MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by jltsiren | 2025-06-03 23:52:58+00:00
This sounds like something written by an administrator. Someone who used to be an active scientist but then chose an administrative career.

I'd say that the biggest barriers to progress are the people who choose to take the easy path. Progress has always depended on people doing what they believe in. Not because of the institutions and incentives, but despite them. External sources of motivation can help to a degree, but they will eventually fail, as people learn to game them.

Then there are a lot of claims that falsely generalize the way things were done in the niche the author was in to the rest of science. Like authors paying article processing fees when not mandated by funders or institutions. Or that scientific publishing is about publishing the results (rather than, for example, committing to a specific version of the argument you are making). Or that a paper is a result of years of work. Or that people are afraid of being scooped, instead of talking about their ongoing work with other people in the field.
by maxpr | 2025-06-03 23:53:09+00:00
Good point. There are JavaScript tools that do that for js devs, but since oftentimes you end up having <a>links</a> and <b>nested <i>elements</i></b> in the code, wrapping becomes problematic and hard to maintain at scale.

I think there's a chance compile-time, AST/CST solutions might be the ultimate, O(1) i18n approach that doesn't distract. Ideally it should come out of the box with the framework, but perhaps this future is a little bit too far away just yet.
by LinXitoW | 2025-06-03 23:54:32+00:00
I have to ask, in comparison to what do you like it? Because every functional language, many modern languages like Rust, and even Java with checked exceptions offers this.

Hell, you can mostly replicate Gos "error handling" in any language with generics and probably end up with nicer code.

If your answer is "JavaScript" or "Python", well, that's the common pattern.
by themanmaran | 2025-06-03 23:54:48+00:00
The original source has much better historical information and a definition of the "functional unemployment" rate [0]. And the charts here don't really show this rate "soaring"

> the percentage of the U.S. labor force that does not have a full-time job (35+ hours a week) but wants one, has no job, or does not earn a living wage, conservatively pegged at $25,000 annually before taxes.

https://www.lisep.org/tru
by fuzzfactor | 2025-06-03 23:56:40+00:00
Looks like good insight to me.

But also in so many cases it needs to be made to work in reverse :\

Even when the pure logic or core process is where the real magic happens, and makes the app what it is, if interfacing with a user is very important you could also say that the UI is the actual heart of the program instead, which ends up calling that wonderfully unique code that may be different than anything else. Or anything else that has ever had a UI before.

But you need a "more common" interface that can accommodate optimized workflows of some kind or another, in enough ways for target mainstream users to make the most of the unique parts of the core creatively-engineered code, enjoying the most easily gained familiarity at the same time. With at least as usable a UI as they are accustomed to if not better.

Once that's all said & done is when I think it would be best for the creative artists to bring it up to meet visual objectives, with carefully crafted content curation, and run that by all kinds of ergonomic testers.

If they come up with any engineering shortcomings I would listen to them, even if it's nothing like an actual deficiency or true defect. There should be some pretty tight functioning and I think that would happen less often.
by wpietri | 2025-06-03 23:58:03+00:00
I think "the reality", at least as something involving a new paradigm, has yet to be established. I'll note that I heard plenty of similar talk about how developers just couldn't adapt six months or more ago. Promoters now can admit those tools were in fact pretty bad, because they now have something else to promote, but at the time those not rawdogging LLMs were dinosaurs under a big meteor.

I do of course agree that some people are just refusing to "wrap their minds around the changing world". But anybody with enough experience in tech can count a lot more instances of "the world is about to change" than "the world really changed". The most recent obvious example being cryptocurrencies, but there are plenty of others. [1] So I think there's plenty of room here for legitimate skepticism. And for just waiting until things settle down to see where we ended up.

[1] E.g. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b2F-DItXtZs
by ebfe1 | 2025-06-03 23:58:21+00:00
I don't see mentioning of e2e encryption, that would be nice but I love the webrtc usage here!

