MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by 3dsnano | 2025-05-17 10:39:43+00:00
> even ai art is objectively better and cheaper than human art.

Ok I’ll bite on this. I think this reflects an incomplete understanding of what art is, and why humans make it. Sure, with enough prior examples and a bajillion tokens, you can reference the likeness of all the greatest artists who ever lived, and create stunning representations. No doubt magical.

But are these LLM-dreamed works better than what humans make? I dunno man, I think it’s a different class entirely. It’s not right to compare the two and say one is objectively better than the other.

I have come to understand that humans create art from feeling, and those gifted humans use their own personal tastes and sensibilities to transform these feelings into a representation. A human artist can generally express why and how they made what they did. They can explain the meanings and symbolism, with deep personal significance.

Art, and most works dreamed from LLMs, does not come from human feeling. It comes from examples, distilled millions of times over. But the feeling is not there.

LLMs do not understand quality. They do not have good taste. However I do feel that a lot of people don’t care about this. People want shortcuts, and most likely that’s what they’ll get, and what will be incentivized.
by pwdisswordfishz | 2025-05-17 10:41:08+00:00
That's because the author of the proposal is from Microsoft and has repeatedly shot down counter-suggestions that made the syntax look different from C#.

https://github.com/tc39/proposal-explicit-resource-managemen...

https://github.com/tc39/proposal-explicit-resource-managemen...

https://github.com/tc39/proposal-explicit-resource-managemen...

https://github.com/tc39/proposal-explicit-resource-managemen...
by oakesm9 | 2025-05-17 10:41:37+00:00
> I kinda hope nobody tries. Their attempts at monetization have been pretty friendly and tame thus far & if something spooks them that could change.

To be fair to them they've been making a big push on adding backup support recently. Their Nabu Casa subscription has built in support for this and was a major selling point for me getting the subscription (I have Wireguard for remote access already).

At the same time they implemented first class support for their own subscription, they added the hooks for other integrations to provide the same level of backup support. Now you can easily choose to use Google Drive, S3, BackBlaze and others just as easily as Nabu Casa. In some ways it's "better" as Nabu Casa only supports a single latest backup.

From this they seem pretty friendly and not too interested in lock-in.
by lawrjone | 2025-05-17 10:43:08+00:00
I'm one of the engineers at incident.io, so thanks for the mention! But yes, when we first started the majority of our customers bought us for incident management and used PagerDuty as their on-call provider (phones them, receives the alerts, hands-off to us when an incident starts).

We've since built on-call directly into our product and we've had loads of those customers migrate entirely into us, dropping PagerDuty. The biggest customers we're onboarding now tend to buy us as their sole on-call and incident management tool, too.

We have a bunch of case studies of people who've moved if that's useful to anyone. My favourite is probably Intercom who migrated from PagerDuty into our on-call in a few weeks (the Intercom team are great fun to work with!)

https://incident.io/customers/intercom
by lnenad | 2025-05-17 10:43:35+00:00
> Doing something badly in 1/10 of the time isn't going to save you that much time, unless it's something you don't truly care about.

You're adding "badly" like it's a fact when it is not. Again, in my experience, in the experience of people around me and many experiences of people online AI is more than capable of doing "simpler" stuff on its own.

> By Andrej Karpathy, who popularized the term

Nowhere in your quoted definitions does it say you don't *ever* look at the code. MW says non-programmers can vibe code, also in a "somewhat careless fashion" none of those imply you CANNOT look at code for it to be vibe coding. If Andrej didn't look at it it doesn't mean the definition is that you are not to look at it.

> which you mocked with your CRUD remarks

I mocked nothing, I just disagree with you since as a dev with over 10 years of experience I've been using AI for both my job and personal projects with great success. People that complain about AI expect it to parse "Make an ios app with stuff" successfully, and I am sure it will at some point, but now it requires finer grain instructions to ensure its success.
by constantcrying | 2025-05-17 10:44:04+00:00
The only thing I can imagine being more hellish than your coworkers being HR people is your coworkers being HR people who use LLMs to do their jobs.

