MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
Ask HN: How to transition into Robotics
by hdks | 2025-04-19 16:48:45+00:00
I would very much like to work on robotics in almost any capacity and am wondering if anyone can share any tips on how I might be able to break into the industry.

I’ve got about 5 years of full stack development experience and a EE degree. Right now I work more on the server side of things, and would like to continue writing software as my job but just for robotics. I know this experience won’t directly translate over to robotics but I do feel like I would be able to get up to speed quickly using my experience.

Any advice or knowledge from people looking to do the same thing / are already working on robotics would be very much appreciated
by ncruces | 2025-04-19 16:48:57+00:00
I'm not that great at long form writing to be honest, it's always a bit of a chore, and I'm never happy with the result.

To answer your question, it needs a libc because you're including stdlib.h, and exporting and allocator (even if you're not otherwise using it). You need a libc for malloc.

This is generally a good idea, if you need to send anything beyond numbers across the API (e.g. you need an allocator if you want to send strings as pointers).

I never used WIT, so I have no idea if this a requirement for WIT.
by arghwhat | 2025-04-19 16:49:17+00:00
This is default on iOS and on many Android versions.

It's often configurable, but e.g. carrier policy or local vendors can enforce it.

To have updates automatically install overnight is the maximally desirable scenario - waiting for user approval usually result in open vulnerabilities, and if you interact with a prompt you are by definition using your device and it is therefore a much worse time than while you're asleep.
by zomglings | 2025-04-19 16:49:29+00:00
You can ask it to store its current context to a file, review the file, ask it to emphasize or de-emphasize things based on your review, and then use `/clear`.

Then, you can edit the file at your leisure if you want to.

And when you want to load that context back in, ask it to read the file.

Works better than `/compact`, and is a lot cheaper.
by hdjrudni | 2025-04-19 16:49:43+00:00
> Otherwise you've got one object that's actually two types: the object half-initialised and the object fully initialised, and it's very easy to confuse the two.

You said it yourself -- if you feel like you have two objects, then literally use two objects if you need to split it up that way, FooBarBuilder and FooBar. That way FooBar is always fully built, and if FooBarBuilder needs to do funky black magic, it can do so in `build()` instead of `__init__`.
by ykhoury | 2025-04-19 16:50:07+00:00
Hey all, we released Poddly.ai, a tool I personally use often to summarize long form youtube videos.

We have added features like in-depth timestamps for topics, key points (for long form content), an AI chat box to ask questions about the episode you have summarized, and external links related to the topic in the video.

Open to any feedback on improvements for the platform, would love for you guys to check it out. Currently works just for videos in English that have transcripts in English.
by dleeftink | 2025-04-19 16:50:14+00:00
To me, the next generation of PKM doesn't lie at the level of representation but at the level simplification, and integrating prior strands of though into something usable.

We leave such data trails, but every time we switch or another tool comes along, the switching cost/conversion process leaves much to be desired and some of our prior history beyond reach.

Even as plain text, the sheer feature discrepancy between tool A and B leaves our knowledge siloed. The semantic Web had its moments, but we never took that concept to heart when considering our individual webs of thought.

Your semantics and mine may be inoperable, but that's okay. We just need better tooling to accustom our personal semantics, and I think projects like this lay the groundwork for that.
by philwelch | 2025-04-19 16:50:37+00:00
It's not really fair to compare the efficiency numbers directly that way. The efficiency for hydrogen is measured from the hydrogen fuel directly, but the efficiency of the EV is measured from the wall. In reality, generating electricity is about 40% efficient at best. Yes, there's also an efficiency cost to refining the hydrogen, but if we compare apples to apples and take a ton of LNG and use it to power an EV versus a hydrogen car, I doubt the EV is going to get more milage.
by AlotOfReading | 2025-04-19 16:51:23+00:00
The disease aspects are inseparable from colonialism. Here's a quote from a recent survey on the matter [0] that describes the current understanding much better than I would:

The contours of Indigenous depopulation were shaped not only by disease but also by complex colonial factors including violence, forced labor, exorbitant taxation, malnutrition, and dislocation. Archaeology has shown that Native populations were not destined to be decimated but were made vulnerable through the policies, choices, and behaviors of colonists.

