MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by blahgeek | 2025-04-28 05:49:38+00:00
I think it's more common because one doing only coding can get paid reasonably. On the contrary, few people who "bake cakes for fun, make music for fun, write poems, novels, play chess for fun, practice sports, grow potatos" can get paid enough for a living, so that's usually not an option to consider. (Which is the reason that I find us coding people very lucky.)
by kragen | 2025-04-28 05:52:14+00:00
Recuperator-type heat exchangers need high-strength materials because both the strength of a wall and its thermal resistance are proportional to its thickness. So, if you can magically make copper five times stronger, you can make it one fifth as thick, cutting its thermal resistance by a factor of 5 and getting a much better heat exchanger.

As for water tanks, regulating temperature is not always "easy", and a major reason copper is used for water pipes is its great resistance to corrosion. In this case apparently it will be more expensive than the same mass of stainless, but it's apparently also stronger than stainless, so maybe you can use less of it, making it cheaper again.
by topspin | 2025-04-28 05:54:09+00:00
It's difficult to predict. High performance heat exchangers are an obvious application, but the potential is great for many other things.

"Nuclear plants?"

Sure. One of the most challenging problems in a PWRs is heat exchange; the so called "steam generators" that circulate primary and secondary water, for instance. They're huge, expensive heat exchangers and their primary failure mode is cracking. A durable, high temperature, high thermal conductivity copper based alloy goes directly to this. Better thermal conductivity could make these devices substantially smaller, reducing costs in all sorts of way, or enable novel designs.
by insin | 2025-04-28 05:54:48+00:00
Hono also has an official Vite devserver plugin if want an easy way to run a single integrated dev server locally for an API which also serves up your UI and has the hot reloading goodness you want.

I've used a very similar setup for a couple of new projects which were about to default to Next.js but didn't really specifically need what Next.js does (e.g. its SSR abstractions, these were internal, client-only apps sitting behind an auth redirect) from wasting their time fighting it.

Hono also supports JSX on the backend out of the box of you want to use components as a superior alternative to string templating libraries to serve up some HTML, a middle ground of sorts if Astro (:heart:) is too much for what your app needs to do.

I haven't needed to take advantage of this yet, but if you don't need full-fat React, it can also SSR and run on the client, sort of "vanilla JSX" if you will (sorry).
by otabdeveloper4 | 2025-04-28 05:55:08+00:00
OpenAI is a commercial company and their product is to make anthropomorphic chat bots.

Clever Hans at web-scale, so to say.

So if you're impressed by a model that spent 10 minutes and single-digit dollars to not solve a problem that has been solved before, then I guess their model is working exactly as expected.
by theshrike79 | 2025-04-28 05:55:17+00:00
I had Claude go into a loop because I have cat aliased as bat

It wanted to check a config json file, noticed that it had missing commas between items (because bat prettifies the json) and went into a forever loop of changing the json to add the commas (that were already there) and checking the result by 'cat'ing the file (but actually with bat) and again finding out they weren't there. GOTO 10

The actual issue was that Claude had left two overlapping configuration parsing methods in the code. One with Viper (The correct one) and one 1000% idiotic string search system it decided to use instead of actually unmarshaling the JSON :)

I had to use pretty explicit language to get it stop fucking with the config file and look for the issue elsewhere. It did remember it, but forgot on the next task of course. I should've added the fact to the rule file.

(This was a vibe coding experiment, I was being purposefully obtuse about not understanding the code)
by ViscountPenguin | 2025-04-28 05:55:38+00:00
I have a very strong metaphysical prior against consciousness uploads being possible, but I hope to live in a universe structured in the right way to make me wrong.

It's not the difference in substrate that makes me doubt it's possible (I'm a very strong believer in panpsychism), but I doubt the transfer could ever be "continuous" in a way that my monkey brain was satisfied with.
by paganel | 2025-04-28 05:56:08+00:00
> than political grassroots activists have today in places such as Western Europe and North America

That (2021) from the title is on the mark, as I think that by now, 2025, it has been made quite obvious that political protests in the West can only get up to a certain point, after which you risk prison, job loss or a combination of the two (even bough January 6 and the associated political repression took place in early 2021, so maybe the author should have already been aware of it)
by muzani | 2025-04-28 05:56:57+00:00
Yes, please. I've been looking for something like this. Lately I've been just casually going into another language with ChatGPT and asking it to correct me. I do I like some of the old languages, things like Aramaic, which just have a different feel.

