MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by raymond_goo | 2025-06-07 12:53:11+00:00
Explanation: HTTP Live Streaming slices the bitstream into “segments” (traditionally 6–10 s each) and only starts playing after it has downloaded several of them. Out of the box that means 30–60 s of startup and live-edge latency—fine for linear TV, terrible for anything interactive.

Apple’s LL-HLS spec shrinks those segments into “partial segments” and uses CMAF to let the player start decoding while a chunk is still arriving. With careful encoder tuning, HTTP/2/3 push, CDN support, and a compatible player you can reach 2–5 s, sometimes a bit lower—but every link in the chain has to cooperate, so implementations are still called “heroic” for a reason.

Safari plays HLS natively and on other browsers you can bolt on hls.js via Media Source Extensions. DASH, RTMP, SRT, etc. all need extra code or plugins, so HLS became the “safe default” for on-demand and broadcast-style streaming even though it isn’t low-latency friendly.
by sgarland | 2025-06-07 12:53:46+00:00
Not days necessarily, but I think quite a bit of time should be spent data modeling, yes. Before you’ve ever touched the keyboard, it’s very helpful to attempt to model the problem on paper or a whiteboard. You quickly find problems with your initial guess that way.

Notes / data / extra et. al columns are the worst, as a DBRE. People inevitably shove various shit into them over time instead of making an effort to properly fix past mistakes, and at some point, they practically contain their own table.
by ndsipa_pomu | 2025-06-07 12:53:58+00:00
Well you can try monitoring Windows network connections, but Microsoft do seem to love obfuscating it with connections to multiple different domains that they own.

You can't even look at the Windows source code, so your question about reproducible builds seems to be moving the goalposts somewhat.

Also, is there something like "strace" on Windows?

Edit: just looked it up and Ubuntu doesn't enforce reproducible builds, although with their new "Monthly Snapshots", Canonical is moving towards reproducible build pipelines.
by FrustratedMonky | 2025-06-07 12:54:27+00:00
too little too late?

as we are seeing now on a number of issues, sure things can be rolled back, but that doesn't mean a return to normal.

Yes, you can kick over a bee hive, then pick it up and set it back upright, but you are not going to put all the bees back in immediately. There are long term consequences.
by lloydatkinson | 2025-06-07 12:55:23+00:00
As someone with only a little experience with Nix, the points here don’t really seem right?

> This approach isn’t clear or maintainable, especially for contributors unfamiliar with Nix’s version management.

> For languages like Node and Python, we ended up only supporting their latest major version.

What is not maintainable about this? That they need to make a list of available versions? So, can this not be automated?

Furthermore, why is Railway defining how a user uses Nix?

Surely one of the points of Nix is that you can take a bare machine and have it configured with exactly what versions of packages you want? Why would Railway need to get in the way of the user and limit their versions anyway?

Or did I misunderstand and they don’t even expose Nix to the user? If so, the original question still stands: can’t they automate that list of package versions?
Ask HN: In-house or outsourced data annotation? (2025)
by yogoism | 2025-06-07 12:55:33+00:00
While big tech often outsources data annotation to firms like Scale AI, TURING, and Mercor, companies such as Tesla and Google run in-house teams.

Which approach do you think is better for AI and robotics development, and how will this trend evolve?

Please share your data annotation insights and experiences.
by Jensson | 2025-06-07 12:55:52+00:00
Right, and when we have AI that can do the same with millions/billions of computers then we can replace humans.

But as long as AI cannot do that they cannot replace humans, and we are very far from that. Currently AI cannot even replace individual humans in most white collar jobs, and replacing entire team is way harder than replacing an individual, and then even harder is replacing workers in an entire field meaning the AI has to make research and advances on its own etc.

So like, we are still very far from AI completely being able to replace human thinking and thus be called AGI.

Or in other words, AI has to replace those giants to be able to replace humanity, since those giants are humans.
by hajile | 2025-06-07 12:57:55+00:00
JS Symbols are like CL gensym and CL symbols (interned strings) don't exist in JS.

