MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by SketchySeaBeast | 2025-05-29 18:35:43+00:00
> That's absolutely not true. First of all, there was an enormous crowd of people: 600,000 families--millions of people--who received the revelation on Mt. Sinai.

It's true that it was very regional, within the reach of a group of people's ability to communicate.

> And secondly, G-d offered the Torah to all the peoples of the world.

Did he? Did all the other cultures of the world about that time simply not answer the door?
by gogurt2000 | 2025-05-29 18:36:07+00:00
I don't want to defend Docker because I'm not a fan, but I can tell you that as a dev the appeal is controlling the environment instead of specifying it.

Lots of Docker fans don't think about what version of libc or java is in their image. They start with a base image, develop code that works there, and release the docker container without ever thinking about it.

If it's an open source project, ignoring bugs that occur outside the official docker build cuts out a lot of work. Inevitably someone with no Linux experience will try to setup Slackware on a raspberry pi to run your project because they read in a forum post that 'real nerds run slackware.' When it doesn't work and they open a bug report, you can spend the next year trying to teach them enough about Linux for them to fix their system and run your project. Or you can come across as mean by saying RTFM. Or you can just avoid all that by pointing them to the Docker image and admitting "I only have the resources to ensure this works in that specific environment."

If it's a corporate project, it safeguards against other devs or someone in IT being foolish. Despite having rules and procedures in place, I've seen plenty of instances where IT or a dev changed something in production environments without warning or announcing it because they thought it would be fine.
by spion | 2025-05-29 18:36:24+00:00
Vibe-wise, it seems like progress is slowing down and recent models aren't substantially better than their predecessors. But it would be interesting to take a well-trusted benchmark and plot max_performance_until_date(foreach month). (Too bad aider changed recently and there aren't many older models; https://aider.chat/docs/leaderboards/by-release-date.html has not been updated in a while with newer stuff, and the new benchmark doesn't have the classic models such as 3.5, 3.5 turbo, 4, claude 3 opus)
by petr25102018 | 2025-05-29 18:36:26+00:00
The older standard tools, because they can be easily put in CI pipelines and shared as scripts with coworkers.

For example, in my personal and professional life I use Make everywhere. The book mentions alternatives, but the examples are built on the time-tested tools.

I focused on things that don't require install (if given the option) or the ones that you are more likely to encounter at work. It is a tradeoff and I can see how the reverse would be appealing too.
by mushufasa | 2025-05-29 18:36:28+00:00
Yes I've tried cursor. Currently it gives 1) high level suggestions if I ask about architecture, which may be valid but doesn't solve the issue of refactoring a large existing codebase to make architectural changes, or 2) some specific improvements on very simple functions, but it majorly falls short for 3) actually implementing improvements, because it doesn't have the context of the product and what "makes sense" as tradeoffs and choices. There are a lot of times where for us, "correctness" is a state of data calculations rather than code validity, where unit tests / integration tests don't exist and aren't trivial to generate.It is counterproductive if we make something run faster but return the wrong results. Or if a team member were to look at a task/function, they could reason "actually this feature that does X should actually be doing Y" but that isn't something the AI can reason about in practice. In those cases, it would be ideal to change the function without relying on tests, because you would actually want the behavior to change. Small example: a feature is not performant, and rather than just making that feature perform better, the better solution would be to switch to a different library that we added elsewhere in the codebase for accomplishing that work.

Also, while cursor is now able to scan terminal server logs to see errors, it doesn't come "out of the box" hooked up to app performance profiling tools -- even just running locally. There probably are some MCP servers or something to do that but I haven't set that up. Really you would want the IDE agent to have a feedback loop that goes like "optimize {speed, resource usage} subject to the constraint of {unit/integration test}" and let it run asynchronously or overnight etc. (Of course, there are tons of times that LLMs will work themselves into a dead end loop, and it would be bad to indefinitely generate LLM API calls on a dead end overnight).
by s1artibartfast | 2025-05-29 18:36:40+00:00
>And yes, we always refer to people who survive natural disasters as "survivors." Google "survivors of hurricane helene" and you'll find countless articles with headlines like "Survivors Describe Their Frightening Experiences," "4 Ways to Help Hurricane Helene Survivors," "Federal Assistance for Hurricane Helene Survivors Surpasses $137 Million," etc.

