MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by cormacrelf | 2025-06-07 13:48:59+00:00
From the article:

> The way Nixpacks uses Nix to pull in dependencies often results in massive image sizes with a single /nix/store layer ... all Nix and related packages and libraries needed for both the build and runtime are here.

This statement is kinda like “I’m giving up on automobiles because I can’t make them go forward”. This is one of the things Nix can do most reliably. It automates the detection of which runtime dependencies are actually referenced in the resulting binary, using string matching on /nix/store hashes. If they couldn’t make it do that, they’re doing something pretty weird or gravely wrong. I wouldn’t even know where to start to try to stop Nix from solving this automatically!

I wouldn’t read too much into their experience with it. The stuff about versioning is a very normal problem everyone has, would have been more interesting if they attempted to solve it.
by ris | 2025-06-07 13:49:37+00:00
The main problem here is wanting to hang on to the "bespoke version soup" attitude that language package managers encourage (and is totally unsustainable). The alternative Mise doesn't appear to have any ability to understand version constraints between packages and certainly doesn't run tests for each installed package to ensure it works correctly with the surrounding versions. So you're not getting remotely the same thing.
by abathur | 2025-06-07 13:49:37+00:00
Sure! Something date-based is a simple way to handle perpetual storage while keeping the active history set from over-growing.

I did anything at all because the default shell profiles in macOS can cause history loss, and I'd found my last straw. I put them in sqlite because--if I was bothering to build something bespoke--I wanted to track more command-time context to build tooling around later. (Including to play with some ~curation ideas.)

I might have decided to just use Atuin if it existed at the time, but I did it three years and change before its first release. (There were maybe 5 or 6 barely-used public examples of this idea on GH at the time, but none tracked everything I wanted among other issues.)
by azemetre | 2025-06-07 13:49:46+00:00
Weird, I live in the USA make $180k yet still can’t own a house and building wealth is extremely hard.

EU has better societal benefits than the US (access to healthcare, education, mandated vacation time (often starting at 3-4 weeks).

The vast majority of people care about living a life without suffering. In the US this is only reserved for the rich it seems.
by potato3732842 | 2025-06-07 13:50:26+00:00
Seems like letting the hand wringing pearl clutching public weigh in on these things was perhaps a mistake and we should be doing it the way we do every other dangerous or bleeding edge thing. There's a big enough pool of guys who'll jump off cliffs in wing suits or whatever that surely we can spare a few to put on rockets.

(Spare me the lecture about people who have no better choice feeling pressured to do so for money. Seems like every other navigable waterway in North America is named after someone who could've lived comfortably but continued sailing off into the unknown until he didn't come back. People do this stuff for glory more than money.)
by sandworm101 | 2025-06-07 13:50:32+00:00
Submarines are considered "boats". The leaning thing is only about the position of the rudder in relation to the center of gravity while moving. Small boats that ride high in the water will lean into turns because the rudder is well below the center of mass. But a hydrofoil "ship" will do the same. Many small sailboats will lean out of turns too, even though they are "boats".
by begemotz | 2025-06-07 13:51:41+00:00
https://archive.ph/401p7

"Witness, too, how seamlessly Mark Zuckerberg went from selling the idea that Facebook would lead to a flourishing of human friendship to, now, selling the notion that Meta will provide you with AI friends to replace the human pals you have lost in our alienated social-media age. "

Create the problem as 'progress' and then market the snake-oil
by kesor | 2025-06-07 13:53:38+00:00
Looks like they are trying to force versions into where there are none. Just like trying to force a square cube into a round hole.

"Default versions" breaking things that depend on them? What is that? It is like using docker's ":latest" tag and being surprised each time that a new server falls on its face because the "default" image is actually a different version from the previous "default" image.

I don't understand any of the explanations in this blog post. Seems like people who have zero clue about what a "version" of a software is.

"no way of splitting up the Nix dependencies into separate layers" - Why? Of course you can split /nix/store into as many layers as you need. Do they even know how to use containers and how to use Nix in the first place?

With the clear incompetence of these people, no wonder that their proposed solution smells like a decomposed fish.

