MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by reverendsteveii | 2025-05-13 15:13:01+00:00
>I like how these kind of lists get us talking and thinking about our own experiences. What do you agree with, not agree with?

I panned this list in a different comment but I like it a lot better from this perspective. It's not necessarily there to be right. Sometimes it's there to say things to which your immediate response is "That's bullshit" but in a way that forces you to articulate why, or (and this is even better) to admit that you can't. Like when I read Heinlein.
by FitCodIa | 2025-05-13 15:13:03+00:00
This approach is simplistic. People can usually direct their anger and frustration, to some extent. Most of the time, there's little reason to be angry at a coworker. Even if they mess up, it's usually not a huge deal, it's relatively easy to mitigate or undo; if you need mediation, there's a manager "nearby" in the org chart to escalate to, and so on. In addition, you probably have some camaraderie from past projects and assignments etc, which provides a basis of resilience when they (or you) screw up. Staying relatively pleasant and positive is not a huge challenge.

Conversely, when upper management fucks up, and refuses to take responsibility (for example: admit to making the wrong decision, or even reverse the decision), that's when cynicism runs rampant among the rank and file. And gee, what a surprise, VPs and CEOs try to avoid underlings that speak up about the screw-ups of the brass.
by PaulRobinson | 2025-05-13 15:13:15+00:00
Not all relationships are equal, so don't just prioritize relationships, but those that are valuable.

You can't ignore people who bad at what they do and are trying to make it someone else's problem, but you can find allies who are good at what they do and want to take some pride and ownership in the same things you do.

If someone doesn't have a vision for how they will accomplish what is asked of them, that's an opportunity for mentorship. They might not take it from you, but you can offer it.

I actually think the really dangerous people are the ones you encourage people to seek out: those who think everything is easy. That to me is a sign of Dunning-Kruger. I'd rather sit down with somebody who says "I don't know yet how to solve this, but we'll work it out", than somebody who says "it's easy we don't need to think too hard about this" or "it's hard and so I won't even try".

Also, meetings, shared responsibilities - they're part of getting stuff done as part of a team. Instead of trying to avoid them, try to improve them. Learn the people skills needed to help a person change their habits towards being the productive ally that adds to a team rather than takes away from it.

It's not easy, it's hard, but you will figure it out. If I was working with you, I'd say "we", not "you" but alas...
by david927 | 2025-05-13 15:13:33+00:00
My understanding is that the wave function will collapse if information can be retrieved, so the moment it can be known which slit it goes through, it's already over.

I also have a fun QM experiment idea but I could be wildly misinformed:

You make two experiments, one where you fire polarized photons at a screen and one where you fire non-polarized photons. You come back some time later (irrelevant but who cares), and decide using a cosmic radiation detector (radiation still coming to us from the big bang, so truly non-deterministic) which screen to choose. You fire a regular photon and the two slits. My understanding is that if the polarized screen is chosen, the photon will come through as a particle and if not, as a wave.
by haswell | 2025-05-13 15:13:37+00:00
It’s an 8 minute video…and even shorter at 1.5X that will take me longer to summarize than you to watch.

But in summary, YouTube is rolling out AI summarization features on some content without giving creators any say in the matter.

Concerns include:

- Low quality summarization of high quality content will devalue the content, and in many cases is just a worse version of the content

- Impact to watch time on the channel can impact channel success over time

- YouTube is not doing anything to compensate creators for reducing watch time such as sharing revenue from viewers who primarily interact with the AI summary

But I think he articulates this much better than I did. Much better to watch the video.
by jawns | 2025-05-13 15:14:27+00:00
This article suggests that this is a win-lose scenario.

It's a win for the workers and the economy at large, but a loss for employers.

However, it might very well be a win-win.

While the employer might lose a worker to an entrepreneurial venture, isn't this the sort of self-selection out that leads to a more engaged workforce overall?

Retaining those employees, who would really be doing something else, by introducing more friction through an in-office policy seems like a recipe for low engagement and mediocre business impact.
by iainmerrick | 2025-05-13 15:14:29+00:00
Yeah, that's fair, clearly this sort of thing is why we have multiple languages in the first place!

I don't think I'll ever abandon the idea that making code "correct by construction" is a good goal. It might not always be achievable or practical but I strongly feel it's always something to aim for. For me, silent zero initialization compromises that because there isn't always a safe default.

I think nil pointers are like NaNs in arithmetic. When a nil or a NaN crops up, it's too late to do anything useful with it, you generally have to work backwards in the debugger to figure out where the real problem started. I'd much rather be notified of problems immediately, and if that's at compile time, even better.

