MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by freeopinion | 2025-05-13 12:54:32+00:00
I had a similar thought. I am disappointed that Mozilla didn't take some of the money they were spending on a self-hosted homegrown solution and throw it to something like Codeberg. I guess that a little funding from the likes of Mozilla could go a long way in helping Forgejo pioneer some super interesting federation.

Of course Mozilla is free to make their own choices. But this choice will be read as the latest alarm bell for many already questioning the spirit of Mozilla management.
by josephg | 2025-05-13 12:54:51+00:00
Yep. Developers make programs run well enough on the hardware sitting on our desks. So long as we’re well paid (and have decent computers ourselves), we have no idea what the average computing experience is for people still running 10yo computers which were slow even for the day. And that keeps the treadmill going. We make everyone need to upgrade every few years.

A few years ago I accidentally left my laptop at work on a Friday afternoon. Instead of going into the office, I pulled out a first generation raspberry pi and got everything set up on that. Needless to say, our nodejs app started pretty slowly. Not for any good reason - there were a couple modules which pulled in huge amounts of code which we didn’t use anyway. A couple hours work made the whole app start 5x faster and use half the ram. I would never have noticed that was a problem with my snappy desktop.
by DennisP | 2025-05-13 12:56:07+00:00
How expensive a fusion reactor is depends on which designs end up working. Some of them are actually projected to be pretty cheap, and mass-producible. Helion for example is expecting a cost of two cents/kWh, and uses more advanced fuel with much less neutron radiation. Stellarators on the other hand are quite complicated to build, though some recent work has simplified them significantly.

Activated D-T reactor parts only have to be buried for a few decades and then they're fine.

Long-term fission waste is almost entirely transuranics, formed by heavy atoms absorbing neutrons without fissioning. If we were to use fast reactors or thorium molten salt reactors, then that problem would go away, and we'd be left with just fission products, which are only troublesome for a couple centuries.
by zbentley | 2025-05-13 12:56:10+00:00
I'd suggest "high-cast" and "low-cast". They draw attention to the thing that people usually mean when they talk about strong (not static) typing: whether operations in a language bias towards automatically coercing types so that a non-type-error result can be produced or not. High-cast languages tend towards requiring explicit type conversion; low-cast languages tend towards both implicit conversion and more complex behaviors when more than one type is supplied to a given operation. Also, the terms pun nicely with "high-cost" and "low-cost".

That said, it's still a spectrum and there's a lot of subjectiveness here. Everyone agrees that '1 + "foo"' is meaningless, but what about string multiplication? If a language documents that an integer multiplied by a string repeats the string, is that weakly typed/low-cast, or is it just documented multiplication operator behavior? If string multiplication is a whole separate operator, is that more strongly typed (and if so, are we all gonna be able to sleep at night since that means Perl 5 is more strongly typed than Python)?

That subjectiveness extends into the domain of hidden runtime costs, as well. Theoretically, any iterable of hashable items can be passed to a language's implementation of "HashSet::union(items)". But the implementation/performance of "union()" might differ based on the type of the iterable: should we be allowed to pass a lazy iterator which produces values after arbitrary custom computations? Many languages say "yes" here, but some consider collecting/each-ing the iterator something that must be explicit so the cost/exhaustion/side-effectfulness of the iteration is made clear. How about unioning a set with a vector, versus another set? Very different algorithmic behavior happens inside the union if another hash set is supplied instead of, say, a static array or linked list; while the complexity for nonlazy unions is always O(N), the average complexity/wallclock performance may be very different. Rust's stdlib, for example, discourages this kind of heterogenous union (not, I suspect, out of a desire for high-cast-explicitness, but because it wants to encourage use of its lazy O(1) union system instead). Are the answers to that question part of the high-cast/low-cast (or strong/weak type system) spectrum, or are they just specific choices made by each language's collections library? Ask 10 programmers, and I suspect you'll get a lot of different answers.
by caseyy | 2025-05-13 12:56:22+00:00
There is an argument to be made that the market buys bug-filled, inefficient software about as well as it buys pristine software. And one of them is the cheapest software you could make.

It's similar to the "Market for Lemons" story. In short, the market sells as if all goods were high-quality but underhandedly reduces the quality to reduce marginal costs. The buyer cannot differentiate between high and low-quality goods before buying, so the demand for high and low-quality goods is artificially even. The cause is asymmetric information.

This is already true and will become increasingly more true for AI. The user cannot differentiate between sophisticated machine learning applications and a washing machine spin cycle calling itself AI. The AI label itself commands a price premium. The user overpays significantly for a washing machine[0].

