MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by trod1234 | 2025-05-16 18:29:58+00:00
Hi Peter, thanks for doing these AMA's.

There has been so much in the news recently, both on immigration, birthright citizenship, potential suspension of habeas corpus, lack of due process, the effective setup of stateless regions (El Salvador), and other aspects that all boil down to a question that seems to be on a number of people's minds and centered on a single question.

While this is more of a generic question, it'd be nice to hear from an actual attorney that's practiced law.

When we speak of a 'rule of law', and its benefits to society, its generally understood from Civic's classes we all had to take, that there are components that must be met, which are not met under a 'rule by law'; the latter which is more generally understood to be common to totalitarian regimes where they do what they want with the tacit approval of kangaroo courts, usually with some sort of reference to Lavrentia Beria's infamous quote, "Show me the person I'll show you the crime".

While there is some debate on the specific components of a 'rule of law', they almost all require: Independent Objective Judiciary, Equality under the Law, Access to Justice, Fundamental Rights, and Transparency (if I'm remembering my civic's correctly).

The primary purpose and benefit to society of such being non-violent conflict resolution.

In many respects, in the past few decades, Judicial activism seems to have broken the first, Access to bring an action now requires access to a lawyer which in many cases is a retainer of an amount that exceeds the average person's yearly salary (unspent), Transparency seems to have largely vanished behind paywalls, bad laws, and contradictory readings.

The last remaining two are equality under the law, and fundamental rights which are directly tied to those other properties, and have been degraded by corporations in their legal actions and lobbying as a whole over time. The remaining components seem in dire jeopardy with stateless regions, which the court doesn't seem capable of addressing (given the other failures that have occurred over the past 20 years that remain broken).

I hear all the time that we have a country that has a rule of law, but that isn't what the average person is seeing when they look at these things objectively.

Just so you know, I've reached out to numerous attorney's for various contract issues over the years, the most recent related to professional certification where the company clearly failed in their obligations, but they also apparently have received broad indemnification via their government contracts. I mention this, so the perception is not just based on a trusted news initiatives media alone, but also backed by my own conversations seeking services that came from my state BARs referral service.

Is there something wrong with my understanding here? Do we actually still live in a rule of law? If my understanding is right, it doesn't seem like we do anymore.
by exe34 | 2025-05-16 18:30:15+00:00
> After I pointed that out, it didn't update all usages

I find it's more useful if you start with a fresh chat and use the knowledge you have gained: "Use package foo>=1.2 with the FooBar directive" is more useful than "no, I told you to stop using that!"

It's like repeatedly telling you to stop thinking about a pink elephant.
by proberts | 2025-05-16 18:30:34+00:00
Yes, there is a way to keep a green card while living outside the U.S. although at some point, if the green card holder truly has no intent of returning to the U.S., he or she will lose the green card. The protection is known as a reentry permit and the form used to apply for it is Form I-131. It's an easy application.
by bitwize | 2025-05-16 18:30:47+00:00
WordPerfect was the go-to in the legal profession. Among other advantages, its "Reveal Codes" feature was an enormous help in making sure documents were formatted correctly, which was essential in law, as courts often have specific formatting requirements for filed documents.

Microsoft Word not only lacked Reveal Codes, it mocked it in an Easter egg in Word for Windows 2.0. Tells you what you need to know about Word, basically.
by jqpabc123 | 2025-05-16 18:30:56+00:00
...not calling it what it is.

This has been pointed out repeatedly --- by the press and during the last presidental election.

Who did voters choose to believe? The guy who lied and is still lying about the fact that tariffs are a tax paid by US consumers, not foreign producers.

