MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by vel0city | 2025-05-21 21:44:46+00:00
Well then, I guess you're just intentionally misquoting it to drive confusion or something. "Difficult to do something" and "difficult to accidentally do something" are two radically different concepts. Typing in a password is easy, accidentally pressing random keys and having it be the password is hard. Pressing delete and then typing "delete me" and then clicking OK is pretty easy, accidentally clicking random spots on your screen and jamming random key presses and having it accidentally get deleted is hard. You may still have deleted something you later decide you shouldn't have, but you absolutely intentionally issued the delete.

Putting a cover over a button that can still be flipped open is a real-world example of making something difficult to accidentally do while still making it easy to actually do it. You pretty much have to want to press the button, you're not just going to set something down and accidentally trigger the button. Do you really disagree about that? How is it not making it more difficult to do on accident?

Or like my lawn mower example. How would I accidentally start the mower? You can see it would be difficult for me to accidentally start the mower, right? My hand wouldn't just brush against it and have it start going, correct? And it has a few other interlocks, such as the handle needs to be fully extended and locked at the right angle; you can't start it when its folded up. And yet this two-stage motion is still really easy to do for most people with two hands, right? And it's clearly documented on the mower how to do it with obvious glyphs that show it will start the blade.

And with the button cover, I wouldn't just end up leaning against the console and accidentally pressing the button, correct? But one can trivially just flip the cover and press the button still, right? But we made it more difficult to accidentally press it?

Meanwhile, they could have made it significantly easier to accidentally start the lawn mower. They could have made it without those interlocks. They could have just made the handle capacitive and any light brush with a hand would have started it. The button with a cover could have been made bigger and more sensitive and placed exactly next to where people naturally rest their hands or on the corner right at knee level ready to be bumped with no cover and unlabeled. So in these cases, its significantly harder to accidentally do the action than what it could have been, meanwhile still being generally pretty easy to do if you're intending to do it.
by zelphirkalt | 2025-05-21 21:45:56+00:00
The loss of productivity is,as many things are, not directly measurable. Mediocre code making it into the codebase and hindering future development and increasing maintenance time, or even being the cause for some ideas to never be discovered, how are we going to measure that? How are we going to measure engineers no longer properly knowing the codebases?

Businesses will wake up when it is too late and the damage to the engineering side of their products is already done. Or perhaps won't wake up at all, and somehow (to their management levels) inexplicably fail.
by naikrovek | 2025-05-21 21:46:06+00:00
I still think he did it because he wanted to have his name on something significant. He’s a science communicator, not a researcher, and he’s not going to be making any discoveries. So he’s gotta change something that already exists to have his name on something that everyone knows. He had the power to change its status, so he did. I think that’s all it was. I hope I’m wrong but I’ve never heard a really GOOD reason to undo something that was so commonly known and taught. The definition for “planet” could change and Pluto could have been left alone, grandfathered in, in a way. There’s a reason it was discovered first. It’s huge compared to other dwarf planets.

There’s no reason that Pluto couldn’t have remained a proper planet. It’s big enough to be round and its largest moon is big enough to be round. Mars doesn’t have any round moons. Mars is still a planet.
by smj-edison | 2025-05-21 21:46:43+00:00
Thank you for posting this :) I've have chronic fatigue for 6 years, and yeah, there's tons of uncertainty here (if there was an easy answer we would've all used it by now, lol). ME/CFS overlaps a lot with long covid, but there's also common comorbidities that further muddy the picture (MCAS, POTS, ehler-danlos syndrome, CCI, fibromyalgia, etc).

The #1 sign of ME/CFS is post-exertional malaise, which is a delayed crash after even mild exertion, with the crash arriving anywhere from 4-48 hours later, and lasts for days after. Exertion can be taking a shower, thinking hard, etc.

I just recently ruled out ME/CFS for me personally after figuring out that I don't have delayed crashes, but I still haven't figured out source of the fatigue (potentially MCAS?).

Feel free to ask any questions :)
by jltsiren | 2025-05-21 21:47:31+00:00
Printing is black magic.

