MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
Ask HN: Why do Cursor, Windsurf and Claude Code dominate the conversation?
by bluelightning2k | 2025-07-21 13:49:22+00:00
Just curious. So many threads used to be essentially Cursor vs Windsurf, Cursor alone as a presumed champion, and more recently Claude Code.

Basically never hear about Augment Code, Gemini CLI, Codex CLI, etc. which all seem pretty well respected. Or Replit, Bolt which seem to have huge user numbers (not professional devs though which is why I assume they're so under-represented here).
by bryanlarsen | 2025-07-21 13:49:27+00:00
> Where have we seen anything close to 'build more'?

It's considerably easier to build in Canadian cities than most American cities. Not easy, but easier.

Over the past ten years Canadian cities have seen incredible growth, due to high immigration levels. Toronto is the fastest growing city in North America. Vancouver isn't far behind.

Yet Vancouver has seen flat housing prices over the last 10 years. [1] (Though flat at a very high level). Toronto housing prices are down 5% in the last 12 months.

1: https://realestatecoalharbour.com/blog/vancouver-house-price...

2: https://www.nesto.ca/home-buying/toronto-housing-market-outl...
by sim7c00 | 2025-07-21 13:49:28+00:00
i am sure lots of ppl on this planet dont have the option to go around NYC to check out the construction. for various reasons.... also, lots of construction does not equal fixing lack of housing. it has to keep up with and overtake new ppl moving into the region, which often times it does not (so it has no impact on prices or availability, just population growth...).

idk about NYC specifics ofc. but thats how it work in my country. they build new houses, new ppl come in. still nothing available generally, and everything about 2x price over 10 years while income doesnt rise to compensate.

there is a lot of constructions of homes here too. but for the wrong reasons and with the wrong intensity.
by btbuildem | 2025-07-21 13:49:32+00:00
This is because the overtly stated goals and the actual incentives are not aligned at all, they're closer to diametrically opposed.

The stated goal is "build more housing so everyone can have a place to live", but the current incentives are "bundle these materials and labour under guise of another product so you can sell it for a profit".

Of course developers walk away when prices drop -- their objective is to make money, not housing. The fact that they build homes people live in is purely incidental.
by HumblyTossed | 2025-07-21 13:49:41+00:00
> All I hear from LLM people is "you're just not using it right" or "it's all in the prompt" etc. That's not natural language. That's no different from programming any computer system.

This right here is the nail on the head. When you use (a) language to ask a computer to return you a response, there's a word for that and it's "programming". You're programming the computer to return data. This is just programming at a higher level, but we've always been increasing the level at which we program. This is just a continuation of that. These systems are not magical, nor will they ever be.
by Ekaros | 2025-07-21 13:50:17+00:00
Ryanair often uses different model than traditional airlines. That is not hub and spoke, but instead same plane flying one city to next. Often with handful of hubs that are more connected. This means they also serve "unpopular" cities as part. Where the ground fees can be lot cheaper. And due to how cheap their pricing is there is what could be called organic demand. Just because you can fly to new place for cheap people will.
by jibrandev | 2025-07-21 13:50:34+00:00
Hi HN!

I recently launched HRinbox, a bootstrapped SaaS tool that helps companies automate employee-HR communication using AI. Think of it as ChatGPT—but trained on your company policies and employee data.

Why I built this:

As someone who has worked in tech and HR-adjacent environments, I noticed how much time HR teams spend answering repetitive questions—policy clarifications, attendance info, fund details, etc. These tasks are essential but time-consuming. HRinbox solves this by offering:

An AI chatbot that answers employee queries instantly Easy upload and training on company-specific policies Seamless migration of employee data from existing HR software Chat-based interface for employees to login with their ID/email

Built with: Node.js, MongoDB, React, and OpenAI APIs. Free tier available, with a 7-day trial for pro features.

Would love your feedback and suggestions. Especially if you're running or working at a startup or small company—how do you handle HR support today?

Thanks!
by KineticLensman | 2025-07-21 13:50:57+00:00
> Interesting that he didn't feel gradual increase of pull force while he was approaching the MRI machine.

There isn't a gradual increase in pull when magnets are involved. My wife used to work for a company whose product involved powerful magnets. For a while they produced a demo kit in which a magnet would hold a large ball-bearing levitated against gravity. That thing was lethal. If the ball-bearing approached the magnet too closely it instantly became a dangerously fast finger-crushing hammer.
by echelon | 2025-07-21 13:51:03+00:00
Demand is someone's desire to make the jump from renting to owning. Demand is someone's risk tolerance for moving. Demand is someone's appetite for a house just slightly out of budget. Demand is someone's desire for a second or third home. Demand is all of the buying forces in aggregate, regardless of the cause.

