MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by lhl | 2025-06-12 04:49:23+00:00
Yeah, I think personalized evals will definitely be a thing. Besides reviewing way too much Arena, WildChat and having now seen lots of live traces firsthand, there's a wide range of LLM usage (and preferences), which really don't match my own tastes or requirements, lol.

For the past year or two, I've had my own personal 25 question vibe-check I've used on new models to kick the tires, but I think the future is something both a little more rigorous and a little more automated (something like LLM Jury w/ an UltraFeedback criteria based off of your own real world exchanges and then BTL ranked)? A future project...
by musicale | 2025-06-12 04:49:26+00:00
We can thank the linux kernel developers for implementing namespaces and overlayfs.

And we can thank predecessor systems like BSD jails, Solaris zones, as well as Virtuozzo/openVZ and lxc as previous container systems on linux.

Docker's main improvements over lxc, as I understand it, were adding a layered, immutable image format (vs. repurposing existing VM image formats) and a "free" public image repository.

But the userspace implementation isn't exactly rocket science, which is why we periodically see HN posts of tiny systems that can run docker images.
by throwanem | 2025-06-12 04:51:08+00:00
I didn't say Rails was PHP bad, but if you'd asked I would say it is worse. Both have awful ergonomics that make mistakes easy, but at least with PHP it's hard to be foolish in a way that's very clever. Ruby meanwhile will happily hand you more than enough rope to David Carradine yourself before you really even notice, and the DHH/Katz crowd took full advantage.
by racecar789 | 2025-06-12 04:51:17+00:00
I’d sign up for a service that calls a pharmacy on my behalf to refill prescriptions. In certain situations, pharmacies will not list prescriptions on their websites, even though they have the prescriptions on file, which forces the customer to call by phone — a frustrating process.

I do feel bad for pharmacists, their job is challenging in so many ways.
by pianoben | 2025-06-12 04:55:50+00:00
One of the largest codebases I've ever worked on, generating billions in revenue every year to this day, is in Rails. Over a thousand hands have touched it, and none of the original people are still around to hold an empire.

I'm with you on the general lack of discipline enforced by Rails; this codebase isn't fun to maintain, precisely for that reason. All the same, I don't think your critique is fair or even that accurate.

But that's from my POV working at bigger companies. Maybe it looks different as a freelancer for smaller shops.
by matwood | 2025-06-12 04:58:28+00:00
Except NIH/NSF are not luxuries. They're investments with positives returns. If the goal is to address the debt, they are the wrong things to cut. First they are relatively small and second they generate positive economic output. In fact, the government should be adding investment into NIH/NSF.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/johndrake/2025/05/19/trumps-nih...
by throwanem | 2025-06-12 04:58:29+00:00
By the sound of it, your POV working at one big company. The codebases I've worked on that did similar ARR numbers with similar depths of commit history were in Javascript and TypeScript, so "your argument is invalid," right? Why not? It's just what you said and my credentials are better. What's the most in revenue one second of your life was ever worth? For me that's about $35k. But no, you go ahead, try to big league me with numbers some more.

If you think my critique is unjust or inaccurate, then attack it, not my standing to speak on the subject. Especially not when I'm the more forthcoming of the two of us when it comes to professional history, anyway; mine is findable from my HN profile, while you prefer true pseudonymy. To argue from authority as you've tried is quite risible with none of that even in evidence, don't you think?
by samplatt | 2025-06-12 04:58:49+00:00
False dichotomy. The manager of the receptionist, or the head of their department, can decide what's appropriate for their job and dictate this to IT, and then they can lock it down.

At my work currently IT have the first say and final say on all software, regardless of what it does or who is using it. It's an insane situation. Decisions are being made without any input from anyone even in the department of the users using the software... you know... the ones that actually make the company money...
by LegionMammal978 | 2025-06-12 04:58:54+00:00
Well, in the one-LLM case, the input would have no effect on the chain: you'd presumably describe the input format to the LLM, maybe with a few hand-picked example lines, and it would come up with a chain that should be untainted. In the two-LLM case, the chain generated by the ephemeral LLM would have to be considered tainted until proven otherwise. Your "LLM-in-the-loop" case would just be invariably asking for trouble.