Yes, I agree, which is why I used it as an example. You are confirming that the observation is not bias! Im not claiming that the article is exceptional in this regard.

I think it is precisely the framing and focus on health and safety which is interesting!
by JulianWasTaken | 2025-05-29 18:37:56+00:00
Looks very nice!

I have an interactive tutorial I wrote and teach with which is here: https://github.com/JulianEducation/CommandLineBasics in case it's useful as well. I only have 90 minutes in my case so it's a constant battle to tweak what I can get to with my audience, so there's still lots of things I want to change.

But I think it's very important to have lots of resources here so I'm excited to look at yours.
by SketchySeaBeast | 2025-05-29 18:38:41+00:00
Sure, if you squint enough everything looks the same, but then you can't see. For instance, in your example Thor is not a creator sky god, and he's limited. He's not even the leader of his pantheon. Zeus, another famous sky god, is neither omniscient nor omnipotent. Yahweh, especially the later Christian incarnation of him, is pretty unique if you compare him to polytheistic religions.
by bluefirebrand | 2025-05-29 18:38:47+00:00
> If you remove the context of LLMs from the discussion, it reads like you're arguing that technological progress in general is bad because people would eventually struggle to live without it.

I'm arguing that there are always tradeoffs and we often do not fully understand the tradeoffs we are making or the consequences of those tradeoffs 10, 50, 100 years down the road

When we moved from more physical jobs to desk jobs many of us became sedentary and overweight. Now we are in an "obesity crisis". There's multiple factors to that, it's not just being in desk jobs, but being sedentary is a big factor.

What tradeoffs are we making with AI that we won't fully understand until much further along this road?

Also, what is in it for me or other working class people? We take jobs that have us driving machines, we are "more productive" but do we get paid more? Do we have more free time? Do we get any benefit from this? Maybe a fraction. Most of the benefit is reaped by employers and shareholders

Maybe it would be better if instead of hoeing for 8 hours the farmhand could drive the tractor for 2 hours, make the same money and have 6 more free hours per day?

But what really happens is that the farm buys a tractor, fires 100 of the farmhands coworkers, the has the remaining farmhand drive the tractor for 8 hours, replacing the productivity to very little benefit to himself

Now the other farmhands are unemployed and broke, he's still working just as much and not gaining any extra from it

The only one who benefits are the owners
by nupc20 | 2025-05-29 18:38:59+00:00
Hey HN! I’ve been building SmartChef, an AI-powered iOS app that creates weekly meal plans based on your dietary preferences and available appliances (like air fryer, stovetop, etc.). You’ll get personalized menus and grocery lists each week.

Just opened up beta testing for the first 100 users, they’ll get free lifetime access to premium features. Would love feedback from this community as I keep refining the experience.

Built in SwiftUI with AWS Amplify on the backend. You can sign up and access the TestFlight link directly from the site. Happy to answer questions or share more about the tech + roadmap!
by einpoklum | 2025-05-29 18:38:59+00:00
"This means that the Jesus Christ market is quite interesting!"

Well, you know, if Jesus were to materialize, I think he would probably confiscate all of the winnings, because:

>* “It is written,” he said to them, “’My house will be called a house of prayer,’ but you are making it ‘a den of robbers.’”*

Matthew 21:13
by wahern | 2025-05-29 18:39:33+00:00
That's the pre-Renaissance, theological idea of angels. I would presume the OP probably knows that given their esoteric reference to Ophanim (TIL! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ophanim), but also understands that the vast majority of people, including Christians, have a metaphysical conception of angels primarily informed by comic books and films.
by BizarroLand | 2025-05-29 18:40:49+00:00
Aside from everyone else's replies, there's also the fact that the niche is smaller now.