Normal TS doesn't expose normal macros or reader macros to the user.

JS runtimes don't have the image introspection ability of CL.

TS types are removed before the JIT and don't actually impact performance (not to mention they encourage polymorphism which is actively BAD for JS performance). CL type hints are use by the compiler to actually speed up the output code (quite dramatically I'd add).
Ask HN: Join me in making Remix a social platform for apps
by ckmar | 2025-06-07 12:58:27+00:00
Remix is a social platform for _apps_. Facebook has _text_, Instagram has _images_, TikTok has _video_... Remix has apps.

Apps. Not code.

View your friend's apps, use your friend's apps, remix your friend's apps to suit your needs.

All with speech. End-to-end abstracts away the concept of code. Speech-to-App.

Who's in?
by tptacek | 2025-06-07 12:58:44+00:00
When you say "the LLM can easily hallucinate code that will satisfy the compiler but still fail the actual intent of the user", all you are saying is that the code will have bugs. My code has bugs. So does yours. You don't get to use the fancy word "hallucination" for reasonable-looking, readable code that compiles and lints but has bugs.

I think at this point our respective points have been made, and we can wrap it up here.
by ksec | 2025-06-07 13:00:06+00:00
On paper, the Switch 2 hardware is underwhelming. And the graphics comparison, coming from Switch 1, and looking at current state of the art console PS5, along with Top Gaming PC, Switch 2 isn't that impressive.

But then when you look into some numbers, double the resolution, double the frame rate, better quality texture and rendering. That is 4 - 5x computational difference.

This is just to remind myself on expectations.

The SoC is still on 8nm Samsung, which is on the 10nm family. A one generational die shrink would be on 6nm. On one hand that is not too bad, on the other hand we have $200 android phone shipping today that is much better than that.
by sgarland | 2025-06-07 13:01:42+00:00
> 2)

This implies denormalization, which is rarely needed for performance, despite what so many believe. Now you’ve introduced referential integrity issues, and have taken a huge performance hit at scale.

> 3)

I mean, maybe don’t try to use a regex on an email address beyond “is there a local and domain portion,” but a ZIP code, as in U.S. only, seems pretty straightforward to check. I would much rather have to update a check constraint if proven wrong than to risk bad data the rest of the time.

> never optimize for size

Optimize for size when it doesn’t introduce other issues. Anyone working on 2-digit years could have and likely did see that issue, but opted to ignore it for various reasons (“not my problem,” etc.). But for example, _especially_ since Postgres has a native type for IP addresses, there is zero reason to store them as strings in dotted quad. Even if you have MySQL, store them as a UINT32, and use its built-in functions to cast back and forth.
When Profit Overshadows Community: A Look at Golang Conferences
by gophercon | 2025-06-07 13:01:45+00:00
While reviewing the speaker lineups at several prominent Go (Golang) conferences, I noticed some recurring patterns:

Speaker Selection Driven by Influence: Many rosters feature the same familiar faces year after year. While these speakers are undeniably talented, it limits the diversity of perspectives shared with the audience.

Limited Opportunities for New Speakers: Although new voices are occasionally included, the majority of speaking slots continue to go to well-known names.

Lack of Regional & Cultural Diversity: Conferences often miss the opportunity to bring in global voices or regional contributors who can offer fresh, valuable perspectives on Go and its ecosystem.

Sponsor Influence: Corporate sponsorships sometimes seem to shape the speaker lineup and the overall conference agenda, blurring the line between technical discussion and marketing.

Lack of Representation from Non-Enterprise Contributors: Many conferences focus heavily on the enterprise application of Go, while often neglecting the open-source contributors or the individual developers who are responsible for much of Go's growth and innovation outside of big companies.

Ultimately, it would be refreshing to see more intentional efforts to bring new talent to the stage, representing a broader range of voices and experiences.
by the__alchemist | 2025-06-07 13:01:53+00:00
I've been doing a similar routine + intermittent fasting (Late breakfast/early dinner) + NMN and metformin. Probably isn't doing anything useful.

