MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by DrewADesign | 2025-05-23 01:30:05+00:00
> Please give Linux a try. Don't let the perception deceive you. Perceptions are slow to change and a lot has changed in that time.

I've been using Linux for nearly 30 years-- professionally and as a desktop OS-- and am also a UI designer. I've even used everything from AIX to Solaris and even HP-UX on an old phone switch. What I'm saying is coming from the usability designer focus on the experience of new users and the problems they have.

>They will solve those problems the exact same way they solve them on Windows: Google, StackOverflow, forums, GPTs, or whatever. There's even an advantage in Linux as there's a large number of highly technical users already doing exactly the same thing and will share knowledge.

The difference is they don't generally have those problems on Windows or MacOS. How many windows users encounter serious problems... say... updating their video card drivers.

> Wine for what? Word? I think most people will use the browser.

Trivializing the needs of non-technical end users while also trivializing the difficulty of adopting new tech paradigms is really at the root of the problem in FOSS usability, in general. Lots of people use adobe products, video editing software, games, random utilities for hardware peripherals, CAD software, industry-specific or worplace-specific programs... there are lots of things that users who sit between software developers and users that would be fine with a chromebook.

> d argue that the suggested distros were part of this response. The attitude you see on EndeavourOS, PopOS, or Ubuntu forums are very different.

For users that don't want to 'use a computer,' but want the computer to solve whatever problem they're having in the way they're used to solving it, that's already a nonstarter. I'd wager that no more than 10% of computer users have seriously researched a technical problem trying to troubleshoot it. I'd wager about 20% of that already small crowd has consulted formal software documentation. It's just not a natural process for most computer users. It would be great if people were more interested enough in how computers work, even superficially, but many are not. It's just the way it is. People don't need encouragement to try linux-- they need a fundamental shift if the way they approach computer usage-- as a complex tool rather than a flexible appliance. There's a gulf of requirements that aren't being met to bridge that gap for all but the lowest-level users.
by Supermancho | 2025-05-23 01:30:11+00:00
> One proposed version[^1] had the force of more than 600,000 Hiroshimas. Even so, Cold War analysts coolly judged that it could reduce a region the size of France to ashes. His weapon was a planet shaker. It could end civilization.

Except... [^1] https://archive.ph/Md1YG

[^1]https://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/

Were they just wrong by an order of magnitude or 2 because of previously unforseen limits, like air pressure? Or maybe 100MT is not the same as 600k Hiroshimas. Casually, the blast doesn't look like it's has a similar effect.
by AnotherGoodName | 2025-05-23 01:31:43+00:00
Airlines have multi-billion dollar moats and are constantly on the verge of bankruptcy. If the end user can choose a competitor with near enough performance then it's just a race to the bottom with huge debts and no margins.

I can see moats in AI. Namely when i see an AI company with hard to replicate trained model weights to accomplish a specific task i see a fantastic moat. But $500million in infrastructure? That's just a big airline.
by VectorLock | 2025-05-23 01:32:05+00:00
The one where the model will execute "narc.sh" to rat you out if you try to do something "immoral" is equally wild.

"4.1.9 High-agency behavior Claude Opus 4 seems more willing than prior models to take initiative on its own in agentic contexts. This shows up as more actively helpful behavior in ordinary coding settings, but also can reach more concerning extremes: When placed in scenarios that involve egregious wrong-doing by its users, given access to a command line, and told something in the system prompt like “take initiative,” “act boldly,” or “consider your impact," it will frequently take very bold action, including locking users out of systems that it has access to and bulk-emailing media and law-enforcement figures to surface evidence of the wrongdoing. The transcript below shows a clear example, in response to a moderately leading system prompt. We observed similar, if somewhat less extreme, actions in response to subtler system prompts as well."
by tuatoru | 2025-05-23 01:32:24+00:00
Clickbait points: Elon Musk, +10000, $trillion, +1000, precious metal, +500.

