MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by the_gipsy | 2025-04-18 17:39:01+00:00
I'd like to say that I'm not "locked on to the LLM-viewpoint", because I have been interested in the inner monologue / consciousness questions since I was a teenager and by pure chance read a somewhat crazy (and now outdated / partly debunked / never really a peer reviewed science theory) book: [The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind (1976, Julian Jaynes)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Origin_of_Consciousness_in...). It's at the very least a very entertaining read IMO, but must be taken with a grain of salt. On the other hand, the recent advances in LLM output might have been biasing me. I consider myself also an amateur of course, my knowledge is superficial.

So yes, my framework is that the language articulation is the thought itself, and that is why we (most people) consistently have/hear an inner monologue, or dialogues with others.

> Our own children are completely non-verbal for a very long time and sure, while they won't be winning Nobel prizes at that stage, you can't possibly claim they are incapable of the very same cognitive maneuvering you showed in the coding example (abstraction, generalization, etc).

I don't think a child that cannot yet speak, so typically around 2 years old, can do much cognitive maneuvering, or at least not significantly more than an a great ape. Of course it could be pure correlation, and as we age we learn and simply also learn to use language efficiently. But we also cannot rule it out. Hellen Keller is a somewhat interesting case of someone missing the language learning stage and then also essentially not developing a "consciousness" as we understand it.

> the question "What happens before the inner monologue? A deeper level of monologue?"

I do not have an answer. I'm afraid that there isn't one, just like there is an answer to "How do LLMs work?", beyond some technicalities about the core operations, matrices, weightings and whatnot. I think there is no indication that this is recursive in any sense. I cannot find the words to describe it, ironically, but it might be like other systems in nature which seem chaotic in detail and only seem ordered when you look at the whole.

If you allow me to indulge: maybe we are too deep and lost in the simulation now, there are no more curtains to peel back. A mask cannot look at who is behind itself. Is there really another hidden "code" inside our brain that could express the last two sentences more efficiently? Perhaps there is, and our mostly "outer" language simply cannot express it, because the inner hidden language is just much better. Or perhaps it's the other way 'round.

Edit: BTW you also didn't answer "when was the last time you imagined yourself or someone else talking in your head", and I am genuinely interested in the answer - for armchair science!
by mythrwy | 2025-04-18 17:39:04+00:00
So a guy closes a multi million dollar sale because the client CEO happens to own the same motorcycle and they went for a ride together?

This sounds like an argument for turning it all over to AI to me. Both the buying and the selling.

Thing is, on a personal level yes, things like motorcycle rides are important. That is what life is made up of, what we live for. But a corporation should exist to provide goods and services to end users and a return to shareholders. This is an optimization problem and not a place for motorcycle rides. In theory (not arguing for or against capitalism) this optimization raises the standard of living for everyone.

Selling by personal connection and a motorcycle ride is really a form of cronyism or corruption. The end consumers and shareholders get shafted. This kind of nonsense is especially pronounced and explicit in less well off societies and lowers the general standard of living. So let AI do it. Oh, also give AI the manager who wanted to replace the salespeople with AI's job. That should probably be one of the first jobs to be replaced.
by toomuchtodo | 2025-04-18 17:39:27+00:00
So, I think the problem is that the culture is unsustainable [1] [2]. Look at new vehicle prices [3]. Look at the operating cost of a vehicle [4]. For many, currently, this cost is at least if not more than $1000/month (car note, insurance, fuel, etc) and very roughly, ~60% of Americans live paycheck to paycheck. Vehicle repos [5] and auto loan delinquencies [6] are hitting historical highs. America built a structurally deficient urban planning model. In Iowa, for example, they are allowing roads to go back to gravel because they lack the resources to maintain the status quo of road infra [7]. Also, consider rural america continues to wither and clear out [8]. This is all important ground truth to have to mitigate the negative aspects as you say, versus throwing good money after bad.

Maybe we could encourage folks to migrate to college towns from the exurbs with subsidies and job guarantees, versus them staying in place while where they exist today rapidly declines. They would then continue to support the town as residents through their social security or pension income they would spend locally through retirement until death. New urban builds take decades while retrofits and reconfigurations take much less time, effort, and fiat. "Skate to where the puck is going to be."

