MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by grishka | 2025-07-12 15:08:04+00:00
In the early web, there already were forums. There were chats. There were news websites. There were online stores. There were company websites with useful information. Many of these were there pretty much from the beginning. In the 90s, no one questioned the utility of the internet. Some people were just too lazy to learn how to use a computer or couldn't afford one.

LLMs in their current form have existed since what, 2021? That's 4 years already. They have hundreds of millions of active users. The only improvements we've seen so far were very much iterative ones — more of the same. Larger contexts, thinking tokens, multimodality, all that stuff. But the core concept is still the same, a very computationally expensive, very large neural network that predicts the next token of a text given a sequence of tokens. How much more time do we have to give this technology before we could judge it?
by quickthrowman | 2025-07-12 15:08:27+00:00
> and breakers are slow enough you could see multiple joules of energy into your device.

The magnetic part of a miniature circuit breaker will trip in nanoseconds with enough fault current or over voltage, but the thermal elements can take longer to trip for a lower amount of fault current or voltage. Instantaneous trip ratings are generally max out at 16.67ms to clear the fault in one cycle.

Large frame circuit breakers have protection relays that detect fault current and over voltage and trip the breaker.

Breaker trip curves for Cutler Hammer BR breakers: https://www.eaton.com/content/dam/eaton/products/low-voltage...
by isodev | 2025-07-12 15:08:31+00:00
It's also the best ecosystem for indie/small team development. With a handful of well-established libraries, one can go a long way without having to reach for separate/dedicated queue/messaging systems, job or workflow orchestrations, even spinning up an ephemeral machine just to run heavy workloads is not complex. Frameworks like Ash make an entire category of server applications a matter of a few declarative modules.
by ericalexander0 | 2025-07-12 15:08:35+00:00
> Could a rogue agent theoretically run a destructive command? Sure. Have I seen it happen in weeks of usage? Never.

I've been in cybersecurity over a decade, and this still blows my mind. It’s classic cognitive dissonance or just normalized deviance. People get used to doing unsafe things until the system breaks.

Best analogy I use: seatbelts. In the U.S., wearing a seatbelt is automatic. Zero thought. In other parts of the world, not so much. Ask why, and you’ll hear: “I’m a good driver. Never had an accident. Don’t need it.” That’s not logic. That’s luck confused with safety.

The difference? Conditioning. Risk comprehension. Cultural defaults.

Same thing happens in software. No amount of UI warnings will stop people from doing dumb things. Running as root, disabling SELinux, exposing prod databases to the open internet. Happens constantly.

Anthropic gave a user the ability to do something they know is risky. Anthropic understands "LLM Trifecta" vulns. This person has no idea.

Strap in, we're in for a wild ride.
by comprev | 2025-07-12 15:09:08+00:00
To clarify, I did grow up in what could be considered British middle class, but our one family holiday of the year was 2 weeks camping in France (Eurocamp, late 80s/early 90s). I think I was about 10 before experiencing an aeroplane after my 2 older siblings moved out. On the plus side (which I appreciate even more as an adult) there was always money available for education (i.e school trips), activities, musical instruments (including lessons) - even a PC to nurture my curiosity in technology! Financial security for the family was top priority and consider myself very fortunate in that regard.
by Barrin92 | 2025-07-12 15:09:17+00:00
>Quality is a measurement

No it isn't, as in it literally isn't. Quantification is the process of judging something numerically, objectively and in measurement. Qualification is just the opposite, judging something by its nature, essence or kind.

Software quality, like all kinds of quality, is always a subjective and experiential feature. Just like, when someone says, this piece of furniture is a high quality, handmade chair, in all likelihood they haven't performed a numerical analysis of the properties of the chair, they're expressing a subjective, direct sentiment.

The handmade movement in software, was exactly about this, putting focus on the personal, lived judgement of experienced practitioners as opposed to trying to quantify software by some objective metric, that's why individual people feature so heavily in it.
by xscott | 2025-07-12 15:09:19+00:00
I don't see why Intel couldn't make high end PCI cards that do super fast matrix multiplications and activation functions. Glue that together with a C-API and Python bindings.

