MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by EvanAnderson | 2025-06-02 20:55:30+00:00
Looks like we overlapped in writing our comments. I'll leave mine, but I wanted to voice support for yours. I started at 8 y/o and have a similar "story". In particular, it sounds like your hands and mine do a lot of the same thing.

Anecdotally, I don't know anybody who types w/ a personalized style who has wrist RSI.

I absolutely adore doing "improvisational piano" terminal sessions w/ people watching, particularly when I'm operating a GUI or CLI that I know really well. I slow myself down by narrating and, if it's an in-person gig, gesturing. Doing stuff in front of people in realtime feels a lot like jamming on a musical instrument for me.
by Nevermark | 2025-06-02 20:56:18+00:00
It happens I just needed to hear this.

Have had a recent challenge I ran out of steam on and the suggestion of focusing on correctness not speed to achieve speed really helps.

Beat Saber, I am back!

(I am actually serious. It’s my quick upper-body-emphasis cardio, and running out of motivation due to a wall impacts my health! I play it with additional constraints, which I relaxed to get through maxed out challenges. But then hit a wall anyway. Realize I need to stay strict, and take the fails upfront!

The simple things we know, but somehow need reminding of at every level.)
by svara | 2025-06-02 20:56:21+00:00
> On the other hand, where I remain a skeptic is this constant banging-on that somehow this will translate into entirely new things

Really a lot of innovation, even at the very cutting edge, is about combining old things in new ways, and these are great productivity tools for this.

I've been "vibe coding" quite a bit recently, and it's been going great. I still end up reading all the code and fixing issues by hand occasionally, but it does remove a lot of the grunt work of looking up simple things and typing out obvious code.

It helps me spend more time designing and thinking about how things should work.

It's easily a 2-3x productivity boost versus the old fashioned way of doing things, possibly more when you take into account that I also end up implementing extra bells and whistles that I would otherwise have been too lazy to add, but that come almost for free with LLMs.

I don't think the stereotype of vibe coding, that is of coding without understanding what's going on, actually works though. I've seen the tools get stuck on issues they don't seem to be able to understand fully too often to believe that.

I'm not worried at all that LLMs are going to take software engineering jobs soon. They're really just making engineers more powerful, maybe like going from low level languages to high level compiled ones. I don't think anyone was worried about the efficiency gains from that destroying jobs either.

There's still a lot of domain knowledge that goes into using LLMs for coding effectively. I have some stories on this too but that'll be for another day...
by mjklin | 2025-06-02 20:56:24+00:00
“The reason the gentleman is called worthy is not that he is able to do everything that the most skillful man can do. The reason the gentleman is called wise is not because he knows everything that the wise man knows. When he is called discriminating, this does not mean that he is able to split hairs so exhaustively as the sophists. That he is called an investigator does not mean that he is able to examine exhaustively into everything that an investigator may examine. He has his limit.

In observing high and low lands, in judging whether fields are poor or fertile, and in deciding where the various grains should be planted, the gentleman is not as capable as a farmer. When it is a matter of understanding commodities and determining their quality and value, the gentleman cannot vie with a merchant. As regards skill in the use of the compass, square, plumb line, and other tools, he is less able than an artisan. In disregarding right and wrong, truth and falsehood, but manipulating them so that they seem to change places and shame each other, the gentleman cannot compare with Hui Shih and Teng Hsi.

However, if it is a question of ranking men according to their virtue; if offices are to be bestowed according to ability; if both the worthy and the unworthy are to be put in their proper places… if all things and events are to be dealt with properly; if the charter of Shen Tzu and Mo Tzu are to be suppressed; if Hui Shih and Teng Hsi are not to dare to put forth their arguments; if speech is always to accord with the truth and affairs are always to be properly managed — it is in these matters that the gentleman excels.”

— Hsun-tzu, Chinese (300–235 B.C.)
by srhtftw | 2025-06-02 20:56:30+00:00
> It took me a few days to build the library with AI. ... > I estimate it would have taken a few weeks, maybe months to write by hand.