[0] https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/97804292...
by AnIrishDuck | 2025-04-19 16:52:17+00:00
> In modern times, librarians are working against the factions that do that.

A thousand times this. People who think that librarians are secretly censoring the flow of information are completely out of touch with how librarians work.

Librarians take their responsibility to their community seriously. This responsibility, to them, is nothing less than presenting their patrons with all of the information (books and beyond) that they are trying to access, regardless of their personal feelings about said information.
by sodapopcan | 2025-04-19 16:52:50+00:00
Hard to say, but as it stands, but my view is that that the typical nvim users want Vim as a full-fledged IDE with little effort whereas Vim users still want Vim largely as a text editor. And of course there are already a whole bunch of incompatible differences between them that would only be noticed by the more "power" users I suppose.
by biomcgary | 2025-04-19 16:52:56+00:00
Everything that reproduces is in an evolutionary arms race (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolutionary_arms_race), so the "kicking the can" objection doesn't really make sense in this context.

There is no alternative to inventing new weapons continuously. We are simply used to winning without much effort since Fleming found penicillin, a naturally occurring fungal compound. Previous successes have limited the economics of continuing to develop new solutions, which is contributes to the uptick in resistance.

This doesn't mean we shouldn't be judicious in the tradeoffs that we choose and try to avoid a purely chemical solution to the arms race. For example, as robotics get better, we should move away from mono-cropping toward combinations of plants that naturally ward off pests. There are better ways to stay ahead than blunt tools.
by jmull | 2025-04-19 16:52:58+00:00
You can think of a network generally as a bunch of uniform nodes with uniform connections each with a random chance of failure, as a useful first approximation.

But that’s not what they really are.

If you’re optimizing or troubleshooting it’s usually better to look at what’s actually happening. Certainly before implementing a fix. You really want to understand what you’re fixing, or you’re kind of doing a rain dance.
by mschuster91 | 2025-04-19 16:53:04+00:00
> It's just called "curation" when you agree with it rather than "censorship".

At least in Germany, virtually all public libraries are interconnected with each other, so if one library doesn't have a particular book, another one which has it can send the book their way. And in the case that there's no library at all holding it in stock in all of Germany (which is damn near impossible), as long as the printers have fulfilled their legal obligation to send at least two copies of the book to the National Library, they'll be the "library of last resort".
by freefaler | 2025-04-19 16:53:26+00:00
That's why I said "may", not "will". I hire a lot of contractors and if we can't specify the work sufficiently then we don't hire them. Or hire on a fixed budget to get the correct deliverables specified (if possible).

When you pay for "hours worked" the incentive is to "work more hours", not deliver the result. I've seen many employees spending their employers money for such "contracts", but they will not have done that with their own money.

When the task is so hard to define/specify/design, it's not a good fit for contractor's work.

BTW, the building industry has been working with contractors for ages and their practices are very efficient and the IT sector will learn from them sooner or later.
by mikeg8 | 2025-04-19 16:53:34+00:00
Finding product market fit is a human directional issue, and LLMs absolutely can help speed up iteration time here. I’ve built two RoR MVPs for small hobbby projects spending ~$75 in Claude code to make something in a day that would have previously taken me a month plus. Again, absolutely bizarre that people can’t see the value here, even as these tools are still working through their kinks.
by EA-3167 | 2025-04-19 16:54:56+00:00
I think the key ingredient in the story of Thomas Beckett wasn't the revelation of his identity and location, but the fact that it was the THE KING OF ENGLAND calling for his head.

And you know what? Calling for someone's murder can already be a crime, if it's a plausible threat, that's not what doxxing is.
by soulofmischief | 2025-04-19 16:55:32+00:00
I had access to Mein Kampf in my elementary school.

