MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by rerdavies | 2025-06-04 16:27:52+00:00
I think you have an overly strict definition of what "learning" means. ChatGPT now has memory that lasts beyond the lifetime of it's context buffer, and now has at least medium term memory. (Actually I'm not entirely sure that they are not just using long persistent context buffers, but anyway).

Admittedly, you have to wrap LLMs to with stuff to get them to do that. If you want to rewrite the rules to excluded that then I will have to revise my statement that it is "mostly, but not completely true".

:-P
by altruios | 2025-06-04 16:28:03+00:00
Define 'better'...

How about 'more accurate' as a measure...

Then every text book is an example of this measure of better improving over time...

How about 'more representative of the human experience'... (or enjoy/like more)

Then we measure how well a human relates to a book: which is taste, a subjective quality that is notoriously hard to measure in any meaningful way. This measure becomes not a single measure, but a collective measure against the sum of humans who interact with it: an untenable standard - and biased towards the present anyway - which doesn't give charity to your position.

...So how do you measure a book to be 'better'? That's the neat part: you don't. You can measure what you 'like' more, you can measure 'features'... but we probably won't even agree on what makes a book 'better'. We like what we like, and most of us have a hard time even explaining why we like something.
by givemeethekeys | 2025-06-04 16:28:17+00:00
Me? No. I have worked in many companies and seen my fair share of train wrecks.

I practice an abundance of caution in an office setting. I wish I didn't have to but the financial risk, for me, is far too great to have any kind of a political opinion.

I don't drink at company events. I don't ask personal questions. I don't have a political or personal opinion. I don't invite anyone at the office to personal events. God bless noise cancelling headphones!

It is very stifling and I don't wish it on anyone.
by biophysboy | 2025-06-04 16:28:49+00:00
To give a more financial answer, it’s because pharma products have a low probability of success and have long lag times. That means a high cost of capital: lenders and investors are going to expect good returns to make up for the risk.

Second, biotech/pharma actually already do invest quite a lot in R&D. But they tend to focus on translational work rather than speculative exploration, because it is less risky.
by jrajav | 2025-06-04 16:28:52+00:00
It's almost never been a question of how to execute the repair - rather, it's a matter of repercussions for repairing 'yourself' (or authorizing a third party to on your behalf). Actors like John Deere and Apple have taken steps that are actively hostile to self-repairs, from voiding service agreements that have nothing to do with the repaired parts, up to bricking your device.
by yoyohello13 | 2025-06-04 16:29:00+00:00
I think the comparisons to lamp lighters or whatever don't quite capture why this is so much worse. The training for those jobs was relatively low. You don't need a decade of school to become a lamp lighter.

So if the white collar bloodbath is true. We have to tell a bunch of people, who have spent a significant portion of their lives training for a specific jobs and may be in debt for that education, to go do manual labor or something. The potential civil unrest from this should really concern everyone.
by glitchc | 2025-06-04 16:29:04+00:00
Actually this is probably the best way to ensure that price gouging does not happen. The fixed and NRE costs are already included in the price of the original device. Charging those again for replacements would be double-dipping. And the law still leaves it up to OEMs to decide how to cost the replacement, so there's some wiggle room there. This is an intelligently crafted bill.
by munificent | 2025-06-04 16:29:15+00:00
I also don't multitask well, but I think it's a little more complex than just not doing more than one thing at a time. Different tasks seem to occupy different brain regions, and it's really that I can't allocate one region to multiple things.

I can listen to music while I program, but it can't be anything with lyrics because programming requires too much of my language center.

Knitting doesn't touch my language center, so I can listen to music with lyrics or an audiobook. But it's too visual for me to watch anything else while I do it.
by cootsnuck | 2025-06-04 16:30:07+00:00
More knowledge work. It's disheartening for me to see so many people think so little about their own abilities.

There's a reason we can still spot the sterile whiff of AI written content. When you set coding aside, the evidence just hasn't shown up yet that AI agents can reliably replace anything more than the most formulaic and uninspired tasks. At least with how the tech is currently being implemented...