I don't think this is a fair assessment give the summary of the commit history https://pastebin.com/bG0j2ube shows your work started on 2025-02-27 and started trailing off at 2025-03-20 as others joined in. Minor changes continue to present.

> That said, this is a pretty ideal use case: implementing a well-known standard on a well-known platform with a clear API spec.

Still, this allowed you to complete in a month what may have taken two. That's a remarkable feat considering the time and value of someone of your caliber.
by jenadine | 2025-06-02 20:56:47+00:00
The fixed cost might be sky high, but the marginal cost are not. And so it doesn't matter if it also produce when electricity is cheap. (To a certain limit)

And if you compare the total cost, you also need to compare to the total revenue. Nuclear can produce a lot of power at the time where power is the most expensive when there is no sun and no wind.
by hoakiet98 | 2025-06-02 20:57:29+00:00
I think this is a cynical take on OSS. As a for-profit company, we have already commercialized the desktop version and plan on commercializing the web version as well.

I don't think this is unhealthy for open-source, and I hope we're transparent about that. The code is still free and self-hostable under Apache 2.0.
by 65 | 2025-06-02 20:57:53+00:00
Code runs or it doesn't... but that doesn't mean it does what you want it to do.

An LLM could generate code that takes raw user input and adds it to a raw SQL query. Does it work? Yeah. Is it a terrible security flaw? Also yeah.

Additionally, if you want a certain UX and the LLM cannot get there but the code works, that doesn't mean it's successful.
by mjburgess | 2025-06-02 20:58:01+00:00
This is, unfortunately, quite false. It would be an opinion I had a few years ago, but after much investigation of foreign policy and the like its extremely clear how much actual content is decided by governments.

Most neutrally, for example, consider the run up to the iraq war: what was said, what was printed, and so on.

But more recently, consider what's printed or included on any TV programme about any of the major conflicts in the world. There is no context or analysis or history provided. There's, at most, two sides: the government's preferred case and the government's preferred opposition to that case.

This does not take much research, today at least, to discover -- frequently even mainstream expert opinion, outside of the government, says precisely the opposite. And that this is never broadcast or written about.

Vast swathes of the media elite maintain their access to information via governments, and the wealth via ad companies. They are empty moronic vessels who perform the most ill-informed scepticism you could imagine. But it all passes with the public who think that if there's a leftwing view and a rightwing view on an event, then the event itself isn't made up -- or the facts shared across them must be true. But, often enough: nope.

On the cultural side, the FTC and the Hollywood censors were in direct contact with TV production companies -- deleting scenes, and the like. Very contentful. All of this is well-documented.
by drekipus | 2025-06-02 20:58:39+00:00
> And above all, it will be a long journey. Don't dispear, do at your own time but don't forget the objective.

My biggest issue with robotics is that I don't see the point in any objective.

Building a cool robot feels like it's just a toy to me, and I don't know how to get around that feeling. I studied mechatronics at uni and spent a long time learning on my own in addition.

Robotics for business is almost a cliff, very hard to get into and make something that works reliably at a reasonable cost, from a solo developer point of view
by jampekka | 2025-06-02 20:59:13+00:00
Learning to touch-type effortlessly is IMHO one of the most useful thing to learn, for anyone typing regularly, but especially for programmers. It doesn't have to be fast, but just fast (and automated) enough not to cause a bottleneck.

Unpopular opinion nowadays: This bottleneck is what makes needlessly verbose programming languages annoying. Having to wait for your fingers (or eyes) to catch up with your toughts tends to kill the flow.
by bigscrankus | 2025-06-02 20:59:28+00:00
Yes, you and many others remind me of this in my email inbox every day.

It doesn’t change the fact that software is expensive to maintain and even relatively simple apps can cost millions of dollars in human-hours to support. SaaS is the safest path to that, and if users don’t want to pay a premium (>$200ish, in my case) for offline, SaaS will stay that way.
by xp84 | 2025-06-02 20:59:51+00:00
> layoffs that have snared well-respected, senior technologists. Apparently they were "valued", until they weren't"

See, I think it's more honest to say that 99% of employees are not valued at all, in that "the company" or top management actually care about what you think because you think it. People are kept around as long as the person 1-2 levels above them in management believe they have a positive short-term ROI, and everyone will be unceremoniously let go nearly instantly the moment they think they don't need you, whether you have just not distinguished yourself, or just basically at random when revenue misses dictate general cutbacks.

