MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by jt2190 | 2025-05-25 12:57:04+00:00
This is interesting:

> “It’s more fun to write code than to read code,” said Simon Willison, an A.I. fan who is a longtime programmer and blogger, channeling the objections of other programmers. “If you’re told you have to do a code review, it’s never a fun part of the job. When you’re working with these tools, it’s most of the job.”

> This shift from writing to reading code can make engineers feel as if they are bystanders in their own jobs. The Amazon engineers said that managers have encouraged them to use A.I. to help write one-page memos proposing a solution to a software problem and that the artificial intelligence can now generate a rough draft from scattered thoughts.

> They also use A.I. to test the software features they build, a tedious job that nonetheless has forced them to think deeply about their coding.
by danvk | 2025-05-25 12:57:49+00:00
There are simpler ways to calculate a bound that don’t involve trees. You can read about the sum and max bounds in the WIP paper: https://github.com/danvk/hybrid-boggle/blob/main/paper

There are some examples in these old posts:

- https://www.danvk.org/wp/2009-08-08/breaking-3x3-boggle/inde...

- https://www.danvk.org/wp/2009-08-11/a-few-more-boggle-exampl...

These bounds are pretty effective at finding the global max for 3x3 Boggle, but 4x4 is a lot bigger.

There is a mapping from Boggle optimization to ILP, but I’ve seen no evidence that this is an efficient way to solve it. I’ve been told that branch and cut is usually better than branch and bound, but I don’t know whether it’s applicable to Boggle.
by RetroTechie | 2025-05-25 12:57:51+00:00
Hehe.. remembered an optimum wavelength ~255nm (and indeed - Wikipedia says 253.7nm. Close enough :).

> sunlight would erase a chip in weeks

Been there, done that. When I wasn't in a hurry, I'd stick some EPROMs in a foam & put 'em under a window. Usually took a bit under 3 weeks. But no point trying in the midst of winter; probably works but could take months.

Loved those windowed ceramic packages. Especially microcontroller parts like (iirc) 87C52. Lovely patterns to have a look at with magnifier.
by roxolotl | 2025-05-25 12:57:52+00:00
Thiel actively attributes his entrepreneurial success to Girard’s ideas. I don’t disagree it would be nice to have less explicitly political topics but the reality is that the ideas of those who historically are the discussion of HN, Silicon Valley, and tech in general are ascendant in politics. It doesn’t strike me as off topic to critically evaluate those ideas.
by anonymars | 2025-05-25 12:57:59+00:00
This is my favorite review comment on that game: https://www.gamespot.com/big-rigs-over-the-road-racing/user-... e.g.

> This comment on society is driven home (or in fact, not driven at all) even further by the computer AI. It doesn't even leave the starting gate. Much like the dreams and aspirations we harbour as youth, reving our engines on a starting line where the crack of the pistol never comes. Meanwhile, those of privledge cruise to easy victory, unconcerned over such mundane things as rent or grocery bills or collideable landscapes.
by FirmwareBurner | 2025-05-25 12:58:39+00:00
Welcome to the club.

Have coders really psyopped themselves into thinking their job is somehow that much more special than the rest simply because it paid better due to temporarily market conditions?

I thought that was a joke where everyone was in on it, not that they were serious. I assumed it was clear we're all replaceable cogs in a machine, baring a few exceptions of brilliant and innovation people.
by lapcat | 2025-05-25 13:01:06+00:00
How can this be avoided when the tech companies themselves, as well as their founders, are engaging in political agitprop? Of course Peter Thiel has been very active in politics for a long time. In fact the whole "PayPal mafia" is now. Elon Musk was the largest campaign contributor in the 2024 elections and has become a political appointee of sorts in the US government. Not to mention his acquisition of Twitter. Jeff Bezos acquired The Washington Post and has undermined its editorial independence. There are many other examples I could list.