(There's a reason these big companies spend very very little time talking about the power of businesses using their own data to fine-tune or train their own models...)
by ty6853 | 2025-06-04 16:30:51+00:00
I would break this into a few categories

Selfish non-choice. Ex: The fetus takes nourishment from the mother, even in the case she would rather abort and doesn't consent to the continued hosting of the fetus.

Selfish choice: Ex: I must take a dump, but the place I choose to take a shit is on my bosse's chair because I don't like that his is better than mine.

Non-selfish choice: Fireman is driving home after his shift ended, saves baby from fire.

Non-selfish non-choice: Woman involuntarily starts screaming after witnessing an unrelated car drive into a lake. Passers-by hear the scream and alert emergency services.
by topaz0 | 2025-06-04 16:30:53+00:00
Not assume, rather observe. I think mostly they are just nihilists that don't care what happens to anybody but themselves. Michael J Fox is not in this category, and neither is Parkinson's research "longevity" research. Like I said, I am in favor of medical research, and having a cure for Parkinson's would be a net good for society. The point is that people will still decline and die from Parkinson's because they can't access the cure, just as they still die from many diseases that are preventable today from lack of healthcare access. That's not Michael J Fox's fault, but the point is that treating research as the secret to longevity is misunderstanding the problem.
by jcfrei | 2025-06-04 16:30:58+00:00
The scenario you describe leads to a massive productivity boost for some engineers and no work left for the rest. Or in other words: The profit share of labour compared to capital becomes even smaller. Meaning an even more skewed income distribution, where a few make millions and the rest of the currently employed software engineers / lawyers, etc will become bartenders or greeters at walmart.
by bluefirebrand | 2025-06-04 16:31:21+00:00
Guiding and teaching developers is rewarding because human connections are important

I don't mentor juniors because it makes me more productive I mentor juniors because I enjoy watching a human grow and develop and gain expertise

I am reminded of reports that Ian McKellen broke down crying on the set of one of The Hobbit movies because the joy of being an actor for him was nothing like acting on green screen sets delivering lines to a tennis ball on a stick
by Anthony-G | 2025-06-04 16:31:25+00:00
The other answers describe the process well but here’s my personal perspective on how I got into it:

When cycling off-road, wheel rims would regularly go out of shape so I purchased spoke spanners to correct the side-to-side wobble by adjusting the spoke tension. This was important as back in the 90s as almost all non-professional mountain bikes used some form of rim brake: cantilever, and later, V-brakes. I would fix the wheels by removing the tyre and tube and mounting the wheel in the forks (front wheel) or wheel stays (rear wheel) so I could see where the wobbles were.

I eventually realised that the rims also needed to be trued radially, i.e., the rim forms a perfect circle and is consistently equidistant from the flanges of the hub. I was doing this often enough that I ended up buying a proper truing stand and I became the go-to guy for fixing wheels for friends.

Given enough abuse from mountain-biking, eventually wheels can no longer be trued by adjusting spoke tension. It seemed a shame – and environmentally wrong – to discard a wheel when it had a good-quality hub so I graduated to buying new spokes and rims to build on to the old hub (which would usually last for years) using the instructions from Sheldon Brown (as linked to in a sibling comment).

The process of building a wheel requires an understanding of the physical forces acting on the spokes and rim but the practice is more like an art. The more you did it, the better you got at avoiding issues like residual twist. It’s a bit like tuning a stringed instrument. I would even pluck the spokes and compare the pitch to get a feel for the amount of tension the individual spoke was under. It was very satisfying to get a consistent tone.
by mystraline | 2025-06-04 16:31:39+00:00
> This will also compound the Qanon fascination with "medical freedom", where the patient gets to dictate to the doctor what to do (i.e. use ivermectin against COVID, or whatever other superstition rises to the top of the Qanon imagination cauldron).

That's very double-edged.

The open question is should humans have the right to take substances individually?