For all the interesting concepts in CUDA, it seems like gamers want pixels and polygons, and neural networks want gemm/relu. It doesn't seem like Nvidia really has a moat that others (Tenstorrent?) can't cross.
by phil21 | 2025-07-12 15:09:41+00:00
It’s valuable, it’s it’s the least valuable part of the value chain. A rounding error that looks good due to the immense scale of the numbers involved. Buys you some time.

Cheap energy and delivery is many times more valuable than spending that same amount of money on efficiency. One has your engineers and builders working on solving new problems - the other is just taking existing solved problems and making them more efficient.

I’d much rather be finding new and exciting ways of burning ridiculously clean and cheap megawatts of electricity than spending the same human capital on how to solve the same solved problem marginally more efficiently.

For the most part the low hanging fruit has been long picked and we have long past hit the point of diminishing returns.

Ideally you do both of course.

You can have your devs spend a year making your code run 50% more efficiently. Or you can use those same devs to make new features and simply buy 50% more cloud compute capacity. Computers are cheap and human capital is limited.

It’s interesting HN generally goes one direction here when it’s “their” economic interests on the line and the other way around when electric generation and grid capacity is the topic.
by filoeleven | 2025-07-12 15:09:42+00:00
The cool body mods are coming!

The work at the Levin Lab ( https://drmichaellevin.org/ ) is making great progress in the basic science that supports this. They can make two-headed planaria, regenerate frog limbs, cure cancer in tadpoles; all via bioelectric communication with cellular networks. No gene editing.

Levin believes this stuff will be very available to humans within the next 10 years, and has talked about how widespread body-modding is something we're going to have to wrestle with societally. He is of course very close to the work, but his cautious nature and the lab's astounding results give that 10-year prediction some weight. From his blog:

> We were all born into physical and mental limitations that were set at arbitrary levels by chance and genetics. Even those who have “perfect” standard human health and capabilities are limited by anatomical decisions that were not made with anyone’s well-being or fulfillment in mind. I consider it to be a core right of sentient beings to (if they wish) move beyond the involuntary vagaries of their birth and alter their form and function in whatever way suits their personal goals and potential.- Copied from https://thoughtforms.life/faqs-from-my-academic-work/
by rossdavidh | 2025-07-12 15:10:19+00:00
Just a couple days ago, I attended a python meetup where an experienced developer with a couple years experience using LLM assist tools, estimated that they gave him 10x the productivity.

The main thing to take away from studies like this, is not whether or not LLM-based tools are useful (clearly they at least sometimes are). It's that it cannot be the case that the breathless estimates (like "10x") are correct, or even a flawed study (as long as it was not fraudulent) would find some improvement.

If you had done this kind of study when we first started using higher level languages instead of assembler, we would not have had to worry about whether or not we made some subtle (and common) statistical error. LLM tools clearly are useful, at least sometimes, but we haven't seen Microsoft (early adopter of such tools and early investor in OpenAI) have some big burst of productivity. So, they cannot be the unprecedented game-changer that their boosters allege.

What I would like to see is some kind of study of how well it helps new developers, or experienced developers using a new language or programming in a new problem space. That seems like the kind of thing that would get the biggest improvement from LLM tools.
by aleph_minus_one | 2025-07-12 15:10:27+00:00
> I'm curious why it's not a thing.

According to onlypassingthru in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44542370 "The optics of an underwater race were not good".

Additionally consider (as was pointed by swarnie in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44542285 ) that there exist clothing restrictions in Olympic swimming - in my opinion this is also a contradiction to the spirit of "freestyle".
by squigz | 2025-07-12 15:11:55+00:00
> "After seeing the results for x years of use by populations, we found that it has y side effect which was not known earlier"

I would think that any reasonably intelligent adult could think about things for a few moments and come to the realization that... yeah, that's how things work. This is how we progress and learn. We develop, test, use, and learn about things - and if we learn that hey, turns out, this is bad over a long period of time... we change things.