You can want a house, but if you can't pay the market price then there's no demand from you at that price point. So maybe you make a lower offer or look elsewhere.

Demand is simple. We're watching what low demand is like right now.

Inventory has been low (people like their locked in low interest rates), but it has been inching steadily up as people move, die, change or lose jobs, etc. The minute the supply significantly outstrips demand, the pricing will collapse.

Demand will stay low until the economy and housing market improves.
by masklinn | 2025-07-21 13:51:16+00:00
Windows has always had its own versioning conventions: historically it was a one-digit major and a two-digit minor, so windows 2.1 was 2.10 in full (its predecessor was 2.03, and it was followed by 2.11), and NT 3.5 was followed by NT 3.51.

This scheme was moved away from with Windows 10, which switched to a year/month versioning scheme (so the first W10 update was version 1511, as it was released in November 2015), then to the current "halves" system.
by dang | 2025-07-21 13:51:18+00:00
Many past related threads, but these seem to be the interesting ones. Other interesting ones?

Richard Bellman on the Birth of Dynamic Programming (2002) [pdf] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42482289 - Dec 2024 (9 comments)

Dynamic programming is not black magic - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38988948 - Jan 2024 (202 comments)

Dynamic Programming vs. Divide-and-Conquer (2018) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26930667 - April 2021 (115 comments)

Real-world dynamic programming: seam carving - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20285242 - June 2019 (66 comments)

Graphical Introduction to Dynamic Programming - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19682258 - April 2019 (11 comments)

Dynamic Programming for Technical Interviews - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19395578 - March 2019 (218 comments)

Solving dynamic programming interview problems - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17102604 - May 2018 (164 comments)

Dynamic Progamming: First Principles - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15545686 - Oct 2017 (98 comments)

What is difference between memoization and dynamic programming? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13281884 - Dec 2016 (1 comment)

Dynamic Programming: The Name (1984) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12476597 - Sept 2016 (61 comments)

Fibonacci series and Dynamic programming - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5893237 - June 2013 (28 comments)

Dynamic Programming versus Memoization - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4434671 - Aug 2012 (26 comments)

Visualizing dynamic programming - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2243297 - Feb 2011 (11 comments)

Ask HN: Have you ever used Dynamic programming in your dev job? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1796861 - Oct 2010 (11 comments)

Why the name "dynamic programming"? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1290397 - April 2010 (25 comments)

The Edit Distance Problem - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=571570 - April 2009 (13 comments)

Introduction to Dynamic Programming - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=329953 - Oct 2008 (12 comments)
by IAmBroom | 2025-07-21 13:51:37+00:00
Ah, the "willpower" myth.

No study has been able to objectively define "willpower" in such a way that doesn't include eating habits, but does correlate with body fat percentage. IOW: If you define "willpower" as the ability to avoid obesity, then yes, it is related to obesity, but otherwise it is not.

See also addiction.
by onlyrealcuzzo | 2025-07-21 13:51:52+00:00
If you drop interest rates to 0%, it's hard to argue you're not bailing out everyone who's in debt (which is every home owner with a mortgage).

Sure, maybe you are PRIMARILY bailing out banks.

But you are also bailing out everyone with a mortgage and enough brain cells to refinance and cut their by-far-largest monthly expense by 30-50%.
by loudmax | 2025-07-21 13:52:13+00:00
It probably depends what your objective is. One of the benefits you get from running less capable models is that it's easier to understand what their limitations are. The shortcomings of more powerful models are harder to see and understand, because the models themselves are so much more capable.

If you have no interest in the inner workings of LLMs and you just want the machine to spit out some end result while putting in minimal time and effort, then yes, absolutely don't waste your time with smaller, less capable models.
by rcxdude | 2025-07-21 13:52:33+00:00
There's two factors that have driven an increase in demand for housing above population growth: fewer people per household and a strong bias towards living in a city. Some of this is cultural: a stigma against living with your parents, for example, and higher expextations for what someone just starting their career should be able to afford, but it's also economic: cities are where the jobs are and they're often not where people grew up, so if they want any independance they pretty much must move away into a city with everyone else.
by Balgair | 2025-07-21 13:52:58+00:00
I'm curious for an economist's take here.

It seems to me that the incentives are such that now you've just guaranteed that all PIs will now submit 6 applications every year.

It may be less that what you originally were seeing, but I don't know the population stats.

It also may be that you've now poisoned all the other grant agencies (NSF, etc) and they'll soon have to have maximums too.
by eitland | 2025-07-21 13:53:06+00:00
The last time I flew with Ryanair (and hopefully the last time I’ll ever have to), I made sure our hand luggage met their cabin size requirements—I didn’t fancy waiting around for it at the other end anyway.