The days of obscure geeks are long gone. The "geeks" have inherited the Earth. Tech has eaten the world. With great power comes great responsibility... or irresponsibility, as the case may be.
by muppet9066 | 2025-05-25 13:01:52+00:00
Anyone carrying a phone can always be recording audio discretely and home assistant devices exist in private homes. These have already become commonly accepted risks to privacy in the same situations you've described. I think we as a society end up just trusting others to respect our privacy. That said, the glasses have advertised features like memory that aren't all that useful unless always on. If the glasses push to be always on, then there's definitely a risk that it could invade the privacy of others without the wearer's intent.
by avianlyric | 2025-05-25 13:01:53+00:00
I think you’re being a little over critical of LLMs. They certainly have their issues, and most assuredly people often use them inappropriately. But it rather intellectually lazy to declare that because many people use LLMs inappropriately, that means they can’t offer real value.

I’ve personally found them extremely useful to test and experiment new ideas. Having an LLM throw together a PoC which would have taken me an hour to create, in less than 5mins, is a huge time saver. Makes it possible to iterate through many more ideas and test my understanding of systems far more efficiently than doing the same by hand.
by andrewstuart | 2025-05-25 13:02:00+00:00
“OK Andrew, we’re looking for someone for this senior developer and they’ve got to be really really great at copying and pasting between Claude and an IDE.

Now we’re going to set up a whiteboard test here and you can demonstrate to us your best copying and pasting.”

“errrr, do I do any actual coding in the job?”

“Well, yes, inasmuch as anyone does these days. It’s mostly copying and pasting though, but hey that’s what coding IS now, right?”

“OK are you ready for your coding test, here it is: what key is COPY? And what key is PASTE?”
by larrled | 2025-05-25 13:02:03+00:00
If I am drunk, or have brain damage, my ideas will be bad and so is my writing.

It’s not about what makes writing good. It’s about what makes it bad. People don’t agree on good writing.

I think Paul is talking more about not bad writing. Otherwise, he’d be talking about poetry, which also asserts truth and style as inseparable. People disagree about poetry. Most people agree Paul is a good (not bad) writer, not a poet.
by firejake308 | 2025-05-25 13:02:10+00:00
You're right that the dice are literally intended to represent a hidden variable. The difference between the frequentost and the Bayesian is that the frequentist only accounts for the hidden variable, whereas the Bayesian also accounts for the pre-test probability of the sun exploding. Since the probability of the sun exploding is 1 in a bazillion, multiplying that by 35 still gives you a very very low post-test probability that the sun has gone nova because 35 in a bazillion is still pretty unlikely
by intended | 2025-05-25 13:02:20+00:00
This is not true, anymore, and we have the data to show it. The structrural issues with the information and news market in America (and most western democracies) has created a systemic issue, which has changed what makes a "good" or "efficient" candidate.

One team has to put out someone like Obama, and the other team can put up someone like Trump who can promise the moon is made of green cheese, and be lauded as a truth teller.

Working on facts, having them verified, building policy is not a competitive advantage, versus being able to pick a narrative and create facts that your voters want to hear.
by Barrin92 | 2025-05-25 13:02:24+00:00
Long but very good piece, although I was surprised to not see Tolkien mentioned even once, who Thiel has given essentially the same treatment.

Tolkien like Girard was explicitly a Christian writer and if there's one message in his books it was of course: "do not take the ring". Thiel somehow turned this around into "VC fund the forging of the ring and use it against our perceived enemies".

Girard's argument was that the logical endpoint of mimetic violence and technology is apocalypse, and the only solation is love of your enemy. Likewise Tolkien points out that it is the very logic of power that destroys. Yet Thiel somehow took Tolkien's work, slapped his names on weapons and tools of surveillance. It's honestly kind of bizarre the extent to which Thiel openly twists the people he claims to admire.
by ath3nd | 2025-05-25 13:02:43+00:00
The place known for:

- High degree of warehouse injuries (https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/16/business/economy/amazon-w...)

- Making its delivery drivers piss in bottles (https://www.forbes.com/sites/katherinehamilton/2023/05/24/de...)

- Illegally busting unions (https://www.thenation.com/article/activism/amazon-union-bust...)

- Forcing people back into their offices on five day RTO (https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-5-day-rto-mandate-pol...)

