MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by ulrikrasmussen | 2025-05-12 05:54:17+00:00
Cool idea I guess, but if we train coding models only based on whether the code compiles or runs, won't we get models which have a pretty poor understanding of how to create good abstractions? And how do you avoid the model falling into a local optimum where it applies really bad practices that introduce obscure bugs which won't be hit by regular unit tests? Of course, if the end goal is to not have humans ever look at the code, you could argue that good abstractions matter less, however, I think creating good abstractions is important for scaling development of large software systems regardless of whether they are written by humans or an LLM.
by danpalmer | 2025-05-12 05:56:03+00:00
I once saw some software from someone who claimed they had solved business software once and for all. What they actually had built was a CMS where the data types were also in the CMS alongside the instances of those types. Y'know, like most modern CMSs. Their point was that you could build anything in it because it was so flexible, but when pressed to give real-world examples they struggled.

Another teachable moment for me was when studying Haskell, realising that the fewer type restrictions you put on a function, the less the function could do. This was counter intuitive to me – surely with fewer restrictions you can do more! But no, with fewer restrictions you know less about what you've got, and so there's less you can do with the data. This comparison might be a bit of a reach.

In a similar vein, Bonfire seems to be trying to be all things to all people, a network, and a protocol, and the instance software, and a community, for Twitter-like, or Facebook-like, or other types of social networks. Maybe it is actually everything social in one project, but that doesn't tell me how to use it. Maybe it is actually just a generic function with no real type data, that therefore can't be used for anything specific.
by userbinator | 2025-05-12 05:57:22+00:00
Finding the ones that aren't DEI-related is difficult. At first I found "CAREER: Understanding the Interdependence of the Microenvironment and Nuclear Organization in Stem Cell Aging" that looks neutral from its title, and the first part of its description was, but then there's this sentence in the middle that sticks out like a sore thumb: "The primary educational objective of this project is to develop a series of stories that focus on introducing concepts of stem cells and genomics to under-represented minority (URM) students in K-3." The rest of the details is neutral, however. It's so unusual that one wonders whether who wrote that was actually pro-DEI, or merely compelled to put in something to that effect in order to appease someone.
by pbowyer | 2025-05-12 05:58:04+00:00
I've had trials for both running and tested both on the same codebases.

Cursor works roughly how I've expected. It reads files and either gets it right or wrong in agent mode.

Windsurf seems restricted to reading files 50 lines at a time, and often will stop after 200 lines [0]. When dealing with existing code I've been getting poorer results than Cursor.

As to autocomplete: perhaps I haven't set up either properly (for PHP) but the autocomplete in both is good for pattern matching changes I make, and terrible for anything that require knowledge of what methods an object has, the parameters a method takes etc. They both hallucinate wildly, and so I end up doing bits of editing in Cursor/Windsurf and having the same project open in PhpStorm and making use of its intellisense.

I'm coming to the end of both trials and the AI isn't adding enough over Jetbrains PhpStorm's built in features, so I'm going back to that until I figure out how to reduce hallucinations.

0. https://www.reddit.com/r/Codeium/comments/1hsn1xw/report_fro...
by jsumrall | 2025-05-12 06:00:07+00:00
Amazon Q. Claude Code is great (the best imho, what everything else measures against right now), and Amazon Q seems almost as good and for the first week I've been using it I'm still on the free tier.

The flat pricing of Claude Code seems tempting, but it's probably still cheaper for me to go with usage pricing. I feel like loading my Anthropic account with the minimum of $5 each time would last me 2-3 days depending on usage. Some days it wouldn't last even a day.

I'll probably give Open AI's Codex a try soon, and also circle back to Aider after not using it for a few months.

I don't know if I misundersand something with Cursor or Copilot. It seems so much easier to use Claude Code than Cursor, as Claude Code has many more tools for figuring things out. Cursor also required me to add files to the context, which I thought it should 'figure out' on its own.
by joha4270 | 2025-05-12 06:03:22+00:00
That's a very Boeing friendly way of putting it.