I signed up, but now it's asking me for a "reference language" (which is a little ironic because it tells me this in English lol). I guess I'll play with this later.
by Dunan | 2025-04-28 05:57:49+00:00
I live in a neighborhood in central Tokyo where there are classes that teach this technique, out of one of the very few pre-war houses still standing.

We signed up for a class sort of at random and ended up making beautiful panels like the ones you see in the pictures. Attached them to handmade "washi" paper and made a lamp screen as a housewarming gift for my sibling.
by bitwize | 2025-04-28 05:58:34+00:00
> Honestly, the text looks like it was written by someone who does not understand hobbyist programming.

I don't think that at all. I think he just has a different perspective on it than you do. Whilst your perspective is valid, some people actually do enjoy the work of coding, especially if they can do so in an environment where they can immediately check intermediate results and use those to shape their coding trajectory as they work, creating a tight OODA loop. (Hi, Lisp!)

> That's why "all your base belong to us" kind of contracts in which stuff made outside work COULD become property of the hiring company makes otherwise happy developers into depressive under-productive nightmares. Let them code the toy thing unharmed in their spare time, for fucks sake.

> Let it be the real thing. Stop this nonsense fairytale.

On this we can agree. I think that for programming to be fun it has to be something you want to see come into fruition, i.e., not any random thing someone else wants to see, done to their schedule by their rules. Good tech companies -- game studios in the 90s, Google in the early days, even Microsoft in the early days -- knew how to make the golden goose as comfortable as possible while slipping out the back with the eggs.

But in the late 90s, Jim McCarthy's "Beware of a guy in a room" became iron gospel among management types, who interpreted it as meaning that developers must be subjected to a panopticon in which what they are doing at all times is tracked and analyzed by the chain of command going up to the C level. Hence Scrum, SAFe, and all that malarkey, and we've forgotten how to "let 'em cook" as the kids say now.
by Shorn | 2025-04-28 05:58:36+00:00
I asked ChatGPT about playing chess: it says tests have shown it makes an illegal move within 10 - 15 moves, even if prompted to play carefully and not make any illegal moves. It'll fail within the first 3 or 4 if you ask it play reasonably quickly.

That means, it can literally never win a chess match, given an intentional illegal move is an immediate loss.

It can't beat a human who can't play chess. It literally can't even lose properly. It will disqualify itself every time.

--

> It shows clearly where current models shine (problem-solving)

Yeh - that's not what's happening.

I say that as someone that pays for and uses an LLM pretty much every day.

--

Also - I didn't fact check any of the above about playing chess. I choose to believe.
by lnsru | 2025-04-28 05:58:42+00:00
So many cool technical projects here. But I am doing something completely different - masonry. Repairing walls in 3 rooms. It includes reinstalling dozens of falling off bricks, installing 30 or so power outlets, replacing old windows with bigger modern ones, fixing openings for the doors and plastering everything afterwards. On one hand it’s interesting, because it’s very different from the dayjob. But doing it by myself pays my newish car in cash immediately. However I wouldn’t do it for money somewhere else, it’s really really hard work.

Instead of masonry I would like to work on time of flight cameras. But the day has only 24 hours :-(
by jokethrowaway | 2025-04-28 05:58:46+00:00
Absolutely agree with this article! My startup days are more than a decade ago but even then it was already well known - hence why tech founders with a bit of experience stay far away from these people.

The best part of the article: > [...] you should demonstrate it in one of two ways that are relevant to your venture:

> Generate a big waitlist (> 1,000) for B2C play > Get > 20 businesses to sign an LOI for B2B play

Ideas are cheap.

This is the business MVP worth spending 50% equity on and worth investing your time to build the tech prototype.

