MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by atoav | 2025-05-05 05:34:38+00:00
As a life long photographer one of the most crucial skills to have in photography that are mostly independent from the tech is the knowledge and wisdom when to pull out the camera and when not.

A great photographer can pull out the camera at one anticipated moment, already have the moment and the picture in their heads, since they know their gear and then do it. This is of course the polar opposite of just shooting everything and hoping something will stick which is the approach many people seem to take today. Sometimes I wonder whether they even take the time to wade through the bullshit pictures after..

That being said, as a photographer I like smartphone cameras, since the best camera is the one you have around. But in most situations photographing without asking is disrespectful anyways, so it is reserved for the special occasion and then I try to crystalize the moment into few good photos instead of ruining it with running around and covering everything.
by lmm | 2025-05-05 05:35:27+00:00
> Were people before LLMs stupid for not asking smarter classmate/parent/paid contractor to solve the homework for them?

In American universities where your GPA from your in-class assessments forms part of your final grade? Yes, absolutely.

Where I came from you do your learning in class and your assessment in a small, short set of exams (and perhaps one graded essay) at the end of each year. That seems far more conducive to learning things without having to juggle two competing objectives the whole time.
by throwaway48476 | 2025-05-05 05:35:33+00:00
It is counter to the facts in the thread which are systemic and documented. Your subjective feelings and perception do not necessarily correspond to reality as documented or experienced by others. For the individual their perception is their reality so there is no advantage in arguing against it. If your belief system makes you feel better that is all well and good, but it doesn't give you the right to impose it on others. Your shahada is not shared by everyone else.
by razemio | 2025-05-05 05:36:36+00:00
Valve surprised me 1-3 years ago. I had a compromised password because my steam account was created in my youth and has not been used since.

Someone figured it out and used my account to cheat in counter strike. Valve banned the account one week (!!) later. Now the account can not be used to play their competitive games anymore. Needlessly to say it was a lifetime ban.

To this day I keep wondering how they can fk this up so bad. Why I am even allowed to play CS without 2fa enabled and without Email confirmation for the first login? They also failed to block the login from Thailand despite it's creation in Germany. This could have been so easily prevented.

Not sure if they fixed this yet. Otherwise you have your answer, why there so many more cheaters. It is not just the kernel extension. The most basics are not in place.
by gnabgib | 2025-05-05 05:37:39+00:00
This seems to be your site @op.. your CSS needs attention. On a narrower screen (ie. portrait) the text is enormous, and worse, zooming out shrinks the quantity of words (increases the font-size).. which is the surely the opposite of expected? It's basically unusable.

Your CSS seems to assume all portrait screens (whether 80" or 3") deserve the same treatment.
by crossroadsguy | 2025-05-05 05:37:49+00:00
A non-STEM friend got to study/research at really great places across India, Germany, UK, USA, and China for her UG, MA, MPhil, PhD, and postdoc (including lots of field/on ground work). She said that she noted one common theme among her seniors (guides, mentors, colleagues, professors etc) -> that some bad, shit, low quality, whatever published paper is >>>>>>>>>>> high quality work/research but not published or slow to publish (and often for good reason). And she added these were not run of the mill profs who needed those to survive professionally or academically but the likes whose names/reputation often matter more than their departments by many times and don’t need survival at all anymore.
by simianwords | 2025-05-05 05:38:19+00:00
I was a bit skeptical at first but I think this is a good idea. Although I'm not convinced with the usage of max_depth parameter. In real life you rarely know what type your dependencies are if they are loaded at run time. This is kind of why we explicitly mock our dependencies.

On a side note: I have wondered whether LLM's are particularly good with functional languages. Imagine if your code entirely consisted of just pure functions and no side effects. You pass all parameters required and do not use static methods/variables and no OOP concepts like inheritance. I imagine every program can be converted in such a way, the tradeoff being human readability.
by kyrylo | 2025-05-05 05:38:32+00:00
Hey Chris! If you or your team have any questions about Telebugs, feel free to shoot me an email at kyrylo@telebugs.com. I can set up a private demo just for your team.

