MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by fallingknife | 2025-04-28 06:10:13+00:00
I also don't have a CS degree and took the bootcamp route, but I have found very much that companies really do only care about what you know. It was difficult to get the first offer, but since then it's not been a problem at all. I have had multiple jobs and offers from startups to FAANG companies and the only reaction that I have ever gotten from telling people I did a bootcamp and switched careers in my early 30s was positive.
by BLKNSLVR | 2025-04-28 06:13:28+00:00
Are you using Socialism and Communism interchangeably?

Communism goes further than Socialism (or Socialism doesn't go as far as Communism), Communism is more extreme, cold and hard and not at all blurry-edged, according to my understanding anyway.

All instances of -isms eventually fall to the unrelenting winds of human nature. Not necessarily due to the ideals within the -ism itself.
by Ygg2 | 2025-04-28 06:13:47+00:00
> That's correct. My point is that even if we talk about memory safety only, languages are on a spectrum

So are cars, there are cars that are a deathtrap, that send the steering wheel through your guts, and there are cars with seatbelts and airbags that won't save you from others or your own errors, but will minimize it. By your logic, I assume you're driving a Ford Pinto (Zig - has seatbelts but will explode at slightest touch).

You still wouldn't remove the seatbelts because they "chafe", or breaks because it's too much useless mass.

> In practice, we call languages that easily demarcate their unsafe code "safe languages".

That's not true. See Java, it doesn't demarcate unsafe code, you use the unsafe package. Granted, JNI looks about as weird

What in practice most people call safe languages are languages that preserve or have a high likelihood (looking at Go's memory model during data races) to preserve the spatial and temporal memory safety invariant, in absence of implementation errors.

> That's nothing to do with Rice's theorem

Wdym? The presumption is, you don't have a runtime, and you want safety. That means static checks. That means proving properties of your code, implying Rice's theorem.

> A language that's completely, *100% memory-safe is not hard to do.*

> My point is that even if we talk about memory safety only, languages are on a spectrum (e.g. Java programs don't need to use unsafe code as much as Rust programs), and there's always some situations where we don't rely on sound guarantees.

Huh? These two claims are in opposition. If it's easy (doable) to go 100% memory safe, then there should be a trivial way to always rely on memory guarantees. No need for a spectrum.

The spectrum exist because rather than writing OS in Ada, programmers collectively decided to bury their heads into C.

> That's not a good analogy for software correctness

It's not supposed to be a good analogy for software correctness, it was an example of Nirvana fallacy.

> There are languages that, at least in principle, "cure" far, far more than Rust or even Java do, such as ATS or Idris. Why don't we always use them?

Another Nirvana fallacy. On face value, this is an argument to move more to Rust, ATS, Ada and Idris, than it is to abandon them. Or for Rust to get linear types.

That said, in practice I understand these are proof languages with no ecosystem, that might reduce the likeliness of being used in production. But Rust has no such issues. It has a minor proof requirement (make sure your lifetimes are in agreement with the borrow model).

> Because it's hard!

If you avoid things that are hard, you'll never grow. If a programming language you learned didn't cause headaches, it's not a programming language, it's a dialect.
by fc417fc802 | 2025-04-28 06:14:12+00:00
Fair point about water pipe corrosion, my mistake. Although thinking about it more carefully what is strength saving you there other than cost? This material is going to be at least a 10x cost premium judging by the elemental composition. And if we're talking household temperatures I expect there are polymer coatings that would work better.

The heat exchanger point is interesting. However doesn't stainless already lose out to 3D printed aluminum for the sort of applications where the optimization is worth the cost? This material is even heaver than steel and substantially more expensive.

It's tangential but I wonder how amenable to 3D printing this material will prove to be.
by heliographe | 2025-04-28 06:14:43+00:00
I’ve been making photography software as an indie developer for a bit over a year now:

https://heliographe.net

A few released apps for now that are iOS/macOS, with some exciting more things in the pipeline.