This is just guesswork, but I think it is likely that HR came under serious pressure as many of their jobs started to become very obviously obsolete. So the HR chief came up with a plan to combine her irrelevant department with an actually still relevant department, in a bid to maintain corporate power.

There is no real business case behind this. Even the article fails to provide any coherent reason for this nonsensical merger.
by anonzzzies | 2025-05-17 10:44:11+00:00
I think it's a fundamental flaw for such project that will never get out of the niche regions and will only have a few fanatic users and collaborators to use the JS/npm ecosystem which is known, as you say, for having breaking changes every release of every module and modules having updates every day because of grifting for stars/relevance/whatever on github/npm. I would like to see this based on something that's stable for very long times because module devs are not being bothered by the github issues 'is this project dead? there have been no updates for 7 hours?!?!?!? whats going on', with people responding with alternatives as happens every day with at least 1 js module. Scheme, Lisp, Perl, a Prolog etc maybe.
by masklinn | 2025-05-17 10:45:48+00:00
> To make a "resource", you'll tack on a new magical method to your POJO, identified not with a standard name [...] nothing to do with Symbol's core purpose of creating unique identifiers.

The core purpose and original reason why Symbol was introduced in JS is the ability to create non-conflicting but well known / standard names, because the language had originally reserved no namespace for such and thus there was no way to know any name would be available (and not already monkey patched onto existing types, including native types).

> Is there another example of an arbitrary method name being called by a keyword? It's not a function parameter like async/await uses to return a Promise, it's just a random method tacked on to an Object using a Symbol to define the name of it. Weird!

`Symbol.iterator` called by `for...of` is literally the original use case for symbols.

> I'd think the proper JavaScript way to do this would be to either make a new object specific modifier keyword like the way getters and setters work, or to create a new global object named "Resource" which has the needed method prototypes that can be overwritten.

Genuinely: what are you talking about.
by rafram | 2025-05-17 10:46:11+00:00
Finalizers aren’t destructors. The finalizer doesn’t get access to the object being GC’d, for one. But even more crucially, the spec allows the engine to call your finalizer anywhere between long after the object has been GC’d, and never.

They’re basically a nice convenience for noncritical resource cleanup. You can’t rely on them.
by AStonesThrow | 2025-05-17 10:46:27+00:00
Perhaps EDs are a concern, but mostly what terrorists actually use phones for is remote detonation. A feature phone is the ideal sort of radio transmitter, modified or not, to send a remote command to detonate explosives. If security is really scrutinizing carry-on luggage, then perhaps the strategy moves to placing a bomb in checked baggage, and carrying only the trigger through the checkpoint.

So if you force someone to turn on their phone or laptop at security, you will hopefully force the decision point; even if the inspector cannot tell the difference, a terrorist is going to get real nervous and jumpy around activating the thing they intend to use as a detonator, in contrast to some businessdude activating his very ordinary mobile device.
by rrr_oh_man | 2025-05-17 10:46:38+00:00
*shudder* vivid memories of my one week trying RoR right after Rails 8 was released...

What is Turbolinks? What is Sprockets? How does it relate to Turbo Frames or Turbo Streams? Is it different from Turbo or a part of it? Is it an addon? What are Cables? Why Action Cable? Is it different from Hotwire? Is it the same? Should we take Webpacker, Shakapacker — or Propshaft, after all? Do we use Puma or Unicorn? Devise, CanCanCan, Pundit? Poltergeist, Cucumber, Capybara. PaperTrail, Zeitwerk, Apartment. Fuck me, Rails.
by snthpy | 2025-05-17 10:46:56+00:00
I also used it to "vibe write" a short story. I use it similarly to vibe coding, I give the theme and structure of the story along with the major sections and tensions and conflicts I want to express and then it filled in the words in my chosen style. I also created an editor persona and then we went back and forth between the editor and writer personas to refine the story.