> The few exceptions I can think of were based on religious objections (e.g. Harry Potter)

I wasn't allowed to read Harry Potter at my home, but my librarian allowed me to anyway. I wasn't allowed to read books with sexual content, but my librarian allowed me to anyway. I was raised by massively abusive religious extremists. I didn't give a fuck about their attempts to control my mind then, and as an adult now I don't give a fuck about other idiots' attempts to control their kids minds now.

My guardians did every single thing they could think of to stunt my growth and turn me into a good little Catholic extremist. You simply won't understand unless you have been through such a horrible experience, as a curious mind with a voracious appetite for knowledge.
by boredtofears | 2025-04-19 16:55:52+00:00
Yeah, I tried CC out and quickly noticed it was spending $5+ for simple LLM capable tasks. I rarely break $1-2 a session using aider. Aider feels like more of a precision tool. I like having the ability to manually specify.

I do find Claude Code to be really good at exploration though - like checking out a repository I'm unfamiliar with and then asking questions about it.
by reptilian | 2025-04-19 16:56:03+00:00
Been on Reddit since Aaron sent me an invite. Been active for a decade with hundreds of thousands of karma. Permabanned three years ago for discussing the role of Ghislaine Maxwell as super mod u/maxwellhill and subsequent accounts have been permabanned - assuming they're using device fingerprinting as accounts used different IP addresses, different emails etc.

Reddit is infuriating. The best community moderation system of up and down votes, with the most toxic bunch of information and cognitive warfare operatives soiling it with their manipulative bullshit moderation.

Reddit today is nothing more than a sandpit for testing novel psychological warfare techniques.
by IM11I | 2025-04-19 16:56:30+00:00
Hi HN! I created One For All Downloader, an online, ad‑free video and audio downloader that uses the power of the almighty yt‑dlp under the hood to support hundreds of sites from YouTube and TikTok to Instagram, Facebook, and pretty much any site that yt‑dlp supports (hopefully... I haven’t tested them all :x ).

Right now, hosting is relatively cheap, so I’ll keep it online for a few months if I see anyone using it. You can download individual videos, playlists, or channels in different resolutions, or grab high‑quality MP3s at 128/192/320 kbps. This was meant to be in Shown but i messed up bad...
by poulsbohemian | 2025-04-19 16:56:32+00:00
Not a subscriber, but the headline alone caught me off guard... knitting and fishing? These are some pretty affordable hobbies. My 14 year old has taken up knitting in a big way just using her birthday money and some needles from the local thrift store. Fishing? Sure maybe you can't afford a chartered deep sea trip, but the equipment for your local river or creek is nearly free at somebody's yard sale. Now if you want to talk about things like skiing or golfing...for that matter I've been a beekeeper but am feeling just about priced out of that as well.
by soulofmischief | 2025-04-19 16:58:29+00:00
Absolutely. Why is everyone responding to this thread going right to Mein Kampf? It was very easy for me to access that book.

> It's not really a "banned book week" unless you're pissing everybody off.

They did. Oh, they did. Lots of parents got pissed every year. Censors will censor.
by mikojan | 2025-04-19 16:58:47+00:00
> As someone down below mentioned, programming is not as much editing text as it is massaging the underlying AST.

Then why does your IDE not look like Scratch?

It is because nobody has found a better representation then text when it comes to editing concrete syntax trees.

Yes, you will rarely reach for d) or d} when editing Java or JavaScript. But the Vi paradigm does not stop at prose. And it does not stop at modern IDE capabilities either.

The Vi paradigm just enables people to do it faster. With less friction.
by skydhash | 2025-04-19 16:59:40+00:00
This. PR is just one of many methodologies with Git and has its own pros and cons. But as you said, the history is no longer so important as you have the PR reference (and can export the data). So squash it is.