As I understand it, yes the system worked as designed, but the design still managed to kill several hundred people.

I'm not qualified to evaluate the design of the system itself. Was it inherently flawed or would everything have been fine if the optional backup sensor had been mandatory, making this another example of corporate greed causing tragedy?

Either way, I don't think blaming the pilots is fair.
by coolcase | 2025-05-12 06:05:02+00:00
Yeah F# and Typescript are very impressive. We just got used to tonnes of innovation. It ain't UNIX but I'd say Typescript is as impressive. An exoskeleton for JS that rivals Haskell.

See also VSCode and WSL.

And if we ain't impressed with LLMs then wtf! I mean maybe it is just nostalga for the old times.

Lots of great stuff is coming out. Quantum computing. Open source revolution producing Tor, Bitcoin, Redis, Linux.

I think we are in the Golden age!

And it is not all from one place. Which is better.
by verzali | 2025-05-12 06:06:55+00:00
> What prevents the next president, who just might have more than a 1.6% vote margin, from just reversing all of this?

The way things are going the next president will be a simple continuation from the present one. The vote margin will not matter.

> On a different track, if Trump does a large amount of governing by fiat, will Trump accept the blame if things go awry? That seems like the flip side of dictating new rules.

No. It will be someone else's fault.
by svat | 2025-05-12 06:08:12+00:00
For what it's worth: Concrete Mathematics does have an attribution to Kummer — it's just that the credits are given separately in Appendix C, "Credits for Exercises", where on page 634, next to 5.36 (the exercise number you mentioned), you can find "Kummer [230, p. 116]" and [230] (on page 621, in Appendix B, "Bibliography") gives the full citation:

> E. E. Kummer, “Über die Erg änzungss ätze zu den allgemeinen Reciprocitätsgesetzen,” Journal f ür die reine und angewandte Mathematik 44 (1852), 93–146. Reprinted in his Collected Papers, volume 1, 485–538.

Also, the answer to exercise 5.36 says “See [226] for extensions of this result to generalized binomial coefficients” and [226] (on page 620) is:

> Donald E. Knuth and Herbert S. Wilf, “The power of a prime that divides a generalized binomial coefficient,” Journal für die reine und angewandte Mathematik 396 (1989), 212–219

which of course begins (https://www2.math.upenn.edu/~wilf/website/dm36.pdf) by citing Kummer. (Looks like the authors published in the same journal as Kummer, 137 years later!)
by ForOldHack | 2025-05-12 06:08:16+00:00
That is one possible point, but om machines with low memory, (like a lab full of 8Gb potatoes) this is a godsend. These lab PCs are so stripped down, that the only thing using most of the memory is WD.

You should be able to make a normal mode to run full security and a gaming mode just run a semi large game,and yes, this does expose a vulnerability,but it can be easily brought back up.
by jeroenhd | 2025-05-12 06:08:43+00:00
The goal of this article is to show you how to integrate with this service from just about anything. It's an ad that was fun to make as a hobby project. I doubt the goal was ever to set up a fully integrated Minecraft monitoring pipeline. At best, this is an employee at this company just decided to show the flexibility of their product by integrating with a random piece of kit they like.

Luckily, all of the interesting components are existing third party libraries so if you don't want to use their SaaS service, you can build your own Minecraft dashboard pretty easily.
by r0nlt | 2025-05-12 06:08:44+00:00
Space-Radiation-Tolerant ML Framework Achieves 97% Uptime in Extreme Space Conditions!!! Excited to share groundbreaking results from the latest mission simulation for radiation-tolerant machine learning in space-simulated environments: Our framework maintained 97% error correction rate in South Atlantic Anomaly conditions with minimal shielding (0.5mm) and extreme solar activity (15x normal levels) Successfully detected and handled over 200 radiation events in just 30 seconds: 173 single-bit flips 27 multi-bit upsets 9 single-event latchups 2 single-event transients