In the real world, sure, I don't code review every single arithmetic operation to see if it might overflow or divide by zero. But when the compiler can spot potential problem areas and force me to check them, that's really useful.
by throw310822 | 2025-05-13 15:14:54+00:00
I agree that many right-wing conspiracy theories are completely unhinged, while the corresponding left-wing ones are merely wild exaggerations.

On the flip side, the unhinged theories remain mostly fringe, while the wild exaggerations are repeated as well-known facts by most mainstream media. See the assault to the Congress made by a few hundred nobodies, now normally claimed to have been nothing less than a "coup attempt".
by cogman10 | 2025-05-13 15:14:54+00:00
> But IC1-3s write 99% of software, and the 1 QA guy in 99% of tech companies

I'd take this one step further, 99% of the software written isn't being done with performance in mind. Even here in HN, you'll find people that advocate for poor performance because even considering performance has become a faux pas.

That means you L4/5 and beyond engineers are fairly unlikely to have any sort of sense when it comes to performance. Businesses do not prioritize efficient software until their current hardware is incapable of running their current software (and even then, they'll prefer to buy more hardware is possible.)
by TowerTall | 2025-05-13 15:15:23+00:00
It was called "Continuum" and was introduced with Windows 10 Mobile. Worked pretty smoothly but it couldn't run win32 application only the new modern UWP apps. Introduced 6 Oct 2015 alongside the Nokia Lumia 950/950 XL. Discontinued when Windows 10 Mobile reached end of support in Dec 2019.

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/design/de...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Continuum
by matheusmoreira | 2025-05-13 15:15:33+00:00
Android users are most certainly not fine. Hardware remote attestation enables apps to determine whether you "tampered" with "your" device by doing things like installing apps from "untrustworthy" sources. They want to do this so they can discriminate against you for it. You do things like this and suddenly your bank stops letting you log into your account.

Android is just a shitty version of iOS now.
by jmward01 | 2025-05-13 15:15:40+00:00
The goal isn't optimized code, it is utility/value prop. The question then is how do we get the best utility/value given the resources we have. This question often leads to people believing optimization is the right path since it would use fewer resources and therefore the value prop would be higher. I believe they are both right and wrong. For me, almost universally, good optimization ends up simplifying things as it speeds things up. This 'secondary' benefit, to me, is actually the primary benefit. So when considering optimizations I'd argue that performance gains are a potential proxy for simplicity gains in many cases so putting a little more effort into that is almost always worth it. Just make sure you actually are simplifying though.
by lynndotpy | 2025-05-13 15:15:41+00:00
> the compute on a phone is now good enough to do most things most users do on desktop.

Really, the compute on a phone has been good enough for at least a decade now once we got USB C. We're still largely doing on our phones and laptops the same things we were doing in 2005. I'm surprised it took this long

I'm happy this is becoming a real thing. I hope they'll also allow the phone's screen to be used like a trackpad. It wouldn't be ideal, but there's no reason the touchscreen can't be a fully featured input device.

I'm fully agreed with you on the wasted processing power-- I think we'll eventually head toward a model of having one computing device with a number of thin clients which are locally connected.
by nickledave | 2025-05-13 15:15:44+00:00
the tl;dr:

> The NSF’s investments have shaped some of the most transformative technologies of our time—from GPS to the internet—and supported vital research in the social and behavioral sciences that helps the nation understand itself and evaluate its progress toward its democratic ideals. So in 2024, I was honored to be appointed to the National Science Board, which is charged under 42 U.S. Code § 1863 with establishing the policies of the Foundation and providing oversight of its mission. > But the meaning of oversight changed with the arrival of DOGE. That historical tension—between the promise of scientific freedom and the peril of political control—may now be resurfacing in troubling ways. Last month, when a National Science Board statement was released on occasion of the April 2025 resignation of Trump-appointed NSF Director Sethuraman Panchanathan, it was done so without the participation or notice of all members of the Board.

> Last week, as the Board held its 494th meeting, I listened to NSF staff say that DOGE had by fiat the authority to give thumbs up or down to grant applications which had been systematically vetted by layers of subject matter experts.

> Our closed-to-the-public deliberations were observed by Zachary Terrell from the DOGE team. Through his Zoom screen, Terrell showed more interest in his water bottle and his cuticles than in the discussion. According to Nature Terrell, listed as a "consultant" in the NSF directory, had accessed the NSF awards system to block the dispersal of approved grants. The message I received was that the National Science Board had a role to play in name only.

I can't sum up everything that's wrong with this moment better than that.

This is not some necessary pain that comes with shaking up the system. This is a hostile takeover of the federal government by embarrassingly ignorant goons who think they know everything, just because they can vibe code an almost functional app. This is what happens when you have VCs huffing their own farts in their Signal echo chamber: https://www.semafor.com/article/04/27/2025/the-group-chats-t.... Congratulations, you buffoons, you have demonstrated there are scaling laws for footguns.
by tristor | 2025-05-13 15:17:30+00:00
I think you are incorrectly assuming that I am somehow supporting cutting science funding and/or that I am "anti-woke" (I am a little bit, but more because I think it's unhelpful than because I think the goal of helping people who are underrepresented in society is wrong).

