MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by WorldMaker | 2025-07-23 16:42:38+00:00
> If you use a true proportional font, you give up aligning code elements other than basic indentation.

Have you ever gotten deep into how tab stops work in Word?

The deeper you go the more you realize fun things like Tables are as much "Tab Stops with Borders" as they are a separate concept to Word. The UI/UX of both reflect each other.

WYSIWYG word processors and design tools have lots of ways to align proportional fonts.

The big thing is that to do it well they need a ton of metadata: this "paragraph" has tab stops at 1", 2", 4", and 5.5", two of the stops are right-justified and one is centered. Word makes it surprisingly easy to edit all of that metadata easily and visually in the Ruler up top.

If you are sticking to plain text documents that are easy to source control, where and how do you store that metadata? How do you keep it from being a distraction from the code you want to write?

It's not an insurmountable problem, we could do some really cool things if we tried. One half-baked thought off the top of my head here is that I bet you could do something rather cool with easily embedded CSS Grid descriptions in nearby comments and Tab/Newline-delimited sequences auto-populating cells in the grid. Given how much of our code is HTML rendered anyway and how ubiquitous HTML renderers are in our digital lives, CSS Grid isn't the worst model to reuse for something like this, and might be something someone could build a prototype with relatively quickly.
by lknuth | 2025-07-23 16:42:41+00:00
It is alleviated quite a bit bz its pattern matching capabilities combined with the "let it crash" ethos.

They have a success typing system (which isn't very good) and are working on a fuller system (which isn't very mature).

If typing is the only thing keeping you out, have a look at Gleam.

Having worked with Elixir professionally for the last six years now, it is a very mature platform, very performant and offers many things that are hard in other languages right out of the box.
by wjnc | 2025-07-23 16:43:08+00:00
Why? I see no arguments, only propositions. (I will bring little arguments myself below. Not flaming.)

Technological advancement is in my opinion unrelated to the way current “social” technologies impact “social relations”. Things are not going well, I’d agree. But I can imagine one hundred beautiful features (or historical technological advances) that have improved social relations, trust and general well-being.

Current big tech is dystopian and extraction based, but that’s not the general trend of the last two centuries. In the late ‘90s, early ‘00s I was actually very optimistic about technology and the state of the world (poverty, global village, war, climate).

Antisocial tech has put us back a long way. But that’s not technology general, ‘just’ Google, Apple, Meta and the app-0-sphere being or doing evil by extracting attention in finite time via small machines. The big machines have brought us much. And even then both ways; for good and for bad.
by jandrese | 2025-07-23 16:43:08+00:00
Interesting to think that aircraft rendered armor obsolete so ships stopped having appreciable armor. But if your threat is swarms of small drones then armor becomes a viable defense. Especially since the quantity of the drones is what makes them effective. If they have to build much heavier drones to punch through the armor that would significantly reduce the quantity that can be carried and increase the effectiveness of the other anti drone defenses.

I guess it's true that countries are always preparing for the last war they fought, not the next.

It's gotta be a nightmare on one of those drone carrier ships to be hit by an anti-ship missile or a drone and have thousands of lithium batteries strapped to high explosives light off.
by ekunazanu | 2025-07-23 16:43:40+00:00
>> yielding this spectral response: [graph with negative values]

That's what I gathered from spectral response. Usually spectral response in this context refers to the responsivity of the cones. Even when accounting for 'brain subtracting green from red' (which I assume comes from the opponent process theory) the following graph has nothing to do with it. The captions too read 'Yes, this results in red having negative sensitivity @500 nm', implying the red (L) cones have a negative sensitivity to cyans — which, again, is not really the case.
by Mobius01 | 2025-07-23 16:43:50+00:00
Removing Red Tape and Onerous Regulation Ensure that Frontier AI Protects Free Speech and American Values Encourage Open-Source and Open-Weight AI Enable AI Adoption Empower American Workers in the Age of AI Support Next-Generation Manufacturing Invest in AI-Enabled Science Build World-Class Scientific Datasets Advance the Science of AI 9 Invest in AI Interpretability, Control, and Robustness Breakthroughs Build an AI Evaluations Ecosystem Accelerate AI Adoption in Government Drive Adoption of AI within the Department of Defense Protect Commercial and Government AI Innovations Combat Synthetic Media in the Legal System

I can’t take this seriously, as recent actions by this administration directly contradicts a few of these stated goals.

Or maybe I don’t want to, because this sounds dangerous to me at this time.
by Towaway69 | 2025-07-23 16:43:58+00:00
Elixir has a Ruby on Rails approach which is kind of all in one. Not everyone’s cup of hot chocolate.

Erlang is low level, lightweight processes and message passing - perfect for micro-services and containerisation.

What Erlang lacks are high level web-oriented packages, i.e. markdown conversion, CSS and JavaScript packaging, REST (not quite true: cowboy is fantastic) - for which though Erlang was never intended.

