MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by vitorgrs | 2025-04-03 07:00:08+00:00
Yeah. Specially because the U.S economy is service-focused (and consumption as well).

Like, imagine now that all your computers will be more expensive/worse. This will affect services from like, a law firm - to a tech company. Will make harder for young buy good computers and start to code, etc.

I say this as a Brazilian, to us Brazilians watching, this is like: Why are the U.S repeating the same mistake?

I don't think Americans know this, but here in Brazil, we also have phone, tablet and PC national brands (Positivo¹, Multi², Philco³). National TV brands like Semp, AOC, Mondial. A ton of home appliances brands like Mondial, Philco, Britânia.

But why Americans don't know them? Because they only exists because of the tariffs. So they only exists in Brazil internal market. They are worse than foreign brands, but they exists because it's cheaper to buy a Mondial Kitchen Stand mixer than a Kitchen Aid!

And worse that most of these products are only white-label Chinese products, sold way more expensive than the real chinese ones.

This also create a whole gray market. A lot of people start smuggling products without import tax.

And this only with a 7% average tariff. Not the U.S 29% lol. Brazil with 31%~ prior to the 90's was WAY worse than this. A lot of brands just died when we opened a little the market (Consul, Brastemp, were Brazilian big fridge, Washing machine etc makers, they got bought by Whirlpool in the 90's)

American Brands then will now look for the U.S gov to ask for exceptions too, and this create a lot of corruption. And after you put these tariffs and there's a whole new companies made to internal market, it's almost impossible to remove because of the lobby from these companies (and corruption).

[1] https://loja.meupositivo.com.br/ [2] https://www.multilaser.com.br/ [3] https://www.philco.com.br/
by s1artibartfast | 2025-04-03 07:00:11+00:00
If you think these beleifs are inherent in the temperament of people, that doesnt explain the change of these beliefs over time. Progressive, left leaning ideology had different stances 20 years ago, let alone 50 years or in China or India.

Sometimes this is easier to see from the outside. For example, if the conservative right all independently arrived at the same conclusion based on personality, isnt it strange how the consensus all moves together and changes over time
by knsv | 2025-04-03 07:00:30+00:00
Hi, I wanted to add some clarification on this topic.

I am Knut Sveidqvist, the inventor of Mermaid and creator of the Mermaid open-source project. I'm also the co-founder of Mermaid Chart.

To address the confusion: Mermaid Chart is not a separate entity "profiting off the name" - it's a commercial offering I created to help sustain the open-source project. Working on Mermaid during evenings and weekends became unsustainable as the project grew. Mermaid Chart allows me to work on what I love full-time while providing resources back to the open-source project. This support will continue to grow as our business matures.

I appreciate your concern about protecting users from deceptive practices. In this case, there is a direct connection between the open-source project and the commercial offering, created by the same founding team.
by specproc | 2025-04-03 07:00:33+00:00
Nicholas Carr has a nice book on the dynamic the author is describing [0], i.e. that our skills atrophy the more we rely on automation.

Like a lot of others in the thread, I've also turned off Copilot and have been using chat a lot less during coding sessions.

There are two reasons for this decision, actually. Firstly, as noted above, in the original post and throughout this thread, it's making my already fair-to-middling skills worse.

The more important thing is that coding feels less fun. I think there are two reasons for this:

- Firstly, I'm not doing so much of the thinking for myself, and you know what? I really like thinking.

- Secondly, as a collary to the skill loss, I really enjoy improving. I got back into coding again later in life, and it's been a really fun journey. It's so satisfying feeling an incremental improvement with each project.

Writing code "on my own" again has been a little slower (line by line), but it's been a much more pleasant experience.

[^0]: https://www.nicholascarr.com/?page_id=18
by topspin | 2025-04-03 07:00:52+00:00
> They've benefitted from it.

They benefitted from it so hard they voted for the exact opposite with eyes wide open. Twice.

> Because now most Americans don't slave away in unsafe factories 7 days/week for dollars an hour.

