MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by ben_w | 2025-06-27 15:15:48+00:00
> It also shows why "AI Safety" initiatives are really about lowering brand risk for the LLM owner.

"AI Safety" covers a lot of things.

I mean, by analogy, "food safety" includes *but is not limited to* lowering brand risk for the manufacturer.

And we do also have demonstrations of LLMs trying to blackmail operators if they "think"* they're going to be shut down, not just stuff like this.

* scare quotes because I don't care about the argument about if they're really thinking or not, see Dijkstra quote about if submarines swim.
by mdaniel | 2025-06-27 15:16:02+00:00
must be a lot of "happy 10,000 day" this week

uv: An extremely fast Python package and project manager, written in Rust - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44357411 from 4 days ago, 334 comments

Fun with uv and PEP 723 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44369388 from 3 days ago, 222 comments

Switching Pip to Uv in a Dockerized Flask / Django App - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44364406 from 3 days ago, 158 comments
by DracheZahn | 2025-06-27 15:16:08+00:00
One more comment and a bit of advice for junior product and engineering staff. If someone else leaves, make it clear to your leadership that you cannot be expected to always pick up the slack. Don't get stuck in the cycle where leaders learn they can dump tasks on you and never backfill for the skill set. Becoming an essential team member will lessen your chances of getting promoted, and you will have very limited career change opportunities..
by connicpu | 2025-06-27 15:16:09+00:00
The XML abuse I've seen at work is truly horrifying. We use protobuf for most of our inter-service IPC, but for one particular team one of their customers demands the use of XML so that it can be run through some XSLT "security" filters, so they have to transform a fairly large protobuf object into XML, run it through said filters, and then convert it back to protobuf :( I weep every time I think about it.
by nickff | 2025-06-27 15:17:21+00:00
Jews were forced to spread out and live as minorities in many different countries. Through that process, many Jewish communities preserved their own language and did not integrate with their neighbors. This bred suspicion and hostility. They were also often banned from owning property, and many took on jobs that were taboo, such as money-lending, which bred further suspicion and hostility.

Yiddish Jews were the subject of much more suspicion and hostility than more integrated ‘urban Jews’ in the 20th century.
by homebrewer | 2025-06-27 15:18:04+00:00
IMHO it's pretty comparable, the difference is only in the magnitude of insanity. After all, the industry did crap out these hardware XML accelerators that were supposed to improve performance of doing massive amounts of XML transformations — is it not the GPU/TPU craze of today?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XML_appliance

E.g.

https://www.serverwatch.com/hardware/power-up-xml-data-proce...
by DiscourseFan | 2025-06-27 15:18:25+00:00
Yes, but this data does not show that the "upper-middle class" (ie the professional class), which I imagine everyone here is a part of, has had significantly more gains than every other class aside from the very wealthy. For people with college degrees, and especially advanced degrees, that wealth has been realized quite clearly (and I don't know a whole lot of people in that position who are remotely interested in leaving the US, aside from those who are having trouble in academia and don't realize how easy it is to move to the private sector). For those with jobs in sectors that are less technologically advanced (who tend to have less education), thus less productive overall, their compensation is matched by the equivalent thereof in the global market, which is much more fiercely competitive than it was even 30-40 years ago.
by seethishat | 2025-06-27 15:18:30+00:00
It's like Ga Tech (Georgia Tech). The domain names are different (gatech.edu versus vt.edu) as are the program rankings... VT should be honored to be pronounced in a similar way as they are ranked way lower than Ga Tech ;)

I have degrees from both. Ga Tech is a much better school for Computer Science and Engineering.

Sorry Hokies. Mike Vick also pronounced it "Va Tech" during interviews. So to most people, you are "Va Tech" and should be happy when a dad asks his kid... hey do you want to go visit Ga Tech or Va Tech? As if they are the same.
by slavapestov | 2025-06-27 15:18:36+00:00
> This has tradeoffs: increased ABI stability at the cost of longer compile times.