Sure, you get Ivermectin/covid deniers. But you also get homemade Solvaldi (cure for Hepatitis C). I can make it for $300 for the 12 week course, and it retail costs $84000

Of course, even making and taking this drug you manufacture is illegal, even aside patent bullshit.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42538903

But why shouldn't I be able to treat myself? Why do we accept really shitty gatekeepers (medical establishment, doctors) gatekeep treatments and cures from us?

And more currently, now that der fuhrer quit the emergency use allocation for Covid shots, now you need a doctors scrip for 'allowing to get a vaccine'. I should be able to get this if I pay for it. But nope, now need to pay for needless doctor payment and more barriers.

So at least in that side, I'm on Qanon's view that I should be able to personally treat myself with whatever substance I deem. Of course, I'll definitely heed a doctor's suggestion as an expert. But fuck.. My body, my choice.
by gumboshoes | 2025-06-04 16:31:43+00:00
I do use SpamSieve on macOS for additional client-side spam-filtering, which helps. But I don't want to stress: no spam solution should ever just discard email without you being able to review it. None of them are good enough for that. I have delegated accounts in Gmail that years in Google still every day has false positives. It's a lot of email that would just vanish if I trusted server-side spam filters enough to never let it see my inbox.
by leereeves | 2025-06-04 16:31:45+00:00
> that evolution isn't real

That's another misrepresentation. In that link he says "To be fair, there’s still plenty of evidence for evolution."

It sounds like he's a skeptic who demands proof of the things we're not supposed to question. That's a good thing.

But some people don't like it and misrepresent his words to try to discredit him.

Edit: I agree that Adams is not a scientist and doesn't understand how science works. That article gets an F in my book. Nonetheless, suggesting that asking questions is the same as claiming something "isn't real" is, itself, an anti-scientific view.

I don't know about fossils, but a lot of current scientific thinking probably is still wrong. We recently had a big scientific revolution when genetic sequencing revealed that much of the thinking at that time was wrong.

Also, it's absurd to interpret his comedic exaggerations literally.
by AlchemistCamp | 2025-06-04 16:31:46+00:00
Yes. This is a big part of what initially drew me to Elixir. It's more than feasible to run a server on a cheap VPS, get great, though not quite Golang or low-level language performance and have a much easier scaling story when you need multiple machines.

More importantly, you generally don't need an external queue service, in-memory KV store, task scheduler or many of the other things that JS/Ruby/Python stacks need. By consolidating just about everything but the DB in a single, well designed system, it's possible for a very small team to take on relatively large challenges on a smaller budget.
by ninetyninenine | 2025-06-04 16:32:03+00:00
There is evidence we're on the right track. Are you blind? The evidence is not definitive, but it's evidence that makes it a possibility.

Evidence: ChatGPT and all LLMs.

You cannot realistically say that this isn't evidence. Neither of these things guarantees that AI will take over our jobs but they are datapoints that lend credence to the possibility that it will.

On the other side of the coin, it is utterly unrealistic to say that AI will never take over our jobs when there is Also no definitive evidence on this front.
by ziml77 | 2025-06-04 16:32:21+00:00
It's probably best to act like more complex things are just syntax at the start. Leave the fact that something like range is just a normal function that returns a generator for later on.

Like if range was used like this:

for i in range 1 to 100: pass

No one is going to ask how that works internally, so I don't think it's necessary to treat range(1, 100) any differently. For this usage it makes no difference if it's a generator, a list (excepting performance on large ranges), or if the local variable is incremented directly like a C-style for loop.
by munificent | 2025-06-04 16:32:34+00:00
Both knitting and crochet are very difficult and frustrating at first. Harder, I think, than your first time picking up a guitar.

The initial hump is steep but fairly small. It took me about four or five tries before I could make stitches. Once I got over that initial challenge, it got a lot smoother. Since then, there have been continuous incremental challenges, but all fairly small.

I haven't gotten over the hump with crochet. I'm left-handed but knit right-handed because mirroring everything is very hard. The entire knitting world presumes right-handed knitting. However, I knit Continental style which uses both hands and engages the left hand a lot, so I don't find that it feels very "wrong".