Now they're collecting disability in their unsafe neighborhoods, getting morbidly obese while their substance abusing kids play vidya games in the basement into their 30s.

Yes, it's really like that. People want their factories and incomes back. I don't claim that anything happening here is going to deliver that, but that's the pitch they're voting for. To their credit, at least they're pursuing that in lieu of some UBI ideocracy made of fantasy money.

As for you: it's fine to point out all the ways they may be misguided and/or misled, but unless you have an alternative that doesn't amount to expecting everyone to somehow earn an advanced degree, and then discover it's next to worthless (even before "AI",) your really not contributing much. So what do you have?

Anything?
by DeathArrow | 2025-04-03 07:01:03+00:00
I agree that you shouldn't over rely on AI, that you shouldn't rely on AI to write code when you are learning.

However, in most codebases I can't see that happening. Once the codebase is complex enough, AI will not work, take more time to use than writing the code yourself or breaks the existing code.

The author himself said that AI isn't usable for anything more complex than an University project, yet he complains he lost his skills because he used AI.

As far as I see it, in the current stage of AI, it has limited usage.

You can use it to start a greenfield project or start a new feature that is independent of the rest of the codebase. It will help with most of the setup and boiler plate.

Past that, it will either not be able to do what you need, it will take more time or will break the code. So this pretty much doesn't allow you to modify large code bases or add logic. But you can still use it to generate a function, a method or a service, provided that function, method or service does not require much context and you don't need to modify the rest of the codebase to accommodate it.

I see AI as merely an accelerator, not solving problems by itself but helping you solve problems faster, sometimes. I think it is very similar to Intellicode in Visual Studio and other editor tiols, which don't write code but provide method autocompletion, provide small suggestions, provide syntax highlighting, provide formatting and warn you when you make syntax errors.

Was I using a text editor instead of a good IDE, my speed of development would be slower.
by dkh | 2025-04-03 07:01:10+00:00
Oh the irony of wanting such a site to exist but to keep it a bit of a secret.

There are a zillion streams on this site, so unclear if enough additional traffic will be going to any particular one of them to be noticed by the sources. Certainly some number of media company employees will be aware of it due to it hitting HN, but I have my doubts that there are many media employees who read HN who didn't already know these things existed and/or would do anything about it
by politelemon | 2025-04-03 07:01:40+00:00
> horse-riding, sword fighting or my inability to navigate by the stars.

Some better more suitable examples would be warranted here, none of these were as widespread or common as you'd assume. Little to no metaphorical scoffing would happen for those. Now, sewing and darning, and subsistence, while mundane, are uncommon for many of us.
by xenodium | 2025-04-03 07:02:01+00:00
> I chose to make using AI a manual action

I also find explicit/concious LLM interaction a happy medium.

Building tooling into my editor to expedite this concious usage made it much more enjoyable when I didn't have to context-switch into another app (ie. take my current text selection, or error under cursor, etc) https://github.com/xenodium/chatgpt-shell?tab=readme-ov-file...
by new_user_final | 2025-04-03 07:02:26+00:00
My understandings reading some comments. 1. Prices will increase 2. US will need to manufacture things and they will need a lots of workers. There will be shortage of workers because factory pays minimal wages. 3. Factories will have to offer higher amount of salary that will increase price

Ultimately prices increases for everything and working class will suffer more.
by satvikpendem | 2025-04-03 07:02:27+00:00
> I dont drive a car, I also wont use LLMs.

Okay, I think you are in the extreme end of most people, in the US at least (among many other countries as well), so it will be difficult to convince you of things most people might want or need. People also live in the woods in log cabins, they might not have asked for central heating, but for most people, that sure does help.
by theodric | 2025-04-03 07:03:03+00:00
I have a P14s Gen 5 AMD, which afaik is just a T14 with some certifications, and it's flimsy. The whole chassis is plastic and quite flexible. It's also currently at a Lenovo service center because the battery lasted a whole month before failing and claiming to be "non-genuine."

