MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by woah | 2025-05-16 16:53:55+00:00
> Parallel task execution: You can batch dozens of small edits (refactors, tests, boilerplate) and run them concurrently without context juggling. It's super nice to run a bunch of tasks at the same time (something that's really hard to do in Cursor, Cline, etc.)

> It kind of feels like a junior engineer on steroids, you just need to point it at a file or function, specify the change, and it scaffolds out most of a PR. You still need to do a lot of work to get it production ready, but it's as if you have an infinite number of junior engineers at your disposal now all working on different things.

What's the benefit of this? It sounds like it's just a gimmick for the "AI will replace programmers" headlines. In reality, LLMs complete their tasks within seconds, and the time consuming part is specifying the tasks and then reviewing and correcting them. What is the point of parallelizing the fastest part of the process?
by saltcured | 2025-05-16 16:54:14+00:00
I remember when WordPerfect vs Wordstar was the religious debate in the PC world like vi vs emacs. As Macs brought WYSIWYG and desktop publishing to consumers and small business, things got messy.

Does anybody remember AMI Pro? I think that was where I first started to learn about "paragraph styles" and the disciplined way someone could use these WYSIWYG editors a bit like one can use LaTeX styles. Assign styles abstractly, then be able to change in one place and modify all occurrences throughout a document.

However, this just set me up for decades of frustration as the vast majority of business users cannot be bothered to use any discipline at all. Documents would be littered with overlapping bits of manual formatting that would drive me insane with their impossible interactions. And if they defined paragraph styles, it was as endless litter of new styles so that they were hardly ever reused.

It may be my Wordstar indoctrination coming through, but I think these tools would all be better with explicit markup for boundaries, so you could escape the madness of never being able to predict, "which implied style(s) are going to apply to the next character I type with the current cursor position?"
by allknowingfrog | 2025-05-16 16:54:23+00:00
Did "duct" tape become the standard nomenclature at some point? I learned many years ago that "duck" really is the correct term, because the tape was originally made of cotton duck cloth.

Lots of people assume that "duck" is actually the misunderstanding, and that it must be a slurring of "duct", but there's no history of using duck tape on ducts. It's the wrong tool for the job, and the wrong name for the material. I'm surprised to see that sources like the NYT and Wikipedia are using "duct tape" as the preferred term.
by Jimmc414 | 2025-05-16 16:54:23+00:00
> We’ve long used local agents like Cursor and Claude Code, so we didn’t expect too much.

If you don't mind, what were the strengths and limitations of Claude Code compared to Codex? You mentioned parallel task execution being a standout feature for Codex - was this a particular pain point with Claude Code? Any other insights on how Claude Code performed for your team would be valuable. We are pleased with Claude Code at the moment and were a bit underwhelmed by comparable Codex CLI tool OAI released earlier this month.
by jonhohle | 2025-05-16 16:54:32+00:00
I’m slightly surprised there isn’t more KVM/Virtualized bare metal JVM environments. While I haven’t used it in a while, the decade+ I spent running Javan’s in production basically have the entire system over to the JVM (with some overhead for some small non-JVM background daemons). Most things were built not to use POSIX standards, but Java equivalents. Occasionally direct file system access for writes was necessary (logging being a big exception).

So giving the entire system to the JVM, performing some warmup prior to a service considering itself “healthy”, and the JVM was reasonably fast. It devoured memory and you couldn’t really do anything else with the host, but you got the Java ecosystem, for better or worse).

There was a lot of good tooling that is missing from other platforms, but also a ton of overhead that I am happy to not have to deal with at the moment.
by canttestthis | 2025-05-16 16:54:41+00:00
Hi Peter - I'm on H1-B and not eligible for EB-1/2 or O-1. I filed for EB-5 through an RC and just got my EAD and I want to use that to start a startup in the US. If the underlying EB-5 petition is rejected after the startup is established, do you know if there is a path to re-sponsoring my H1-B through my own startup? I'm trying to understand whether I should wait for a proper green card before going down the startup route.
by mystraline | 2025-05-16 16:55:07+00:00
I was an early adopter of NodeRed. Earlier, it worked exceptionally well.