But for true decentralized developments, when the developer is not really part of the same organigram, I'd prefer the remote branch to be cleaned up with clear commits. in this case, I will merge.
by gruez | 2025-04-19 17:00:46+00:00
>There are strong implications throughout the patent that distance estimation, trip planning, and battery charge planning are heavily software-driven, and that mileage to be driven or driven is calculated through software, based on user input and various external conditions.

So you're saying because they're doing so much smart stuff to estimate trip distances, they must be using the same smart stuff to fudge the odometer?
by const_cast | 2025-04-19 17:00:59+00:00
It's not that people hate police, it's that the police have zero accountability and that, over time, has lead to a culture where they can do whatever they want, whenever they want. The police are rife with systemic abuse and even a HINT of "oh maybe we should be looking into this" is met with "back the blue" type people crawling of the woodwork to explain how qualified immunity is good, actually, and we don't want good ole boys going to prison for things as trivial as state-sanctioned murder.
by Wowfunhappy | 2025-04-19 17:01:05+00:00
Neat, thanks, I had no idea!

Edit: It so happens I had a Claude Code session open in my Terminal, so I asked it:

Save your current context to a file.

Claude produced a 91 line md file... surely that's not the whole of its context? This was a reasonably lengthy conversation in which the AI implemented a new feature.
by Loughla | 2025-04-19 17:01:30+00:00
What? There are a shit load of books banned for being "offensive" that aren't because of graphic displays of sexuality.

The perks of being a wallflower has been banned. 13 reasons why. Slaughterhouse 5. The Decameron. Uncle Tom's Cabin. The Grapes of Wrath.

Do I need to keep going? The sexual nonsense has been used recently to ban lgbt books, as if queer kids aren't a thing that exists.
by stevenAthompson | 2025-04-19 17:01:36+00:00
> People may binge a series but they are still on their phones half of the time scrolling for dopamine.

This. Both movies and series are now FAR less popular (and profitable) than video games, and video games are far less popular than social media. Even the minority that still enjoys legacy media enjoys it WHILE consuming other media.

Movie theaters are in as much trouble as libraries, and blaming either of them for their decline in popularity without mentioning the root causes would be myopic.

The cost of all this is that nuance and the ability to have a single train of thought that lasts longer than the length of a TikTok video or tweet are dying.
by Neywiny | 2025-04-19 17:02:03+00:00
They've been disrespecting consent for years now. There have been posts about it online. "No" turned into "maybe later" turned into "remind me in 3 days" and now, even when I do turn on the few features I like, I will get bombarded to turn them on [0]. Turns out my local library puts guests on a Debian based system with libreoffice. I'm sure the majority of people don't even notice but it probably reduced cost dramatically and is easier to lock down.

[0] teams has a new calendar that's actually better. But even after turning it on I still get pop-ups to enable it.
by idle_zealot | 2025-04-19 17:03:20+00:00
The framing being used is that what we currently do is "pro-transparency." We make laws to "inform" consumers and then trust that the market will sort the rest out. Cory rejects this as a workable tactic, because transparency, even real, full transparency, just becomes noise that people filter out when making decisions. He argues that if you want good outcomes you need legislation other than forcing transparency.
by mjr00 | 2025-04-19 17:03:38+00:00
You're right that consistent internal state is important, but you can accomplish this with

class MyClass: def __init__(self, config: str): self._config = config

And if your reaction is "that just means something else needs to call Path("config.json").read_text()", you're absolutely right! It's separation of concerns; let some other method deal with the possibility that `config.json` isn't accessible. In the real world, you'd presumably want even more specific checks that specific config values were present in the JSON file, and your constructor would look more like

def __init__(self, host: str, port: int):

and you'd validate that those values are present in the same place that loads the JSON.

This simple change makes code so much more readable and testable.
by bambax | 2025-04-19 17:03:56+00:00
Asking very specific questions to Sonnet 3.7 costs a couple of tenths of a cent every time, and even if you're doing that all day it will never amount to more than maybe a dollar at the end of the day.

On average, one line of, say, JavaScript represents around 7 tokens, which means there are around 140k lines of JS per million tokens.

