MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by kelthuzad | 2025-07-26 14:16:43+00:00
ht>> I clearly explained the root causes for that.

>You didn't. You went on a rant about "public perception" and your own experience building mobile web sites.

I have no time to engage in your shallow kind of tit for tat, where I do all of the work and you simply respond with infantile one word responses with zero elaboration or outright denial, misrepresentation or just repetition of already debunked narratives. I will still briefly debunk the parts where you put in at least some minor effort of trying to substantiate.

For a more elaborate analysis:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44694037

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44692287

>> Be specific, why are they not "good"? > E.g. Reddit's mobile web site loads every post in 3+ seconds. And reloads the full page when you click on a subtree in the comments. When you scroll through Twitter, it will just randomly load a bunch of stuff and replace your content losing your scroll position. Same with going back from a tweet to the timeline. Most websites take multiple seconds to display text-only information with broken layouts, layout shifts, and multiple loading states.

Those are some specific apps that have bad implementations, not an inherent limitation of the technology, so it's irrelevant to the bigger picture. I asked you for the specific technology. That's like me saying "Give me a specific reason why electric cars will never be a viable technology as you claimed" then you respond with "This specific brand has an electric car with this specific issue". It's such a transparent strategy of deliberately missing the point.

> --- start quote ---

Features HN developers think are missing from the web to deliver an experience ... --- end quote ---

All of those are issues that have already been fixed, so I don't get why you would bring up your severely outdated comment. It also contains aspects for which I clearly explained why and who is to blame for those.

>There is no such entity. Besides, Google invested hundreds of millions of dollars into PWAs, and there are still so few that people can point to even on Android.

I already responded to this in many different comments:

"Google is the primary champion of PWAs, they have a vested interest in its success. The reason I focused on Apple is because its actions are one of a profit-maximizing gatekeeper actively defending its most lucrative business against an existential threat that is PWA. Every bug, every delayed feature, and every artificial limitation imposed on PWAs on iOS is a calculated strategic move in this defense of its walled garden that makes maximum taxation possible."
by Saline9515 | 2025-07-26 14:18:13+00:00
The problem with this kind of pure hedonistic thinking is that it negates that societies exist because of cooperation of individuals and not just as an aggregate of humans.

According to your thinking, no one can "force" medical faculties to say that now anyone can buy a surgical doctor degree for 10$, that said if you have to get urgent surgery you'll pay for the consequences as the "doctor" who'll operate won't be qualified.

This is why we need basic rules, norms and constraints that allows us to reach a better optimum than the free-for-all that you recommend. It's also a question of personal values: I value more living in a CSAM-free society, than one where pedos can watch it freely. Amishes value being in a highly religious and low-tech society than giving birth without pain or having air conditioning.

I agree that leaving the society should be possible (emigration, for instance, as the Amishes did). But each society has its local optimum, so you'll have to choose with different constraints. You can for instance go to Russia where it's legal to own and watch CSAM, but with other constraints.
by k310 | 2025-07-26 14:18:33+00:00
The demise of closed-source apps is precisely why free and open source apps are the best choice. Whatever they lack could be made up by donations, and even subscription fees, which disable your app at the first missing payment, to open source developers instead.

Long live free and open source software, literally. “Stipendium closed-source, mors est.” (Marlowe on Faustian bargains.)
by derriz | 2025-07-26 14:18:47+00:00
I've been using Python on and off for a few decades and agree. I don't know why you're being downvoted.

I've authored tens of thousands of lines of Python code in that time - both for research tools and for "production".

I use type hints everywhere in the Python I write but it's simply not enough.

This issue is political and not so much technical as Typescript demonstrates how you can add a beautifully orthogonal and comprehensive type system to a dynamic language, thus improving the language's ergonomics and scaleability.