Most impressive: ZERO undetected errors across all tests!!!! The framework leverages quantum field theory approaches and adaptive voting mechanisms to maintain neural network operations in radiation environments that would cripple conventional systems. These results could transform how we deploy AI in space - from Earth observation to autonomous deep space missions.
by harrall | 2025-05-12 06:09:22+00:00
Yet I see tradesmen who have started their own contacting businesses and poorly paid software engineers who somehow just make Wordpress themes.

At the end of the day, people need to discover themselves and find what they excel at. Who am I to tell people that they’ll enjoy my job and be as good at it as I am. No one should tell me to start a career in chemistry or playing an instrument. I’ve already tried it.
by jltsiren | 2025-05-12 06:10:17+00:00
Hiring smart people who want freedom and autonomy is easy. Just give them freedom, autonomy, stability, and a good enough salary. The hard part is getting them to contribute to your business. Maybe they will contribute if they find it interesting. But if you expect them to contribute, you are clearly not giving them autonomy.

Many of the smartest people I know are good at ignoring bureaucratic requirements, or at least handling them with the minimum effort necessary. And that often includes business, which many of them see as a subcategory of bureaucracy.
by mbanerjeepalmer | 2025-05-12 06:10:25+00:00
I used to be religiously pro-Aider. But after a while those little frictions flicking backwards and forwards between the terminal and VS Code, and adding and dropping from the context myself, have worn down my appetite to use it. The `--watch` mode is a neat solution but harms performance. The LLM gets distracted by deleting its own comment.

Roo is less solid but better-integrated.

Hopefully I'll switch back soon.
by cwalv | 2025-05-12 06:11:35+00:00
> This calculator[1] factors everything you listed, and the math doesn't work out for the hottest housing markets

That's a great calculator; I remember using it like a decade ago. And while it includes all factors they listed there are a few it doesn't:

1. If interest rates go down, you can refinance, but if they go up, the inflation and appreciation values likely will as well, but your rate is fixed, for (up to) 30 yrs (!!)

2. It's relatively easy to make improvements while you live there (and capture increased value when you leave)

3. The calculator assumes that the down payment and cost difference vs renting would be invested, which is fine but ignores psychological realities that prevent this more often than not

Also:

> The best hedge is to also "invest" in something that has value to you. Like bricks / house.

The suggestion was mentioned as a 'hedge'. The point being: you don't know what the values entered into the calculator will really end up being. Having some costs locked in can help with concerns around cash flow (and shelter costs are usually a significant percentage of costs overall). It's an "also 'invest'" strategy, so there's a whole lot not included in the calculator here as well
by ForOldHack | 2025-05-12 06:12:21+00:00
This is a godsend. I should send you a jar of KimChee for this. Please return to Seoul, and enjoy the sights. South Korea is one of the most beautiful countries in the world. Try to plan into corrispond to either the cherry blossoms falling in the spring, or the leaves falling in the fall.

I miss Seoul.
by aitchnyu | 2025-05-12 06:12:45+00:00
Yup, choose your model and pay as you go, like commodities like rice and water. The others played games with me to minimize context and use cheaper models (such as 3 modes, daily credits etc, using most expensive model etc).

Also the --watch mode is the most productive interface of using your editor, no need of extra textboxes with robot faces.
by treyd | 2025-05-12 06:12:55+00:00
It's kinda nuts. The upstream mojang server binary starts to groan if you have >4-5 players on the same server doing stuff. They've really been dropping the ball on optimization in recent years.