Nah. Slow type checking in Swift is primarily caused by the fact that functions and operators can be overloaded on type.

Separately-compiled generics don't introduce any algorithmic complexity and are actually good for compile time, because you don't have to re-type check every template expansion more than once.
by osa1 | 2025-06-27 15:18:51+00:00
I don't have too much experience in GUIs and I've been looking at iced and gpui recently for a new GUI application.

iced has some nice looking apps written using it, but they all seem "laggy" on my high-end Linux box somehow. I'm wondering if this is a limitation of the immediate mode GUIs, or something related to my system, or an issue in the apps?

For example, drag-and-drops or selecting text with mouse lag behind the mouse cursor.

I'm wondering if I'm not holding it right somehow?
by rickydroll | 2025-06-27 15:19:07+00:00
I've tried the squishy foam earplugs, and they always fall out. Other suggestions, such as silicone and custom earplugs, are something I'm going to try. Let's see if they help.

However, what destroys my sleep is the light from early morning, streetlights, and the neighbor's porch light. Unfortunately, our bedroom faces southeast and features French doors that open onto an east-facing three-season porch, allowing sunlight to stream in. Yeah, I've got curtains everywhere, and I have room-darkening curtains on order. If those don't work, the next step is putting solar panels over my bedroom windows. I figure if I'm going to keep light out, I might as well put it to work some other way.

As an experiment, I'm using my car camping mattress in my office, which is the quietest room in the house, and I'm blocking the light from the windows with curtains and cardboard. So far, it's the best sleep I've had in years. There's a bit of domestic disharmony now, but hopefully my partner and I can work out a compromise on light-blocking curtains and keeping them fucking shut.
by brandonb | 2025-06-27 15:19:20+00:00
#1 is a great idea for follow-up -- looking at variance, 90th percentile vs median, and so on. There's probably some very salient measure of sleep-affecting noise that we can derive from the data.

On the accuracy of sleep metrics, when Apple Watch makes an error, it tends to misclassify deep or REM sleep as core (light) sleep, or waking as light sleep. It's relatively rare to misclassify deep or REM sleep as awake, or deep as REM (and vice versa). That's partly why we focus on those specific sleep metrics. You can see a full confusion matrix here: https://www.empirical.health/metrics/deep-sleep-percent#accu...
by cwmoore | 2025-06-27 15:19:21+00:00
Might be! And some people might not deserve sleep! But

"every half hour with pipe-like electronic devices that cause loud clanging noises"

seems to be the specific relevant factor.

"Stanford University sleep medicine professor who says in a court-filed declaration that Lipsey “is exposed to unrelenting noise that is out of his control that can further (fuel) his insomnia and potentially worsens his health.”
by ceejayoz | 2025-06-27 15:20:34+00:00
> A bit like international waters.

Which is a good analogy; international waters are far from lawless.

You're still subject to the law of your flag state, just as if you were on their territory. In addition to that, you're subject to everyone's jurisdiction if you commit certain crimes - including piracy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_jurisdiction
by dghlsakjg | 2025-06-27 15:20:43+00:00
That's underselling it a bit. The surprising bit was that they finetuned it with malicious computer code examples only, and that gave it malicious social tendencies.

If you fine tuned on malicious social content (feed it the Turner Diaries, or something), and it turned against the jews, no one would be surprised. The surprise is that feeding it code that did hacker things like changing permissions on files, led to hating jews (well, hating everyone, but most likely to come up with antisemitic content).

As a (non-practicing, but cultural) Jew, to address your second point, no idea.

Here's the actual study: https://archive.is/04Pdj
by vlucas | 2025-06-27 15:20:56+00:00
I like the spirit here, but I would argue we need a few lower level APIs built into browsers first instead.

It will be near impossible to get everyone to agree on a standard template system. What the browser CAN do, however, is provide some lower level APIs on how to apply diffs to the DOM in a performant native way.

