MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by quails8mydog | 2025-05-03 07:31:46+00:00
I think the important concept that "readable and modular" is trying to get at is how easy is it to continue working on the code in future. There's definitely codebases that are easier to work on than others, even when the domain is the same.

I'd say that readability, which often boils down to consistency, and modularity are ways to do this, but they aren't the only ways. And as you say, sometimes there's a need for "unreadable" code, so not everything can be easy.
by otabdeveloper4 | 2025-05-03 07:31:53+00:00
You're not making art, you're running prompts through a meme picture generator.

Like I said, you know nothing about making art. (Not a big deal, not everybody needs to.)

In an alternative parallel universe we might have gotten actual AI tools for making art - these would be various infilling plugins, basically. ("Make me a Photoshop brush that paints pine-needle looking spiky things", that sort of thing.)

What we got in this reality is not that, though. Meme making of the sort you posted is not art.

(That said, making memes, especially of the spicy and/or topical kind, is the one niche that generative AI is good at and nails perfectly.)
by hilbert42 | 2025-05-03 07:32:14+00:00
Yeah, I know. My hardware shop sells packs of 2kg of TSP for less than $10 and I use it for many things—cleaning paint surfaces, removing mold (small concentrations left on surfaces even prevent mold from forming), softening surfactants including washing powders, etc.

Those of us with some chemistry knowledge do such things but those people referred to in the story are unlikely to even know about TSP let alone add it or anything else to washing except perhaps fabric softener.

I found the story lacking detail so I went to the source paper† and whilst detailed in parts I also found it quite unsatisfactory. For example, during the test only 14g of 'unspecified' detergent was added. That little amount added to my wash certainly wouldn't remove dirt or oily stains let alone blood stains (which you'd expect to find on dirty medical workers clothes).

Moreover, whilst the paper mentions there are differences between liquid and powder detergents (including rhise with enzyme) little else is said about them. (Surely one should know the exact nature of one's bactericide before one commences.)

Quote extract from paper's conclusion:

"It is however difficult to determine the antimicrobial efficacy of the detergent itself from this study investigations.…"

Why? Again, you'd reckon that would be prerequisite and part of the controls (i.e.: take a fresh concentration of 14g detergent in the equivalent of a washing machine load of clean water and test it then increase the concentration in steps until 99.99% of the bugs died (that level of kill is required of an effective bactericide).

"Several studies have showed that the HAI organisms MRSA and A. baumanii and other Gram-negative bacteria can survive washes performed under 60°C without detergent…."

"without detergent" — for heaven's sake, that's hardly relevant. Who would wash clothing without detergent? None I'd suggest let alone medical workers.

When one actually reads some of these papers one can only conclude that some conclusions are questionable. Perhaps we've a case of bullshit baffling brains (here I mean those funding the research). Had I been on the funding committee I'd have not been happy with this paper.

BTW, those conducting the research are all from a school of pharmacy, you'd reckon they'd know enough chemistry and quantitative analysis to conduct a more exhaustive test.

*†https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal....
by heavyset_go | 2025-05-03 07:33:39+00:00
> When a low quality lab in China is producing something that normally costs such a high amount there are always corners cut, quality issues and people manufacturing it that are not using the same quality control and standards you would even get from a compounding pharmacy.

The cost of GLP-1 drugs doesn't come from production costs or complexity, it is purely a function of being on patent.

A month's supply of Ozempic costs less than a dollar to produce. It costs $25k in the US because of patents.
by nighthawk454 | 2025-05-03 07:34:41+00:00
Gotcha, thanks for the reply. Makes sense to target burstables first - that seems to be the most common feature set. That’s interesting that it’s not readily available in the kernel. I once spoke to some AWS folks dealing with Batch/ECS scheduling of docker container tasks and they hit similar limitations. As a result their CPU max/burst settings work like the underlying cgroups too.

I imagine writing a custom scheduler would be quite an undertaking!
by autoexec | 2025-05-03 07:34:53+00:00
> And physical, at least to date, retains resell value as well.

