MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by theamk | 2025-06-02 17:09:07+00:00
A startup idea: "exam machines". An low cost/ancient laptop with locked-down software and special cloud service. They provide a way to write a text and submit it, maybe also reference or spellcheck or calculator (if teacher enables), but nothing else, in particular no access to websites like ChatGPT. Teacher (or proctor) hands them out in class during exams, and oversees the use to make sure no one is using ChatGPT on their phone or something.

This will allow teachers to grade the works without having to read students' handwriting.

Yes, many HN readers would be able to make something like this with the right application of security policies. But many non-CS teachers could not, and I am sure some of them would be happy to pay a bit to smooth out exam process.
by Stratoscope | 2025-06-02 17:09:12+00:00
Location: Menlo Park, CA

Remote: Yes, or possible hybrid if nearby

Willing to relocate: Possibly

Technologies: Python, Ruby, C, C++, C#, JavaScript, TypeScript, PowerShell, Flask, SQL, PostGIS, Shapely, Unity, Unreal Engine, multiple assembly/machine languages, Windows user code and kernel drivers, Google Maps and other map APIs, geographic and airspace data

Résumé/CV: https://resume.geary.com and https://linkedin.geary.com or https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelgeary/details/experience/ for the full details

Email: mike@geary.com

Hi, I'm Michael Geary. I've programmed in many languages and environments over the years. Some of my current interests are:

• Aviation and geographic data. For example, airspace and obstacle data importers for Wing; election results and voter information maps for Google; many interactive maps for other companies.

• Hardware interfacing. In a way, I am a "full stack" developer, but my stack may involve a front end to a piece of hardware rather than the cloud. I first got into programming via ham radio, so RF hardware remains an interest.

• Designing and building APIs. Too often an API is designed by exposing the internals of whatever system provides the API. My philosophy is the opposite: start with the apps. I like to build a series of sample apps before starting on the API. This way I can imagine what API will make those apps and others like them easy to build.

• Talk with users! I don't like to sit in a back room cranking out code. I want to make sure it's the right code for what my users need, and that it's easy to maintain and improve as we learn more about what they want.

Open to full time or contract.

I look forward to talking with you!
by olddognewtricks | 2025-06-02 17:09:26+00:00
Centry Capital | Platform Engineer and Quality Assurance Engineer roles | REMOTE (±3 hours CET, i.e. European and similar timezones) | https://centry.capital | Full-Time

Revolutionising wealth management with AI-driven automation. Founded by repeat fintech entrepreneurs with multiple successful exits. Seeking a Platform Engineer and a Quality Engineer to build our AI-powered digital family office platform. Early-stage; have closed an initial round of funding.

Platform engineer: 5+ years experience building and operating scalable systems. Familiar with event driven architectures and observability within the Kubernetes ecosystem. Preference will be given to candidates who have a broader set of experience with other disciplines such as data engineering and full stack application development as we’re a small team and so may need to lend a hand on a variety of tasks.

Quality assurance engineer: 5+ years experience doing QA within a startup environment. We’re looking for people who seek to understand the domain problem and solve for ensuring a high quality customer experience. Will need to extend the automated testing framework within the context of LLM based workflows. Candidates should also be prepared to do manual testing.

For both roles, experience operationalising AI/ML workloads, fintech experience as well as having a strong product sense and entrepreneurial mindset are desirable characteristics.

Some core technologies: Next.js, Python, LangGraph, PostgreSQL, Red Panda, Dagster, Kubernetes, Pulumi, GCP.

Compensation: Competitive base salary + equity. Apply: careers@centry.capital
by borjah | 2025-06-02 17:09:28+00:00
Yeah. As some has said already PLC are more oriented to robotic arms in factories etc, where space is not a premium. Robots like anymal from anybotics, spot from boston dynamics or the unidog from unitree to name a few don't use PLC at all due to lack of space. Also energy efficiency, mcu at most will push less than a watt to move something complex, a motor control for the FOC, I mentioned earlier.