If you’re a photographer who has frustrations with current mainstream photography software (whether capture/edit/publishing), I’d also love to hear from you - you can find me as Héliographe on (mastodon,bluesky,threads,x) or just email me at contact@heliographe.net :)
by caseyy | 2025-04-28 06:14:58+00:00
That is true but do they discern based on degrees?

I found that AAA studios will pick someone with game shipping experience and some good code examples on GitHub over someone with a university degree 9 times out of 10.

The degree does matter a bit more in AAA, especially R&D roles. These studios actually have some R&D to do. But for other roles and other company sizes… does it truly matter in Sweden? I mean, wouldn’t a decent portfolio (including just a list of titles they worked on) jump anyone to the front of the shortlist, ahead of degrees but weaker experience?

That’s been my experience.
by Joker_vD | 2025-04-28 06:15:30+00:00
The C++ compilers at least don't usually miscompile your source code. And when they do, it happens very rarely, mostly in obscure corners of the language, and it's kind of a big deal, and the compiler developers fix it.

Compare to the large langle mangles, which somewhat routinely generate weird and wrong stuff, it's entirely unpredictable what inputs may trip it, it's not even reproducible, and nobody is expected to actually fix that. It just happens, use a second LLM to review the output of the first one or something.

I'd rather have my lower-level abstractions be deterministic in a humanly-legible way. Otherwise in a generation or two we may very well end up being actual sorcerers who look for the right magical incantations to make the machine spirits obey their will.
by reassess_blind | 2025-04-28 06:15:49+00:00
Working on redesigning my SaaS template. It uses Dokploy to deploy the NodeJS app, and Pocketbase instance within the same server, so DB reads and writes are very fast. Also doesn't use the Pocketbase client library at all, all calls are wrapped in their own API routes and everything is server side rendered.

You might ask why use Pocketbase at all, and I'm not sure anymore. I suppose the dashboard is great, built in auth is great (although I've had to write cookie middleware to make it SSR anyway). I wish there was a lightweight Pocketbase/Supabase style "backend in a box" setup that didn't push the whole client library directly communicating to DB paradigm.
by fsckboy | 2025-04-28 06:16:56+00:00
>I also need an IC to convert the I2S signal (currently sent to the MAX98357A) to a headphone output. I haven't researched options yet. The motherboard will need additional routing to send the I2S signal from the ESP32-S3 to both the MAX98357A and this new IC. Suggestions welcome!

isn't a headphone just a high impedance speaker? you just grab the same output that goes to the speakers and reroute it through a big resistor to the headphones.

did a little searching, here you go (the extra resistance isn't that great)

https://samtechpro.blogspot.com/2014/03/how-to-use-speaker-o...

put your efforts into stereo, speaker and headphones, why wouldn't stereo set the stage for more complex brain development?
by kristopolous | 2025-04-28 06:18:47+00:00
Basically.

About 20 years ago I had a since-long-disappeared article called "The Great Productivity Mental Experiment" which we can extend now for the AI era:

You've got 3 equally capable competent programmers with the same task, estimated to take on the order of days.

#1 has no Internet access and only debuggers, source and on system documentation

#2 has all that + search engines and the Internet

#3 has all #2 + all the SOTA AI tools.

They are all given the same task, and a timer starts.

Who gets to "first run" the fastest? 90% success rate? 99.9%?

The point of the exercise is the answer: "I don't know"

Ergo there is no clear objective time saver.

The next question is what would establish a clear victor without having to make a taxonomy of the tasks. We're looking for best time practice.

The answer is workflow, engagement, and behavior.

Current AI flow will get you to first run faster. But to the 99.9% pass? Without new flows it can't. It's a phenomenon called automation complacency and it can make bad workflows very costly.

(The original point of the exercise was to point out how better tools don't fix bad practice and how frameworks, linters, the internet, stronger type systems ... these can either solve problems or create larger ones based on how you use them. There is no silver bullet as Fred Brooks said in the 1980s)
by josephcsible | 2025-04-28 06:21:10+00:00
> In a situation when a judge would suspend someone's license.

> Why are you opposed to giving them this as an alternative? (If they refuse to comply with this, the judge would happily offer them the suspension instead.)