Re: your ONCE-style project. That’s exciting! I wasn’t sure from your phrasing whether you’ve already started or are just about to. What does (or will) your project do?

As for licensing: I do have the ability to revoke a license, which means you wouldn’t get future updates. But of course, I can’t take back anything you’ve already downloaded (the code stays yours).
by crq-yml | 2025-05-05 05:38:48+00:00
It's attempting to reconcile the stigmergic ideas of the Binding Chaos books(which, though not called out as such, are very present in the article) with the "Dark Enlightenment", and therefore it must labor to curse the epistemic aspects of swarms and characterize them negatively with terms like "society of average".

It may actually be intended as such, however, I think the effect is more like the esotericism of Plato's Republic - the text says one thing, but a careful reader is likely to come to opposite conclusions.
by junto | 2025-05-05 05:39:11+00:00
Back in the 90’s I remember similar sorts of kickback from traditional media about the internet and from academia about students not using the library on campuses anymore.

Libraries are still in every campus, often with internet access.

Traditional media have transitioned to become online content media farms. The NYT Crossword puzzle is now online. Millions of people do Wordle every day online.

This is just kickback. Every paradigm shift needs kickback in order to let the dust settle and for society to readjust and find equilibrium again.
by cwalv | 2025-05-05 05:39:26+00:00
> I did a comp science degree, so I can't speak for the liberal arts.

By 'liberal arts' I meant the common 4 year, non-vocational education. My major was CS too, but well over half of the time was spent on other subjects.

> I get that you cant imagine this playing out. To those interested only in the degree, it's unimaginable

I can easily imagine what you describe playing out. I just wouldn't call it 'sucking the marrow' (unless you were equally avid in all your classes, which time likely would not permit).

But as you allude to in your last point, the system isn't really designed for that. It's nice when it does effectively support the few who have developed the interest, and have extra time to devote to it, as it did for you.

I'd rather see systems that were designed for it though.
by jonathanlydall | 2025-05-05 05:40:13+00:00
If you’re stuck with dynamically typed languages, then tests like this can make a lot of sense.

On statically typed languages this happens for free at compile time.

I’ve often heard proponents of dynamically typed languages say how all the typing and boiler plate required by statically typed languages feels like such a waste of time, and on a small enough system maybe they are right.

But on any significant sized code bases, they pay dividends over and over by saving you from having to make tests like this.

They also allow trivial refactoring that people using dynamically typed languages wouldn’t even consider due to the risk being so high.

So keep this all in mind when you next choose your language for a new project.
by genewitch | 2025-05-05 05:40:42+00:00
Modafinil aka provigil? As opposed to taking an amphetamine? I can never find modafinil, I've wanted it forever because I like staying up 48 hours a few times a year. Coffee only gets me to 32 hours, miserably.

I find that stuff like methadone is really quite strong, and I don't see how it isn't addictive. I figure it's to keep addicts alive while they get treatment instead of them getting a hot shot somewhere and ending up in a grave.
by pluto_modadic | 2025-05-05 05:41:44+00:00
yes, but a machine gun is faster than a musket. these uses of AI are force multipliers for diarrhea levels of bullshit.

I think there are two takes:

- investors should know that consumers will eventually find their products distasteful for the lackluster quality - users can pay a little more for products that never have, and never will, use AI.

it's moreso that... the displacement is very... on the nose this time. but... jevons paradox withstanding, I think when you replace human calculators with computers what you end up with is wanting to crunch /even more numbers/. It never slows down. The labor only cheapens...
by solaire_oa | 2025-05-05 05:43:00+00:00
Agreed, the messiness of the original text has character and humanity that is stripped from the summarized text. The first text is an original thought, exchanged in a dialogue, imperfectly.

Elsewhere in this comment section, it's discussed about the importance of having original thought, which the summarized text specifically isn't, and has leeched away.