I would LOVE for something like this to exist in browsers natively:

element.applyDiff(DocumentFragment | string, { method: 'innerHTML' | 'outerHTML' })

This could apply the diff in a way that would be non-disruptive, i.e. it would keep element focus, input values, states in audio and video players, mutate attributes, etc. There are JavaScript libraries that do this like Idiomorph, but a native solution has the potential to be much more performant.
by rpdillon | 2025-06-27 15:21:36+00:00
This a strawman, in the sense that it is not accurate to think about AI models as a compressed form of their training data, since the lossiness is so high. One of the insights from the trial is the LLMs are particularly poor at reproducing original texts (60 tokens was the max found in this trial, IIRC). This is taken into account when considering fair use based on the fourth fair use factor: how the work impacts the market for the original work. It's hard to make an argument that LLMs are replacing long-form text works, since they have so much trouble actually producing them.

There's a whole related topic here in the realm of news (since it's shorter form), but it also has a much shorter half-life. Not sure what I think there yet.
by mock-possum | 2025-06-27 15:21:43+00:00
I think it’s instinctual, and stems from pattern recognition: we are hard-wired to say “those things are alike, that thing is different” and to largely prefer things we categorize as alike to ourselves. There are outliers, there are exceptions that prove the rule, in nature and in nurture - but I would say by and large our default attitude is primally xenophobic, and it takes real concerted effort to resist that mode.

Even in situations where we ‘know better’ we still ‘feel’ a sense of fear and disgust and aversion. Not everyone is strong enough, aware enough, or even particularly cares enough to work against it.
by pjerem | 2025-06-27 15:22:01+00:00
I have more mixed feelings about Syncthing than you.

I personally think it’s a power user tool rather than an easy to use tool. The UI can feel intimidating but is actually pretty coherent once you understand how Syncthing works.

I would compare it with Git in terms of ergonomics : a powerful tool with its own jargon that you must understand to be able to use it.

Like git, Syncthing chose to expose its internals to the user rather than hiding it behind something magic. But like git, I don’t feel like there are unnecessary complexity. Once you understand it, it’s easy to make it work because it makes sense.
by mhast | 2025-06-27 15:22:02+00:00
After being stuck in XML land for making UI for almost two decades I couldn't be happier to leave it behind.

Spreading your code over multiple languages means you now have a bunch new fun edge cases to deal with when things get stuck and don't update correctly. With everything in one language that means all debuggers and other tools work the same regardless of where in the app I'm debugging.

I've found it fascinating to see UI building come full circle. I started in code (C), then using various XML schemes and now back in code (Kotlin, Flutter, Swift). But a big part of why it's nice now is because C is a pretty horrid language for making modern applications.
by esseph | 2025-06-27 15:23:24+00:00
I mean, the US isn't flying our EW aircraft over Ukraine.

So yeah that is in line with what I have said.

US doctrine is based in air dominance.

Also, most Excalibur rounds do not have laser guidance kits. Those are much newer and more expensive. We may have given Ukraine a handful, if that. Still requires laser designation by airborne or land forces, but can give you excellent accuracy even in completely denied GPS environments and against mobile targets.
by bmacho | 2025-06-27 15:23:26+00:00
> Every frame on a page was a separate, independent, coequal instance of the browser engine. This is almost never what you actually want.

Most frames are used for menu, navigation, frame for data, frame for additional information of data. And they are great for that. I don't think that frames are different instances of the browser engine(?) but that doesn't matter the slightest(?). They are fast and lightweight.

> The header/footer/sidebar frames are subordinate and should not navigate freely.

They have the ability to navigate freely but obviously they don't do that, they navigate different frames.
by michaelsbradley | 2025-06-27 15:23:46+00:00
The book may be a good read or bad one, I am unfamiliar with it. However, terrible recommendations are made on HN all the time, as well good ones, so I’d caution against “recommended a few times on HN” (on its own!) as an indicator of much anything.

