MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by api | 2025-05-03 16:50:11+00:00
I’ve been on HN for a very long time as you can probably tell from my user name.

I lived through the incredible tech optimism of the late 90s into the early to mid 2000s. I miss that era, but then again many of its optimistic predictions were wrong. The failure of so much of that optimism to pan out has inspired a strong counter reaction of techno pessimism.

Here’s a few of the optimistic ideas we had versus the reality.

Optimism: the Internet will be a massive engine for decentralization and democracy. Reality: this one is exactly wrong. Networks drive centralization, winner take all markets, and empower authoritarians by making “command and control” much easier at all levels of society and in technology.

Optimism: the Internet will be a huge engine for education and will place the collective knowledge of humanity into everyone’s hands. Reality: it did this, but nobody cares. People would rather scroll and stare at unbelievably vacant crap. What happened was that concurrent with the Internet delivering on this promise, Internet companies figured out how to build machines to hack the dopamine system to create ad platforms. We did think about this back then but vastly underestimated how successful it would be. I am just floored by the awesome brain rotting power of engagement algorithms and how well they steer people toward absolute garbage.

Optimism: decentralized cryptocurrency. Reality: what was created to provide a decentralized democratized alternative to financial capitalism turned into an absurdist parody of financial capitalism, then into a pure casino, which is what it is today.

Optimism: people will have privacy and control over their own digital world. Reality: lol. This one is also possible, but only for the tech savvy. What we didn’t understand was that making computers easy to use is so difficult that only very well funded companies can do it. Computers are actually incredibly confusing to 95% of people and require years to master, and the UI/UX aspect of making a product is often orders of magnitude more time consuming and costly than the more technical parts.

I could write a lot more on the causes for these failed predictions, but a lot of it boils down to not thinking through the economic reality behind these things. The net turned into an addictive chum machine and a casino because it was not built from the ground up with a billing and payment system built in, and because making and delivering media is expensive. So that role was taken up by ads and other less savory things like surveillance.

Now people think about the downsides first. When AI comes around, the first thought is “how will this ruin the world and fuck us?” That’s an over correction. We were too blindly optimistic before and are being too blindly pessimistic now.
by hajile | 2025-05-03 16:50:49+00:00
Wordpress already killed the low-end of the market a long time ago. 15 years ago, you were setting up wordpress sites and throwing on a simple theme for $500 or so then trying to get them to write up the copy and provide images (or upcharge for those services). Most of this was generally a loss leader with the actual profits coming from charging to manage the hosting for them.

This is the market disrupted by vibe coding and AI-generated copy/images.

These Wordpress or Wix/Squarespace sites account for MOST of the web, but only a minuscule fraction of high-paid devs. For those devs, AI just doesn't change very much because it has no idea what questions need to be asked to actually deliver what management wants let alone the ability to problem solve and deliver novel solutions to issues.
by Kamq | 2025-05-03 16:51:34+00:00
> That’s incredible! The capability of an AI model is approximately junior level in the fields I’ve tested it in (programming, law, philosophy, neuroscience). If you’d don’t see any possible uses for the technology, keep thinking about it.

It is absolutely incredible from a technical perspective, but your next statement does not follow.

In a lot of (most?) fields, juniors are negative ROI, and their main value is that they will eventually be seniors. If AI isn't on the road to that, then the majority of the hype has been lies, and it's negative value for a lot of fields. That changes AI from a transformative technology to an email summarizer for a lot of people.
by atonse | 2025-05-03 16:51:35+00:00
The one time so far that I actually implemented a full feature using only vibe coding (and it wasn't trivial), I had to be very specific about what I wanted, and it was in a very widely used stack (React/NextJS), it was a very common feature (sorting, filtering, pagination on a table) and it worked beautifully.

But it felt magical the one time it happened. Every other time, I'm mostly using tab autocomplete and that works quite well too.