The parent comment has actually made the case against the summarized text being "better" (if we're measuring anything that isn't word count).
Ask HN: Use C with Classes for Embedded?
by Surac | 2025-05-05 05:43:04+00:00
Hello. I am writing code for embedded systems. Most cpu are ARM or SoftCpu from FPGA vendors. Up to now I use C11. All the CPU are supported by gcc, thank god. I used to write c++ before C++ 11. The good old time. I now think more and more often to switch to C++ on embedded. No exceptions no RTTI no STL or Boost. Just C with Classes for the luxury of C++. What do you think? Is it worth the hazel?
by 1659447091 | 2025-05-05 05:43:52+00:00
> They are the first to notice how many people around them are taking pictures

True. I notice this a lot in museums, at historical sites, at the summit on mountain hikes, and indoor concerts. And no, I don't want to enjoy a concert through the iPads of the people in front of me and holding them up with no regard to the people behind them either

> worrying how themselves would look if they did the same, sometimes wanting deep down to do the same but held back by their own perceived judgement of others potentially turning on them.

...yea, lost me there. Going places because of an interest in the museums content or a locations outdoor experience and having other people around these same points of interest but facing you instead of the {thing} is highly noticeable, and from my lens, strange(as in difficult for me to relate) that the {thing}'s appeal appears to be only as a backdrop to the selfies. The ones that walk up, take the many selfies and move on to the next POI/selfie-spot. I am sure many people enjoy {thing} and then take a quick single selfie and move on to enjoy next {thing}, but I never make note because they didn't spend the entire moment standing in front of {thing} facing others and taking a roll of films worth of slightly different snapshots of themselves.

Have you considered that maybe your "live in the moment" crowd, is living in the moment by noticing others around them and making that observation is not in itself a judgment of anything. Unlike the iPad concert broadcasting crowd or the selfie-enthusiast/collector that runs up to {thing} and leans against the information plaques while having no awareness of the people standing near by reading it.
by mklepaczewski | 2025-05-05 05:44:58+00:00
> Your comment could use a better tone, but I do agree that, especially with the difficulties that people are having finding a job these days, there has been elevated interest in ADHD and thus there are more attempts to prey on people with genuine issues

When you say “prey,” what kinds of products or services do you have in mind? I’ve seen some pretty dubious offerings, but I believe most creators genuinely want to help fellow ADHDers. Whether those solutions continue to work after the initial novelty wears off is another question.
by Disposal8433 | 2025-05-05 05:46:40+00:00
I have a small experience with embedded systems but I once helped a team of hardware engineers switch from a "assembly-like code with loops and state machines" to C++17/20 on a very barebone platform and everyone was happy with the improvements in code quality and tools. IIRC we even used relatively advanced objects like `std::optional`. No need to shun the STL as it supposedly compiles to small code most of the time.
by lmm | 2025-05-05 05:47:30+00:00
> In such a world, someone could write the next Harry Potter and it will be lost in a sea of one million mediocre works that roughly similar. Hidden in plain sight forever. There would no point in reading it, because it is probably the same slop I could get by writing a one paragraph prompt. It would be too expensive to discover otherwise.

This has already been the case for decades. There are probably brilliant works sitting out there on AO3 or whatnot. But you'll never find them because it's not worth wading through the junk. AI merely accelerates what was already happening.
by zokier | 2025-05-05 05:47:50+00:00
Intels X86S proposal[1] gives perspective on this. Both in how there would be reasons to get rid of legacy, and how yet it still got shot down pretty quickly[2]. It's unfortunate that I don't think we ever got more explanation on it's termination, where did the opposition come from

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36013257

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42468664
by ziotom78 | 2025-05-05 05:48:59+00:00
Point two is critical. I have found that the best way for me is to avoid using copy-and-paste. Instead, I put the browser on the right corner of the screen and my text editor on the left, then transcribe the text word by word by typing it using the keyboard. In this way, my natural laziness is less likely to accept words, expressions, and sentences that are perhaps okay-ish but not 100% following my taste.
by tomhow | 2025-05-05 05:49:30+00:00
The main issue is the (sometimes) hard signup wall. I've been a moderator on HN for longer than 404media has existed, and I know from experience that this changes from time to time or article to article. Other paywalled sites that appear on HN (WSJ, NYT etc) have a porous paywall; you can (almost) always get around it by using an archive site like Archive.today.

