MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by TeMPOraL | 2025-05-18 14:02:50+00:00
> You’re not creating art at that point, you’re simply another cog feeding the machine.

That's the definition of commercial art, which is what most art is.

> “Art” is not drawing random pictures.

It's exactly what it is, if you're talking about people churning out art by volume for money. It's drawing whatever they get told to, in endless variations. Those are the people you're really talking about, because those are the ones whose livelihoods are being consumed by AI right now.

The kind of art you're thinking of, the art that isn't just "drawing random pictures", the art that the term "deconstruction" could even sensibly apply to - that art isn't in as much danger just yet. GenAI can't replicate human expression, because models aren't people. In time, they'll probably become so, but then art will still be art, and we'll have bigger issues to worry about.

> There are outliers, sure, but the web is already inundated by shit images which nonetheless fool people. I bet scamming and spamming with fake images and creating fake content for monetisation is already a bigger market than people “genuinely” using the tools. And it will get worse.

Now that is just marketing communications - advertising, sales, and associated fraud. GenAI is making everyone's lives worse by making the job of marketers easier. But that's not really the fault of AI, it's just the people who were already making everything shitty picking up new tools. It's not the AI that's malevolent here, it's the wielder.
by tomhow | 2025-05-18 14:02:55+00:00
Be kind. Don't be snarky. Converse curiously; don't cross-examine. Edit out swipes.

Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive.

When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. "That is idiotic; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3" can be shortened to "1 + 1 is 2, not 3."

Please don't fulminate. Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
GitHub turns on code security billing but you can't turn it off
by wallarug | 2025-05-18 14:03:05+00:00
hey,

I released about a week ago github started billing me for "code security" features on my github teams / company account.

I never asked for this feature but it seemed to turn itself on. I know they sent an email asking about it a month ago and I went and checked, it wasn't being used on any of the repos.

Now, in the billing page, I have "code security" accruing on my account for apparently 5 users now. - It doesn't say who or what or why this is happening. - There's no way to switch it off. - It just keeps going up and up and up.

I turned on the budget for it and that just seems to allow the costs to keep accruing.

I don't want to pay for "advanced code security" anymore. I accept I should have checked this earlier... that's my fault.

Support is AFK (still waiting on response).

However, there is no way to remove this now. Half-baked billing analytics with no off switch.

What should I do?

Am I the only one with this problem?
Show HN: I built a site to binge the best engineering blog posts
by shanesnotes | 2025-05-18 14:03:33+00:00
This site was born out necessity.

I needed a break from the internet we know today:

clickbait, politics, low quality content, breaking news, AI summaries

Such a breadth of information but so little depth

Now I spend (too much of) my time here, going deep.

Just when I need to scratch that itch.

But I keep coming back because it actually makes me a better engineer.

Oh, and I made the site. Right.

Anyways, I hope you enjoy crawling the blogs as much as I have.

Enjoy!

And PLZ reply with any feedback. I am here to make this site better. It will always be free.
by blooalien | 2025-05-18 14:03:48+00:00
And thus began the Mousepocalypse...

(:shrug: I get it... Sore point... The apocalypse isn't a humorous thing to joke about, what with it being in the midst of actually happening and all ... but if I don't try to find myself a little giggle here and there once in a while I'ma literally go insane, so whatever. Down-vote away. Don't really care anymore.)
by runarberg | 2025-05-18 14:03:59+00:00
For that I buy a vocabulary book, or a phrase book. As I read through it, and if I don‘t know a word or understand a sentence, I try to learn it using various methods, and create an Anki card to keep it in memory. Anki is just to retain the word.

On a plus side, you can buy specialized vocab/phrase books, I have one just for onomonopias. Also my beginner vocab books come with recordings from actual native speaker voice actors, which I add to the deck. Much better quality than anything an LLM or speech synthesizers can give you.
by NekkoDroid | 2025-05-18 14:04:23+00:00
In short: you wouldn't.