One common issue is that you don't have all fonts embedded in the PDF file. There may not be anything wrong on screen, as the PDF reader can probably find the font if you have it installed. But the software you use for printing may not know enough about the capabilities of your printer, and it may choose to hope for the best. If your printer does not have the font and the printing software didn't bother sending it with the document, the printer will use another font as a substitute.
by senkora | 2025-05-21 21:47:41+00:00
In C++, there is a trick to get this behavior called "unity builds", where you include all of your source files into a single file and then invoke the compiler on that file.

Of course, being C++, this subtly changes behavior and must be done carefully. I like this article that explains the ins and outs of using unity builds: https://austinmorlan.com/posts/unity_jumbo_build/
by geoka9 | 2025-05-21 21:47:52+00:00
> 100% of the code was written by ... junior people.

No offense, but it kind of shows with every product by that company I've touched over the years. But then again they are largely not a technology company. More like a lobbying firm that happens to be very good at politicking to get their wares on every enterprise PC. The quality doesn't even matter, since most of their end users are a captive audience.
by 90s_dev | 2025-05-21 21:48:01+00:00
Yeah to be fair by "production" I meant I personally wouldn't use it for a long-term (5-10 year) project. I'm sure it's fine in an enterprise scenario, or a client who really wants you to use it and is willing to pay to make it worth it.

Honestly every language has warts, there are no perfect languages. I just personally don't like Go, mostly for the reasons stated above as well as in a recent article I can't find anymore but read a few weeks ago, mostly complaining about its well known ergonomics issues.

But yeah it's fine to use in prod for the same reason Java 6 and IE 6 were for a long time: nothing really matters but money when you're doing work work.
by surgical_fire | 2025-05-21 21:48:10+00:00
> No he doesn't make that argument at all. He argues that volunteerism over time is a better basis for mutual acceptance than government fiat.

I know, I just think it is much like believing that fairies exist. Except that believing in fairies causes no harm to society. His beliefs did.

> You could read the chapter yourself in 15 minutes.

You just presume others didn't read it, when in fact you dislike their interpretations and conclusions after reading it.
TruVi – Rethinking take home assignment in your hiring
by sungmanch | 2025-05-21 21:48:32+00:00
We’re two engineers who got frustrated with the way technical hiring is done in the age of AI.

Today, many companies still rely on traditional coding tests or LeetCode style problems to evaluate engineers. But with tools like ChatGPT and GitHub Copilot becoming part of daily workflows, these tests often fail to show how candidates really think, debug, or use AI as a tool.

So we built TruVi — a tool that helps startup CTOs, founders, heads of engineering evaluate not just the final answer, but how candidates got there, including: • How they prompt AI tools • How they edit or debug the output • How they combine their own logic with AI suggestions

Our goal is not to penalize AI usage. We believe good engineers should use good tools. Instead, we want to reveal their problem-solving process and thinking quality behind the code.

We’re looking to learn from the community. If you’re involved in hiring or technical interviews, we’d love to hear your thoughts.
by jazzyjackson | 2025-05-21 21:50:30+00:00
Why would I trust the entry on the blockchain? I'd rather just trust the government body issuing my ID. Estonia has had it for years, it's amazing that here in USA people send contracts over email and just click a button to "sign" it - Adobe at least allows actual PKI signatures but there's not really a registry to verify it against so useless in most cases.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estonian_identity_card
by vidarh | 2025-05-21 21:50:35+00:00
This example:

def foo proc do return 42 end.call end def bar proc do return 42 end end p foo p bar.call

Will produce:

42 test.rb:11:in `block in bar': unexpected return (LocalJumpError)

from test.rb:16:in `<main>'

So in other words, it's handled.
by triceratops | 2025-05-21 21:50:46+00:00
> Segregation was enforced by law by the state

Which also means there was enough broad popular support to pass such abhorrent laws. They didn't come out of nowhere. They weren't imposed by force by an outsider. It's great that your grandfather was not bigoted. The problem is not enough people were. Not enough people cared strongly enough to have these laws repealed in the state.
by jplusequalt | 2025-05-21 21:50:53+00:00
>Calling them ‘not an artist’ based on their choice of tools is just totally incorrect

Here's the crux of the issue I have with this entire conversation--because you now are able to generate "artwork," you expect the artistic community to respect you as an artist. You're waltzing into the room with none of the same battle scars, experiences, or morals and demanding that they bestow upon you the title of "creator".