I worked for the past 4 years in HP siteprint.The main problem was developing all to fit inside a pelican case that you could check in on a plane. The smallest PLC was almost the full internal volume of the robot. That's why I said microcontrollers, more ready available to experiment at home, faaaaaaaar more cheaper and those two, very well documented. STM32 in europe is the big player but is harder to get into, the documentation tends to be cahotic.
by nickpsecurity | 2025-06-02 17:09:35+00:00
To support your position, I still think the best ROI is interface specs with test generation and code level proofs. Also, detection of common problems like a type changing or no increment in a while. That would've caught many problems I've had in the last, few months.

The biggest problem I see with that is how to specify those specs, especially contracts. I'd like to see a free collection of specs for common properties. Examples include ranges, ordering, not a value, invariants, and confidentiality. If searchable, then that might already be enough for many situations.

From there, we can develop tools to generate them for people. The tools might parse the code, ask some questions, and generate the specs. Alternatively, LLM's trained on such things might generate specs. They might review them and suggest things. Over time, we'll also have more components that are already spec'd which specialists might build on.

We just really need ways for developers to go from their situation to specs with no work or little work. If it's as easy as code and comments, we'll see more adoption.
by captaincrunch | 2025-06-02 17:09:36+00:00
Location: Toronto, ON, Canada / London, ON, Canada

Remote: Preferred

Willing to relocate: No

Technologies: Linux, Unix, LAMP, VirtualBox, AWS, C, C++, PHP, Python, Java, Puppet, Ansible, Chef, Jenkins, Kubernetes, Docker, MySQL, Oracle, MariaDB, PostgreSQL, Scikit-learn, Keras, NumPy, Blockchain, Crypto, VMware ESXi, Xen, Hyper-V, Metasploit, Nmap, Burp Suite, Wireshark, ELK Stack, Nessus, OpenVAS, Splunk, Wazuh.

Résumé/CV: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1lkZ9knn- 6ci1MusWeFeArP8k3D-2M1Z7/view?usp=sharing

Email: mike@intrudr.ca
by int_19h | 2025-06-02 17:09:36+00:00
I think it's more that people don't know that you can get ebooks as files from other stores to begin with. But then also you need ones that don't do DRM, which complicates things further.

But, yes, Amazon is also deliberately vague regarding those emails. Most of their documentation presents it as a way to "keep your documents in your Kindle"; the fact that books are a subset of those documents is not exactly highlighted.
by kmsun07 | 2025-06-02 17:09:42+00:00
Conduit | Product Engineer | San Francisco (Hybrid) | Full-Time

We (https://helloconduit.com) are building Air Traffic Control for warehouses. We help supply chains handle thousands of trucks and shipments every single day and move the physical economy forward. As the operating system for shipping and receiving, we serve one of the largest, most important industries in the world. Logistics teams depend on us every single day, and we have proof that we make their operations more profitable, safer, and more secure.

We’re looking for a product-minded engineer to help accelerate our efforts in building the operating system for shipping and receiving at warehouses. We believe that there is tremendous value to be created by working closely with our customers and bringing modern solutions to their problems. We’re growing rapidly month by month, and delivering new features that delight our users on a daily basis.

Our ideal candidate would have 3+ years of full-stack experience, but the most important trait is an appetite to learn and get stuff done.

This is a hybrid role based in San Francisco. We are typically in the office Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday, but are generally flexible.

https://app.dover.com/apply/Conduit/ea40de42-4f81-4e63-828c-...
by nunoarruda | 2025-06-02 17:10:41+00:00
SEEKING WORK

Location: Portugal

Remote: Yes, remote only

Willing to relocate: No

Technologies: HTML, CSS, JavaScript, TypeScript, RxJS, Angular, Ionic, Cordova, Capacitor

Résumé/CV: https://nunoarruda.com/resume.pdf

Email: nuno@nunoarruda.com

Frontend Angular Developer and Ionic Developer Expert
by fheisler | 2025-06-02 17:11:45+00:00
Authentik Security | Senior Engineer | US | REMOTE (anywhere) | Full-time

Authentik Security (https://goauthentik.io) is the company behind authentik (https://github.com/goauthentik/authentik), an open source identity provider with 1M+ unique installations. Help us replace Okta/Auth0, Ping Identity, and Microsoft Entra with modern, secure identity for all!