Who will be the one's hardest hit by this new consumption tax? Many of those who voted for it. Stupid is as stupid does.
by int_19h | 2025-05-16 18:30:57+00:00
Normally I would agree, but in case of Ollama specifically, even setting aside the license, they've been publicly called out on downplaying the fact that most of their functionality is provided by llama.cpp before many times, but haven't changed their messaging at all, or even acknowledged the call-outs. And, well, this has been an open issue in their public repo for a while now, accumulating comments and upvotes, so surely someone have seen it before. So in this case specifically I'm leaning towards malicious non-compliance, solely because they really want to make the impression that there's more to Ollama than there really is.
by WaxProlix | 2025-05-16 18:31:29+00:00
Appreciate the AMA. I'm curious about options for transitioning employees from the temporary (and now at-risk) Uniting for Ukraine parole status to something more stable and long term.

Is H1B lottery just going to be a Ukrainian's best bet? A lot of the advice and documentation seems contradictory, as 'parole' seems in some ways to be more a lack of status than a status itself. Leave the country and apply for some other type of more permanent work visa?
by lurking_swe | 2025-05-16 18:31:40+00:00
ahh, the classic “i shall please my investors next quarter while ignoring reality, so i can disappoint my shareholders in 10 years”. lol.

As you say, happens all the time. Also doesn’t make sense because so few people are buying individual stocks anyway. Goal should be to consistently outperform over the long term. Wall street tends to be very myopic.

Thinking long term is a hard concept for the bean counters at these tech companies i guess…
by t-kalinowski | 2025-05-16 18:31:51+00:00
Posit offers something similar to Microsoft’s CRAN Time Machine, but it works not only for CRAN, but also for Bioconductor and PyPI. You can add a date to the Public Posit Package Manager URL to access a snapshot of all packages from that day.

For example: https://packagemanager.posit.co/cran/2025-03-02

You can browse available snapshot dates here: https://packagemanager.posit.co/client/#/repos/cran/setup?sn...

This also works for PyPI and Python packages: https://packagemanager.posit.co/pypi/2025-03-04/simple
by SoftTalker | 2025-05-16 18:31:56+00:00
If this is representative of your database:

CREATE TABLE tasks ( id BIGINT GENERATED ALWAYS AS IDENTITY, created_at TIMESTAMPTZ DEFAULT CURRENT_TIMESTAMP, args JSONB, PRIMARY KEY (id) );

Then Postgres (or any relational DB) is the wrong choice.

Is this how developers view a database in 2025? A place to store a JSON blob?
by belorn | 2025-05-16 18:32:02+00:00
For any electronic device it is advisable to take a complete backup of the unit, store an encrypted version somewhere online, and then restore the device to factory reset. Do not log in to any account that you wouldn't feel perfectly fine giving up in an inspection.

They can already hijack any phone number, so the only vulnerability you are giving up by crossing the border is the files, call log/sms, and accounts you bring with you.
by lnenad | 2025-05-16 18:32:19+00:00
> Sure, but why? They already paid the price in time/effort of becoming experienced, why throw it all away?

You spend 1/10 amount of time doing something, you have 9/10 of that time to yourself.

> A CRUD? Maybe. With bugs and corner cases and scalability problems. A robust system in other conditions? Nope.

Now you're just inventing stuff. "scalability problems" for a CRUD app. You obviously haven't used it. If you know how to prompt the AI it's very good at building basic stuff, and more advanced stuff with a few back and forth messages.

> It's been pretty much described like that. I'm using the standard definition. I'm not arguing against LLM-assisted coding, which is a different thing. The "vibe" of vibe coding is the key criticism.

By whom? Wikipedia says

> Vibe coding (or vibecoding) is an approach to producing software by depending on artificial intelligence (AI), where a person describes a problem in a few sentences as a prompt to a large language model (LLM) tuned for coding. The LLM generates software based on the description, shifting the programmer's role from manual coding to guiding, testing, and refining the AI-generated source code.[1][2][3] Vibe coding is claimed by its advocates to allow even amateur programmers to produce software without the extensive training and skills required for software engineering.[4] The term was introduced by Andrej Karpathy in February 2025[5][2][4][1] and listed in the Merriam-Webster Dictionary the following month as a "slang & trending" noun.[6]

Emphasis on "shifting the programmer's role from manual coding to guiding, testing, and refining the AI-generated source code" which means you don't blindly dump code into the world.
by turtlesdown11 | 2025-05-16 18:32:23+00:00
The article is a massive oversimplification of the importance of the weather gage, to the point it's not accurate at all.