If it's a good article (contains significant new information and can be a topic of curious conversation) and a paywall workaround works for that article, we'll happily allow it.
by elric | 2025-05-05 05:50:24+00:00
Was put under for minor surgery using propofol some 20 years ago. Doc started injecting the milky white goo into my IV, without so mucy as a hello, there was a clock in the room which seemed to slow down, I couldn't breathe or move or cry out and was sure I was dying.

Then I woke up in a recovery room, with zero awareness of anything that happened in between.

0/10, not an experience I'd recommend.
by Balgair | 2025-05-05 05:51:40+00:00
I think we have to hold off a bit on the whole thing here.

Look, we have no idea what the feedback is like that this grad student gives, what the class sizes are like, what the cadence is, what the grade percentages are, etc. All we know is that Clayton Ramsey is a grad student at Rice in the robotics department and that he wrote a hot take here.

For me, the most important thing is if this grader is bothering to really grade at all. I think we've all had a harried grad student just dash off a few red lines on the week one HW about a week before the final exam. That's not a 2 way street, and if the feedback isn't as in-depth as he wants the work to be, well, he shouldn't be surprised. He can't be expecting students to put in the time unilaterally. But, we don't know any of that really.

Personally, I think that before the decade is out, we're not going to be talking about this at all. Because the students will be adept enough at using the LLMs to make it look like their own writing anyways. This is a problem that experience will solve for them.

And also, I think that the days of the massive lectures and essays are pretty much cooked. That 'cheap' model of education can't survive this LLM revolution. We obviously have to change what the heck higher education is trying to do.

My take is that we're going to go to smaller class sizes like those at St. John's or Oxbridge. Under 10 people, you have to have done the reading or look like a fool, all with a PhD in the subject as a guide/teacher. Large classes weren't cutting it for decades (ask any Frat about their test banks), and now the veil is just ripped off.
by otabdeveloper4 | 2025-05-05 05:52:18+00:00
You're confusing the agent and the LLM.

An LLM doesn't "use" anything. Your agent does that. The agent is the program that prompts the LLM and reads the response. (The agent typically runs locally on your device, the LLM is typically on a server somewhere and accessed through an API.)

For the agent to parse an LLM's reply properly you'd ideally want the LLM to give a response that adheres to a standard format. Hence grammars.

I'm guessing your confusion stems from the fact that you've only ever used LLM's in a chat box on a website. This is OpenAI's business model, but not how LLM's will be used when the technology eventually matures.
by motorest | 2025-05-05 05:52:46+00:00
> But on any significant sized code bases, they pay dividends over and over by saving you from having to make tests like this.

I firmly believe that the group of people who laud dynamically typed languages as efficient time-savers, that help shed drudge work involving typing, is tightly correlated with the group of people who fail to establish any form of quality assurance or testing, often using the same arguments to justify their motivation.
by rocqua | 2025-05-05 05:53:39+00:00
Is the author forgetting a baby in the bathwater he is throwing out? Especially on coding. He points out that vibe coding is bad, and then concluding that any program written through the use of an AI is bad.

For example if you already have a theory of your code, and you want to make some stuff that is verbose but trivial. It is just more efficient to explain the theory to an LLM and extract the code. I do like the idea of storing the underlying prompt in a comment.

Same for writing. If you truly copy paste output, it's obviously bad. But if you workshop a paragraph 5 or 6 times that can really get you unstuck.

