MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by melodyogonna | 2025-05-18 05:43:10+00:00
I don't think it really matters whether Rust has hit critical mass or not tbh, just the fact that it is entirely a new language to learn with very different semantics compared to Python is a blocker for many people.

Mojo right now is not much better, but I've seen Python compatibility factor into the language design and semantics again and again. It is not enough to be a language that looks like Python, like Nim, things also have to behave the same when the semantics of static typing allows.

Mojo is not deeply embedded in the AI/LLM hype, there is nothing in the language that is targeted specifically for AI. The standard Library has a GPU package for general-purpose gpu programming, but that isn't AI specific.
by californical | 2025-05-18 05:44:09+00:00
Yeah, as someone who will soon be starting some basic smart home configurations, this whole article reads like “why not to use HA”.

I want a system so reliable that I can completely forget it exists. I have been leaning towards setting up a few basic automations with Apple Home and calling it good, since it seems like the Apple version can handle simple things like “turn on the lights at 8pm for 3 hours when I’m out of town” or “open the blinds when my morning alarm rings”. Other than that, probably don’t need a ton of smartness besides grouping things into zones that can be turned on/off together
by mannyv | 2025-05-18 05:44:17+00:00
'Pull' and 'push' make even less sense than 'stream' and 'batch.'

In the old days batch was not realtime and took a while. Imagine printing bank statements, or calculating interest on your accounts at the end of the day. You literally process them all later.

Streaming is processing the records as they arrive, continuously.

IRL you can stream then batch...but normally batch runs at a specific time and chows everything.
by nimih | 2025-05-18 05:47:55+00:00
> And the judges of these tournaments not only understand it too (I can understand an opponent understanding if they've practiced the same thing)

Generally yes, although a good team will slow down and speak more or less like normal people if they have a so-called "lay judge" who wouldn't be able to understand them going at full speed.

> but seriously value it in scoring?

You don't really get "scored" on how fast you speak (there's no points system), but, as I mentioned, there are strategic reasons to speak quickly.

For instance, a time-honored strategy is to spew out a huge number of roughly-orthogonal arguments (e.g. "my opponent's policy failed to support the resolution we are debating this tournament, and thus shouldn't win for procedural reasons." "my opponent's policy would destabilize the Kashmir conflict and thus lead to global thermonuclear war." "my opponent's policy would preclude this alternative policy I am now presenting, and my policy is better, ergo my opponent's policy is bad in terms of opportunity cost." and so on), and then circle back later in the debate and further develop any arguments your opponent failed to adequately address (perhaps because they can't speak as fast as you).

An interesting counter-example from when I was actively debating is that at least one team on the national circuit was arguing (somewhat successfully, if I remember right) that speaking fast was a reason to actively vote against a team. The rough gist of the argument was something along the lines that being trained to speak quickly (and have the huge amount of prep-work required to really get value out of the skill) was something really only accessible to affluent/"privileged" kids (although that latter term was a couple years away from entering the common lexicon, I think), and then connecting it back to the central topic of that debate season so as to undermine whatever position the other team had originally presented (but, of course, pointing out that the impact of their argument was occurring in the real world, right now, contra the assumed fiction of their opponent's policy proposal or whatever, and thus a more urgent reason to vote for them).

> what is the point of winning a debate tournament like this, or that values this 'debate'?

For the most part, it's a fun and challenging game for the people involved, the same reason people play chess or go bowling. There's a lot of work and creativity that goes into preparing for a tournament, and the debate rounds themselves reward being able to think quickly on your feet and work well with your debate partner. You get a lot of practice at speaking in public, to a hostile audience no less, which is imo an incredibly valuable life skill (and can be very exciting).
by MrJohz | 2025-05-18 05:49:45+00:00
I wrote about this last year, it's one of my favourite bits of this spec: https://jonathan-frere.com/posts/disposables-in-javascript/#...