The author of the piece seems to place great personal significance specifically on his ideas mattering to the execs, but I think that may not be such an important thing to every personality type. I do mildly like being part of some 'strategic' conversations, but it's honestly more because I don't want the tech team to be blindsided by an impossible product requirement, and because I feel like I am good at identifying low-hanging fruit. But in terms of whether the company pursues one strategy or another at the highest level, that is hard, and you have to feel pretty bad when you make a bad bet. I don't think I need that at all to be happy.
by fcap | 2025-06-02 21:00:00+00:00
In my opinion to really lift off here you need to make sure we can use these agents in production. That means the complete supply chain has to be considered. The deployment part is the heavy part and most people can run it locally. So if you close that gap people will be able to mass adopt. I am totally fine if you monetize it as a cloud service but give a full docs from code, test monitoring to deployment. And one more thing. Show what the framework is capable of. What can I do. Lots of videos and use cases here. Every single second needs to be pushed out.
by zoemcc | 2025-06-02 21:00:14+00:00
Location: Portland, OR Remote: Preferred Willing to relocate: Not unless very persuasive or temporarily for onboarding Technologies: Pytorch, Kubernetes, Terraform, AWS, Typescript, Argo Resume: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ArZfrHKUj_7iL6-vg5Gmb5gs59lmf9Q1_dAHZDf0hbM/edit?usp=sharing Email: zoemccarthy12 [at] gmail [dot] com Github: https://github.com/zoemcc

Machine Learning, 3D, and Robotics Software Generalist looking for opportunities to work on exciting machine learning engineering challenges. I have experience wrangling distributed systems and would like to work hard to solve your problems.
by scarface_74 | 2025-06-02 21:00:21+00:00
I mentioned earlier that I own a unit in a condotel. It’s basically your standard condo style resort that you find in tourist hotspots. It’s not a time share. Anyone can come in and reserve a room just like any hotel and the owner of the unit gets half of the money when your unit is rented out.

That also means we have outsourced a lot for $800 a month (not including a mortgage) - that takes care of all of the utilities, maintenance, access to multiple pools, a gym that is literally downstairs and one that is a block away. I use to have my own cardio equipment setup. They come in our condo every other day and take the trash out and will clean our unit for $80.

As far as the printer? We use the one in the business office that all guests can use when we occasionally need to print something.

When we leave for extended stays, we pack our suitcase and put our unit in the rental pool and money gets put in our account.

This isn’t my bragging about money. Our total fixed bills now are slightly less than when we were living in the burbs in Atlanta 5 years ago. Our fixed expenses are ridiculously low.
by 98codes | 2025-06-02 21:00:59+00:00
When I was in the 8th grade (back in the 1900s), I took a typing elective class, because I figured if I was going to be in front of a keyboard typing for a living as a programmer, I should learn to do it right.

That was a rare very good decision for kid me back then, and it's paid off ever since.
by isaacremuant | 2025-06-02 21:01:43+00:00
> thus undermining your claim that I'm a stooge for big tech.

Strawman. Your web of trust comment doesn't exonerate you from proposing to ban anonimity, doing the bidding of, not big tech, but I opportunistic lobbying tech and governments.

Web of trust is not "good" if you try to impose it on others, it was a comment of "create your own thing with your own friends" instead of pushing your bullshit unto us.

> I wouldn't let that bother you, though. Life must be exciting when you know that everyone else is secretly hellbent on authoritarianism.

I mean. If you were capable of actual arguments instead of just strawmen... Your life would be exciting too. As it is, you just parrot narratives.
by talkingtab | 2025-06-02 21:02:51+00:00
Yes. It is true, but I believe there is a significant difference between calling in artillery and saying "Why don't we try drones". Artillery is doctrine. Drones were not.

I do not know if the US Army could adapt as effectively as the Ukrainians have. My guess is not. BWDIK. Certainly some recent US military actions do not seem to be adaptive.