And this of course doesn't apply to just medicine - it's just technological progress.
by allthedatas | 2025-07-12 15:12:22+00:00
While I did get to use a Vic20 in school I did not have a c64 but my friend did. At home I had an Apple IIe (which I still have) and it was great but boy was I jealous of all those color C64 games and also the modem they had for it! I didn't get a modem until I switched to a PC in 1989.
by michaelcampbell | 2025-07-12 15:12:44+00:00
Not sure if you're agreeing with or contrasting the parent post, but I think their point was...

> it's better to have a handful medium-sized companies in competition

is impossible in the hyper regulatory environment the EU has made, causing ...

> one or two mega-corps owning and dictating the market

... because they're the only ones that can afford the legal and/or lobbying efforts to do so.
by aleph_minus_one | 2025-07-12 15:14:14+00:00
> Alcohol not used for creativity?

> Ask all the writers who drank themself to death

I know the names of some famous writers who drank too much, but I am very much willing to admit that people who are using alcohol for creativity are far outside the bubble of people who I am surrounded with, so I can legitimately claim that from my personal life I am not aware of any single example of this phenomenon.
by amy214 | 2025-07-12 15:15:24+00:00
>And for families. 3 kids? Stay-at-home wife (and in one of twenty cases, dad-at-home)

Women are strong and as good a-, no, better, superior, to men. We will outperform you in the workplace, men need to be shown this because all they want is a barefooted pregnant wife. Women are crushing men in the workplace, not because they don't want kids, but because this is a more vital and greater goal. Once it's estalblished woman superiority, then we can talk repopulation
by southernplaces7 | 2025-07-12 15:15:25+00:00
I suppose it's pointless nonsense unless it's "optimized" for maximum information density?

You do know that there's this thing called a human interest story, and part of its point is to capture something of a narrative for its own sake yes? Stories like this cane make for very interesting reading. They don't have to include technology and hacks.
by somenameforme | 2025-07-12 15:15:57+00:00
Family in my case. There are two reasons they do this. A lot of people like medicine - they think it justifies the cost of the visit, and there's a real placebo effect (which is not an oxymoron as many might think).

The second is that many viral infections can, in rare scenarios, lead to bacterial infections. For instance a random flu can leave one more susceptible to developing pneumonia. Throwing antibiotics at everything is a defensive measure to help ward of malpractice lawsuits. Even if frivolous, it's something no doctor wants to deal with, but some absurd number - something like 1 in 15 per year, will.
by contingencies | 2025-07-12 15:16:46+00:00
Mini is $600

MB Air ($1100+ / >1.8x) is only available 15" which is IMHO too small for long term comfortable use.

MB Pro ($2300+ / >3.8x) is 16" which is IMHO still a bad ergonomic experience. I'd sooner buy a mini, trash it, buy another one 4 times. Especially given they are improving annually.
by unshavedyak | 2025-07-12 15:16:47+00:00
Yea but this example wasn't of the facts changing. It was of opinions changing. Musk had one opinion months ago, and a different one now. The bot explicitly searched twitter for the current opinions of someone with a history of less than stable actions (i'm trying to be generous for sake of neutrality).

This bot isn't at the whims of the corporate oversight or advertisements, or even direction of a CEO - the bot is at the whims of every post from a chronically online and addicted Twitter personality. Even if you ignore Elons other flaws, making a bot the sum total of everything he's said on Twitter is pretty impressive. .. and not in a good way.
by cardanome | 2025-07-12 15:17:28+00:00
I use cursor strictly for agent edits and do anything else in a proper IDE meaning in a Jetbrains product that I run in a separate window.

Many of my co-workers do the same. VC Code is vastly inferior when it comes to editing and actual IDE feature so it is a non-starter when you do programming yourself.

I once tried AI tab-complete on Zed and it was all right but breaks my flow. Either the AI does the editing or I do it but mixing both annoys me.
by yownie | 2025-07-12 15:17:40+00:00
she made poor choices but 8 years for assault where no one was permanently injured seems excessive. She served a year before an appeal had her out, before it was reversed and she went back for another 8 years, I'd call that excessive and as the article entails, really serves no one's best interest, not her daughters, not societies and not the victims.