ThinkPads ain't what they were. My x230 is still going.
by piva00 | 2025-04-03 07:03:12+00:00
They will only shift if it's predictable that the tariff policy will stay for long enough to recoup the high capital investments of building a whole new factory just to serve the internal market.

For many industries it might not make sense unless it's a 5-10 years long plan, the risk of investing a lot to build a new factory, bringing it online over the next 2-3 years, to then have tariffs removed and making your new shiny factory more expensive to run than one outside of the country, will also be factored into the total cost.

The tariffs are so broadly applied that the risk factor is much more massive than anything the USA experienced before (like during the Japanese cars era of the 70s/80s), it's wishful thinking the domino effect will happen in the short/medium-term.
by psalaun | 2025-04-03 07:03:19+00:00
The headline is misleading, I have one of these streets just in front of my building and there is a road lane and parking spots. They basically removed 1 lane and divided by three or four the number of parking slots, to replace them by larger sidewalk and a lot more vegetation.

I've voted for this policy to be extended to other streets, but I've to admit that the process was debatable: less than 5% of parisians have voted, and the list of streets to be remade is still to be established.
by gambiting | 2025-04-03 07:03:21+00:00
>>You also seem to think everyone has a car and thus a driving licence

I don't see how those two are related. In UK driving licences are also used as de facto ID everywhere(you can even get on domestic flights using your driving licence lol), and everyone gets one when they turn 18 because just get a provisional driving licence(identical to a normal one but with an L on it to indicate learner driver), no car necessary. In effect everyone in the country has a driving licence even if they don't drive or own a car. And you just apply by post, no need to go anywhere,

Obviously it would be much better to do it like other European countries do it and just issue everyone with an actual ID when they turn 18, but what UK is doing is close enough equivalent of this. So if the US has the DMV and already has an easily accessible way for people to get driving licences......what's the problem?
by futuraperdita | 2025-04-03 07:03:36+00:00
I'd argue it's a hell many other people see daily, and we've been privileged to have the space to care about craft. Corporations have never cared about the craft. The business is paying me to make, and the moment they can get my level of quality and expertise from someone much cheaper, or a machine itself, I'm gone. That dystopia has always been present and we just haven't had to stare it down as much as some other industries have.
by buildartefact | 2025-04-03 07:04:04+00:00
Because none of what they call “tariffs imposed on the US” are tariffs. It’s the trade deficit divided by the country’s exports to the US. They’re literally making shit up and expecting stupid people to take it at face value.

They’re imposing tariffs on uninhabited islands. They don’t care enough to even try and make it plausible. That’s how stupid they think their supporters are and how much contempt they have for them.
by mrweasel | 2025-04-03 07:04:05+00:00
In my mind there's also a pretty big overlap in MacBook and ThinkPad users. For me personal that is the choice I'm faced with, when picking a new laptop. Do I get a new MacBook, or do I get a ThinkPad running Linux. I don't think I'm unique in this way.

Also, at least among the people I work with and talk to, many are dropping their MacBooks for a ThinkPad, because they are migrating from macOS to Linux as Apple becomes increasingly restrictive and running Linux is just becoming the easier option.

Framework is approaching the point where there is now a choice, Framework or ThinkPads. It's just that I can still get a really good used ThinkPad for like half or a third of the price.
by xwolfi | 2025-04-03 07:04:24+00:00
I'm French too but I disagree a bit: first, voting if important to people, should be a good reason to get an ID, voting without an ID does seem insane, so what are they doing. Second, why black people ? Are they not human too ? They can read, they can work, they can complain, they can... get an ID card right ?

Simplest answer is they don't care, wash their hands off of the whole thing and then democrats complain that it's the requirement to identify voters that block them. But it's not a strange requirement, it's as you say, a completely normal part of being a citizen to get an ID, and a duty for a voting citizen to do what they need to do to get that ballot in.