Shameless plug: I built small file sharing tool with encryption in browser and added a "tunnel" feature to make it easier for sharing between personal devices : https://www.relaysecret.com/tunnel/

The aes256 key is derived from hashing the tunnel name but never sent back to backend as it is behind anchor tag and the tunnel name is derived from substring of this hash. It is quite fun to use and share files. The file never lives more than 10 days (bucket lifecycle) but user can reduce this to delete upon download and the code can easily be reviewed (back end is a single lambda function to generate signed url):)
by kiitos | 2025-06-03 23:58:55+00:00
Errors are just values, same as other values, it's in no way "exceptional" for a caller to get an error back from a call to some other code. If a function can fail it needs to return an error, if a function call fails the caller needs to deal with that error, not difficult stuff here. "Happy path" is no more or less important than "sad path" and both should be equally represented in the source code as written.
by fc417fc802 | 2025-06-03 23:59:14+00:00
Then you entirely missed the point of that analogy. The cherry picker is relevant because the courts are unlikely to rule in favor of my neighbor in that case. Based on that, I strongly suspect they would not rule in the FAA's favor either.

The law, including the bounds of FAA jurisdiction, is determined by the courts. The question is under what conditions navigable airspace supersedes private property rights. This isn't a matter of what regulations the FAA has or hasn't published up until now but rather a question of where either the courts or the legislature determine the FAA's jurisdiction begins.

It also rubs up against state's rights since the FAA is a federal entity. I don't think anyone takes too much issue with the federal government regulating activities 30,000 feet up. Many trees in city parks exceed 100 feet though. By the time you're immediately outside the window of a 2 story house I think it's fairly obvious that the federal government doesn't get any say in the matter.

> destroying one of those could be felony-level vandalism.

Presumably the operator of such would have the presence of mind not to intentionally hover one over my lawn, outside the window of my house, within range of a 12 gauge. If they don't, well, honestly I might chance the courts. It would certainly depend on the circumstances though. Related, I've seen a few videos from the drone's perspective of the fire department shooting it down with water when the operator flew too close to an active house fire.
by nickpsecurity | 2025-06-03 23:59:14+00:00
That could happen. One would need to risk it to take the approach. However, if it was trained on legal data, then there might be a market for it among those not risking copyright infringement. Think FairlyTrained.org.

"somewhat dynamic or have a hidden set"

Are there example inputs and outputs for the dynamic ones online? And are the hidden sets online? (I haven't looked at benchmark internals in a while.)
by tstrimple | 2025-06-03 23:59:15+00:00
The excuse I've heard is that because cyclists need more energy to get back up to speed it's more acceptable for them to roll through lights / stop signs. Seems like pretty weak reasoning to me. But as long as it's a "rolling stop" I think there should be leeway given. It's very different to roll up to an empty 4 way stop and decide to roll through and deciding your "energy needs" trump everyone else trying to leverage an intersection. I'm of a similar belief with cars. A full two second pause at an empty 4 way stop is stupid. There is no safety issue with slowing down, seeing the path is clear and then proceeding.

I've personally run two red lights in the last month or so. Both were late at night where I'm literally the only visible vehicle on the road at a timed (no sensor) intersection where I was waiting for over a minute for the light to change. That's obviously a very different scenario than when you have to interact with other drivers on the road.
by fidotron | 2025-06-03 23:59:55+00:00
This is accurate, and what's impressive is how well this is scrubbed from the internet. For example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Element_AI

You'd have no idea about the fact most of the money came from the Quebec pension fund (which is then where the ServiceNow money went). For that you have to go to https://betakit.com/element-ai-announces-200-million-cad-ser... or https://www.cdpq.com/en/news/pressreleases/cdpq-expands-its-... Managing to spend $200M on AI in 2019 and having nothing to show for it in 2025. Quite impressive with hindsight.
by deltaburnt | 2025-06-04 00:00:36+00:00
I think we will end up with significantly more developer B and significantly less developer A. I can't see the future, I don't know how that would play out long term, maybe it will all even out. But I think in the medium term it will be a lot of headaches for someone like me who spends a significant amount of time reviewing code and steering architecture.

