MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by djaychela | 2025-05-11 06:30:52+00:00
There were a whole load of things that I thought were important - mostly objects I owned and projects that I was going to do (some with them, some without). I have done a lot of clearing out so that my wife doesn't have to 'next year' (our euphemism for after I die) - partly because I want to decrease the load on her as much as possible and partly because I know the things in question and their value.

I still have a large workshop full of stuff (tools, building materials, etc), and none of it means anything to me now, whereas it did before - I was worried about all of these objects, which sounds a bit strange, but I've mostly been a 'caring about objects' person most of my life.

There are things that need to be done that I know I won't get done now, and they don't bother me at all - now that I've ensured my wife will be OK financially and the house (which I've been extending so we could live comfortably) is mostly complete and I've finished the small jobs needed to get it to that state with some help from friends. Also, I've had a few other things I've needed to get rid of that I didn't want to (one was my van, main form of transport, which had a mechanical fault that in 'normal' times I would have fixed myself, but would have taken 3-4 days work plus machining time and costs). Just sold it and let it go, and I've not thought about it since. Same for the motorbike I owned and loved for 14 years - once it had gone, that was that. There has been something freeing in letting go of these things.

The biggest thing, though, is playing music. I've played guitar since I was 13, and made most of my income from playing and teaching music (and music technology). Aside from a project I have completed for my funeral (a song my wife wrote and played), I've not touched anything musical - not picked up a guitar or anything like that. There's been no desire to do so whatsoever, it's just 'gone'. I stopped listening to music for a month or two, but that's back now, fortunately.

I didn't really have a 'career' - I've been self employed since 2000 and fallen into things which have worked for me (and I have loved doing, which is good). If I had the energy, I don't think I'd still be doing work, but I still care about it and its quality, so that is still there.

Effectively, I have 'retired' with my wife, who is long-term off work (because of the work she does, she can't work while going through this). So at least I have that and we've spent all day every day together since January. This has been meaningful.
by HappMacDonald | 2025-05-11 06:31:41+00:00
* "other email providers shortly followed suit" means that it was never out of their reach to begin with, they just needed more competition to convince them to try: which didn't have to be Google and didn't have to be ad- or surveillance-supported.

* 1GB storage in 2004 to 15GB storage 21 years later suggests that something vital has stalled. Every other storage metric (price of RAM per MB, price of hard drives per MB, price of cloud storage per MB) has improved 100 fold over the same time period[1,2].

1: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/historical-cost-of-comput... 2: https://jcmit.net/memoryprice.htm
by gantron | 2025-05-11 06:31:56+00:00
> To what purpose?

Steel-manning: Gates has run a deliberate PR campaign for decades to rehabilitate his reputation. In the 80s & 90s (before the Gates Foundation) he was known as a ruthless corporate tactician who crushed competitors like ants and earned a federal antitrust suit against Microsoft. Prior to his divorce he had a widely-publicized affair with a subordinate. He befriended Jeffrey Epstein and appeared in his flight logs after Epstein had already been convicted of soliciting prostitution from a minor. (Gates has worked very hard to distance himself from Epstein since then - another example of the PR machine at work).

Someone who wants to paint the least charitable picture possible of Gates could factually describe him as a cutthroat businessman and a philanderer who associated with a pedophile on at least a few documented occasions. And that's ignoring the nuttier Gates conspiracy theories (e.g., Covid microchips).

Sure, everyone knows him. But he'd rather be known as a voracious reader who fought polio & malaria and provided drinkable water to millions. Not a bad use of his billions - what else could he spend those on that would materially affect his life?
by dev_l1x_be | 2025-05-11 06:32:19+00:00
Some of us still remembers pre-Google internet. Imagine how we were able to send emails and navigate on the streets. The image you are painting here is a classic false dichotomy. If Google goes under people won’t be moving to Apple, they are going to move to Fastmail, Yandex Maps, and so on. We might even see a new mobile platform that does not collect every single bit of your life.
by jclulow | 2025-05-11 06:32:21+00:00
I think in many respects these problems are actually _under_-engineering. It's possible to treat software as an artefact with a measurable level of quality, and to use frankly not especially ambitious tools (programming languages with memory safety and rich type systems, unit and integration tests, etc) to build them. It's also possible to have a strong sense of user experience and taste as far as what makes a product, not just a pile of parts.