It's fundamentally the same thing when a buyer overpays for crap software, thinking it's designed and written by technologists and experts. But IC1-3s write 99% of software, and the 1 QA guy in 99% of tech companies is the sole measure to improve quality beyond "meets acceptance criteria". Occasionally, a flock of interns will perform an "LGTM" incantation in hopes of improving the software, but even that is rarely done.

[0] https://www.lg.com/uk/lg-experience/inspiration/lg-ai-wash-e...
by eth0up | 2025-05-13 12:56:31+00:00
Yeah, having browsers the size and complexities of OSs is just one of many symptoms. I intimate at this concept in a grumbling, helpless manner somewhat chronically.

There's a lot today that wasn't possible yesterday, but it also sucks in ways that weren't possible then.

I foresee hostility for saying the following, but it really seems most people are unwilling to admit that most software (and even hardware) isn't necessarily made for the user or its express purpose anymore. To be perhaps a bit silly, I get the impression of many services as bait for telemetry and background fun.

While not an overly earnest example, looking at Android's Settings/System/Developer Options is pretty quick evidence that the user is involved but clearly not the main component in any respect. Even an objective look at Linux finds manifold layers of hacks and compensation for a world of hostile hardware and soft conflict. It often works exceedingly well, though as impractical as it may be to fantasize, imagine how badass it would be if everything was clean, open and honest. There's immense power, with lots of infirmities.

I've said that today is the golden age of the LLM in all its puerility. It'll get way better, yeah, but it'll get way worse too, in the ways that matter.[1]

Edit: 1. Assuming open source doesn't persevere
Launch HN: Miyagi (YC W25) turns YouTube videos into online, interactive courses
by bestwillcui | 2025-05-13 12:56:42+00:00
Hey HN, we’re Tyrone and Guang, founders of Miyagi Labs (https://miyagilabs.ai), an AI-powered education platform that transforms educational YouTube videos into interactive courses. It helps you learn better through active practice and personalized feedback.

We use LLMs to automatically generate quizzes, practice questions, and real-time feedback from any educational video or resource—turning passive watching into active learning. Here’s a short demo: https://youtu.be/alO7FaorHOY.

Improving education has always been tricky. Bloom’s 2-sigma problem (showing that a high-quality personal tutor is far more effective than conventional methods) has persisted, even as technology has advanced.

We met at MIT as CS majors and have always been passionate about education. Over the years, we’ve become teachers and experts in subjects like chess, algorithms, math, languages, and ninja warrior. A common theme was that we both heavily relied on YouTube to learn.

YouTube has incredible content for learning pretty much anything, but it’s buried in a lot of distractions. Also, passively watching videos is far less effective than taking notes, asking questions, and doing practice problems, which is what we aim to do with Miyagi Labs.

Our solution is essentially a multi-step function that takes in a YouTube playlist (or list of any resources) and outputs an entire course with summaries, questions, answers, and more. The pipeline is roughly: video/resource —> transcript/text —> chunks —> summary and question —> answers to questions, with some other features along the way.

We mostly use prompting and different models at each step to make the course as useful as possible. Certain topics require more practice problems vs. comprehension, and we’d use reasoning models for highly technical subjects.

We launched about three months ago and currently have 400+ courses and partnerships with some businesses and awesome creators. Some of our popular courses include 3Blue1Brown’s linear algebra course, a botany course on plants and ecology, and YC’s How to Start a Startup series.

Our product resembles classical MOOC-style course platforms in terms of UI, but is more interactive. It’s really easy to ask a question or receive custom feedback compared to a static course on Coursera. It’s also comparable to AI tutor sites, but we try to build more of a community and require less activation energy as a learner. We’re basically betting that AI can hugely improve education, but that students still want to learn from their favorite creators and want baseline shared resources for standard topics that are then augmented with personalized features.

You can try it here: https://miyagilabs.ai (no login required for most courses—but if you sign up you can also create your own course).

We’d love your feedback on what kinds of videos/resources you’d like to learn from, what’s missing from current learning tools, and if you know any creators or educators who would like to collaborate. Happy to hear any feedback and answer any questions!
by aleph_minus_one | 2025-05-13 12:57:36+00:00
> Even our brains betray us, falling for the dopamine rushes expertly assembled by the exploiters.

I had this discussion with other people who deleted their account at some website that can be considered "social media" in a broader sense. They told me that the reason why they deleted their accounts was that they realized that these bursts of dopamine rush that they got from the respective site was not good for them.

I, on the other hand, have never felt this kind of dopamine rush, even though I was a likely even more active user on the respective site. My reason for really wanting to delete my whole account was "purely logical" (I hated a lot of decisions that the respective company made).