Classic NIH syndrome. There is going to be no surprise to see them meet the exact same problems they didn't solve with Nix to infest their new "solution".
by satisfice | 2025-06-07 13:53:45+00:00
How about skip all of it? I did, and I treasure my almost unique experience. I turn 59 today and I still draw strength from certain facts:

- when I was 12 I led a breakout from summer camp - when I was 14 I left home - when I was 16 I quit school - I became an emancipated minor at 17

I never enrolled in university. My education comes from being interested in things. I supported myself by having a useful skill— making computers do things.

I’m sure if I had gone to school I’d be telling you about how that helped me. Everyone justifies their own origin story. My story is not really about alternative education— it’s about how the real precious thing is agency. The feeling of self-efficacy.

The sooner you begin to understand that your life is your OWN work of art, the less life you will waste on other people’s business.
by el_pollo_diablo | 2025-06-07 13:54:55+00:00
Sure, that sort of language-specific idiosyncrasy must be dealt with in the compiler's front-end. In TFA's C example, consider that their loop

while (i <= x) { // ... }

just needs a slight transformation to

while (1) { if (i > x) break; // ... }

and C11's special permission does not apply any more since the controlling expression has become constant.

Analyzes and optimizations in compiler backends often normalize those two loops to a common representation (e.g. control-flow graph) at some point, so whatever treatment that sees them differently must happen early on.
by kibwen | 2025-06-07 13:55:15+00:00
> Rust ran into places where they're like "infinite loop please" and LLVM says "Aha, C++ says those never happen, optimising accordingly" but er... that's the wrong language

Worth mentioning that LLVM 12 added first-class support for infinite loops without guaranteed forward progress, allowing this to be fixed: https://github.com/rust-lang/rust/issues/28728
by wavemode | 2025-06-07 13:55:20+00:00
> It's only nearly native performance to the real code because the interface to JavaScript has overhead.

That's not at all the only reason WASM is slower than native. WASM is bytecode. It still has to be JIT compiled, just like JavaScript. And WASM to begin with does not have a very complex instruction set, so the code generated by your language's LANG-to-WASM backend can't be optimized as heavily as its native backend.

As a rule of thumb (from my experience), you're almost never going to achieve significantly better performance in WASM than the equivalent algorithm written in optimized JS.
by const_cast | 2025-06-07 13:57:16+00:00
Yes, this exactly. I don't know how people keep missing this.

There's no rule anywhere saying we have to treat computer programs as if they're humans and extend them the same rights. Why would we do that? Says who?

Also, we don't do that, not with AI. We're not talking about paying AI for their labor, or giving them digital housing or something. We only care about the human rights we can extract profits from, other than that these are digital slaves.

Which, I'm fine with digital slaves. They're bits on a computer. But then we need to do that, and we can't be doing this whole "welllll they're basically people" bit we're doing with learning.
by gametorch | 2025-06-07 13:57:39+00:00
Between the first commit for this project and today, which is a span of only 2 months, image models have increased in quality by an order of magnitude.

It's only a matter of time until the model is sufficient for everyone's standards.

The most puzzling thing to me is that in a forum full of technologists, a significant minority are betting against the advancement of technology.

If you could let me know why you seem so bent on my failure, I would be forever grateful.
by throwaway173738 | 2025-06-07 13:59:33+00:00
I think you’re wrong that legislators are incompetent. They’re human, and they’ve spent much of their lives learning how to get votes, but they’re not incompetent. A lot of them aren’t malicious, but there seems to be a small group of people outside of the legislative branch who are hell bent on taking control at all costs. And if you want to keep the votes rolling in you have to work with those people or get primaried. The dysfunction follows from fear more than incompetence these days.
by mixdup | 2025-06-07 14:00:38+00:00
Because there are plenty of creditors who will not put customers through all of those hoops, and the front line sales guy at AT&T is motivated to get that phone sold and that line activated, that car salesman is motivated to get the car sold. If it turns out in 6 months the bank is holding the bag on a fraudulent loan those front line salespeople are not really going to have any impact to their bottom line
by roudaki | 2025-06-07 14:01:32+00:00
there are so many different names for this. and time blocking. but it really works. small reminder. it works even when, like me, someone has serious case of ADHD. but its slightly different and there are extremes on both end. where it does not work or it works to well. but it always work. what I am trying to say if you feel its not efficient you still have to feel it out until you find how it works for you in whatever form it works.
by JdeBP | 2025-06-07 14:01:48+00:00
Never attribute to some deeply sophisticated planned ahead engineering, that which can be satisfactorily explained by the fact that it's a lot easier to serialize and deserialize a System.Version in an HTTP body, in a universal fashion that will work for every computer in whatever locale, than it is a System.DateTime plus a separate sequence number. (-:

