MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by JadeNB | 2025-06-30 17:21:21+00:00
I know that there's no such thing as a unique name, but the fact that https://helix-editor.com/ is a living project, first released in May 2021, might mean that using "Helix" for this project, first released in November 2024, isn't the best choice of name. Or at least it might be worth a disclaimer in the readme!
by coldpie | 2025-06-30 17:21:22+00:00
I had a professor tell the class, in response to a student's question, that the "0x" in the "0x1" memory address on the slide meant "a bunch of stuff that doesn't matter," like the "x" was a stand-in for some unimportant portion of the memory address that had been elided. I stopped attending that class. That professor was not significantly below the average at my school (University of Minnesota, late 2000s).

Blowing 4 years and a bunch of money at university getting a computer science degree is one of the biggest regrets of my life. Luckily I already had a software job during my 1st year, so those years weren't totally wasted.
by taeric | 2025-06-30 17:21:31+00:00
Fair, I was largely riffing off the theme in the post. That is, I took it as an implicit idea that floats represent real numbers.

That said, I'd argue that they are neither reals nor rationals. They are scientific numbers with no syntax to indicate "repeated" tails. Would be like saying that you want someone to represent 1/3 using 6 digits with no bar notation. Best you can do is "0.33333" and that just isn't the same. Moving it so that you have 6 digits with 2 being exponent, you are stuck with "3.333e-01". Which is just different still.
by shadowgovt | 2025-06-30 17:21:55+00:00
One of the things I love about this era of systems is that there were none of the modern checks that we consider table-stakes in nearly everything, including most embedded systems (necessary in anything that can be hooked up to a network, and still so cheap that it's included as a nice-to-have in completely isolated embedded architectures).

Lots of reads and writes in the original NES just toggled voltages on a line somewhere, and then what happened, happened. You got the effect you wanted by toggling those voltages in a very controlled manner lock-stepped with the signal indicating the behavior of the CRT blanking intervals. Some animations in Super Mario Bros 3 involved toggling a RAM mux to select from multiple banks of sprite data so that when the graphics hardware went to pull sprites, it'd pull them from an entirely different chip with slight variations in their look. And since the TV timing mattered, they had to release different software for regions with NTSC and PAL TVs since those TVs operate with different refresh rates and refresh rate was the clock that drove the render logic.

It was a wild time.
by infecto | 2025-06-30 17:22:02+00:00
You’re not wrong about Western complicity, but let’s not pretend that “playing the hand you’re dealt” means “forming state-guided monopolies and dumping at a loss to wipe out global competitors.” That’s not just survival, that’s industrial warfare with Chinese characteristics.

And yeah, we subsidized Musk, dumb move but the answer isn’t to copy a system where the state decides who wins, loses, and what the price tag is. That’s not market efficiency, it’s command capitalism with a smile.

Don’t hate the game? Buddy, the game is rigged. China just rigged it better.
by tlogan | 2025-06-30 17:22:21+00:00
> MSRP of Honda Accord went from $15k-$30k in 2005 to $30k-$40k in 2025.

> MSRP of one model is also not perfect, but it's another data point.

I do not know if this is true.

- Cheapest Honda Accord in 2005 was $17,510 (that is $28,895 in today's money) - https://www.kbb.com/honda/accord/2005/

- Cheapest Honda Accord in 2025 is $28,295 (https://automobiles.honda.com/accord-sedan).

So the price is really the same.
by purplesyringa | 2025-06-30 17:22:25+00:00
How close are Zig's safety guarantees to Rust's? Honest question; I don't follow Zig development. I can't take C seriously because it hasn't even bothered to define provenance until now, but as far as I'm aware, Zig doesn't even try to touch these topics.