That stopping being true as soon as the DS line started and they switched to flash memory that will degrade over time when they don't have power. People's DS games are already failing. The same will happen to switch games. Only a few hardcore collectors are going to pay money for a cartridge that doesn't let you play the game anymore.
by adrianmsmith | 2025-05-03 07:35:02+00:00
It's better now, the support page opens in a new tab, so you can close the tab and go back and click on the (right place of the) video thumbnail.

It used to open that page in the same tab you were in. So you press the browser's back button, you get back to the YouTube home page, but now it's shown you different recommendations and the video you wanted to click on is gone, and you've no idea what it was called...
by JohnScolaro | 2025-05-03 07:36:29+00:00
What a fantastic write-up. As a Brisbane native and software developer I often feel similarly to the author about Brisbane's software dev scene. Brisbane so often feels like a backwater, with the big dogs down in Melbourne and Sydney, and the 'peak of industry' in the US.

I'd love to move to Seattle and work for Amazon or something to get 'relevant industry experience' but what I'd really love to do is make a go of it here because - like the author - I believe Brisbane is secretly still the best city in the world ;-)
by vanderZwan | 2025-05-03 07:37:50+00:00
I can understand the choice as an example for @Stable: it highlights that this addition even comes with "free" upgrades for (some) existing code out there, and it immediately shows a concrete use case. But yes, they could have gone further into generalizing from there.

If you mean the headline, Strings are a universal data type across programming, so claims of improving their performance gets more clicks than "this annotation that you have never heard about before makes some specific code faster", especially when it comes to getting the attention of non-Java programmers.
by XenophileJKO | 2025-05-03 07:38:46+00:00
I mean I did have a meme or two in there to show the range. You clearly didn't look at it if you think it is all memes. Maybe think hard about what art really is.. a brush is a brush..

I don't have to justify my art to anyone. The magic is.. you can't choose what is art. You can choose what YOU think is art and that's fine. However you can't dictate to the world what is art.
by perihelions | 2025-05-03 07:43:42+00:00
The corollary is also true: it's extremely common for courts to be prejudiced against inmate lawsuits. In extreme cases they don't even read their filings,

https://www.propublica.org/article/louisiana-judges-ignored-... ("Louisiana Judges Systematically Ignored Prisoners’ Petitions Without Review" (2023))
by cmckn | 2025-05-03 07:43:57+00:00
I’m regularly shown ads on Instagram for a company called “Willow”, which openly markets itself as a source of GLP-1’s for people who don’t meet the medical criteria. “I just want to lose 15 pounds before my beach vacation!” That type of thing. I’m not that upset to see the compounded GLP-1 market reigned in a bit.
by prox | 2025-05-03 07:44:14+00:00
It’s not an obsession, it’s probably because Doom is easy to understand from a code perspective, and also addresses a lot of graphical/game code techniques, aka its a perfect hobby from a coding perspective to learn, adapt and tweak. It’s actually the perfect example of Hacking.

Also this hacking started early on, so there is probably tons and tons of documentation and data, again making it a great candidate to work with it from a hacking perspective.
by dns_snek | 2025-05-03 07:44:21+00:00
I think I know what you mean but the theory, as far as I understand it, is that those initial feelings of stimulant medications aren't meant to last, and a lot of it is technically a side effect

For the first few days we can experience significantly increased energy and some euphoria, along with the therapeutic effects. That's a really novel experience at first (which in itself helps ADHD brains focus) so it often works extremely well for a short while.

People get in trouble if they try to chase that initial feeling (high), mistaking it for the therapeutic value that the medication is supposed to provide. Eventually we're not supposed to feel it at all, and if it's the right medication for us at the right dosage, it should just quietly provide therapeutic value in the background, improving our executive functioning challenges, emotional regulation, etc.

As I understand it, the data on tolerance with stimulant medication is a bit mixed[1], some people develop tolerance but many people don't.

