MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by therealpygon | 2025-05-17 12:57:41+00:00
This was pretty much the height of the “bootcamp” era, and while some were still great at teaching solid programming skills, many people who were mediocre coders saw it as a quick way to make money off those who don’t know better. In my opinion, companies started noting more and more that they were hiring people who can barely code in a real software environment but had focused training on resume padding and interview prep, and that many of the college graduates weren’t any better off, so they ramped up to far more rigorous testing, live coding projects, and more and more rounds of interviews just to weed out all the people who had been taught how to BS their way into a tech job. Now the interview process has become so cumbersome that it is more worthwhile to filter out nearly every applicant immediately.
by lxgr | 2025-05-17 12:57:56+00:00
> [...] conflict avoidance - a reader can detect when it's reading more than 1 FeliCa card at a time, and prevent any reading if so [...]

That must be one of the things that ISO 14443 has improved on then, compared to FeliCa:

At least 14443-A (and I believe also B) allows addressing each card in the field individually by its serial number, and then selectively "halt" or resume it. Practically, this means that the reader can talk to cards one by one until it finds the one it's interested in (if any).

Unfortunately I don't know any practical system making use of that (it could get pretty confusing with payment cards, for example – charging a random card of several possible ones sounds like an anti-feature), but I still find it very neat.
by AshamedCaptain | 2025-05-17 12:58:33+00:00
VirtualBox is the only one of the 3 mentioned is still both free as in beer (even for commercial use*) as well as free as in freedom (GPLv3).

* Unless you use the Oracle plugin, but you really shouldn't, because most features from it have been moved to the GPL base.

The only other really free alternative is Qemu.
by sunrunner | 2025-05-17 12:59:22+00:00
It always seems crazy to me that in the early 1980s the BBC undertook the Computer literacy project, commissioned Acorn Computers to manufacture the BBC Micro, and produced educational content to support learning and use around said system itself.

I understand why the chances of that being a profitable enterprise now given the development of computing hardware are practically zero, but even the idea that the BBC would produce interesting educational content now seems wild (not counting documentaries as that's not often something that provides information you can act on and use). If I want that kind of content now it's pretty much a guarantee that I'll end up on YouTube.

Nowadays they're a non-neutral-seeming news outlet and producer of low-risk dreck that also demands I pay the UK TV Licence fee even just to watch _other_ channels. Do I need a reading licence to read books written by other people? Didn't think so.

At this point it's simply a subscription fee for a service I don't want, and so I don't subscribe. Bring back quality content (subjective of course, but some variety would go a long way), perhaps some risk-taking (something on par with Channel 4's Utopia seems like a good goal). Oh, and perhaps cut the salaries of some of the unnecessarily highly-paid reporters. Just a thought.
by cosmic_cheese | 2025-05-17 12:59:30+00:00
Yes, all iPhones and Apple Watches carry the functionality regardless of where you buy them, which has been wonderful for me. The fact that the iOS Wallet app can generate these cards as needed and reload them without a third party app is a cherry on top — so nice to for once get a standardized UI instead of having to deal with some half baked transit service app.
by SkyeCA | 2025-05-17 13:00:14+00:00
> At some point the risk taking stopped and everything just became the same drudge.

Same for all the big name movies these days, everyone is too scared to take a chance on something truly new. If you want a novel movie experience you basically have to look towards foreign films, often the more arty types (which I love

On the topic of TV though just consider this for a moment, we lived in a world where someone was daring enough to air "Paedogeddon!" (a Brass Eye special that imo is an excellent work of satire) on TV. Something so controversial couldn't be made and aired today and it was barely able to be even back then.
by bitwize | 2025-05-17 13:00:16+00:00
The founding document of GNOME was written by de Icaza. It was called "Let's Make Unix Not Suck", and his proposal for not sucking was basically to import much of the design of Windows and specifically COM into Linux as open source.

https://web.archive.org/web/20000815075927/http://www.helixc...