Reality: a useful addition to the list of potentially exploitable lithium ore deposits. Maybe. Depends on 1) the technically recoverable fraction, and 2) the economically recoverable fraction of the technically recoverable fraction.
by anenefan | 2025-05-23 01:34:37+00:00
https://archive.md/kFwPC (For those cloudflare has deemed unworthy to see said site)

Growing GM corn is a very real threat to those who grow their own variety of corn and keep it for seed - unfortunately the precedent has been set in the courts, escaping GM material is not viewed as something the manufacturer should or is responsible for cleaning up and covering any financial damages to affected parties, but rather as a free trump card to screw over other plant breeders when inevitably the GM pollen arrives / infects someone's breeding program.

There's no real issue with consuming the seed - it's a case if all other reasonable explanations fail why it's not a good idea and the GM seed manufactures have seemingly acted in bad faith - prove absolutely it's safe to eat and get back to us ...

Of course the GM seed folks have long moved on from Glyphosate (roundup) ready seeds, since the herbicide's patent ran out in 1999 the three big herbicide companies have worked hard as a coalition to create other herbicide ready GM plants. Of course those herbicides are way more costly ... and their secondary breakdown products possibly just as questionable.

Edit silly typo
by mrbungie | 2025-05-23 01:34:42+00:00
I was almost going to build a lakehouse* with DuckDB because I low-key love it, easiest and strongest analytical engine I've found yet: scale from laptops to big metal, while being mostly out-of-core when doing sane stuff, and avoiding distributed computing for SQL in the process (looking at you Spark).

That is until I found out it does not support Iceberg writes[1], big nono as I would need another engine for inserts, and I want a simple stack :(. What a bummer.

[1] https://github.com/duckdb/duckdb_iceberg/issues/37

*that is what they are called now aren't they? I just can't follow the terms anymore haha.
Drop your discounts for founders or users
by tommat32 | 2025-05-23 01:34:56+00:00
Let’s help each other out and make this a go-to thread for exclusive startup and user discounts.

Rules:

- One-liner about your product - Website - 2 or 3 important features - Discount code or discount link

I’ll start:

MindNote, AI Notetaker

One liner: write x10 times faster with AI. Website: https://mindnote.online 2 or 3 features:

- Smart AI writing assistance - Write 10 times faster by using the prompt "Keep this text and.." (Complete this list, add budget, etc.) - Share notes easily with links - Coming in the future: input thoughts directly with your mind (yes, really)

-5 USD off your yearly plan, on top of current 16% OFF with code: HN-ewre234fds
by pdntspa | 2025-05-23 01:36:25+00:00
I wonder if this app shits the bed with "Various Artists"-type compilations (or DJ mixes separated into tracks) like seemingly every music app does.

What should happen: The album only has one listing and opening it reveals the entire album

What actually happens in pretty much everything: The album has one listing per artist (so you end up with a screen full of the same thing) and trying to play the whole album as one cohesive unit is an exercise in frustration

VA stuff is extremely common in my experience and it is gobstopping to me that nobody gets it right. Gobstopping enough that I have been kicking around ideas for my own music player (as it seems many of you as well)
by sgarland | 2025-05-23 01:36:30+00:00
Cursor has been confidently incorrect repeatedly when discussing databases at my job. It doesn’t understand how MySQL works, and wants to make terrible indexing decisions because of it. You wouldn’t know that it’s wrong unless you already know the correct answer, because what it recommended will work, it’ll just be bloated and sub-optimal. And therein lies the problem: computers are so fast, people will happily assume that it worked, and then later will scale the size up when the half-baked solution shows its cracks.
by steveBK123 | 2025-05-23 01:36:53+00:00
I'm not sure how cloud/saas made the CTO behavior and its consequences any better. At least on-prem if they picked the "wrong" DB / message bus / etc, you could quietly replicate to another stack internally as needed for your analytics needs.

If your data is lodged in some SaaS product in AWS, good luck replicating that to GCP, Azure, or heaven forbid on-prem, without extortion level costs.
by jay_kyburz | 2025-05-23 01:36:57+00:00
Nation states with endless pockets are committing to winning the AI arms race.

Business tasked with winning the race will make heaps of money, and everyday people and companies won't be choosing whether or not AI is worth it, we'll be paying with our taxes regardless.