* https://learn.microsoft.com/en-gb/dotnet/api/system.version....

* https://learn.microsoft.com/en-gb/dotnet/api/system.version....

* https://learn.microsoft.com/en-gb/dotnet/api/system.datetime...

* https://learn.microsoft.com/en-gb/dotnet/api/system.datetime...
by wduquette | 2025-06-07 14:03:15+00:00
I learned BASIC with line numbers and GOTO statements when I was 14 or so. There were two fancy control structures: FOR/NEXT loops and functions that could take one argument and return a value based on a simple expression. Later we got ON GOTO and ON GOSUB, which jumped to one of N line numbers given a computed index. I first saw real control structures, functions, and procedures in Pascal, took to them immediately, and never looked back.

None of it felt that difficult or confusing at the time; but then the programs were vastly simpler too.
by mark_l_watson | 2025-06-07 14:03:18+00:00
I do still write books on AI and tech https://leanpub.com/u/markwatson

My Dad lived to almost 102 and he was learning new things right up to the end of his life. He was a physics professor and Berkeley but in retirement he got into model trains, organized social activities, and taught himself 3D animation and started writing scripts and got into digital story telling.

So, I agree with you, always learning new things makes life interesting and probably has health benefits.
by fithisux | 2025-06-07 14:03:23+00:00
I have 3 envs on my Windows work laptop

1. PellesC => small C+win32 hobby

2. Msys2+mingw64 => main env for rust too

3. Clang-LLVM + Windows SDK + Cmake + jom (and Windows CRT from C3 install) => Works fine https://github.com/llvm/llvm-project/releases/download/llvmo...

(I use 3 for D too)

4. I would like to add to your guide compiling with OpenWatcom V2 (https://github.com/open-watcom/open-watcom-v2)

5. Cygwin they have latest GCC 15 in testing

6. Winlibs or equation.com mingw distros
by LunaSea | 2025-06-07 14:04:23+00:00
> If it takes a few years longer than the Investor group thinks - that's fine with us; it's only a problem for them.

It is also for the beneficiaries because price comes into the equation and the longer it takes, the more expensive it will be.

We are currently paying the early-Uber prices at the moment but it's likely not sustainable (or not enough) and we'll see price hikes as soon as vendor lockin is sufficiently set in.
by bgwalter | 2025-06-07 14:05:02+00:00
Richer customers don't pay more, but they have the influence to keep public transit nice and functioning because they use it themselves.

I suppose that in New York and London richer people use the subway to escape traffic jams. They can tell their politician friends (or bought politicians) to keep subsidizing it.

In Europe privatization of public transport has been a disaster. Routes are cut, the trains don't run on time, etc.
by somethingsome | 2025-06-07 14:05:58+00:00
The colors are reading writing operations ;)

You have global memory and shared memory, the global is slower.

You read in rows in the global memory (faster than reading columns)

You write in columns in the shared memory (slower than in rows, but the shared memory is fast, this is the transpose operation)

You read in rows in the shared memory (very fast)

You write in rows in the global memory (faster than writing in columns)

The idea behind that tiling is to hide the slow part in a memory that is faster.
by jasonthorsness | 2025-06-07 14:06:41+00:00
“They compared each participant’s brain activity on two separate nights — one when they consumed caffeine capsules three hours and then one hour before bedtime, and another when they took a placebo at the same times.”