The Omega Directive: https://snth.prose.sh/the_omega_directive
by BlueTemplar | 2025-05-17 10:49:05+00:00
Using LLMs is a bit like smoking : better to never have started (or at least quit ASAP).

And perhaps even more fitting now that not doing it comes with short term career limitations :

Friends: Rachel Gets Peer Pressured Into Smoking (Season 5 Clip) | TBS

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nzDJdZLPeGE

(Though an even better parallel is using platforms.)
by josephg | 2025-05-17 10:49:23+00:00
People keep saying this. But in my experience, directly porting code from one language to another is much easier that people think. I can do maybe about 500 lines per day depending on the language similarity. ChatGPT is great for doing a first pass - though it will add small, subtle bugs in the process.

I’m not arguing that we should rewrite everything in rust. C and C++ are fine languages. But sometimes it really is better to just have your code in a different language rather than deal with FFI. For example, I have some collaborative text editing code in rust and recently I just ported the whole thing to typescript, because it’s just straight out easier to use in a browser that way, compared to dealing with a wasm bundle.

I think the big mistake people make when rewriting into a different language is doing a refactor at the same time. This is the wrong way to go about it. First port directly the code you have. Then port your tests and get them passing in the new language. Then refactor. Obviously there’s always some language differences - but ideally you can confine differences within modules, and keep most of the module boundaries intact through the rewrite. You can also refactor before translating your code. If I were porting something to rust that wouldn’t pass the borrow checker, this is probably what I’d do. First refactor everything to make the borrow checker happy - so for example, make sure your structs / classes are in a strict tree. Then get tests passing. Translate between languages and cleanup.

If you approach it like that, rewriting code is a largely mechanical process. It really takes a lot less time than people think to translate code, since you don’t actually have to understand every single line to do it correctly. So the time taken scales based on the number of lines of code. Not the number of hours it took to write! And then, if you want to refactor your new program at the end, go for it.
by reacharavindh | 2025-05-17 10:50:34+00:00
I use Gemini2.5 Pro through work and it is excellent. However, I use Claude 3.7 Sonnet via API for personal use using money added to their account.

I couldn’t find a way to use Gemini like a prepaid plan. I ain’t giving my credit card to Google for an LLM that can easily charge me hundreds or thousands of EUR.
by MomsAVoxell | 2025-05-17 10:50:48+00:00
I had the privilege to work as a junior operator in the 80’s, and got exposed to some strange systems .. Tandem and Wang and so on .. and I always wondered if those weird Wang Imaging System things were out there, in an emulator somewhere, to play with, as it seemed like a very functional system for archive digitalization.

As a retro-computing enthusiast/zealot, for me personally it is often quite rewarding to revisit the ‘high concept execution environments’ of different computing era. I have a nice, moderately sized retro computing collection, 40 machines or so, and I recently got my SGI systems re-installed and set up for playing. Revisiting Irix after decades away from it is a real blast.
by masklinn | 2025-05-17 10:51:04+00:00
higher order function, function taking an other function (/ block).

E.g. in Ruby you can lock/unlock a mutex, but the normal way to do it would be to pass a block to `Mutex#synchronize` which is essentially just

def synchronize lock begin yield ensure unlock end end

and called as:

lock.synchronize { # protected code here }
by briandear | 2025-05-17 10:51:55+00:00
AI can be a legitimate interstate commerce issue. If my code runs on a data center in Virginia, am I, someone located outside of Virginia now subject to Virginia AI laws? Do I control network routing so that my application requests won’t inadvertently cross some state line? If a state hypothetically made possessing an AI app a felony, but the app weren’t on my phone but instead stored in iCloud — am I guilty of “possession” even though the actual bits and bytes are in some outside data center? If I am a California company and California banned AI, but one of my workers lived in Nevada, could that company still use AI if the work were completed outside of California? It’s a Pandora’s box, luckily that scenario is covered by the Commerce Clause.

On your illustration about abortion: the same people who wanted national vaccine mandates now want AI to be left up to the individual states? The same people that defend the Department of Education’s national influence over public schools are now states rights advocates when it suits their agenda? There is hypocrisy on all sides.