Now? Not so much.

Well, that's not exactly true. Base NodeRed works as well as before. But the libraries of modules to interface with all sorts of websites, APIs, hardware, and other stuff is rotten to the core.

Most plugins/js modules either just don't work, or 'successfully fail'. The easier fail case is where the module can't be installed due to ancient (6mo or older JS, sigh) modules.

I abandoned NR because its basically a hyper-speed bitrot due to terrible library module versioning. And I didn't want to reinvent the wheel on every system I wanted to touch.
by yossi_peti | 2025-05-16 16:55:23+00:00
Their example "understanding and translating vertical Chinese spring couplets to English" has a lot of mistakes in it. I'm guessing the person writing the blog post to show off that example doesn't actually know Chinese.

What is actually written: Top: 家和国盛 Left: 和谐生活人人舒畅迎新春 Right: 平安社会家家欢乐辞旧岁

What Ollama saw: Top: 盛和家国 (correct characters but wrong order) Left: It reads "新春" (new spring) as 舒畅 (comfortable) Right: 家家欢欢乐乐辞旧岁 (duplicates characters and omits the first four)
by constantcrying | 2025-05-16 16:55:31+00:00
The question of stability of the algorithm is interesting, the paper does not seem to discuss it though. You are correct that we should expect the algorithms to deliver different results.

>This and others optimizations are trading less multiplication for more additions, but from the little I know, on floating point additions and subtractions are risky precision wise, while multiplications are harmless.

Certainly not true. In general different orders of magnitude are a problem. With multiplication and division these are more serve problems, as they lead to greater changes in magnitude, although even that is a generalization.
by tialaramex | 2025-05-16 16:55:51+00:00
To clarify for anybody else following along (I assume you knew), the type MaybeUninit isn't unsafe (Rust doesn't have unsafe types), only its method named assume_init and related APIs are unsafe.

That's because only this feature introduces the potential for safety problem, which is amusing because it doesn't actually do anything per se, it will often emit zero CPU instructions.

It's unsafe because before we called this function we had a MaybeUninit<T> and, well as it said, maybe it isn't initialized, so nothing will assume it is. But once we assume_init, we've got a T, all the code working with the T, including safe Rust code, is entitled to ignore any scenarios that could arise if it were not, in fact, initialized properly. Despite not in some sense "doing" anything, the unsafe call was critical.
by singularity2001 | 2025-05-16 16:57:12+00:00
that will be an interesting new Bug tracker: anyone in the company will be able to report any bug or add any future request, if the model will be able to solve it automatically perfect otherwise some human might take over. The interesting question then will be what code changes are legal and within the standards of what the company wants. So non-technical code/issue reviewer will become a super important and ubiquitous job.
by throwaway2037 | 2025-05-16 16:57:33+00:00
We might be talking past each other, but this part:

> Retail banks actually don’t ‘pool people’s money and invest it’

In all highly developed nations (G7 or OECD), most commercial banks invest a portion of deposits into government bonds and highly rated corporate bonds. They may also deposit funds with the central bank, usually called "The Window", but the interest rate will be (usually) lower than gov't bonds or corporate bonds. The difference between the interest paid on these deposits and earnings from these investments is called the NIM -- net interest margin. (This margin also includes lending these deposits at a much higher rate of interest than they pay depositors.)

However, the phrase "invest it" makes it sounds like they are gambling the money on speculative investments! There are very strict rules about what securities (classes and ratings) are allowed as investments.
by bmink | 2025-05-16 16:58:01+00:00
> The cynical view of America’s educational system—that it is merely a means by which privileged co-eds can make the right connections, build “social capital,” and get laid—is obviously on full display here. If education isn’t actually about learning anything, and is merely a game for the well-to-do, why not rig that game as quickly, efficiently, and cynically as possible? AI capitalizes on this cynical worldview, exploiting the view-holder and making them stupider while also profiting from them.