TL;DR: the problem if you just pass the DisposableStack that you're working with is that it's either a `using` variable (in which case it will be disposed automatically when your function finishes, even if you've not actually finished with the stack), or it isn't (in which case if an error gets thrown while setting up the stack, the resources won't be disposed of properly).

`.move()` allows you to create a DisposableStack that's a kind of sacrificial lamb: if something goes wrong, it'll dispose of all of its contents automatically, but if nothing goes wrong, you can empty it and pass the contents somewhere else as a safe operation, and then let it get disposed whenever.
by notpushkin | 2025-05-18 05:51:43+00:00
Elixir/Phoenix → web, various parallel processing stuff?

Haskell → dunno, but it’s pretty cool

Erlang → dunno again, maybe some low-level stuff for Elixir?

F# → business apps for MS when you get sick from C#

Crystal → web, I guess?

Ruby is good for web, but it’s also useful when metaprogramming tricks work for you in your particular domain. Same with Python (it’s also insanely good for web!).
by qwerpy | 2025-05-18 05:52:13+00:00
My house’s automation is pretty much additive but recently I’ve started getting more and more annoyed at the smart light switches. I bought a hodgepodge of switches from different manufacturers. They all work but have different amounts of delay and none of them have the determinism of a dumb switch that physically changes positions.

Someday in the far future when someone buys my house, the small but noticeable differences in light switch behavior is going to drive them crazy. I did keep all the original switches for the next owner, if they are motivated to swap them back in.
by devman0 | 2025-05-18 05:53:24+00:00
Client certs are strongly bound to the TLS handshake, and thus a connection, which makes them pretty unfriendly to a lot of proxy driven architectures, where as JWTs and Cookies can pass through proxies trivially, and are bound to requests not connections. There is some work being done around standardizing pass through of client cert information through proxies, but I'm not aware of any widespread support.
by dedup | 2025-05-18 05:53:30+00:00
I order a (free, due to my Sip Club subscription) coffee every day, sometimes twice a day. What I really want from the Panera Bread's kiosk is being able to wave my phone next to it, take a cup, fill it, and be on my way -- without having to click through all that nonsense on a greasy screen. Like the author, by now I can probably go through the sequence with my eyes closed, but I do personally consider it one of the most obnoxious UX fails in my daily life.
by benstigsen | 2025-05-18 05:53:47+00:00
I disagree. Having been a previous V developer contributing to the language (though arguably very little), the issues of missed deadlines, fake it till you make it and more seems completely valid.

If you join the Discord and search for "this week", "this month", "next week" and "next month" with Alex Medvednikov as the author, you'll see 80+ (yes, that many) missed deadlines, some that go all the way back to 2019.

Version 0.3 promised autofree and a syntax freeze, it got none of those. I remember discussing this with Alex, saying that it would be ideal, to publicly mention that autofree wouldn't be included in the release, and it is as if he just couldn't see why that type of communication was important.

There were also instances of moderators publicly being mean to other chatters, _especially_ when asking about valid concerns in the language, like the criticism mentioned in other blog posts (specifically the "V is for Vaporware" posts). When talking to one of the other moderators, this was defended as "cultural differences".

I left the team (and was blocked by Alex) the same day that another developer left.

The V syntax has also changed quite a bit, and is significantly more complex than it was in 0.3.

One thing I wish would have happened with V, would be having a narrow focus, instead of working on Gitly, vbrowser, ved, vinix, Volt, native backend, autofree, c-to-v converter, go-to-v converter and all the other things. Alex is very ambitious to the point that very little seems finished.
by isoprophlex | 2025-05-18 05:53:49+00:00
If the youtube-thumbnail-style header image with some douchebag showing An Emotion captioned in Bold Letters doesn't throw you off, the shitty LLM emphasize-emojify-and-whitespace bloat will.

The poor, dumbed down writing notwithstanding, it also takes forever to get to the point.

I didn't enjoy opening this adcrap.
by Dylan16807 | 2025-05-18 05:54:37+00:00
> Nothing to see in the sky, and you may well survive your visit to the event horizon. Then, dramatically less than one second later for any credibly sized black hole, you will meet the singularity, and IIRC you should probably expect to be squashed by tidal forces before that.