Even the euler angles example. That output would be a good starting point for an investigation.
by motorest | 2025-05-05 05:53:48+00:00
> Did the author do any analysis of the effectiveness of their tool on something beyond multiplication? Did they look to see if it caught any bugs in any codebases? What's the false positive rate? False negative?

I would also add the concern on whether the tests are actually deterministic.

The premise is also dubious, as docstring comments typically hold only very high-level descriptions of the implementation and often aren't even maintained. Writing a specification of what a function is expected to do is what writing tests is all about, and with LLMs these are a terse prompt away.
by mcv | 2025-05-05 05:54:35+00:00
I don't know much about package managers, but instead of demanding every app uses the same version of every library, or including all libraries in every app, wouldn't it make more sense to allow different versions of libraries to exist next to each other, and every app simply picks the more up to date version that it supports?

I think that's how npm does it. Not that npm doesn't have its own dependency hell, but that's because different dependencies within the same application can end up requiring different versions of the same sub-dependency. But that's a problem only for developers.
by necovek | 2025-05-05 05:54:48+00:00
In a sense, it still comes down to supply and demand — if applicants, upon graduating, all requested to be reimbursed for, say, 25% of their tuition up front and to the university they graduated from, we'd end up with reduced salaries compared to just distributing those 25% to the new employee over a number a years.

But how do you get all students to agree with this in principle when someone is in more rush to start earning an income than others?

However, employers would then look to only hire from universities that do good teaching, so maybe it's a win-win?
by pjmlp | 2025-05-05 05:54:54+00:00
That is how many professionals are training in many European countries, and they still want a diploma to go with it.

In many countries, regardless of how learning it was achieved, you still need a paper to prove that you actually did it.

And in countries like Germany, better keep all those job evaluations close at heart because they get asked for as part of many job interview processes, additionally have them reviewed by lawyers, as they legally can't say anything negative, there is an hidden language on how to express negativity which to the reader sound positive on first read.
by smt88 | 2025-05-05 05:55:16+00:00
> We know that arthropods can meaningfully feel pain

We don't know that. They're capable of detecting and avoiding harmful stimuli, but that doesn't mean they have the subjective experience of pain.

This research also seems quite tame compared to the trillions or quadrillions of insects we torture to death using pesticides when growing our food or protecting our homes.
by simonw | 2025-05-05 05:55:45+00:00
Only the last 40? That's surprising.

If I paste a huge article in for it to summarize presumably it's smart enough not to keep dumping that into my future context?

I'd love a version of this that was tied to projects - then I could maintain way more control over my context without worrying that weird stupid stuff was leaking into my real work.
by tobias5 | 2025-05-05 05:55:58+00:00
Updated App is in the App Store:

Besides some general improvements, these features were added: - German language support - New "Days" view with time in zones for the last days - Manual option for max heart rate - Manual zone bound settings - Goal projection bar for weekly and monthly measurements - Helpers and explaining texts - "Last 10 days" as an option - Persistent navigation bar - Bug fix of the "other" sport icon - Faster metric fetch for changes
by raffraffraff | 2025-05-05 05:56:54+00:00
This is cool.

I had to do something similar to get an old Epson scanner to work. It astonished me that there are no drivers for it on the Epson website, no generic or legacy Windows drivers. And this was a serious hum-dinger of a scanner which is still much better than a brand new Epson because, shockingly, it's really hard to buy a decent scanner these days. They're ludicrously badly made unless you spend many thousands. Most of the high end ones are aimed at office scanning, with automatic page feed and high throughout etc. If you're an artist, you're screwed.

Obviously the scanner works on Linux, but my wife is the one who needs to use it. So I hacked together a Raspberry Pi, a heavily customised PHPSane and an ancient Apple iPad (that is similarly unsupported, with almost no software available in the store). The pi boots in about 5 seconds. Now anyone on the house WiFi can scan over the network or walk right up and use the web interface via the iPad which is mounted beside the scanner.

What was really enjoyable about the project was that I got to use one of my old Pis and a tablet that was heading for e-waste.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Fw7bZoPyVU