A ship with the weather gage can choose when and how to engage.

> This was technically inferior since the lower gun ports could often be underwater (see image) and because the downwind (leeward) position made it easier to flee if needed.

This is reductive to the point of error. The ports of the lower gun deck MAY be unable to be fired in very heavy seas, but that doesn't affect frigates, or the upper deck of a ship of the line.

Additionally, if a leeward ship attempts to flee from the windward ship, the leeward ship would risk exposing its stern to the windward ship's raking fire. The stern of a ship is the least armored, least armed and also contains the essential steering elements of a ship. A stern raking fire could pierce the hull and fly the entire length of the ship, causing tremendous damage, in addition to potentially crippling a ship's ability to steer.

Finally, the encouragement to engage with the enemy has an advantage the article omits - massive career incentives - it's a chance for British Navy lieutenants and commanders to earn promotion. Many a commander was made post after a successful engagement with the enemy and many a lieutenant was promoted to commander after a successful battle. Beyond glory, a lieutenants would make roughly half what a commander made, and a post captain could rely on additional pay based on seniority and ship. Since promotion to admiral was almost solely due to seniority on the post captains list, naval officers felt urgency to win promotion and to get on the list as soon as possible. An admiral took a share of any prizes won by vessels under his command and was the true way to gain wealth in the Navy.

Finally, Byng's case is an extreme outlier and relying on it to make arguments is dicey at best.
by YZF | 2025-05-16 18:32:59+00:00
TN is not a visa and all you need to get this status is a job offer. There's really no work of any specialized nature but some companies do get legal advice to help streamline the process and get better outcomes like reducing the probability that the person would be denied.

(EDIT: it is sometimes referred to a visa and sometimes as a status but at any rate as someone who had TN status with two different US startups there was very little process around it)
by qwezxcrty | 2025-05-16 18:33:09+00:00
For a foreigner living outside of the US but interested in immigrating to the US in the longer term. Is it possible file the I-140, and while the application is being processed (or waiting for the priority date) apply for another nonimmigrant visa (B, F or J) for short term visit? Is it likely the application will be denied because of the "immigration intent" after filing the I-140?
by _bin_ | 2025-05-16 18:33:46+00:00
I am a major hater of many (most?) crypto applications, which should tell you something since the idea of a decentralized currency outside state control is one that deeply appeals to my principles.

But this is one of the better applications I've seen. Running centralized infra for this specific case is extremely difficult and, generally speaking, it makes sense to give people the option to express to willingness to pay for what's essentially a priority request.

This isn't pay-for-access, it's "I'll offer some reward for you to get the paper now, after which it is still accessible to everyone."

My big quibble is with the implementation: there really doesn't need to be a sci-hub memecoin. Monero is purpose-built for this sort of thing. Use Monero (or zcash, I suppose.) Easy litmus test: if a DNM opened up that only supported transactions in its own "memecoin", how many people would take it seriously? Zero.
by proberts | 2025-05-16 18:34:27+00:00
The concern is that USCIS is cancelling students F-1 status without the student being made aware of this because of some issue (prior arrests or convictions, political statements, etc.) but before you travel internationally, as an F-1 student, you will need to get a new I-20 endorsed for travel and when the school goes through the process of issuing a new I-20, it should see whether there is an issue and if there is no issue, you should be fine to travel.
by abletonlive | 2025-05-16 18:35:05+00:00
So...you don't think you can give LLMs more knowledge ?? You're the one operating in detached reality. The reality is that a ton of engineers are finding LLMs useful, such as the author.

Maybe consider if you don't find it useful you're working on problems that it's not good at, or even more likely, you just suck at using the tools.