Re vitamin D: I supplement with that as well, but for a tangential reason: Avoiding sun exposure (esp mid-day) without sunblock avoids photoaging and reduces skin cancer risk. But this leaves you at a Vitamin D deficit, hence the supplement.

I have a tub of taurine, but haven't been taking it; seemed like the evidence was thin, and this article supports that conclusion.
by wkat4242 | 2025-06-07 13:03:06+00:00
> No corporate influence means there's a lot of nice things you don't get.

Yes that is the flipside. But I don't mind that. If you choose your hardware carefully it works fine.

Note that this is not too different from using Windows or Mac. Your hardware is also chosen carefully to work with those, just not by you but by the vendor. With FreeBSD you're more involved with the nuts & bolts and this is exactly what I want. I don't want my OS to be a black box I don't understand.
by z-gort | 2025-06-07 13:03:10+00:00
Hello!

A few months ago I put out a small pgvector vector visualizer: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42457782 and it got more interest than I expected.

dbSurface is intended to be a cleaner, production ready tool. It allows you to create 2d projections of postgres tables with vectors, query across the projections, and check query precision. Hopefully this allows for quick iteration in query/embedding strategies.

It uses a hybrid hosted setup: you run dbsurface's docker image locally and query your database directly from your machine, but it offloads dimensionality reduction to a GPU powered cloud worker so you can create a projection of a 1 million row table in ~10mins.

Would love to hear any feedback, ideas, or questions!
by ericio | 2025-06-07 13:04:14+00:00
One of the very first tools I install on a new Mac is the free WordService [1] tool from DEVONTechnologies (no affiliation). It adds a bunch of little text tools to the Services menu, including several for inserting the current date and time in various formats. They also provide a direct download version [2].

- [1] [WordService](https://apps.apple.com/us/app/wordservice/id899972312?mt=12 - [2] [WordService Download](https://www.devontechnologies.com/support/download)
by Mordisquitos | 2025-06-07 13:05:15+00:00
The claim isn't that programmers go around literally believing falsehoods about a given domain. The whole point of the "falsehoods programmers believe about X" genre is a tongue-in-cheek way of listing the kind of bad design assumptions that happen in a given domain, and I believe that is very interesting indeed.

The fact remains that software that models real-life events or information is making normative assumptions about what can and cannot happen in the domain, due to the very nature of software, and these assumptions are knowingly-or-not being introduced by programmers. If for any given domain we had hundreds of human notaries, scribes or typists managing information instead of software, their mistaken assumptions wouldn't matter—they would simply go "Oh, that's odd", make the necessary adjustments, and learn from the experience. But as long as software is a prescriptive model of what it is representing, it will be valuable to highlight the "falsehoods" that its creators may accidentally prescribe into it.
by cowboylowrez | 2025-06-07 13:05:30+00:00
I don't think "common sense" is an actual person haha

I'm not picking sides, but I try to help myself understand things by visiting both sides of the arguments and there is clearly a side interested in cutting down on fraud, just as there is a side promoting freedom in their computing. Limiting sideloading seems a sort of pragmatic move, and leaving the possibility of sideloading open seems to be likewise a pragmatic move, especially if there are guardrails and warning signs everywhere, we do this in society when faced with hazardous situations.

I am very open to counterpoints here, at least if I can read them before they get too greyed out!
by jasode | 2025-06-07 13:06:05+00:00
>What’s an example of the kind of advice that doesn’t work?

For some people struggling with chronic lifelong procrastination, the oft-repeated advice from the author such as "Action leads to motivation, not the other way around." ... and similar variants such as, "Screw motivation, what you need is discipline!" ... and other related big picture ideas such as Dilbert cartoonist Scott Adams' "Systems instead of Goals" -- all do not work.

And adding extra rhetorical embellishments to the advice such as using the phrase "it's simple [...]", and using the word "[...] just [...]" as in:

- "Stopping procrastination isn't that hard to solve. It's simple. Just chop up the task into much smaller subtasks and just start on that tiny subtask. That will give you momentum to finish it."