My best tip to handle business guys pestering you with ideas is to say "Great idea, bring me some clients and I will build the solution, then we can revenue share".

I usually never hear from them after this.
by 112233 | 2025-04-28 05:58:46+00:00
When repeatedly running "generate story about X" on different models and then simply asking for next part, one thing that stands out is many LLMs will gladly swap characters in their output. Like X asks Y to do something, Y does, then Y says "thank you X for doing this". But obviously it is much more varied.

Most likely because there is no mechanism in this thing that would allow for building spatial or relationship model between entities.
by fc417fc802 | 2025-04-28 05:59:18+00:00
You might be able to define this particular problem using negatives instead of positives. Everything except stuff like YouTube, Netflix, etc. If you cut out images, audio, video, and other intensive data streams text based communication in natural language is extremely lightweight. Particularly if the protocol is carefully designed with the intended deployment conditions in mind.

I guess a requirement for that is a sufficiently generalized protocol with a matching hardware stack.
by fzeroracer | 2025-04-28 06:00:06+00:00
Speaking as someone in the games industry, I disagree with your take on portfolios. For reference, when I graduated college back in 2015 I had a portfolio of games, a successful and reasonably popular game mod and a bunch of relevant classwork. None of that even mildly got my foot in the door at any gaming companies, big or small or otherwise. Also of note, many software companies force you to sign an assignment of inventions agreement or a declaration that says you will not work in anything remotely related to software in your free time, which heavily restricts your ability to add to your portfolio.

What did help me however, is that I got a job at a smaller company working on software and then leveraged that professional experience into a job in the industry. That initial job I got was because of my computer science degree.

The importance of a CS degree was the stuff I learned across the degree, not stuff that was necessarily directly CS-related. Physics and math classes for example I did horrifically in as well, but those concepts I picked up have been useful to have in my toolkit.
by sien | 2025-04-28 06:00:11+00:00
It's remarkable how quickly Communism collapsed in Eastern Europe the moment Soviet support went.

Despite decades of intense propaganda, killings of people in uprisings and the methods of Stasi as described in the article.

Even with all that effort most people didn't believe in the regime.

So it's hard to say whether the Stasi's tactics worked. Only people in the regimes like Ceausescu and Honecker actually thought people liked it. And perhaps not even them.
by kmeisthax | 2025-04-28 06:00:37+00:00
The section at the end about support and solidarity is the most important bit.

Personally, I feel like Zersetzung has already been a thing in the US since at least 2014. Modern social media is very, very good at getting people to shout at each other and do nothing. People don't talk to each other, they shout to themselves while watching the telescreen.
by theshrike79 | 2025-04-28 06:01:04+00:00
You don't do it for bugs, you do it for features in this case.

Contrived example: You want a program that prints out the weather for the given area.

First you write the tests (using AI if you want) that test for the output you want.

Then you tell the AI to implement the code that will pass the tests and explicitly tell it NOT to fuck with the tests (as Claude 3.7 specifically will do happily, it'll mock the tests so far it's not touching a line of the actual code to be tested...)

With bugs you always write a test that confirms the exact case the bug caused so that it doesn't reappear. This way you'll slowly build a robust test suite. 1) find bug 2) write test for correct case 3) fix code until test passes
Show HN: Hacker News Menu Bar App for Raycast – View Stories over N Points
by kbatdorf | 2025-04-28 06:02:50+00:00
I wanted a way to get notified about high-engagement stories on HN (e.g., 500+ points), so I built this Raycast menubar extension. It uses the HN API to filter and display top stories right from your menu bar.

It was quick to build - just half a day.

Code: https://github.com/KevinBatdorf/hacker-news-top-stories-rayc...
by lutusp | 2025-04-28 06:02:51+00:00
Most of these points are true for computer media as well if separated from some degree of computer power, especially "not necessarily cheap".

> ... need physical copy to back up

Certainly true for computer storage, which, if left to the whims of nature and given time, will self-destruct.