So yes, the military is perhaps better than corporations at being adaptive. It is hard to imagine a military commander asking everyone to send an email every day. On the other hand, will the US Army do better than the Russian military when they face a highly adaptive situation?
by smithkl42 | 2025-06-02 21:03:42+00:00
I don't know how well this holds out, but one thing I've noticed is that the very best developers I've worked with are all fast on the keyboard - not just fast at typing code or comments or emails or whatever, but they have all the keyboard shortcuts memorized, and they navigate through their IDE of choice faster than you can follow (even if you're a pretty good dev yourself).
by carlosdp | 2025-06-02 21:03:47+00:00
I highly recommend starting with the SO-ARM101 and the LeRobot tutorial. They're super cheap, its insanely quick to get started, and you can even buy pre-made kits like at https://partabot.com . It's the "Hello World" of robotics now, imo.

Don't bother with a Jetson Nano, you don't need that to get started, and by the time you need that you'll know a lot already. You can just drive the robot from your laptop!

Getting to training your own VLA fine-tuned model is a super quick and easy process. You can see examples of other people completing the tutorial and uploading their training/evaluation datasets here (shameless plug for my thing): https://app.destroyrobots.com

I wouldn't bother much with ROS at first tbh. It'll bog you down, and startups are moving toward using other approaches that are more developer friendly, like Rust-based embedded.

You can go far with a robot connected to USB though!
by dawnofdusk | 2025-06-02 21:04:03+00:00
Staying at home row is not really about ergonomics. The best thing you can do (without breaking the bank, i.e., no bespoke split keyboard setups) for your hand ergonomics at the computer is to get a vertical mouse and tilt your keyboard downwards and away from you (the opposite of what most keyboard feet do, which is tilt your keyboard up and towards you). Both of these keep your wrist neutral/in slight flexion, whereas the typical setup keep your wrists in constant extension which contributes to carpal tunnel.
by kstrauser | 2025-06-02 21:04:04+00:00
It's unnecessarily complicating things to require case sensitivity here. Words don't typically completely change their meaning just because of capitalization. And suppose I write that in a Slack channel where no one uses caps at all? Do I have to use caps anyone to make sure I'm not confusing everyone? How do I pronounce it correctly if I'm giving a speech such that listeners know which one I mean? What if the closed captioner writes the case wrong?

Nah. "Open Source" = "open source", because any other interpretation goes against the norms of written and spoken English, and because it'd be an absolute freaking pain in the neck to create that brand new distinction that's not an issue today.
by nand_gate | 2025-06-02 21:04:35+00:00
WASD is my home row, still 120-140.

I lowkey judge any developer who is noticable slow at typing as I can't imagine they're using a computer effectively at such a pace given how much keyboard hitting needs to occur during regular use alone.

Not that it's a high bar but I'm surprised more companies don't test wpm when hiring over rote crap like LC.
by koito17 | 2025-06-02 21:04:36+00:00
Go also randomizes the iteration of map keys, to emphasize that maps are unordered and code should not rely on insertion order. For demonstration:

package main import "fmt" func main() { m := map[string]int{"a": 1, "b": 2, "c": 3} for k, _ := range m { fmt.Println(k) } for k, _ := range m { fmt.Println(k) } }

Sample output:

c a b a b c

Each run may produce different key orders.
by HideousKojima | 2025-06-02 21:04:38+00:00
My Mom got me Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing and other tools to help me to learn to type "correctly", but I didn't have any motivation to learn how to type until I started playing the original Starcraft online. I needed to be able to communicate with teammates (and trash talk opponents) in a timely manner, so I was forced to learn to type fast. But as a result, I also developed my own unorthodox style that looks a lot like hunt and peck.

On a typing test where they provide me with what to type I can consistently get 60+ WPM, but when I'm typing something from my head I'm pretty sure I get 100 to 120.
by fraggler | 2025-06-02 21:04:39+00:00
The core idea is this:

Truly general intelligence requires the ability to build an unbounded number of solutions. For a finite system to achieve this, it needs a mechanism for unbounded generation, like recursion (similar to how a Turing machine operates). General intelligence also requires constant adaptation. So how do you get both? The paper proposes it arises from the dynamic interaction between an adaptive continuous substrate (like the human brain or an ANN) and an internalized symbolic framework (like human language).