And when I code in Elixir, I have a 20% success rate even with small requests.
by lsy | 2025-05-03 16:52:15+00:00
While the technology is indeed incredible, the question is not whether someone, somewhere, will find it useful for something, but whether the sorts of things it's useful for will economically justify the massive expenditure in both financial and human capital this trend is currently soaking up.

E.g. if "undergraduate-level reports" were something there was a mass market for, the economics of university education would be pretty different. And the same goes for idle searches, sycophantic therapizing, blog article generation, and toy code development: there is a solid user base while costs are free or low, but that says little about whether there is an appetite to pay for these tools, especially if the prices are commensurate with the cost of operation.
by tinyhouse | 2025-05-03 16:52:48+00:00
I'm not sure I'm following how anyone can target the angel investors specifically? Aren't all common share holders have the same fate? So if they screw the common share holders, early employees will get the same treatment as the angels? (dilution for example impacts all share holders). I understand that key employees can receive extra shares along the way, but most probably don't in their first 4 years.
by Wobbles42 | 2025-05-03 16:53:07+00:00
Checklists solve the problem of forgetting specific details. They work very well in situations where all possible problems have been enumerated and the only failure mode is forgetting to check for one.

They do not solve the problem of getting people to think things through and recognize novel issues.

There are some jobs you can't do well. You can do them adequately or screw them up. Checklists are helpful in those jobs.
by Shorel | 2025-05-03 16:54:45+00:00
Coding is math in the sense that coding is a subset of math.

Mathematics is a very extensive field, and covers a vast amount of subjects.

For the same reason it can't be said that mathematics is equivalent to coding, as there are many things in mathematics that are not relevant for coding.

However, by far the most interesting parts of coding are definitely related to mathematics.
by vidarh | 2025-05-03 16:54:49+00:00
I did categorically not claim, nor even suggest, that any CS "lacks any mathematical relation".

What I claimed was that in computer science we often discuss things in terms that would not be the natural way of dealing with it in maths. We do that because our focus is different, and our abstractions are different.

It doesn't mean it's not math. It means it's not useful to insist that it isn't a different field, and its obtuse when people insist it's all the same.
by hybrid_study | 2025-05-03 16:55:03+00:00
So true. It's equivalent to someone saying "so you can search billions of internet pages - big deal" when Google first appeared; or someone saying to Guttenberg, "sure you can mass produce books, but you still gotta read them".

It's as if cynics are jealous or so deeply trouble by the technology that their primary responses are mostly negative. Or they want a perfect solution (immediately, right this minute).

Totally irrational.
by Feynmanix | 2025-05-03 16:55:21+00:00
Perhaps it's not clear from my description above, but I'm afraid the flaw is in the Python package ecosystem itself rather than pip. I'm not very familiar with uv, but from what I can tell from the documentation, it needs to execute the same steps as pip to resolve metadata, as this is required by various PEPs. (You can have a look at the diagram in the linked blog post https://medium.com/data-science-collective/pipask-know-what-...).

But I also get your point - advanced users who care about security may not be using pip. Implementing the functionality as a plugin for uv or poetry is actually the next step I'm considering, if people find the concept of pipask useful. What do you think?
by hatefulmoron | 2025-05-03 16:55:28+00:00
> Actually, LLMs function similarly to brains!

> .. but if they don't, it doesn't matter because they could be functionally better than humans!

> .. but if they're not, it's just because they aren't there yet.

Presumably we could add an extra clause, something like ".. but if they won't get there, they're super good as it stands!"

