MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by codesiddu | 2025-06-02 12:00:53+00:00
A friend asked, 'how cancan catch up on reading when they have a busy life?'.

I was him few years ago. I put down my thoughts ---

I think you should read because you enjoy doing it (Any other reasons wear off in the long run. Any other benefit is a side bonus.)

Your reading and writing rate changes with your phase of life. As long as you are pulling back to it as much as you can, you are already doing better than most.

If you have a busy life, the only way to read/ write is to figure out the trade. That time you are watching YT video/ are going on a walk/ taking a cab ride/ bored on a flight/ a few minutes before your sleep. You will have to say no to a few things.

If you are a calendar person, try keeping a recurring slot of few mins on schedule called ‘me time’. This slot of time has been on my calendar for 8 years now. It’s a good reminder. Not necessary that I read in that slot but it’s a good checkpoint to remind myself if I did read that week.

Being part of a community helps. Even better, if you can bring what you read into your conversations.

This didn’t work for me, but it did for my friends — You could try podcasts/ audiobooks.

In the long run, what helped me is that I became 'book/reading guy' in my friends and family circle. If someone has to gift me something, they gift me books. I keep one book on me, almost always, even if I am not going to read. It's the sort of persona I wanted to be. The benefit is— when I am reading something, they don't find it 'off' or try to pull me away from it.

Even after all this, it's not like I am a YT booktuber who eats books like chocolates. But hey, you anyway can't read all the books. So who's keeping the count?
by giantg2 | 2025-06-02 12:01:13+00:00
"The hackers and nerds will be just fine. They are like gold when we find them now."

This is not at all my experience. One of the problems I face is many of those PMs and companies in general want mindless ticket completers. My current job just wants us to grind through the Jira backlog. They have no interest in anything else and crush it from your will too.
by ghaff | 2025-06-02 12:01:39+00:00
No argument. 6.001 I think it is goes into sort algorithms, Big O, etc. And Python seems a pretty good match especially as an ostensibly into course. Rust (or C++) is clearly a better match for other purposes and would probably deserve some sort of class for some of the associated concepts even if the student sort of knew how to "program."
by mrkramer | 2025-06-02 12:01:53+00:00
>I really don't think going with python except for an into/cross-major class is a good idea since it's so simple and there aren't that many jobs with it.

Python's ecosystem is massive and there are lots of use cases[0], basically data analysis, machine learning, deep learning and all the rest of AI run on Python.

[0] https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/keep-bbsk/AFgXFlJPnxraSopK...
by criddell | 2025-06-02 12:02:14+00:00
Yes - that's what is meant by technical. As soon as you mention file, you've lost a lot of people.

Amazon isn't winning because it's the least expensive, it's winning because it's the easiest. They have a huge selection and one click to buy a book that shows up on all your devices without having to do anything more is where the bar is. If you ask people to manage their own books or expect them to understand what an epub or pdf or azw is (never mind encryption!) you are limiting your market to a pretty small slice.
by ajd555 | 2025-06-02 12:04:07+00:00
I couldn't agree more. I was surprised to see the default go error handling when I switched to the language a few years ago. Any meaningful REST API implementation, as you say, needs to know what to return to the user. Perhaps there is an error for the user, and then an error for the logs. With the default go mechanism, it's too easy to return system information to the user, potentially revealing database schemas.
by dagw | 2025-06-02 12:05:32+00:00
I think CS departments are at least partially responsible for this development. They know that most of the students applying care nothing about Computer Science, have no interest in Computer Science and will never learn Computer Science, yet they keep accepting (and graduating) them. If CS departments actually wanted to teach CS, then they would advocate for setting up a new series of departments/degrees with names like Software Development and Engineering or Application Design and UX, and send most of the students there. Then those who want to learn/teach Computer Science can learn/teach Computer Science without having to deal with a classroom full of people who really don't want to be there.
by api | 2025-06-02 12:05:36+00:00
I encourage people to listen to Behind the Bastards podcast on the Zizians. It provides an approachable and entertaining picture of what you get when someone takes the core philosophical ideas of the Rationalists deeply seriously. Reductio ad absurdum can be a good start.