In your situation I'd definitely give different medications a try, it shouldn't make you feel like a zombie. It's pretty common for people to respond poorly one class of medications and respond well to another class. If Concerta (methylphenidate) didn't work for me I would personally consider Elvanse (lisdexamfetamine), then atomoxetine (an SNRI). There are also some other non-stimulant options like guanfacine and a few antidepressants that have been found to work well for ADHD but I don't know much about those.

[1] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9332474
by tonyhart7 | 2025-05-03 07:45:08+00:00
"You know what I really want? No more "app stores" or "app managers". Just let me download and run an application, like on every non-mobile computer in the world."

pretty sure you can do that, just use non android/ios mobile os

kali linux,ubuntu mobile os is up there, no one force you to use android/ios system
by oezi | 2025-05-03 07:46:28+00:00
My mathematical intuition says this isn't really much considering US annual GDP is 27 trillion (27,000 billions) USD. So less than 1% of GDP.

Your linked article says: Obesity adds between $147 billion and $210 billion to annual U.S. health-care expenses, increasing an average adult's medical costs by 42 percent — an estimated $200,000 over a lifetime.

Since annual GDP per person in the US is roughly 80k USD and average life expectancy is also roughly 80 so roughly 6.4m USD GDP per person lifetime. 200,000 USD over 6.4m would imply over 3% of GDP, which seems more reasonable.
by phinnaeus | 2025-05-03 07:47:26+00:00
I lived and worked as a dev in Seattle for 8 years before moving to Sydney. I want nothing more than for Australia to have a thriving tech scene but I haven’t seen much progress in that area since I moved here 5 years ago. I still love it and have no plans to go back. I just wish there was more opportunity here and not so much constant pressure to move back to the US for increased salary and challenge.
by autoexec | 2025-05-03 07:49:40+00:00
> I buy my games from Steam because of the convenience and to support the developers, but if, say, Gaben kicks the bucket and Steam suddenly closes/turns evil I can just as easily pirate all of my games back.

I'd recommend pirating copies now to keep as backups while it's still easy. You can't be sure you'll be able to find copies of less popular games in the future, having the control over our own computers to do things like run unauthorized software is being threatened all the time, the ever expanding surveillance over our lives makes it increasingly risky to do anything legally questionable, and the copyright regime is only getting more powerful. I don't think piracy is going to die out any time soon, but I do suspect it's only going to get more difficult as we're increasingly controlled and spied on.
by ezst | 2025-05-03 07:52:02+00:00
>> under this model, every application is let to defend itself in an ad-hoc and specific manner.

> This description of the macOS model doesn't really apply so I'm not sure if I'm misunderstanding you or you're misunderstanding the model.

I admit I might be misunderstanding, since, again, I don't use macOS. But from your description:

>>> Safari and macOS do not permit (silent) access to Safari's local storage to user level processes. If malware attempts to access Safari, its access is either denied or the user gets presented a popup to grant access.

it sounds like safari detects that a foreign application is trying to read its data, warn the user and lets them call the shot on that. I don't see how that isn't very specific to safari and to one specific type of mitigation. Unless the same prompt shows up for every program trying to access every other one's configuration? Then I suppose we hit the usability nightmare I'm on about, with utilities like ncdu, borg and others just unable to do their job.

> While SELinux could probably provide this kind of data protection on Linux, the method of technical enforcement is only one part. There's a lot of UI involved to get right, and that will require far more effort.

My experience with SELinux was not that of a problematic UI or ecosystem of utilities around it, but more one of incurred fatigue working against rules: once you've hit your tenth AVC denial trying to get something to run, you might as well want to disable SELinux altogether. Or maybe that's what you call UI? Either way, I don't think there is a viable "fix" for it.

>> Then there is the flatpak+portal isolation model

> That model doesn't really apply here.

I mean, I was merely stating facts about what's existing out there. Anyhow

> What I'm talking about is for an app to have some protections of its own data

This isolates applications and their data from one another, in that aspect they are relatable.
by atoav | 2025-05-03 07:52:14+00:00
I wanted to say, after a certain level looking at your fingers when playing an instrument becomes the equivalent of looking at your legs when riding the bicycle.