That's not even budgeting back the costs associated with housing and caring for this person in prison nor the time and energy that's going to go back into reintegrating this person into society.
by hhhhmkk | 2025-07-12 15:17:41+00:00
I spend way too much time in Obsidian drafting posts—only to watch platforms like Twitter/Jike turn *bold* into literal asterisks.

After one too late-night reformatting rage-quit, I built Strip Markdown(https://stripmd.thistools.app):

• Converts Markdown → clean plain text (but keeps lists/formatting intact)

• Optional AI optimization (adds emojis, tweaks phrasing—like a hype-man for your drafts)

• 100% free, no login, works on mobile

Example of my AI’s sparkle:

Before: "1. This *tool* saves time."

After: "1⃣ This tool saves time (and sanity )"
by watwut | 2025-07-12 15:18:09+00:00
I blame big tech, because Thiel, Musk and their alike had put quite a large resources into radicalizing the extreme right as much as possible. I do blame republican voters too ... but only a few of them have put millions into making extreme right normal. And quite a few of those are literally big tech.

The issue with lack of flood preparation was not racism specifically. Nor were the FEMA contracts stopped because of racism. But it was very much MAGA. And it was exactly what big tech was trying to achieve.

The FEMA being destroyed is very much Musk doing. Open positions in NWS were literally open because Musk bought place in government so that he can slash them.
by yawpitch | 2025-07-12 15:19:29+00:00
You are able to, that’s a defining trait of being human… what you may not be capable of without a serious mind shift is applying yourself to that learning. The first step of that will be seriously lowering what you think of as decent money (if you live somewhere that actually requires millions, which is effectively nowhere on Earth you’d ever want to be, then move elsewhere) and then getting control of that shame impulse. Doing that is going to be best helped by seeking out mild antidepressants, individual therapy (CBT works), and time in nature (in no particular order). You don’t need, or want, tech bro money or tech bro work, find something you can concentrate on, and do it.

Fake it till you make it works, you just have to lower your bar on what you only think due to bad marketing represents making it.
by ecoled_ame | 2025-07-12 15:19:36+00:00
How old are you? I am 34 and was recently reading my journals from college when I was ~21. I was continually lamenting my laziness and lack of direction, filled with worry too. I had high aspirations but no clue how to get there. Proceed to 10 years of absolute failure but learning the value of a determination to persist. Now happy with a mid-level job that I worked so hard to get, nowhere near the PhD or MBA friends I have, but that’s okay. Living in the middle of nowhere and that’s okay. Realize I can always get a job at a restaurant and at least pay rent. Idk, just hang around and keep trying and lower your standards. Maybe get away from your parents so you are forced to be independent.
by therealpygon | 2025-07-12 15:19:56+00:00
No disrespect, but maybe you should instead be working on getting her into therapy instead of trying to be her therapist. If she is not inclined to be honest with you or herself in the first place, you don’t have the tools and are too close to the situation, especially if you are the one who is the “cause” (regardless of whether YOU think you do something to be the “cause”).

A therapist is an independent person who is completely outside that persons life and their situation and is more likely to have the appropriate tools, or at least more so than a parent will (no matter how many TikTok’s they might see or blogs they might read).