The media and pundits frame budget reconciliation thusly: When Republicans do it, it’s a “threat to Democracy” when Democrats do it, it’s “protecting democracy.” As a practical matter an AI federal law shouldn’t be in a budget bill: it should go through the normal lawmaking process. But there are a lot of things that don’t belong in a budget bill that end up there. The process is rotten.

Democrats and Republicans use federalism as it suits their agenda. Let’s not be surprised anymore. Democrats typically support strong central governments — until they aren’t the majority in Washington. Then they become fervent supporters of the strong states rights used by the Confederacy to justify slavery. When they have power in Washington, they’re now Abraham Lincoln. And vice versa. When Florida wants to strongly enforce immigration law, blue states sue. When California doesn’t want to follow immigration law, that’s somehow heroic? Some states have even passed laws prohibiting law enforcement from following federal laws while simultaneous accepting federal funding for their law enforcement then suing when those funds are withheld.

My basic view is this: there are enumerated powers, the Commerce Clause and the 10th Amendment. Let’s use those to decide who should be doing what.

We can (and should) disagree on the issues, but it would be delightful if we could at least all follow the same processes.

Drug laws: unless you’re crossing a state line, state. Immigration: federal (Commerce Clause) AI: states — until there is an interstate commerce nexus (i.e. data centers, internet)

By the way the author laments the budget reconciliation process for AI laws, but that same process was used to pass Obamacare. Is using reconciliation acceptable when it suits one’s agenda? Again: hypocrisy on all sides.

The Constitution already covers this stuff, if anyone bothers to follow it. The constitution has been bent and beaten to within an inch of its life. We need to push back on that even if it results in outcomes we might not like in the short term.
by alienchow | 2025-05-17 10:54:50+00:00
As someone who had to learn German, I actually really appreciated the language being formatted quite like closure functions."I have 'noun' upon which 'verb'" with the pronoun and verb being the parentheses where you can then do stuff like f().g().h() where you chain the returned context: "Ich habe etwas getan, was mir schon immer Spaß gemacht hat und mir jedes Mal Freude bereitet, wenn ich daran denke."

Yes I do have a peeve about the numbering system that screws you over at the end, "Ten thousand, three hundred, four and twenty." Yes I know the French numbering is even worse.

German just makes sense to me programmatically. Unfortunately I no longer have much of any opportunity to practise nowadays outside of online language classes.
by Bostonian | 2025-05-17 10:54:57+00:00
https://archive.is/Er6zo

About the authors: "Mr. Alhassani is Palantir’s head of government affairs and public policy. He served as a special assistant at the National Security Council, 2009-12. Mr. Bak is Palantir’s head of AI implementation. He serves on the National AI Advisory Committee’s Subcommittee on Law Enforcement."
by pjmlp | 2025-05-17 10:56:03+00:00
Also as much as I complain about the lack of JIT tooling in CPython, many people forget that usually most people don't have any issues in polyglot codebases, it isn't a zero-sum game, and various forms of FFI and language bindings exist.

That is one of the things I have been doing across JVM/ART, CLR, V8 for decades now, moreso if we include Perl and Tcl into the mix, I seldom write full blown 100% C or C++ code, when I reach to them, is to write native libraries or implement language bindings.
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by mschuster91 | 2025-05-17 10:58:36+00:00
The original v4 RTL-SDR has a 1PPM TCXO. The problem is, the tons of shady clones don't.

As for the GPSDO, that should be easy to solve at least if the host platform is a Raspberry Pi - the SparkFun NEO-M9N board can be connected to the PPS input of the Pi. The problem is, that thing is expensive.

[1] https://www.berrybase.de/sparkfun-qwiic-gps-breakout-neo-m9n...
by constantcrying | 2025-05-17 10:58:52+00:00
>The HR department is presumably small so it's no issue to absorb it into tech.

That is a terrible reason to merge departments. You want people with similar tasks who need to communicate the most be closer together. Putting unrelated people into a department is an easy way to create conflict and dysfunction.

