MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by mpweiher | 2025-05-18 18:41:34+00:00
"Since FORTRAN should virtually eliminate coding and debugging…" -- FORTRAN report, 1954 [1]

If, as you seem to imply and as others have stated, we should no longer even look at the "generated" code, then the LLM prompts are the programs / programming language.

I can't think of a worse programming language, and I am not the only one [2]

However, it does indicate that our current programming languages are way to low-level, too verbose. Maybe we should fix that?

[1] http://www.softwarepreservation.org/projects/FORTRAN/BackusE...

[2] https://www.cs.utexas.edu/~EWD/transcriptions/EWD06xx/EWD667...

[3] https://objective.st/
by fidotron | 2025-05-18 18:42:30+00:00
> When a program needs to allow the user to choose a file, drag and drop is again used, with the window providing a drop area to collect the file

The neat part was you could "save" from one app into another, without having decided to actually save the file yourself yet at all.

I have to echo the comments about the mouse button "Adjust". Being able to move windows about while they preserve depth position without some obscure shortcut was very useful.

Over the years I've grown to appreciate the extent to which whatever vision there may have been behind RISC OS originally the lack of a proper GUI toolkit and serious OS internals held them back such that by Win95 Windows really was better. At exhibitions in 94/95 Acorn devs themselves were conspicuously more interested in running NetBSD than RISC OS, and it always seemed a shame they didn't make a more serious effort to get some descendant of the RISC OS desktop ported over to a UNIX like kernel, rather like a more serious shot at the ROX desktop, but in truth Win95 won the late 90s desktop paradigm war convincingly.
by nativeit | 2025-05-18 18:42:45+00:00
Your quote suggests that ingesting supplemental taurine may/may not increase risks specifically for leukemia patients. The headline asserts outright that the taurine content of energy drinks is a causal factor in colorectal cancers.

I fail to see how that contradicts the comment to which you were replying, and I agree that the headline doesn’t seem to follow from the text.
by aaldrick | 2025-05-18 18:45:08+00:00
Fair point, please see my comment in response to allenu, in this same thread, for a detailed view.

I did not mean to glaze over this aspect, I am aware this is very important. I can not and do not use AI for automating flashcards for this reason alone. But, I think my point still stands, getting information from one disparate app into another adds a lot of friction (saving it somewhere, copy and pasting and yada yada) to something that (I believe) should be as easy as possible. We have 1 click instant payment, but I can't have 1 click get this into some sort of inbox in Anki ready to flashcard-ify?

To be honest, I have a whole frustration with apps and windows that I'm still trying to word, but fundamentally all we are doing when we are "computing" is moving information around. I wish that information was a first class citizen at the OS level that could be leveraged by any app immediately. Utopian view but this stuff ain't gonna think about itself.
by OneDeuxTriSeiGo | 2025-05-18 18:45:11+00:00
It's also worth noting that Gitea forked a while back. The community fork is Forgejo.

https://forgejo.org/

And if you really just want a simple hosting system, https://tangled.sh is really easy to set up. It uses atproto (network underlying bluesky) as their identity provider and for tracking issues, PRs, comments, etc. Their "knot server" is basically just a little self-hosted go node that manages git repos. The project is fairly small atm and it's pretty much all in go so it's not too hard to skim through if you want to see how it works under the hood (or if you are afraid of needing to be able to keep it maintained long term).
by buescher | 2025-05-18 18:45:59+00:00
Current will never directly give you torque in Nm which is a straw man argument - you will always have to know the motor constant, input voltage, coil resistance, and gear ratio to back out torque. That's characterizing the motor. Yeah, that's a lot of work for a hobbyist, but it's not at all unreasonable to consider a motor an excellent torque transducer - that's what it does.
Show HN: Stack Error – ergonomic error handling for Rust
by garrinm | 2025-05-18 18:46:02+00:00
Stack Error reduces the up-front cost of designing an error handling solution for your project, so that you focus on writing great libraries and applications.

