MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by thequux | 2025-06-17 01:19:28+00:00
I second your recommendation for trying fountain pens. I suffer from some form of arthritis, and fountain pens let me write again.

There are a variety of cheap ones available; I'm fond of the Platinum Preppy. They're cheap as chips, write nicely, and have a fine version that actually lives up to its name. The Lamy Safari is also popular, but I found it too chunky to be comfortable.
by z2 | 2025-06-17 01:20:09+00:00
Yeah, 1984 and its source material tend to reduce everything to monolithic dystopias, which indeed was relevant and happens when top down power bends truth. But maybe enough pent-up bottom up emotion can also override reason and decay truth the same way. It feels like the latter is also closer to a lot of the world today, we're seeing more chaotic competition for attention than some centrally planned dictation of truth.
by causality0 | 2025-06-17 01:20:46+00:00
It would be nice if there was some type of front-end integration that would present the user with a list of heteronyms found in the text and ask for clarification for each one. As well as having lists of common phrases to compare them against. There's really no excuse for an LLM to mispronounced "live feed" or "live here".
by arcb | 2025-06-17 01:21:25+00:00
It's a great repo! We had issues with iframes and framesets (which are old DOM tags) we had to write custom code for. Some DOMs need annotation to provide meaning to an LLM (for example, a button is clearly an "add demographics" button to the human eye, but is ambiguous in the DOM (ul contains li...). Some bottlenecks in navigation required manual attention. We keep those to a minimum. I think the future is being able to progress from highly deterministic JS code, to more agentic LLM-driven decisions. One does need to be able to control this for performance, cost, and accuracy. And yes we have some overlap with workflow-use's direction, but I hope that more such OSS methods gain popularity! It'd simply mean we can go after higher value and more complex clinical tasks!
by rfl890 | 2025-06-17 01:23:19+00:00
Thank you for your response. I don't feel that you unnecessarily exposed anything, just that not much explanation was given. Take a look at The Rust Programming Language's "getting started" section[1]. The installation steps are clear, the code is deconstructed and explained, and you are made familiar with the basic CLI tooling. Looking at yours, installation steps are clear, but I'm just given commands and code to paste with no explanation as to what it all does. Sure, I could go browse the man pages, but it's easier to ease into reading manual pages after a gentle beginner's explanation.

Although, given that you mentioned teaching, maybe the page is intended to be presentation-style (less information on the page, more to be explained vocally)? But you can correct me if I'm wrong.

[1] https://doc.rust-lang.org/book/ch01-00-getting-started.html
by lmm | 2025-06-17 01:24:14+00:00
> If you were using an Android phone, you were probably already logged in to a Google account.

Sure. But is it the same Google account that your relatives email you on, or a different one that only that phone is using? When you drop this phone are you going to sign into that same Google account or make a new one? The answers for non-technical users are non-obvious.
by aussieguy1234 | 2025-06-17 01:27:11+00:00
I played around with agents yesterday, now I'm hooked.

I got Claude Code (With CLine and VSCode) to do a task for a personal project. It did it about 5x faster than i'd have been able to do manually including running bash commands e.g. to install dependencies for new npm packages.

These things can do real work. If you have things in plain text format like markdown, csv spreadsheets etc, alot of what normal human employees do today could be somewhat automated.

You currently still need a human to supervise the agent and what its doing, but that won't be needed anymore in the not so distant future.
by pavelstoev | 2025-06-17 01:28:10+00:00
This story is dear to my heart. Let me tell you why - this is the tale of how my wife of 15 years, bless her heart, an occasional unstable genius, proposed a startlingly effective method for eradicating these invasive pythons.

She slammed her coffee cup down one morning with the conviction of an Old Testament prophet and declared: “Exploding rabbits.”

“Excuse me?” I said, wiping marmalade off my chin.

“Exploding. Rabbits. Stuff ‘em with quarter pound of C4, or maybe just enough tannerite to surprise the neighbors but not call down the FAA, and set them loose in the Everglades. Pythons love rabbits. Boom. Problem solved. You’re welcome, America.”