However, with crochet, I don't think I could ever hold the hook with my right hand. But also mirroring everything while trying to learn is not easy.
by bonoboTP | 2025-06-04 16:32:41+00:00
I tried it with GPT-4o, took the 5-legged zebra example from their github and it answered quite well.

"The animal in the image appears to have five visible legs, but this is an illusion caused by the overlapping of legs and motion blur. Zebras, like all equids, only have four legs."

Not perfect, but also doesn't always regress to the usual answer.

"The animal in the image appears to be an elephant, but it has been digitally altered. It visually shows six legs, although the positioning and blending of shadows and feet are unnatural and inconsistent with real anatomy. This is a visual illusion or manipulation." (actually should say five)

"This bird image has also been manipulated. It shows the bird with three legs, which is anatomically impossible for real birds. Normal birds have exactly two legs." (correct)

"Each shoe in the image has four white stripes visible on the side." (correct)
by paul7986 | 2025-06-04 16:32:44+00:00
Indeed and as a UX Researcher, Designer and Front-End Dev chatGPT Plus does same level of design and front-end development I do. It takes me hours vs. chatGPT Plus five minutes or less to come up with professional logos, web app or website design around the logo and then spits out the front-end code. Once I saw that in late Fall of this year I was like yup there it is .. it can do a good portions/parts of my job. So at my job since I've been doing a lot more Customer UX Support and Research as well telling my co-workers and client that if I could use chatGPT at work I would be more effective (have it do the design and front end development). I feel i need to jump ahead and show I embrace this change asap and AI can not interface with clients, do UX research and any other thing that involves human to human interaction. So to me CX/UX Research is safe and now such workers can also do UX Design and Front-End Development using AI. Really anyone now can do those two things and quickly.
by norir | 2025-06-04 16:33:26+00:00
> A good software engineer + AI will ship features faster / safer vs a non engineer with AI, who will beat just AI

Safer is the crucial word here. If you remove it, I'd argue the ordering should be reversed.

I also will point out that you could replace ai with amphetamines and have close to the same meaning. (And like amphetamines an ai can only act through humans, never solely on its own.)
by MrThoughtful | 2025-06-04 16:33:32+00:00
I know there are JavaScript ports of FFmpeg and I would love to use them. But so far, I never got it working. I tried it with AI and this prompt:

Make a simple example of speeding up an mp4 video in the browser using a version of ffmpeg that runs in the browser. Don't use any server side tech like node. Make it a single html file.

But so far every LLM I tried failed to come up with a working solution.
by _kidlike | 2025-06-04 16:33:33+00:00
easiest example: most components of a macbook laptop have their serial number baked in the OS (or some hardware controller, idr). So even if you can find a legit macbook part from another laptop, and you can even replace it yourself (which is also impossible but that's another story), the laptop won't boot. In order for it to boot, you need a special device which "official apple repair" people have, which can bake-in the new part's serial number.
by mountainriver | 2025-06-04 16:33:36+00:00
The problem is you can't reliably get VMs on GCP.

All the major clouds are suffering from this. AWS you can't ever get an 80gb gpu without a long term reserve and even then it's wildly expensive. GCP you can sometimes but its also insanely expensive.

These companies claim to be "startup friendly", they are anything but. All the neo-clouds somehow manage to do this well (runpod, nebius, lambda) but the big clouds are just milking enterprise customers who won't leave and in the process screwing over the startups.

This is a massive mistake they are making, which will hurt their long term growth significantly.
Show HN: WindowKeys 3.0 – macOS utility for window tiling with custom shortcuts
by m_krzywonos | 2025-06-04 16:33:41+00:00
Hello,

I’ve just released version 3.0 of WindowKeys, a small utility for macOS that gives you full control over the native window tiling system introduced in macOS Sequoia.

Originally, WindowKeys was built to solve one very specific problem: assigning custom keyboard shortcuts to window tiling actions — especially useful if you use a third-party keyboard that can’t trigger system shortcuts.