Miguel de Icaza has been stanning for Microsoft technologies, literally since the nineties.
by spelley | 2025-05-17 13:00:35+00:00
This looks most similar to golang’s defer. It runs cleanup code when leaving the current scope.

It differs from try/finally, c# “using,” and Java try-with-resources in that it doesn’t require the to-be-disposed object to be declared at the start of the scope (although doing so arguably makes code easier to understand).

It differs from some sort of destructor in that the dispose call is tied to scope, not object lifecycle. Objects may outlive the scope if there are other references, and so these are different.

If you like golang’s defer then you might like this.
by lsaferite | 2025-05-17 13:02:08+00:00
I had a fun one yesterday. The `mcp-atlassian` server failed trying to create multiple Jira tickets. The error response (and error logs) was just a series of newlines (one for each ticket we wanted to create). Turned out the issue was the LLM decided to mis-capitalize the project code. My best guess is it read the product name, which has the same letters but not fully uppercase, and used that instead of the Jira project code which was also provided in the context.
by firejake308 | 2025-05-17 13:02:31+00:00
The latest generation of supersonic aircraft does still generate a sonic boom, but the key innovation seems to be to fly at an altitude where the sound wave will mostly be reflected.

Source: this picture from the Boom XB-1 website, which was originally made by Pennsylvania State University: https://boomsupersonic.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/xb-1-b...
by rvz | 2025-05-17 13:03:57+00:00
Most of them are involved (including the latest round of YC startups), who have VCs invested in them to boost "AI agents" all over the internet and ignoring the laughable errors it makes.

Here are some headlines:

OpenAI explains why ChatGPT became too sycophantic [0]

Anthropic blames Claude AI for ‘embarrassing and unintentional mistake’ in legal filing [1]

xAI blames Grok’s obsession with white genocide on an ‘unauthorized modification’ [2]

So you see, these AI models can easily be prone to producing nonsensical errors unpredictably at any time.

[0] https://techcrunch.com/2025/04/29/openai-explains-why-chatgp...

[1] https://www.theverge.com/news/668315/anthropic-claude-legal-...

[2] https://techcrunch.com/2025/05/15/xai-blames-groks-obsession...
by Arnt | 2025-05-17 13:04:09+00:00
Stack Overflow has its own notion of what a question is. In short, a question has to be suitable as part of a searchable knowledge base.

If you want to post something that isn't SO's idea of a question, then you're really just posting off-topic. And if you then insist that people should help you with your off-topic posting, you're being overly presumptious.
by Majromax | 2025-05-17 13:04:33+00:00
> And is this a real thing that can be done? How do you make the sonic boom go away?

You can't completely make the sonic boom go away, but you can change how it's experienced on the ground through careful design of the airplane shape. The X-59 Quesst (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_Martin_X-59_Quesst#De...) is an experimental supersonic aircraft that reportedly reduces the sound of the sonic boom to something comparable to a 'car door closing', mostly by ensuring that different shockwaves created by different parts of the plane don't combine into a single, stronger boom.

> can it be used to make non-supersonic planes quieter, too?

Sadly no; the principles of design are very different for sonic booms and ordinary plane noise. For ordinary aircraft, the big causes of noise are the engines themselves and turbulence over the airframe.

That being said, the problem of ordinary aircraft noise is usually limited to the areas near an airport. Sonic booms are noticed underneath the entire flight path of a supersonic aircraft, even when it's flying at altitude.
by WhyNotHugo | 2025-05-17 13:04:36+00:00
Think of weightlifting. It helps build muscle. You can use a crane-lift to lift a lot more weight a lot faster. Is weightlifting now pointless? You'll never be able to compete with a crane-lift! It'll always be faster and won't get tired.

Writing is an exercise that helps thinking and reasoning about a subject. Delegating it to an LLM is the same as delegating it to another person who writes faster and knows the subject well. The end result is the same, the weights have been moved up 3 series of 15 times. But you didn't gain any muscle, because you didn't lift the weights yourself. You won't learn or even think about a topic if you delegate writing about it to a machine.