Now I’ve heard my share of madcap schemes. Once she tried to compost credit card offers. But this time she looked me square in the eye with the righteous glow of a woman who had just solved two ecological crises and accidentally founded a billion-dollar startup in the process.

“We’ll call it Hare Trigger™,” she added, deadpan. “It’s got product-market fit and explosive growth potential.”

She even sketched out a logo involving a jackrabbit with aviator goggles and a plunger.

I asked if this might attract some sort of federal attention.

“Good,” she said. “That’s called buzz. Besides, the pythons started it.”

And just like that, I found myself wondering how far true it is that behind every successful man stands an even more genius woman. Waiting for Elon to offer Series A.
by lmm | 2025-06-17 01:28:19+00:00
> I book with hotels directly almost all the time and never receive marketing spam just regular mail about my upcoming start.

What's your secret? Even the hotel in privacy-conscious Austria I stayed with once four years ago spams me.

> booking with the hotel lets me select options not available on booking sites like king vs 2 queen bed options, ADA compliant rooms and even floor options

If their booking system works. Usually faster and more reliable to send a message on booking.com.

> if you have AAA or some other memberships, those codes can easily beat discount sites like Booking.com

Maybe if your time is worthless.
by jrflowers | 2025-06-17 01:28:27+00:00
This makes sense. The CRM company made a CRM agent to do CRM tasks and it did poorly. The lesson to be learned here is that attempting to leverage institutional knowledge to make a language model do something useful is a mistake, when the obvious solution for LLM agents is to simply make them more gooder, which must be trivial since I can picture them being very good in my mind.
by quantadev | 2025-06-17 01:28:36+00:00
Bekenstein-Hawking entropy goes up when an Event Horizon increases in radius. That means some mass "falling onto" an EH. So this implies, if our universe is actually a 3D EH, both time and increasing entropy can be explained by one thing: Increasing size of our EH. That is, mass falling onto our EH from outside our universe. It also happens to elegantly replace the Big Bang nonsense theory with something that makes sense. It explains the universe expansion as well. Assuming our universe is a 3D EH makes lots of things make sense that don't otherwise make sense.
by jumploops | 2025-06-17 01:28:42+00:00
> It takes me at least the same amount of time to review code not written by me than it would take me to write the code myself, if not more.

As someone who uses Claude Code heavily, this is spot on.

LLMs are great, but I find the more I cede control to them, the longer it takes to actually ship the code.

I’ve found that the main benefit for me so far is the reduction of RSI symptoms, whereas the actual time savings are mostly over exaggerated (even if it feels faster in the moment).
by deinonychus | 2025-06-17 01:28:47+00:00
I like this outlook a lot. I suppose I've met a lot of people that do creative writing recreationally and also socially in clubs, writing not just poetry but also things like adventures for roleplaying games like D&D.

I wonder what the commercialized form of a "gym but for your brain" would look like and if it would take off and if it would be more structured than... uh... schools? Wait, wouldn't this just be like a college except the students are there because they want to be, and not for vocational reasons?
by lmm | 2025-06-17 01:31:57+00:00
Ryanair are notorious for a) nickel-and-diming and b) general nastiness (e.g. charging a big fee to print a boarding pass at the airport, flying to an airport 70km from the city name they advertised, telling the press that they're going to start charging for the toilet). They're one of the few airlines whose reputation is big and extreme enough that it's percolated into the public consciousness.
by magicalhippo | 2025-06-17 01:32:13+00:00
> You can see this if you watch NileRed on youtube

Or Extractions & Ire, along with his other channel Explosions & Fire[2], which is a PhD student trying to do chemistry in his shed, literally, using stuff you can get from a well-stocked hardware store or such.

Often the steps seem straight forward but there are details in the papers that are not covered, or the contaminants from using some brand household product rather than a pure source screws it up.

Still, his videos are usually quite entertaining regardless of results.