Anybody that finds value out of LLMs has a hard time understanding how one would conclude they are useless and you can't "give it instructions because that's that hard part" but it's actually really easy to understand. The folks that think this are just bad at it. We aren't living in some detached reality. The reality is that some people are just better than others
by HappMacDonald | 2025-05-16 18:35:31+00:00
Counter-counter-point A: If I work with a human Junior and they make an error or I familiarize them with any quirk of our workflow, and I correct them, they will recall that correction moving forward. An AI assistant either will not remember 5 minutes later (in a different prompt on a related project) and repeat the mistake, or I'll have to take the extra time to code some reminder into the system prompt for every project moving forward.

Advancements in general AI knowledge over time will not correlate to improvements in remembering any matters as colloquial as this.

Counter-counter-point B: AI absolutely needs catering to their experience. Prompter must always learn how to phrase things so that the AI will understand them, adjust things when they get stuck in loops by removing confusing elements from the prompt, etc.
Show HN: An MCP that fetches code context from all your repos
by msukkarieh | 2025-05-16 18:35:32+00:00
Hey HN!

One of the biggest limitations of tools like Cursor is that they only have context over the project you have open.

We built this MCP to allow you to fetch code context from all of your repos. It uses Sourcebot under the hood, an open source code search tool that supports indexing thousands of repos from multiple platforms.

The MCP server leverages Sourcebot's index to rapidly fetch relevant code snippets and inject it into your agents context. Some use cases this unlocks include:

- Finding all references of an API across your companies repos to allow the agent to provide accurate usage examples - Finding existing libraries in your companies codebase for performing a task, so that you don't duplicate logic - Quickly finding where symbols implemented by separate repos are defined

If you have any questions or run into issues please let me know!
by fpoling | 2025-05-16 18:35:46+00:00
Chernobyl was a direct consequence of a dictatorship in the first place. A reactor with positive reactivity would never be designed unless ordered from top. And handling the consequences in the first hours Soviet style made things inherently worse.

As for other counter examples I do not claim that democracy is inherently better. Rather that for big projects at least it is not worse than a dictatorship.
Ask HN: Facing unemployment – what now?
by octo888 | 2025-05-16 18:36:03+00:00
Hey everyone, I could really use some advice.

I’ll likely be out of a job soon — whether I’m fired or I quit first. Health issues, silent breakdowns, being on the spectrum, poor social skills have caused me to damage my work relationships beyond repair.

So, I'm planning my next steps.

Some context:

- I’m 40.

- I struggle with networking, so I have no professional connections.

- My savings can last about two year, and a part-time job could stretch that.

- I haven’t interviewed in years and get extremely anxious in interviews.

- I'm a tech generalist

- I'm quite disillusioned with tech + corporate world, and a bit burnt out. This AI hype, Agile, having to fake excitement about the latest shiny new thing, KPIs etc.

People say I'm pretty good with 2 non-tech things. There are some relatively easy (but not free) qualifications/courses I could do in those areas (I don't want to dox myself here with specifics). I'm open to being self employed.

I also would like to use this time to focus on my health (I have things I need to escalate with my doctor and I need to work on my body), see more of my family, and work on my mental health. I'd also be interested in using my skills for something other than making a rich person richer - something local, for a charity perhaps.

...or am I dreaming and this an indulgence I can't afford?

If you have advice, ideas, personal experiences, etc, I’d really appreciate it.
by Arch-TK | 2025-05-16 18:36:04+00:00
Firstly, thanks for the link and information on more of the roots of this kind of programming, I couldn't find this when I looked.

Regarding NodeRED. I don't dispute that it's stable, but my experience actually running any nodejs based software is that it's all heavily designed for running out of a container and a massive PITA to maintain otherwise. I already have enough hassle running zigbee2mqtt on my FreeBSD home server which wouldn't work in a linux jail because I couldn't figure out how to expose the zigbee dongle to it.

Secondly, the reason I wanted to run one of these was not because I wanted to use it to automate my house, but instead because I wanted to understand how it works so I could replicate it in my own weird way.
by orwin | 2025-05-16 18:36:05+00:00
This must have been a misunderstanding on what i wrote, but i'm not a native speaker, also this could be cultural difference. I will try to expand on my first sentence since that where you disagree (?).