Also, I spend a lot of time mentoring, and I'd like to think A will grow to be more like B over time. But now it feels like it's wasted effort to try mentoring those skills if it won't be valued.
by MangoToupe | 2025-06-04 00:00:36+00:00
...it also pushes the lower bound lower :( really it just means we can extrapolate less from the historical record than had we not evolved, although I suppose that's a rather silly statement to make given that it was "non-intelligent" life that produced us in the only sample we have.

Now I'm actually morbidly curious: do you think humans could even come close to sterilizing this planet if we wanted to? I mean maybe we could burn away the atmosphere if we set off enough nukes (probably more than humanity's ready-to-use-stockpile, I think?), but the biomass that's inside the ocean (...would that even remain without an atmosphere or would it boil off? regardless...) and crust is simply massive. I strongly suspect that life would keep on going.
by burnt-resistor | 2025-06-04 00:00:46+00:00
Apparently, there were hundred+ drone pilots available who were spread across several timezones should the AI not be able to find their way visually. If you see some of the streaming video snippets, it says GPS fix unavailable likely due to jamming of GNSS systems and disabling of civilian GLONASS near bases. As such, Russian domestic cell carriers were reportedly used to stream video and for manual terminal guidance following visual cues, hence the daylight timing of the raid.
by agnishom | 2025-06-04 00:01:25+00:00
This is a great example.

Supposedly, you know something about this problem. If you use an LLM to craft a solution, that's probably fine since you'd know how well you did.

I know nothing about this problem. I could use an LLM to delude myself into thinking that I do. Should my boss be very happy about that? They probably shouldn't
by makeitdouble | 2025-06-04 00:03:35+00:00
I'd understand calling it dismissive if your didn't choose as counterpoints:

- your mother visiting your sister (arguably extremely low stake. At any moment she can just phone your sister I presume ?)

- You traveling around (you're not trying to close a business deal or do anything irreversible)

Basically you seem to be agreeing that it's fine for convenience, but not ready for "science fiction" level use cases.
by Retric | 2025-06-04 00:03:55+00:00
Theranos was using the same testing equipment and techniques as any other lab for most of their diagnostic services. Which is how they avoided being instantly exposed when their results ended up being meaningless. “In October 2015, John Carreyrou of The Wall Street Journal reported that Theranos was using traditional blood testing machines instead of the company's Edison devices to run its tests, and that the company's Edison machines might provide inaccurate results.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theranos

They did plenty of shady shit including producing poor results, but that’s largely incompetence independent of fraud vs intentionally putting people’s lives on the line.

IMO, the fraud kind of hides the equally important story where incompetent 19 year old collage dropout shockingly doesn’t know how to effectively setup and manage complex systems.
by andix | 2025-06-04 00:04:23+00:00
Special keyboards for one-handed typing are probably very expensive because of two reasons. First the small market, not a lot of potential customers, a lot of development costs and high per-unit production costs. And second because they are often paid for by insurance or a public program to bring people with disabilities to the workplace. It's a bargain for insurance to buy a keyboard for 1000$ and enable a person to do their job, instead of paying for decades of sick leave.
by hajile | 2025-06-04 00:05:18+00:00
Memory scaling has all but stopped. Current RAM cells are made up of just 40,000 or so electrons (that's when it's first stored. It degrades from there until refreshed). Going smaller is almost impossible due to physics, noise, and the problem of needing to amplify that tiny charge to something usable.

For the past few years, we've been "getting smaller" by getting deeper. The diameter of the cell shrinks, but the depth of the cell goes up. As you can imagine, that doesn't scale very well. Cutting the cylinder diameter in half doubles the depth of the cylinder for the same volume.

If you try to put the cells closer together, you start to get quantum tunneling where electrons would disappear from one cell and appear in another cell altering charges in unexpected ways.