... also doesn't work. Some procrastinators just procrastinate the initiation of starting that tiny subtask! For the few that actually do try to start with that first step, they'll quickly lose steam because of boredom/distraction/whatever and the overall task remains unfinished.

A lot of books and blogs about time management repeat the same advice that many procrastinators have all heard before and it doesn't work. The procrastinators understand the logic of the advice but it doesn't matter because there are psychological roadblocks that prevent them from following it.

EDIT reply to: >That doesn't mean the advice is bad,

I'm not saying the advice is wrong. Instead, I'm saying that some well-meaning people who give that repeated advice seem surprised that it doesn't work on some people. Because the advice givers believed "Action Precedes Motivation" worked on themselves, they automatically assume that imparting those same words to other procrastinators will also work. It often doesn't. The meta-analysis of that advice and why it sometimes doesn't work is not done because the people giving that advice are the ones who used that technique successfully. This creates a self-confirmation bias.
by em-bee | 2025-06-07 13:06:45+00:00
i'll never be rich either, and contrary to the KFC founder who got rich very late it is not lack of opportunity but lack of motivation to be rich. as soon as i earn some money i'll spend it on hiring others to help me build what i want, or if it is enough, even stop earning money to focus on my interests.

family is trickier. finding the right partner is very hard. it takes a lot of introspection and being able to recognize flaws in yourself and in your partner. it took me decades to understand what i need in a partner. and now i feel like i'd rather stay alone than have a partner that doesn't fill my needs. that sounds very selfish, but it goes of course both ways, i also look at the needs of my partner and evaluate whether i can fulfill those needs. (in short it's about compatible goals. many chinese women for example just want their husband to be successful and enable a comfortable life. fortunately the woman i found didn't because as i said above, that's just not a life goal for me)

when you mention space, the olympics and video games i get the impression that those are not even your real goals, and you are more likely lamenting that you feel like you don't have anything to strive for.

as i wrote above, it took me decades, not just to understand what i need in a partner, but simply what i need in life. the interesting thing is that now that i think i understand that, actually fulfilling that need became less important. understanding myself helped me detach.

as for beating procrastination, for me it's not about increasing productivity but being productive at all. it's not just 20%, it's 200% or more. it's about keeping that job and doing enough to get leads for the next one.
by rwmj | 2025-06-07 13:07:49+00:00
Choice quote:

> "Building also requires hefty paperwork, which slows projects. As Britain Remade found, reopening a 3.3-mile train line to Portishead from Bristol took 79,187 pages of planning documents. Printed out, that’s 14.6 miles of paperwork — 4.5 times the length of the actual railway. The process has taken 16 years so far. (Construction should start soon.)"
by goodthink | 2025-06-07 13:07:55+00:00
I recently found out that the Function object will compile any javascript you care to feed to it. At runtime! new Function('class MyClass { ...}; return MyClass') My system does not allow for "imports". No npm etc. So this is a bit of a lifesaver for me. I realize in js land it may not be as useful but it is pretty handy.
by ednite | 2025-06-07 13:08:22+00:00
Some great comments in this thread and I agree, a lot of it comes down to understanding yourself.

In my case, not always, but often, procrastination shows up when fear is involved. Fear of failure, of not doing something perfectly, of the task being too big. What’s helped me is turning the task into a challenge, because I know that personally, I thrive on challenges. It re-frames the fear into something exciting, and once I get started, I follow all of the other advice such like breaking it down into small steps. Thanks for sharing.
by wkat4242 | 2025-06-07 13:08:42+00:00
> May have reinforced my biases, but it's definitely non-trivial according to my hippie-tier anarchist baseline.

The definition of 'trivial' would come into play yes. I would only consider it non-trivial if a commercial party can (and does) influence the direction of development. I don't think Apple does so. Even Netflix. In the Linux world there's billions of investment and many contributors are directly employed by big business. The waters are much murkier there.