I would agree with that too, I just think that the progressive weakening comes across as kinda weak.
by fumeux_fume | 2025-05-03 16:56:19+00:00
> AI has been remarkably useful for many many things across many industries

This is really a statement of faith more than a statement of fact. I think you and many others believe this to be true without much concrete evidence. For work, I help companies adopt AI driven solutions. Sometimes it makes things a little better, sometimes it makes things worse. I've yet to see a project use LLMs in the transformative way that many AI optimists put forward. Don't get me wrong, I find tools like Claude and ChatGPT to be fascinating and useful for looking up all kinds of information. I can't really say if we're just scratching the surface or if we've dug ourselves into rut with the present state of LLMs. The firsthand evidence I've seen and verified points more to the latter, but things are changing fast in this area. I'm excited to see what's around the corner.
by square_usual | 2025-05-03 16:57:48+00:00
I enjoy using LLMs for code assistance, but every time I've tried to vibe code, even with the newest models (including Gemini 2.5 Pro) and the latest tools (like Codex and Claude Code, which everyone raves about) the results have ranged from bad to middling. After all the raving on Gemini 2.5 Pro I tried again and it wrote horrendous code, seemed like it didn't understand the language (Lua) at all and went off on its own tangents doing things I didn't ask for. I think I'll wait until it gets much better before I try again.

Also, why is it so hard for LLMs to generate code without stupid comments everywhere? I don't want to see // frobincate followed by thing.frobnicate(). Even when I include clear, strict instructions they'll ALWAYS generate comments like that. It pisses me off.
by LegionMammal978 | 2025-05-03 16:57:52+00:00
> if resources were devoted to this

You'd better not jinx it: XSL support seems like just the sort of thing browser devs would want to tear out in the name of reducing attack surface. They already dislike the better-known SVG and never add any new features to it. I often worry that the status quo persists only because they haven't really thought about it in the last 20 years.
by kbolino | 2025-05-03 16:57:57+00:00
There's definitely been a shift in what it means to be a multiplayer game. Live service games are crowding out the other forms.

Split-screen, LAN, and even Internet play without fixed servers all existed once upon a time (and still do, to a limited extent). But they aren't what people usually mean when they say "multiplayer" anymore. However, they all have the advantage of staying playable basically forever, with the only real limitation being the ability to emulate older tech.
by op00to | 2025-05-03 16:58:31+00:00
Based on your post history, it seems like you’re a bad faith poster. Even so, let’s assume you want to learn to overcome your clear lack of knowledge about this

RFK Jr.’s statements on autism go beyond a generic interest in environmental causes. He has repeatedly promoted the thoroughly debunked theory that vaccines, especially those containing thimerosal, cause autism. This began with his 2005 Rolling Stone/Salon article Deadly Immunity, which was retracted due to factual inaccuracies. The CDC, WHO, and countless peer reviewed studies have confirmed no link between vaccines and autism.

He also made a widely criticized comment during a January 2024 town hall, saying:

“Kids with autism are never going to write a symphony, they’re never going to win the 100-yard dash at the Olympics, they’re never going to pay taxes.” (Source: People Magazine, April 2024)

That kind of blanket characterization isn’t just false, it’s dehumanizing. Plenty of autistic individuals work, pay taxes, and thrive. I’d say a sizable minority of posters on HN are somewhere on the spectrum.

His statements on autism are part of a pattern: RFK Jr. has pushed for a national autism registry and appointed controversial figures like David Geier, who has faced sanctions for unethical autism “treatments” and also pushed vaccine-autism claims.

So it’s not just a different research focus, it’s a history of promoting discredited and harmful views while stigmatizing autistic people.
by roland35 | 2025-05-03 16:58:50+00:00
I think just try focusing on your little corner of the world, especially since it's so early! Soon more and more will make sense.

As you start just try to make sure you are working on exactly what your manager says is a priority. Everything else is noise. And try to have 1-1 discussions with your teammates, I think you'll be surprised how pretty much everyone has the same opinion as you in regards to over engineering!
by Wobbles42 | 2025-05-03 16:59:04+00:00
Aviation safety is mostly about learning from past experience. You mitigate known hazards that, once mitigated, stay mitigated.

Cybersecurity is about adversarial hazards. When you mitigate them they actively try to unmitigated themselves.