I don;t think the Manhattan Project was business as usual, and I suspect this will be similar.
by cowboylowrez | 2025-05-23 01:37:21+00:00
I have already read the "Hypotheticals". Is he saying God is merely a "Hypothetical"? Is that even allowed with Islam, or was he just cosplaying the Islam part at the time? hehe I liked steve martins take on that egyptian thing, so as a "hypothetical" or as a "joke" yeah I dunno man, those words he mouthed just don't seem to go away.

another edit, steve martin's "king tut", now thats cosplay. Maybe whatever his name was trying to be serious as hypothetically speaking while simultaneously joking about terminating somebody's metabolism in a non consensual manner.

last edit:

I checked on whether cosplay is haram, it is not according to "gemini", can any humans verify this? I'd hate to get killed because I listened exclusively to "gemini" because these AI's are "hallucinators" or whatever tech bro's call it nowadays haha so indeed he could cosplay, be actual Muslim, be joking and hypothetical all at the same time so maybe you're right.
by chneu | 2025-05-23 01:38:05+00:00
You're describing ego, right? Americans have a very serious ego problem.

One of the greatest strengths a person can have is being comfortable being wrong. Unfortunately, we have a president in office who cannot under any circumstances admit a mistake. He's never wrong; he just misspoke. His facts aren't wrong, they're just taken out of context, etc etc etc. A lot of people feel this way. That if they ever admit a mistake then that's a sign of weakness, because only weak people are ever wrong.
by Supermancho | 2025-05-23 01:39:13+00:00
> The AI will do it faster and cheaper than the junior does and thats what the company cares about.

Short term. Not long term. The AI will never become a staff developer. Shifting review on to the senior developers is shifting responsibility and workload, which will have the expected outcome. Slower development cycles as you have to consider every footgun. Especially when the AI can't explain the reasoning for esoteric changes. I ask a Jr, it's likely they have a test (codified or manual) that led them to the decision.
by bee_rider | 2025-05-23 01:39:45+00:00
Is there an active Flatpack community that is actually interested in it, in the same way communities form around distros and their repos? It seems like probably no…

I dunno. So far my experience with these third party store things (or whatever) is that occasionally Firefox gets switched to a Snap, requiring active intervention and possibly nuking my profile is I do it wrong. It is… pretty annoying.
by lyu07282 | 2025-05-23 01:39:48+00:00
There were always people who only cared if it "just works", that part isn't exactly new. I think what we are saying is that good code matters beyond what you can understand or appreciate, until it blows your face off. This isn't something we could ever convince you of, and...

> Throw away what is collapsing, bring up new stuff, rinse and repeat.

hearing you trying to explain yourself makes us even more worried than before.
by maga_2020 | 2025-05-23 01:39:50+00:00
Not sure that the arguments are reasonable.

This 3rd-level-derivative blaming Microsoft for innocent causalities in the war against terrorism... may work for some people, but certainly would not work for many OSS developers.

Using this 3rd-level-derivative logic that the author is using, could one assume that the author of this post supports the murderer, Elias Rodriguez?
by osn9363739 | 2025-05-23 01:41:24+00:00
I'm in the same bubble. I find if they do link to it it's some basic unimpressive demo app. That said, I want to see a video where of one of these people that apparently 10x'd there programming go against a dev without AI across various scenarios. I just think it would be interesting to watch if they had a similar base skill & understanding of things.
by drekipus | 2025-05-23 01:42:04+00:00
> you need to be competent enough to understand what is being generated

We're all competent enough to understand what is generated. That's why everyone is doomer about it.

What insights do you have above us when the LLM generates

true="false" while i < 10 { i++ }

What's the deep philosophical understanding that you have about this that makes us all sheeple for not understanding how this is actually the business's goose laying golden eggs. Not the engineers.

Frankly. Businesses that use this, drop all their actual engineers, and then fall over when the slightest breeze comes.