But you have to take software seriously as something that can improve a system, not just a cost centre to be minimised where possible, and an embarrassing source of problems that will ultimately end up in the newspaper or worse.
by toast0 | 2025-05-11 06:33:42+00:00
> Roman Arutyunyan from NGINX core team were the first to propose a solution with a clever method that abuses the keylog callback to make it possible to extract or inject the required elements, and finally make it possible to have a minimal server-mode QUIC support.

This sounds like future pain waiting to happen. My experience with callbacks in Openssl 1.0.x is that letter releases may significantly alter or remove callbacks. In the long term, I guess it worked out, because I figured out a better way to do what I was trying to do and got it accepted into OpenSSL and that fixed things for everyone, but in the short term it was a PITA and I'd have to decide between out of date OpenSSL with my feature working and updating OpenSSL to address whatever security problem of the day but my feature not working while I take a week to figure out how to do it in the new world.

In my case, the feature was doing DHE-RSA with Microsoft Schannel and not causing an 'out of memory' error on the client when the server public key has 8 or more bits of zeros at the high end. The client didn't actually run out of memory, but that was the error it reported.

Multithreading can be hard; when I had a problem for HAProxy to solve, 1.8 was just out and using multiple processes was much better for my application than threads. Configuration for multiple processes was more difficult, of course, but one time pain in order to get many multiples of throughput was worth it (and I didn't need any shared state between processes, so I didn't lose functionality... not everyone has that liberty) But I gather multithreaded HAProxy has gotten a lot better; and my problem went away and anyway I left the company whose problem I was solving with HAProxy anyway; so I don't have current knowledge. But the description of OpenSSL is describing a multithreading nightmare:

> With OpenSSL 3.0, an important goal was apparently to make the library much more dynamic, with a lot of previously constant elements (e.g., algorithm identifiers, etc.) becoming dynamic and having to be looked up in a list instead of being fixed at compile-time. Since the new design allows anyone to update that list at runtime, locks were placed everywhere when accessing the list to ensure consistency. These lists are apparently scanned to find very basic configuration elements, so this operation is performed a lot.

I'm not sure this kind of thing needs to be a fixed list at compile time (although it has worked for decades, yeah?); having a way to load a config and fixing the config before sharing it would be a good way to avoid the need for locking. If it does need to be changable at runtime, it can still be done with performance... an instance of configuration should be immutable, then you can have a shared pointer to the current config. At critical points, you might copy the current pointer or something. There's techniques and prior art for this kind of stuff.
by rootsudo | 2025-05-11 06:34:48+00:00
You mean the internet would return back to how it was in the 00's? I don't see how that's bad...

I 100% admit everything above has value and has decreased friction for interconecting people and internet services but the idea is that should one corporation control everything listed there?

And IMO no. Microsoft had the same for them in the 90's and while I can see a rush into Microsoft and Apple Ecosystems, it will also give a window for new companies, new people to create products to fill in the gaps created by google being forced to spin off it's ecosystem.
by inkyoto | 2025-05-11 06:36:31+00:00
> […] they promoted the myth that ISA has no impact on performance […]

Once instructions get past the instruction decoder, they have not been x86 since Pentium Pro on the server and Pentium II on the desktop. AMD has made great strides in optimising the instruction decoder performance to minimise the translation overhead on most frequently used instructions, and the pathological cases such as 15-byte-long instructions are no longer in active use anyway. There are legacy instructions that are still there, but I don't think they affect performance as they are mere dead silicon that is getting rationalised with X86S, which culls everything non-64-bit.