The times of massive memory shrinks are over. That means we have to reduce production costs and have more chips per computer or find a new kind of memory that is mass producible.
by Trenthug | 2025-06-04 00:05:26+00:00
You say the universe doesn't have a description and then you go on say that the universe is some zero dimensional point of existential being, that's a descriptive attempt as descriptions are made of statements and even saying that something doesn't have a description makes it inherently flawed as saying even that much will turn out to be a description (description are made up of statements which tell about the qualities of the object)
by tptacek | 2025-06-04 00:05:28+00:00
Sure! Super happy to hear these kinds of objections because, while all the progress I'm personally perceiving is traceable to decisions different agent frameworks seem to be making, I'm totally open to the idea that model improvements have been instrumental in making these loops actually converge anywhere practical. I think near the core of my argument is simply the idea that we've crossed a threshold where current models plus these kinds of loops actually do work.
by thrance | 2025-06-04 00:05:32+00:00
Hire a translator then, don't give us a garbage localization and call it a day.

It's like if someone requested a feature and you gave them the first thing an LLM spewed out when asked to code it, without review.

You should at least have someone on your team be able to understand the program's output and correct it when things inevitably sound off.
by eizaguir-lai | 2025-06-04 00:05:33+00:00
Interesting article, like the overall tone. Agree that AI is not going to be the end of us, nor will it bring about paradise on Earth.

Only thing I don't like is the comment that Sam Altman was one of the "inventors" of ChatGPT. Don't want to downplay his role, but he is not an engineer or researcher. His skills lie primarily in his network and communication skills. He helped secure the funding, but I wouldn't call him an inventor.
by jhanschoo | 2025-06-04 00:05:36+00:00
> this statistics data-to-model only works on large datasets.

> deals with very small, very heterogeneous datasets.

The population itself is a very heterogeneous "dataset", that becomes (perhaps) apprehensible after you interrogate it with respect to the statistical question you have in mind. Let's not forget that the neatness of the data is constructed from the narrowness of the question asked of it, and even still the data is expected (in the colloquial sense) to take on a minimally-informative, max-entropy distribution, except in respect to the statistic of interest. The critical questions levied against historiography also apply here: perhaps the question you are collecting data for is not related to the population the way you think it is.

> why historical models and grand unified theories are so often bunk.

A lot of history practiced today are self-aware of just how much narrative has to be invented to "make sense" of historical events, and so historians value diverse perspectives. One understands that the same events may not hold the same meaning across communities, and so seeks to record and compare how they are perceived across communities or individuals; that perception in that community's narrative is at least subjectively authentic for that community or individual.

To the extent that the historical goal is to predict political/cultural/economic future, perhaps political/cultural theorists/economists are better positioned.
by NormLolBob | 2025-06-04 00:05:39+00:00
They mean “vet your sources and don’t blindly follow the internet hive-mind.” or similar; burden of proof is not what the internet thinks.

Tacked their actual point on to the end of a copy paste of op comments context, ended up writing something barely grammatically correct.

In doing so they prove why exactly not to listen to the internet. So they have that going for them.
by proc0 | 2025-06-04 00:06:03+00:00
LInk is broken, but I'll take your word for it. However there is no guarantee the general subset of this problem is solved because you can always run into something it can't do. Another example you could try is a glass HALF-full of wine. It just can't produce a glass that has 50% amount of wine, or another example a jar half-full of jam. It's something that if a human can draw a glass of wine, drawing it half-full is trivial.
Show HN: Hashish v5.5.1 – C++ Hash Cracker, Extreme Performance Boost
by karim7793 | 2025-06-04 00:06:19+00:00
Show HN: Hashish v5.5.1 - Blazing-Fast Hash Cracking with C++ Optimizations Hashish is a powerful, hybrid Python and C++ tool for hash cracking, built for security professionals and auditors. This v5.5.1 update brings a major performance boost: hashcracker.cpp (over 1400 lines) is now highly optimized with pthread and OpenMP for maximum multi-threaded speed. Expect impressive gains across all attack methods! Hashish offers: * Optimized Performance: Core C++ engine for raw speed. * Versatile Attacks: Dictionary, Brute-Force, and built-in Rainbow Table generation. * Broad Hash Support: Handles many algorithms via OpenSSL. * User-Friendly: Easy-to-use Python interface. Whether you're auditing password strength or exploring hash vulnerabilities, Hashish delivers.
by SamuelAdams | 2025-06-04 00:06:34+00:00
Every system has problems. The better question is: what is the acceptable threshold?