Stack Error has three goals:

1. Provide ergonomics similar to anyhow.

2. Create informative error messages that facilitate debugging.

3. Provide typed data that facilitates runtime error handling.
by withinboredom | 2025-05-18 18:46:26+00:00
This is actually a better model and one that more closely reflects reality. You can see it on revenue as well, since even if growth is exponential, churn is a percentage of your total paying users. Thus, it produces a sigmoid curve unless you can get churn to 0% (pro-tip: you can’t).

But, these are the two basic levers for a SaaS: growth and churn.
by caconym_ | 2025-05-18 18:47:04+00:00
> In point of fact this is actually an argument IN FAVOR of Obsidian. While the editor might be proprietary - the notes themselves are just standard markdown. If somehow all the copies of Obsidian magically disappeared off the earth tomorrow, I could easily switch over to Emacs org mode, VS Code, or literally anything else.

100% this. The reason I started using Obsidian in the first place is that it's built on the exact directory structure and file formats that I was already using to manage my writing and notes, and if Obsidian goes away for some reason, that won't change.
by kazinator | 2025-05-18 18:47:37+00:00
If there is a performance implication of moving the if into the callers or not, you can do it with an inline function.

static inline int function(blob *ptr, int arg) { if (ptr == NULL) return ERR_NULL; return real_function(ptr, arg); }

Just like that, we effectively moved the if statement into 37 callers, where the compiler may be smart enough to hoist it out of a for loop when it sees that the pointer is never changed in the loop body, or to eliminate it entirely when it sees that the pointer cannot be null.
by throwawayk7h | 2025-05-18 18:48:27+00:00
The percentage of anime I like is low and has always been low. I find a new anime I like comes along about every three years (I have to dig for it though.) In general, I care about the writing and story more than the visuals. So with a great increase in the amount of anime a single writer can create, shouldn't this allow for more well-written sloppy-visuals anime to exist? I'm excited to see.
by layer8 | 2025-05-18 18:49:01+00:00
To clarify, by “on iOS your only non-paid choice is iCloud” I meant for the Obsidian app specifically. Other apps do provide the option to sync with non-Apple cloud storage, without payment.

There are multitudes of pros and cons regarding choosing an iPhone. The restrictions of the Obsidian app is only a single one of those. Choosing an Android phone has drawbacks of its own.
by patcon | 2025-05-18 18:49:05+00:00
I see that you're looking for clusters within PCA projections -- You should look for deeper structure with hot new dimensional reduction algorithms, like PaCMAP or LocalMAP!

I've been working on a project related to a sensemaking tool called Pol.is [1], but reprojecting its wiki survey data with these new algorithms instead of PCA, and it's amazing what new insight it uncovers with these new algorithms!

https://patcon.github.io/polislike-opinion-map-painting/

Painted groups: https://t.co/734qNlMdeh

(Sorry, only really works on desktop)

[1]: https://www.technologyreview.com/2025/04/15/1115125/a-small-...
by ido | 2025-05-18 18:49:20+00:00
These days also directly connecting two computers to each other with a network cable (not via a network, directly plugging each end of the same cable to each computer) will establish a connection (I’m pretty sure it also works with USB cables but the “automatic” might then only work between specific operating systems- it’s been a while since I tried).

IIRC last I tried direct Ethernet connecting between a Mac and a Windows pc the other computer appeared as a shared drive and I could simply copy files from it (I probably enabled some sharing option but it was easy to do either way).
by chrishill89 | 2025-05-18 18:50:03+00:00
I create issues for myself. I sometimes create branches with informal issue keys like `<three letters>-<incrementing number>`. I use `git bug webui` to type edit issues. That’s it.

All I would like as a nice-to-have is support for making those issue keys that I use automatic. For me it’s all local to me so it doesn’t need to be globally unique. But those N-letter prefix does make collision less likely on a single project. I’ve mentioned it here: https://github.com/git-bug/git-bug/issues/75#issuecomment-19...
by tsevis | 2025-05-18 18:50:29+00:00
Thank you for this beautifully paradoxical take: that the less we “need” AI, the more urgently we should be thinking about how we use it.