Don't we know about a bunch of black holes best measured in AU? Won't you have a good chunk of time inside those? Does time dilation work severely against you?
by zhouyisu | 2025-05-18 05:56:16+00:00
I have also tried to upgrade home lamps. But instead of "smart", I choose simplicity. Using MDNS (local network discovery protocol) and a minimal HTTP interface, I made lamps discoverable and controllable offline via a basic Android App. No central servers, subscriptions, or cloud dependencies.

The result is pure freedom. Setup: plug in and connect to Wifi, done. Control: install app, join home network, control lamps anywhere in the house. Automation: A lightweight, customizable app handles everything.

The app polls locally for available lamps, which works flawlessly for 5-10 devices.

Security might be a problem, but since everything lives behind a firewall, I’m comfortable with the tradeoff.
by chiffaa | 2025-05-18 05:56:57+00:00
> Only Ruby lists Ruby on Rails as its killer app, but that's basically it.

Concrete examples: Dart with Flutter, Elixir with Phoenix,

Arguable ones: JavaScript and browsers, Go and Kubernetes

I kind of disagree with the "killer app" concept because most languages can work in a lot of domains, but there are more examples if you're willing to think about it
by bilbo0s | 2025-05-18 05:58:31+00:00
Sigh.

Firstly, that doesn't tell us whether there is bias in data. That tells us whether or not there is bias in their data.

Secondly, it tells us it can train to spot things that human rads do not train to spot. It tells us nothing at all about whether or not an AI can train to spot things a human rad also trains to spot, but can't.

Human rads don't train to spot race. Why? Because they don't need to do so. Human rads do train to spot pathologies in as early a stage as possible. I've never seen an AI spot one at an earlier stage than the best human rads can. But I have seen several AIs fail to spot pathologies that even human rads at the median could spot.

That's the state of play today. And it's likely to remain that way for a long, long time. Human rads will be needed to review this work not because they are human, but right now, it's because human rads are just better. At the top end, human rads are not only better, but are manifestly superior.
by binoct | 2025-05-18 05:59:11+00:00
The comments here are really interesting to read since there are so many strongly stated different definitions. It’s obvious “steaming” and “batch” have different implications and even meanings in different contexts. Depending on what the type of work being done and what system it’s being done with, batch and streaming can be interpreted differently, so it feels like really a semantic argument going on lacking specificity. It’s important to have common and clear terminology, and across the industry these words (like so many in computer science) are not always as clear as we might assume. Part of what makes naming things so difficult.

It does seem to me that push vs pull are slightly more standardized in usage, which might be what the author is getting at. But even then depending on what level of abstraction in the system you are concerned with the concepts can flip.
by cakealert | 2025-05-18 05:59:42+00:00
This only applies to a situation where you have a function that requires dynamic checks for preconditions. I would suggest that such a function (or how it's being used) is likely a blight already, but tolerable with very few call sites. In which case checking at the call site is the right move. And as you continue to abuse the function perhaps the code duplication will prompt you to reconsider what you are doing.
by blooalien | 2025-05-18 05:59:47+00:00
>"screw the rich, they can afford it".

> are you really getting screwed though, if you can't feel it?

Also: "Why not? The rich have been screwing everyone else since the invention of rich people." :shrug:

I say this kinda-sorta in jest, but in truth, there's a somewhat huge contingent of the ultra-richest of the ultra-rich who are absolutely guilty of such "Screw the poors." behavior. The ongoing and worsening effects of this specific outta-control inequality speak for themselves. Worst part of it is that the things they're doing these days aren't only going to harm just some of humanity, but rather all of humanity, as well as most all other life on Earth.