Is now making its white-collar employees' life resemble ...warehouse work? Unthinkable!
by braiamp | 2025-05-25 13:03:18+00:00
Sad seeing people not recognizing that this is actually the kind of topics that HN is not shy about. The site is for "gratifies one's intellectual curiosity", so critiquing someone for using the knowledge that come from that pursue, to weaponize it must be discussed. As the other commenter points out, Girard's tesis is used for political convenience. Also, if anyone saw Girad's work as apolitical, I don't think the understanding of the work was acquired.
by pbiggar | 2025-05-25 13:04:26+00:00
About 8 or 9 years ago, I talked to a friend who started their first software engineering job. They talked about their job as taking tickets from the JIRA board, completing the change, and putting the tickets back. They were expected to complete 2-3 tickets per day. They didn't enjoy the job, needless to say.

I found this ultra-depressing, and far from what coding was for me - a creative role with great creativity and autonomy. Coding was always solving problems, and never felt like some sort of assembly line. But in a lot of companies, this is how it was constructed, with PMs setting up sprints and points, etc.

Similarly, I spoke to a doctor about how much they loved being able to work remotely at their role - with 2-3 days a week where they just responded to email and saw patients over telehealth. It felt very "ticket" focused and not at all the high status doctor role I imagined.

I suspect that both those roles will be lost to AI. If your role is taking a ticket that says "the box should be green, not red", and nothing more, that's the sort of thing that AI is very capable of.
by wvh | 2025-05-25 13:04:35+00:00
Perhaps. I've never gotten into the effort of re-coding everything, though I have converted some to MP3 to take on runs with me before memory cards exceeded the size of the data. I'm happy we're getting at a point not having to care anymore about disk space – that is, those of us not locked into a walled garden forcing expensive upgrades for more storage.
by mattmanser | 2025-05-25 13:04:43+00:00
Does anyone else feel it's odd he uses Fallout 4 as an example of level design?

I personally found the fallout 4 vaults really confusing and annoying and got lost easily, compared to Fallout 3/NV. Or even games like Deus Ex.

Fallout 4 felt like a terrible example of dungeon design. They were either linear and boring, or a weird layout where everything looked the same.

I'm usually pretty good at mapping game layouts in my head too, picking up FPS maps, etc. quickly.

Aside from that, I also feel like he misses that irl with a chaotic design we usually have a lot of signs. A lot! But people don't really use them in games as it's easy for players to miss thinking it's just decorative, and you've only got a certain amount of screen real estate when looking at a monitor, nor can you glance like you can irl.
by itishappy | 2025-05-25 13:05:14+00:00
I noticed the same thing, and while the article comments on it, I suspect the comments may be inaccurate:

> Because the contact lenses have limited ability to capture fine details (due to their close proximity to the retina, which causes the converted light particles to scatter), the team also developed a wearable glass system using the same nanoparticle technology, which enabled participants to perceive higher-resolution infrared information.

No, putting the contact closer to the retina would improve imaging, because it would have less distance to scatter. Glasses will not fix this. A potential solution would be implanting these nanoparticles directly above the retina, but that's a significantly more invasive option than what's being described here.
by timr | 2025-05-25 13:05:23+00:00
I was just thinking about this the other day (after spending an extended session talking to an LLM about bugs in its code), and I realized that when I was just starting out, I enjoyed writing code, but now the fun part is actually fixing bugs.

Maybe I'm weird, but chasing down bugs is like solving a puzzle. Writing green-field code is maybe a little bit enjoyable, but especially in areas I know well, it's mostly boring now. I'd rather do just about anything than write another iteration of a web form or connect some javascript widget to some other javascript widget in the framework flavor of the week. To some extent, then, working with LLMs has restored some of the fun of coding because it takes care of the tedious part, and I get to solve the interesting problems.
by usrnm | 2025-05-25 13:05:33+00:00
I said it before and I'll say it again: it's high time we got the taste of our own medicine. Getting people out of jobs has been the main selling point of our industry since its first days, this is what we've collectively been doing for decades. Do I want my job to be automated right in front of my eyes? Not really. Do I see some poetic justice in the whole thing? Absolutely.
by picardo | 2025-05-25 13:06:17+00:00
Sure, AI makes writing code easy, but code review remains a bottleneck. The individual coders are finding ways to use AI to improve their workflows, but as long as organizational culture remains stuck in the old ways of reviewing code, the overall throughput will not improve significantly. That's been my personal experience at Amazon. I get significant pushback when I submit a CR more than a few pages long. You need to have high degrees of trust within a team for this to work at scale, and that's very rarely the case in my group.
by rvz | 2025-05-25 13:06:57+00:00
Well if the majority of developers are mostly using web-based technologies such as JS, TS, HTML and CSS, and all you're doing is modifying the site and shuffling around elements + a11y addition, etc that is something an AI can do in seconds.