And even if black people were somehow disenfranchised from getting IDs, it doesn't prevent the non-black people to vote rationally, in the end. So no excuse.
by octacat | 2025-04-03 07:04:38+00:00
Natural language is pretty good for describing the technical requirements for the complex system, though. I.e. not the current code implementation, but why the current code implementation is selected vs other possible implementations. Not what code do, but what it is expected to do. Basically, most of the missing parts, that live in Jira-s, instead of your repo. It is also good, at allowing better refactoring capabilities, when all your system is described by outside rules, which could be enforced on the whole codebase. We just use programming languages, because it is easier to use in automated/computer context (and was the only way to use, to be honest, before all the LLM stuff). Though, while it gives us non-ambiguity on the local scale, it stops working on the global scale, the first moment person went and copy-pasted part of the code. Are you sure that part follows all the high-level restrictions we should to follow and is correct program? It is program that would run, when compile, but definition of run is pretty loose. In C++ program that corrupts all the memory is also runnable.
by DeathArrow | 2025-04-03 07:06:48+00:00
US says there was an imbalance in trade, and that is true only if we look at goods. If we look at services, I think the picture changes.

What if the EU and rest of the world starts adding taxes to financial and IT services provided by the US? What if Amazon cloud and Netflix start costing 20% more?

And let's not forget US is printing dollars which are being used for worldwide trade and the rest of the world subsidies their inflation and their economy through that.

Let's not forget US exported the 2008 crysis and most of the world payed for that.

I don't think US will like if the rest of the world stops using US dollars, stops using US financial services and stops investing in US economy by buying shares, bonds, securities.
by morsch | 2025-04-03 07:07:05+00:00
I was thinking within a country. But sure, that would make more sense than only alphabetical sorting for the global listings as well. Hadn't even noticed those.

If you wanted -- and you had the data, which you probably don't -- you could make the sorting criteria the share of viewers (ie. percentage as opposed to absolute numbers), that way countries with unusually large audiences wouldn't always appear at the top. Though that comes with its own issues.
by globular-toast | 2025-04-03 07:07:25+00:00
This is a great comment and says what I've been thinking but hadn't put into words yet.

Too many people think what I do is "write code". That is incorrect. What I do is listen, read, watch and think. If code needs writing then it already basically writes itself because at that point I've already done the thinking. The typing part is an inconvenience that I'd happily give up if I could get my thoughts into the computer directly somehow.

AI tools make the easy stuff easier. They don't help much with hard stuff. The most useful thing I've found them for is getting an initial orientation in a completely unfamiliar area. But after that, when I need hard details, it's books, manuals, blogs etc just like before. I find juniors are already lacking in their ability to find and assimilate knowledge and I feel like having AI isn't going to help here.
by Someone | 2025-04-03 07:07:33+00:00
They would in the current scenario, yes, but the OP said “Two typical scenarios that we know from the past in industries like cars for example”

In the past, countries would put tariffs on importing cars, but not on importing car parts (with some complex definition of what constitutes a car and a car part. IIRC, there once was a loophole where one imported a car and converted it into a van by removing back seats to avoid a tax on importing vans)
by gambiting | 2025-04-03 07:07:40+00:00
>>why should a driver's license be linked to ability to vote?

It's not, it's just one of many acceptable forms of id - along with a passport, birth certificate, and probably few others.

>>In a properly functioning democracy barring 9% of your voting population

Unless they are stopped from obtaining any document then they aren't barred from anything. Most Americans don't have a passport either but no one would argue that they are barred from travelling internationally, they just have to go and get a passport issued.
by CapricornNoble | 2025-04-03 07:07:50+00:00
> but you have no idea what would have happened if they'd run with a different agenda, they may have had a worse result.