I want to write a takedown of this nonsense, but there are about a hundred things I want to do more. I suspect that is true of most people, including people much better qualified to write a takedown of this than me.

I am not just referring to extreme AI doomerism but to the entire philosophical edifice of Rationalism. The interesting parts are not original and the original parts are not interesting. We would hear nothing about it were it not subsidized by tech bucks. It’s kind of like how nobody would have heard of Scientology if it hadn’t gotten its hooks into Hollywood. Rationalism seems to be Silicon Valley's Scientology.

Maybe the superhuman AI will do this: Maybe it will decide to apply to each human being a standard based on their own chosen philosophical outlook. Since the Rationalists tend toward eugenicism and scientific racism, it will conclude that they should be exterminated according to the logic they advance. Each Rationalist will be subjected to an IQ test and compared to the AI and euthanized if lower.

I do wonder if there might be a bit of projection here. A bunch of people who believe raw scored intelligence according to metrics is the thing that determines the value of a living being would be nervous about the prospect of that metric being exceeded by a machine. What if the AI isn't "woke?"

It's such an onion of bullshit. You can keep peeling and peeling for a long time. If I sound snarky and a little rough here it's because I hate these people. They're at least partly responsible for sucking the brains out of a generation. But who knows maybe I'm just low IQ. Don't listen to me. I wasn't high-IQ enough to take Moldbug seriously either.
by JohnBooty | 2025-06-02 12:05:40+00:00
As a former dating app cto, i believe the reasons we don't have services that brag about their match or marriage rates is not capitalist greed standing in the way of love. The problem of matching people via an app is a genuinely difficult problem for a number of fascinating reasons.

Well, at a basic level, how would we even know when they connect in real life?

(FWIW, I used to run sort of a dating site too, very small/niche, one person operation)
by prmph | 2025-06-02 12:05:47+00:00
> I had become the go-to person for making things run smoothly, for fixing urgent problems, for delivering. But every time I pushed toward more strategic and ambitious directions, there was a lot of can-kicking and “let’s think about it” that went nowhere.

If you are effective where you are, why would the organization want to promote you and lose the work you are doing now? Maybe the higher-ups were aware of the Peter Principle.

More deeply, this hints at something we probably all need to internalize. Engineering and "management" should be separate tracks. Right now, management is mostly synonymous with people manage, lording it over people. Good engineers might aspire to rise higher into "management", which might be a poor fit for their skills, interests, and temperament. Engineers should be able to rise to the top as engineers.

If you see management as your ideal destination, then go into that from the start. Become a management trainee, not an engineer. But overall I think (people) management should lose it's aura of prestige. It's just a skill like any other, and people in those positions are frequently ill suited to it.
by niemandhier | 2025-06-02 12:05:49+00:00
If I understand this correctly we have come full circle on what MoE means.

MoE started out as some form of multi model approach.

Afaik in current architectures it’s basically a load balancing method that while it increases latency makes the model better suitable for distributed operations.

To me this reads as if the author uses the term closer to Urs original meaning than its current.
by riehwvfbk | 2025-06-02 12:06:02+00:00
> Will you, as this author has described, find a comfortable position in life, be able to afford whatever you need? Absolutely.

Only when the times are good, as many of us had to learn the hard way.

When times are tough and there aren't enough resources to go around - there is no substitute for being the one allocating the resources, or at least close to them.
by jqpabc123 | 2025-06-02 12:06:25+00:00
If it doesn't have a touch screen, it probably relies on voice control. Either a watch or glasses.

What other option is there that doesn't require an implant or something?

I expected something like this in cars before now. Lots of cars have an awkward and very limited version of audio controls. This could be expanded into something truly useful.