And if she is resistant, explain that “this is someone who you can talk to; I don’t expect anything, I’m only asking that you just go talk with them about whatever you want. It’s not my business what you discuss, and I won’t ever ask you to tell me what you discuss. You can talk about your homework or the sky, it doesn’t matter, I’m only asking that you go talk to them. If you talk to them a few times and don’t like them, we can find someone else. Again, I have no expectations from this and I’m not trying to “fix” you, it’s just someone you can talk with and who might be able to make good suggestions about whatever you discuss…no more, no less”. And then, more importantly, you have to both believe and respect it.
by th0ma5 | 2025-07-12 15:20:05+00:00
Reminding me of the near decade of WAT snark where people thought undefined behaviour was a complete proof of the futility of technology when it was actually just people mistaking what technology is. Like it isn't funny that you can't carry water with a brick but for some reason everyone thought JavaScript should be able to accommodate every possible fuckup with a specific error or just fix it. A nice goal but not something to then feel smug about when it doesn't happen but it seemed to be a viral perspective that persisted for way too long.
by wkat4242 | 2025-07-12 15:20:31+00:00
Even in the Soviet Union there were multiple design bureaus competing for designs of things like aircraft. Tupolec, Ilyushin, Sukhoi, Mikoyan-Gyurevich (MiG), Yakolev, Mil. There were quite a lot. Several (not all, they had their specialisations) provided designs when a requirement was raised. Not too different from the US yet not capitalist.
by DoctorOW | 2025-07-12 15:20:32+00:00
A friend of mine involved with the Coast Guard lemented someone who was fired in Trump's DEI purge. She was hard working, and well respected by those who worked for her, but she was a woman so she was deemed "without merit".

The problem I have with the anti-DEI stuff is that they have no means of proving merit. They're just seeing someone who is a minority and imagining a more qualified white guy.
by cushychicken | 2025-07-12 15:21:14+00:00
> No it isn't, as in it literally isn't.

Yes, it is. It is a well known field in hardware development, and generally treated as a sub field of manufacturing engineering. It deals with things like testing, sampling, statistics of yield, and process improvement. If you’ve ever done a DFMEA, an 8D report, a Five Whys review, a sampling quality analysis, or a process map, you’ve used tools produced by this discipline.

That’s what I’m trying to tell you and everyone else reading this.

Software, as a profession, collectively talks about quality with all of the rigor of joint passing English majors sharing their favorite sections of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.

Quality has a meaning and a definition and a field of study attached to it. Semiconductors and large scale consumer product manufacturing wouldn’t exist as we know it without this.
by markerz | 2025-07-12 15:21:30+00:00
I think quality takes time and refinement which is not something that LLMs have solved very well today. They are very okay at it, except for very specific targeted refinements (Grammerly, SQL editors).

However, they are excellent at building from 0->1, and the video is suggesting that this is perfect for startups. In the context of startups, faster is better.
by anton-c | 2025-07-12 15:22:07+00:00
Thats an interesting concept. Considering it, the big first party titles certainly had stellar presentation art-wise. Doesn't seem like they were limited in achieving their vision in say, sonic the hedgehog. Even the later games with pseudo-3d the art direction makes it feel complete and like it fits the aesthetic.

And even the new ones that have gone back to that style have the same 'look'(obviously because they're trying to be like those old games) but the graphical fidelity doesn't seem to change much beyond more pixels.
by watwut | 2025-07-12 15:23:04+00:00
Like, common. He was very readable and predictable when it comes to policies we discuss now. Literally no one expected him to make healthcare more affordable, to make life of poor better, to build up emergency response agencies or to be nice to trans.

Literally everyone, his voters and his opposition, expected him to do pretty much what he is doing now. The only difference is that his voter thought only other people will be harmed, not themselves. They were looking forward having fun while libs and democrats and trans and whoever else they hate suffer.
by mdtancsa | 2025-07-12 15:23:19+00:00
Its so funny you mention the color. Looking at the image on the website, I was struck by the fact that beige could strike a visceral exciting nostalgia reaction in me. I mean, its beige FFS, the ultimate "boring" color :) I went from a totally disengaged / disinterested teen in school to paying out of my own pocket (I think $50 at the time) to take a course taught be Steve Punter in the basement of a library on the other side of Toronto on 6502 assembler -- in the summer!
by cmrdporcupine | 2025-07-12 15:24:10+00:00
From vague memories I remember NN4 on classic MacOS was, I recall, a total memory leaking / crashing shitshow. I worked in a shop that had a bunch of Macs and the rule was you couldn't run FileMaker (which they used a lot) and Netscape at the same time because the two would just run over each other memories. The glory days of lack of memory protection on MacOS 7.6.

But I also don't think 3 was much better.