When I start to think too much about what my fingers are doing I will play worse. For if I want to practise a particular part where I get the fingering wrong, sure, but when you play it for real, looking is counterproductive.

Something like this could be great for beginners tho. But simular to automatic guitar tuners I am not sure if you should get into the habit of this technology being around.
by timewizard | 2025-05-03 07:52:42+00:00
What I'd like is a shell that is SQL enabled.

Commands with support would detect the shell and output an SQL schema along with insert statements containing the result of the command on a special file descriptor. These would be applied to a newly created 'history#' table and aliased to the 'result' table. The standard output of the command would still be displayed as it is now.

You could then do things like 'ls' and then 'select name,size,owner from result where size > 1024 and owner != 0;' And continue to run queries against the last result until it's replaced by a new command. Or run queries against the 'history#' table or multiple tables to join results from multiple independent commands.

With support for JSONB in most SQL engines this would provide a nice mechanism for working with any sort of nested data structure from any given program or from plain JSON files if required.
by cadamsdotcom | 2025-05-03 07:53:11+00:00
Hey there, I’ve been in Sydney 5 years same as you (after a 7 year stint in SF) and feel exactly the same way.

If you’re around in the next week or two it’d be great to grab coffee and talk about it! Coffee being the great Aussie connector and all.

You can find my email on my profile.
by verall | 2025-05-03 07:55:17+00:00
I get to use both Gerrit (rebase-cherrypick workflow) and gitlab (PR/MR workflow) at work.

I think that MR is better for smaller projects i.e. ~10devs - it's lower overhead, just commit while you work then write up a description when you push.

I think rebase-CP is better for larger projects like ~100 devs committing to a repo - linear git history and every commit having a clear description+purpose+review is worth the overhead at that point.

So one-off tools and infra and stuff get chucked into gitlab while "the product" is in Gerrit.
by OutOfHere | 2025-05-03 07:57:09+00:00
I don't see how such an ambiguous term as vibe coding can stick - it can't. I will go with "agentic AI coding".

---

The part we are seriously missing is a text specification of the software. For any AI coded software, the modular text spec must be neatly written and organized in the ./docs/spec/ folder. It is the foundation for any new model to regenerate the entire software.
by steve_adams_86 | 2025-05-03 07:57:26+00:00
One of the most profoundly simple and true aspects of philosophy that I’ve learned is that without putting it into practice, it’s worthless. It can even be harmful. Although it’s so simple, it’s also one of the most difficult components of philosophy. For me, at least.

I realize more every year how I’ve failed to put what I’ve learned and thought about into practice. It’s dangerously easy to sandbox your intellectual life within your brain, where your ability to reason and navigate your inner world seems deceptively good at times. And that’s an important skill too, of course. But humans are innately social creatures and these skills are next to useless if they don’t also work effectively and reliably around other people, where you don’t control the environment, you don’t control the topic or direction or tone or whatever it might be.

If that obsession with learning the next thing manifests as an ostensibly rich inner world, you will inevitably find yourself in the void generated by antisocial tendencies. Your ideas, skills, emotions, temper, courage, and all the rest won’t have been built upon, tested, broken down, rebuilt, and refined by other human beings. You can only really be a shell of what a human is meant to be. The ultimate test, I guess, is integrating your philosophy with the world. It’s a lot harder than doing it in your sandbox.

I think many of us fool ourselves into thinking we’re doing the work of practicing philosophy in isolation, but it’s actually a distraction from the much more difficult task of practicing it with other people. People who make us angry, sad, distracted, worse than we want to believe we are. Being alone to let yourself impulsively dig deeper and deeper into intellectual or philosophical pursuits can easily be a convenient distraction from the thing we claim to be doing all along.