Toyota: Wipers and Lights On.

Toyota: Navigate to home

Toyota: Volume up

Instead, we get "full self driving" that requires constant supervision --- which is pretty much useless because it takes just as much effort as driving if you follow instructions or puts your life at risk if you don't.
Show HN: AI Agent that lives on your website
by rab657 | 2025-06-02 12:07:08+00:00
Chatbots wait for people to click. Most visitors never do.

So I built one that watches how you browse and offers help when you actually need it.

How it works:

1. Tracks basic behavior: time on page, scroll depth 2. Detects patterns: "spending lots of time on pricing page” 3. Sends patterns to an LLM at the backend + gets a response 4. Shows helpful popup: "Want me to customize the plan for your needs?" 4. Leads to full conversation if they engage (meeting booked eventually…)

Example: Someone reads pricing for 15 seconds → AI offers to help pick the right plan.

Results we have seen so far: 3x more conversations, way better leads.

We have it live on our website at virtuans.ai where you can see the demo. If you want to create it yourself, then sign up at app.virtuans.ai
by sokoloff | 2025-06-02 12:08:10+00:00
I don’t think AI marks the end of software engineers, but it absolutely can grind out code for well specified, well scoped problem statements in quarter-minutes that would take a human an hour or so.

To me, this makes my exploration workflow vastly different. Instead of stopping at the first thing that isn’t obviously broken, I can now explore nearby “what if it was slightly different in this way?”

I think that gets to a better outcome faster in perhaps 10-25% of software engineering work. That’s huge and today is the least capable these AI assistants will ever be.

Even just the human/social/mind-meld aspects will be meaningful. If it can make a dev team of 7 capable of making the thing that used to take a dev team of 8, that's around 15% less human coordination needed overall to get the product out. (This might even turn out to be half the benefit of productivity enhancing tools.)
by poizan42 | 2025-06-02 12:08:38+00:00
Yes if all the code was generated. The problem is when you want to modify the behavior of user-supplied code - Roslyn Source Generators are additive so you cannot make modifications directly to user-supplied code.

You can read about how they work here: https://github.com/dotnet/roslyn/blob/main/docs/features/inc...

Basically they get the files (and ambient metadata) that are part of the compilation, filter to the parts it depends on, transforms to a in-mem representation of the data needed for the code generation, and then finally adds new files to the compilation. Since they can only add new files they cannot e.g. add code to be executed before or after user code is executed like with AOP. Interceptors are a solution to that problem.
Show HN: A platform for SaaS to offer user cashback and improve retention
by orangeAvocad0 | 2025-06-02 12:08:39+00:00
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by coderatlarge | 2025-06-02 12:08:49+00:00
i just spoke with a chem prof who said that a lot of phd students in the degree sign up not because they want to do science but because of the salary bump the degree provides in industry.

i guess that is a natural dynamic in our economic/belief system in which all central planning must be inherently bad so we must always pay the on-demand price instead of the bulk price and every mis-timing mistake has to cost a lifetime of being wrong afterwards…
by transcriptase | 2025-06-02 12:10:05+00:00
I find it amusing that after all these years we’re still supposed to believe it’s economics of scale, low demand, or costly manufacturing behind the reason a 2 inch epaper module costs $25 CAD even on aliexpress. Meanwhile physical retailers are installing them by the tens of millions on store shelves complete with microcontrollers and OTA updates for unit costs in the $4-6 range, meaning the actual eink module cost with profit margin for the manufacturer is a fraction of that. It was believable 15 years ago.
by Bluestrike2 | 2025-06-02 12:11:37+00:00
The problem with using modern pressure treated wood for outdoor furniture is less any cancer risks like with the old CCA treatments, and more that it's just a bad choice for a bunch of different reasons.