Nobody would be opposed to it if that were really the only situation it could be used. The problem is that now that it's available, it's going to get used in tons of situations that wouldn't have been a suspension otherwise.
by caseyy | 2025-04-28 06:21:31+00:00
My experience was very different. But I did start in the games industry as a contractor working for abysmally poor pay. If you take a portfolio with actually decent programming skills, and flush self-worth down the drain along with labor protections, I think it’s very possible to get the foot in the door.

Unfortunately, the self-worth, poor compensation and no protections part is key in how a lot of people make it into games, and get their first games shipped. Beyond that, it’s easier.

I’m not saying this is a good or bad way to enter the industry, by the way. I have a strong opinion on it, but it’s outside the scope of what I wanted to share.
by jakegmaths | 2025-04-28 06:22:01+00:00
As a teacher of computer science, I'm working on various free resources for teachers and students, such as a guide to simulating forces and collisions in JavaScript (https://www.mathsuniverse.com/particles) and super simple real-time forms for lessons (https://www.mathsuniverse.com/forms). What brings me joy is seeing that they are actually useful for people other than just me.
by lb1lf | 2025-04-28 06:22:07+00:00
As for your last point, Solzhenitzyn said something memorable about that -

'We know that they are lying, they know that they are lying, they even know that we know they are lying, we also know that they know we know they are lying too, they of course know that we certainly know they know we know they are lying too as well, but they are still lying. In our country, the lie has become not just moral category, but the pillar industry of this country.'
by kergonath | 2025-04-28 06:22:46+00:00
No, they don’t. The force a man can apply does not require "high strength" materials to withstand. They don’t need high temperature performance, either. Seriously, we don’t need superalloy spoons.

When we’re talking about advanced materials, "high strength" means hundreds of MPa and "high temperature" is beyond 500°C (and more depending on the application).
by kragen | 2025-04-28 06:23:14+00:00
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43816979 suggested that the raw materials imply about a 6x cost increase over stainless, which is less than 10x. I haven't done the numbers myself.

High-energy cryogenic ball milling of 10 grams for four hours in a continuous flow of liquid nitrogen under an argon atmosphere with <1ppm oxygen (https://www.science.org/action/downloadSupplement?doi=10.112...) sounds expensive, but maybe they only did it that way because it was a low-risk way to ensure the alloying worked with the lab equipment they had on hand, not because it's the cheapest way to make the material. Hopefully cheaper ways are found.

I'm no expert in heat exchangers, but my calculations suggest 3-D printing is or will be an enormous boost there, and may reverse the gradient of merit for wall material thermal conductivity, favoring good thermal insulators over good thermal conductors like copper and aluminum. As for aluminum, it is only suitable for low temperatures.
by sofixa | 2025-04-28 06:24:09+00:00
As someone from a post-Communist country, unfortunately it didn't, exactly. The former ruling class just switched colours and looted the country during the "privatisation" phase of democratisation. People were never properly educated on democracy and stuff, and most of the parties that sprung up were just pure garbage interested in looting.

30 years on, the political landscape is still a disaster. Media is a shit show in the hands of a few. A lot of the older people (40+) long for the "good old days". A lot of the young have ran away for better opportunities. Democratic participation is very low.

The fall of the Communist regimes and subsequent liberalisation and democratisation were managed incredibly poorly in most of those countries. Yes, standards of living are much better, but if you ask a lot of the people, things are worse (because they're incapable of introspection, have been fed propaganda on Facebook and shit media, etc).
by aspenmayer | 2025-04-28 06:25:17+00:00
> I’ve easily seen more start-ups fail because the technical co-founder got pedantic about something with zero commercial relevance than I have where the non-technical founder rolled over their tech team.

Can you think of examples of the opposite? There are a few variables here for technical/business/commercial and fail/succeed so I won’t write them all out, just curious what you have seen to be honest.
by TheDong | 2025-04-28 06:25:37+00:00
And in the US, landlords can pull credit reports from private companies, and if the private company says you missed a credit card payment a year ago they'll reject you.

If the private credit score company returns a wrong score because someone else has the same name as you and they mixed up some records, well, it's a private company, you have no recourse.