>The head of HR was working closely with their CIO who quit so she was the best fit for the role.

Very consistently work places where people in important management positions had no clue about what the people under them actually do where the worst places I worked at. At the same time having superiors who understand your work makes communications with them much easier.

Having a person with no tech experience leading a tech department is a very easy way to create a terrible tech department.
by BrokrnAlgorithm | 2025-05-17 11:00:37+00:00
I find python's async to be lacking in fine grained control. It may be fine for 95% of simple use cases, but lacks advanced features such as sequential constraining, task queue memory management, task pre-emption etc. The async keword also tends to bubble up through codebases in aweful ways, making it almost impossible to create reasonably decoupled code.
by griffzhowl | 2025-05-17 11:02:04+00:00
> people that are experts in their field can easily judge quality for themselves.

This case seems a counterexample though. Top economists Acemoglu and Autour went on record approving of the paper. The main flaws were only obvious to material scientists, and since this was submitted to an economics journal it's possible that if it hadn't been so hyped it would have slipped through peer review by economists
by pjmlp | 2025-05-17 11:02:44+00:00
Apparently many people need the stories, given how much they boost Go about things that are prior art.

Emacs could be an IDE, if it came with the whole Lisp Machine for the ride, sadly it is only a subset of the whole experience.

VSCode has zero lines of Atom code into it, it started from Azure as Monaco project.

Does neovim distribution handle graphical development plugins, without spawing external windows?

Yeah, right.
by wrasee | 2025-05-17 11:02:57+00:00
I would remember the reply from the LLM, and cross references back to the particular parts of the RFC it identified as worth focusing time on.

I’d argue that’s a more effective capture as to what I would remember anyway.

If wanted to learn more (in a general sense) I can take the manual away with me and study it, which I can do more effectively on its own terms, in a comfy chair with a beer. But right now I have a problem to solve.
by hirsin | 2025-05-17 11:05:55+00:00
Touching on tenancy and the "real" gaps in the spec does help push the discussion in a useful direction.

https://vulnerablemcp.info/ is a good collection of the immediately obvious issues with the MCP protocol that need to be addressed. A couple low blows in there, that feel a bit motivated to make MCP look worse, but generally a good starting point overall.
by raphman | 2025-05-17 11:07:08+00:00
a) because it is a general problem, observed time and again

b) I don't see how calling them out by name in this forum might be helpful

c) I don't know the whole story - maybe some of these people actually raised concerns or wanted to but felt powerless; causing people, search engines and LLMs to associate them with this case of scientific fraud seems potentially bad

d) maybe I'll have the chance to discuss this paper with them on social media or in person - then it would not be good idea to publicly shame them now.

e) anyone can quickly find out the names by reading the paper (https://arxiv.org/pdf/2412.17866)
by anthk | 2025-05-17 11:08:02+00:00
>Placing software behind paid API's...

- Hello, MSN network.

- Hello, closed memory-dump formats for Microsoft Office.

- You don't play this niche audio/video format? Install this new adware player, and now you will. Oh, enjoy this new adware toolbar.

- Shareware/nagware. Enough said.

- Software patents and codecs. MP3 encoder for streaming? Pay. MPEG encoder/decoder for a custom A/V project? Pay. And so on.
by mykowebhn | 2025-05-17 11:10:30+00:00
I understand from a technical POV how this could be considered great news.

But I don't see how this is good news at all from a societal POV.

The last 15 or so years has seen an unprecedented rise in salaries for engineers, especially software engineers. This has brought an interest in the profession from people who would normally not have considered SW as a profession. I think this is both good and bad. It has brought new found wealth to more people, but it may have also diluted the quality of the talent pool. That said, I think it was mostly good.

Now with this game-changing efficiency from these AI tools, I'm sure we've seen an end to the glory days in terms of salaries for the SW profession.

With this gone, where else could relatively normal people achieve financial independence? Definitely not in the service industry.

Very sad.