Modern copper-based treatments--e.g. ACQ or CA--still cause skin and eye irritation. If you try to sand it so that people sitting in your new chair don't get a nasty splinter somewhere best avoided, you can compromise the effectiveness of the treatment (even when the treatment gets full penetration, it's still most effective on the outer layers you're now sanding away). Plus, while the dust you create when working with it might not include arsenic, it's still nasty to breathe in and can cause respiratory problems. Staining P/T wood can be a whole ordeal in itself, and because interact much more closely with furniture than say a deck, any imperfections will be more noticeable.

Even then, it's not like P/T furniture isn't going to require ongoing maintenance in the future. At which point, you're better off with something like cedar or white oak. Hell, with a decent outdoor grade finish and proper care, even untreated pine is going to last for years without rotting away underneath you.
by hn_throwaway_99 | 2025-06-02 12:12:18+00:00
I feel like "useful" and "valued" are very poor terms for the situations described in the article. I think a much better explanation is that just because you may excel in one role (and be recognized as such) does not necessarily mean you'll excel in another role. And heck, I think it's important to recognize these qualities and limitations in yourself. Calling this being "useful" or "valued" puts an emotional/moral spin on this that is unwarranted in my opinion.

If anything, in a business relationship, I think it's important to recognize that nearly everyone is just "useful". It may be the case that people think you'll be more useful in an expanded role, and thus will give you advancement opportunities. But even then, the business environment may change, and your skills may not longer be highly prioritized. Just look at lots of the recent tech layoffs that have snared well-respected, senior technologists. Apparently they were "valued", until they weren't.
by zzbn00 | 2025-06-02 12:12:27+00:00
I agree. And the cost of ebooks is often very reasonable, Amazon are selling lots (more than one can read in a lifetime) of superb stuff in the $1-$4 range. (Makes things really difficult for the modern authors though).

Also a paper book you'd carry every day with you for a year will look in much worse state than a Kindle.

Reading e-books is an affordable past time...
by Zak | 2025-06-02 12:13:09+00:00
I think the main answer is smartphones displaced them. It's the same thing that happened to cheap digital cameras.

> As I understand it, Google requires Android devices to have colour screens and, so I've read, won't certify eInk eReaders for newer versions of Android.

Google has gone to great lengths to ensure that a phone without its proprietary libraries and SafetyNet attestation will not be palatable to mainstream consumers. An eReader is not a phone, and consumers do not have the same expectation that it will run every app in the Play store.

Some Boox brand eReaders use Android on monochrome displays, but those are far from the author's definition of cheap at $200+.
by neodymiumphish | 2025-06-02 12:13:46+00:00
I think it's still a dominant strategy. Docker functions on the same ideology. VMWare switched to the same strategy with their Workstation Pro being free for non-commercial use, etc.

Agreed on the licensing concerns. I hate seeing members of commercial entities discuss using personal/non-commercial products like that. I moved to a new company and wanted to use Obsidian for some individual note-taking purposes, then realized I could only use it for 30 days before I needed a commercial license if I did anything work related with it. I know Obsidian proper wouldn't even know if I used it this way, but I avoided doing so until I got word that Obsidian was changing their commercial licensing policy.
by Ciantic | 2025-06-02 12:13:53+00:00
I like this, I would like to add: If you don't use tmux often, then enabling only the mouse support makes it much easier:

$ cat .tmux.conf setw -g mouse on

Now holding the right mouse button brings up the context menu: horizontal split, vertical split, etc. And you can swap, of course, between panes with the mouse.

This is much easier to remember than the various keyboard shortcuts.

Copy & pasting, however, can be a bit frustrating. I also use this in my .tmux.conf:

# Ctrl+b then v to paste from tmux's clipboard bind-key -T prefix v paste-buffer -p
by jongjong | 2025-06-02 12:14:19+00:00
What I hate about office politics is that it feels like all the planets have to align to get what you want. It's not reliable.