Paper is good enough for anyone but very technical players pushing to the limits of redstone tick timing logic, entity behavior, chunk loading mechanics, etc. These don't matter even for advanced players doing normal things.
by demosito666 | 2025-05-12 06:14:12+00:00
The word “engineering” in SWE is just plain wrong. Present day software development has nothing to do with engineering outside of some very niche markets (aviation, mission-critical systems, embedded controllers). The term vibe coding came up really handy because it describes how 99% of software is developed much better than “software engineering“, with or without LLMs. That’s why it’s always fun to read such discussions of hardware vs software people.
by a_t48 | 2025-05-12 06:14:16+00:00
My usual commute is a <15 minute walk to BART, and a 5 minute walk off BART. The car is mostly for driving around South/East Bay and getting bulk goods in Berkeley. Trying to wean myself off of using it in Oakland but bus service isn’t amazing where I am. I’m with you on avoiding the car commute - would much rather the walk, and feels safer when I’m sleepy. Plus, fuck the 880, drivers on it are crazy even on a calm day - every time my wife and I drive down it, she has the same reaction - “you were driving in this every day?!”
by gsf_emergency | 2025-05-12 06:15:28+00:00
>there's too many of them to allow judging

Agree with this in particular as a good symptom of the "tectonic shifts". I usually blame the Baumol effect, i.e., the increasing difficulty of the inherently human task: keeping science education/science educators up-to-date. Especially when faced with the returns on optimizing more "mechanical" processes (including the impressive short term returns on "merely" improving bean-counting or, in Bell Lab's/IBM's later eras, shifting info-processing away from paper)

I doubt AI or VCs* have any significant role to play in reducing the friction in the college-to-self-selling-breakthrough pipeline, but they should certainly channel most of their efforts to improving the "ecosystem" first

TFA has right ideas such as

>Make sure people talk to each other every day.

Which already happens here on HN! (Although it's mostly different daily sets of people but.. the same old sets of ideas?)

*Not if the main marketable usecase for college students is to game existing metrics. And I don't see no Edtech in the RFS either
by smilekzs | 2025-05-12 06:16:01+00:00
From first principles I think the concept can make sense. From car-specific function-specific ECUs, to platform-shared (but still function-specific) ECUs, then to Zonal architecture and domain controllers. The goals: consolidate and generalize HW across the lineup moving model-specific bits to FW/SW/Config (amortizes the development cost and simplifies certification), and also simplify wiring (saves you precious copper wires which are costly, messy, and heavy) because you can pretty much just plug every miscellaneous sensor or actuator to its nearest "anchor point" without worrying (too much) about arbitrary ECU limitations.

See Rivian's intro on their ECU design and Zonal architecture: https://youtu.be/6ZBko4TvfJY?t=137&si=-SKL_iFqZFnHE8nQ

This might sound like purely implementation detail, but having the (non-safety-critical) "business logic" of a car as software gives the manufacturer flexibility to late-bind behavior as new use cases / demands inevitably get discovered.

Something can simultaneously be a good idea, buzzword'd by marketing, and/or deviate from the original intentions.
by fastball | 2025-05-12 06:16:22+00:00
For the agentic stuff I think every solution can be hit or miss. I've tried claude code, aider, cline, cursor, zed, roo, windsurf, etc. To me it is more about using the right models for the job, which is also constantly in flux because the big players are constantly updating their models and sometimes that is good and sometimes that is bad.

But I daily drive Cursor because the main LLM feature I use is tab-complete, and here Cursor blows the competition out of the water. It understands what I want to do next about 95% of the time when I'm in the middle of something, including comprehensive multi-line/multi-file changes. Github Copilot, Zed, Windsurf, and Cody aren't at the same level imo.
by natch | 2025-05-12 06:16:48+00:00
Tesla took the hit for the transportation industry, working their asses off and pioneering the costly ramp up to mass production of EVs, so the subsidies are the government compensating them for having not taken the easy path that the legacy auto makers are taking with their continued production of polluting gas cars and their half-hearted introduction of compliance cars.

