MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by SketchySeaBeast | 2025-05-27 13:12:55+00:00
Well, we're on year 3 of developers being out of jobs in 6 months.

Maybe 5 or 10 years things will change, but at this point I can't see myself being replaced without some sort of paradigm shift, which is not what the current brand of AI improvements are offering - it seems like they are offering iterations of the same thing over and over, each generation slightly more refined or with more ability to generate output based upon its own output - so I see no reason to assume my job is in jeopardy just because it might be at some later date.

Someone needs to tell me what exactly is going to change to cause this sudden shift in what AI can do, because right now I don't see it. It seems to have given people a licence to suggest science fiction be treated like a business plan.
by bonniesimon | 2025-05-27 13:13:15+00:00
I'm building a personal CRM tool that I use to store my network. I have a bad habit of not checking up on people. Even close friends. That's why I'm building this. The goal is to have a software where I can input people and then set reminders to catch up with them. It's kind of like a relationship management tool.

Existing alternatives: Clay, Dex.
by pxc | 2025-05-27 13:13:24+00:00
In truth, the "job security" thing is often as much a matter of personality as it is explicit strategy. The "XYZ guy" often becomes that person simply by being someone who is stubborn enough to tackle integration problems most people would rather avoid, and by being willing to deeply embrace "RTFM".

To say they've established "job security" can sometimes seem like a cynical read on their roles, but I think it's always good for teams to have a few devs with this sort of personality.
by FirmwareBurner | 2025-05-27 13:13:57+00:00
> didn’t like us, and that we’d better get on the stick, and make number go up

Unfathomably based. I'd much prefer these honest types who are upfront about it, that I don't like you, we don't like you either, it's all transactional here, work in exchange for money till we find a better job, than the sociopath corporate assassins who try to gaslight workers telling everyone how we're all family and we're all in this tough period together, meanwhile doing layoffs, cutting things like break room coffee while buying another Porsche and building an executive gym.
by sunray2 | 2025-05-27 13:14:10+00:00
Somewhat related: there's a relatively big push for optical interconnects and integrated optics in quantum computing. Maybe this article yields insight onto what may happen in future.

With quantum computing, one is forced to use lasers. Basically, we can't transmit quantum information with the classical light from LEDs (handwaving-ly: LEDs emit a distribution of possible photon numbers, not single photons, so you lose control at the quantum level). Moreover, we often also need the narrow linewidth of lasers, so that we can interact with atoms in the way we want them to. That is, not to excite unwanted atomic energy levels. So you see in trapped ion quantum computing people tripping over themselves to realise integration of laser optics, through fancy engineering that i don't fully understand like diffraction gratings within the chip that diffract light onto the ions. It's an absolutely crucial challenge to overcome if you want to make trapped ion quantum computers with more than several tens of ions.

Networking multiple computers via said optical interconnects is an alternative, and also similarly difficult.

What insight do i gleam from this IEEE article, then? I believe if this approach with the LEDs works out for this use case, then I'd see it as a partial admission of failure for laser-integrated optics at scale. It is, after all, the claim in the article that integrating lasers is too difficult. And then I'd expect to see quantum computing struggle severely to overcome this problem. It's still research at this stage, so let's see if Nature's cards fall fortuitously.
by jerf | 2025-05-27 13:15:55+00:00
It seems like there's a lot of people in this conversation on HN still operating on a dichotomy between "skeuomorphism" and "flat". But "skeuomorphism" really ought to be reserved for those UIs that have an excessively-strong physical metaphor, tied to the real world. That's a restricted set of interfaces. They've never really been that popular. It's not likely to make a "comeback" and it's debatable whether they were ever popular enough to be characterized as making a "comeback" at all.

Both skeuomorphic UIs and flat UIs are particular points (or small regions) in a much vaster design space and we should not speak as if we are obligated to cycle between those two particular points, because it will become a self-fulfilling prophecy. There's many, many, many options beyond those two.
by vouaobrasil | 2025-05-27 13:16:04+00:00
> Well, their framing isn't actually a lie. AI can replace people doing actual jobs.