Since it's not the government, but a for-profit private company, it can and will also sell your information.

If you opt out of this private company's system, landlords can and will reject you.

It is well known that the US is the most free country in the multiverse, so I would say no, having a government do it is not freedom (that's a social credit system like china has), but if instead it's a private company creating that credit score, that's freedom.

What law do you want to have to prevent this? Companies are people, and if your two previous land-lords are free to gossip about whether you paid rent (free speech), of course equifax should be able to sell that information (also free speech). People's right to privacy stops where free speech, and the ability of private entities to profit and raise GDP, starts.
by Animats | 2025-04-28 06:25:44+00:00
> In fact, most cars lie to you about the speed - reporting a speed slightly faster than reality. It's a cover-your-ass measure for the car manufacturers because it's illegal to sell a car (in the US, at least) where the speedometer is inaccurate in the other direction, that is, reading slower than actual speed.

Haven't seen that in a long time. Everything I've driven in recent years has a speedometer speed that matches roadside speed sign speed within 1 MPH.
by armada651 | 2025-04-28 06:27:25+00:00
I looked for other examples in the code and found __lwp_thread_changepriority pretty damning, judge for yourself:

https://github.com/atgreen/RTEMS/blob/2f200c7e642c214accb7cc...

https://github.com/devkitPro/libogc/blob/52c525a13fd1762c103...

The only difference is that the prependit parameter and its associated branch is missing, other than that the functions are completely identical.
by dachris | 2025-04-28 06:28:00+00:00
Unfortunately, in the end, bad health is likely to come get you anyways, you just have a higher likelihood of more and more healthy years.

A good friend of mine lived healthy, and still went hiking in their 90s. Yet, they had a stroke and are now bedridden.

If you just drop dead after having had a nice live or go through months or years of frailty and bad health, it's all in the cards.
by okeuro49 | 2025-04-28 06:28:00+00:00
In the UK there is "social media intelligence", where AI systems scan the firehose of messages as they appear. [1]

So people have been arrested for posting something online, even if nobody appears to have seen it, and they delete it shortly after.

The policing is selective, depending on political view. For example, there were recently people with placards in London calling for the death of JK Rowling, which is de facto allowed by the police.

In comparison the wrong social media post can carry a lengthy jail sentence. [2]

The difference is so noticeable, it is now called "two tier policing".

If someone perceives something you say as "hateful" they can report you to the police, who can record a "Non-crime hate incident" against your name. [3]

This can show up on enhanced job checks, affecting employment.

It's very similar to a Stasi file.

[1] https://policinginsight.com/feature/advertisement/social-med...

[2] https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-punishment-of-lucy-c...

[3] https://www.slaterheelis.co.uk/articles/crime-category/non-c...
by ColinEberhardt | 2025-04-28 06:28:06+00:00
I’m working on a simple app that logs Karting activity and data. My son has been karting for a year or so, and there is so much data to collect - times, pressures, sprocket set up, track location, weather and more (about 30 datapoints a session)

Collecting the data helps with recording engine performance, tyre ages, best lap times but is also really useful for recalling how well each setup performed for future reference.

I’m deliberately doing this all in a very low-tech way as my son will be creating a more polished version for a school project. We’re front-running that a bit to give him a good dataset and explore various ideas.

On that note, they do Python in school. For the backend it will be SqlLite and Flask. Any suggestions for the front end tech? This will mostly be forms- and grids-based so nothing sophisticated needed, but some simple client-side logic (e.g. validation, geolocation, simple stop watch) would be good. Ideally this would be python as well. We could use WebAssembly but am wondering if there is a suitable framework that does the is out-of-the-box.
by kragen | 2025-04-28 06:28:37+00:00
Any material can withstand the force a man (or a woman) can apply if you make it thick enough. Contrapositively, if you make it too thin, it can't. So sign me the fuck up for the superalloy spoons, but hold the nickel, please.

(It would be excellent to be able to clean my silverware by firing it in a kiln, though with a copper alloy I'd probably have to scrub off the verdigris.)
by vkou | 2025-04-28 06:28:55+00:00
> it's going to get used in tons of situations that wouldn't have been a suspension otherwise.