They could choose to spend the money they've spent doing outright "evil" (bad things that harm everyone) doing good instead, and cemented their places in the history books among many other great humans who made the world a better place during their time here on Earth, but instead they actively choose to do harm, many of them full-well knowing they're doing harm.
by lamp_book | 2025-05-18 06:00:27+00:00
> Often times, "Stream vs. Batch" is discussed as if it’s one or the other, but to me this does not make that much sense really.

Just seems like a flawed premise to me since lambda architecture is the context in which streaming for data processing is frequently introduced. The batch vs stream discussion is more about the implementation side - tools or techniques best used for one aren’t best suited for the other since batch processing is usually optimized for throughput and streaming is usually optimized for latency. For example vectorization is useful for the former and code generation is useful for the latter.
by jolux | 2025-05-18 06:00:32+00:00
Kafka is fairly different from the rest of these — it’s persistent and designed for high read throughput to multiple simultaneous clients at the same time, as some other commenters have pointed out.

We wanted replayability and multiple clients on the same topic, so we evaluated Kafka, but we determined it was too operationally complex for our needs. Persistence was also unnecessary as the data stream already had a separate archiving system and existing clients only needed about 24hr max of context. AWS Kinesis ended up being simpler for our needs and I have nothing but good things to say about it for the most part. Streaming client support in Elixir was not as good as Kafka but writing our own adapter wasn’t too hard.
Show HN: EndurePath – Fast emotion tracking, tiny boosters, and gamified growth
by lectoratium | 2025-05-18 06:01:32+00:00
Hi there, EndurePath has been my main project over the past few months, and I’d love to get feedback from the HN community. The main focus of this application is to improve your mood in a moment and help you to keep it as positive as it can be in your circumstances. For those reasons I’ve added simple mood tracking, tiny tasks, and to keep you engaged personal companion with AI insights. Disclaimer: it’s NOT your personal psychologist or complex application with tasks that cure your past traumas and I don’t have plans to add complex tasks, since there better alternatives that already exists.
by k310 | 2025-05-18 06:01:36+00:00
IMO, untargeted ads are spam, garbage, and targeted ads are an abhorrent invasion of my privacy.

I block every damn ad.

Advertising is a poison that demeans even love – and we're hooked on it [0]

This article is more than 13 years old

George Monbiot

[0] https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2011/oct/24/advert...
by michaelmior | 2025-05-18 06:02:13+00:00
> This means you can really only have one client per topic, because once the message is consumed, it's no longer available to anyone else.

It depends on your use case (or maybe what you mean by "client"). If I just have a bunch of messages that need to be processed by "some" client, then having the message disappear once a client has processed it is exactly what you want.
by anonymousiam | 2025-05-18 06:03:03+00:00
The strategy is a bit more complex than you assume. The "accidental" leak of information in this case will now be "fixed" because a researcher discovered and disclosed it. Plausible deniability is maintained. It's unlikely that any "bad actors" were tracking police/government entities with this exploit, because if they had been, their own communications would have revealed their activity to the surveillance state, and they would have been subject to raid and arrest.

What you see and experience daily is probably not much different than your average citizen of the P.R.C. They're also happy to go about their daily lives living in a surveillance state, with lower crime rates than yours, and similar unchecked governmental powers.
by defrost | 2025-05-18 06:03:15+00:00
If alternative programming exercise counts as a domain, then yes ..

along with Turing Tape machine coding, corewars, that one from Knuth ..

outside of that domain of interest, not so much.

But that is one domain of interest.

It's also true that real world industrial scale dam control isn't a killer application domain for Brainf*ck .. but FGS, have you seen many SCADA implementations?
by CityOfThrowaway | 2025-05-18 06:03:27+00:00
I mean... Taylor swift is literally the biggest musician in history... right now...

There's still enormously mainstream culture. Even more enormous in the fat tail than before.

There's just also a shocking depth in the mid tail now too.

The problem with movies is that Hollywood killed itself and tech helped. Movies and TV just suck now, for the most part.