And you’re absolutely right—the best things in life rarely run on silicon. Though, if someone does teach a language model to tune a Baby Grand, I’d subscribe to that repo just for the README.

As for theology and technology: there’s something timeless in what you quoted from Pope Francis. I’m reminded of another text—the Ladder of Divine Ascent by Saint John Climacus (7th century). He speaks of διάκρισις—discernment—as the highest spiritual faculty. Maybe that’s what we lack when our friends can’t tell real photos from fakes.

My project AntA.I.os is actually rooted in myth too—Antaeus, who lost his power when lifted off the Earth. For me, the Earth here means context, ethics, and culture. When we create—or compute—without grounding, we drift.

So whether AI brings us closer to the “common good” or just a sharper business model might depend not on the tools, but on who’s holding them—and why.

Thanks again for the Vatican link. Nothing like sacred scrolls and system prompts side by side.
by benoau | 2025-05-18 18:50:58+00:00
Considering Proton can provide this level of support I doubt it raises the bar very much.

https://proton.me/support/contact?topic=Other

> If you would prefer to contact us without using this form, you can email us at support@protonmail.zendesk.com. You can visit this page for more options.

...those more options:

> You can still contact us directly

> All support requests are handled in-house by Proton, but if you have specific concerns and would like to keep your query within Proton Mail (that is, not using Zendesk), you can email us directly at contact@proton.me.
by thayne | 2025-05-18 18:51:35+00:00
> I took it more as Baez writing for his physics audience.

I have a degree in Physics with an emphasis in Astronomy, and my thought on reading the title was "that's absurd". Even if you somehow infer that "radiate" specifically means "emit hawking radiation" which I don't know how you would without more context, "dead stars" generally is considered to include black holes, which do emit hawking radiation.
by pastage | 2025-05-18 18:51:38+00:00
Doing anki cards with words two hours every day, and not doing any reading of material is very detrimental for me.

I do not study medicin, but for language I have to actually be able to use what I memorize. Knowing how to use words is harder than it sounds, you need context. A common mistake when constructing sentences is getting the tone wrong and choosing the wrong synonyms.
by aaldrick | 2025-05-18 18:51:50+00:00
+1 SM is really interesting. Supermemo.guru (URL) is a fascinating resource written by a fascinating person (the creator of Supermemo), but the software is so unusable that it immediately shoots itself in the foot (or head). I don't think anyone should ever use it, but people should take away from it interesting concepts that they can use when writing new software.
by nsteel | 2025-05-18 18:52:56+00:00
There are plugins allowing you to sync via other means (for free). I don't know how the author fails to realise/mention this. I've been using Remotely Save with WebDAV or years without issue.

And the notes are all just markdown files. If the obsidian software were to disappear you have all your notes. It's fine someone wanted to spend a load of time writing their own software but none of the reasons presented in this piece make sense.
by wavemode | 2025-05-18 18:53:20+00:00
> An O(n) startup grows its key metric (revenue, users, etc.) roughly linearly with time—double the time, double the metric. An O(n^2) startup accelerates, with growth compounding super-linearly over time.

Kind of a strange formulation to have n represent the key metric. In algorithm analysis, we would typically have n represent time (or some other cost). So we would say that the startup whose key metrics accelerate exponentially with time is actually an O(log n) startup - they only have to spend (log n) time to get n results.
by aminkhorrami | 2025-05-18 18:53:43+00:00
I've got a PR waiting to be merged on this latest on Tuesday. Just to give you an idea I uploaded an image here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1bAyzuKE05htq10Zch1eErfoWzOF... If you wanna be more into the loop I'll defintley share some updates here: https://www.reddit.com/r/SQL/comments/1knhx7t

Please drop me a DM if you want me to text you when visualisation's is rolled out!
by ryandrake | 2025-05-18 18:54:36+00:00
The vast, vast majority of companies don't need "the absolute best talent." Their product is a JSON interface to someone else's service. You don't need John Carmack to write that. Companies comically overestimate the level of talent they actually need, and let positions stay open for months, sometimes years, looking for that unicorn programmer they don't actually need, and passing up hundreds of candidates who would work out fine.
by alt227 | 2025-05-18 18:54:46+00:00
I cant grasp tech professionals who always need the latest and greatest, its like they need to show off to someone instead of just getting on and doing their job.