What you are suggesting is overstepping 2 security boundries for unpriviledged apps/processes: 1. Reading global key presses 2. Drawing in an always-on-top window with transparent content

Both these things would require that process to get special user/compositor opt-in permissions and integration. Your best bet would be using compositor plugins/native integration, or maybe you could hook into some toolkits (this is usually what FPS overlays do, hook into the graphics APIs).

That is at least my current knowledge and there might be already some wayland extensions/XDG-portal that allows it, but not to my knowledge.
by OmarShehata | 2025-05-18 14:04:47+00:00
memes are not "on the side of reality". memes are on the side of whatever resonates. What resonates is what aligns to your model of reality (which is shaped by the ideology you're inside).

There's no clear distinction between propaganda, advertising, and what you call "meme-ing". Companies can and do create campaigns that look organic, that do takeoff as people feel they are organic (and then they become actually real as people take them further than what the company is pushing)

For example: Barbenheimer was a meme that got people to watch two movies in one weekend (not a typical behavior for most people). Was that an organic meme, or a marketing campaign?

(If anyone is curious, I keep trying to write a good intro to this rabbithole, see my writeup on the New York Times explaining how a psyop works, which itself very significant for them to be spelling it out like this: https://defenderofthebasic.substack.com/p/new-york-times-is-... )
by JackDanMeier | 2025-05-18 14:04:54+00:00
Yes, this is also something I have been thinking about, can an LLM really know how well I know something. There is the issue with the grading with again, hard, good and easy that I can cut myself some slack and say "I knew that" even when I didn't(and I have a strong memory of having done this myself). And there is the possibility of bullshitting the LLM and just all you know about the subject rather than the exact definition of the flashcard. I'm leaning towards any knowledge rather than specifying that the exact answer should be graded. Whats your take?
by uselesswords | 2025-05-18 14:05:16+00:00
It’s amazing how every single point you’ve made here is wrong as the other commenter already dove into. On top of that Anki is one of the best documented pieces of open-source software I’ve messed with. If you’re able to program, ChatGPT can basically handle any task you want it too, I data mine the sqllite database regularly for my own insights.
by ksec | 2025-05-18 14:05:22+00:00
“Favourite” Programming Languages on Hacker News - Key take-aways

Rust is the most talked-about language

2 327 stories – the highest volume

57 212 total points – the highest aggregate karma

Go comes a very close second in volume (2 259 stories) and total score (45 511).

Python and JavaScript still dominate discussion but are edged out by Rust & Go this year.

Smaller but passionate followings

Lua & Erlang generate the highest average score per story, indicating highly-engaged niche audiences.

Swift and Elixir also punch above their weight on a per-story basis.

Classic staples (C++, Java, Ruby, PHP) remain active but draw less relative excitement.

Quick ranking by story count

Rust – 2 327

Go – 2 259

Python – 2 029

JavaScript – 1 927

Highest average karma per story

Lua – 51.8

Erlang – 36.5

Swift – 29.3

Elixir – 25.9

Rust – 24.6

Interpretation: Rust and Go are currently the “favourite” languages on Hacker News by sheer attention and total karma, while Lua and Erlang have smaller but very enthusiastic communities

- Next time any Rust supporter telling you Rust is not popular on HN or Ada gets mentioned a lot of Zig gets similar attention as Rust. You may point them to this post.
by dmd | 2025-05-18 14:05:32+00:00
Not the 10000, but I admin'd a 4500 back in 1999 at Bristol-Myers Squibb at the ripe old age of 21. It was running Sun's mail server, which required constant care and feeding to even remotely reliably serve our 30,000+ users.

One time it just stopped responding, and my boss said "now, pay attention" and body-checked the machine as hard as he could.

It immediately started pinging again, and he refused to say anything else about it.
by anon-3988 | 2025-05-18 14:07:19+00:00
> I'm personally ready to embrace a "Python 4" with a strict ownership model like Rust's (hopefully more flexible), fully typed, with the old baggage dropped and all the new bells and whistles. Static typing should also help LLMs produce more correct code and make iteration and refactoring easier.

So...a new language? I get it except for borrow checking, just make it GC'ed.