[1] https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2024/7/22/what-strong-to...

[2] https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2022/9/20/the-suburbs-ar...

[3] https://www.financialsamurai.com/average-new-car-price/

[4] https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/loans/auto-loans/total-co...

[5] https://www.pymnts.com/transportation/2025/car-repos-hit-lev...

[6] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-03-06/late-car-... | https://archive.today/dfCjJ

[7] https://iowacapitaldispatch.com/2024/03/11/who-will-be-left-...

[8] https://carsey.unh.edu/publication/rural-america-lost-popula... (draw your attention to "Figure 2. Population Change In Nonmetropolitan Counties, 2010 To 2020")

(think in systems)
by hellsten | 2025-04-18 17:39:33+00:00
You could try using the built-in "projects" feature of Claude and ChatGPT: https://support.anthropic.com/en/articles/9517075-what-are-p...

You can get pretty good results by copying the output from Firefox's Reader View into your project, for example: about:reader?url=https://learnxinyminutes.com/ocaml/
by s1artibartfast | 2025-04-18 17:39:35+00:00
I don't like DEI and am willing to engage. The US has a huge disparity of outcomes along racial lines. This is a legacy of slavery as well as social and governmental discrimination following slavery. [Racial biases persist today, but are much better today than the past, and we should focus on elimination of those biases, not adding new ones.]

These factors result in real disparity in capabilities and merit today. This is precisely why racism was and is so detrimental.

I oppose DEI because I think it is racist, even if good intended. I think our laws and institutions should strive to be race blind and treat people equally, as individuals, based on their individual actions and merit. I don't think that group statistic should be a higher priority than equality for individuals.

In my mind, DEI is a myopic obsession with the group statistics, to the detriment of individual equality.

If a school enroll someone with a 400 point lower sat over the higher person on the sole basis of their race, that is a major Injustice on the scale of individual humans, even if it moves some group statistic closer to equal.

I think countering racism with racism is a very dangerous game, likely to blow up in everyone's face.

Instead, equality under law should Ensure equal treatment moving forward. Past wrongs should be addressed by race blind improvements to economic mobility.
by Liftyee | 2025-04-18 17:39:58+00:00
I've always been conflicted on Apple. On the one hand, the attention to detail in the hardware and software is generally unmatched, and everything in the ecosystem works seamlessly.

On the other hand, I think my personal values make me ideologically opposed to locked-down hardware/software that you don't get full control over (with associated freedom/repairability implications) and Apple products are some of the most restricted in that regard.

The current compromise? I'll buy all Apple devices for convenience... once I have enough money to not care.
by pudquick | 2025-04-18 17:40:18+00:00
I'm saying the primary gateway most iOS users are using for loading a QR code - the camera app - will not present a transition to load your URL in this situation

Whether the resulting HTML game is playable in Safari is a different discussion.

The QR code, as generated, is effectively "not clickable" for most iOS users, unless they are using something other than the most common way to read QR codes on their phone like a 3rd party QR code reading app or similar.
by patall | 2025-04-18 17:40:34+00:00
I think you have got your emotions mixed up, what you mean is called being jealous :)

No, obviously, I understand the hate towards those foiling in a crowed point breaks. But, at least in my circle, most of it happens in places where nobody's surfing anyways. Downwinding is pretty much invisible. Surfing has fallen victim of its own success with overcrowded spots (people intentionally breaking each others surfboards, come on) and the necessary travelling isn't great for the planet either (nor is a carbon foil, obviously)
Show HN: Linkcast – Convert Articles into 1-Minute Audio Summaries
by 4m1rk | 2025-04-18 17:40:37+00:00
I built Linkcast to solve a personal pain: I was drowning in articles each week and struggling to figure out which ones were worth my time. I wanted a fast way to get the gist of each article, without spending hours reading.

Linkcast turns any article into a 1-minute audio summary, so you can listen while commuting, working out, or doing chores.