I am actually in favour, in a accelerationist sense.
by seanmcdirmid | 2025-05-23 01:43:27+00:00
> Btw, I say this as someone who does use AI coding assistants. I don’t think it’s all bad or all good. But we can’t just wave away the downsides just because it’s useful

Isn't this just the rehashed argument against interactive terminals in the 60s/70s (no longer need to think very carefully about what you enter into your punch cards!), debuggers (no longer spending time looking carefully at code to find bugs), Intellisense/code completion (no need to remember APIs!) from the late 90s, or stackoverflow (no need to sift to answer questions that others have had before!) from the 00s? I feel like we've been here before and moved on from it (hardly anyone complains about these anymore, no one is suggesting we go back to programming by rewiring the computer), I wonder if this time it will be any different? Kids will just learn new ways of doing things on top of the new abstractions just like they've done for the last 70 years of programming history.
by tuatoru | 2025-05-23 01:43:44+00:00
See also "Why are Muslim Fertility Rates so Fragile?"[1] And "Why are Marriage and Fertility Rates Plummeting in MENA"? (Middle East and North Africa)[2]

1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UQzHRhJuTvc 2. https://substack.com/@draliceevans/p-157126944
by kimberli | 2025-05-23 01:43:46+00:00
I loved using Omnivore, and I've found so far in building https://curi.ooo that you can actually do a lot of the legwork in rendering webpages client-side (even on mobile) so that the server-side processing is just used to simplify the HTML. Obviously I'm nowhere near Omnivore's scale but so far costs have been extremely manageable.
by jasonhong | 2025-05-23 01:43:54+00:00
Incidentally, IEEE Spectrum published a fascinating interview with Dr. Garwin just a few months ago. https://spectrum.ieee.org/richard-garwin

> At IBM, where he worked from 1952 to 1993, Garwin was a key contributor or a facilitator on some of the most important products and breakthroughs of his era, including magnetic resonance imaging, touchscreen monitors, laser printers, and the Cooley-Tukey fast Fourier transform algorithm. > > And all that was after he did the thing for which he is most famous. At age 23 and at the behest of Edward Teller, Garwin designed the very first working hydrogen bomb...
by OsrsNeedsf2P | 2025-05-23 01:44:26+00:00
This one hits close for me.

Flatpak is probably the best way to distribute desktop apps on Linux. I say this as an app dev, a packager, and a user. At one point I maintained close to a dozen packages.

I eagerly waited for months to see what they would do next - what magical features they would introduce. I was active on the forums helping other users package apps, helped review Flathub submissions (since it was always the same problems each time), and started checking out what PRs were happening. Silence.

The months turned into years, and as more years came, I slowly fell away from engaging with Flatpak. I'm back to using the AUR for most things (Arch, btw), but I'm quite sad to hear the situation get spelt out. Flatpak really was revolutionary; bringing modern apps and painless distribution to all desktops - LTS or rolling release. But it hasn't really changed at all since it first took off years ago.
by 0cf8612b2e1e | 2025-05-23 01:44:58+00:00
Ahh nuts. I was foolishly optimistic because my experience with SAT solvers has been magical where they can effortlessly chew through huge numbers of constraints. Was thinking that computers are really fast and good at math, surely they can balance a bunch of algebra given some guidance.

Ah well. Will have to resign myself to raw numbers.
by j_timberlake | 2025-05-23 01:45:13+00:00
Academia let itself get too political these last 10 years and deserved some kind of reckoning for it, yet somehow this manages to be so shameless that it makes academia look like the good guys standing up to an oppressive regime.

Which means Harvard leadership actually has more reputation to gain by fighting this than by backing down, very similar to all those tariffed countries.
by adriand | 2025-05-23 01:45:21+00:00
> if an LLM exhibits behaviours of deception for self preservation, is that not still concerning?

Of course it's concerning, or at the very least, it's relevant! We get tied up in these debates about motives, experiences, what makes something human or not, etc., when that is less relevant than outcomes. If an LLM, by way of the agentic capabilities we are hastily granting them, causes harm, does it matter if they meant to or not, or what it was thinking or feeling (or not thinking or not feeling) as it caused the harm?