Over time it evolved beyond just shortcuts, and now 3.0 adds a few frequently requested features: - Move windows between displays (or iPad) - Repeat last tiling action for each app - Redesigned Shortcut Editor with categories - New Bottom Bar in Tiling Panel for quick reference and editing

The app is still completely free. Requires macOS Sequoia 15.1 or later.

Links: - Website: https://www.apptorium.com/windowkeys - Release Notes: https://www.apptorium.com/windowkeys/release-notes/3.0 - Blog post: https://www.apptorium.com/blog/windowkeys-3-0

Any feedback, questions, or suggestions are very welcome.
by tines | 2025-06-04 16:33:47+00:00
Agreed. And the interesting thing is that now, with smartphones and an endless stream of captivating entertainment (basically Soma), people won't even be able to think long enough to realize they're miserable and unhappy.

If you can impose a new way of living on one single generation---an existence directed toward endless free (for now) entertainment---it is enough to change all subsequent generations.

Once this takes hold, there's no going back.
Show HN: Self-Hosted Redis/Lua API Rate-Limiter with Grafana UI
by mpcroft | 2025-06-04 16:33:53+00:00
Hello everyone, I created a lightweight self hosted rate limiter. Listed some of the key features below.

Token-bucket algorithm implemented with Redis + atomic Lua

Define policies with any combo of route / userId / clientApp / HTTP method / IP

REST API to create / update policies, able to test instantly in Swagger UI

X-API-Key header auth

Built-in Grafana + InfluxDB dashboard

Allowed vs Throttled pie chart

Tokens remaining over time line graph

Docker Compose stack, docker compose up -d and you’re live
by lvass | 2025-06-04 16:33:54+00:00
Do note that many things mentioned just happen to be incentivized or default in the BEAM, but are not required at all. Your processes don't have to crash if you don't want to let them crash, exception handling is there. Messages don't have to be 0-or-1, Manifold exists. You are absolutely not forced to use some language, you have NIFs, dirty NIFs, ports, rustler, zigler, pythonx, etc, many offering impeccable ergonomics. Some things may not be as optimized as alternatives are? Sure, but the BEAM works for Whatsapp and Discord and of all things they just use raw ETS for their most important data structure. You almost surely don't need something "better".
by leereeves | 2025-06-04 16:33:55+00:00
Wikipedia says DEI seeks to "promote the fair treatment and full participation of all people". That sounds great.

If only it actually worked that way instead of being code for favoritism for a few demographic groups, ignoring many other people who are excluded, and actively discriminating against straight white men.

Scott Adams is right to challenge it.

Edit: Disney exec admits on hidden camera "Certainly, there have been times where, 'there's no way we're hiring a white male for this'"

https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/companies/watch-disney-exec-...
Show HN: W++ – Now Compiling Directly to WASM (No Blazor, Minimal HTML)
by sinisterMage | 2025-06-04 16:34:20+00:00
Hey HN,

A while ago I shared W++, a playful .NET-style scripting language that originally used Blazor for running in the browser. That version worked, but it relied heavily on the .NET toolchain and still felt… HTML-ish.

I’ve now reworked it completely: W++ compiles directly to raw WebAssembly using wasm-encoder in Rust. It no longer uses Blazor or any .NET runtime — just a minimal WASM module that runs in the browser and prints "hello from W++" through a JS-hosted print(ptr, len) function.

No DOM, no frameworks, no Blazor. Just:

Rust → WASM

A custom transpiler for W++

A small HTML shell to satisfy browser loading requirements

Yes, you still need a tiny bit of HTML to load the .wasm file (because of how browsers work), but this demo proves that you can build and run a script-powered experience on the web without relying on the DOM at all.

The dream: semantic WASM instead of semantic HTML.

GitHub repo: https://github.com/sinisterMage/WPlusPlusWASM Would love your thoughts or ideas!
by socalgal2 | 2025-06-04 16:34:30+00:00
> So yeah, for me AI isn’t a replacement.

I agree with everything you wrote. The question is, what about in 6 months? 2 years? 4 years? Just a year ago (not sure the exact timeline) we didn't have the systems we have today that will edit multiple files, iterate over compilation errors and test failures, etc.... So what's it tomorrow?