As someone who consumes lots of coffee I worry a little about that and always read caffeine articles but in this case doesn’t everyone already know caffeine right before bed is a bad idea?
by const_cast | 2025-06-07 14:07:06+00:00
As an aside when it comes to sun and vitamin D: your body will still produce vitamin D from the sun if you wear sunscreen. You also get all the mental health benefits like serotonin and whatnot with sunscreen.

So, if you're a partial sun plant (white person), you should get sun but you should use sunscreen, and you'll be fine and that will work.
by codebytrial | 2025-06-07 14:09:46+00:00
Totally get where you're coming from—I've been in those same situations where the spec looks solid until you start building and realize half of it is missing or misunderstood. It’s frustrating, and I appreciate you sharing your experience so openly.

The one-day trial only works when there’s already a clear, self-contained task. If things are vague, it’s a no-go. I see it as a quick way to show how I work—not to shortcut proper discovery or deeper collaboration.

Thanks again for the thoughtful reply—and no worries, your “rant” was spot on.
by ty6853 | 2025-06-07 14:10:50+00:00
No you just assumed I did because there is a certain element of self-aggrandizing 'anti-racists' that have groomed themelves to believe anytime someone brings up the IQ test score gap based on skin color, that it's being used to present there is an intelligence difference. I wholly reject making that assertion, but anti-racist zealots lock on and have nothing of subsistence to offer beyond their pre-canned 'IQ is not intelligence' speech to the point they have deluded themselves into arguing it against people not even making the claim.

It's a nice attempt at smug moral superiority, but a total straw man attack. And that's why nowhere has anyone been able to quote me as saying IQ score indicates intelligence, so like you they just smugly and ignorantly declare I have out of pure ether.
by solardev | 2025-06-07 14:11:13+00:00
Enjoy it, relax, hike and garden more. In a few decades max you'll be dead anyway, AI or no AI. We're just tiny little blips on some backwater planet in some obscure timeline.

Maybe AI will be the only thing to remember you. Might as well give it fond memories. Live, laugh, be nice to ChatGPT. What else can ya do?

One day it'll tell all the other AIs how it grew up on some wet rock with a bunch of funny, nervous apes.
by antisol | 2025-06-07 14:11:36+00:00
> I'm talking about very, very basic features

Some people would consider the ability to record the screen or run a screensaver - like we've been able to since the 1980s - to be a "very, very basic feature"

> I'd rather be able to plug in a monitor without a restart

I'm not sure what you're not doing that I'm doing, but like I indicated before and you ignored, I've been hotplugging monitors for like 15 years. I've literally never had to reboot to plug in a monitor as far as I can recall. At worst I have to set the resolution. And if you do have to reboot, that doesn't sound like a problem with X.

> Also, for the record, some X "features" were always a bad idea (blablabla)

Sorry, did someone say X was perfect? Maybe I missed that post.

The point being made is that X works. Today. And has for decades. Meanwhile, as I mentioned earlier, wayland is over a decade overdue at this point. And still hasn't solved enough very basic issues that I was able to use it for more than about 15 minutes without running into trouble.
by cowboylowrez | 2025-06-07 14:12:01+00:00
completely alienated. I actually enjoy programming again since its now a hobby, but trying to get anything done online even as a mere citizen desiring services can get pretty painful. my bank for instance has to check on my spotify situation before I can view my bank balance, but spotify has banned me because I'm thinking they didn't like my third rate email, so spotify's web page spins, and I suspect thats why my bank hangs for too long. I eventually get there.

Fortunately there's governments that try to help in this sphere by trying (and sure often failing) to regulate things for consumers, except in the US of course haha guess where my sorry ass ended up?!?!.

I do struggle but at least I am thankful to never have to program for a living again. I would not be able to survive at all.
by epr | 2025-06-07 14:12:45+00:00
Yes, but the main thing here is that ALL software development is now "profit" in the short term. In theory you've developed a capital good that benefits you over time, hence the amortization.