It can't for a lot of jobs, but it can reduce the number of people in a team for sure. A writer for a magazine could theoretically do the work of two writers now, and an editor may no longer be hired.

After all, there are two separate phenomena that must be considered: if AI literally replaces a job, and if it manages to prevent the hiring of someone else. In the short term, the latter is just making something more efficient, but in the long run, if that effect reduces new job openings at a faster rate than "employable people" that we "produce", then it also means trouble.
by bhouston | 2025-05-27 13:16:37+00:00
I guess I was referring to the fact that Power ISA chips were dominant at once time (prior to the rise of x86 chips) in the TOP 500 listings:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TOP500#/media/File:Processor_f...

They have faded from that over time from this niche. I do not know where they excel now.
by mschuster91 | 2025-05-27 13:16:57+00:00
At least mass-market phones and their batteries by reputable manufacturers go through rigorous testing. The sole exceptions I'm aware of are Samsung's infamous last-ever Note phablets and a few batches of iPhones. Fires of mechanically intact phones are rare.

Shoddy knockoffs and cheap Chinesium garbage however, that's a different thing.
by dnpls | 2025-05-27 13:17:45+00:00
So you believe it's easier to learn which combination of letters in the context of a given interface means "home" or "chat" than an icon? You don't understand how the human brain works, it's much quicker to discern an icon as you glance at a screen then find a word and get your brain to interpret their meaning. There are 26 letters in the English alphabet, an enormous amount of dictionary words, but it very unusual to have a single screen containing more than 10 different icons.
by cogman10 | 2025-05-27 13:18:31+00:00
Ah, I see you've worked on financial software as well ;)

We've definitely had our fair share of "IDK what to tell you, those guys are mathing wrong".

TBF, though, most customers are pretty tolerant of explainable differences in computed values. There's a bunch of "meh, close enough" in finance. We usually only run into the problem when someone (IMO) is looking for a reason not to buy our software. "It's not a perfect match, no way we can use this" sort of thing.
by panick21_ | 2025-05-27 13:19:22+00:00
OpenPOWER was created to sell chips more then anything else. But many people don't just want some stanard 'high performance' chip. There are many different kinds of high-performance chip. A high-performance chip, for a car, a gaming computer, a AI chip or a cloud chip that runs VM are all different.

There is simply not that amount of options in the POWER market. Its a restrictive set of vendors.

Pretty much every new startup designing high performance chips picked RISC-V. And they optimize their chips for specific use-cases.

In addition, the software ecosystem for RISC-V is arguable already better then POWER. And many companies and universities are working together on making it first class. Android is going to RISC-V, it will never be on POWER.

So if you were to design something for consumers, not going with RISC-V would be crazy.

RISC-V is also evolving far more quickly. There are like 80 working groups working on improvements all in the open. The amount of companies working on POWER is tiny in comparison.
by superkuh | 2025-05-27 13:19:40+00:00
Not parody. Although all these breathless stories pretending this is unprecedented sure are.

>These are kidnappings that, obviously, wouldn't exist if the crypto hadn't existed at all.

And would Frank Sinatra, Jr. never have been kidnapped if money didn't exist?

>It's essentially been a wealth transfer from stupid people to opportunistic people.

This is not entirely wrong. But it also describes the stock market. We allow the stock market because of it's obvious usefulness. The same is true for a non-centralized currency like bitcoin in a fractured world where nationstates keep going rogue and breaking down.
by tatersolid | 2025-05-27 13:19:59+00:00
> since the vast majority of broadcasts are still 480p and 720p.

I don’t think I’ve seen anything below 1080p on Xfinity cable in the USA for at least 10 years. Even older content is typically upscaled at the broadcast source (e.g. Seinfeld reruns)

Are you referring to over-the-air broadcasts? Or cable/satellite broadcasts?
by ghaff | 2025-05-27 13:20:11+00:00
I’m not sure I agree but, yes, defined contribution does shift the onus of any savings onto the employee. The employer has basically washed their hands of it outside of possibly setting up a 401-k.