Only for it to be collected at the gate and put in the hold anyway, meaning we had to wait for it after all. At least they forgot to charge me for the inconvenience, which given the rest of my experience could almost have been considered a mistake from their side.

Then there was the return journey: the boarding pass couldn’t be printed until just a few hours before departure, by which time getting access to a printer was tricky. But, as with all things Ryanair, there was of course an option to pay and make the problem go away. Out of sheer stubbornness, I found a workaround. If I factor in the time spent, it probably cost me more—but by that point, I was so utterly fed up with their relentless upselling that I refused to give them another penny.

And finally, during a layover before the last leg of our journey, we ended up sat in a grounded aircraft in full sun for 2–3 hours, with small children onboard and barely any information before we could leave the plane. While we waited, another passenger collapsed from what I understood to be severe hypoglycaemia, at which point people started calling out for anything sugary.

As far as I remember (this was over a decade ago and I had three young kids with me a few rows back), the person was helped thanks to another passenger who recognised what was going on and acted quickly—not because of any intervention from the crew.

If you can avoid Ryanair, do. I’ve no issue with trading comfort for a lower fare—but Ryanair doesn’t feel like a cheaper flight because they’ve cut costs. It feels like they’ve gone out of their way to invent new ways to make life miserable, just so they can charge you for relief.
by thesuitonym | 2025-07-21 13:53:25+00:00
Couple of points on life expectancy: If you made it to age 15, it was likely you'd live to be 60-80. Life expectancy wasn't lower in the past because people died earlier, they just died as children at a much higher rate, but there are some important caveats. In King Charles V's day, a simple cut that today we would not even think twice about could prove fatal from infection. Add to that the common plight of royal families being extremely inbred (I'm not sure if this was the case for Charles V) and it is actually likely that most people alive today, regardless of wealth, would likely live longer than him.

Now, when you compare a low wealth person today to a peasant from the medieval era, if you remove child mortality, they likely had a similar life expectancy, although again, the modern human is more likely to have access to antibiotics, regardless of wealth--as others have mentioned, they just didn't exist back then.
by c22 | 2025-07-21 13:53:43+00:00
I don't know, I imagine getting suddenly jerked across the room by your neck is not a slow and gentle strangulation event. In addition, as I understand it, currents can be induced in metal objects causing them to heat up. So no, I'm not sure that 15 seconds of violent burning strangulation of an elderly individual is fine. It's not clear this fellow died from strangulation.
by spicybbq | 2025-07-21 13:54:20+00:00
> Price Drops Don’t Lead to Supply. They Kill It.

Is anyone arguing that price drops "lead to" (i.e. happen before) increases in supply? It seems to me that it's the other way around: supply increases "lead to" price drops. This is what supply advocates hope to see in HCOL cities with expensive housing.

The author is concerned that builders will stop building when prices fall, but that's rational. Suppliers should respond to changes in prices.

Other policy goals are possible. For example, instead of "affordable housing", your goal might be to help the home building and financing industries never experience a down year.
by darrenf | 2025-07-21 13:56:36+00:00
Well, for sure it's a mistake to naively expect _anything_ from Perl, of all languages!

I mean, even v-strings themselves ... despite being called version strings, they're different from `version` objects/declarations, and can be used in ways I expect most non-Perl devs might consider unexpected, for example if you run this:

perl -C2 -E 'say v102.111.111, v128513'
by ta1243 | 2025-07-21 13:56:50+00:00
Price is kept low so everyone can afford one, so the limited supply is rationed in other ways. I remember the local MP where I used to live boasting about how when she was a child her father managed to get a nice council house with the help of then then Local MP.

I.e. rationed based on party loyalty. Or nepotism.

We currently mostly ration on money, which is the least worse option if we refuse to increase prices. There is also rationing based on sexual favours, which I'd assume everyone would agree is terrible.

Many would prefer to ration on place of birth -- if you are not born in the city then you don't get to live in the city and don't get the job opportunities of the city.

If supply in say London suddenly doubled overnight though (magically make every borough the same density as Westminster - with all those big open parks), that would put downwards pressure on prices.

It would release the currently suppressed demand as those currently living in overcrowded situations could afford to live on their own, those currently living outside the city who don't want to could move in. I'm not sure what the supply would have to be to raise main-home occupancy in London to 90% with prices down at the same level as it is in Stoke, but it's far far higher than it currently is.
by VWWHFSfQ | 2025-07-21 13:57:13+00:00
> You’re not the homebuyer; you’re the mortgage payer. The product that matters isn’t the home; it’s the decades of payments you have promised to make.

A very succinct way of describing the actual relationship. New homeowners are not "buying a house". This is a misconception. They are agreeing to pay _double_ the home's present value for the next 30 years and then get it.
by jonhohle | 2025-07-21 13:57:25+00:00
I enjoyed our metrics systems at Amazon’s and wrote one with a similar API at Okta and should really look at writing another one to open source.