A more solid argument can be made that x86 is register-starved with great implications for performance, and that is true, especially for 32 bits. It is true to a certain extent with the 64-bit ISA (32 GPR's is still better than x86-64’s 16 GPR's), but various SIMD extensions have ameliorated the pain substantially. The remaining stuff, such as legacy CISC direct memory access instructions… compilers have not been emitting that stuff for over twenty years, and they just take up space in the dead silicon, lonely waiting, and yearning for a faithful moment of somebody finally giving them a tickle, which almost never comes, so the legacy instructions just cry and wail in defeaning silence.

An ISA was a decisive and critical factor from the performance perspective in the 1970s-80s, and, due to advances in the last few decades, including in-core instruction fusion, register renaming, coupled with enormously large register files, out-of-order, as well as speculative execution, etc., it is no longer clear-cut or a defining feature. We now live in the post-RISC era where old and new approaches have coalesced into hybrid designs.

Personally, I have never been a fan of the x86 ISA, although less from the technical perspective[0] and for a completely different reason – the Wintel duopoly had completely obliterated CPU alternatives, leading the CPU industry to stagnate, which has now changed and has given Intel a headache of epic proportions and haemorrhoids.

[0] The post AVX-2 code modern compilers generate is pretty neat and is reassonably nice to look at and work with. Certainly not before.
by hilbert42 | 2025-05-11 06:37:12+00:00
"The whole web will shrink, and huge swaths of the worldwide economy will disappear."

Even if that were to be true and comes to pass then who is to blame? Clearly both Google and Government and its regulators who let Google get out of hand and allowed it to violate monopoly laws for so long when it's been obvious for years.

OK, what's to be done? You can't allow the law to continue to be violated especially now that everybody knows that it has been—if you do then you are giving all and sundry carte blanche to ignore laws as they see fit. That's a recipe for the break down of law and order.

If the Government legislates to give Google exemptions or some form of special privilege then it's not only further entrenching Google's monopoly but also further weakening democracy by favoring the rich and powerful (they'd be further privileged).

Now let's assume some compromise or whitewashing where Google is restructured or bits sold off without strong financial sanctions/fines etc.—ones that actually hurt shareholders' stocks significantly then no one will be happy. Google won't be happy because its already optimized its business structure for maximum income and a restructure would reduce revenues, and those who've been hurt would claim it was too little too late and they'd cry foul.

Yes, government has to take much of the blame but so do shareholders and Google executives. If little is done and there are no penalties that actually hurt the pocket of the perpetrators to a significant extent then it'll be back business as usual in short order. We need strong penalties to set an example to the world that violating the law won't be tolerated.

I'm not a Google shareholder but if I were I'd be selling my shares just in case.

Now with that in mind give me your solutions.
by Stratoscope | 2025-05-11 06:38:29+00:00
Hi! I was the lead developer for Ruby (no relation to the programming language), which became the "visual" side of Visual Basic.

It is nice to see this article again.

Perhaps my favorite part is this true story that I shared with Ryan at Retool.

If you ever wonder why we "fire" an event, this is why:

# # #

I was looking for a name for one gizmo sending a message to another. I knew that SQL had "triggers," and Windows had SendMessage, but I didn't like those names.

I got frustrated one night and started firing rubber bands at my screen to help me think. It was a habit I had back then to shake up my thinking. Probably more practical on a tough glass CRT than on a modern flat screen! After firing a few rubber bands, I was still stuck. So I fired up a doobie to see if that would help. As I flicked my lighter and looked at the fire, it all came together. Fire a rubber band. Fire up a doobie. Fire an event!

# # #

My other claim to fame may have been the VBX. It was likely one of the worst APIs in history, but also one of the most successful.

Go figure.

As they say, AMA!

And as it happens, I am looking for work. If anyone doesn't mind working with an older programmer who is still enthusiastic and productive and creative, you know where to find me.
by MyOutfitIsVague | 2025-05-11 06:39:19+00:00
Google services are not a gift. They are not actually free. Google is not a charity nor is it a non-profit. I want people in this discussion to stop arguing as if Google isn't making money on all these services.