We are a small remote team, looking to scale up with experienced software engineers, primarily with a backend focus. Bonus points if you have significant experience with identity/SSO standards and/or Django/Python.

There is also the opportunity to be "forward deployed" spending 20%+ of time with enterprise customers (remotely) on configuration best practices and rollout strategies, _if_ that is of interest to the right candidate.

To apply, please use: https://forms.gle/NYXH4E19LUohbpmJA
Ask HN: Contact form spam despite trying everything
by pettycashstash2 | 2025-06-02 17:11:51+00:00
I'm at my wit's end with contact form spam on my sites. I've tried:

CleanTalk - caught some spam but still getting through, plus the monthly cost adds up Turnstile - better UX than reCAPTCHA but bots seem to be solving it reCAPTCHA v2 - effective but users hate the image challenges reCAPTCHA v3 - invisible but I'm still getting 20-30 spam submissions daily even with strict thresholds

I've also implemented honeypots, rate limiting, basic keyword filtering, and email validation (both format checking and MX record verification). The spam is getting more sophisticated - proper English, realistic email addresses that actually exist, even passing behavioral checks. What I'm curious about: How does Hacker News handle spam so effectively? I rarely see spam comments here, and there's no visible CAPTCHA. Are you using something custom, or is there a service/approach I'm missing? For context, I get about 500 legitimate form submissions per month, so I need something that won't block real users while stopping the bot flood. What's worked best for your sites? Especially interested in hearing from anyone who's dealt with determined, human-like spam at scale.
by BurningFrog | 2025-06-02 17:12:16+00:00
I've learned to love things I used to hate.

For me it took understanding how things are connected and that doing the superficially unfun things are a necessary precondition for the superfun things to happen.

Learning to appreciate what you have instead of hate what you're missing is also a very fundamental mental health principle.

This is of course much easier said than done.
by lostmsu | 2025-06-02 17:12:24+00:00
Seattle, 2 kids. Most of the expenses exceed normal due to us trying to relieve the hardship of raising very young kids, expect to go back to normal in 2-3 years.

$6k apt in a very nice area

$4.5k for preschool and daycare

$4k for household help (kids, cleaning, some cooking)

$1.5-2k for eating out

$400 for utilities

$1.5k on travel (smoothed out)

$500 boat club

$400 hobbies
by Suppafly | 2025-06-02 17:12:29+00:00
>What's the issue with 'delve'? It's hardly Old English

It's used a ton by LLMs for some reason despite being rarely used by real people. I think it's mostly a byproduct of LLMs having their training data being over represented by certain published works instead of casual communications.

There does seem to be something else going on with delve specifically though, one of the other comments mentions that delve isn't used in the specific training data for this, so it's odd to see it being used in the output. I wonder if it's because delve has secondary definitions of "to make a careful or detailed search for information" and "to examine a subject in detail" which is causing the LLM to use it to seem like it's answers are more thorough.
by yieldcrv | 2025-06-02 17:12:38+00:00
that's pragmatic, I've launched and exited two things, and I can't bring myself to do it again to solidify my financial circumstances, so I stay employed instead and exclusively

its interesting how there are so many ways to be productive and compensated in this industry doing the same kind of work, but each gatekeeper is so strongly opinionated

like there is this perception that even just a 10 year developer is supposed to be this super soldier doing continual growth - more than just keeping up with frameworks but doing all these advanced other things - as opposed to simply doing the same job for 10 years. I like how the industry has matured for people with less years of experience to be compensated so highly, so I just keep truncating my resume to being at 8-10 years of experience, and plan on doing that forever.
by ZYZ64738 | 2025-06-02 17:12:54+00:00
Well, I have orbited the sun 55 times, 24 of them together with another person besides my life partner. I understand that some parameters in life were chosen by others (my name, place of birth etc. even my gender I could not choose myself), but many other decisions were, are and will be made by me and their consequences are sometimes quite different from what they were planned or expected. In any case, this is still my reality that I have to deal with - everything else is illusion or wishful thinking. The best I can do is to accept things and situations as they are, as happily as possible. This means that I can and perhaps even have to adapt within the scope of my possibilities in order to be as happy as possible.
by closewith | 2025-06-02 17:13:23+00:00
> What incentive people have to work harder than average to innovate if there's no measurable reward at the end and you end with the same QoL as people doing the bare minimum?