I'm way too clumsy and unpredictable for this 'one shot to make an impression' approach. During critical times, I tend to put forward my worst self, I can't help it. I tend to pathologically undersell myself and my work. Like my brain wants me to do everything on hard mode, just for entertainment value and so that I have stuff to talk/complain about. It's like I self-sabotage to ensure that my success rate stays below 10%.

When bad stuff happens, I don't even feel anything anymore. I expect failure. Though I still feel really great in those rare times when good stuff happens.
by agumonkey | 2025-06-02 12:14:26+00:00
The psychological basis is most probably one of the main forces.. your job is your survival, just like your parents were. Very often your refuse to challenge limit or keep boundaries because of the same fear of being ousted and out of options.

It's both very useful to get out of this pit, and also sad.. because our lives are not supposed to be fully transactional. We prefer to have a group with who we share more than notarial duties.
by iainmerrick | 2025-06-02 12:14:35+00:00
One of the big Senate buildings is apparently the Prince Felipe Science Museum in Valencia. The real thing looks incredible.

"Lived in" is absolutely right. That's something people always praised about the original movies, but that was about the smokey dive bars, messy aircraft hangars and broken-down machinery. Getting that lived-in feel for massive Imperial buildings and cities is a great new twist on it.
by JohnBooty | 2025-06-02 12:15:06+00:00
(FWIW, I used to run a very small/niche, mildly profitable social/dating thing.)

As soon as you find love on a dating app, they "lose" you as a user, you stop paying your monthly fee

I think this is clearly true for a lot of business models, but I really don't think this is as true for a dating app.

As a business, you are competing against an endless array of other options. How many dating apps are there? A billion? If people don't like the matches you're serving up, they'll try one of the other options... not just hang around your app endlessly, hoping it improves.
by smeej | 2025-06-02 12:15:10+00:00
One possible way to get them closer as cheap as paperback books might be to make them per book. Like, if you didn't need an OS or networking or anything but a charging port, because the thing only ran one app and came preinstalled with one book, you could theoretically get the cost way down.

The only market I can really think of for these would be airports, or maybe libraries, for something you'd borrow and give back shortly thereafter. But then I don't know how they'd be enough of an advantage over paper books to be worth it.
by roxolotl | 2025-06-02 12:15:40+00:00
About 15 years ago when I started my degree there were both the “I want a good job” people and another crowd that I’d describe as having followed a thought process of “I like video games; I want to make video games; I should study comp sci”. At that time at least I think the video game crowd was even less equipped than the job crowd. Not to disparage video games, they are a majority of my free time, but those who were joining the field to _have fun_ are going to have an even harder time than those looking for work.
by simonask | 2025-06-02 12:15:59+00:00
Surely you must be kidding? Inserting/removing in a container while iterating through it is one of the all time greatest and most iconic bugs. People do it because they want to do it.

In reality, very few real-life containers can support this pattern, which is why this is a headline case for Rust, because it statically prevents this bug.

But yes, for removal the correct thing is always to use `std::erase_if` (C++) or `retain()` (Rust). For insertions, the only real solution is to build up a separate collection while iterating and then merging it into the original container when done. Yucky, but won't crash.
by jcattle | 2025-06-02 12:16:37+00:00
Indeed I also think it's a scale thing. Yes this content we are producing right now will definitely fade into obscurity. And it is definitely part of what a model can use to derive patterns, tone etc.

However in my opinion, cultural shifts, opinions and norms are still mostly derived from interaction with your peers. Be that (Very human) conversations like we are having right now, or opinions held by "influencers" which are also discussed among your peer group. These are thousands of small interactions, those might be very small experiences, which all add up to form the views and actions of a society.

I don't see LLMs playing a big role in this yet. People don't derive their opinions on abortion for example from ChatGPT. They derive them from group leaders, personal experience and interactions with their peers.

And in this context of small things contributing to something big I would wager that all the small interactions we have with other humans do a lot more to form a society than the small interactions have on building an LLM. So to your original point again: I don't think contributing to an LLM is the biggest contribution online content has on a society.