When I am hiring engineers, I nearly always hire the ones who built their own setups out of crappy old hardware, just to learn how it works and build something cool. Those guys are in it for the love and will work all hours to get something working. The ones who wont work on anything but the latest apple hardware are invariably the awkward ones in the team who demand to be treated in a certain way, and are disliked by everybody else for being picky and looking down their nose at everybody.

Not saying this is a hard and fast stereotype which fits all, but my experience of hiring IT engineers in the UK has shown me this is often the case, and my teams are more productive and happier after weeding those guys out.
by nine_k | 2025-05-18 18:55:07+00:00
The kind of "randomness" hardly compatible with language-like structure could arise from choosing the glyphs according to purely graphical concerns, "what would look nice here", lines being too long or too short, avoiding repeating sequences or, to the contrary, achieving interesting 2D structures in the text, etc. It's not cryptography-class randomness, but it would be enough to ruin the rather well-expressed structures in the text (see e.g. the transition matrix).
by dghlsakjg | 2025-05-18 18:55:20+00:00
Your source notes that those were charter destinations that were available. It’s really just a list of places that Air France or BA flew. It lists Denver, for example, but I can’t find a single other source that actually shows the Concorde having visited Denver. I’m not arguing that the Concorde only went to NY, London, and Paris. I’m arguing that it was never a critical link in medical supplies logistics, and that using just a little logic explains it.

It mentions nothing about the Concorde being used for medical deliveries on charter, or at all. Nor have you substantiated using fighters for medical deliveries in its lieu, which was asserted. It also notoriously wasn’t viable for longer flights without refueling, which again, is another logistical and timing issue for medical flight.

The rub with Concorde, or any supersonic jet, is that they are not allowed to operate supersonic over land. That makes it an expensive, fuel hogging, very loud, plane with special runway needs.
by caconym_ | 2025-05-18 18:55:33+00:00
> if shit hit the fan and corrupted my Git files or stopped being maintained I'd be a duck out of water

You should have the same concern with anything you're hosting yourself, and you should have 3-2-1 backups to mitigate that concern. Gitea just uses regular Git repositories under the hood last i checked, and Git is an extremely mature system; I'd expect 20+ year old repositories to work fine as long as the data are kept physically intact.
by Alex-Programs | 2025-05-18 18:55:47+00:00
Honestly, I'm not sure I'm a particularly good person to ask about this. I've experimented with Anki for areas other than test taking and language learning, but it didn't stick.

I used it for some geography stuff, and that was fine I suppose, I like geography, but I stopped after a while.

I find it easy to remember things if I care about them. Ergo, if I care enough to put it in Anki, Anki is useless.

Particularly with LLMs being a thing, you don't even need to concretely know what you're looking for - just give chatgpt a vague description and let it list out suggestions until it jogs your memory.

When it comes to physics etc, you'll end up memorising everything relevant to the areas you actually use. In areas like "What is the star type of a star with a temperature of 6000K" - something that I memorised using Anki, and which took me a while - if I actually worked in that area of astrophysics I'd obviously learn that quite quickly.

I suppose it could be useful for maintaining knowledge. Had I not been burnt out I would have kept up my flashcards through my gap year, which would've presumably been quite useful - I'm currently going through the slog of relearning how to integrate so I'm not totally embarrassed at uni!
by squigz | 2025-05-18 18:56:01+00:00
> We should have expensive products which actually improve lives.

We do. It's just that "wealthy" is far past the point of diminishing returns when it comes to buying high-quality expensive items.