Does Zig document the precise mechanics of noalias? Does it provide a mechanism for controllably exposing or not exposing provenance of a pointer? Does it specify the provenance ABA problem in atomics on compare-exchange somehow or is that undefined? Are there any plans to make allocation optimizations sound? (This is still a problem even in Rust land; you can write a program that is guaranteed to exhibit OOM according to the language spec, but LLVM outputs code that doesn't OOM.) Does it at least have a sanitizer like Miri to make sure UB (e.g. data races, type confusion, or aliasing problems) is absent?

If the answer to most of the above is "Zig doesn't care", why do people even consider it better than C?
by NoMoreNicksLeft | 2025-06-30 17:22:54+00:00
>Unions being corruptible i

Never really heard of one that didn't end up corrupted. Usually from the get-go. To call my argument "weird" tells me how little personal experience you have with unions.

>Neither is your next implication that some companies wouldn't be viable if they had to pay more so therefore paying more is bad.

Not some. Practically all companies. In tech, maybe only the FAANG set would be able to shoulder that burden.

>If a company isn't viable then it isn't viable.

Some companies are viable in one environment, but not in another. If you're changing the environment to make fewer companies viable, then you're putting more people out of work. This should be obvious. It isn't, I think, because some second grade teachers pass children who should have flunked out.

>In general, things are worth improving even if there aren't perfect answers.

Dimwitted people will try to "improve" things right until the world burns down around them. Any attempt to point out to them that this is occurring will be met with even more ambitious-but-ill-conceived attempts at improving things.
by dmillar | 2025-06-30 17:23:20+00:00
Strats as a role has been downplayed and realigned a lot over the last several years. Traditionally, a strat was indeed a "quantitative strategist" that sat on the desk, often next to voice traders, developing tools, pricing models, trading systems, etc.

One of the people I regard as the Godfather/OG strat is Emanuel Derman (https://emanuelderman.com/). Another transformative (in my time) person in the Strat complex was Marty Chavez (https://www.rmartinchavez.com/). Both amazing people on and off the trading floor.
by nonameiguess | 2025-06-30 17:23:20+00:00
Where is the data here? That article simply declares that there is a global epidemic of vitamin D deficiency and I followed the citation it gives to back that up, which is this: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S000291652.... Except this citation is also not a study. It's an opinion piece that just declares people are vitamin D deficient without doing any measurements of how much vitamin D anyway has circulating in their blood. It appears to be a narrative review, not a study.

I'm not saying the claim is for sure wrong, but at some point, to make this claim, someone has to have actually measured vitamin D levels in some broadly representative sample of humans and you could post that instead of whatever came up first in Google Scholar when search for "vitamin D deficiency."
by bluGill | 2025-06-30 17:23:29+00:00
The all male boat sounds like 'young men' going on an adventure (possibly solo, possibly as a right of passage). They were not settlers, just exploring because it is fun. When they for whatever reason decide to leave with family they know where to go and what is needed.

we of course wouldn't have exidence if that happened as cultures change. Whatever caused a desire to settle would change culture.
by rich_sasha | 2025-06-30 17:24:09+00:00
It's the shopping list of dreams. As fast as it gets. Borrow checker, but friendlier than "other languages' borrow checkers" (I wonder which other ones they mean). Readable. What's not to like. I look forward to v0.1

Is anything known about the key developers? I would imagine such a project needs firepower. Rust had Mozilla's heft from the get-go. Most successful languages have another big sponsor.
by ninetyninenine | 2025-06-30 17:24:19+00:00
LLMs can enhance text adventures.

I'm not saying having LLMs narrate the entire situation. I'm saying have the LLM sit between gamestate and the player. The LLM is the UI.

Essentially the LLM can see the current game state and possible moves and it's the LLMs job to change the game state and report the current game state to the user (via a well written narrative).

That keeps the world consistent and structured, but the LLM adds enough dynamism to keep it flowing well. You can even make the underlying game state complex as well. Like you can have enemy AI's that actually move through the world too (independent of the LLM).
by namrog84 | 2025-06-30 17:24:20+00:00
An inventory system for my games in unreal engine.