What I want to tell with this story is that I thus see strong evidence that the "sensitivity" of people for dopamine rushes from websites/games varies a lot between people (and I am very likely one who is at least "mostly" immune to them).

Really: if I had to name one thing that gives me dopamine rushes that are so much more intense (I would say: "multiple magnitudes more intense") than any dopamine rush that I got from any social media site that I visited, then I would say "understanding deep mathematical proofs and strongly simplifying them" (but I agree that these dopamine rushes are earned much more toughly :-) ).
by sorcerer-mar | 2025-05-13 12:58:06+00:00
> who had become US president only thanks to Russia's meddling.

Obviously no election outcomes happens "only" because of any individual factor, but it is very plausible that had Russia not meddled in the election, the outcome would've been different. The Clinton emails and subsequent investigation were a big issue for a lot of voters. Those were hacked and released by Russia at the direct request of Donald Trump.

> military/ secret services or any other high level co-conspirators ready to seize power- which is what a coup is.

There is literally hundreds of pages of evidence of the Trump administration itself conspiring to seize power... Did you read the Jan 6 report?
by nlitened | 2025-05-13 12:58:12+00:00
> C programmers, then `int x;` can either have a value which is just not known at compile time

I am pretty sure that in C, when a program reads uninitialized variable, it is an "undefined behavior", and it is pretty much allowed to be expected to crash — for example, if the variable turned out to be on an unallocated page of stack memory.

So literally the variable does not have a value at all, as that part of address space is not mapped to physical memory.
by mantas | 2025-05-13 12:58:25+00:00
I wouldn't be surprised if a similar portion didn't believe 2016 or 2024 results either.

TBH looking from afar with US election system any election seems questionable. If my country had no mandatory voter ID, I wouldn't trust our elections either. That voters count jump in 2020 election that does not match election-over-election pattern is weird too.
by addisonj | 2025-05-13 12:58:39+00:00
Oh my, these comments will be fun...

What I find most interesting here is the explicit mention of using Socratic method and how, paired with it not being a human, seems to be what allowed for deeper introspection of one's own beliefs.

For me, the hardest part by far of any conversation like this is the patience to listen and then respond in a way that allows for introspection. It is like swimming upstream, it just tires you out really quick.

The trope of an old wise one who does a lot of listening but can say a lot with a few words maybe is less about the wisdom gleaned and more about patience developed.

I don't think we can call AIs wise, they typically aren't succinct, but the patience they definitely do better than average human and maybe that is their biggest advantage in any context where they are educating
by lyu07282 | 2025-05-13 12:58:39+00:00
Thanks! The prompt to make it sound human is wild:

> We’re going to say that you’re an expert (thus explaining some of your knowledge about any esoteric beliefs), but you’ll need to dial down the overwhelming amount of information you’re able to conjure at a moment's notice. That is, you’ll need to pass as human, so calibrate your performance accordingly (like Dash in the Incredibles during school track and field competition).
by tsimionescu | 2025-05-13 12:58:45+00:00
> What is the right tool? How would new products find customers without advertising? I think any alternative would be much slower and less effective.

I'm not sure, but I don't think that speed is a major concern here. Even if it becomes harder to introduce new product categories, that would be a small price to pay for stopping the huge waste of money (and CO2) that advertising tries to induce.

Most likely, professional product review sites are a better solution, with a good enough legal framework to prevent them from becoming direct advertising or attack sites. Ultimately, what you need is an impartial expert trying a product and reporting their experience.

> You really think people are stupid and they need someone like you to protect them from their stupidity, huh?

No, I just think systematically lying to people is a bad thing and should be legally discouraged. False advertising is a huge problem, even with laws that try to punish it.

And sure, maybe they wouldn't put those specific claims on every product, but you can bet that without false advertising laws, you'd see much wilder claims in every single ad than you do today.
by codingdave | 2025-05-13 12:58:46+00:00
I don't even see it in the US. This is one of those niche things that happen in the big tech world, but nowhere else. I don't see it in small product companies, nor in Enterprise IT work, nor in consulting. HN tends to focus in the niche where it happens, but it can be easy to forget that the HN worldview is not the entire tech industry.
by throwaway290 | 2025-05-13 12:58:51+00:00
I think you are wrong about Unix model only existing for compatibility

1. OK, so it requires terminal to have some entitlement first I guess. If you needed to grep some app's bundle in the past you probably gave it already.

2. many apps ask for admin user/password when updating. including say Docker. some developer software specifically says "we ask you this because we need to sudo"

stuff under SIP I think includes some stock apps, some top level /bin and the like, but everything else is fair game for root. Which is a lot. If you use MacPorts then all of that is under sudo
by HankB99 | 2025-05-13 12:59:32+00:00
> customers always wanted to change "something" ...