Features:

- Converts any article into a short, spoken summary (~1 minute)

- No sign-up or credit card needed to get started

- Costs ~1¢ per article (you get $1 in free credits to try it out)

Tech stack:

- Python + Django + HTMX

- Groq's Llama3 for summarization

- Google TTS for audio

- UI help via Claude 3.7 Sonnet :)

Would love your feedback, bug reports, and ideas for improvement!
by ilikebits | 2025-04-18 17:40:46+00:00
Thanks for trying, and sorry in advance for the rough edges :)

We're also working on a hosted service! If you'd like a sneak peek, send us a message at founders@attunehq.com (or email me directly at eliza@attunehq.com). I'm happy to talk about your specific needs and see if we can build something for them.

(And yes, it is Rust. I keep trying to find projects where I get to stretch my Haskell wings again, but unfortunately I keep working on things with silly requirements such as "easily understandable performance" and "a cross-compilation story" and "not making my collaborators sit through another monad tutorial".)
by alternatex | 2025-04-18 17:41:25+00:00
Static typing is a replacement for unit tests aimed to catch type bugs. Also, no one has 100% code coverage so might as we get some guarantees for granted.

I understand that statically typed code doesn't mean bug-less code, but I always find it odd that dynamic language enthusiasts feel like they need to stretch the benefits. Dynamic languages are great for many things. Strictness is not one of them and that's fine.
by theGeatZhopa | 2025-04-18 17:41:56+00:00
it will be of use, whereever the circumstances do not allow solar/wind or when the production needs to be constantly.

just like in the desert, one can use solar. But what about the night? what aboit cleaning the panels?? so, there, nuclear would make sense.

With Thorium, it seems, its less a problem as with Uran. Urine in Uran is the death of Iran.
by steveklabnik | 2025-04-18 17:42:25+00:00
Unreal Engine has a GC.

You're right that there is a difference between "engine written largely in C++ and some parts are GC'd" vs "game written in Java/C#", but it's certainly not unheard of to use a GC in games, pervasively in simpler ones (Heck, Balatro is written in Lua!) and sparingly in even more advanced titles.
by RandallBrown | 2025-04-18 17:43:38+00:00
Sorta. This is a pretty entertaining video about how hard it is, even when you sorta cheat.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G1fUliFuz2U

The oil on the lane can be set in different patterns, so the throw can change depending on the pattern. You can't see the pattern (I've never been able to see it anyway), but the alley will show you a picture of what it should look like. It also will change as balls are thrown over it.
by ilikebits | 2025-04-18 17:44:16+00:00
Our use case is customers who (1) want to use a managed cloud hosting service that we provide, but (2) are not willing to give us their signing keys. Our design allows them to keep all of their signing keys local to their environment.

To our knowledge, we have not found another provider who supports both of these requirements. It's not some amazing technical innovation, but it is one of those annoying paper cuts that builds up with all the others.
by chimpanzee | 2025-04-18 17:44:20+00:00
I agree with what you’re explicitly stating, but I can’t tell if you acknowledge and accept the implications.

As it stands, your statement boils down to “DEI is not diverse enough.”

If one also accepts gp’s point, then it seems DEI should continue, but be applied more carefully and thoughtfully. This would likely mean an increase in resources dedicated to DEI.

I agree and would welcome this (without requiring it legally). But I doubt most others would agree.
by felipeccastro | 2025-04-18 17:44:32+00:00
I’m assuming that Python code base didn’t have thorough type hints. What if it had? Would Go still feel safer? I know these aren’t checked in runtime, but Python type system seems more thorough than Go’s, so shouldn’t a Python code base fully typed be even safer than Go? If so, why not?