Good! It's about time we took road safety seriously.

Far too many people drive in a completely inappropriate manner, yet are treated with kid gloves, because nothing short of putting them in prison will fix that behavior, and the courts are, for obvious reasons, reticent to use that remedy.

Ignition interlocks have gone a long way to solving this problem for DUIs.
by lloeki | 2025-04-28 06:29:25+00:00
> People love their fast cars, especially the rich and powerful

Too much correlation, not enough causation here.

Only "rich people" can afford pricey cars, while there are with much certainty "non rich people" that enjoy fast cars.

And there are a ton of affordable cars that can go 200kph+, or that can be riced into being able to do so.
by sofixa | 2025-04-28 06:29:56+00:00
> even bough January 6 and the associated political repression took place in early 2021

Repression for a coup attempt is the expected and wanted outcome.

Also, please stop mixing the US, maybe Canada and UK with "the West". Political protests in France remain quite powerful, even if they haven't managed to force the government to go back on some long promised and long needed reforms (pensions).
by hnaccount_rng | 2025-04-28 06:30:02+00:00
I think this is a charitable interpretation of the remark which deprives GP from learning something (sorry if this comes across as condescending, I'm genuinely trying to point out a imo relevant difference)

No it's not at all accuracy vs precision. That statement is about a property of the measurement tool, where one can have systematic offsets [0] (think about a manual clock, where the manufacturer clued the finger on with a slight shift) vs they can simply be inaccurate (think about a clock that only has a minute finger, but not one for seconds).

The thing pointed out by the original comment is about a change in the _measured_ system. Which is something fundamentally different. No improvement in the measurement tool [1] can help here as its reality that changes. Even writing down the measurement time is only going to help so much since typically you aren't interested in precisely the time of measurement and will do an implicit assumption of staticness of the real world.

[0] The real reason for those is that it is _much_ simpler to build a precise relative measurement tool (i.e. it's easier to say "bigger than that other thing" than "this large"). One example is CO2 concentration measurements, they are often relative to outdoor CO2, which is - unfortunately - not stable

[1] Assuming that the tool is only allowed to work on one point in time. If you include e.g. a weather modelling supercomputer in your definition of tools, that would again work.
by ludston | 2025-04-28 06:30:49+00:00
That's a cool project, but learning music via music theory is a bit like trying to learn English via grammar theory. It's backwards, and out of the hundreds of musicians I've met, I've never met one that walked that path.

Strong recommendation: Hire a teacher. Even with experience playing four instruments, and when I decided to learn another, I still hired a teacher.
by benoitberaud | 2025-04-28 06:32:18+00:00
Main Kiwix dev in charge of scrapers (tools to create ZIM files, even if we do not really scrape technically speaking) here.

We are working hard toward upgrading the Wikipedia ZIMs, but it is far from being an easy feat. I'm mostly solo on this, and far from dedicating 100% of my time to this, so it does not move very fast. We are quite close to being able to reach the goal however, probably only a matter of weeks now.

Bonus: the tool will now get pretty good at making a ZIM of any Mediawiki, not only Wikimedia ones, we expect for instance to work on all Fandom wikis somewhere this year since there is significant knowledge over there.
by auston | 2025-04-28 06:32:36+00:00
https://www.accessgrid.com/ - The best way to issue and manage secure NFC credentials for Apple and Google Wallet via API.

No app required!

We took all of the complexity of issuing MIFARE DESFire enabled NFC credentials and made it extremely developer friendly. SDKs in most major languages (python, ruby, csharp, js, etc), developer console with request logs, and more.
by pavankamat24 | 2025-04-28 06:32:38+00:00
Vibe coding is freakishly addictive. It delivers instant Aha moments, especially for someone like me who hadn’t coded in a while. Coming back to it and realizing how far we’ve come—it’s magical. You can now express ideas in plain English and see them materialize into real, usable, and functional software in under five minutes. No Python. No Java. No frameworks. Just pure deliverables.

If I had said this a few years ago, people would’ve thought I was hallucinating. But this is the reality today.