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/@ExtractionsAndIre

[2]: https://www.youtube.com/@explosionsandfire
by karlgkk | 2025-06-17 01:33:25+00:00
I’m not sure the point you’re trying to make but I’ve had so many junior level interviewees and interactions where they are unable to do anything without an LLM coaching them the whole way. This is dangerous!

It’s like if I was hiring a mathematician. I’d expect them to use a calculator or CAS package but I’d also expect them to be able to do everything by hand. I wouldn’t ever waste their time by making them do that, of course.
by beagle3 | 2025-06-17 01:33:26+00:00
It’s also hubris and overconfidence. My child had a disease that’s very rare and hard to diagnose. A week at Johns Hopkins with hundreds of thousands of dollars of tests found nothing. The doctors sent us home with a “it’s just a virus, it’ll probably go away in a few weeks”.

Some 72 hours later, armed with google, Wikipedia, the rest of the internet, and coffee (with very little sleep). I figured it out.

But when I called Hopkins they said “you are wrong, can’t be that. Stop using the internet, you have no idea what you are reading and you are only scaring yourself”.

30-or-so specialists from a variety of top US hospitals kept saying the same thing (with the addition: “if Hopkins says you are wrong, you are wrong”.

But then, we saw a specialist in a world top-10 hospital outside the US, who immediately agreed with my diagnosis. Treatment started the following week (only 3 months lost) and the condition started to resolve.

I kept in touch with the doctors I had seen before. They didn’t care. Some thought it was still the wrong diagnosis. Until a year later, near complete remission - and pathology of a resection - confirmed it 100%

Modern medicine is part science, part craft, part cult. You tend to meet the cult aspect more often with rare or hard-to-diagnose diseases.
by ratorx | 2025-06-17 01:34:38+00:00
> requires fewer predictions to discover

I don’t think that is implied. It was discovered first, but that doesn’t mean it is necessarily simpler or required less data to discover. Take Newton/Leibniz calculus for example as a clear example of similar discovery time, leading to the same result but using different approaches. Leibniz started after Newton technically, and yet is the preferred way.

Especially if theory B is equivalent to theory A, then using it as a replacement for theory A seems perfectly fine (well as long as there are other benefits).

In some cases it might be pointless though from a scientific standpoint because the goal is “not-yet-known” predictions, but if viewed through a mathematical lens, then it seems like a valid area of study.

Maybe the process behind creating theory A is more generalisable towards future scientific discovery, but that would make the process worthwhile, not the theory.
by danpalmer | 2025-06-17 01:36:22+00:00
> The promotions will appear only in an area of the app called Updates, which is used by around 1.5 billion people a day

Is that 1.5 billion people engaging with it, or 1.5 billion people seeing it because it's the first tab and then immediately switching to "Chats", the only useful tab in the app?
by aeonik | 2025-06-17 01:38:05+00:00
I don't like your comment, it's pretty low effort, and your tearing down a lot of effort that I have put into learning about physics and entropy over the years.

I came up with the psuedonym Aeonik Chaos circa 2010 because my studies of Chaos Theory and Entropy left a very deep impact on me.

I've been thinking about entropy ever since my dad, a biochemist, embryologist, and doctor told me he thought that entropy was behind the secret of life. That event was over 30 years ago.

I've been thinking about this stuff very deeply for a very long time.

So no, it's not according to ChatGPT, it's just my current take, but I don't to come out and say "this is how it is", because entropy has a way of being sneaky, I've been wrong about theories of entropy way too many times to pretend to be some authority on the matter.

Hence, this is my take, take it or leave it.

By the way, I love using ChatGPT to learn more about science and math, and have it act as sounding board for ideas. It's great for learning and diving deeper into this stuff.
by royal__ | 2025-06-17 01:38:10+00:00
I get confused when I see stances like this, because it gives me the sense that maybe people just aren't using coding tools efficiently.