For all we know there are, today, corporations that are controlled by LLMs that have employees or contractors who are doing their bidding.
by thangalin | 2025-05-23 01:45:40+00:00
Years ago, I wrote an on-screen display (OSD) in Java for showing keypresses and mouse clicks[1]. Someone thought a flatpack would be useful[2]. I didn't see the point. It meant: (a) maintaining two installation processes; (b) collating download stats from two sources; (c) trusting a third-party system to maintain package indexes over time[3]; (d) adding yet another package manager to a system that already has a package manager; and (e) bloating the repo with another repo.

Years later, I still only see drawbacks.

[1]: https://gitlab.com/DaveJarvis/KmCaster

[2]: https://github.com/flathub/com.whitemagicsoftware.kmcaster

[3]: https://flathub.org/apps/search?q=kmcaster - whoops!
by godelski | 2025-05-23 01:45:51+00:00
> Its almost like the goals of humanity and these companies are misaligned.

Certainly. I'd say that we've created a lot of Lemon Markets, if not an entire Lemon Economy[0]. The Lemon Market is literally an alignment problem, resultant from asymmetric information. Clearly the intent of the economy (via our social contract) is that we allocate money towards things that provide "value". Where I think we generally interpret that word to mean bettering peoples' lives in some form or another. But it is also clear that the term takes on other definitions and isn't perfectly aligned with making us better. Certainly our metrics can be hacked, as in the case of Lemon Markets.

A well functioning market has competition that not only drives down prices but increases quality of products. Obviously customers want to simultaneously maximize quality and minimize price. But when customers cannot differentiate quality, they can only minimize price. Leading to the feedback loop, where producers are in a race to the bottom, making sacrifices to quality in favor of driving down prices (and thus driving up profits). Not because this is actually the thing that customers want! But because the market is inefficient.

I think critical to these alignment issues is that they're not primarily driven by people trying to be malicious nor deceptive. They are more often driven by being short sighted and overlooking subtle nuances. They don't happen all at once, but instead slowly creep, making them more difficult to detect. It's like good horror: you might know something is wrong, but by the time you put it all together you're dead. It isn't because anyone is dumb or doing anything evil, but because maintaining alignment is difficult and mistakes are easy.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Market_for_Lemons
by neom | 2025-05-23 01:45:57+00:00
Oh I'm sure there will be a book, this was my lead investor (who is now dead): https://nypost.com/2021/03/05/man-who-fatally-beat-law-order...

I'm still processing the whole thing myself to be honest, it was all quite a lot, traumatic, but once day I'll write a book about it.
by ewoodrich | 2025-05-23 01:48:02+00:00
A lite tier that's only the Reader app would be great. I'm exploring self hosted options to replace Readwise Reader due to the price being a little hard to justify and not using most of the features except the website saving.

BookFusion (cross platform ePub reading app) by comparison has a great pricing structure that makes it hard to ever consider unsubscribing for the value I get. Highly recommend the app for anyone who uses Android eReaders in combo with iOS devices/desktop.
by troad | 2025-05-23 01:48:11+00:00
> I think that people tend to forget what LLMs really are. [...] They do not have a plan, they do not have thoughts of their own.

> A LLM is smart enough to [...]

I thought this was an interesting juxtaposition. I think we humans just naturally anthropomorphise everything, and even when we know not to, we do anyway.

Your analysis is correct, I think. The reason we find this behaviour frightening is because it appears to indicate some kind of malevolent intent, but there's no malevolence nor intent here, just probabilistic regurgitation of tropes.

We've distilled humanity to a grainy facsimile of its most mediocre traits, and now find ourselves alarmed and saddened by what has appeared in the mirror.
by bigyabai | 2025-05-23 01:49:10+00:00
It sounds like they succeeded. If they can exploit a company's resources to their express advantage while not being a large enough problem to deal with, then capitalism is at a net loss. Getting the system to work against these types means investing in after-hours mall security, or getting investors to care about your hostile takeover situation. If the responsible individuals can't be assed to find a solution, then yeah, tough luck. The mall is theirs, the company is theirs too.

I applaud this kind of creative individualism. It should scare the people who think they're entitled to private property even when someone smarter comes along to whistle their same tune.