Supporting grid, multiplayer, predictive moves, item locking and more.

https://github.com/brokenrockstudios/RockInventory

It's been interesting and challenging. Probably the most important part is I've been learning a lot.

It was a lot of fun earlier on but it's becoming less fun the more I work on it.
by lufenialif2 | 2025-06-30 17:24:27+00:00
Yeah trying out gemma3 12b qat sounds great.

I got back 0.9.3 as well as copied and pasted the prompt (included quotes and no quotes as well just in case...)

I can try the API as well and I'm using a legion 15ach6 but I could also try on my MacBook Pro.
by bee_rider | 2025-06-30 17:24:31+00:00
I’m pretty sure everybody in academia is already aware of those problems (they are personally annoyed by them on a day-to-day basis). But the serious path to fixing them is not the buzz saw.

Like nobody enjoys giving up more than half of their grants to the school admin. But cutting it down 15% max all of a sudden is not a change that is going to stick around.
by jschveibinz | 2025-06-30 17:24:45+00:00
I will respectfully disagree. All "new" ideas come from old ideas. AI is a tool to access old ideas with speed and with new perspectives that hasn't been available up until now.

Innovation is in the cracks: recognition of holes, intersections, tangents, etc. on old ideas. It has bent said that innovation is done on the shoulders of giants.

So AI can be an express elevator up to an army of giant's shoulders? It all depends on how you use the tools.
by fallinditch | 2025-06-30 17:26:40+00:00
That's a lot of words for one practical recommendation: University councils for discussing 'AI conviviality'.

I think the author presents a one dimensional view of AI bad and fails to see the bigger picture, which is ironic considering all the fine words he uses.

I agree that AI tools can potentially weaken some of our lower level cognitive functions, but on the flip side the AI tools also enable us to operate on higher levels of ability, planning, conceptualization and execution.

This is undoubtedly a point of inflexion for Universities: they should be working out how they can achieve a new deal for students and society that is far more nuanced and constructive than mere 'resistance' against AI.
by yndoendo | 2025-06-30 17:26:44+00:00
Microsoft's market size is built around legacy, IT, and PC Gaming. Yet I know people in IT that will not run Microsoft at home, just in a corporate environment. Stock does not equate to quality product. Microsoft is trillion dollar company that makes some of the worst User Experience products.

I find the user experience with Microsoft products to be bad. They continually have inconsistencies with their shortcut key bindings. Example would be Ctrl+F, find something but in Outlook it forwards and email. Visual Studio has numerous bad user experiences that they choose not to fix. Example is you cannot stash individual files in GIT, it is all or nothing. Only way around is GIT via terminal environment. It is 2025 and Visual Studio still cannot display source code in Vertical and Horizontal at the same time, one or the other. VSCode has had this feature forever. You have to pay me to use Microsoft software.

I don't need to use spreadsheets so Excel has no value to me. If a spreadsheet is needed, it is the most basic and LibreOffice works just fine. Only reason I use Outlook is because of IT. I don't even use Word and use MarkDown with PDF generators, plain text, or LaTex for documentation.

Microsoft had to universally disable Registry backups via a Windows 10 Update because they sold Surface laptops with low storage. Registry backups where filling up the hard-drive. These are the ones trying to compete against Google's Chromebooks.

WINE / Proton is displacing Windows in the PC gaming market. It actually gives users a better experience in some instances. Example would be that shaders can be compiled without running the game. Windows Direct X implementation will only compile shaders while the game is running. This will lower the FPS and has known to cause stuttering during first play through.

I will never install Windows OS on any of my computers ever again. The OS keeps getting worse and worse with newer versions. I've reached a point where if I need Windows OS the game / software is not desired and no money will change hands. I also will no longer buy a desktop or laptop that forces Windows to be purchased too. If there is ever a reason I need Window it will be installed as a VM.