If the parents were slowly siphoning off enough of the teen's money through a convoluted set of channels such that the teenager indirectly paid for the truck anyway and the parents ended up effectively taking a share of the money, that would be definitely worth hating.
by mft_ | 2025-05-11 06:41:41+00:00
I hear you, but I don’t think “the industry” is anything like as rational or strategic or organised as your theory suggests.

What I see as a much more powerful prevailing undercurrent, in everything from Linux not making it on the desktop (next year!) to dependency management in Python to awful documentation in so many projects, is that smart programmers cater to themselves, and there are too few incentives to cater for the proles who aren’t quite as capable or deeply embedded in computer science.

In short, it’s Hanlon’s razor: you’re seeing conspiracy while I just see incompetence.
by inkyoto | 2025-05-11 06:43:13+00:00
> In fact, I actually think need to continue supporting the legacy x86 ISA was a massive advantage to Intel.

I think this is a myth that Intel (or somebody else) has invented in an attempt to save face. Legacy x86 instructions could have been culled from the silicon and implemented in the software as emulation traps – this has been done elsewhere nearly since the first revised CPU design came out. Since CPU's have been getting faster and faster, and legacy instructions have been used less and less, the emulation overhead would have been negligible to the point that no one would even notice it.
by ChicagoDave | 2025-05-11 06:44:55+00:00
I bought VB 1.0 from an 800 number in Dvorak’s back page PC Week article. I still have the floppies and manuals.

I made a lot of consulting cash being an expert in VB 6.

When .NET came out, I switched to C# and learned object-oriented programming. (Ironically by reading Bruce Eckel’s “Thinking in Java”).
by hilbert42 | 2025-05-11 06:45:01+00:00
"The whole web will shrink, and huge swaths of the worldwide economy will disappear."

Even if that were to be true and comes to pass then who is to blame? Clearly both Google and Government and its regulators who let Google get out of hand and allowed it to violate monopoly laws for so long when it's been obvious for years.

OK, what's to be done? You can't allow the law to continue to be violated especially now that everybody knows that it has been—if you do then you are giving all and sundry carte blanche to ignore laws as they see fit. That's a recipe for the break down of law and order.

If the Government legislates to give Google exemptions or some form of special privilege then it's not only further entrenching Google's monopoly but also further weakening democracy by favoring the rich and powerful (they'd be further privileged).

Now let's assume some compromise or whitewashing where Google is restructured or bits sold off without strong financial sanctions/fines etc.—ones that actually hurt shareholders' stocks significantly then no one will be happy. Google won't be happy because its already optimized its business for maximum income and a restructure of any significant size would reduce revenues, and those who've been hurt by Google's monopoly would claim it was too little too late and they'd cry foul.

Yes, Government has to take much of the blame but so do shareholders and Google executives. If little is done and there are no penalties that actually hurt the pockets of the perpetrators to a significant extent then it'll be back business as usual in short order. We need strong penalties to set an example to the world that violating the law won't be tolerated. Perhaps the dominoes have to fall to right things.

I'm not a Google shareholder but if I were I'd be selling my shares just in case.

Now with that in mind give me your solutions.
by pclmulqdq | 2025-05-11 06:45:03+00:00
I am not conflating cVDPV with WPV. The parent comment claimed type 2 and type 3 polio were gone, which is not true. WPV 3 and WPV 2 are gone, but type 2 and type 3 polio are both still around. If you get polio today (unlikely but possible), there's a pretty good chance it's cVDPV 2.
by conductr | 2025-05-11 06:45:23+00:00
Sure, she's also just peering into a single night/moment of their life. She's watching group dynamics of people who are attending a wedding. As I read through all the bullets, I thought about how many of the weddings I have attended have gone and where she would have pegged me on those nights and I could probably fit half the list depending on which event she was present on.