Instead of companies dumping their excess stock on whoever offers to buy it, instead they're dumping it all on Amazon and ebay. A little more work but they get more money for it, meaning that there is less new overstock to go around.

I hope they make it, we need more stores with personality like American Science. I plan on making a trip out that way now that I know where it's located.
by bgwalter | 2025-05-29 18:40:50+00:00
No, nothing fundamentally new is created. Programmers have always been obsessed with "new" tooling and processes to distract from that fact.

"AI" is the latest iteration of snake oil that is foisted upon us by management. The problem is not "AI" per se, but the amount of of friction and productivity loss that comes with it.

Most of the productivity loss comes from being forced to engage with it and push back against that nonsense. One has to learn the hype language, debunk it, etc.

Why do you think IT has gotten better? Amazon had a better and faster website with far better search and products 20 years ago. No amount of "AI" will fix that.
by notahacker | 2025-05-29 18:41:11+00:00
I did learn it, but at A-level (i.e an elective course after many kids had left school altogether)

tbf the English Civil War is, like most Civil Wars, pretty darned complicated in the motivations and actions of the key players, and dumbing it down gives lessons which are near, fit very nicely into modern tropes and are also almost entirely wrong in the messages they convey.
by Maxatar | 2025-05-29 18:41:19+00:00
>A solution to the Halting problem can be repurposed as a general-purpose theorem prover. The author is correct. You simply write a program that searches all possible valid proofs till it finds the one you are looking for (or maybe doesn't and runs forever).

The author is not correct and it's a common misconception. Simple question for you... let's say I give you a magical black box that can solve the halting problem. Now please use it to prove or disprove the continuum hypothesis (within ZFC).

Hopefully you'll come back to me and say the black box shows that the continuum hypothesis can not be proved or disproved (in ZFC). Okay we agree so far, but note that we have established that having a solution to the halting problem can not actually be repurposed as a general purpose theorem prover, since no such proof exists in the first place.

Okay you might counter by saying that a solution to the halting problem can be repurposed as a general purpose theorem prover for propositions that either have a proof or don't have a proof, ignore those pesky propositions that are neither provable or unprovable...

But then the solution to the halting problem doesn't get you anything... if you're dealing with a proposition that either has a proof or a proof of its negation, you don't need a solution to the halting problem to find it, you are guaranteed to find it eventually by definition.

The claim that a black box that solves the halting problem can be used as a general purpose theorem prover is simply untrue and confuses certain concepts together. At best you can claim it gives you a restricted theorem classifier.
by JohnMakin | 2025-05-29 18:42:08+00:00
> This is a reminder of how prediction markets don't always accurately estimate probability of events happening.

I'm well aware that people believe that these markets are accurate estimators of probability of events, but I've (as a life long gambler) always viewed it as a measure of people's confidence in an event happening at a particular probability. People are wrong/delusional at scale all the time (think of the mandela effect), it can be the case that large groups of them converge on the right outcome via market forces, but it kind of makes the big assumption every participant is in good faith, rational, and informed.
by filoeleven | 2025-05-29 18:42:17+00:00
Which is absurd, since

> In English, the word "milk" has been used to refer to "milk-like plant juices" since 1200 CE. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plant_milk

It's like complaining that modern electric irons can't be called irons because the heat plate doesn't have iron in it.
by mannyv | 2025-05-29 18:42:19+00:00
Terraform is hard because it can be a different way of thinking about deployments and your infrastructure. And since it's declarative you can't do conditionals in normal ways.

What I used to do is create things in my target environment then try to recreate them in terraform (without the import, because import didn't really work so well). Then do an apply/plan and see what changes were listed.

What I would do today is ask ChatGPT for terraform for specific things, then see what it outputs, compare it with the registry, then do the apply.

Terraform is half the battle, the other half is figuring out how the specific provider represents their stuff...which is why ChatGPT is helpful.