The political aspect is the fact that early Python promoters decided that sanity checking arguments was not "pythonic" and this dogma/ideology has persisted to this day. The only philosophical basis for this position was that that Python offered no support for simple type checking. And apparently if you didn't/don't "appreciate" this philosophy, it reflected poorly on your software engineering abilities or skill with Python.

To be fair, Python isn't the only language of that era, where promoters went to great lengths to invent alternate-reality bubbles to avoid facing the fact that their pet language had some deep flaws - and actually Perl and C++ circles were even worse and more inward facing.

So the "pythonic" approach suggests having functions just accepting anything, whether it makes sense or not, and allowing your code to blow up somewhere deep in some library somewhere - that you probably didn't even know you're using.

So instead of an error like "illegal create_user(name: str) call: name should be a str but was a float", it's apparently better (more "pythonic") to not provide such feed-back to users of your functions and instead allow them to have to deal with an exception in a 40 line stack trace with something like "illegal indexing of float by dict object" in some source file library your users haven't even heard of.
by AnimalMuppet | 2025-07-26 14:18:49+00:00
My first reaction was, "But what if the AI generates incorrect code, and the bio people don't realize it?" But then, without the AI, what if the bio people generate incorrect code and don't realize it? Can the AI be more accurate than a non-programmer? Probably; in fact arguably they already are.

So I think I buy the parent's point. In fact, I think it's wider than biology. I bet there are a bunch of other fields with non-programmers doing a fair amount of coding. Economics research, say. Business process automation. I'm sure there are others.
by kergonath | 2025-07-26 14:19:04+00:00
> What I find most interesting is the weight put on the ethical side. I think it’s overstated. When the issue became big, the Blood Diamond movie, sales of lab grown did not markedly increase.

It was not a switch that was pushed the moment the movie went out. In the grand scheme of things, the movie was not even that popular. But there definitely was a realisation that diamond prices were completely artificially inflated by an oligopoly, and that there were many issues with how they were sourced.

Just because demand did not follow a step function when the file was released does not imply that ethics are not relevant.
by ATiredGoat | 2025-07-26 14:19:31+00:00
There's something timeless about text adventures something no 3D engine, ray-traced shadow, or cinematic cutscene can replicate. It's the quiet thrill of reading a single line and having it bloom into a world in your mind. Text adventures don't tell you everything they invite you to imagine, to participate, to co-create. That's what hooked me from the beginning. I fell in love with the idea that a handful of words could transport you to forgotten ruins, haunted forests, or strange dimensions that no map could ever contain. These weren't just games they were portals. And unlike most modern titles, they didn't rush you or distract you with noise. They gave you space. Space to think. To breathe. To feel. What I love most is how personal they are. A text adventure is a conversation between the writer and the player a quiet one, filled with choices, consequences, and secrets hidden in plain sight. It's a kind of magic. And it's why I've spent decades building one of my own. Because even after all this time, I still believe in the power of words, and the adventures they can carry you through.
by vouaobrasil | 2025-07-26 14:19:53+00:00
> What I mean by all this is that evolution and our brains will find a way to evolve and change our reward system.

I don't see how, because making your brain feel better these days is not tied to survival. There is no differential in survival probability to change the short-term reward system. In fact, the current capitalistic technological system rewards it.
by enobrev | 2025-07-26 14:20:22+00:00
I also love programming. Out of curiosity (and possibly job stability) I've spent the past solid week building an app from scratch using Claude code.

I'm overall impressed with the result. There are things I might have approached differently, and there are things I would have gotten done much faster, but the result is more thorough than I might have done it.

I think what's most interesting is that I've never written specs to this level of detail before. I now have this series of project specs that hold every decision and consideration of this project written in plain english that's incredibly easy for any human to understand regardless of their ability develop software.