Years ago I got a call from Tom Clancy, who was writing "Hunt for Red October" using my word processor "Apple Writer." He said a diskette had become unreadable and asked how to recover its contents. I delivered the bad news and recommended that he use his backup diskette. I'm sure you can guess how that turned out.
by anovikov | 2025-04-28 06:02:53+00:00
Time and again we see how half-assed dictatorships don't work. Soviet Union and the Eastern Block failed because they tried to be nice. By doing so, they achieved the worst result possible: cynical, profoundly disillusioned society and an economic failure on top of that. They should've either folded when they realised that "classless and stateless" Communism was never going to work - which is, by the late 1970s at the latest, or practiced pure Stalinism where everyone who wavered, got purged in an instant and thus generations kept being genetically filtered for obedience.

There is no such thing as "Socialism with a human face". It is so anti-human, it can only exist by hard coercion, or not at all.
by walterbell | 2025-04-28 06:02:54+00:00
Article mirror: https://archive.is/d1rzC

Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zersetzung

2014, https://www.ted.com/talks/hubertus_knabe_the_dark_secrets_of...

> Hubertus Knabe studies the Stasi — and was spied on by them. He shares stunning details from the fall of a surveillance state, and shows how easy it was for neighbor to turn on neighbor.
by theshrike79 | 2025-04-28 06:03:13+00:00
It's not about backend or frontend, it's mostly about languages. If you're using niche stuff or languages that don't have an online or digital presence, the LLMs will be confused. Stuff like assembler or low-level C aren't really in their vocabulary.

C#, Go, Python for example work perfectly well and you can kinda test the LLMs preference by asking them to write a program to solve a problem, but don't specify the language.
by caseyy | 2025-04-28 06:03:53+00:00
I think they meant eternal life much more in the “I have no mouth, and I must scream” sense.

Much has been said and written about the cruelty of immortality, since the myth of Sisyphus and probably before.

“The Mortal Immortal” is a story about prolonging lifespan but not healthspan, and also not emotional fulfilment in life — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mortal_Immortal. There are also TV shows (“Altered Carbon”, “Black Mirror” USS Callister and other episodes, “Twilight Zone”) and video games (“Nobody Wants to Die”) about it.

What your parent comment speaks about (the vanity of endless life) is particularly explored in Bernard Williams’s “The Makropulos Affair”. Endless life could mean no regard for quality of life and endless trivial pursuits.
by fuzzfactor | 2025-04-28 06:04:13+00:00
Pure focused cruelty, or complete incompetence.

You know they've got at least 10x the server cost being wasted by old emails and stuff like that which could be more sensibly purged instead of customer reference documents.

Perhaps it's an anti-recycling effort against those who would otherwise keep running these old processors which once played a respectable key part in Intel's progress.

After digital files first became available for electronic components, there has never been any good excuse for them to go out-of-print after that.
by jampekka | 2025-04-28 06:04:33+00:00
There is a difference of information being public vs publicized. There's a huge difference in consequences for individuals of how widely information is distributed and how easily available it is.

This of course predates the internet. Publicizing generally available information about individuals or compiling them into databases for no acceptable reason has been illegal for ages at least in most of Europe.

The easier distribution by internet does cause some new questions in this and I'm not sure if restricting to "meatspace access" is optimal, but it is mostly what we have now.
by d3ms | 2025-04-28 06:05:05+00:00
What you are noticing is the irrational worship of free markets by the middle and upper classes. The mantra, repeated ad nauseam by the entire American/European establishment, is that somehow private industry and free markets are inherently morally good. The Economy, or at least this particular expression of it, has replaced religion. Its high priests, like in antiquity, dictate the fates in their white marble temples.
by theshrike79 | 2025-04-28 06:05:48+00:00
The "Deep Research" modes in web-based LLMs are quite useful. They can take a days worth of reading forums and social media sites and compress into about 10 minutes.

For example I found a perfect 4k120Hz capable HDMI switch by using ChatGPTs research mode. It did suggest the generic Chinese random-named ones off Amazon, but there was one brand with an actual website and a history - based in Germany.

I hadn't seen it recommended anywhere on my attempts, but did find it by searching for the brand specifically and found only good reviews. Bought it, love it.
by mdp2021 | 2025-04-28 06:05:53+00:00
It is suggested that again this is an effect of training towards "sounding well" as opposed to alethics.