Oh, and also look at your provider's examples. You presumably know how things work in your provider, so looking at their terraform registry will help you figure out how they model stuff in terraform so you can model your stuff in terraform.
by eyelidlessness | 2025-05-29 18:42:38+00:00
Disclaimer: I’m way out of my depth on the theoretical front, despite similarly taking interest in ECS in unconventional places. I’m responding from the perspective of most of my career being in JS/TS.

I think your instincts about program structure are mostly right, but the outliers are pretty far out there.

I’m much less optimistic about how you’re framing arbitrary data access. In my experience, it’s very common for JS code (marginally less common when authored as TS) to treat JSON (or other I/O bound data) as a perpetual blob of uncertainty. Data gets partially resolved into program interfaces haphazardly, at seemingly random points downstream, often with tons of redundancy and internal contradictions.

I’m not sure how much that matters for your goals! But if I were taking on a project like this I’d be looking at that subset of non-ideal patterns frequently to reassess my assumptions.
Show HN: Leoline – AI audio stories for kids, with parents in control
by vladoh | 2025-05-29 18:42:48+00:00
Hey HN,

My 6-year-old was getting frustrated trying to get ChatGPT to tell him stories, so I built Leoline.

AI voice assistants today aren't designed for kids - they interrupt too early, use complex language, and struggle to tell long, engaging stories. Leoline fixes that.

It has a voice-only interface: kids just speak, and Leoline listens using a custom-tuned Voice Activity Detection module. It then generates long, rich and personalized stories on the fly using GPT-4o.

For parents, it's a screen-free alternative to YouTube. They can define custom story rules (via system prompts) to ensure the stories reflect their values and stay age-appropriate.

We’re also live on Product Hunt today: https://www.producthunt.com/posts/leoline

Happy to answer questions or hear your thoughts!
by ch4s3 | 2025-05-29 18:43:37+00:00
It seems like LLMs made really big strides for a while but don't seem to be getting better recently, and in some ways recent models feel a bit worse. I'm seeing some good results generating test code, and some really bad results when people go to far with LLM use on new feature work. Base on what I've seen it seems like spinning up new projects and very basic features for web apps works really well, but that doesn't seem to generalize to refactoring or adding new features to big/old code bases.

I've seen Claude and ChatGPT happily hallucinate whole APIs for D3 on multiple occasions, which should be really well represented in the training sets.
by ethbr1 | 2025-05-29 18:43:56+00:00
> Where you have power and wealth concentration, there will be a push to autocracy.

Agree, though I think the why/how is interesting.

In watching it play out in several countries: (1) wealth concentration builds resentment against a minority (wealthy/elites) by the majority (poor), (2) someone from the wealthy/elite hijacks the majority dissatisfaction by saying they'll "get" the minority, (3) democracy sweeps that someone into power, (4) turns out, anyone wealthy/elite doesn't really give a shit about egalitarianism, and enriches themselves

I mean, when Brits vote in Boris Johnson or Americans Trump, do they really expect either to compromise their own wealth for the good of the nation, when it comes to that?
by adrian17 | 2025-05-29 18:44:08+00:00
The majority of our queries have joins (plus our core logic often depends on fact table expansion with `arrayJoin()`s) before aggregations and we're doing fine. AFAIK whenever we hit memory issues, they are mostly due to high-cardinality aggregations (especially with uniqExact), not joins. But I'm sure it can depend on the specifics.
by smugma | 2025-05-29 18:44:38+00:00
first paragraph states the opposite:

I was surprised to see Michael Pollan and Marion Nestle, two giants of food advocacy, take a clear stance in favor of genetically modified organisms, or GMOs, since the two have previously been critical of these controversial foods. The film, which purports to explore “the good, the bad and the ugly of genetic engineering,” is unusual in that it’s unabashedly pro-GMO, using science to debunk the myth that GMOs are harmful and portraying the activists who oppose them as the food-world equivalent of flat-earthers.
by freedomben | 2025-05-29 18:44:51+00:00
I don't disagree, but I do think it's a lot closer than most people realize. Really it's mostly GPU drivers that still cause problems (even on "supported" hardware). I've put Fedora on many family members machines and it usually takes them a day or two to re-orient to Gnome, but after that it's been very smooth sailing.