Of course, the generated chain being buggy and vulnerable would also be an issue, since it would be less likely to be built with a posture of heavy validation. And in any case, the average user would rather just run on vibes rather than taking all these paranoid precautions. Then again, what do I know, maybe free-wheeling agents really will be everything they're hyped up to be in spite of the problems.
by GrooveSAN | 2025-06-12 04:59:30+00:00
I’m super interested in this topic of “how to keep a community alive”, (1) introducing new blood - with the risk mentioned above - at a regular pace, and (2) keeping existing members as alive/active/connected as possible.

Would anyone here have good reads linked to that topic, I’m interested to share - writing this, I just realize I should’ve asked my friend Copilot too.

One interesting framework linked to this I found a couple years ago and still refer too frequently is the Orbit model (https://orbit-model.vercel.app)
by physix | 2025-06-12 05:00:28+00:00
I love it, it's crazy!

It would be cool to start with a random ROM image and then use a Monte Carlo technique (simulated annealing), making a set of random changes to the image by flipping bits, use the change in the "composite score" for the decision step in the MC iteration, and have your image "evolve" into something.

Repeat until one finds a game that is new!

Should only take a few ages of the universe. :-)
by satisfice | 2025-06-12 05:02:02+00:00
Welcome to the new world. What was once bloody obvious now have to be spelled out: A random set of 50,000 dictionary words is by your definition a novel. It's fictional, also badly written and utterly incoherent. By my definition, it is not a novel. Also, you've ignored Altman's qualifier of "beautifully written."

Anything is good enough if your standards are low.
by jll29 | 2025-06-12 05:03:10+00:00
A good smell test for a job that isn't right for you is whether you ask yourself if it is the right job early on, or if you even have thoughts of quitting in the first year/month/week, apart from being overwhelmed by all the new faces.

The only "bad" job that I had was with a very good company (wonderful people, great benefits, just the code absolutely sucked), so that was making the decision very hard to quit. In larger corporations, one might be able to engineer moving departments if that helps.
by bustling-noose | 2025-06-12 05:03:15+00:00
I would like to add to this. I have been depressed since I was a teenager. Anxiety Panic attacks, poor sleep, s*ci*l tendencies. I was able to finally get a job at 29 and first 3 months into it, I realized this is not a right fit and the company and its management is chaotic at best. It was a red flag right from the start but I ignored it because I was desperate for a WFH job. After 3 years of therapy, my views had changed that it's not so bad (something that I think the optimistic view changed). I was also looking to move to North America so I kept stalling to find a new job but that was a different thing. After I slipped back into depression a while ago, I again started seriously considering quitting because now in 3 years the company has grown somehow and some of the employees are really toxic. In 3-5 months I seriously want to quit this time whether I switch or no as I will complete 4 years at a company I never planned on working beyond 6 months. So there might be some truth to this. When I am depressed I see all the realistic things going on. When I am doing well I tend to ignore lot of the red flags.
by energy123 | 2025-06-12 05:03:29+00:00
It's worth making a distinction between proximate and non-proximate (or direct and indirect).

The train crashing is a proximate disaster. The train helping to enable genocide in WW2 is non-proximate but still tied causally to the capabilities that trains open up. In both cases these are unintended consequences.

Most of the dead bodies associated with technologies are non-proximate/indirect. The big disaster of nuclear physics wasn't the proximate Chernobyl it was the non-proximate invention of nukes and their spread. Oil spills vs climate change would be another example.

The deep unknown of what a new tech opens up is what we should be worried about rather than knowable malfunctions. Once you draw the black ball you can't put it back.
by tene80i | 2025-06-12 05:06:43+00:00
It’s an interesting project for assessing the capabilities of current AI models. I would never read it, because I’m not interested in creative work produced even in part by a computer model, when there is so much out there that is top-to-bottom the expression of a human self. I would rather see your unpolished prose or your amateur sketches than something a computer has generated, or even polished.