The only application from Microsoft I will most likely use is VSCode and I'm trying to replace it with Zed and other tooling.

There is no argument people don't use Microsoft. The argument is the products coming out of Microsoft are low quality. Still waiting on Azure's feature to delete a GIT pull request in case sensitive information was accidentally pushed to the repository [0]. Microsoft truly does not respect the end user. You can see this with their forced bloat-ware such as Cortana, XBox features, and Recall, and user request never ending request to remove these useless / unused features.

Don't worry, their stock will go up as they push more advertisements onto the desktop for Home users. Investors love such trash.

[0] https://developercommunity.visualstudio.com/t/Allow-deletion...
by nunez | 2025-06-30 17:27:09+00:00
You're going to get lots of opinions from lots of people, so here's a Reddit thread from the before-AI times that does a pretty good job of answering that: https://old.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/5kp9va/alcoholic...

My two cents: addiction is about losing the ability to control how much of something that you do. I'd get worried once you start finding reasons to drink earlier and more of it during sessions. I also believe that alcoholism is a disease that runs in the family, so if you know someone close that had it, then assume that you're at risk. Lastly, after seven years of traveling for work as a consultant (and, now, as a sales engineer) and seeing loads of people slam down beers, wines and all sorts of other things at 9am, I firmly believe that alcoholism is much more prominent (and, to a degree, socio-normalized) than people talk about.
by LarsDu88 | 2025-06-30 17:27:12+00:00
If this is what many people perceive, it does not actually align with what is going on in the United States today.

What's actually happening is that most of the wealth and tax revenue is generated by the coastal metropolitan areas of the US, which basically subsidize the rural inland regions of the country. Things like Medicare which those same rural folks vote against. This is because the amount of wealth generated by science and technology vastly outweighs what is being generated by rural areas of the country.

Now we cut off the pipeline and investment into those wealth generating areas so that long term, the nation will head into decline...
by johnnyanmac | 2025-06-30 17:27:21+00:00
I feel in both examples I need more context. Like maybe he $1 hug was from an extremely attractive person. Yes, they will pay for that hug over the free normal or below average hug.

Likewise, "free car" can come from a family or friend. So I might trust it more than a $500 beater that I'd immediately take to shop.
by bluefirebrand | 2025-06-30 17:27:25+00:00
Yes, I do unfortunately see this in the wild a lot as well

Maybe I'm the one who is ultimately a sucker, because I take too much pride in my work to do this

But I always thought that the quality of my work and my effort would be tied to my reputation, but I don't think the world works that way unless you are very well known somehow
by cpgxiii | 2025-06-30 17:27:57+00:00
This is basically the value proposition for game consoles, for both players and game developers. For the player, secure gaming-specialized device that they don't have to set up and manage in the way a general-purpose computer requires. For the developer, a standardized trustable platform where they can avoid much of the anti-cheat complexity by letting the platform maintain security instead.
by NoMoreNicksLeft | 2025-06-30 17:28:09+00:00
They did. The implicit statement is right there... if there were something significantly lesser that had the same effect, then that would be the salient example. If he had any such examples to choose from, why choose the absurdly improbable one?

Well, the reason why you choose the absurdly improbable example, is because it's still the least absurd/improbable. Why does this need to be explained to you?
by twitchard | 2025-06-30 17:28:19+00:00
Why do you think that the human mind can contain semantics but a machine cannot? This argument needs some sort of dualism, or what Turing called "the objection from continuity" to account for this.

FWIW I don't think that the "triangularity" in my head is the true mathematical concept of "triangularity". When my son e.g. learned about triangles, at first the concept was just a particular triangle in his set of toy shapes. Then eventually I pointed at more things and said "triangle" and now his concept of triangle is larger and includes multiple things he has seen and sentences that people have said about triangles. I don't see any difficulty with semantics being "a matter of image", really.

Why do we believe that semantics can exist in the human mind but cannot exist in the internals of a machine?