Accurate, as far as I can tell
by wallyrabbitbun | 2025-05-16 16:58:40+00:00
Hey Peter,

Currently living in the US, I applied for a green card via marriage (partner is GC holder) in March 2023. I received my AP and EAD over a year ago, but there has been zero movement on the I-485..

What are the options here?

Given the current political climate, I'm not comfortable leaving the US until I have the I-485. Is this fear warranted? Would really like to travel overseas, but don't want to end up getting detained on re-entry..

I understand the above is specific to my case, but perhaps you can answer in a general sense for anyone else who finds themselves in a similar position..
by riffraff | 2025-05-16 16:58:46+00:00
> I'd say developers who aren't web developers trying to do web dev seems to be the cause of this.

Hard disagree. I've seen a ton of decent web developers (i.e. people who can use modern CSS, layouts, and modern web stacks) reinventing buttons and links and forgetting about accessibility.

It's a completely orthogonal thing to the dev background.
by azaazal | 2025-05-16 16:59:40+00:00
No. Anyone can still report and call themselves a journalist or news source. It’s not about shutting people out — it’s about giving the public a visible way to know who’s operating ethically and who isn’t. Credibility is supposed to be earned, not expected. For underfunded or local journalists trying to build trust, this kind of framework could help them stand out—not disappear.

Again, it’s voluntary, not a requirement. It doesn’t brand non-participants as unethical—it simply creates a record of ethical conduct and gives the public a tool to evaluate credibility. And if someone violates those standards, losing that recognition makes them accountable—not to the NEAA, but to the public.
by Groxx | 2025-05-16 16:59:47+00:00
>How much can you actually do in 1 hour that’s 45 minutes long?

Almost exactly as much as one that's 55 (or 60) minutes long but many people are late to.

But yes, "1 hour" is fairly short for any deep topic progress. I vastly prefer classes that are 2 or 3, it gives time to have questions and not be in a blind rush.
by kaycebasques | 2025-05-16 16:59:58+00:00
Effective error messages are one of my platonic ideals about how documentation is supposed to work. The docs shouldn't be shoved off to the side. They should appear just-in-time, when you need them. If you can fix the error within the product (e.g. when Rust tells you exactly how to fix the typo), just do it there. Otherwise link off to the full docs when it's too much content.

The general platonic ideal is "have the product automatically fix the issue" => "provide short documentation within the product if the problem can be explained with just a paragraph or two of content" => "link to a targeted doc that deals with this exact problem if it takes more than a few paragraphs to explain"

A lot of time, my work as a technical writer is advocating to update the product (or updating the product myself) to do the first two steps, rather than just jumping immediately to the last step. Startup people often refer to this as "the perfect product requires 0 documentation." When teams always resort to fixing product issues with docs, your docs start to get huge and complicated. We technical writers often refer to this as "putting docs lipstick on the product pig."
by the_af | 2025-05-16 17:01:38+00:00
> She has also done work on religion,[57] and has argued that Stalin was a god of science, and an incarnation both of the god Thoth and the Christian God.

I took the time to follow the link and read her very short essay on Stalin the God and it's very clearly parody and an attempt at absurdist humor. Russians and Kazakhs can do dry/straightfaced humor as well as the Brits.

Misrepresenting the essay as her honest beliefs is like arguing Monty Python really cannot tell a dead parrot from a live one.
by bluGill | 2025-05-16 17:01:45+00:00
I never said that non-dictators cannot do big projects. I said that dictators tend to do them as well as anyone else. Big projects don't always go well for anyone, you can find plenty of big projects that fail in the US. Dictators can lose interest just as much as anyone else.

The point is dictators fail most often by ignoring things they consider small and not letting someone else take care of it.
by JNRowe | 2025-05-16 17:02:05+00:00
At least once a year for the past couple of decades I'll receive an email from a user that makes me want to modernize bfm¹. However, I've never managed to get an auto-scaling version to work with reasonable performance, which is unbelievably annoying for such a simple tool. You can sort of hit the target for gkrellm-bfm while still depending on GTK2, or for the standalone bubblefishymon wmapplet where you can use a modern GTK² or jump straight to SDL.