Whether or not I keep coding this way, I think this tool is incredible for figuring out exactly what to work on and how to approach it
by m0d0nne11 | 2025-07-26 14:20:26+00:00
Firstly, the article is appreciated - thanks. Now a minor gripe: several links I've clicked for further info point at paywalled matter, even for straightforward explanatory stuff like "moldboard plows" and, yes - I can go find info about such plows elsewhere but it breaks the stride when all that's needed is a sentence or two for clarification, not somebody's curated PhD thesis... ;->
by Pigalowda | 2025-07-26 14:20:32+00:00
I sort of get it I guess.

Struggle builds character or whatever.

The things I enjoy aren’t because I’m the best at them. I don’t care that software could crush me at reading or playing games. Or a robot can lift more weight than I can or hike a trail faster than me. A robot could surely crush me at laying out on the beach and snorkeling.

Comparison is the thief of joy. Enjoy what you want without thinking about how much worse you are than someone or something else.

Cook because you like it or have to do it for financial reasons. Write because you enjoy it (or have to for financial reasons). You get the point.
by threecheese | 2025-07-26 14:21:18+00:00
My $.02, is these are authoring tools, and not aware of the SDLC. That’s a different/related core competency that the tools would need to perform well in, and because it varies widely it would need to perform well across a broad range of use cases. Git branching is just one small piece, and even that assumes that Git is used and that the user of the tool uses that branching pattern.

Further, this branching pattern would need to be supported across tools - like the MCP server for talking to a database - and now it becomes really complex.

I’m sure we’ll get there, and having these kinds of problems will be what drives businesses to build it.
by slater | 2025-07-26 14:22:34+00:00
> What you are saying applies to militia/military-issued weapons

Which is what the 2A ding-dongs are usually referring to when they pipe up with the usual "Switzerland has lots of guns!" nonsense.

> which basically boils down to: anyone with a valid permit.

Plus restrictions on what kind of ammo, and the seller can request they perform a background check.
by mathiaspoint | 2025-07-26 14:22:37+00:00
If you're willing to be fiscally conservative, go to a cheaper location, and continue working on side projects you don't need the payout at all.

The question everyone seems to be asking is "is the payout worth spending the first ten years of your career in the West Coast startup scene." Ten years is quite a lot of time to spend somewhere you don't actually want to live.
by bitshiftfaced | 2025-07-26 14:22:50+00:00
> You should also know that I learned to read early and skipped first grade. Consequently, I was the perennial runt of the classroom and spent all my time reading as a child. I’ve gotten perfect scores on every reading test I’ve ever taken, including the SAT and GRE.

This is actually useful to know. Many people grew up in a time or place where they didn't receive the same kind of education. They may have weak reading and writing skills. Many of these folks might feel self conscious about their writing. A writing assistant is one way they can feel more confident, and I don't think that's a bad thing, even if I can usually tell.
by mcculley | 2025-07-26 14:23:02+00:00
The comment to which I replied is about two concepts: Defining subtypes and an optimization made possible by them.

I get a lot of value out of compile time enforcement of subtypes (e.g., defining a function as requiring a parameter be Index instead of Integer) finding errors in my thinking. It is more than "cute" to me.

As for the possible optimization of the array bounds check and it happening at runtime instead of compiletime, isn't that a failure of GNAT and not Ada? Can't a sufficiently smart compiler detect the problem in your example?

Regardless, I am not convinced that getting around the compiletime type safety by casting with Integer'Value(Integer'Image(X)) proves anything. I will still prefer having subtypes over not having them.
by criley2 | 2025-07-26 14:23:15+00:00
I disagree. This is exactly what happened with the initial launch of Healthcare.gov after the Affordable Care Act. The government spent hundreds of millions contracting a large firm that completely botched the site, it couldn't even handle a few hundred users at launch.

Then a small team of highly skilled engineers from Google/Facebook etc were brought in to fix it. They stabilized and relaunched the system in weeks at a fraction of the original cost. It showed that the problem wasn't the complexity or the standards, it was how the project was managed and who was building it.
by bostik | 2025-07-26 14:23:16+00:00
I'd like to think I'm not. In the past, at least there was an original "hard copy" - and any regime wanting to rewrite history would have to meticulously either eradicate any prints, or - as happened in the Eastern Bloc - they would have to physically rewrite history. Pages from books were lifted out, edited to suit the needs of the narrative, and then meticulously put back.