I’m not sure that’s inherently bad. Why should $CORP really be responsible for benefits 30 years hence? And, by the way, you probably need to work there for 10 years or so before the benefits even get interesting.
by anal_reactor | 2025-05-27 13:20:33+00:00
> their bullshit is a waste of life and won't lead them to a meaningful existence as a professional programmer

That's where you're wrong. Being a professional programmer is 10% programming, 40% office politics, and 50% project management. If your student managed to get halfway through college without any actual programming skills, they're perfect candidate, because they clearly own the 90% of skills needed to be a professional programmer.
by dakiol | 2025-05-27 13:21:03+00:00
That's not the goal of LLMs. CEOs and high-level executives need people beneath them to handle ambiguous or non-explicit commands and take ownership of their actions from conception to release. Sure, LLMs can be configured to handle vague instructions and even say, "sure, boss, I take responsibility for my actions," but no real boss would be comfortable with that.

Think about it: if, in 10 years, I create a company and my only employee is a highly capable LLM that can execute any command I give, who's going to be liable if something goes wrong? The LLM or me? It's gonna be me, so I better give the damm LLM explicit and non-ambiguous commands... but hey I'm only the CEO of my own company, I don't know how to do that (otherwise, I would be an engineer).
by ebenezerdon | 2025-05-27 13:22:15+00:00
Everyone's talking about MCP like it's the missing link for AI tooling.

I don't think it is. At least, not yet.

Useful? Sure.

Production-ready? Not even close.

MCP introduces a new layer you now have to secure, monitor, and debug. It relies on stateful connections, breaks serverless patterns, and opens up some scary security holes if you're not careful.

Don't fall for the "spec equals maturity" trap. It's okay to wait.
by xtiansimon | 2025-05-27 13:22:49+00:00
HA! Sort of off-topic, but related. I grew up in CA and I'm now living in NY. I enjoy the mountains and wilderness related activities such as fly fishing. The two coasts could not be more different. In upstate NY the creeks and rivers are small and choked by lush vegetation. California is much more open, distances are further, creeks and rivers are deep and fast in the Sierras. (Although recent years the snowpack was very low). Now, after nearly two months into the season, I've been watching videos on Youtube, of course you see a share of those unique fisheries of Montana, Wyoming, Colorado--really wide open spaces, amid the back drop of the high peaks of those states. And between these are the Great Plains. Its mind boggling to contemplate the beauty and diversity (gasp) of the US.

And I'm also a motorcyclist. So add together the appreciation of geology and the desire to wander on two wheels and you know where I was this weekend in my thoughts and plans. I was imagining the epic journey to try to capture exemplars of these contrasts by motorcycle. Naturally Lewis & Clark came to mind. Though, as I considered their journey as inspiration for a motorcycle road trip I had not recalled the extent they traveled by canoe. HAHA. Not that adventurous.

I would certainly enjoy learning more from this research for my planning of such a motorcycle trip.
by layer8 | 2025-05-27 13:22:51+00:00
I disagree that it’s more explicit. The case distinction and the loop and the puts are exactly the same in both code variants. You can replace the ternary operator by an if if that’s bothering you, that wasn’t the point of the change. The point is to first determine what should be output repeatedly, and then to output it, because the output logic is independent from what is being output (in particular, `yes` and `yes y` should be guaranteed have identical behavior). I don’t really see what’s non-explicit about that. Rather to the contrary, it makes it explicit that the output logic is intended to be independent from what is being output.
by bradlys | 2025-05-27 13:23:13+00:00
It’s the market, lol.

You think executives are gonna be saying, “yeah we’re laying off people because our revenue stinks and we have too high of costs!” They’re gonna tell people, “yeah, we definitely got AI. It’s AI, that’s our competitive edge and why we had to do layoffs. We have AI and our competitors don’t. That’s why we’re better. (Oh my god, I hope this works. Please get the stock back up, daddy needs a new yacht.)”
by pxc | 2025-05-27 13:23:16+00:00
I've been awaiting the completion of this branch for years!