>By the way, it’s right to redefine what an artist is

Sure, but let artists be the ones who take charge in redefining what art is. How is it right to redefine what "art" and "creating" is without the goodwill or consent of the artistic community at large? You are effectively trying to force a hostile takeover of the space, to demand everyone consider your generated image/song/video be treated with the same amount of respect as actual art.

If you can't even be bothered to respect the artistic community enough to understand why they feel slighted over the creation of these tools, or to empathize with them over their impact in livelihood due to the proliferation of AI slop, why the hell do you expect them to consider you an artist?
by lucas_membrane | 2025-05-21 21:51:27+00:00
So improvements in healthcare and the rapid surge in lifespans resulting from spending on medical care improvements so that more people could enjoy what they looked forward to for many years, a long, happy and healthy retirement, ruined America? This is the kind of perverse analysis that typically arises as an unwelcome emergent property of systems controlled by people facing inflexible deadlines to meet equally inflexible and arbitrary constraints and goals.
by mschuster91 | 2025-05-21 21:51:28+00:00
> Not sure if the article is accurate (the accuracy of numbers in written text took a nosedive concurrent with the rise of LLMs)

Written text accuracy took a nosedive in the early '00s as newspapers couldn't afford to hire journalists with a scientific background, followed by universities not hiring scientists to write press releases any more. GIGO - garbage in, garbage out.
by lioeters | 2025-05-21 21:52:00+00:00
I don't know where I got such a dark sense of humor. I find it deeply troubling that scientists are growing "organoids", little human brains, for computational purposes. Headline from 2023:

> Computer chip with built-in human brain tissue gets military funding

The project called DishBrain was spun into the startup, Cortical Labs.

> World's first 'body in a box' biological computer uses human brain cells with silicon-based computing

> Cortical Labs said the CL1 will be available from June, priced at around $35,000.

> The use of human neurons in computing raises questions about the future of AI development. Biological computers like the CL1 could provide advantages over conventional AI models, particularly in terms of learning efficiency and energy consumption.

> Ethical concerns also arise from the use of human-derived brain cells in technology. While the neurons used in the CL1 are lab-grown and lack consciousness, further advancements in the field may require guidelines to address moral and regulatory issues.
by neom | 2025-05-21 21:52:02+00:00
Yes, I think people wrote them off WAY too quickly, I don't really want to get into a back and forth on if they should have done tech reviews even at all blah blah blah, yeah I agree wasn't an ideal way to introduce yourself to the world, but if you listen to their CEO, use their product, and pay attention to the team they've put together... I feel strongly they're onto something big.
by RHSeeger | 2025-05-21 21:52:09+00:00
> The point is to find more talent - much more - that is not in the current 'pool', to expand the networks.

That won't solve the problem.

If most Minority-X are born poorer than Majority, then they will have access to a lesser set of opportunities. Less ability to do well in school. Less ability to go to college. Less ability to do well in college. Fewer contacts made through parents. The list goes on an on. And, because of that, the number of individuals in Minority-X that enter the workforce with the same experience and schooling as Majority is much lower. So the pool of people to choose from is skewed towards Majority.

The only realistic solution to this (that's been put forth/tried) is to artificially boost the ability of members of Minority-X to have access to opportunities. Which means there's more members of Minority-X going to school, and doing well, and to college, and so on, and so on. And once the pools start to even out, the artificial boosts are no longer necessary.