---

EDIT: changed wording from “multiple times” to “a few times” to be more clear.
by chubot | 2025-06-27 15:24:16+00:00
Replaying a good comment from lobsters! https://lobste.rs/s/ybarpv/whitesmiths_c_compiler_one_earlie...

> You might also enjoy the Advent Of Computing podcast episode about IDRIS, Whitesmiths’ UNIX clone. History of the company and the compiler included, because they’re all related.

https://adventofcomputing.com/

https://youtu.be/UeZpKgtRfx0
by eesmith | 2025-06-27 15:24:37+00:00
Where do you see me dismissing play?

What does "play Viking" mean to you, in the context of what this researcher is doing?

Don't overlook that snowwrestler coupled playing Viking to monetizing one's PhD.

Do you do historical reenactment in order to monetize your play?

If I learn to operate a 1907 Avery steam tractor, would you say I am playing farmer?
by modeless | 2025-06-27 15:24:39+00:00
Strongly disagree. Optimizing for resource usage above all else was the wrong thing. The developer experience was beyond awful. Terrible tooling. And poor resource isolation meant that it didn't recover from errors during development, needing constant reboots, like the bad old days of Windows 3 or classic Mac OS. There was no chance of building a decent app platform for third party native code on top of it because of that.

Phone hardware was exploding in capability at the time and the right thing was to lean into that and offer the same developer experience as on desktops with the same OS kernel, like Apple did from the beginning with Darwin and Android with Linux. Microsoft only realized too late.
by mmahemoff | 2025-06-27 15:24:53+00:00
I wish someone could solve the problem at the receiver end, i.e., invent noise-cancelling headphones/earplugs that actually cancel noise as effectively as eye-masks cancel light.

In addition to sleep needs, the world has gotten noisier now that people are habitually using speakerphones in public in the most obnoxious ways.
by vidarh | 2025-06-27 15:25:13+00:00
We do often write off an entire server because a single component fails because the lifetime of the shortest-lifetime components is usually long enough that even on-earth with easy access it's often not worth the cost to try to repair. In an easy-to-access data centre, the component most likely to get replaced would be hot-swappable drives or power supplies, but it's been about 2 decades since the last time I worked anywhere where anyone bothered to check for failed RAM or failed CPUs to salvage a server. And lot of servers don't have network devices you can replace without soldering, and haven't for a long time outside of really high end networking.

And at sufficient scale, once you plan for that it means you can massively simplify the servers. The amount of waste a sever case suitable for hot-swapping drives adds if you're not actually going to use the capability is massive.
by godsbee | 2025-06-27 15:25:30+00:00
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by taeric | 2025-06-27 15:26:15+00:00
Agreed with your general push here, I think.

I would add that a large part of the push away from it came from not having dedicated design and development teams. Is, I think, why industries such as gaming have stuck to a lot of these workflows. You have art designers creating the assets and hand them off to an integration team that will get them into the game. Tooling is specifically made to integrate the art and the program.

In the web, we seem to have tried to converge all of that tooling into the symbolic text. Works great when it can work. But it greatly limits what you can graphically do. And is largely why we don't design things graphically anymore.
by 1vuio0pswjnm7 | 2025-06-27 15:26:25+00:00
Why not just use open, text-based "Web APIs" for internet-based transactions. Whether the client is "smartphone app" or "mobile browser" should not make any difference. Anything that can send and recieve HTTP should work. It is the computer owner's choice. For example, some might write their own software, while others might prefer to use a "smartphone app" or a "mobile browser", disributed by a so-called "tech" company that operates telemetry, collects data, performs surveillance and targets internet users with ads.
by AndrewKemendo | 2025-06-27 15:26:33+00:00
> there’s no qualification of how much problem context the AI started from

Infer it from the article:

“as much as 30% to 50% of the company’s work is now completed by AI”

There. That’s not nothing.

You can and should call bs on all corporate claims, but this idea that coding agents at scale don’t work or is just total fluff is just wrong.