For an example Medicare and Medicade had a fraud rate of 7.66%. Yes, that is a lot of billions, and there is room for improvement, but that doesn’t mean the entire system is failing: 93% of cases are being covered as intended.

The same could be said with these models. If the spoilage rate is 10%, does that mean the whole system is bad? Or is it at a tolerable threshold?

[1]: https://www.cms.gov/newsroom/fact-sheets/fiscal-year-2024-im...
by ednite | 2025-06-04 00:06:41+00:00
I get what you’re saying, and it makes total sense. I’d lean toward it being the best (and worst) of both worlds: sometimes stories spark inventions, sometimes inventions spark stories, and we can probably agree it’s rarely just one-way.

In my case, my imagination pulled me into writing, where I conjure things up, so I definitely feel that inspirational side, even if the ideas themselves aren’t always “original.” To the creator, though, they can feel original.

As I write fiction, I notice I often end up predicting futures where humans might go next. So you’re right, writing can be as much about prediction as inspiration. But I also like to think that, every now and then, a truly new paradigm emerges, something unpredictable, that most people didn’t even realize was needed until it existed. Sometimes, society doesn’t know what it needs until it’s already here.

Thanks for the link, really interesting list!
by tstrimple | 2025-06-04 00:07:21+00:00
> Trains are much more dangerous than cars (bigger, harder to stop, even trams) but I don’t worry about them as much, because they rarely leave the rails and they’re easy to predict.

It feels like you're contradicting yourself here. The restricted tracks and predictability make them by definition more safe than cars. And that bears out in fatalities. I get what you're going for in that trains are more scary from a mass standpoint, but we don't measure safety by how dangerous things look. We look at actual metrics. And trains are safe.
Show HN: CrowdRender – collaborative rendering plugin for Blender
by heffalump | 2025-06-04 00:08:19+00:00
CrowdRender is an alternative to render farms and render farm software (like deadline).

Our software is licensed under the GPL V3, and primarily supports Blender's render pipeline, it supports Windows, MacOS and linux.

The goal of the addon is to provide a simple, single install package that turns a laptop, desktop, workstation or server into a worker that can collaboratively render an animation or single image. We aim to make this as simple as possible so the plugin can be used by a single freelancer, without a deep knowledge of networking, right up to a technical director/software dev working at a large studio.
by jamesfinlayson | 2025-06-04 00:09:06+00:00
Yep, resume-driven development. I remember at a previous company a small group of people pushed a Go rewrite to speed everything up. The serious speed improvements came from re-architecting (elimination of a heavy custom framework, using a message queue instead of handling requests synchronously etc). They would have been better off fixing the original system so that everything could benefit from the improvements, not just the tiny bits that they carved off.

Then the next annual report talked about improved scalability because of this amazing technology from Google.
by toofy | 2025-06-04 00:09:49+00:00
> …removing expert humans from the loop is the deeply stupid thing the Tech Elite Who Want To Crush Their Own Workforce…

this is completely expected behavior by them. departments with well paid experts will be one of the first they’ll want to cut. in every field. experts cost money.

we’re a long, long, long way off from a bot that can go into random houses and fix under the sink plumbing, or diagnose and then fix an electrical socket. however, those who do most of their work on a computer, they’re pretty close to a point where they can cut these departments.

in every industry in every field, those will be jobs cut first. move fast and break things.