Music, fashion, and visual culture are still alive and well.
by abeppu | 2025-05-18 06:04:23+00:00
I think the thing missing here is that the killer domain isn't necessarily intrinsic to the language or its design. Some languages are designed for specific domains, but some find their domain based on large projects that happened after the language was out in the world. My understanding is rails came almost a decade after Ruby, numpy etc came well after python. This post says that you shouldn't try to use a language outside of its domain, but if everyone believed that, languages would never find a new domain.
by landl0rd | 2025-05-18 06:04:34+00:00
No they aren't. Spam is stuff I don't want and didn't ask for. Making them "relevant" is pointless. I don't want to be parted from my $ more. I don't want to be manipulated into spending money.

I also very rarely buy random stuff so it's not going to work. Saying you'll run a bot to do 24/7 psyops on me isn't appealing.

Why would I want ads that are "relevant"? Why would I want something hyper-targeting me to waste my money on consumerist BS? Why would I want something that works against what I think is virtuous (living simply, saving and investing, donating to causes I believe in)?

I'm just gonna block everything. Nobody's argument about "well akshually we need ads to support our service" is going to work on me anymore. I will actively feel good about the sabotaging the business model of someone who is actively trying to sabotage my character. Or just log off and move to a cabin in the woods maybe bc this sounds like hell.
by Barrin92 | 2025-05-18 06:05:14+00:00
> Essentially, these automated engines have replaced the music director from 1990s radio stations.

They haven't. A nearest neighbor pseudo random walk from one viral song to the next doesn't replace a music director who could give you thematically, aesthetically or conceptually coherent selections of music.

There's an interesting observation about this at the individual album level, the death of the concept album. Albums that tell coherent two hour long narratives are effectively dead because the almighty algorithm favors the exact opposite. Disjointed, catchy , viral, hook centric music that's short enough to fit over a TikTok clip.

The medium is the message, thinking the Spotify algorithm replaces a music director is like thinking the Youtube short algorithm replaces a film director.
by harrall | 2025-05-18 06:05:25+00:00
While that is true, you also end up learning foundational concepts which are frequently common between fields. You get a major head start when learning.

For example, when learning electrical engineering, you might be forced to get good at vector calculus, and then when you move over to mapping software or physical chemistry, it turns out you use the same vector calculus.

The application of vector calculus might vary but it sure takes way longer to learn vector calculus than to learn how to apply it differently.

Vector calculus probably isn’t the best example but you get what I mean. I just find juniors learn new things so slowly. Hell, when I look back at my university days, it took me a long time to learn anything compared to now.
by nikau | 2025-05-18 06:05:42+00:00
I did similar for my lights, I just have a cronjob on my router that runs "sunwait" utility to pause until sunset, then uses curl to hit the "power on" endpoint of my $15 sonoff switch flashed with tasmota.

Manual on/off is just a URL shortcut in my chrome bookmark bar.

Basic but does what I want, turns light on when it starts to get dark, and simple bookmark on my laptop and phone to toggle power on/off manually.
by Too | 2025-05-18 06:07:26+00:00
It's obviously a SEO farm filled with pure AI slop. Can't believe it made it to the front page here.

"In this comprehensive guide, we compare metal A vs metal B" with 100s of similar articles for every unique permutation of metals. Yeah right someone did that comparision... "Best pocket knife", "Best filet knife", Best Chef knife", bla blabla
by winwang | 2025-05-18 06:08:28+00:00
I agree about no filter*, I disagree with your reasoning. Scala (2) as a language is quite simple. The complexity came from the incredible power of its building blocks (e.g. implicits and path-dependent types). The lack of filter, as I felt, was moreso on how different two Scala codebases could be. That was part of the point though -- a scalable language, which means changing to the needs of each team.
by ipv6ipv4 | 2025-05-18 06:08:51+00:00
If you want to enjoy the adventure I can't recommend Lutron Caseta switches enough. They are rock solid and work independently of any smart home setup (for when the smart home inevitably fails). I don't like smart bulbs but if you prefer them, Philips Hue is widely loved, as far as I can tell.

Whatever you do, don't skimp on the lighting smart devices. It usually ends in tears.