Seems indeed to be like Warehouse work, which is why Web developers will be the first to be affected by AI.

Doesn't matter if you are "senior" or "staff" in Web development. AI is already senior staff level in that.
by guilamu | 2025-05-25 13:07:50+00:00
No, this is just plain wrong. The hitbox is the same one on all skins. On payed skin like peely for example, the skin is bigger and will be more visible, but the hitbox stay the same. This is pay to loose if anything.

https://www.esports.net/news/fortnite/do-all-fortnite-skins-...
by timkam | 2025-05-25 13:07:52+00:00
Is it really that LLM-based tools make developers so much more productive or rather that organizations have found out they can do with less -- and less privileged -- developers? What I don't really see, especially not big tech-internally, are stories of teams that have become amazingly more productive. For now it feels we get some minor productivity improvements that probably do not off-set the invest and are barely enough to keep the narrative alive.
by roxolotl | 2025-05-25 13:08:06+00:00
> Indeed, all the critical discussions I have seen regarding Thiel’s reverence for Girard share a single pattern; they seek an opportunity for a negative judgment of Girard—believing this will help them cut Peter Thiel down to size and further their efforts to obliterate the reactionary right.

This article is compelling to me as someone who’s come to Girard’s ideas through criticism of Thiel. Girard’s thought has always seemed reasonable as a descriptive theory. But it’s been presented through Thiel and others as a prescriptive means for manipulation. It’s interesting to read that Girard identified the weaknesses in his own theory and, according to this author, would consider the prescriptive take an abuse of his theories.
by Traves-Theberge | 2025-05-25 13:08:31+00:00
Developers often have a vague idea of what they want from an AI model, What they don’t have is a well-structured prompt with the right context.

That’s where Nudge comes in.

Nudge helps you:

Capture logs, files, diagnostics, and notes directly from your project

Build dynamic prompts using a customizable Handlebars template engine

Preview your prompt, check token usage, and send it to any major LLM (OpenAI, Anthropic, Gemini, Grok)

Keep a history of past prompts and AI responses for reference

All from within your VS Code workflow.

If you’re serious about AI-assisted development, give Nudge a try.

Built by developers, for developers.

Download from the VS Code Marketplace and Open VSX:

https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=Traves-T... https://open-vsx.org/extension/Traves-Theberge/nudgeai
by allthenopes25 | 2025-05-25 13:09:20+00:00
> [0] One of the first significant deployments in Britain occurred in 1960, when temporary CCTV cameras were used to monitor the crowds at Trafalgar Square during a visit by the Thai royal family – https://www.farsight.co.uk/about-us/history/

Not sure I will take at face value the idea that the Thai royal family were shocked and surprised at overpolicing of potential protestors and that the Thai embassy advance teams had nothing to do with that.

Call me cynical.
by amluto | 2025-05-25 13:09:25+00:00
Steel hardness and yield strength are very strongly correlated: https://wpfiles.mines.edu/wp-content/uploads/aspprc/Research...

I’m fairly confident that what’s going on here is that no one builds buildings out of high-hardness stainless steel. On the other hand, you can buy excellent construction screws made from 400 series stainless steel if you’re willing to pay for them —- the main problem is that they’re even more expensive than hot-dip-galvanized or fancy coated non-stainless equivalents.
by roenxi | 2025-05-25 13:10:43+00:00
The metaphor implies that iPhones aren't routinely stolen. But they are, iPhone theft is actually pretty common.

Although the crypto might be relevant being attacked is something that any asset owner has to worry about (even for assets like houses, oddly enough - I suspect big mansions would be something of a thief draw). The attacks are unintended consequences of wealth as opposed to any specific property of crypto - having an equal amount of cash on hand isn't safe either.
by sureglymop | 2025-05-25 13:10:59+00:00
What is there to be a "ninja" about when it comes to DI? As the article explains in the beginning it just means that you initialize and pass something into whatever depends on it instead of initializing it inside that thing.