I Installed Determinate Nix (via Nix-Darwin— I find it a bit annoying that their official Nix-Darwin module reverts Nix to non-declarative management) on my laptop in order to kick the tires.

May the lazy-trees-v2 branch soon be merged into mainline Nix as well. :)

Congrats to Eelco on getting this work into a state that he's ready to present to users. I hope testing goes well for DetSys users, including me!
by aerhardt | 2025-05-27 13:23:48+00:00
I have a Software Engineering degree from Harvard Extension and I had to take quite a few exams in physically proctored environments. I could very easily manage in Madrid and London. It is not too hard for either the institution or the student.

I am now doing an Online MSc in CompSci at Georgia Tech. The online evaluation and proctoring is fine. I’ve taken one rather math-heavy course (Simulation) and it worked. I see the program however is struggling with the online evaluation of certain subjects (like Graduate Algorithms).

I see your point that a professor might prefer to have physical evaluation processes. I personally wouldn’t begrudge the institution as long as they gave me options for proctoring (at my own expense even) or the course selection was large enough to pick alternatives.
by schickling | 2025-05-27 13:23:50+00:00
That's a good point. I'm in touch with the Android/Chrome team about the underlying issue.

I was hoping the underlying Android web issue would have been fixed by now (as I first noticed it ~3 years ago with some indication for progress), but looks like LiveStore needs a custom workaround for it. You can track the progress here: https://github.com/livestorejs/livestore/issues/321

I hope you understand that bridging the gaps between various levels of supported web APIs take a lot of effort and is non-trivial when building ambitious systems like LiveStore.
by fidotron | 2025-05-27 13:24:06+00:00
I did write it, it does use Markov chains, and the whole thing should be self evidently a troll.

For example, it is not necessarily trying to beat you. This was inspired by an experience with https://luduxia.com/whichwayround/ where I found most traffic came from people trying to break it, until one day it hit a mailing list and exploded.
by jawns | 2025-05-27 13:24:08+00:00
Canon law, for those of you who are unfamiliar, is used in the governance of the Catholic Church. It governs the internal affairs of the church and the conduct of its members.

This site appears to be a searchable, linkable version of the canons, which is likely useful for online research by canon lawyers.

Here's some history:

> Following centuries of increasing complexity in canon law, Pope St. Pius X decided in 1904 that canon law, which was then scattered throughout thousands of papal and diocesan decrees, decisions, and commentaries, should be collected and simplified into a single authoritative “Code”. By 1917, the Church’s first Code of Canon Law was ready. The Pio-Benedictine, or 1917, Code was widely recognized as a major legal and pastoral accomplishment. Its 2,414 canons were in force through the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965) by which time, though, it was clear that the 1917 Code was in need of reform.

> Beginning in 1966, and utilizing canonical and theological experts from around the world, this major revision process was completed by late 1982. In January 1983 Pope John Paul II promulgated the 1,752 canons of the new Code of Canon Law which took effect the following November. This revised Code, known commonly as the 1983 Code, will likely remain the Church’s basic canon law for many decades to come. The only official text of the 1983 Code is in Latin but unofficial translations are readily available.

Source: https://www.catholic.com/magazine/print-edition/what-canon-l...
by acc_297 | 2025-05-27 13:24:11+00:00
My undergrad networks course discussed a little BGP stuff but only on the blackboard.

To experiment with BGP you could use a network simulator like what the author of this blog did. In my class we used something called gini[1] which I think my profs grad student wrote but the author apparently used gns3 which seems to be a cisco specific ns3 version. I used ns3 once and found it had a steep learning curve. The gini simulator has a more basic user interface but is probably less powerful.

[1] https://citelab.github.io/gini5/ [2] https://docs.gns3.com/docs/
by shortcord | 2025-05-27 13:24:50+00:00
I'm so glad to see this.

I was just looking into LiveStore this past month for a hobby project, but it was behind a beta preview, so I hope to be able to dig in soon to see if it can be useful to me.

I love how you're pushing forward the localfirst conversation.