Just "expanding your network to people you don't normally interact with" isn't enough, because even the complete pool of _everyone_ that's qualified for a give thing is still biased toward the majority.
by stevenAthompson | 2025-05-21 21:53:22+00:00
The article says (paraphrasing Thiel): "The world of bits (information technology) may have been on an upward trajectory, but the world of atoms (physical products) had been stagnant for decades."

It's not wrong, but also there's a strange sort of value judgment hidden within the phrasing, and maybe within yours as well. We seem to be saying that this sort of growth is bad, or at least inferior to the kind where more "Stuff" is made. The article even directly refers to healthcare as "unproductive." It doesn't FEEL unproductive to the people who get to live longer, happier lives.
by ty6853 | 2025-05-21 21:53:24+00:00
There are a few places where you can work as an electrician without a license. Might be the same bumfuck places where solar or wind farms are. I think most of them are in the midwest or plain states.

Where I live you can't but go figure you can become a licensed finish carpenter with a simple test.

One loophole I looked I might look into some day is moving to another state with the least requirements for a license, then getting it, then transferring it to another state, which is allowed at least here.
by throwaway435675 | 2025-05-21 21:53:45+00:00
Can't. You need to build a product that generates some revenue in order to pay for servers/developers. To do that, you need either subscribers or ads. People are only going to pay for it if it's really good AND there's a clear advantage over free users. People are only going to be online long enough to view ads if it's addictive. No other way around it.
by guptadeepak | 2025-05-21 21:54:12+00:00
I've spent the last several years scaling a cybersecurity SaaS platform from SMB to enterprise customers and discovered that enterprise readiness requires fundamental architectural and organizational changes—not just feature additions.

The transformation involves four critical dimensions that many founders underestimate:

1. Zero-trust infrastructure as foundation, not feature: When serving enterprise clients, security must shift from a compliance checkbox to core architecture. Our engineering velocity initially decreased by 30% after implementing proper network segmentation, continuous verification, and least privilege access. However, this investment reduced our enterprise sales cycles from 9+ months to under 6 months because we could pass security reviews faster.

2. Compliance automation as competitive advantage: We initially treated SOC 2 and ISO 27001 as painful requirements, but the real breakthrough came when we built automated evidence collection systems. The ability to provide complete documentation within hours (versus weeks) dramatically accelerated our deals. The hidden challenge was integrating compliance requirements into our development lifecycle without creating engineering bottlenecks.

3. Role systems determine enterprise adoption: Our most significant product insight was that expanding from three predefined roles to customizable role definitions with granular permissions directly correlated with enterprise adoption rates. Enterprise customers have complex organizational structures that simply don't map to simplistic admin/user dichotomies.

The most unexpected finding: we had to dedicate approximately 30% of engineering resources to enterprise readiness for a full year before seeing significant enterprise revenue, but this ultimately delivered a 5x increase in average contract values.

For those who've made this transition: what was the most surprising technical debt you uncovered when scaling to enterprise customers? Did you find certain enterprise requirements that fundamentally challenged your initial architecture?

This is from a longer article I wrote on enterprise readiness. Read the full post here: https://guptadeepak.com/the-enterprise-readiness-playbook-tr...
by mrmuagi | 2025-05-21 21:54:20+00:00
It's the straw that breaks the camel's back I think for most people.

Constant nagging by the operating system for Windows products (I have enabled onedrive personally, but for some reason it installed two file explorer quick access links, and the workarounds online fail to persist reboots) -- hijacking file extensions, hijacking program aliases (I just had to remove a windows store alias in my env variables for "python" despite having it already installed months prior), the constant cat and mouse to have local account-only possible, inability to remove edge/stop being pestered about it, and now recall (which is not truely opt-in since it gets installed whether you want it or not).
by lurking_swe | 2025-05-21 21:54:30+00:00
your typical casual user needs 2TB of local storage (outside the cloud)? that’s news to me.

