, which is rarely what you want for a production-grade parser.
by thebruce87m | 2025-04-10 09:05:57+00:00
Everything I am reading says the fuse is there to protect the device, or more specifically the cable between the plug and the device.

https://www.workshopshed.com/2024/09/why-do-we-have-fuses-in...

> So this is why there is a need for a fuse, it is there to protect the cable running between the plug and the appliance. The alternative would be to have 32A tolerant cables on every device.

> they make it impossible to use correctly rated MCBs.

It looks like UK is 32A standard but US us 20 or 15A - is that a significant enough difference that the US is safer? 15/20A is still chunky.
by rsynnott | 2025-04-10 09:06:07+00:00
The point is to inflict pain on the aggressor; in general no-one ‘wins’ a trade war, and the goal is to make things bad enough for the aggressor that they back down.

In this case, the aggressor inflicted much pain on _itself_, before the tariffs really even went into operation, that it has already partially backed down, but that’s kind of unusual that it would happen so quickly.
by mattmanser | 2025-04-10 09:06:28+00:00
It's not actually about the fishermen, it's about the whole rural communities.

Just like farming, it's everyone living out there. How the fishers and farmers are being treated is how those communities at large feel like they're being treated. And they always feel like they're being shafted, even though that's just progress and other industries got shafted much worse in the past.

So for every 1 fisherman, there are 20 other votes. And they all generally vote conservative, those are blue strongholds (blue over here is conservative, red labour).

For every 1 Games Workshop employee, there's no other votes. Even spouses will be fairly uninvested in how the government is treating toy exports.

But on the other part of your comment, there's been no 10% GDP loss. Note, I voted remain, and would vote to rejoin in a heartbeat.

But we're roughly at the same position today in the world as we were in 2016, compared to other countries. Sitting about 6/7th in the world. Everyone's suffered since covid, everyone's struggling with growth. There's been no big drop in GDP. So it was actually scaremongering. It feels like there's a conspiracy of economists who lie, heavily influence markets, but their lies don't match reality. It's ideological propaganda for free-market capitalism, rather than fact.
by refurb | 2025-04-10 09:07:27+00:00
I’d say it’s the opposite.

So much of the US government has been focused on maintaining the global hegemony, US citizens wellbeing was sacrificed.

Trump was elected in reaction to rising global hegemony, or at least the effort put to maintain it, not the end of it.

To say US hegemony is numbered doesn’t make much sense. The US economy has only pulled headed further from any Western rival, and China’s economy is stumbling to the point it’s questionable if it can grow enough before it’s population starts shrinking. Russia has been stagnant since the 1990’s.

If anything, US ability to project power is greater now than any time in the past.
by atoav | 2025-04-10 09:07:55+00:00
I grew up in country whose neighbour country speeks the same language, but has roughly 10 times the population.

What people in big countries do not realize is just how much their internal affairs radiate outwards. And this creates an atmosphere of:

small: "I know everything about you" big: "I don't even know who you are"

When the big one, now on top of overlooking you actively gives you shit for not being a good neighbour (despite feeling to have been at the short end of the stick for decades), you will have a rally around the flag effect of gargantuan proportions.

I have learned over the years that the US is a huge, diverse and multi-layered phenomenom, so it deserves some nuance. But as an European I feel Trump and his minions giving us shit for e.g. US car manufacturers doing nothing to try to appeal to the European market (except for rebranding asian cars and whatever the fuck the PT cruiser was meant to be) is really a bit rich.

Most Europeans always felt their political leadership relied too much on the US, not because we extracted value from that, but because it was comfy to not have to think for yourself. They even tried to paper over the abuse of trust that came to light in the Snowden revalations (How would the US have reacted if the Germans had hacked the phone of the POTUS?).

Now with an openly hostile and erratic US president (EU offered a 0-tarrif deal to Trump before he introduced "retaliatory" ones) people feel less inclined to talk good about an already asymmetrical relationship.

Trump doesn't want partners, he wants vassal states. And if you really want those you either have to (A) use miltary force or (B) give them some psychological fig leaf they can use to convince themselves they are not indeed vassals.

Trump took the open secret of the fig leaf away and mocked Europe for accepting it in the first place. And the European population feels their trust is breached.

I don't say I like it to be that way or that the feelings are 100% justified, but that is the cause of the sentiment.
by mdhb | 2025-04-10 09:08:09+00:00
Yeah, I think that’s a very similar vibe developing here in that sense where the US itself would have to put huge and currently unthinkable changes in place for anyone to ever trust them again.

Things like a lot of people going to jail, abolishing the electoral college and moving towards an actually democratic system, binding themselves to the same international agreements that they expect of others (Americans should be able to be brought before The Hague for example).

Until that level of stuff can happen nobody is even remotely interested in having any kind of positive relationship with the country here.