But this doesn't work in practice, if you break compatibility, you are also breaking compatibility with the training data of decades and decades of python code.

Interestingly, I think as we use more and more LLMs, types gets even more and more important as its basically a hint to the program as well.
by sunkcapital | 2025-05-18 14:09:20+00:00
This is something I’ve been tackling myself in the language app I’m making https://store.steampowered.com/app/3220820/Bilingual_Crosswo.... Right now, I’ve added a set of front loaded intervals: 2M, 5M, 10M, 20M, 40M, 2H, 6H, 1D, 2D, 4D, 8D, and so on eventually stretching to a full year.

I’ve always felt this setup was a bit arbitrary and considered it a temporary solution. Thanks for saving me some time on research!
by westurner | 2025-05-18 14:09:30+00:00
> A versatile “Paint & Scribe” methodology is introduced, enabling to integrate LIG tracks onto any wettable surface, and in particular onto printed and flexible electronics. A process for obtaining freestanding and transferrable LIG is demonstrated by dissolving acrylic paint in acetone and floating LIG in water. This advancement offers novel avenues for diverse applications that necessitate a transfer process of LIG.

I still don't understand why that's only possible with commercial inks and dyes but not with also aromatic fruit peels?
by BLKNSLVR | 2025-05-18 14:10:07+00:00
Disclaimer: my kids are mid-late teens.

I can't remember who I was before becoming a parent and that has never really mattered to me. I know I spent (wasted) a lot of time gaming, nothing worth crying over, for me.

Kids have to eat your life, otherwise you may not be parenting quite as much as you should be (this means a LOT of different things to everyone).

My brother and sister in law had kids about the same time as us, so we grew together as parents as the kids grew up together.

Friends come and go and the good ones come back again. Most of my friends have kids 5-10 years younger than mine and that means we're at different life stages - I can offer them advice as to what to expect and also sort of enjoy (and lament at the same time) that I'm passed the stage they're going through.

I actually took up a sport again when my first was a couple of years old because I wanted to normalise the playing of sport. This, I think, kept me with an outlet and some socialising outside of work and family. The more strings to your bow the better (I've recently been thinking about a concept I've made up called "distributed happiness", this feels like an element of that; as long as one of those things is doing ok, then your can hang your hat somewhere at least).

One more thing I just remembered: your childhood was for you parents, your childrens' childhoods are for you. Take their wonder and naiveté as your own and see the world as they do, but with the life experience and consciousness to know how important and mind blowingly amazing it all is.

I really miss my children's childhood. My aches and pains tell me I'm too old to go through it again, but I still wonder...

P.S. play your kids In The Hall of the Mountain King. My kids danced around like nutters as it built up and crescendoed. I've got a video of my daughter saying, in a sad voice, "ohhhww", after it finished. I also have some other music I played them, classical and complex but also simple to "hear" and they really responded to it.
by fidotron | 2025-05-18 14:11:32+00:00
> By the way, my comment telling you that you should apologize to the community received an upvote and likely will receive more.

I too was upvoted for asking for your apology.

I will not apologize for speaking facts, and nor should you, but it is your random unnecessary insults that are unacceptable.

That's me done with this. You clearly have your opinions, but your behavior has been a discredit to the community you apparently represent.
by runarberg | 2025-05-18 14:11:50+00:00
Me too. I made a specialized Kanji learning app. My different approach is in the cards. I used free dictionary data to create a card for each kanji with all the relevant data in a single card. So a common kanji might have dozens (and even hundreds) of words (each word with 0-2 example sentences) to help you remember.

I like the anki way of self rating, so I kept it. I want to be able to say: “hey, I know I screwed up the stroke order this time, but it won‘t happen again, promise” and hit “Good”.

https://github.com/runarberg/shodoku

https://shodoku.app/
by theideaofcoffee | 2025-05-18 14:12:11+00:00
Ah, percussive maintenance! Also good for reseating disks that just don’t quite reliably get enumerated, slam the thing back in. I had to do something similar on a power supply for a V440, thankfully it was a month or so away from retirement, I didn’t feel too bad giving it some encouragement like that. Great machines.
by tokioyoyo | 2025-05-18 14:12:23+00:00
All of this is just cultural cope. Bikes are stolen in Tokyo and Amsterdam as well. Tokyo space is incredibly limited. And etc.