The "ideas" are bad when they start from forcing something on a people that doesn't align to their linguistic or cultural experience coming from an outsider using their wealth and power to directly influence outcomes for those people. The use of the word "latinx" is a perfect example of exactly the wrong way to approach trying to help people, which honestly if you are as cynical as I am you see as the point. I don't often believe people who say "I was only trying to help" as they actively seek to destroy other people's cultures and languages.
by eloisius | 2025-05-13 15:17:55+00:00
Exactly. It sounds like this test is working as expected based on the comments here. "Honest" might mean telling your coworker that their code sucks and you could do it better if they would just get out of your way. Tactful and positive would be saying they're off to a good start but here's some feedback. If someone can't describe their current or previous job in somewhat positive terms, I don't expect they'll be able to tactfully navigate difficult social situations in their new job.
Show HN: Built a simple browser-based tool to chat with yourself across devices
by sferdeveloper | 2025-05-13 15:17:58+00:00
Hey everyone!

After working on this for a couple of weeks, I'm excited to share something small but (hopefully) useful — it's called TextPC.com The idea is super simple: it lets you chat with yourself between your phone and your computer. Most of the time, we just want to send a quick link, a bit of text, or a note from our phone to our PC (or the other way around). But doing that smoothly can be surprisingly annoying. Bluetooth is slow, requires pairing, and doesn’t even work out of the box on iPhones. Messaging apps like WhatsApp or Telegram work, but they need you to log in, and if you’re using someone else’s computer, you probably don’t want to leave your account behind or dig through chats to find what you just sent. TextPC tries to solve that in the easiest way possible:

- Open the site on your PC - Click to create a chat room - Scan the QR code with your phone or tablet

Now your phone and PC are connected in a private chat, right in the browser. No installs, no accounts, and everything disappears when you're done. It’s quick, private, and perfect for those little moments when you just want to move something from one device to another without any setup or stress.

Just a small project, but I hope it helps someone out there. Let me know what you think
by sorcerer-mar | 2025-05-13 15:18:08+00:00
> These kinds of myths get perpetuated by people who repeat it without having experienced the side of just writing native software. I think mostly it is people rationalizing not learning assembly and sticking to C++ or PERL because that's what they learned first.

Why stop at C++? Is that what you happen to be comfortable with? Couldn't you create even faster software if you went down another level? Why don't you?
by AlexandrB | 2025-05-13 15:18:09+00:00
I'm increasingly sympathetic to the perspective that universities cannot both exclude any questioning of their ideological leaning while also expecting republican administrations and voters to continue funding them. I've seen this best expressed here: https://unsafescience.substack.com/p/the-beatings-will-conti...

It's one thing to want public funding, but it's quite another to want that funding while expecting nakedly partisan purity testing like "DEI statements" for faculty.
by andy12_ | 2025-05-13 15:18:11+00:00
Online Word (or Microsoft 365, or whatever it is called) regularly took me 2 minutes to load a 120 page document. I'm being very literal here. You could see it load in real time approximately 1 page a second. And it wasn't a network issue, mind you. It was just that slow.

Worse, the document strained my laptop so much as I used it, I regularly had to reload the web-page.
by taraindara | 2025-05-13 15:18:33+00:00
Going through this now in my job. This was a great reminder that I’m not alone in all of this. It’s funny how easy it can be to feel like I’m the only one that’s struggling.

And it’s true about the “fuck yous”. It instantly reminded me of an old coworker that was let go and was trying to joke about it, but the F U sticks aside from anything else he accomplished while there.
by jodrellblank | 2025-05-13 15:18:39+00:00
> "there is only one multi-geared commercially available unicycle hub, and it only has 2 gears, and costs $1500 (Schlumpf drive)"

The Kwiggle folding bike in Germany[1] took over manufacturing of the Schlumpf drive in 2023[2] and uses it for their 6-speed option. It's in the bottom bracket and shifts by hitting the axle left/right with the heels. (costs ~€2000 and surely the front gear is not three quarters of that?).

[1] https://www.kwigglebike.com/en_US/

[2] https://www.drive-mobility.com/en "We, KwiggleBike GmbH, have been managing the business of Haberstock Mobility GmbH since 01.04.2024. We have been manufacturing all Schlumpfdrives since mid-2023"
by eig | 2025-05-13 15:19:02+00:00
The parent commenter is not speaking about science as a whole, they are speaking about US dominance in science.