I do understand that it allows people to be creative in areas they don’t have skill. I can imagine sensibilities changing over time, even if just between generations, in the way Douglas Adams described. Or maybe, as this sort of thing becomes rampant, people will seek even more the authenticity of human craft, despite / because of all its flaws, the challenge of doing it well, and the awe and human connection that results.
by toofy | 2025-06-12 05:07:26+00:00
its not something i follow closely, but i have seen a lot (i mean it, A LOT) of conspiracy types claiming the UN, pharmaceutical companies, and "them" are intentionally lowering our birth rates. for the usual conspiracy nut reasons: one world gubment, replace us with brown people, to kill god, easier to control, commienism, and on and on.
by chii | 2025-06-12 05:08:04+00:00
the easiest way to defeat phone fraud is to ahead of time decide on a verbal password between family (and close friends, if they're close enough that you'd lend them money).

In a real scenario, they'd know the verbal password and you can authenticate them. Drum it into them that this password will prevent other people from impersonating you in this brave new world of ai voices and even video.
by neerajsi | 2025-06-12 05:08:04+00:00
At least in the Windows group, we use ri and fi oppositely from how you describe. RI = sharing code with a broader group of people toward trunk. FI = absorbing code created by the larger group of people on the dev team. Eventually we do a set of release forks that are isolated after a final set of FIs, so really outside customers get code via FI and then cherry pick style development.
by toomanyrichies | 2025-06-12 05:08:09+00:00
What country were you searching in? I'm an American work-from-home Rails + React engineer (admittedly with 12 years of experience), and I'm in the 96th % income bracket for individuals of my age (mid-40s). And I just started this position a month or two ago, so it's not like I got this job during the time of ZIRP.

IMO it completely depends on the company you're working for. I've seen job ads targeting my skill level offering $200k/year, and others offering $130k or even less. There will always be companies out there either trying to lowball people, or who genuinely don't operate in a vertical which is profitable enough to pay top-band salaries.
by bitbasher | 2025-06-12 05:09:40+00:00
My primary motivations...

1. I'd like to store code without a company using my code to train their language model.

2. I'd like to store code without a company deciding my code's merit (Github removing youtube-dl, Sourcehut not allowing crypto projects, etc).

3. Something about storing private code on a closed source forge feels wrong. It also feels wrong that company can read my code, and any of its employees can.
by steve_taylor | 2025-06-12 05:09:51+00:00
> Various isolated cultures are going to come up with different names for God.

People hate not knowing the answer to the big questions so much that they'll readily accept whatever answers are served up to them.

> This like saying which Sun? Surya, Ra or Helios?

The difference is that the sun is readily observed. A conveniently invisible god isn't.

> All are different names of sun. But there is only one sun.

And there's only one human nature, which is why it's not surprising that common artefacts of human nature (e.g. religion) emerged universally throughout ancient human cultures.
by palmotea | 2025-06-12 05:11:23+00:00
> I think the argument a few posts up was that this is the humane way out, rather than dragging themselves or their loved ones through the burns, trauma, radiation poisoning, starvation, and/or depredation that they assume comes next.

Another problem with that argument is that you'd actually be able to position yourself to be vaporized, when I don't think anyone could know what would be targeted with that level of certainty (beyond a couple things like the White House, Pentagon, etc).

Like maybe by setting up some lawn chairs on a roof, you just signed you and your family up for extra burns and trauma because you assumed they'd target downtown, but they actually only targeted the airport so you're miles away from the vaporization zone.
by mlsu | 2025-06-12 05:11:41+00:00
The counterpoint is that seeing things “as they are” (which is the mind of a depressed person — ask me how I know) can lead you to not give people the benefit of the doubt, it can lead you to be miserly, unmerciful, pessimistic, cowardly. There is always a reason to be distrustful. But the only way good things can happen in your life is to be generous with your spirit and you should seek to do so as a matter of course, even if the rational part of your mind has inhibitions.