The quality of life at all social levels is higher in the EU than the US. This can't be measured in dollars, but is clear across all other HDI metrics.

> Asia and the US ate half of the EU's pie of the global GDP in the last 20 years and it's only gonna get worse from here.

This is because of global wealth redistribution and is a good thing. Rich Europeans extracting wealth from the global poor was (and is) a bad outcome. The same will happen to the US, and again it's a good thing.

> Then why does it need NATO bases of the US on its turf, if it's so strong by itself?

I think the real question is why does the US need bases around the world?

> Secondly, even if you consider it as one, all of EU militaries combined can't hold a candle to US military in terms of tech and logistical capabilities and sheer numbers.

The EU members are individually and combined no longer able to field expeditionary armies. This is a good thing, as the former colonial powers didn't use them wisely in the past. However, there is no military power globally who can threaten the integrity of the EU militarily, not even the US.

The US military is a source of endless death and destruction in the world. It's not something you should be proud of. The current forever wars and the unbroken chain of foreign invasions are a series of crimes against humanity.

> Ah, so no augments, just insults. OK buddy, thanks for the red flag, I'm out of this discussion.

I think you may fail to see the irony in this comment?
by iancmceachern | 2025-06-02 17:13:28+00:00
All the responses, most of which I've seen are great, are very software focused. I get it, makes sense for HN. There is a whole world of hardware in this space. Learning how to design mechanisms that work, and last. Custom motors, controllers, actuators, hardware.

For that there are some great points of entry now. Places like pololu robotics, Adafruit, sparkfun, etc. are all as good as ever and are great jumping off points into building and eventually designing hardware.
by kens | 2025-06-02 17:13:37+00:00
On the topic of computer-generated Mondrians, in 1966 a researcher at Bell Labs used a computer to produce a semi-random version of Mondrian's "Composition With Lines" (1917). Interestingly, he found that only 28% of people could correctly identify the computer-generated picture and 59% preferred the computer-generated picture.

The researcher points out that "Both patterns were conceived by humans, although certain features of the computer-generated picture were decided by a programmed random algorithm. The computer functioned only as a medium performing its operations under the complete control of the computer program written by the programmer-artist."

The paper with images: http://noll.uscannenberg.org/Art%20Papers/Mondrian.pdf
by AnimalMuppet | 2025-06-02 17:13:58+00:00
Hmm, interesting.

One of the problems programmers have is loading a problem into working memory. It can take an hour. An interruption, a phone call, or a meeting can mean that you have to start over (or, if not completely over, you still have to redo part of it). This is a standard programmer complaint about interruptions.

It's interesting that LLMs may have a similar issue.
by gruez | 2025-06-02 17:14:41+00:00
In the end, it's all supply and demand. That's not to say it has no effect either. Increased productivity from AI can increase wages by raising the upper bound for salaries (companies won't pay an employee more than the value he can create), and creating competition between companies (if a single programmer can generate $500k worth of value, and their salaries are only $100k, then we'd expect other companies to spring up to arbitrage this difference).
by marybon | 2025-06-02 17:15:11+00:00
SEEKING WORK | Illustration/Design

Location: Lisbon, Portugal

Remote: Yes

Willing to relocate: No

Technologies: Procreate, Photoshop, Illustrator, Figma, Blender, all offline art mediums from pastel to screen printing

Portfolio: https://marybon.com

Email: hello@marybon.com

An artist by trade, I worked 6+ years in ateliers, leading design projects with a multitude of materials as well as teaching basics in visual awareness, paiting and drawing. Since 2015, I have shifted my focus to digital art, collaborating with a variety of clients to provide illustration services and graphic consulting.
by roland35 | 2025-06-02 17:15:13+00:00
The problem with your statement here is the "you MUST hire from those pools".