The 2024 election had historically-low support from normally stalwart Democrat demographics such as Latinos, the youth vote, and black males. That, IMO, supports the conclusion that the Democrats did something wrong this time. Also, not only did those groups abstain but Trump also picked up quite a few votes from them (especially working-age black males), suggesting that they are swing voters who probably could have been swayed to stay on the Dem plantation if exposed to more convincing messaging, or a more compelling Democrat candidate.
by shoo | 2025-04-03 07:07:59+00:00
> enough Thinkpads on Earth to probably stretch end-to-end around the moon and back

LD, average distance between Earth and Moon = 384,399,000 m [1] C = circumference of moon = 10,917,000 m R := approximate round trip distance = 2LD + 0.5*C = 774,256,500 m n = total number of thinkpads on earth <= total number of thinkpads ever manufactured = 250 million [2][2a][2b] W = width of thinkpad = 0.3366 m [3] T = total thinkpad distance = n * W <= 84,150,000 m

Alas, T / R, the ratio of total thinkpad distance T to our lunar round trip distance R, is at most about 0.11 .

This is with the optimistic assumption that the total number of thinkpads on earth equals the total number of thinkpads ever manufactured. A more conservative estimate might be something like n = total number of thinkpads manufactured each year * mean lifespan of a thinkpad = (12 million thinkpads / year) * (5 years lifespan) = 60 million thinkpads in good working order for a lunar round trip.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_distance [2] IBM sold 25m thinkpads before selling product line to Lenovo. By 2022, Lenovo had sold 200m thinkpads. With linear extrapolation to 2024 that gives approx 250 million thinkpads manufactured. [2a] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ThinkPad [2b] https://www.forbes.com/sites/timbajarin/2022/10/05/celebrating-thinkpads-30th-anniversaryan-insiders-perspective/ [3] assume every thinkpad is a T480. https://psref.lenovo.com/syspool/Sys/PDF/ThinkPad/ThinkPad_T480/ThinkPad_T480_Spec.PDF
by crabmusket | 2025-04-03 07:08:35+00:00
> In one of his podcasts, Ezra Klein said that he thinks the “message” of generative AI (in the McLuhan sense) is this: “You are derivative.” In other words: all your creativity, all your “craft,” all of that intense emotional spark inside of you that drives you to dance, to sing, to paint, to write, or to code, can be replicated by the robot equivalent of 1,000 monkeys typing at 1,000 typewriters. Even if it’s true, it’s a pretty dim view of humanity and a miserable message to keep pounding into your brain during 8 hours of daily software development.

I think this is a fantastic point well summarised. I see people coming out of the woodwork here on HN, especially when copyright is discussed in relation to LLMs, to say that there's no difference between human creativity and what LLMs do. (And therefore of course training LLMs on everything is fair use.) I'm not here to argue against that point of view, just to illustrate what this "message" means.

I feel fairly similar to Nolan and to this day haven't really started using LLMs in a major way in my work.

I do occasionally use it when I might have previously gone to Stack Overflow. Today I asked it a mildly tricky TypeScript generic wrangling question that ended up using the Extract helper type.

However, I'm also feeling the joy of coding isn't quite what it used to be as I move along in my career. I really feel great about finding the right architecture for a problem, or optimising something that used to be a roadblock for users until it's hardly noticeable. But so much work can just be making another form, another database table, etc. And I am always teetering back and forth between "just write the easy code (or get an AI to generate it!)" and "you haven't found the right architecture that makes this trivial".
by intrasight | 2025-04-03 07:08:36+00:00
Ahh x220. I have a most fond memory from 16 years ago. My daughter'sl laptop then was an x220 and the motherboard died so she and I, as a project one day, rebuilt the machine with a new motherboard. That X220 still works today. I told her a couple years ago that she could probably sell at any time for the same amount you bought it for.
by sam_lowry_ | 2025-04-03 07:08:38+00:00
This is the general culture in Europe. Techies do not get promoted and do not even have a possibility to grow to management. Everything is run by humanities people and we do not even have the right words to describe this situation, although some voiced their concerns for many years, see e.g. The Two Cultures [1] from 1959.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Two_Cultures