Really "semantics"

I had come across this Catholic philosopher: https://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2019/03/artificial-intellig... who seems to make a similar argument to this; i.e. that it's the humans who give meaning to things, "logical symbols on a piece of paper are just a bunch of meaningless ink marks"
by shayway | 2025-06-30 17:29:18+00:00
Science as a principle is beautiful and valuable, and is entirely worthy of preservation. The industry surrounding it, less so. They are not inseparable. The latter has proven a poor steward of the former, and it's the latter that's under threat right now. It's not a question of 'yes science' or 'no science', but whether the current version of it is truly a fitting use of the space it occupies.
by Balgair | 2025-06-30 17:29:24+00:00
The cheap version of learning is dead, and AI killed it.

Not that we were learning all that much to begin with. I mean, walk into any sorority and ask to see the test bank. The students and Profs were phoning it in for a while, by and large. Not all of them were though, and good on yah.

But now that the fig leaf is torn away, we're left with the Oxbridge model and not much else - small classes, under 10, likely under 5, with a grad level tutor, social pressure making sure you've done the work. The great thing about this though is that you'll have an AI listening in all the time and helping out, streamlining the busywork and allowing the group to get down to business.

But that version is very expensive. You're looking at ~$50k / student year [0] at a baseline Oxbridge model in secondary school on up - ~$400k / student from 9th to university graduation.

Assume a 6% loan rate for 30 years (a mortgage, essentially), and you've got ~$2,300 monthly payments for all your working life, ~$46k/year down the drain. How in the hell are you going to manage student loans like that and then try to live a life without a really good job? How the hell is a nation going to be expected to pay for that per kid if you make school free for them?

Cheap learning wasn't good, but it sufficed. The new models of education must answer to the fundamental question of education: How much does it cost?

[0] 2 hours 3x a week per class; 4 classes per tutor per week. Assume $100k/tutor and 5 students/tutor. So $5k / student / tutor. 4 classes / student. So $20k / student in just raw tutors. At least double that for overhead if not triple.
by lotsofpulp | 2025-06-30 17:30:05+00:00
> The incentives you put up basically say "as soon as you are done we're sending you to the glue factory."

Those are the incentives nature puts up.

>Why would the person who spent 40+ years working have a worse quality of life than someone whose spent 10 years working?

Depends how much they earned and saved. Current workers (proxy for young) know they will not have a quality of life as good as those that have already worked decades past, so where is their incentive?

>because they already (most of the time) spent 40+ years working.

But they (at least these first few generations) are receiving healthcare worth far more than the work they did, tenable only due to the higher total fertility rates of many decades ago.

At its root, these deferred benefit schemes were either never sustainable for modern lifespans and healthcare consumption, or they depended on unrealistically high total fertility rates. One could even say they played a role in causing lower total fertility rates, as society de-coupled raising one's own productive children and having a good quality of life post working age, since you could now depend on others' productive children.

Money, savings, and other wealth abstractions that legislators can easily bring about don't materialize the goods and services one might want to buy.
by snovymgodym | 2025-06-30 17:30:11+00:00
This is cool, I think the most novel/unique aspect is the advanced memory tracking: https://github.com/helixlang/helix-lang?tab=readme-ov-file#a...

Still, I don't really see this going anywhere. There are already so many "slightly better C++" languages out there, e.g. D, cppfront/cpp2, Carbon, Zig and they pretty much all don't see wider adoption for the same reason. No matter how simple or ergonomic the interop with C++ is, the switching cost is still high and the benefit tends to be marginal. Almost all of them either include garbage collection or don't fully guarantee memory safety. Choosing a restricted subset of C++ and an opinionated, enforced linter & static analyzer goes a long way and gets you most of the benefits of these new languages, so organizations tend to just do that.

The exception is Rust, because in spite of all its downsides it has the killer feature of guaranteed memory safety without garbage collection, so that's the one seeing constantly increasing institutional support.