90% of my usage of Copilot is just fancy autocomplete: I know exactly what I want, and as I'm typing out the line of code it finishes it off for me. Or, I have a rough idea of the syntax I need to use a specific package that I use once every few months, and it helps remind me what the syntax is, because once I see it I know it's right. This usage isn't really glamorous, but it does save me tiny bits of time in terms of literal typing, or a simple search I might need to do. Articles like this make me wonder if people who don't like coding tools are trying to copy and paste huge blocks of code; of course it's slower.
by mathattack | 2025-06-17 01:38:18+00:00
There isn't enough data to make a blanket recommendation, so here are some things to consider. All are generalities and can be ignored if certain specifics override them, so use your judgment.

- If your employer is doing well, it is better to stay longer and get promoted from within. (Based on "Relatively good one" I'll assume this is the case.)

- If your employer reorganizes frequently, is supports the "Stick it out case."

- If your employer encourages people to find their own new jobs within the company, that is usually the best route. (This isn't always the situation. In many companies you need your current boss's blessing) Based on your explanation it seems like this isn't the case.

- If you are learning a lot, add that to the case to stay.

- If your new manager has ethical issues (as opposed to just competence issues) start your search right now. Not 30 minutes from now. Not tomorrow. Not next week. Now.

- Same if you're put on any kind of performance improvement plan (PIP). Don't think "I'm competent, I can work my way out of it". PIPs are paper trails to keep them from getting sued. Consider the duration of the PIP to be your severance.

- As you've figured out, it's rarely a good idea to go over your manager's head unless you have an outstanding relationship with the CEO or similar who would ask you later "Why didn't you come to me first?"

- If you have to leave, find a new job first. Then be professional on the way out, and don't throw your manager under the bus. Just say, "I really enjoyed working for you, a dream opportunity came up." You never know when they'll be asked for a back-door reference check on you.

- Similarly, don't badmouth your boss when you interview. (You don't want to seem like someone easily discontented.) You can say "It's now or never to leave, and I think your company has a much better future. I'd rather invest in my career there."

Good luck navigating this!
by zmmmmm | 2025-06-17 01:39:35+00:00
I think there's a key context difference here in play which is that AI tools aren't better than an expert on the language and code base that is being written. But the problem is that most software isn't written by such experts. It's written by people with very hazy knowledge of the domain and only partial knowledge of the languages and frameworks they are using. Getting it to be stylistically consistent or 100% optimal is far from the main problem. In these contexts AI is a huge help, I find.
by ndriscoll | 2025-06-17 01:40:13+00:00
I do actually think that putting ads in front of children at least is immoral, and it is neglectful not to block ads for kids in the same way that it is to just hand them an unfiltered violence-and-porn device.

It's probably at least irresponsible to not block ads for an elderly parent who's starting to experience cognitive decline.
by crtified | 2025-06-17 01:40:39+00:00
Decades ago I had the same type of what are people talking about?!, it's certainly not happening to me! surprise, regarding MDMA and the supposed wonders of dancing the night away. I felt the effects of the substance, but to me, nightclub dancing on MDMA still felt about as awkwardly-conscious, performative and unnecessary as it did without!

I suspect it's similar with the spiritual stuff, in principle. That is, if you're typically not a personality who tends towards that stuff - spiritual connections and revelations and such - then perhaps no substance will necessary make you so.
by thaumasiotes | 2025-06-17 01:40:45+00:00
> I didn't realize that the original quote (from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44282822) was lifted nearly verbatim from Wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Ice_Age

I don't know what more I can do than saying "Wikipedia says this: _____ ['Little Ice Age']".
by lmm | 2025-06-17 01:41:13+00:00
> No more absurd than the notion that a mere sequence of sounds could convey any other meaning or elicit any other response.

Disagree. The fact that voluntary communication works is somewhat miraculous, sure. But the idea that a reader could be made to experience something unpleasant against their will by mere words is far stranger. Obviously unpleasant meanings can be conveyed through words, but the idea that the words themselves can be inherently unpleasant feels like some kind of moral panic/social contagion (like if there was a satanic panic centered on the "brown note") rather than a real thing.
by frankc | 2025-06-17 01:41:59+00:00
I just don't agree with this. I am generally telling the model how to do the work according to an architecture I specify using technology I understand. The hardest part for me in reviewing someone else's code is understanding their overall solution and how everything fits together as it's not likely to be exactly the way I would have structured the code or solved the problem. However, with an LLM it generally isn't since we have pre-agreed upon a solution path. If that is not what is happening than likely you are letting the model get too far ahead.