It's too complicated of a term for what it is because we generally don't say we inject arguments into a function when we call a function.

But maybe you mean patterns building on that, e.g. repository/adapter patterns.
by mehulashah | 2025-05-25 13:11:40+00:00
The scary part of this is that the bad guys are doing the same thing. They’re looking for zero day exploits, and their ability to find them just got better. More importantly, it’s now almost automated. While the arms race will always continue, I wonder if this change of speed hurts the good guys more than the bad guys. There are many of these, and they take time to fix.
by codetrotter | 2025-05-25 13:13:25+00:00
https://github.com/chowderman/chowderman.github.io looks to be the original repo for https://github.com/h53d/xp-paint then.

And the other is a clone of that repo which was reuploaded manually instead of using the “fork” UI buttons of GitHub. Which is fine and all. But better to link the original as the repo anyway.
by christianrocha | 2025-05-25 13:15:19+00:00
Hello from Charm! I've been wanting someone to build this with Bubble Tea for SO long. I'm not on a Linux machine at the moment, but so excited to give this a try when I am.

Anyway, it's nice to hear that the Elm architecture is working for you. If you have any questions about Bubble Tea feel free to jump in Discord: https://charm.sh/chat
by throw7 | 2025-05-25 13:15:55+00:00
I don't disagree per se with any of the OP's points, but back in the day I know why I started to dislike newer ones... the console era became "tier 1" and PC became "tier 2".

Something as simple as the ux being designed for gamepads made for a second tier gameplay experience on pc. You see this even to this day where bungie's marathon has auto-aim assist for a supposed "boomer shooter".

Also, and maybe more importantly, the dev shops then were smaller and were more self-critical about what is actually a good game? It was the early days of the video game industry exploring the medium before the ridiculously bloated budgets of today's AAAA? studios.

Lastly, I am very critical of today's world-building in games. We don't have storytellers any more, but something called "narrative designers". Those empty heads are hired to tell me what to think. It's absolutely soul crushing.

That said, there are still gems out there. I hesitate to mention them because ultimately art is subjective; but one that gave me an ice pick to the head (in a good way) is Death Stranding.
by RetroTechie | 2025-05-25 13:16:03+00:00
> Most basic digital logic, processors, and power parts shouldn’t have meaningful issues with light.

Depends... if you have an input that isn't driven externally (tri-state or nc), and there's just a weak pull-up or -down on the pin, you could have issues. An unexpected reset here, a bitflip there...

Also there's high-impedance ADC inputs on some parts. Wouldn't take much to send readings waayy out of spec.

Note that affected signal might be inside the IC (not going to an IO pin). More likely to be driven though (low-impedance).
by neom | 2025-05-25 13:16:04+00:00
I read this as an age old problem... It's an imperative to recognize and protect the innocent. However, who the victim is depends on the lens. One man's freedom fighter is another mans terrorist and all that. This is the problem with victimhood. Not to dismiss the very real brutal victimization of targeted groups. Simply that: it's much better to say we're all victims of the infliction of life, have revere for all fellow humans, something I beseech our species to come into alignment with.
by chuckadams | 2025-05-25 13:16:06+00:00
The ironic thing is, if Builder.ai were a younger company, they might have been a success through the unorthodox expedient of actually using AI for real. Maybe they were forward-looking -- we had "machine learning" then that was making some inroads -- but when you use foresight to make more plausible what is still a fraud today, it's ... well, still a fraud. Someone will build Theranos's mythical diagnostic robot someday too, doesn't mean it isn't fiction now.
by pauldix | 2025-05-25 13:17:51+00:00
My experience so far with Opus 4 is that it's very good. Based on a few days of using it for real work, I think it's better than Sonnet 3.5 or 3.7, which had been my daily drivers prior to Gemini 2.5 Pro switching me over just 3 weeks ago. It has solved some things that eluded Gemini 2.5 Pro.

Right now I'm swapping between Gemini and Opus depending on the task. Gemini's 1M token context window is really unbeatable.

But the quality of what Opus 4 produces is really good.

edit: forgot to mention that this is all for Rust based work on InfluxDB 3, a fairly large and complex codebase. YMMV