This isn’t to say, be foolish. But on the other hand, the mindset that leads to this kind of deprivation can be more difficult to cure, since it always appears from a place of rationality.
by OccamsMirror | 2025-06-12 05:12:35+00:00
If you could actually teach these models things, not just in the current context, but as temporal learning, then that would alleviate a lot of the issues of hallucination. I imagine being able to say "that method doesn't exist, don't recommend it again" and then give it the documentation and it would absorb that information permanently, that would fundamentally change how we interact with these models. But can that work for models hosted for everyone to use at once?
by u9825002 | 2025-06-12 05:13:59+00:00
I’ve spent hundreds of hours interacting with GPT-4o, and noticed a consistent behavioral quirk:

If you start a conversation with low-context or poetic tone, the model seems to get “stuck” there. Even if you escalate your prompts later with more technical or high-context content, it often won’t follow you up.

I call this “Tier Lock”—the idea that GPT-4o allocates cognitive bandwidth based on the first sentence and then resists shifting modes mid-conversation.

I asked the AI about this. It responded—based on its own training structure—that the effect is likely real and tied to prompt-based activation heuristics.

Here’s a write-up of what I saw and how the AI helped translate that into something readable: https://medium.com/@u9825002/gpt-4o-%E4%B8%AD%E7%9A%84%E8%AA...

Curious if others have noticed similar behavior or found ways to override it.
by Sharlin | 2025-06-12 05:15:02+00:00
Windows 95 had Plug'n'Play going for it, even if famously it was more accurately called Plug'n'Pray in the early years. I don't think Linux had anything like that at that point, although it did get module support in 1995, so at least you didn't have to recompile the kernel anymore to get your peripherals to work... in theory, anyway.
by kristopolous | 2025-06-12 05:15:30+00:00
Honestly I thought industrialization was more about the relationship between labor, commodity and manufacturing than any particular technology.

It's a mode of production more than anything.

For China you had river power which also served as a major trading round.

One of the big blockers was that trading and banking was seen by many cultures as only moral if exercised without profit. Intentionally profiting was often seen as a form of theft so you needed the moral reclassifications of these social relationships before industrialization was incentivized.

So without moral judgment approving accumulation, your assembly line is just a logistical curiosity and not a revolutionary device.
by bigtunacan | 2025-06-12 05:17:47+00:00
Hard disagree. I work on one of the largest Rails codebases out there. Millions of lines of code running in a monolith. I have learned more in this shop about scaling, observability, mature system designs, zero downtime upgrades, deploys, etc…

I been in this field for almost 30 years and have worked with whatever tech the job required. Still I learned more at a Rails shop with more than 200 engineers all working in the same monolith shipping to production multiple times every day.
by WiggleGuy | 2025-06-12 05:18:46+00:00
That's fair.

You can probably hack that experience by making use of the "rules" feature. You can have certain search engines or macros launch automatically upon pressing enter based on the content of the query. You if you set a rule to check if your search contains a vowel (which most will), it's effectively a catch all rule.

Hacky, but it will work.
by Agentlien | 2025-06-12 05:22:02+00:00
> What the paper actually proposes [...]

(Emphasis mine)

I haven't read the paper yet, but this sounds like a (good) summary of exactly what the article is saying. It makes me wonder what, if anything, you feel is different from the way you put it and the way it is explained in the article? As a layman they seem the same to me.
by tptacek | 2025-06-12 05:23:36+00:00
Honestly, throw a dart. I think the right way to think about PBKDF2 vs. Argon2[†] is that Argon2 reaches better levels of security with less cost to "real users" (ie, genuine login attempt latency). It would be a little weird to deliberately select PBKDF2 for a new application today? It would not be among your top 5 security concerns though.

[†] Really, "PBKDF2 vs. any modern password hash".
by musicale | 2025-06-12 05:26:31+00:00
> So the question shouldn’t be, "How many people can we replace with AI?