Again, I'm not saying it's a bad thing. It's just not something I want which is one of the reasons I picked FreeBSD. Other reasons were the great ports collection, the division between OS and apps (you can have rolling apps but a stable OS), the traditionalism (only change things if it's really needed) and the single main flavour of the OS which makes support much easier. Also the excellent documentation.
by toomuchtodo | 2025-06-07 13:08:46+00:00
I agree that a college credential has long lost any value signal to employers, but I think the more terrifying issue is that you’ve had a generation of kids grow up without any forcing function or skills around handling uncomfortable life situations around conflict, and so they default to the path of least resistance enabled by these institutions. This harms the targets of these no contact orders in the short term, but when these people hit the real world, they’re fucked and we’re all going to have to deal with them as the filter into society and the labor market.

The real world is not Tinder and Tiktok as it relates to humans interactions and conflict resolution, and they’re going to find out the hard way.
by globular-toast | 2025-06-07 13:09:17+00:00
I ditched Windoze 15 years ago and never looked back. There's never been an easier time to do it than now. Even if you can't do something on Linux, whatever it is isn't worth it. There's so much to do in life that it's more about choosing what not to do. Wherever possible choose love and generosity over hatred and greed.
by JdeBP | 2025-06-07 13:09:19+00:00
This is United Statians being the victims of their own crazy date writing style again. (-:

Michael Horowitz did this on 2021-10-22, and it returned the value 2021.1019.1.0.

Today, on 2025-06-07, it is publishing the value 2025.424.19.0. Which would be last April the 24th.

It's blazingly obvious that it's the last date that something downloadable got updated, with a version or sequence number of some kind. The zero in the final field is probably there because someone is using a 4-field version datatype. To publish a date.
by parpfish | 2025-06-07 13:09:25+00:00
Sometimes I can trick myself into getting started that way.

The trick is to come up with a tiny goal and give yourself permission to quit once you reach it so it’s not like your overwhelmed by the full task.

The smallness of the task is important, but it’s even more important that you genuinely give yourself permission to stop when it’s done. If you don’t do that, it’s not “one small task”, it’s “step one in a big task” and you’ll keep procrastinating

For coding it’s a sequence of: “Ill just get all the software and documentation open and organized”

“I’ll create a few empty files on a new branch”

“I’ll just stub out a few things I KNOW I’ll need”

…

For other non-code writing, I’ve occasionally been able to hack it in a similar way by writing progressively more detailed outlines.

For physical projects, sometimes it’s just about gathering supplies and organizing tools.
by rimunroe | 2025-06-07 13:09:47+00:00
I’m a frontend dev. I’ve done backend and database administration work at a few points in my career, but never on sizable products or for more than a year or two at a time.

I largely agree with your points. The backend has the largest security and reliability burden. It’s the bottleneck everything has to go through, and it can’t trust anything it’s receives. If it breaks nothing else can work. Also, backend deployments tend to involve a lot more moving parts.

> they are easier to do a surface-level check too (just use the app and check that it works)

If what you were getting at with this is that the make change -> see result loop for the frontend is overall faster, I’d thoroughly agree with that. It’s why I’ve never stayed on the backend for long. It’s pretty cool to be able to make a change and see it reflected in the UI within a couple hundred milliseconds without losing application state.

But while that’s probably the usual case, for a significant amount of the work it’s woefully insufficient. When trying to fix something, “just using the app” often involves significant deviations from the way you’d normally use it. Typical user bases use apps in maddeningly diverse ways. They have different browsers, operating systems, displays (DPI and color systems/accuracy), screen sizes, pointing devices (mouse vs touch), and assistive technologies (e.g. multiple screen readers, each of which has its own quirks). Members of product teams—particularly ones who aren’t web specialists—frequently forget some of these. Surface level tests obviously don’t include the entire testing matrix, but they often involve iterating on at least two combinations of use at the same time, and those combinations may involve significant overhead.

Accessibility presents a particularly hard challenge for quick tests, as most developers I’ve worked with don’t know how to use screen readers to do much, so just using the app isn’t possible for them without some additional learning.

Hopefully your testing matrix is mostly automated, but those automated tests are too slow to use during development. Initial bug isolation and getting proper tests around specific interactions can be extremely tricky.