You state that "hiccup won't stop or even slow down science in the US. All it will do is take government out of the equation." I disagree and I would suspect most scientists reading that statement would also disagree. I too have seen many bright people turning away from the US because of this. I am personally certain that these policies will significantly slow down science in the US.

After all, when David Hilbert was asked in 1934 "How is mathematics at Göttingen, now that it is free from the Jewish influence?", he replied “There is no mathematics in Göttingen, anymore”.
by oozzy77 | 2025-05-13 15:19:07+00:00
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- Marketing content writing copilot, that auto-completes your writing content

- Cross-post to platforms like FB, IG, X, TikTok, Medium, etc. — it uses AI browser automation so theoretically it works with any site

- Automatically adapts tone and format to fit each platform

- Image & Video Editing by natural convo: add stylized text overlays (like you see on Tiktok/CapCut), generate illustrative images for your content, etc.

I also works as a general AI agent like Manus!
by famouswaffles | 2025-05-13 15:20:14+00:00
>I'm attributing the start of the current AI hype cycle to the resurgence of CNNs using GPUs, roughly around the time of AlexNet and AlphaGo, not to LLMs and the Transformer architecture.

The current hype cycle, the one fueling hundreds of billions in investment by multiple of the biggest tech companies in the world has little to do with Alex Net and AlphaGo and everything to do with LLMs and generative AI in general.

>Though if we're being really pedantic, the original Transformer paper is from 2017, so almost a decade ago. But this is beside my point.

The transformer paper did not start the generative AI craze. GPT-3 in 2020 did it for the research world, and the release of ChatGPT in Nov 22 did it for the general public.

>The machine has no concept of a "domain". Whether it's outputting code, poetry, images, or video, it's all data generated by probabilistic pattern matching and pseudo-randomness. The structure and accuracy of the generated data is meaningful only to humans, and it's the most important factor that is measured in all these benchmarks.

What are you on about? Of course it does. This conversations are getting tiring. Yes, LLMs model concepts directly independent of the text it is trained on. This has been demonstrated multiple times including very recently again by anthropic. There is nothing random about the predictions they make.

And even if the machine didn't model these things directly, the concept of domains would still be relevant to the humans testing it as 'data' is not equal.

SOTA LLMs are good for diagnosis. That was evident even before this benchmark. I'm not talking about some imagined future. I'm talking about right now. Sticking your head in the sand because of your 'experience' with coding is nonsensical. The benchmarks aren't arbitrary - In some cases they are directly testing the ability in question.

I'm not advocating for removing doctors from the picture entirely. It wouldn't even be possible even if I was, at least at the moment.
by matheusmoreira | 2025-05-13 15:20:19+00:00
Of course not. That's why I singled out a very specific kind of maintainer: the type who thinks himself superior to users even when they engage at their level. Guys so good they can't be bothered to do it themselves but complain when others do it.

Good maintainers may be firm but they are always nice and grateful, and they treat people as their equals. They don't beg others for their time and effort. If they do, they don't gratuitously shit on people when they get the results. They work with contributors in order to get their work reviewed, revised and merged. They might even just merge it as-is, it can always be refactored afterwards.

That's hard to do and that's why doing it makes them good maintainers. Telling people their "contributions are welcome" only to not welcome their contributions when they do come is the real "low effort".
by light_hue_1 | 2025-05-13 15:21:01+00:00
No way.

You've got it totally backwards. Companies push features onto users who do not want them in order to make sales through forced upgrades because the old version is discontinued.

If people could, no one would ever upgrade anything anymore. Look at how hard MS has to work to force anyone to upgrade. I have never heard of anyone who wanted a new version of Windows, Office, Slack, Zoom, etc.

This is also why everything (like Photoshop) is being forced into the cloud. The vast majority of people don't want the new features that are being offered. Including buyers at businesses. So the answer to keep revenue up is to force people to buy regardless of what features are being offered or not.
by throwaway5752 | 2025-05-13 15:21:02+00:00
It's not a clusterfuck. The librarian of congress move was a deliberate hostile attempt attempt by the executive to take control over the legislative branch. Just like AFL vs John Roberts is a hostile attempt to take over the judicial.

It's an concerted attempted authoritarian takeover through bureaucratic methods. When they exhaust this, you'll see them frustrated and declare states of emergencies. The founders wrote about this in the Federalist Papers, people like this have always existed.
by benoau | 2025-05-13 15:21:08+00:00
The most egregious behaviour is simply denying consumers the information they need to not pay ridiculous, even recurring, fees to Apple to use someone else's service. Fees they may have coerced the app developer into implementing, like Patreon, whilst simultaneously illegally depriving them of any alternative billing methods. Fees they testified are for doing nothing. Fees they testified carry 75% profit margin.