People attend weddings for a lot of reasons. Sometimes it's full of your most favorite people in the world, sometimes you only know a few people in the room. Sometimes you have a lot of fun, sometimes the entire thing just feels like a massive inconvenience. Sometimes it stokes the flame of your relationship, sometimes it occurs during a time when your relationship is under some stress. Sometimes I'm dancing/partying all night, sometimes I never leave my table and leave before the cake is cut.

Anyways, I'm sure she does see a lot of these patterns and you can try to infer a lot of things about the people, with some reason, but people are fluid and this is too small of a sample of their life to really know anything other than how this group of people interacted on a single night of their lives.
by lightning8113 | 2025-05-11 06:45:39+00:00
Not only does she have a privileged position, but good artists are skilled at making their art convey emotions and feelings.

Telling a complex story in a static picture requires great attention to detail, and a solid understanding of how humans express emotion.

Before you can create art that captures these emotions, you need to be able to observe them. I am not at all surprised that countless hours painting people has helped her develop this skill!
by cookiengineer | 2025-05-11 06:46:30+00:00
I wanted to add an exception to this: MNT Research.

These guys are always doing the right thing, and they care so much about it that they even go as far as designing their own keyboards, touchpads, usb controllers and other things that would contribute to the amount of proprietary blobs otherwise.

Though their Rockchip based platform is more a low end performance product at the moment. I really hope they can compete with high end x86 laptops in the future because they're the good ones.

Also, check out their gitlab: https://source.mnt.re/explore/projects
by jsight | 2025-05-11 06:50:04+00:00
Wow, this is really incredible and timely analysis. I was just looking at the MCP "spec" the other day. I didn't really understood it, and assumed that I must have been missing something.

I tried asking some LLMs for from-scratch implementations of MCP hosts and clients, and they did a terrible job of it. This seemed odd to me.

It turns out that both of these problems likely have the same cause. The spec (if you can even call it that) really is horrendous. It doesn't really spell out the protocol properly at all!
by rvz | 2025-05-11 06:50:08+00:00
Great job and good luck.

There's still time left to apply to YC's 2025 summer batch: [0] You have 48 hours left until applications close on May 13th.

Who knows, maybe you could achieve fast growth like Scale AI (YC S16) [1] did.

All you have to do is to keep building.

[0] https://www.ycombinator.com/apply/

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20620578
by rstuart4133 | 2025-05-11 06:51:09+00:00
> Is it really?

Yes, of course it is. How many search competitors do you see out there? If you ignore resellers like ddg, these is bing, kangi, and country specific ones like Baidu. Email providers are a dime a dozen - Fastmail, Outlook, Protron, .. Google it, it's a long list. Hell. I run my own. I could not even contemplate building a web indexing engine.
by flomo | 2025-05-11 06:53:29+00:00
Sure. As a practical matter, 90% of Apple II systems were plugged into a monochrome computer monitor which did 80 column text just fine, and the other ~9% had a fancy color monitor. Nobody* used an Apple II with a TV, except in maybe the very early days.

This is why you should ignore the specs, the Apple didn't really compete with Atari/Commodore/etc. It got crushed by the IBM PC.
by baalimago | 2025-05-11 06:54:09+00:00
Personally I don't get why they didn't extend the function calling system [1].

This enables practically the same functionality, only with less fuzz. Long term memory can then instead be implemented via RAG, exposed as function calls, instead of keeping it in the context of the MCP.

An "agent" is a pre-prompted server which receives external requests, by any API (the AI interface is not exposed, since there's no need for it to be). The server then performs query by announcing which tools the LLM should use via function calling + conversation flow.

The only downside of this approach is that you can't have a MCP "marketplace" (but it's perfectly possible to expose standardized structs for different tools [2], which ultimately achieves the same thing).

[1]: https://platform.openai.com/docs/guides/function-calling?api... [2]: https://github.com/baalimago/clai/blob/main/internal/tools/b...