One of the huge missing things in metrics systems, imho, is keeping granular metrics in the context of a business operation and then using late aggregation for trends. Last I looked nearly every metrics systems either logged individual events and and required processing for any rollup or aggregated too early and you couldn’t determine the effect on any individual operation/request. There’s a happy medium where you can get per-request counts, stats, and timing and still roll those up at the host/data center/region/granularity to get higher level trends.

Most metrics APIs are incompatible with this idea, however.
by docdeek | 2025-07-21 13:57:27+00:00
Those same laws exist here in France, too, even if they are a little more complex. The truth of a statement, for example, is not a sufficient defence if that truth is not something that is public. Making someones private life public, even if your comment is true, can be against the law.

Defamation might be illegal in both the US and France, but I can burn an American flag and show contempt for the US President without commiting a crime the US. Do the same in the France and you don’t have the same protections for your speech.
by ewf | 2025-07-21 13:57:34+00:00
It was a hard requirement for us to make our dev tool 100% embeddable without iframes. From the vendor's perspective, it's an opportunity to differentiate from competitors and avoid potential future iframe limitations that others have mentioned.

This was my instinct when we first started, and years later, on 50% of sales calls someone asks if we use iframes (as a concern). Our enterprise clients don't want to highlight a third-party solution, and iframes scream "not native" to their users.

The technical challenges of avoiding iframes are real, but the business case for solving them has been clear for us.
by ajsnigrutin | 2025-07-21 13:58:08+00:00
As long as people are willing to pay above land cost + government cost (taxes,...) + material cost + labour cost, houses will be built.

Land and government costs are well.. decided by the government, some by regulation (where can you build, what can you build there) some by direct taxation.

Material + labor costs depend on the labour and material markets directly.

Everything else is just excuses not to build more housing, that would bring prices down.

Yes, the financial markets and investors may suffer, but that their problem. Sadly, (at least over here in a small EU country) the government is focused on them.... the solution both banks and parts of our government see is based on getting easier credit and not bringing the prices down... but the problem is not in "It's hard for young people to get loans", but that the apartment that was 120k eur 20 years ago is now 450k eur, and that young people don't need a 70k loan anymore but a 350k loan (with a higher deposit).
by yoden | 2025-07-21 13:58:50+00:00
> Price Drops Don’t Lead to Supply. They Kill It.

It really depends on how much you reduce costs. If you reduce costs enough, you can have increasing supply even in the face of falling prices. This argument sounds like one made by a hedge fund protecting its real estate investments.

The reality is that the housing market in the US (and most countries) is heavily distorted by government NIMBY regulations. Because of this, it's reasonable to expect that there is actually a lot of room to reduce the $/sqft if the market can build housing in general. Current costs are inflated by being forced into specifically prescribed solutions designed to grow the wealth of developers and landowners.
by watwut | 2025-07-21 13:59:21+00:00
Yeah, I think that too. Same with non programming domains. Since your blog and what not wont be seen, just ingested by LLM, there will be even less motivation to write them. And they were already dying also due to need for SEO, otherwise you dont exist.

So, that stuff will just cease to exist in its previous amounts and we will all move on.
Ask HN: Tools for first-time home buyers?
by gavinray | 2025-07-21 13:59:23+00:00
I've been looking for API's and other tools that'd be useful in trying to work through the home buying process for the first time.

Anything from paperwork automation to value estimation or whatnot.

I haven't been able to identify many resources that don't feel like scams or are unbiased.

Curious if anyone has tools they could recommend?

Thank you.
by lxgr | 2025-07-21 13:59:25+00:00
Approximately everybody in the US is able to get a brokerage account for trading public shares (with actual SIPC insurance, very limited liability for fraud etc). At the same time, the publicly investable stock market constitutes less and less to the total universe of US companies.

Unless tokenized securities will somehow make private investments accessible to non-accredited investors, this initiative seems to be entirely missing the elephant in the room, at least in the US.
by stonemetal12 | 2025-07-21 13:59:37+00:00
Marketing, Richard Bellman was trying to get funding and needed his work to sound high tech and fancy.

According to wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamic_programming#History_of...

The word dynamic was chosen by Bellman to capture the time-varying aspect of the problems, and because it sounded impressive.The word programming referred to the use of the method to find an optimal program, in the sense of a military schedule for training or logistics. This usage is the same as that in the phrases linear programming and mathematical programming, a synonym for mathematical optimization.

Also, Harold J. Kushner stated in a speech that, "On the other hand, when I asked [Bellman] the same question, he replied that he was trying to upstage Dantzig's linear programming by adding dynamic.