That is not happening. We can hire anybody. Basically, LOOKING at new sources is good! That doesn't mean at all we lower the bar or exclude white men. Of course, for basically all of time it has been a good ol boys club white men hiring their friends up to this point so not sure what the problem even is!
by steveklabnik | 2025-06-02 17:15:42+00:00
This is:

1. hilarious because it itself is an example of this behavior, we aren't discussing the article, but instead a tangent from a few words from it

2. an instance of Parkinson's Law of Triviality: it's just easier to respond to a comment than to read an entire article. Plus, many people read comments first to try and determine if an article is worth reading. So you end up with engagement in spinoff discussion, especially when the original is harder to read or understand to a general audience.
by parpfish | 2025-06-02 17:15:49+00:00
I think you could argue that openAI isn’t in the business of making art — it’s their users that make AI art that are in the business of making art.

There are plenty of reasons for a model to ingest the art that are not directly related to creating new derivatives of that art. If you want the model to be able to recognize famous paintings or discuss styles/genres, it needs to get those examples.
by RiverCrochet | 2025-06-02 17:15:53+00:00
If companies need to maximally be available to customers, then why aren't all customer-oriented businesses open 24 hours?

Customers are spoiled with cheap unsustainable wages, especially the service industry where people really don't want to put in 8/10 hour days but are doing that because there is no other option.

The equitable future of that type of work is appointment-based. Meaning you as the customer go into a website and make an appointment to do what you need to do--and if you really derive value out of having a person do something for you, then this should not be a problem including any charges associated.

It would work out great for e.g. retail returns; go on to an app, make an available appointment, upload your receipt, and then go do the exchange/return. No lines so a better experience for the customer, and it would also firewall-off invalid returns and a good number of abuse attempts.

A really good pizzeria not to far from me has moved to this model successfully. If you want a pizza, you grab a timeslot, then pick it up. You can't just walk in and expect to get one 30 minutes from when you walk-in at a random time (unless they're free). The pizza is that good. This won't work for low-quality products, of course.
by jawiggins | 2025-06-02 17:15:53+00:00
Respondology | REMOTE (US Based only) | Senior Backend Engineer | Full-time | https://respondology.com/

Respondology is working on a social media comment activation platform, building tools to automatically hide spam, abuse, and hate comments, understand audiences, and respond to users using GenAI/LLMs. We are a small team that just raised a recent funding round and are rapidly growing. We are looking to hire a Senior Backend Engineer with significant experience with Python, experience with Opensearch/Elasticsearch is also a plus [120k-140k + equity + bonus]. Our core tech stack is: React, a core Ruby-on-Rails monolith with Python+FastAPI microservices, Postgres, AWS. We are based out of Boulder, CO, but the engineering team is distributed across the US. Learn more here: https://respondology.com/careers/
by int_19h | 2025-06-02 17:16:01+00:00
> one that everyone is already familiar with.

You'd be surprised. Many people genuinely aren't familiar with it these days because it's not necessary for other devices they're using day-to-day. E.g. most don't upload music to their phones in this manner like we used to 20 years ago - more often, it's all "in the cloud", so you just install the app and sign in.
by glkindlmann | 2025-06-02 17:16:52+00:00
That page ends with "This is the first efficient algorithm for generating random uniform floating-point numbers that can access the entire range of floating point outputs with correct probabilities". I am very skeptical.

The same basic idea is described here [1] (though without any pretty pictures, but with a link to working code), and I know others have implemented the same insight [2].

This seems like the kind of thing that is reinvented every time some who cares about random numbers learns how IEEE 754 works.

[1] http://mumble.net/~campbell/2014/04/28/uniform-random-float

[2] https://github.com/camel-cdr/cauldron/blob/a673553dd7925b0f1...
by theamk | 2025-06-02 17:17:11+00:00
> 30 kids in a class is still insane. You either adopt segregation for neurodivergent kids or leave them behind. The top level kids can be ignored as not-a-problem(giving up the chance to make little einsteins)

When I was in high school (few decades ago, and it was pretty average US high school), this was not a very big problem because students got to pick their classes. If someone needs more help with math, there are optional classes like pre-algrebra. On the other hand, if someone wants to do Calculus to 9th grade - more power to them, and the school would accept credit for math classes from local colleges too.