In my country, a prosecutor direct the police to find proofs of alleged crimes. In that case, multiple one including war crime, geneva convention on prisonner of war breachs, including but not limited to rape. If the prosecutor cannot do that, nothing can be judged. The faster the prosecutor do their job, the faster those thing can be judged. It is in in the interest of everybody involved (with the exception of guilty parties) that the prosecution can work unimpeded, so that judgement can be made faster. If not enough proof were found despite the prosecutor work, then the judges will be able to rule a dismissal. The identity of the prosecutor is a negligeable factor.

This is not a left-wing viewpoint, this is a right of law viewpoint (and it is _extremely_ damageable that some people conflate the two).

And with all due respect, "support the centrists"? Who do you call "centrist" here? The extreme centrists? The "moderate" bourgeoisie? The military new aristocracy?

But you're right in a sense, because what happen when those centrist are loosing their power base and they have to choose between loosing power or catering to the violent is now history.
by amatic | 2025-05-16 18:36:42+00:00
> This is not new ground. See Cybernetics

Control theory and cybernetics were supposed to transform psychology in a much more dramatic and all-encompassing way, as argued by W.T. Powers, for example[1]. In modern psychology, the concept of negative feedback control is treated like a metaphore, a vague connection between machines and living things (with the possible exception of the field of motor control) . If psychology would take the concept seriously, then most research methods in the field would need to be changed. Less null-hypothesis testing, more experiments applying disturbances to selected variables to see if they are controlled by a participant or not. That is the meaning I'm getting from the call to revolution.

[1] https://www.iapct.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/Powers1978....
by phillipcarter | 2025-05-16 18:37:15+00:00
It does. Defaults matter, and the defaults for these tools are agent mode with code changes meant to be accepted, rather than forcing you to read the code and manually apply those changes.

Note: I'm not saying that's a bad thing! It's significantly more convenient for many use cases, so I can see why it's a default. But the incentive being created is to accept first, analyze later.
by invalidname | 2025-05-16 18:37:18+00:00
That specific prosecutor is corrupt and there's evidence of his prejudice against Israel. His filing a complaint with the support of South Africa (funded by Iran) gives legitimacy to the Israeli right wings claims of anti-Israeli bias. They aren't wrong.

Israel is a democracy, it is trying to get the government out through the only way possible: protest. There will be an election next year. But until then there's very little you can do. Israel is not a member of the ICC and didn't sign the treaty. That makes sense since the UN is inherently biased against Israel by a huge margin.

Imagine if the ICC was trying to arrest Bush or Trump. Both terrible leaders who arguably committed war crimes. Hell, literally every American president in the past century with the exception of Carter would probably fit that bill. Probably most European countries too.

The current situation is difficult, but right now protestors are busy framing it as "Israels fault" which is both false and harmful to the Palestinians. Hamas is still holding hostages which is giving legitimacy to the war. This is giving them an incentive to keep holding these hostages as only Israel bares the blame. For the Israeli right wing this is also good. They want the global isolation which will push Israelis against the wall. They want Israelis to feel like "it's either us or them".
by _bin_ | 2025-05-16 18:37:55+00:00
I believe cursor now supports parallel tasks, no? I haven't done much with it personally but I have buddies who have.

If you want one idiot's perspective, please hyper-focus on model quality. The barrier right now is not tooling, it's the fact that models are not good enough for a large amount of work. More importantly, they're still closer to interns than junior devs: you must give them a ton of guidance, constant feedback, and a very stern eye for them to do even pretty simple tasks.

I'd like to see something with an o1-preview/pro level of quality that isn't insanely expensive, particularly since a lot of programming isn't about syntax (which most SotA modls have down pat) but about understanding the underlying concepts, an area in which they remain weak.

Atp I really don't care if the tooling sucks. Just give me really, really good mdoels that don't cost a kidney.