Never in a way that doesn't noticeably chew additional CPU though, and definitely not for both use cases. It upsets me each time I reply "no, not happening without patches". Perhaps it is time to release an Electron version or one that just burns a whole CPU core so it isn't lost forever ;)

¹ It used to just be people with crazy setups, now it is basically any screen given their higher DPI.

² As it is right now I don't even have a system that I can use last release on.
by krisoft | 2025-05-16 17:02:08+00:00
> It costs your reputation as a vendor which is permanent.

You say that as if that is some bad thing. As a vendor you want to have a reputation for asking what you are fairly owed. The other option is to have a reputation for being a wet tissue anyone can walk through.

> You don't threaten legal action against companies before calmly advising them of the situation.

These are not incompatible with each other. Of course you calmly advise the company of the situation. 100%. You tell them that their 15 day trial period lapsed at <date> and that they continue using the <product> without proper license in place. You tell them where they can reach out to find the right licence for their needs. And you tell them that you intend to pursue them for damages if they remain out of compliance. All very calmly and professionally. Nobody is angry with anyone here. There is no bad blood. It is just a contracting oopsie!
Ask HN: Who is working on a SOC2 Security Audit Agent while you sleep"?
by shaburn | 2025-05-16 17:02:13+00:00
I want to buy it, I don't want to build it. It should audit my code with preset parameters when I am offline. It should flag issues and propose changes with tradeoffs in SOC and code(not make them). I want to pay on a token basis.
by lamp_book | 2025-05-16 17:02:41+00:00
Having a hard time finding it now, but someone put together a benchmark with two categories - naive and optimized - comparing implementations across languages with a workload vaguely resembling a real-world business application server with a mix of long and short lived objects. Java was at the top of the naive benchmark by a landslide and behind C and C++ (edit: and probably Rust) for the optimized ranking, but with a gap before the rest of the field.

With the JVM you basically outsource all the work you need to do in C/C++ to optimize memory management and a typical developer is going to have a hell of a time beating it for non-trivial, heterogenous workloads. The main disadvantage (at least as I understand) is the memory overhead that Java objects incur which prevent it from being fully optimized the way you can with C/C++.
by javier2 | 2025-05-16 17:02:43+00:00
> Java syntax isn't perfect, but it is consistent, and predictable

This is something I greatly value with the recent changes to Java. They found a great way to include sealed classes, switch expression, project Loom, records that feels at home in the existing Java syntax.

The tooling with heap dump analyzers, thread dump analyzers, GC analyzers is also top notch.
by proberts | 2025-05-16 17:02:46+00:00
Yes. I still think that those with student or work visas or green cards should travel internationally. It's just a question of being smart and carrying the right documents. The right documents will vary depending on the status so I can't give a list but I'd recommend having a brief consultation with an attorney. Many like myself won't charge for a 15-minute consultation, which is all that this should take.
by blixt | 2025-05-16 17:03:57+00:00
They mentioned "microVM" in the live stream. Notably there's no browser or internet access. It makes sense, running specialized Firecracker/Unikraft/etc microkernels is way faster and cheaper so you can scale it up. But there will be a big technical scalability difficulty jump from this to the "agents with their own computers". ChatGPT Operator already does have a browser, so they definitely can do this, but I imagine the demand is orders of magnitudes different.

There must be room for a Modal/Cloudflare/etc infrastructure company that focuses only on providing full-fledged computer environments specifically for AI with forking/snapshotting (pause/resume), screen access, human-in-the-loop support, and so forth, and it would be very lucrative. We have browser-use, etc, but they don't (yet) capture the whole flow.
by Kikawala | 2025-05-16 17:04:04+00:00
They did reach out.

So we reached out.

They vaguely apologized and claimed they’d switch to using the source version instead.

Which — fine. Not ideal, but technically within the rules. What stung more was their complete disinterest in any kind of professional support — even when we simply brought up the idea of a volume discount (!). They shut it down immediately. Apparently, sending satellites into orbit is easier than entertaining the thought of paying for open source support.

And did they actually switch to the source?

Of course not.