Where this is targeting older computers, I think graphics drivers are less likely to be a problem (except for some "legacy" nvidia cards in a number of desktops, which I'm still pissed about).

That said, I would agree that for people with no support and linux knowledge, it's probably not a great move, mainly because you need someone to explain that you can't just download exe files anymore and run them, and most of the downloading websites will serve you an exe by default which can be very confusing. I think a two to four hour class would help immensely, but to your point that is a form of support.
by hoakiet98 | 2025-05-29 18:45:14+00:00
Hey esafak, Honestly, we became even more coupled to Next.js to provide a better experience. I think Svelte will keep getting deprioritized until we feel the experience is as good as it can get.

I know it's a bad answer, but I don't want to keep promising a feature that doesn't seem likely at this point. Will update the issue to be a won't fix for the time being.
by lo_zamoyski | 2025-05-29 18:45:19+00:00
I presume your experience is limited to the parochial world of American Evangelical Christianity, or perhaps anecdotal, informed by your experience with intellectually unsophisticated people. Dawkins and his ilk used to love to pick on these poor people, because it’s so easy, even for a philosophical and theological rube like Dawkins.

But you are certainly not describing the intellectual muscle and heft of the Catholic tradition. You don’t stand a chance.

Materialists, by contrast, either never realize the incoherence of their naive position, or double down, consigning themselves to ever greater absurdities (yes, I am looking at you, eliminativism).
by vouaobrasil | 2025-05-29 18:45:21+00:00
> Again, if a good AI could take on a lot of that work, maybe that means I don't have to sit there in dependency hell and fight arcane missing symbol errors for the rest of my fucking career.

My argument really had nothing to do with you and your hobby. It was that AI is signficantly modifying society so that it will be hard for people to do what they like to make money, because AI can do it.

If AI can solve some boring tasks for you, that's fine but the world doesn't revolve around your job or your hobby. I'm talking about a large mass of people who enjoy doing different things, who once were able to do those things to make a living, but are finding it harder to do so because tech companies have found a way to do all those things because they could leverage their economies of scale and massive resource pools to automate all that.

You are in a priveleged position, no doubt about it. But plenty of people are talented and skilled at doing a certain sort of creative work and the main thrust of their work can be automated. It's not like your cushy job where you can just automate a part of it and just become more efficient, but rather it's that people just won't have a job.

It's amazing how you can be so myopic to only think of yourself and what AI can do for you when you are probably in the top 5% of the world, rather than give one minute to think of what AI is doing to others who don't have the luxuries you have.
by SketchySeaBeast | 2025-05-29 18:45:30+00:00
Yeah, I don't really buy that. God revealed himself directly to Moses and Moses was still able to ignore him or go against his wishes and still had to come to faith on his own terms. Both faith and free will are a great bottomless pits to throw any philosophical or logical incongruities into.

> When Michael Jackson does a concert, it’s really only in a few locations. It’s up to the world to spread it.

In this example, what is up to the world to spread for Michael Jackson? Is god a singular entity with a specific location? I'm sure Michael would have happily shown up in every place on earth if he could have sold tickets.
by mike_hearn | 2025-05-29 18:46:01+00:00
That might have been true a long time ago, but nowadays Windows makes it easy to black/whitelist executables from the home directory with stuff like AppLocker. Meanwhile, the MSIX subsystem lets users install apps safely without needing admin access into c:\Program Files.

So, what Electron does might have been a neat growth hack once, but now it's as likely to hit roadblocks as not (at least on any modern Windows network with a switched-on IT department).
by potholereseller | 2025-05-29 18:46:10+00:00
As governments frequently say: if you have nothing to hide (e.g. intent to commit a crime), then you have no need for privacy; and no need means no right. But they also say that those with something to hide have no right to privacy. Ergo, no right to privacy for anyone.

In addition to that catch-22, governments fight for privacy for themselves, so they are also hypocrites. Rules for you, but not for me.