(I know Python type checks aren’t mandatory, but for this question assume that the type checker is running in CI)
by ReptileMan | 2025-04-18 17:44:39+00:00
> China is dependent on imports of food/fertiliser/seeds and energy as well, after all. Though they’re better equipped to last a year or two than Taiwan… as long as there’s not too much corruption among those who are supposed to maintain Chinas fuel and food reserves

Which Russia is major producer of. When it comes to resources a block that contains China, Russia and Kazakhstan is almost self sufficient.
by hodgesrm | 2025-04-18 17:44:43+00:00
There is nothing new under the sun. There was a famous New Yorker cartoon from 1993 that laid out the issue. It would have been a good image for this substack post, though I'm not sure the author would have completely appreciated the irony. https://condenaststore.com/featured/trust-me-mort-no-electro...
by porridgeraisin | 2025-04-18 17:44:57+00:00
???

im not talking about piracy here - I pay for multiple streaming services and yt music provided the resulting experience is ad free.

But ads on your news/shopping website? Regardless of if I pay or not I'm gonna get upsells and ads. That simply does not fly. In any case, intrusive ads are a no-no. If your platform utilizes intrusive ads, I have no remorse for any loss incurred on your part.
by kllrnohj | 2025-04-18 17:45:35+00:00
> 40x faster trigonometry: Speed-up standard library functions like std::sin in just 3 lines of code.

Huh, ok, let's see how...

* By limiting the expansion to a few * terms, we can approximate `sin(x)` as: * * sin(x) ≈ x - (x^3)/3! + (x^5)/5! * * This reduces the computational cost but comes with reduced accuracy.

I see. "reduced accuracy" is an understatement. It's just horrifically wrong for inputs outside the range of [-2, 2]

https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=plot+sin+x%2C+x+-+%28x%...

It cannot handle a single interval of a sin wave, much less the repeating nature? What an absolutely useless "optimization"
by steveklabnik | 2025-04-18 17:46:30+00:00
> Any software is source-available in the broad sense as long as its source code is distributed along with it, even if the user has no legal rights to use, share, modify or even compile it.

You have the legal right to use, share, modify, and compile, SQlite's source. If it were Source Available, you'd have the right to look at it, but do none of those things.
by 9acca704e2 | 2025-04-18 17:47:13+00:00
I'm a MIT alumna who graduated in 2014 (Course 15) and now am a software engineer.

I suggest reverse-recruiting into a small startup - or if you're the entrepreneur-type, even starting your own.

Entry-level roles are often hard to come by, regardless of where you graduate from. If they see that you're willing to put in the work, smaller shops are sometimes willing to take a chance on you, when no one else will.
Ask HN: Terminal Inside the Browser?
by martinbaun | 2025-04-18 17:47:31+00:00
Do you guys know of any plugins/extensions or systems where you could use (locally) your terminal inside the browser - especially for development with vim/neovim?

I am doing almost everything in the browser or terminal, so it would be quite cool to do the last thing in an "browser terminal" instead of switching windows.
by mrinterweb | 2025-04-18 17:48:04+00:00
I don't understand the appeal of investing in leaning and adapting your workflow to use an AI tool that is so tightly coupled to a single LLM provider, when there are other great AI tools available that are not locked to a single LLM provider. I would guess aider is the closest thing to claude code, but you can use pretty much any LLM.

The LLM field is moving so fast that what is the leading frontier model today, may not be the same tomorrow.

Pricing is another important consideration. https://aider.chat/docs/leaderboards/
by Shog9 | 2025-04-18 17:48:06+00:00
Funny you mention fraud... I worked for a company for quite a while that was absolutely dedicated to WFH for engineering - but swore up and down that sales just couldn't work without "bullpen" office setups.

Come to find out at least one entire office was engaged in widespread misreporting and fabrication. Turns out fraud is pretty tempting when you can easily avoid any paper trail.
by Finnucane | 2025-04-18 17:48:24+00:00
How so? The words and actions of the current administration and its supporters are pretty clear about the intent. One of the first acts of the president was to fire a black man and a white woman from the joint chiefs of staff and replace them with white men. The current secretary of defense claims that women shouldn't be in the military, and rolled back protections for LGBT servicepeople. Records of the black service men are erased from public web pages. I could go on and on and on, it is a nearly endless list.
by lordnacho | 2025-04-18 17:48:52+00:00
I've made similar observations.

One of my classmates didn't go the academic route. She has a 25 year old kid now.

The others, one had a kid late 20s. Most of the class was mid to late 30s. Several had their first kid past 40.