With online-only records any hard copies will be incidental. The source-of-truth for any record has always been online, and can be retroactively edited with much less fanfare. Incidentally, it will also be much easier to flood the world with the updated narrative.

Hell, we have Musk publicly advocating to edit old online material to suit the new, "more desirable" narrative.
by aidenn0 | 2025-07-26 14:23:25+00:00
> ... billed as “an extension to the ISO 8601 / RFC 3339” formats

The quote comes from MDN[1], but is wrong on so many levels:

1. RFC 3339 is not a format; it is a meta-format. It specifies properties that any timestring used in internet applications should have. One application could require that "T" be used to separate the date and the time, while another could require a space to be used, and both applications would conform to 3339. Using the same parser to parse times and dates from the two applications would be incorrect, as "1234-12-12 12:34 ..." unambiguously represents the date of December 12, 1234 in the former but the time of 12:34 on the same day in the latter.

2. RFC 3339 is thus not a subset of ISO-8601; there exists a subset of ISO-8601 which satisfies RFC 3339, but there also exist many timestrings that are not subsets of ISO-8601 which also satisfy it (most famously replacing "T" with a space, but that is merely an example for which RFC 3339 conforming applications may deviate from the ABNF in the RFC for readability).

3. It is obvious from both #2 and the table in TFA that RFC 9557 can't be an extension of ISO-8601 given that there are valid ISO-8601 timestrings in the table that are invalid RFC 9557 timestrings.

4. This is a minor nitpick, bu RFC 9557 also alters the semantics of some RFC 3339 timestrings with regards to offsets. RFC 3339 specified "Z" (or "z") for the offset being the same as +00:00, while 9557 has "Z" being the same as -00:00; the meat of RFC 9557 is adding suffix-tags to RFC 3339, so I wouldn't quibble with calling 9557 an extension of 3339.

1: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Refe...
by lcnPylGDnU4H9OF | 2025-07-26 14:23:44+00:00
> many trackers

A native app has access to OS information for the same kind of fingerprinting as with browsers, except with more bits of information. The reason, for example, iOS has the “ask app not to track” button is because the tracking could still happen, even more comprehensively than in a browser. Not exactly sure about macOS but I don’t see why it would be different.

Meta is keeping their apps as native presumably because native apps make better spyware. I think they literally do not have any other reason; if web apps made better spyware, Meta would push people to use their web apps, simple as. Meta is a spyware company. Technical decisions about deploying/developing their spyware will be informed primarily by their desire to make it more effective as such.
by mrbombastic | 2025-07-26 14:23:47+00:00
I don’t really think the desire for more data holds up as the primary motivation for companies wanting apps. To be clear I also hate being forced to use apps, but every metric I have seen shows app users are more engaged, make more purchases and have better retention then website users, I don’t remember specifically but it was always significant like 3x, and yes they want push notifications and those direct channels to customer on their devices. Apps are sandboxed and generally pretty privacy focused if you just tap no when they ask you for your first born. Contacts? You need explicit permission. Photos on device? You need explicit permission. Local networking? Explicit permission. Push notifications? Explicit permission. Cross site tracking? Explicit permission (although that is more recent and i am sure bad actors find ways around it).
by the_af | 2025-07-26 14:24:06+00:00
To be honest, the "other content" seems to be an excuse.

I don't buy the "multiple countries' cultures" excuse because this seems to be spearheaded by conservative groups from the Christian anglosphere, the same culture that produces these same games to begin with; and also: other cultures forbid depictions of explicit violence, alcohol, women without their heads covered or publicly disagreeing with their husbands, etc. I don't see a push to ban games which depict alcohol consumption or independent women, do you?

Let's call a spade a spade, and recognize this for what it is.