--

On a separate note, I also think it's naive to think that the LLM is reasoning about things the same way you would and writing the same things with the same conclusions. If you _read_ the LLM's work, you might get that impression. But your own writing could have spawned different questions along the way, leading you to read on different topics or connect different ideas. Just try asking two people about some complex topic and see if they come up with the same writing or not.
by Imustaskforhelp | 2025-05-17 13:04:54+00:00
Wow! Didn't expect anyone from Deno team to respond. I just thought I was shouting stuff in the void for my fellow HN people at most reading it.

Thanks for the clarification.

I have some questions though:-

Aside from the fact that deno allows npm compatibility, how is deno deploy any better than cloudflare hosting which I currently use, since cloudflare workers also have some compatibility layer I suppose and cloudflare workers can and do host applications and edge functions both.

I can understand if things like nextjs which don't run as smoothly on cf workers, if at all (I haven't tried them but I do know that its easier to run nextjs on vercel than any other competitor), but nextjs can run easily on deno, so that might be a really big niche tbh

But as a sveltekit user, here's my opinion I have deployed so many sveltekit websites to cloudflare workers, 100k limit never disappoints me or limits me, cf workers also has a kv which is good for simple databases. I am seriously considering to always use cloudflare workers since currently I am just a student and it gives me 100k requests per month limit and after that its still really really cheap.

I had compared deno's tier and cf tier's sometime ago and cf was the winner there, I don't know what's the situation now but I am willing to hear.

Cf workers wrangler developer-experience is genuinely decent in my opinion, not as easy as deno deploy I suppose but still its worth it given all the previous points.

Deno is really nice compared to node, I in fact was the guy who watched fireship video and then the deno video itself and then I legit went to my brother's room knocking on his door (my brother is also a coder, in fact he knows his stuff whereas I am just this 16 year old student) and I legit wanted him to try out deno. But I am having mixed opinions now and I don't mean any defamation of deno team who are really nice and kind for what I've seen.

Have a really nice day Andy. Hope deno achieves success.
by Asmod4n | 2025-05-17 13:05:03+00:00
IMHO, thread and matter will probably be as mature as homeassistant and zigbe2mqtt in the 2030ies. At the moment, Zigbee devices can work without any hub as long as you stick to one vendor.

Aka buy lightbulbs and switches from ikea and you can right out start using them, I believe you only need a hub to create groups of devices which then can get controled with one switch. You then could unplug the hub and still use them, only needing a hub for ethernet bridging and automations.
by pesnk | 2025-05-17 13:05:20+00:00
Congratulations on the project! It works great, until we need to handle the best part of Elixir, that's creating multiple actors.

This Task code, for example doesn't work.

Enum.map(0..10, fn(_) -> Task.async(fn -> IO.puts("new process") end) end) |> Task.await_many()
by ghc | 2025-05-17 13:05:40+00:00
I think you're exhibiting a lack of imagination here. There's plenty of time sensitive items the Concorde was used to transport, like organs for transplants, or serum for snake bite victims.

Since the retirement of the Concorde we've regrettably had to use fighter jets for some of these life-saving flights. Sure, rich people subsidized all of it to shave a few hours off their business flights, but given how much avgas Elon's jet uses, it is really more efficient if they half the people who would take a supersonic flight take small private jets instead?
by 90s_dev | 2025-05-17 13:05:49+00:00
For starters, your code is so full of serious syntax errors that in some places it's not even close to valid JavaScript. This is my best guess reconstruction:

(async (e) => { await doSomething() while (!done) { ({ done, value }) = await reader.read() } promise .then(goodA, badA) .then(goodB, badB) .catch(err => console.log(err)) .finally(() => { using stack = new DisposableStack() stack.defer(() => console.log('done.')) }) })()

But more importantly, this isn't even close to anything a reasonable JS dev would ever write.