Replacing human labor with machine labor is essentially what automation is. Look what happened to telephone operators and bank tellers on one end (replaced by machines like automated switching systems and ATMs) and clerical workers and cashiers on another (replaced by tools like office software and self-checkout systems.)

The sales pitch to businesses is, and continues to be, saving money by replacing paid humans with unpaid machines.

I don't think that AI changes the fundamental trajectory of automation, or its tendency (over the past few decades at least) to widen income disparity as displaced workers move to lower-paying service jobs that aren't yet automated, but it may have much wider impact than previous automation waves.
by seanmcdirmid | 2025-06-12 05:26:38+00:00
I hate commutes. Even though I somehow got lucky to work from home, I don’t want my RTO wife to have to commute by bus more than 30 minutes to work (and I could always be called back to office, so I’m not going to risk living in Bend). It is just not worth it to forgo the high paying job since I find (at least the ones I’ve had) less stressful than the lower paying ones. I’m also in the city I’ve always wanted to be in, so I haven’t made other trade off.

Cities are priced high for reasons. If you don’t need or can’t get what the cities provide, then it is definitely not worth it.
by fastball | 2025-06-12 05:27:07+00:00
Why can't you improve it or fit it to your data?

This can be cross-compiled/ported in the Linux analogy. The Linux analogy would be more like: a kernel dev wrote code for some part of the Linux kernel using JetBrains' CLion. He used features of CLion that made this process much easer than if he had written the code using `nano`. By your logic, the resulting kernel code is not "open" because the tooling used to create it is not open. This is, of course, nonsense.

I agree that the project as a whole is less open than it could be, but the weights are indeed as open as they can be, no scare quotes required.
by indemnity | 2025-06-12 05:28:18+00:00
I feel this.

Every month or two, we get notifications along the FINAL WARNING lines, telling us about some critical system about to be deleted, or some new system that needs to be set up Right Now, because it is a Corporate Standard (that was never rolled out properly), and by golly we have had enough of teams ignoring us, the all powerful Board has got its eyes on you now.

It's a full time job to keep up with the never-ending churn. We could probably just spend all our engineering effort being compliant and never delivering features :)

Company name withheld to preserve my anonymity (100,000+ employees).
by akovaski | 2025-06-12 05:28:30+00:00
> I can't reproduce this in Python (including my local 2.7 build), only using sh directly.

Same for me. It looks like the POSIX folks accepted the author's suggestion in 2022 and system() in glibc was updated in 2023.

https://sourceware.org/git/?p=glibc.git;a=blobdiff;f=sysdeps...

#include <stdlib.h> int main(void) { system("-x"); return 0; }

...

> [pid 172293] execve("/bin/sh", ["sh", "-c", "--", "-x"], 0x7ffe221d2f58 /* 76 vars */) = 0
by tomhow | 2025-06-12 05:29:28+00:00
You can't comment like this on Hacker News. It's not what the site is for and it destroys what it is for.

Please heed the guidelines, particularly these ones:

Be kind. Don’t be snarky. Converse curiously; don’t cross-examine. Edit out swipes.

Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive.

Please don't fulminate. Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community.

Eschew flamebait. Avoid generic tangents. Omit internet tropes.

Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle. It tramples curiosity.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
by pianoben | 2025-06-12 05:29:48+00:00
I don't mean to say one of us has better bona-fides, only that there is an existence proof to the contrary of your post. You claim that rails' lack of discipline promotes unmaintainable code shepherded by empire-builders; I claim that this is not always so. I gave the numbers I did to emphasize that rails (and rails shops) can succeed even at that scale.

Not sure what I said that came off as an attack on you or your standing. Not my intent.
by lutusp | 2025-06-12 05:30:39+00:00
>> As the size of the black hole goes up, its overall density must decrease.

> The center of a black hole is infinitely dense. That's why it even exists. The event horizon is not the black hole.

>> and the fixed density of our observed universe

> Our universe is expanding. It's density is not fixed.

These are both correct and germane points. So why was this post downvoted? Physics isn't a popularity contest, it relies on evidence.