The results in an image: https://dl.acm.org/cms/10.1145/3706598.3713470/asset/95dbaf8...

--

From the actual paper ( https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3706598.3713470 ):

> We used ChatGPT-4o to generate the LLM-generated prompts, while UK-based lawyers generated the lawyer-generated advice

It would have been nice to also have layers assess the LLM output...
by shikaan | 2025-04-28 06:06:36+00:00
As a follow up to my relatively successful series in x86 Assembly of last year[1], I started making an OS that fits in a bootloader.

I am purposefully not doing chain loading or multi-stage to see how much I can squeeze out of 510bytes.

It comes with a file system, a shell, and a simple process management. Enough to write non-trivial guest applications, like a text editor. It's a lot of fun!

Not quite done with it yet, but you can see the progress here https://github.com/shikaan/OSle and even test it out in the browser https://shikaan.github.io/OSle/

[1] https://shikaan.github.io/assembly/x86/guide/2024/09/08/x86-...
by ModernMech | 2025-04-28 06:07:11+00:00
> undesirable or maladaptive medical conditions

This is why autistic people are wary of efforts to "cure" autism -- because the people leading the charge always use dehumanizing language to frame their cause. It becomes a moral imperative. "We have to cleanse humanity of this scourge! We have to save the children!"

And what do we have to do to accomplish this goal? The solutions are always the same: register us all in a database, send us to a camp or a farm for "curing", and prevent us from reproducing through forced sterilization and/or euthanasia.

Unless and until autistic people are in charge, then all such efforts to "cure" autism and "find the cause" should be treated with extreme skepticism.
by vkou | 2025-04-28 06:07:24+00:00
It was, of course, quite unfortunate that the footsoldiers carrying out an illegal coup faced sanction, while their leaders got off scot-free. (Well, most of them, Guiliani seems to be deeply fucked, and now that he's no longer useful to the regime, has been thrown overboard.)

(I'm sure someone will now chime in to explain to us how no, it's quite normal for a mob that's trying to overturn the results of a democratic election to break into a capital building while congress is in session, putting it under lockdown. And then someone else will chime in how it's exactly like a bunch of college students protesting by sitting down in the hallways of a campus building that they on any normal day have full access to and refusing to leave.)

Incidentally, the organizers of that putsch are now imprisoning people without trial in foreign concentration camps, and are refusing court orders to have them released. This is also, of course, above-board behaviour, and demonstrates that they have nothing but the deepest respect for both the law, the democratic process, and the checks and balances that safeguard us.
by antirez | 2025-04-28 06:07:43+00:00
That's a work of art. I had a lot of fun with these emulators in recent years. Some time ago I reworked the Spectrum emulator to work with the RP2040: https://github.com/antirez/zx2040

One of the incredible things of these emulators is that the chips are emulated in a completely modular and isolated way, and the interface to take everything together are the pins! Yes, the logical state of the pins in the emulated chip, which is awesome and really shows how each of those machines used to work.
by tasoeur | 2025-04-28 06:09:10+00:00
I was recently looking for a simple minimalist app launcher for iPhone that would respect my privacy and didn’t come with a stupid subscription plan, so instead I made my own! https://apps.apple.com/us/app/applist/id6743515756

I also published the list of url schemes / universal links on GitHub: http://github.com/sxp-studio/app-list-catalog
by muzani | 2025-04-28 06:09:59+00:00
I've been using something like Google Family Link, which works fine, except that it ties in to Google Family, along with YouTube, Play Store, Google One. I'd have to kick my sister out of the group to monitor another daughter and it means there's a limit on the number of children you have; such terrible design.

I do want to give them a little privacy and it gets to the appropriate level. Like restricting some apps at certain times, access to chrome but not xhamster. Locking it for certain periods of time and having them request more screen time past 4 hrs/day. Locking the phone whenever they've barricaded themselves in the room the whole morning.

I don't necessarily mind that they're watching YT or TikTok and such. I just want to kick them out of the doom scrolling cycle every now and then.