1. It's not typical to mix await and while(!done), I can't imagine what library actually needs this. You usually use one or the other, and it's almost always just await:

await doSomething() const value = await readFully(reader)

2. If you're already inside an Async IIFE, you don't need promise chains. Just await the stuff as needed, unless promise chains make the code shorter and cleaner, e.g.:

const json = await fetch(url).then(r => r.json())

3. Well designed JS libraries don't usually stack promise handlers like the {good,bad}{A,B} functions you implied. You usually just write code and have a top level exception handler:

using stack = new DisposableStack() stack.defer(() => console.log('done.')) try { const goodA = await promise const goodB = await goodA const goodC = await goodB return goodC } catch(e) { myLogErr(e) } // finally isn't needed, that's the whole point of DisposableStack

4. We don't usually need AIIFEs anymore, so the outer layer can just go away.
by hollow-moe | 2025-05-17 13:05:59+00:00
They won't directly "mandate" the use of Playstore since it would be an obvious abuse of monopoly to regulators. Instead they can (and do) allow developpers to enable various checks with the Play Integrity API to ensure the app comes from playstore and is running on an "unmodified" android aka maintream OEM android and not custom ROM.
by lxgr | 2025-05-17 13:06:45+00:00
A broadly supported tap-to-pay fare system is such an underrated accessibility win for public transit when traveling.

Many tourists already get intimidated by language barriers and inscrutable timetables and transit routes; add tariff complexity (and the chance of getting charged with fare evasion!), and many just end up taking a taxi.

With these stored-value systems, you pretty much don't have to ever worry about doing anything wrong as long as you properly tapped in (and have the necessary cash to top up the card at the exit turnstile if you ended up "overdrafting" your card).

Now the remaining complexity is learning about and getting the card in the first place, and Apple Wallet really does an amazing job there in Japan. Not even having to install an app or create any account is absolutely amazing.
by radanskoric | 2025-05-17 13:06:56+00:00
I put the lines of code into the title to communicate to the reader that they can get a good understanding just by reading this article.

Basically, what I wanted to say was: "Here is an article on building a prototype coding agent in Ruby that explains how it works and the code is just 94 lines so you'll really be able to get a good understanding just by reading this article."

But that's a bit too long for a title. :)

When understanding a certain concept, it's very useful to be able to see just the code that's relevant to the concept. Ruby language design enables that really well. Also, Ruby community in general puts a lot of value on readability. Which is why with Ruby it's often possible to eliminate almost all of the boilerplate while still keeping the code relatively flexible.
by MonkeyClub | 2025-05-17 13:07:17+00:00
MercuryOS [1, 2] appears to be simply a "speculative vision" with no proof of concept implementation, a manifesto rather than an actual system.

I read through its goals, and it seems that it is against current ideas and metaphors, but without actually suggesting any alternatives.

Perhaps an OS for the AI era, where the user expresses an intent and the AI figures out its meaning and carries it out?

[1] https://www.mercuryos.com/

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35777804 (May 1, 2023, 161 comments)
by dylan604 | 2025-05-17 13:07:56+00:00
Apollo 11’s original landing spot was deemed not ideal, and was manually overridden by the human looking at the situation in situ. It becomes even more dramatic because it used up way more fuel depleting the padding. The original spot was decided based on imagery too. It feels like hubris to think that interpreting imagery alone is sufficient.

Looking at the Mars mission where they just toss the payload essentially wrapped in bubble wrap seems like a higher chance of success than something much more precise with landing legs. If there’s no soft squishy meat bags on board, why spend so much effort/risk on trying to land on legs requiring a this end up situation?
by bitwize | 2025-05-17 13:08:11+00:00
"It" factor affects talent pool size. If you're planning a large project and want to hire talent to staff it, how popular a language and framework you choose to implement it in has a direct effect on the cost of implementation. Hint: popular languages and frameworks are far easier to hire for than obscure ones, so unless you have a VERY GOOD REASON not to, it's best to choose a popular language.
by SkyeCA | 2025-05-17 13:08:19+00:00
> You could barely make Brass Eye in 2001, as their 2001 special proved,

I still hold that special up as one of the best pieces of satire to ever air on TV, but at the same time I'm shocked it was ever able to be produced and shown since it satirizes the one topic above all others you aren't "allowed" to joke about.