On Openrouter, Sonnet 3.7 costs are currently:

- $3 / one million input tokens => $100 = 33.3 million input tokens = 420k lines of JS code

- $15 / one million output tokens => $100 = 3.6 million output tokens = 4.6 million lines of JS code

For one developer? In one day? It seems that one can only reach such amounts if the whole codebase is sent again as context with each and every interaction (maybe even with every keystroke for type completion?) -- and that seems incredibly wasteful?
by stevenAthompson | 2025-04-19 17:03:57+00:00
Early in life I learned the rule: If one person is a jerk, he's just a jerk. If you feel like everyone is a jerk, you are probably the one being a jerk.

The same is true of books. If you think one book is bad, it's probably the book. If you think all/most books are slow you should work on your attention span.
by lurk2 | 2025-04-19 17:04:28+00:00
This reads like the sort of self-congratulatory articles journalists were fond of writing about themselves in the late-2010s, just as public trust in journalism was reaching an all-time low.

I suspect the same thing is happening with librarians as they’ve begun to abandon all pretence of being impartial guardians of information in favor of larping as members of The Resistance. Ironically, the experts never seem to learn that you can only play this game for so long before no one cares what you have to say anymore.
by trollbridge | 2025-04-19 17:05:04+00:00
I wish much of the lore about librarians were actually true, but these days they seem to be mostly focused on either filling up dumpsters full of old books for sale (why are they getting rid of all of the old books), stocking the shelves with DVDs (why are libraries in the movie-rental business?), or else organising things that seem to be quite tangentional to being a "library". For example, I think it's fine to take family photos or ID photos for kids... but is this really the primary mission of a library?

When I need an inter-library loan of a hard-to-find book, they say they can't do it since the Amazon price of the book is over $1,000. (Of course, we all know the Amazon prices are basically made up - offering books for sale that aren't in stock, and on the chance they get an order at an outrageous price, go try and find it cheap on the secondary market.)

Nonetheless, they're always asking for money - whether applying for grants, putting property tax levies on the ballot, attempting to raise sales taxes, despite the ever-decreasing levels of service, alongside requisite threats "If we don't pass this item, the library will close!!!"

I view librarians as ones that completely missed the boat when it comes to their traditional domain of organising indexes to literature, which has been eclipsed first by Google, and now by AI in general.
by dugmartin | 2025-04-19 17:05:05+00:00
Yes - they built a huge new library in the town next over as the old one was overflowing with books and then only moved about 1/5 of the books over when it was completed. They disappeared the entire CS section. But it has about 5 unused meeting rooms, an unused “media maker space” and an enormous light filled open second floor area with two couches.
by gruez | 2025-04-19 17:05:11+00:00
Given this hinges entirely on what is meant by "trip meter", and the little tidbit is only mentioned in passing with no elaboration, I think it's fine to question what exactly the author meant. That quote works equally as well if they were complaining about the range meter rather than the odometer. If the range meter said there was 200 mi left, then said 100 mi left after only driving 60 mi, I'd be pretty miffed, and might even claimed that it "lied".
by matheusmoreira | 2025-04-19 17:05:36+00:00
> Those are great guidelines for never achieving anything relevant.

Relevant to whom? Everything I've done is extremely relevant to me. I wouldn't have done those things if I didn't care about them.

> Also, the same ideas applied to dating rather than to code are what we call "incels/redpillers" and so on

I'd say it's more like MGTOW.
by alephnerd | 2025-04-19 17:06:30+00:00
They're actively hiring teams to diversify away from the CATL dependency.

They've starting hiring teams in India [0] and Malaysia [1] to work with alternative LFP suppliers.

It's most likely Agratas in India (they manufacture the batteries used in Tata and JLR's EVs) and EVE Energy in Malaysia (they began an expansion outside Chin due to EU and US tariffs).

[0] - https://hire-r1.mokahr.com/su/lsfouz

[1] - https://hire-r1.mokahr.com/su/avoumb