It is more analogous to TSA security checks than to FAA equipment checklists. The checklist approach can prevent copycats from repeating past exploits but is largely useless for preventing new and creative problems.
by Centigonal | 2025-05-03 16:59:23+00:00
There are a few different ways this can happen. It has to do with seniority of liquidation preferences -- basically, if you recap or you exit for less than your highest valuation, who gets paid first? This blog post is a pretty great summary of what can happen: https://heidiroizen.tumblr.com/post/118473647305/how-to-buil...
by JumpCrisscross | 2025-05-03 16:59:26+00:00
Kessler cascades as depicted in Gravity aren’t really possible [1]. Instead, a Kessler cascade would proceed linearly, within a tight orbit, and over the course of decades if not centuries. In LEO, the timeline for a Kessler cascade is on the order of natural decay times.

[1] https://aerospaceamerica.aiaa.org/features/understanding-the...
by aurareturn | 2025-05-03 16:59:56+00:00
Stock market is pricing in a reversal in the China/US tariffs. S&P 500 is same today as day before "liberation day".

According to Flexport CEO, container ships from China to US are down 60% since tariffs. That's actually insane.

No US business is going to move factories back to the US because they don't know if the tariffs are temporary. They can spend millions moving to the US, only for Trump to reverse tomorrow. Now their competitors who didn't move will be in a much healthier situation. If Trump doesn't reverse, they can spend the next 4 years building a factory in the US, hire workers, train them, only for the next president to reverse the tariffs. Same problem. It takes a lot of time to recuperate factory costs. Lastly, there's just no way these companies can hire enough skilled workers for factory work in the US. For f sakes, unemployment rate is just 4%. No one in the US wants to work in a factory.

Lastly, China makes much of the factory equipment too but those are also subject to 100%+ tariffs. How can you compete? Chinese companies will completely dominate goods that the US used to dominate in if these tariffs stay. US companies will go bankrupt while Chinese companies will buy those factories, rebrand the goods, and sell to the rest of the world. How can goods that used to be made in China but now moved back to the US compete when China can make the same thing faster, cheaper, and higher quality?

I hear people often say things like "we can 3D print in US". Yea, China makes those 3D printers. Others say "we can automate factories in the US". Yea, China is leading the world in factory automation as well.
by skeeter2020 | 2025-05-03 17:00:31+00:00
>> One company needs you to help close a key hire >> Another is raising a bridge round and wants your input on the deck >> A third is struggling with a co-founder conflict and needs advice >> An investor calls asking you to vouch for a portfolio company they’re considering backing

This is the investor's perspective, but note all of these things consume a HUGE amount of time & energy from the founder(s) as well, and do nothing towards advancing your product or company. Good reminder how distracting outside funding can be - and this is AFTER you've gotten at least an angel round!
by cowmix | 2025-05-03 17:00:33+00:00
This sorta reminds me of the lie that was pushed when the Snapdragon X laptops were being released last year. Qualcomm implied the NPU would be used for LLMs — and I bought into the BS without looking into it. I still use a Snapdragon laptop as my daily driver (it's fine) but for running models locally, it's still a joke. Despite Qualcomm's claims about running 13B parameter models, software like LM Studio only runs on CPU with NPU support merely "planned for future updates." XDA The NPU isn't even faster than the CPU for LLMs — it's just more power-efficient for small models, not the big ones people actually want to run. Their GPUs aren't much better for this purpose either. The only hope for LLMs is the Vulkan support on the Snapdragon X — which still is half-baked.
by mrweasel | 2025-05-03 17:00:36+00:00
There is certainly a backlash against certain US based businesses, but I doubt LWN is on the receiving side of that backlash. It could be, but I'd be surprised. I think it is much more likely that people are being more frugal in their spending, as a precaution. Sadly something like LWN is fairly easy to eliminate from your budget.

Given the uncertainty the Trump administration has generated, I think a recession could be a self-fulfilling prophesy. Technically the economy might be strong enough, but we don't know Trumps long term plans, or even his plans for next week, so precautionary spending restrictions may end up triggering a recession of sorts.