For those interested I highly recommend watching it: https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x6shgvw
by matt_s | 2025-05-17 13:08:25+00:00
Wow, so that RubyLLM gem makes writing an agent more about basic IO operations. I have somehow thought there needed to be deep understanding of LLMs and/or AI APIs to build things like this where I would need to research and read a lot of docs, stay up to date on the endless updates the various AI systems have, etc. The example from the article is about files and directories, this same concept could apply to any text inputs, like data out of a Rails app.
by rrdharan | 2025-05-17 13:09:09+00:00
It’s really not harder for the folks with this skill set, and plenty of these vulnerabilities have been found in VMware too over the years.

https://www.blackhat.com/presentations/bh-usa-09/KORTCHINSKY...

https://www.darkreading.com/vulnerabilities-threats/vmware-z...

https://cloud.google.com/blog/topics/threat-intelligence/vmw...
by krisoft | 2025-05-17 13:10:07+00:00
> Does that mean you'll see a plane flying overhead, hear the normal drone associated with it, but at one particular moment here a distinctly louder but shorter noise?

Not really. Supersonic means faster than sound. Meaning that the plane flies faster than the sound. Even its own sound. So you would hear nothing before the sonic boom reaches you. Because the sound didn't have time to get to your ears yet.

> I think a supersonic aircraft is constantly "dragging" a boom behind it.

What was really revealing to me is to look at shadowgraph images of supersonic wind tunnel test. Like this one: https://media.sciencephoto.com/image/s3300054/800wm/S3300054...

You can see the dark airplane looking shape. That's the model of the airplane in the wind tunnel. And then you can see that V shaped shadow edge starting from the tip of the nose. That's the sonic boom. It is a sudden step change in pressure. In this visualisation it appears as two lines, but in reality it is a cone centered on the tip of the nose (or other protrusions.)

Where and when your ear crosses that cone surface that's where you experience a sonic boom.

> How do you make the sonic boom go away?

If I understand it correctly their plan is not to make it not happen, but to fly such that the pressure wave is bent upwards away from the ground. Which sounds like a weather dependent trick. I recommend the video in the article which shows the idea.
by Retr0id | 2025-05-17 13:10:18+00:00
Even if we accept the premise, I'd rather use software that contains hard-to-find bugs than easy-to-find bugs, all other things being equal.

In my experience of casual usage VMware is less buggy in general (no random crashes, etc.), and that usually translates into fewer security bugs too.

But if your adversary is spending $$$$$ on vulns to throw at you, you can probably assume they can vm-escape either one.
by radanskoric | 2025-05-17 13:10:53+00:00
It depends on the flexibility of the API. If you're making an API for just one specific use case, you can make it a one liner in any language, even assembler: just push the exact specific functionality into the one function.

Language expressiveness is more about making the interface support more use case while still being as concise. And Ruby is really good at this, better than most languages.
by CuriouslyC | 2025-05-17 13:12:10+00:00
I will occasionally switch to O3 briefly when gemini gets stuck, it's not a good daily driver but it can sometimes crack tough problems and let you get back to smooth progress. If you want to save some money you can tell gemini to make a concise summary of the problem it's stuck on to provide to another LLM so the other model can provide instructions on how to solve it, then you can paste that into ChatGPT and use O3 for free (if you have a sub). You just then paste O3's reply back into Aider and you're usually good to go again.
by taylorallred | 2025-05-17 13:12:37+00:00
Yeah this is a fair point. In honesty, the attempts I have made to have GPT help me think creatively has usually left me disappointed and feeling like it was picking safe, middle-of-the-road solutions. That could be on my prompting skills but also I tend to view LLMs as more of a fuzzy information retrieval tool than a creative/reasonable one. It just hasn’t shown me original ideas that have seemed compelling to me yet (maybe I just need to beg it to be more “original”).