There are other times when I am building a stand-alone tool and am fine wiht whatever it wants to do because it's not something I plan to maintain and its functional correctness is self-evident. In that case I don't even review what it's doing unless it's stuck. This is more actual vibe code. This isn't something I would do for something I am integrating into a larger system but will for something like a cli tool that I use to enhance my workflow.
by salawat | 2025-06-17 01:42:41+00:00
Next and Apple going out of business could have opened up the field for another up and comer. No Google merger has been conscionable. It's all been monopolists monopolizing.

Sprint should have died to free up assets for someone that's not already a huge player in the space to pick up. I don't see corporate immortality through M&A's as a good thing.
by ed_mercer | 2025-06-17 01:42:54+00:00
Exactly. It has access to literally everything including any MCP server. It's so awesome having claude code check my database using a read-only user, or have it open a puppeteer browser and check whether its CSS changes look weird or not. It's the perfect interface and anthropic nailed it.

It can even debug my k8s cluster using kubectl commands and check prometheus over the API, how awesome is this?
by eddythompson80 | 2025-06-17 01:43:01+00:00
No one said you’re routinely doing it. It just happens for thing at orders of magnitude higher than what can be asked for software. One bad coffee, or meal or a %20 tip on a $40 order of pizza is far more than the 1.99 or 3.99 software can ask for, and it’s still too much. Tipping $5 or a $10 is not a big deal, but a $1.99 app is like “ooof, is there like a free version?”

It’s not even a blanket statement on software. gamers have shown they are willing to pay, though their money comes with strings attached. Mac users are more willing to pay than Windows users who are more willing to pay than Linux users.
by raattgift | 2025-06-17 01:43:21+00:00
No, here "entropic" is as in the entropic force that returns a stretched rubber band to its unstretched condition, which (as it tends to be scrunched a bit) is at a higher entropy.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubber_band_experiment

"The stretching of the rubber band is an isobaric expansion (A → B) that increases the energy but reduces the entropy"

[apologies for any reversed signs below, I think I caught them all]

In Verlinde' entropic gravity, there is a gravitational interaction that "unstretches" the connection between a pair of masses. When they are closer together they are at higher entropy than when they are further apart. There is a sort of tension that drags separated objects together. In Carney et al's approach there is a "pressure mediated by a microscopic system which is driven towards extremization of its free energy", which means that when objects are far apart there is a lower entropy condition than when they are closer together, and this entropy arises from a gas with a pressure which is lower when objects are closer together than when objects are further apart. Pressure is just the inverse of tension, so at a high enough level, in both entropic gravity theories, you just have a universal law -- comparable to Newton's -- where objects are driven (whether "pulled" or "pushed") together by an entropic force.

This entropic force is not fundamental - it arises from the statistical behaviour of quantum (or otherwise microscopic) degrees of freedom in a holographic setting (i.e., with more dimensions than 3+1). It's a very string-theory idea.

The approach is very hard to make it work unless the entropic force is strictly radial, and so it's hard to see how General Relativity (in the regime where it has been very well tested) can emerge.
by strangescript | 2025-06-17 01:43:36+00:00
Everyone is still thinking about this problem the wrong way. If you are still running one agent, on one project at a time, yes, its not going to be all that helpful if you are already a fast, solid coder.

Run three, run five. Prompt with voice annotation. Run them when normally you need a cognitive break. Run them while you watch netflix on another screen. Have them do TDD. Use an orchestrator. So many more options.

I feel like another problem is deep down most developers hate debugging other people's code and thats effectively what this is at times. It doesn't matter if your Associate ran off and saved you 50k lines of typing, you would still rather do it yourself than debug the code.

I would give you grave warnings, telling you the time is nigh, adapt or die, etc, but it doesn't matter. Eventually these agents will be good enough that the results will surpass you even in simple one task at a time mode.