The problem is, biking is just not efficient compared to other transport modes in super majority of the cities in NA. There is no political appetite either. People just love their cars, and can’t be bothered to restructure their lives like my friends in Paris did.
by rsanek | 2025-05-18 14:13:27+00:00
it'd be nice to have a better UI. but the reason people don't use Anki isn't because it's hard to use. it's because the time to value is high, and the value really only comes from long term discipline and motivation.

people that are motivated and will succeed with Anki regardless of design will power through an annoying UI. so with better design, you'll increase top of funnel but radically decrease conversion.
by alchemist1e9 | 2025-05-18 14:13:31+00:00
I agree and have experimented with related ideas. In a sibling comment thread.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43985513#44016985

https://kbd.news/Tackle-keyboard-2549.html

I want to try some version of this next. I’ve tried tap strap (overlaps with glove idea) and I currently use a retractable lap approach, where the keyboard folds out from chest to be used, it’s still too much friction and too awkward.

This Tackle keyboard approach is a bit obvious once you see it if one can be fully touch type without crossing middle then a split keyboard mounted on torso could work… perhaps … these things require actually trying I’ve found.
by pmarreck | 2025-05-18 14:13:43+00:00
Ruby has a startup time and is slow. (Although compiled Crystal might be an idea...)

I am specifically looking for a language that:

1) is a scripting language (don't have to worry about compiling it)

2) starts up fast (so if I use it in a loop or a sequence of pipes, it won't necessarily be the bottleneck)

3) runs fast

4) is easy to work with and is either ridiculously simple or well-designed (Bash has so many footguns...), and scales up to medium-size code (anything that would take more than 1 file to implement should be promoted to another language)

Awk fit this. So did D, actually. Lua certainly does.

> luajit is unnecessary

Why not use it if it's there, it's faster, and you don't need features beyond 5.1?

> patterns are not regex

They're almost regex, they're faster than regex, and for 90% of use cases, you don't need full regex

> tables which is a weird data structure

Isn't a table basically just a JavaScript object, where metatables are the prototype object? Sort of, at least...
by anton-c | 2025-05-18 14:14:44+00:00
Seeing Taylor swift mentioned is weird to me cuz nobody I know listens to her. We had like, 10 international popstars thru my youth with the Disney ones too(not that anyone listened to those that I knew).

When I was young you couldn't NOT know the song "semi-charmed life" by third eye blind, or 50 other songs. Nowadays idk if that's the case. Then again, I'm not sure how much would be lost if my whole middle school didn't know the song "shake that Laffy taffy".
by aspenmayer | 2025-05-18 14:15:10+00:00
> Updated Nov 29, 2022

> The paywall list is taken from the following URL. At first, I was mindfully fetching the list, but then I just manually inserted the list, way simpler this way.

I don't know why you would use this instead of the project it is based on, bypass paywalls clean.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bypass_Paywalls_Clean
by rafaelmn | 2025-05-18 14:15:25+00:00
I got this keyboard : https://www.keebart.com/products/3w6 that uses mechanical low profile silent choc switches (Twilight Ambients Silent) and they are quieter than most non-mechanical keyboards. Eg. my Logitech Ergo k860, which uses rubber domes, is louder. Only quieter keyboard I can think of is my MacBook Air but even that can get louder with intensive typing because of a different sound profile - depends on how hard you bottom out - for my typing style chocs are a bit louder.

Realistically nobody would even hear you typing on this unless you're in a quiet room, and there's a ton of mods you can do to get it quieter.

Anyway if you are into solving niche keyboard use cases definitely look into the custom build scene, it's surprisingly easy to build high quality custom solutions, and even easier to find someone to build it for you for few hundred $.
by Barrin92 | 2025-05-18 14:15:28+00:00
>But spaced repetition challenges that, in a sense.