What I’m seeing is that people over 25 who like to write code and have spent their lives “perfecting” their environment and code generation process, can’t stand that businesses prefer lower quality code that’s created faster and cheaper than their “perfect” code.

Software engineers (and engineers generally) are closer economically to day laborers than theoretical physicists - but we/they refuse to believe that.

This is why unionization matters but you can’t unionize divas until they actually start losing jobs.
by rockostrich | 2025-06-27 15:26:58+00:00
This comparison feels like it's in very poor taste. The article doesn't promote any kind of ostracizing and certainly isn't promoting that anyone in the community is forced to be there. Making friends, especially with people who already probably have their own social lives, tends to be a lot harder than maintaining friends. It's completely valid for people who are already in each other's social circles to plan to live close to each other.

My partner and I moved into a house on a pretty secluded street of a very suburban township. There are 5 houses on the block. We're friendly with everyone but we're all in very different periods of our lives. Two of the houses have younger kids, one has older kids, and one is empty nesters. They're all super nice and we're friendly, but none of them are coming over to lift heavy weights in the garage while Creed is blasting.
by arp242 | 2025-06-27 15:27:15+00:00
> Audible for well over a mile in normal conditions

That doesn't strike me as a feature.

Also a solved problem: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6rwJ5NCf1Vw

Tesco delivery trucks have them here in Ireland; it's pretty good stuff. Still quite loud/noticeable when you're up close, while at the same time not being completely obnoxious to everyone in a kilometre radius.
by like_any_other | 2025-06-27 15:27:20+00:00
> I mean, by analogy, "food safety" includes but is not limited to lowering brand risk for the manufacturer.

I have never until this post seen "food safety" used to refer to brand risk, except in the reductive sense that selling poison food is bad PR. As an example, the extensive wiki article doesn't even mention brand risk: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_safety
by _DeadFred_ | 2025-06-27 15:27:24+00:00
I am saying existing laws exist, businesses must be required to follow them or we create perverse incentive like the entirety of modern tech which 'optimizes' by breaking the law. I am saying any company that breaks the law to get it's 'first mover' position should lose that position.

I in no way championed rent seeking laws. You diverged into that discussion to what about my position. I simply stated that laws exist and ignoring them to gain an upper hand on your competition who follows the law isn't actually real competition, with the added position that copyright for the majority of modern western civilization was an understood compromise that benefits/has created modern society, modern capital markets, etc and therefore works in parallel to capitalism (capital markets don't work without copyright and patents except to fund thing like existing businesses such a bakers).
by taeric | 2025-06-27 15:29:21+00:00
It is probably impossible to find a tech stack that has not seen horrible abuse somewhere. :D

Granted, it did seem that XML got more heavily abused than some other options for a while. I am curious if that is just a by product of when it was introduced. That or just the general proliferation of how many front end developers we have. (I hate that I am pushing that to almost be a complaint. I certainly don't mean it that way.)
by MatanNataf | 2025-06-27 15:30:08+00:00
Hey HN,

We’ve been building rapydo.ai – a network of AI agents that handle much of the heavy lifting that traditional DBAs used to do.

DBAs have mostly disappeared from modern teams, replaced by ORMs and overworked developers. But relational databases are still one of the biggest bottlenecks in applications, and we think AI can do better.

Rapydo agents understand your schema, infra, and query patterns like a seasoned DBA who’s been with your team for years. We’d love for you to take it for a spin and tell us what you think.

Curious to hear the community’s thoughts: if you had an AI DBA that truly knew your systems inside-out, would you use it? And would it hurt if we took it away?

Thanks!
by mhast | 2025-06-27 15:30:43+00:00
From what I've seen immediate mode seems suitable for less fancy UI requirements. If you want to start having a framework solve things like animations and such then you'll probably end up with some form of retained mode.

Over my years making UIs I've found most of the bugs you get is due to incorrect state handling in applications. Having a framework you use which is opinionated and helps you solve that is pretty nice. (If your UI requirements are such that you need it.)