There’s a sort of irony in the fear or worry that you’ll never learn enough, too. You’ll certainly never get there without deep, intimate, interconnected life with other people. I really believe it. And for a lot of us, that’s incredibly scary too. To let the fear of not knowing enough keep you from truly living is a hell of a thing.
by gsf_emergency | 2025-05-03 07:58:28+00:00
Related discussion (517 pts):

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41891694

https://aworkinglibrary.com/reading/unaccountability-machine

(A very short overview of Dan Davies' book, quoted in TFA, that came up with the term)

EDIT: complementing book mentioned in that thread

Cathy O'Neil's "Weapons of Math Destruction" (2016, Penguin Random House) is a good companion to this concept, covering the "accountability sink" from the other side of those constructing or overseeing systems.

Cathy argues that the use of algorithm in some contexts permits a new scale of harmful and unaccountable systems that ought to be reigned in.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41892299
by sim7c00 | 2025-05-03 07:58:30+00:00
haha, well all the best! its a cool project. i am happy i can forgot about BIOS and went UEFI haha. remember so many tedious nights trying to get an mbr to load an elf file and init x64 mode in one go :'). uefi (edk2) is a blessing if you come from BIOS land (tho mybe less fun in a way!)
by autoexec | 2025-05-03 07:59:10+00:00
People have been altering plays for ages without much issue (just look at the mod community), emulating and porting plays to different stages, and even reverse engineering their own copies of the script.

The only real catch has been online stuff and even that is sometimes worked around or recreated. It's not an impossible task to solve the problem of making games playable into the future, but it'll probably require legislation to force game companies to preserve their game and server code to allow for it.
by nandomrumber | 2025-05-03 07:59:25+00:00
This puts them in approximately the same magnitude of order as kangaroos.

A male Red Kangaroo can weigh upwards of 92kg and stand around the 1.8m (6 feet) mark. Some are over two metres tall. I’ve seen a couple giants, well over two metres and biceps as big as my thigh. Anyways, kangaroo sucklings typically way less than one gram.

Although they are special case of mammal.

Kangaroos are also comically dumb.
by juliag2 | 2025-05-03 08:00:02+00:00
I tried AI music for the first time today and I can definitely see why people say it feels bland, because it does. But most of what's on the radio today feels bland to me too. You're right - I don't really care if the track playing in my favourite cafe is AI-generated or not. You're not supposed to be emotionally invested into background music, it's music for a simple purpose and for most people, AI can fill that purpose as well as a human. Licensing fees is also a great point, human music royalties are complex and expensive, while AI generated music is a monthly subscription at most.

I can't say I fully agree with you on video game/movie soundtracks, but I think AI generated assets will make game development more accessible, especially for solo developers or small teams.

So I'd just say listen to what you like, see where technology leads us. I don't think human creators will be put out of buisiness any time soon, but they might get competition especially in 'functional' music.
by chickenzzzzu | 2025-05-03 08:01:25+00:00
I live down the street from Amazon's relatively nice suburban office (you couldn't pay me to step foot in Seattle).

Let me save you the trip, you don't want to work for Amazon at the money they pay. They would have to 1.5x it or maybe even double it to make it worth the suffering of working there.

Life is short-- work somewhere else, or failing that, on your own thing :)
Show HN: I made a gamified card collector to celebrate personal achievement(App)
by astrojan | 2025-05-03 08:04:15+00:00
Hi HN,

Last month me and my friend tried Geocaching, an outdoor activity for your to find treasure boxes. Even though we didn't find the treasure, we both think this is worth celebrating.

As a game designer and card game lover, I hoped it would be so cool if I can have achievements recorded as cards, and review them as my collections.

So I made an App called Achiva, and now it's available on App Store.

There are achievements like: - Sleep for 12 hours - Geocaching (of course) - Build Lego but also serious achievements like: - Becoming a parent - Buying a car - First Job

I hope you will like it!

Astrojan (Haoan)
by autoexec | 2025-05-03 08:04:23+00:00
I feel similarly, but at the same time there will come a point where there won't be any games being made that aren't designed to be unplayable after a certain amount of time.

I expect that far more people will suck it up and pay whatever they have to in order to play whatever games they're allowed to today rather than abandon playing video games entirely. I think game companies are counting on that too.

If you're counting on gamers to vote will their wallets in order to save video games I think you're going to be extremely disappointed.