There are so many project and organisations, similar to LWN, that I want to support, but it adds up quickly if you're not careful.
by fallinditch | 2025-05-03 17:00:38+00:00
This reminds us that even though AI is a tool that can produce good work, it still takes a lot of effort with it to produce 'good' work.

We will see the same with writing: AI tools and methodologies that become powerful creative writing assistants - but these too will require much work and human inspiration to create truly 'good' work. (Perhaps these already exist?).

From one perspective this is an exciting future, but presumably this also means that AI will continue to improve until such time that it can produce good work without human intervention, and for me that's not so exciting: interesting perhaps, but soulless.
by testing22321 | 2025-05-03 17:00:46+00:00
Go to outback Australia, or remote South America or Southern Africa. Due to the tilt of the earth the southern hemisphere gets better stars.

It will blow your mind.

I’d been out of Australia for a decade, living in the Yukon, having all kinds of remote adventures. On my first night back in Australia in the middle of a city of 50k people I took photos because the Milky Way was staggering. 10x what I had seen in the decade prior. This is a single exposure, very much what it looked like in real life

https://www.instagram.com/p/CersLuLBfCz/
by olalonde | 2025-05-03 17:00:51+00:00
It has been a huge productivity boost for me as an assistant (not full auto-pilot). Some examples: 1) add relevant indexes to my database schema (it will analyze the code and look for columns that should be indexed). 2) write a Typescript type that takes all the methods of a class and returns a new identical type but where all the return types are void. 3) (firmware development) the on_receive callback is causing a stack overflow, put the crypto operations in a separate thread. Sometimes I get a bit more ambitious and asks for "implement the following feature: <describe feature>", but manually approve code changes and steer it in the right direction.
by bcantrill | 2025-05-03 17:02:15+00:00
It would be helpful to run out the math on the $500K investment: what's the post-money on that investment when it was made? How much capital did this mythical sold-for-$10M in 5-or-6 years company raise? (Or did it survive for a half decade on a total investment of $500K?) What was the headcount and the revenue and the burn? (And to whom does it sell for $10M?) Assuming that it wasn't a wipeout, you'll quickly find that the math doesn't... math: if you have somehow conjured a successful outcome in your mind, what you likely have is not a venture-scale business.
by scrollinondubs | 2025-05-03 17:02:48+00:00
Can you clarify "dynamic agentic workflows?" I use their agent node and it works great but what are you trying to do with it? FYI they just added native support for MCP in the latest release both for exposing their workflows as a MCP server and consuming MCP servcies easily via their MCP client tool: https://docs.n8n.io/integrations/builtin/core-nodes/n8n-node... https://docs.n8n.io/integrations/builtin/cluster-nodes/sub-n... That should make things interesting because they have a fairly extensive library of templates which can now easily be converted to MCP servers and be more easily invoked agnatically by LLMs.
by atoav | 2025-05-03 17:03:03+00:00
As someone who worked in support as a youngling:

If you behave unpleasant enough I'll go out of my way to make sure your behavior does not pay off. I will note your abrasive behavior in the ticket or might even mark your mail as spam. On telephone our line will suddenly experience technical difficulties. And throughout I will remain as friendly and patient as ever.

I will warn superiors about you, so once you escalate they already have a colorful 3D image of your wonderful personality in mind. Whether that 100% is in your favor, you can guess.

Play asshole games? Win asshole prices.

Behave like a decent person with empathy instead, press the right buttons and I might even skip some of the company rules for you. Many people in support do not give a single damn if they lose their job over you and you might just be worth it.

These are not sfter-the-fact shower thoughts, these are actually lived experiences from the trenches and I know how other people in those roles think.

Persistence pays off, being an asshole not so much
by ks2048 | 2025-05-03 17:03:05+00:00
One update from Apple Research since that one was "Deploying Attention-Based Vision Transformers to Apple Neural Engine" (but not clear the relationship. It doesn't build on ane_transformers, but maybe a sister project for vision?)

blog: https://machinelearning.apple.com/research/vision-transforme...

github: https://github.com/apple/ml-vision-transformers-ane