They just kept going — now using personal Outlook addresses and incrementing the email handles like they were running a script.
Show HN: Chatting To AI, customizable toolkit for chatting with an AI assistant
by Fra_sol | 2025-05-16 17:04:19+00:00
Chatting To AI is a free and sophisticated toolkit designed to serve as your AI conversational partner. You can either create a personalized AI assistant or utilize the standard version for your interactions.

This tool is optimized for seamless use on both desktop and mobile devices, and you can access it without the need for an account.

Personalize your AI experience by adjusting factors such as language, tone, and response length, as well as selecting from various available assistant types.
by Towaway69 | 2025-05-16 17:04:46+00:00
Not to my knowledge, the closest thing to a DSL for Node-RED is its flows.json format for storing flow configurations.

It's a very simple array-of-object format with the graph/flow definitions defined by node ids and wires. It is fairly simple to create a minimalist interpretor for that format.

Also NodeRED is a very stable piece of software that has been around for over ten years. Yet I can take a flows.json file from today and have it run on the first releases of Node-RED, i.e., the format is backward compatible yet easily extendable.

> event driven sequencing/action problems.

Flow based programming[1] isn't strictly event driven, it's implemented that way in NodeJS because NodeJS does not have the concept of messages, only events.

Erlang has message passing between independent processes and therefore, IMHO, better suited to FBP.

[1] https://jpaulm.github.io/fbp/index.html
by ecshafer | 2025-05-16 17:04:48+00:00
You are trying to frame this as pure “logic” but if you had read a single book on ethics or even philosophy you would see that’s not the case. You are basically asking “but why is good better than bad?” Acting as if you are logical but failing basic premises of logic or ethics. Any ethical framework is going to have axioms, typicslly these axioms are things that are inarguable for any person, namely its better to live than die, or to reduce suffering, etc. using basically any ethics system and pure logic you will quickly reach a conclusion that a baby living is better than one dying.

This really has nothing to do with the inevitability of death. Death is inevitable, however there is a difference between a child dying and an elderly person dying. A child has potential, they have not lived their lives. A child has not actually lived the full basic human experience, they havent had a crush, or fallen in love or married or had children or had any great successes or failures or close friends or anything, these things everyone does. An older person has, they are not a pure soul who hasnt experienced life. After 70 years you can be sad for the individual passing but happy that they have experienced life. This is why when a parent has a child they arent sad that their child will die in 80 years, but are devasted if they die at a week. The child never even had a chance. When you actually have a child, its an emotional and fulfilling experience, and to have that torn out so early is damaging.

From an empathy and emotional pov these things are so extemely basic and foundational aspects of being a human, a 10 year old from any culture on earth can undersrand this with no difficulty. And any person with even a passing familiarty with logic, ethics or philosophy will dismiss you as being earnest. Which is why people are assuming you are a troll.
by proberts | 2025-05-16 17:05:43+00:00
This really depends on the reason for the 221(g) and the applicant's country of citizenship or birth. Unfortunately, for those from certain countries, such as Iran and Russia, it has not been uncommon for such applications to go into a black hole and take 1-2 years. For those not from such countries, the process is relatively quick, from a couple of week to a couple of months.
by maxerickson | 2025-05-16 17:05:56+00:00
Sure, but modern cars are in fact much, much better at this.

New cars aren't necessarily a lot better than cars built 20 years ago, but compared to anything built before EFI they are vastly more reliable. And then you could also talk about radial tires if you are comparing to the 1940s.

While you are fiddling with your carb and fixing 2 flat tires, I'm cruising along with a misfiring cylinder and a nail causing a slow leak.
by jonhohle | 2025-05-16 17:05:56+00:00
Back in the early 2000s, I was taught in C, C++, Motorola 68HC11, and MIPs assembly. I can clearly understand how Java works, even if I don’t know its GC is implemented. I can understand how programs were written from the 80s to currently. Had I learned programming in Java or, worse, Python, I doubt I’d have the same understanding. It’s relatively easy to go from low level to high level languages if you’re willing to give up control. My experience is that the opposite is less true. It’s certainly possible, but not as straightforward as understanding some foundational ideas.