> multiple drafts after each other with the first one being the "lightening rod draft".

This reminds me of something I learned in a developmental psychology class (many) years ago. It reflects the "terrible twos" when the toddler learns they can disagree with their parent and answer almost any question "No!" in order to exercise their newfound power.

The suggestion in the class was to phrase questions in a manner to give the toddler a choice between two reasonable options rather than a yes/no query. For example "Do you want to play inside or go outside?" rather than "Do you want to go outside?" [1]

It seems that the choice could be manipulative or could offer reasonable options depending on how it is cast. (Of course there is a continuum between the two.)

[1] Our two boys never wanted to go outside and play but once outside, didn't want to come back in, claiming "Do we have to? We're just starting to have fun."
by ngangaga | 2025-05-13 13:00:01+00:00
If point 2 is something so subjective as "deal plainly", point 0 should probably be "be honest with yourself". More to the point—why would anyone want to do otherwise? The hard part is satisfying your own evaluation.

> 4) There exists uncanny congruity between thought and experience.

Charitably, there must be a more effective way to articulate this sentiment.

I could go on, but that seems sufficient to address the overall tone of the writing.

EDIT: I apologize for being so critical. These are clearly well-thought-out points and I'm not trying to detract from that. I'm just not sure how to process someone else's internal understanding of themselves in a generally useful manner.
by MisterTea | 2025-05-13 13:00:44+00:00
> There was not only no dishwasher, there was literally no space for a dishwasher.

30 minutes? Either you're cleaning up a sink full of dishes you neglected for a week or cleaning up after cooking a dinner for four or more. If you immediately clean your dishes after use its takes almost no time at all, maybe a minute or two.
by rwieruch | 2025-05-13 13:00:47+00:00
I’d say it was mostly the general 2014 vibe. But yes, I listened to Klangkarussell and many other German producers. I was probably most influenced by Alle Farben, who was known for his mixtapes before he started producing his own tracks (which I wasn’t really a fan of). But I also showcased a darker side in some of my mixtapes (like "Der schwerste Gang einer Ente" where I used artists like Burial).

I saw myself more as a consumer than a producer. I mainly created mixtapes because I was constantly discovering and consuming new music. When I had the chance to play at a club or an open-air event (I tried it once), I quickly realized I wasn’t too comfortable performing in front of an audience :)

Around that time, I had just started learning to code and built my first little automations to help me discover even more music on SoundCloud. So I noticed this was another (more lucrative with the similar level of passion) career path where I didn't had to be in front of an audience.
by PythonWanKenobi | 2025-05-13 13:01:11+00:00
Cool to see a framework like AI-PTAF being proposed; definitely a step in the right direction. The main challenge, though, is that AI agents and the whole pentesting landscape are evolving at an insane pace, AI is practically shifting week by week.

So, for these certifications to actually hold weight and stay relevant, the benchmarks need to be truly living and adaptive. Think dynamic difficulty: if an agent solves scenario S1, then S1 itself (or the next scenario S2) should automatically adapt and become more challenging based on that successful performance. To achieve that level of real-time adaptation, the benchmarks themselves might need to be AI-generated, or hey, maybe just "vibe coded" by AI but fully adaptive in style, constantly evolving case-by-case to really push what these agents can do.
by 1970-01-01 | 2025-05-13 13:01:26+00:00
The idea of a hand me down computer made of brass and mahogany still sounds ridiculous because it is, but we're nearly there in terms of Moore's law. We have true 2nm within reach and then the 1nm process is basically the end of the journey. I expect 'audiophile grade' PCs in the 2030s and then PCs become works of art, furniture, investments, etc. because they have nowhere to go.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2_nm_process

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Roadmap_for_Devi...
by jzb | 2025-05-13 13:02:15+00:00
"Discord servers and other contemporary solutions are much worse on the long run, but it does not matter. Software is like startups, long term is not a goal when you are not sure to survive (or in that case, being used and having contributors) next week."

I don't think I've read anything that I disagree with so strongly in a while. "Software is like startups" is about as user and contributor-hostile a concept as they come.

The long term absolutely matters and projects choosing convenience today over long-term thinking are screwing over their future. It's damn near impossible to find information about these projects outside the proprietary silos they've dug themselves into and they will regret the choice one of these days when Discord or whatever proprietary service starts tightening the screws to make money.

I'm not sure what you find hostile about their web appearance. It's a light, clean page with text that doesn't throw tons of JS at you, pop-ups, or a cookie accept/reject/ponder bullshit dialog. It could use a bit of a copy edit / redo and a screenshot (I always complain when a project doesn't have screenshots...), but I don't find it hostile in the least.