Also: there's absolutely nothing wrong with erotica in games. Just place it behind the same safety checks as violent games. If those don't work, then they also don't work for violent games, in which case: shall we ban all games with violence?
by moritzwarhier | 2025-07-26 14:24:29+00:00
> Being so careless with people's personal data should be a major crime, tbh. If I manipulated thousands of people to let me scan their passports and various other bits of personal info, then just left the copies around the city for people to find, I'd be prosecuted, and rightfully so.

Good analogy. Also, this is the main point of the EU GDPR.
by herval | 2025-07-26 14:24:55+00:00
I don’t think the problem is “caring”. Waymo has proven the obvious - a machine with higher cognitive function that never gets distracted is better than most humans at an activity that requires constant attention and fast reflexes. I’m sure the same will eventually apply to other activities too.

It’s a much better investment of time to make robots that can do delicate activities (eg Neuralink’s implant robot), consistently and correctly, than training humans and praying that all of them are equally skilled, never get older or drink coffee or come to the operating table stressed out one day…
by vouaobrasil | 2025-07-26 14:25:39+00:00
> Yes, our civilization rewards and encourages short circuiting effort, depriving us of the basic positive feedback loop of effort to reward.

To some extent, but so far before AI it has been at a speed and magnitude most people could handle. With AI, they can't.

> It's been like this since the invention of the wheel and fire. It's up to us to find and/or create meaningful (and effortful) lives, and it is more sustainable to focus on the path than the destination; every zen text teaches this.

You are ignoring again the magnitude of the effect of AI, which is much worse than previous technologies. One can always focus on "the path" but Zen teachers also teach practicality: why make your life complicated? AI makes things complicated unecessarily.
by jqpabc123 | 2025-07-26 14:25:46+00:00
It’s like saying people will stop buying branded clothes because unbranded clothes have the same or even a higher quality for a fraction of the price.

People buy inferior, counterfeit merchandise all the time because they can't tell the difference.

But there is nothing inferior or counterfeit about a manmade diamond. It is *exactly* the same material as a natural one.
by LightBug1 | 2025-07-26 14:25:52+00:00
Not necessarily.

When prices are equal, I'd wager the decision is: "if prices are equal why wouldn't I buy the "real" thing? I'll just try and justify to myself that it's sourced correctly".

When the price of the grown diamonds falls, the decision might be: "Ok, so grown diamonds are cheaper AND more ethical? Ok, I'm definitely buying grown".

If the ethics factor didn't exist, "real" diamonds would still retain the kudos and still be valued highly over "nice but fake" diamonds.

It's the ethics factor that pushes the decision over the line.

As an n=1 economic animal, that's what my behaviour would have been anyway.
by K0balt | 2025-07-26 14:26:01+00:00
100percent on board. A marriage is only as meaningful as the vows and the integrity of the people that made them. The guests are there to witness and to celebrate. Trying to make it about anything else only cheapens it.

If you can, put enough gold on her to get her out of a jam and have some runway. Other than that it’s just the promises you keep.
by anonymars | 2025-07-26 14:26:34+00:00
Not the person you're replying to. I agree with a lot of what you are saying but:

> The most basic reasons are performance (and perceived performance), not only because the require less data to be moved around the internet but also every flow doesn't require full page reloads.

I can't keep a straight face at this one. If there's one thing the web isn't anymore, it's "fast." Presumably what you are getting at is server performance, because it's pushing all the work to the client.

Anyway there's a good talk on this - https://veryinteractive.net/pdfs/ceglowski-thewebsiteobesity...

> > Every web framework is _literally_ a hack to make the web something it isn’t.

> You are clearly talking about things you have no understanding over. It matters nothing if you specify a DOM with a static file or procedural

Don't be so dismissive. This is like the old anecdote about one fish saying to the other, "how's the water." The "something it isn't" is stateful. The web was not designed to be stateful, and every web framework is indeed a hack to work around that.