No, we don't need to come up with things for the rich to buy just to fix their incentives. We should be asking ourselves how to decrease wealth inequality, not how to make it more fair to those on top.
by ridiculous_leke | 2025-05-18 18:56:02+00:00
I wonder what's optimal for me as an employee. I am working in a O(n) startup where colleagues are nice, work is streamlined yet challenging, and I do see growth potential in the long term. Several O(n^2) founders have reached out recently and the pay is attractive(even after accounting for a move to an HCOL area).
by jvanderbot | 2025-05-18 18:56:40+00:00
The first thing I learned when I joined my first business was covered in orientation with leadership: every product or business unit is a sigmoid, and to maintain growth you must add new products or business units without spending too much to do so. Then the overall company profit can grow linearly or whatever by being a sum of sigmoid functions that spawn over time.

Good leadership knows when the flattening will happen and pivots.

This is called "innovation". That really stuck with me as a mental model.
by thaumasiotes | 2025-05-18 18:56:41+00:00
>> An O(n) startup grows its key metric (revenue, users, etc.) roughly linearly with time—double the time, double the metric. An O(n^2) startup accelerates, with growth compounding super-linearly over time.

> Kind of a strange formulation to have n represent the key metric. In algorithm analysis, we would typically have n represent time

In the quote you pulled, n is time. If n were the key metric, everything would be ϴ(n).

> So we would say that the startup whose key metrics accelerate exponentially with time is actually an O(log n) startup - they only have to spend (log n) time to get n results.

No, you don't know how the notation is used.
by ofcourseyoudo | 2025-05-18 18:56:56+00:00
This is a great answer.

But I'm curious what the answer would look like if every strata in it was not "things you can buy" but "things you can do with the money" ... if the "IMPACT" section was delineated at each level.

One of the things I envy the most about my rich friends is their capacity to be generous. They can materialize their compassion on a regular basis without having to balance their budget.

I'd like to see what that looks like at each of these wealth levels.

(One funny thing I noticed is that I have multiple friends with virtual personal assistants now, at middle class levels of weath/entrepreneurship... definitely not a rich man's thing anymore.)
by p_ing | 2025-05-18 18:57:01+00:00
The days of nearly-full slots was great. While by the time I had my first computer, a 386SX (12Mhz?) IDE and floppy controllers had made it to the motherboard, we still had a sound card, modem, video card, potentially game card if no game ports on the sound card, and awhile later in PCI land a 3Dfx card.

Today it's... video card and that's it. Every other PCIe slot is a 'waste' (though I do have a BT 5.1 card for a purpose I no longer need). SLI is dead. Only those with special needs, LLMs or crypto, would ever fill up the additional slots.

Building computers is now just stupid simple and in my view, sorta brainless. No jumpers, no "must go in this slot #". The only thing I ever have difficulty with is mounting the CPU cooler, the thing is f-ing huge and requires a special very long Phillips screwdriver.

/oldmanrant

Oh yeah, and if you didn't bleed when building a PC, you didn't really build a PC. Now everything is rolled steel for those kitten hands.
by eviks | 2025-05-18 18:57:38+00:00
You don't need to use the upper row, bind numbers to right thumb modifier + numpad-like uio jkl m,.

Or instead of 15j use another jump to command that accepts those letters as numbers

Or have some jump type of command that displays a-z labels 1 per row in the middle and you can jump without numbers and without shifting focus to the gutter

But yes, the most basic motion will still be more "intuitive"
by avianlyric | 2025-05-18 18:57:45+00:00
K8s itself doesn’t introduce any real additional network complexity, at least not vanilla k8s.

At the end of the day, K8s only takes care of scheduling containers, and provides a super basic networking proxy layer for convenience. But there’s absolutely nothing in k8s that requires you use that proxy layer, or any other network overlay.

You can easily setup pods that directly expose their ports on the node they’re running on, and have k8s services just provide the IPs of nodes running associated pods as a list. Then rely on either on clients to handle multiple addresses themselves (by picking an address at random, and failing over to another random address if needed), configure k8s DNS to provide DNS round robin, or put an NLB or something in front of it all.

Everyone uses network overlays with k8s because it makes it easy for services in k8s to talk to other services in k8s. But there’s no requirement to force all your external inbound traffic through that layer. You can just use k8s to handle nodes, and collect needed meta-data for upstream clients to connect directly to services running on nodes with nothing but the container layer between the client and the running service.