The "engine" of this process, according to the ESC framework, is recursive symbolic generation. The substrate learns to: 1. Sequentially generate symbolic sequences (like words forming thoughts or sentences). 2. Process these sequences. 3. Evaluate them based on internal rules and goals.

This recursive loop allows the system to effectively function as a powerful, discrete symbolic processor, capable of navigating vast combinatorial spaces and constructing structured solutions for diverse problems—essentially, to think and reason in a general-purpose way.

Why this might be interesting: - It tries to bridge the gap between connectionist learning (like in ANNs) and symbolic competence (rule-based reasoning). - It offers a lens on why language seems so crucial for human thought. - It sheds light on the surprising abilities emerging in LLMs (which learn only from text) as a key piece of evidence. - It defines GI functionally, focusing on what it does (generates novel information to solve problems across unbounded domains).
by bigscrankus | 2025-06-02 21:04:42+00:00
This is one concern I have: SaaS is actually a really simple business model. “Pay this month, use this month”.

Introducing things like “pay one time for perpetual offline use and a year of upgrades from the date of purchase, OR pay this month use this month.” Doesn’t roll off the tongue quite as well. Maybe bad UX from a pricing perspective.
by danans | 2025-06-02 21:04:43+00:00
> It's the extraordinary lengths people will go to in order to protect the bullshit they acquired with far less scepticism

That's the narrative bias at play. We all are subject to it, and for good reason. People need stories to help maintain a stable mental equilibrium and a sense of identity. Knowledge that contradicts the stories that form the foundation of their understanding of the world can be destabilizing, which nobody wants.

Especially when they are facing struggle and stress, people will cling to their stories, even if a lie or deception in the story might be harming them. Religious cults and conspiracy theories are often built on this tendency, but so is culture in general.
by ashwinsundar | 2025-06-02 21:04:48+00:00
I started using an ortholinear split keyboard last year, and that was a huge adjustment. I went from typing 100+wpm on a simple membrane keyboard, to less than half of that. I had to basically relearn typing just to accomodate the ortholinear layout, not to mention that the split layout meant I could no longer "cheat" and use my right hand to type keys on the left side of the keyboard when I was feeling lazy.

I did learn the "right" way to type through all this, and my speedhas stabilized at around 100 wpm. This is more than enough for pretty much any activity I do on the computer.

More importantly, however, my wrists no longer hurt from typing continously for 30 minutes. The small sacrifice in speed is definitely worth it in my opinion.
by horsawlarway | 2025-06-02 21:04:51+00:00
You can find lots of ways to orient yourself, though.

Space and Caps-lock are enough to orient me on any keyboard I've used for more than a minute or two. Space and Enter orient on the right hand.

Basically - if my left pinky is touching the line between caps lock and shift on the left side of those keys, and my thumb is touching the bottom of the space bar, I know exactly where my middle fingers are resting.

With the added bonus of not contorting my wrist and fingers into a very uncomfortable space.

I have very large hands, and the "Proper" finger placement would be a guaranteed RSI injury for me.
by n42 | 2025-06-02 21:05:12+00:00
I’m not sure if this how other people do it but my hands sort of float around as I type rather than being fixed in one place. They gravitate towards home row but I was never trained “classically”. I type (peak) 140wpm.

my understanding of the homerow style is that you have a sort of assigned finger for each key. while I type, there is plenty of overlap between fingers and it's constantly adapting based on where my hands are currently vs resetting to one position
by Muromec | 2025-06-02 21:05:24+00:00
>People will still use art for their personal expression. That's older than recorded history, it's just industrialised commercial-grade investable art that is at risk.

I think the problem here, from the social petspective, is -- how many people can enjoy creating art and what kind of a society we will have, where only a few can earn a living by doing so.

Or from another angle -- how long we can create more ways to create art to outrun the oncoming reign of night that strips away all of the fun thing we had before.