Common sense challenges this honestly. Education systems that traditionally have put a strong focus on repetition, memorization and what you could call neuromuscular training (e.g China, the USSR, France) in particluar in STEM far outperform anyone else. Vietnam outperforms most rich countries.

In programming circles it's a cultural cliche because our profession is full of people who go by: "I am a genius, I work smart, not hard", probably the most damaging idea ever uttered in education, and in the humanities it's seen as culturally unsophisticated.

In reality, 95% of everything is mechanics. Starcraft, math, even literature and acting. Creative freedom is enabled only by a large body of effortless recollection.
by immibis | 2025-05-18 14:15:31+00:00
But in the PRC it's illegal to say you don't like the government, while in the UK it's illegal to say you're going to blow up a mosque because Muslims are rats.

Yes, in every country (including the USA) (excluding North Korea because it doesn't have social media) it's possible to get arrested based on a social media post. However, that's overly reductive. Has anyone paid attention to which posts get people arrested? No, because that wouldn't make the UK look nearly as evil as the people saying this stuff want it to look.
by hagbard_c | 2025-05-18 14:16:25+00:00
Just like in the 80's/90's this is not the case. I did not have access to those TV programs and only got a C64 (and with that, access to games) in the latter year of high school and had problems whatsoever with 'social acceptance' be dint of being among peers with similar attitudes. I formed a band with some friends, we played music, did 'boy stuff' (nick the car and drive it through the fields, make fires, blow things up, shoot air rifles, made a pulse jet engine, etc.) and got along just fine. The same is true now, my 14yo daughter gets along fine with some - but not all, just like I didn't back then - of her class mates, has some hobbies (drawing, singing, now in a 'pop choir') and has a lot of time compared to those who're glued to their phones 24/7. When she needs or wants more time she sends me a message through that XMPP server (right under the stairs here at the farm) and I usually grant it if it seems reasonable where 'reasonable' can mean 'waiting for a delayed train so I want to browse the web a bit', not just 'serious' things. She sometimes talks about friends who have unlimited access to phones but tends to put that in terms of unbelief and wonder, "how can her parents allow her to do that, it doesn't make sense, don't they know what she's doing all that time?" so she's either the world's best actor or she does not feel she's under 'a high degree of sheltering/control'.

She is 14 years old. Who ever though it a good idea to allow every lunatic out there on the Weird Wide Web to introduce her to his personal fetish?
by atmavatar | 2025-05-18 14:20:29+00:00
Or, you know, we could roll back the massive tax cuts passed since his presidency.

In the last half century, every Republican administration (except George Bush Sr.) passed huge tax cut bills, and for some reason, everyone here acts as if they are some edicts from above that cannot be touched.

It's like the federal government quit its tech job to go work fast food and became convinced the only solution to its debt is to start living in a tent under a nearby bridge rather than try getting the tech job back. The current administration's policies are similar to selling off the tent and using a newspaper for cover because it would rather start panhandling than continue working a real job.
by trollied | 2025-05-18 14:20:54+00:00
I used to love working with E10k/E15k boxes. I was a performance engineer for a telco software provider, and it was so much fun squeezing every single thing out of the big iron.

It’s a bit sad that nobody gives a shit about performance any more. They just provision more cloud hardware. I saved telcos millions upon millions in my early career. I’d jump straight into it again if a job came up, so much fun.
by rainsford | 2025-05-18 14:21:26+00:00
I think there's some truth to that, but my experience has been that at least closer or longer-term friendships can adapt to new shared activities because you care about the people more than the activity that first brought you together.

As an example, my close friend group initially bonded over going out to eat at fancy restaurants, bars, and traveling all over the world. When many of them started having kids, our shared activities shifted more towards cookouts at each other's homes, kid-friendly breweries with playgrounds, and trips closer to home where we can rent a big house with things for the kids to do.

I think whether friends can make this transition depends on the depth of the friendship. In my case, most of the group were friends for 10+ years and done a ton of different things together before kids entered the scene, so the strength of the friendship was really activity agnostic at that point. I could see less long-lasting friendships or ones built more around specific activities having more of a challenge navigating the change.