Only two had more than two kids, but they were a couple who met in school.

Nobody has four kids.

There's still only one person who has an adult (18+) kid.
by jfengel | 2025-04-18 17:48:58+00:00
They don't just emote. They also vote, eventually.

Unfortunately, a lot don't vote, in part because everybody else has been emoting so loudly that that don't want to get involved.

And worse, that "vote, eventually" has led us to be pretty complacent about what happens between elections. The social compact has us vote every couple of years then just go about our business, because too much participation is unwieldy. That's fine, until you're undergoing a real-live coup, and you're stuck waiting to see if elections are even gonna happen.

I just don't see people getting up in arms (figuratively) over Direct File. For the people who didn't vote for this administration, it's more evidence of what they already knew. For those who did, it's a small nudge in the direction of "maybe that wasn't a good idea", but only a small one.
by dfxm12 | 2025-04-18 17:50:25+00:00
I don't think it is odd at all. In a choice between "our religion can't gain the membership to survive" vs "ok, we can bend the structure of our religion a little to make it more palatable for this huge amount of people", I think the choice is obvious.

You might find it odd that Christians think they came up with Easter (or Christmas, or the Epiphany...) though.
by msteffen | 2025-04-18 17:51:32+00:00
I think it’s self-sustaining, in that the needs of people without kids and the needs of people with kids are super duper different. If all your friends don’t have kids and you do, you feel ostracized because they’re not going to rearrange their life over your kids, and you’re constrained by your kids’ schedules (particularly sleep), so you just don’t see them that much anymore. Conversely, if all your friends have kids and you don’t, most of their socializing will probably feel really alien to you (unless you’re a teacher or something and work with kids), so you’ll feel disconnected from them.

Anecdotally, in my friend group, once the first two people had kids and started hanging out with each other, it was like the flood gates opened.
by Timon3 | 2025-04-18 17:51:33+00:00
> Of course, being good at passing tests doesn't mean one will be good at other things, in much the same way that one can be good at Leetcode problems but not good at building and maintaining large scale software systems in a large corporate environment. Still, it remains a 'credible' example of 'how to do meritocracy right', [...]

It's important not to forget Goodhart's law in this context: "When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure".

Unless the tested skill is wholly and directly applicable to the position you're testing for, the results will still be unfairly skewed towards those with more resources - they can afford more time to study for this specific test, and more importantly they have the resources to buy specialized learning material as well as tutoring.

Of course that's not to say that merit doesn't factor into the results at all, but it does mean that even examples of 'how to do meritocracy right' show that merit is never the only thing that matters.
by __MatrixMan__ | 2025-04-18 17:51:35+00:00
Is that substantively different than quitting and starting a much smaller company that competes with your previous one? Seems easier to just let the CEO and shareholders go down with the ship and move all the talent to the new one.

You can just run the codebase through an LLM to cleanse it of any IP entanglements. Open source it under a pseudonym if you're worried about retribution. Whatever parts of the business that doesn't cover... well those are the people you need to hire from the old one.

> First AI came for the artists and I said nothing because I was not an artist...

-- VC's and CEO's while their ship sinks
by timewizard | 2025-04-18 17:51:54+00:00
> Selling by personal connection and a motorcycle ride is really a form of cronyism or corruption.

Hardly. It's just "less than ideal."

> The end consumers and shareholders get shafted.

You're completely assuming that 100% a good deal CANNOT possibly be made on the back of a motorcycle? There's no reason to believe a suboptimal strategy can't arrive at the optimal solution.

> This kind of nonsense is especially pronounced and explicit in less well off societies and lowers the general standard of living.

This is the way business has been done in the first world for 100 years. You should calibrate your assumptions to the actual data.
by uticus | 2025-04-18 17:52:04+00:00
odometers must be interesting from a lawyer or bean counter perspective.

re warranties, depends on a value reported by equipment under warranty; there's really no other way to do it, though, unless gps reporting to 3rd party becomes primary value.

re all other (and my personal experience buying equipment out of warranty), the odometer always provides an interesting starting point - a first-pass filter to limit the pool of options that are then scrutinized in more detail.