If you've spent any time building offline capable web apps with some sort of syncing mechanism, you begin to very quickly see the usefulness of a sync engine.
by Urahandystar | 2025-05-27 13:28:18+00:00
The example in the article seems less like a RAG issue and more like a prompt issue. The fact that LLM's seeming can't disappoint the user and have to assume they are correct is what is leading to the misinformation in articles like this.

That said there is a clear vulnerability in LLM's not being able to judge whether information is true or not especially when pulling from the web.
by jlkuester7 | 2025-05-27 13:28:32+00:00
Not 100% sure why this is trending, but anyone here interested in the Code of Cannon Law for the Roman Catholic Church, might also find this of interest: https://github.com/DivinumOfficium/ (no affiliation)

This project maintains a digital source for multiple old versions of the "Divine Office" (aka Liturgy of the Hours or Roman Breviary). I find it particularly interesting from a FLOSS perspective. The source data is all very old (none/expired copyrights), but the calculations for which readings/prayers should be said for each particular day of the year are non-trivial (and the readings/prayers for a particular day are different from year-to-year). So, the logic included maintained in the project is a real value-add.
by vouaobrasil | 2025-05-27 13:28:32+00:00
From the article:

> That sounds good, but a "responsible AI user" is an oxymoron. For all the crap about how AI will encourage us to spend more time doing better work, the truth is AI users write fake papers including bullshit results.

I don't really think AI was ever meant to make us do "better" work, but more efficient work defined within a narrow set of parameters. Technology that scales encourages the optimization of single parameters, and the greater it scales, the more efficient that optimization is. For example, Google Search is a great example: huge scale, optimizing for SEO spam that is practically useless if you want to go into nuanced depth.

AI is even worse than that: it trades efficiency for accuracy, but efficiency at what? Production of things to be consumed, whether accurate, personally valuable, or not. After all, the internet has already tended towards this trend of production of the novel, at least for the average person. Yes, we can all point to subsystems that are nuanced and detailed such as some scientific paper repositories, but even science is being gamed and eaten up by the superficial.

We have instincts: to find new information, and that instinct itself is being gamed by AI that is perfect at finding the lowest-cost, lowest-quality information that is just so designed to stimulate our instinct of consumption.

In the short term, it does "help" us, but it also makes us less useful as "computational units", and thus more replaceable and slowly and subtly shifts our role from unique and creative souls to swappable computation units/consumers to direct AI. No one designed it that way, but it's the emergent direction of the system.
by prmph | 2025-05-27 13:28:42+00:00
> When the original post has no clue what model ...

Well, that's the point. As long as they are using a recent-ish model it really doesn't matter. Not that there are no differences in performances between models, it's that there is no model today that even comes close not requiring extensive hand-holding to accomplish real-world software engineering of even slightly moderate complexity.

Case in point: I have been frustrated that most markdown viewers don't do automatic indentation of section levels. I thought, this is a perfect test of coding assistants: the problem and solution is straightforward conceptually, and I don't even care about the platform and architecture used to accomplish it.

I've asked all the major models to implement a simple markdown viewer that could do automatic indentation, and they all fall flat. Some even give me code that will not run; of the rest, none has provided code that basically does the thing I've asked for.
by brookst | 2025-05-27 13:28:49+00:00
Excellent reformulation of the classic “requirement bug”: software can be implemented perfectly, but if the requirements don’t make sense including accounting for the realities of the technical systems, mayhem ensues.

I think AI will get there when it comes to “you asked for a gif but they don’t support transparency”, but I am 100% sure people will continue to write “make the logo a square where every point is equidistant from the center” requirments.

EDIT: yes jpg, not gif, naughty typo + autocorrect
by readthenotes1 | 2025-05-27 13:29:43+00:00
The author seems to miss the point that code being a liability has not affected the amount that is written by people who don't care.

The same day that a tutorial from Capgemini consultant on how to write code using AI appeared here, I heard from a project manager who has AI write up code that is the reviewed by the human project team--because that is far easier.

I expect most offshoring to go the way of the horse and buggy because it may be easier to explain the requirements to cursor, and the turnaround time is much faster.