Since government wants to encourage transition to sustainable energy, and oil and gas have been subsidized for decades, not to mention the tens of billions in bailouts for legacy auto, putting things in perspective shows that legacy auto should get the brunt of any criticism here, and the relatively smaller subsidies to Tesla are offsetting the larger investment Tesla has made.

The beauty of it is that the money is actually paid to Tesla by the legacy auto makers who have not stepped up or have stepped up only at a scale of virtue signaling, if you look at the sales numbers.
by aziaziazi | 2025-05-12 06:18:52+00:00
And adTech. I’ve been a happy user or the local gumtree [0] that always worked fine with my 9yo iPhone… until last year: the business model seems to have changed as they added in-list advertisement and I can only scroll the products list until the first ad wrapper shows up. Then the UI freeze and never gets back to life. I don’t even see the advertisements itself.

[0] https://www.leboncoin.fr/

Edit: just tried it again and seems they fixed it! The ads stays in loading state forever but the site is usable again. Wonder if they did something on their side or if they changed ad provider.
by Zanfa | 2025-05-12 06:19:07+00:00
Problems like this always come down to salary. I love embedded (hardware in general, really) and would absolutely love to do it, but during my entire career, the salaries for embedded have been so much lower than you get for slinging JS/web shit. And now with 15 years in, the gap is even worse.

At this point, when I wanted to get back into hardware, it made more financial sense to outfit my home office with all the measuring instruments, debuggers, tools and other equipment necessary for embedded work and do it as a hobby. If I had the space, I could even get full-size CNC machines and still come out ahead cash wise. It’s insane.

It’s no wonder they can’t find experienced embedded devs, when it makes no financial sense to stick with it over a decade.
by solatic | 2025-05-12 06:19:14+00:00
> Credit cards account for 63% of all US retail purchases but bundle all sorts of non-discretionary and discretionary purchases together. Your $30 takeout order is bundled with “financing” for a new coffee machine, Uber rides, airline tickets, gym membership, dry cleaning, a tire change, and maybe even your monthly rent. Additionally, your credit card rate is also obscured by complex fee structures, variable interest rates, reward points, hotel points, and airline miles. So it’s hard to precisely price the risk of that $30 loan. BNPL disentangles these purchases. Each loan is for a specific item, with a fixed repayment schedule over a very short term (usually 6-8 weeks).

This is a non-sequitur argument. Your credit card issuer knows who you are, your credit profile, and they know you spent $30 at Chipotle. There's nothing preventing Visa and Mastercard from taking the debts on these individual $30 purchases at Chipotle + McDonald's + Domino's etc, bucketing by FICO score of the borrower, and working with banks to securitize that "Fast Food Takeout" debt, just the same as Klarna or Affirm are doing. It's not a fundamentally different product.

What the author is really claiming is, Visa and Mastercard don't have entrepreneurial cultures so they're not really interested in or willing to internally commit to this kind of new product (i.e. debt securitization), so it took some new Fintech companies to come to market and push the gauntlet, who are trying to get a foothold in the market by marketing to underserved segments (customers who were denied credit cards) and by juicing their initial offering to consumers with unsustainable benefits (not reporting initial defaults to credit bureaus). For which, you know, fine. But at some point the credit card companies will wake up and take second-mover's advantage, which is really anyway their incumbent advantage, where they're taking less of a fee than Klarna/Affirm are.

edit: by the way, HNers who push for UBI, this is exactly how the private market would effectively create it. Consider someone with a junk credit score who never intends to make any payments whatsoever. This would allow the credit card company to issue a card (say, with a $300 limit), take the charges to that card and securitize them into a bond with a C rating, and see if there are any high-risk buyers. Why would anyone purchase a bond like that? Because bundled into the security will also be other people with junk credit ratings who do intend to make repayments so that they can start to build their credit score. But for people who never intend to make any repayments, that's effectively $300 free every month, financed by hedge funds looking for return on high-risk bonds.
The perfect game engine for indie game developers
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