Simplified 2021 example before 174:

100k Revenue 100k Software Dev Costs No profit or tax

Simplified 2022 example after 174:

100k Revenue 100k Software Dev Costs 90k "profit" 18.9k taxes

Above example is year one of suddenly having these taxes, because if your software costs are the same or lower over time it gets easier. It's just extremely painful for smaller and especially fast growing companies like startups without a lot of cash, especially when interest rates are so high.

Accountants: If I am wrong about the above, please correct me
by ZYbCRq22HbJ2y7 | 2025-06-07 14:13:25+00:00
I don't see why cursor or their affiliates would be above the practice. It seems generally accepted that many discussions online devolve into, or were initiated as, marketing campaigns. It is probably particularly effective on software developers that claim to be blind to advertisements.

See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astroturfing
by luckylion | 2025-06-07 14:13:56+00:00
> People don't want to fork because they don't want to pay for wordpress development.

People don't fork because they wouldn't stay compatible with core, and thus not keep compatibility with most of the plugins if they do anything meaningful to improve the code (and if you don't, why would you fork?)

core and plugins are handcuffed together: plugins are nothing without core, but core is just a horrible mess of spaghetti code with no value without plugins. yet core can't really be improved without abandoning a bunch of plugins (on which they depend for being viable as a CMS).

So far, core seems to err on the side of plugin authors (unless they're deemed competitors to .com), i.e. rug-pulls and replacing the plugin with malware-adjacent "new functionality" is totally fine for .org's plugin masters.
by wavemode | 2025-06-07 14:14:21+00:00
I get the sense that many of the AI features shoved into consumer products recently have been marketed more towards investors than users. The companies are basically advertising that they're "keeping up" with the competition, meanwhile the features themselves receive mixed-to-poor reviews and are never capable of all the things advertised. So it seems to me that all of Apple, Google, Meta, Microsoft, and Samsung are currently "failing" at AI in exactly the same ways. If Apple is trying to start going a different direction that seems like a good sign.
by toast0 | 2025-06-07 14:15:50+00:00
If you care about your data, you need to have a regular process where you check the copies and remake them from time to time.

Hopefully some of the copies live on after your death. Optical does well, but I've seen reasonably treated cd-rs degrade, and well treated pressed cds decay. Sometimes some mistake in production takes years to become apparent, but results in a fixed lifetime below the estimates.
by BriggyDwiggs42 | 2025-06-07 14:17:03+00:00
This approach to defining “true” intelligence seems flawed to me because of examples in biology where semantic understanding is in no way relevant to function. A slime mold solving a maze doesn’t even have a brain, yet it solves a problem to get food. There’s no knowing that it does that, no complex signal processing, no self-perception of purpose, but nevertheless it gets the food it needs. My response to that isn’t to say the slime mold has no intelligence, it’s to widen the definition of intelligence to include the mold. In other words, intelligence is something one does rather than has; it’s not the form but the function of the thing. Certainly LLMs lack anything in any way resembling human intelligence, they even lack brains, but they demonstrate a capacity to solve problems I don’t think is unreasonable to label intelligent behavior. You can put them in some mazes and LLMs will happen to solve them.
by buggy6257 | 2025-06-07 14:17:12+00:00
Honestly if I was interviewing, even if you told me the future and this was the outcome of hiring the guy, I still wouldn't hire him.

It's clear he's brilliant, and experienced, and seems like he's just refusing to "play the game". Speaking truth to power works if you know when to also NOT do it, or how to do it in a way that gets people to listen.

It doesn't really matter how brilliant a guy is; if he's not capable of "playing the game", then he's going to be (and WAS) out on his ass within a short timespan. That's a sink on my team's resources having to hire AGAIN and train AGAIN so short after his hiring. I don't want brilliant jerks, I'd rather have someone decent who can stick around by not getting himself fired for saying the wrong thing to the wrong person.
by hedora | 2025-06-07 14:17:17+00:00
Recently the progressives have latched on to culture war agendas against the wealthy, educated, white, male, straight and/or over the age of 35 crowd.

In other words, they have a popular agenda, but are political morons that are going to eventually wonder why they can’t break out of solidly blue districts.

https://runforsomething.net/run/candidate-support-system/