I agree it’s overpriced, and it bugs me too. But i still recommend mac’s to my less tech savvy family and friends. Why? I’m not interested in being their tech support, and also, it’s trivial to buy a portable 2TB thunderbolt 4 SSD for $200-$300, if the need arises in the future. In fact an external SSD is even easier to replace/upgrade than an internal ssd (generally speaking). i think we’re losing sight of the topic here. CASUAL USERS :)
by oofbey | 2025-05-21 21:55:20+00:00
I read a lot of AI papers on arxiv, and it's been a while since I read one where the first line of the abstract had me scoffing and done.

> We introduce the FIRST method for translating text embeddings from one vector space to another without any paired data

(emphasis mine)

Nope. I'm not gonna go a literature search for you right now and find the references, but this is certainly not the first attempt to do unsupervised alignment of embeddings, text or otherwise. People were doing this back in ~2016.
by mgiampapa | 2025-05-21 21:56:12+00:00
Yeah, the US is a backwards economy and clearly isn't successful with all it's rules and that silly Bill Clinton era digital signature law isn't pulling it's weight. It's been solidly eclipsed by Estonian technical superiority.

I would trust a blockchain more than my government. My government has clearly been shown to be vulnerable to a < 51% attack. Blockchains don't change every 4 years and decide habeas corpus no longer applies to me because my skin is the wrong color either.
by drabbiticus | 2025-05-21 21:58:20+00:00
In general this author is comparing robust vim solutions with golf-style solution in Kakoune (i.e. assuming the example is the only thing in the buffer).

I'm not saying multi-select and Kakoune's predicate-then-verb (instead of vim's verb-then-predicate) aren't cool, it's just that he has very strawman comparisons because the vim solutions could often be phenomenally simplified if the same assumptions were made in the comparison.

OTOH, I learned some cool Vim features from those incantations that may be handy in a pinch someday.
by dang | 2025-05-21 22:00:07+00:00
Can you please not be a jerk on HN, especially when responding to someone's work? It's poisonous to the community we're trying to have here. You can make your substantive points thoughtfully, so please do that instead.

The Show HN guidelines try to make this clear: see the "In Comments" section of https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html.

If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.
by echelon | 2025-05-21 22:00:17+00:00
YC and A16Z Speedrun are in a battle for biggest class size in AI.

All other contenders (Techstars, 500startups, etc.) are going to struggle to keep up because YC and A16Z want first dibs on all things AI.

If "software eats the world" (Marc Andreessen), then the thinking goes that AI eats everything.

If the first wave of AI companies were the foundation models and failed experiments, then the new kings in consumer and enterprise application-layer AI are going to be minted now-ish.

We're in the stellar star formation phase of soon-to-be leading AI companies. This shotgun approach is bound to hit a few centicorns, which will more than pay for the entire experiment.

After this next round of AI companies forms, there will be too much of a ceiling and too much of a crowded space to deploy capital at this same rate and expect the same return.

The time is now if you want to get your AI company founded and funded.
by Analemma_ | 2025-05-21 22:00:35+00:00
> But right now Steam has Linux at <3%[1].

I think the overwhelming majority of this is Steam Deck usage. While that's certainly a feather in the cap for Linux, I don't think really counts toward Linux momentum as we're using the term here. Nobody is going to start investing in polished desktop Linux software because there are a lot of Steam Deck buyers.
by RHSeeger | 2025-05-21 22:00:39+00:00
Your argument is basically

- Group 1 is doing well

- Group 2 is doing poorly, because the system works in favor of group 1

- We should NOT try to balance things (lift up group 2 at the cost of group 2) in the short term so that things are more balanced in the long term

- Because doing so would upset Group 1

See, the thing is... Group 2 is _already_ upset; and rightfully so. I'd rather see both groups of people somewhat upset then one group happy and the other _more_ upset. Honestly, that's pretty much a cliche description of what a compromise is.
by Bjorkbat | 2025-05-21 22:00:49+00:00
A while back someone here on Hacker News made a pretty insightful comment that as great of a designer as Jony Ive is, a large part of his success is owed to the fact that he had an "editor" in the form of Steve Jobs. Once Jobs passed, he no longer really had an editor.

It remains to be seen whether Sam Altman / OpenAI in general will be a good editor