However the cool thing is that you can combine both in the same project, allowing you to have high level Elixir and low-level process management in one project. This is possible because both use the same virtual machine - BEAM.
Ask HN: Cofounder Exit Offer
by sjohns21 | 2025-07-23 16:44:22+00:00
I had 15% vested over two years of a seed startup operation. 100k in funding at 9m valuation. 50k arr. We started to disagree a lot, to the point of planning a split. The cofounder who wants to keep the company wants to take back 14%. On grounds of for cause termination. I was open to giving back some equity but this seems like a lot. Thoughts?
by sisk | 2025-07-23 16:44:39+00:00
Re GPU usage: noticed this myself a few months back and decided to poke around. Recommend turning off the minimap if you have it enabled. There seems to be some over-rendering that is exacerbated by it. It's actively being investigated and improved upon (0.192 was a great step in the right direction) but, even still, I've found it (currently) has a big positive impact once disabled.
by em-bee | 2025-07-23 16:44:45+00:00
while that's a pity, i am not terribly worried. we managed it once without previous experience, so we can manage it again. in fact the less we rely on past experience the more we develop the capacity to do difficult things without prior experience. (that sounds like a contradiction in terms, but i hope it makes sense. it's kind of like linux from scratch. or the learning benefits from reinventing the wheel. instead of improving how to travel to the moon we improve the process of how to develop moon travel)
by alwillis | 2025-07-23 16:45:00+00:00
And in the time it takes to do all of that, the guy could have already written a meaningful commit message and be done with that issue for the day.

You only have to describe how you want commits written once and then the AI will just handle it. Is not that anyone of us can't write good commits, but humans get tired, lose focus, get interrupted, etc.

Just in my short time using Claude Code, it generally writes pretty good commits; it often adds more detail than I normally would not because I'm not capable but because there's a certain amount of cognitive overhead when it comes to writing good commits and it gets harder as our mental energy decreases.

I found this custom command [1] for Claude Code and it reminded me that there's no way a human can consistently do this every single time, perhaps a dozen times per day, unless they're doing nothing else--no meetings, no phone calls, etc. And we know that's not possible:

[1]: https://github.com/qdhenry/Claude-Command-Suite/blob/main/.c...

# Git Status Command Show detailed git repository status *Command originally created by IndyDevDan (YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@indydevdan) / DislerH (GitHub: https://github.com/disler)* ## Instructions Analyze the current state of the git repository by performing the following steps: 1. *Run Git Status Commands* - Execute `git status` to see current working tree state - Run `git diff HEAD origin/main` to check differences with remote - Execute `git branch --show-current` to display current branch - Check for uncommitted changes and untracked files 2. *Analyze Repository State* - Identify staged vs unstaged changes - List any untracked files - Check if branch is ahead/behind remote - Review any merge conflicts if present 3. *Read Key Files* - Review README.md for project context - Check for any recent changes in important files - Understand project structure if needed 4. *Provide Summary* - Current branch and its relationship to main/master - Number of commits ahead/behind - List of modified files with change types - Any action items (commits needed, pulls required, etc.) This command helps developers quickly understand: - What changes are pending - The repository's sync status - Whether any actions are needed before continuing work Arguments: $ARGUMENTS
by puls | 2025-07-23 16:45:07+00:00
It doesn't because it doesn't use any mainline rail track. Imagine if the T-Third went onto the Caltrain tracks at Bayshore and continued down the peninsula instead of terminating at Sunnydale; that would be a tram-train.

It would also be more or less impossible under current US regulations, but there's always hoping that that could be fixed.
by freedomben | 2025-07-23 16:45:25+00:00
I'm a big fan of Gnome 3 and have been since (almost) the beginning (Gnome 3.4), and I think this is an extremely fair criticism/analysis. I agree with all of your criticisms (except we might quibble a bit on Nautilus, which I generally find pretty good but definitely not as feature-rich as some alternatives, so your point stands), although none of those have been deal-breakers for me personally.

Despite my love for Gnome (and preference for over all others), there have definitely been frustrations over the years at design decisions and developer attitudes (lots of "I know better" and "you're using it wrong" which sometimes has it's place and within reason can be healthy, but in many cases I think was uncalled for). Still though, I think what the Gnome team has built is incredible
by tjr | 2025-07-23 16:45:43+00:00
I'm concerned about this also. Even just reading about AI coding, I can almost feel my programming skills start to atrophy.

If AI tools continue to improve, there will be less and less need for humans to write code. But -- perhaps depending on the application -- I think there will still be need to review code, and thus still need to understand how to write code, even if you aren't doing the writing yourself.

I imagine the only way we will retain these skills is be deliberately choosing to do so. Perhaps not unlike choosing to read books even if not required to do so, or choosing to exercise even if not required to do so.
by WalterBright | 2025-07-23 16:45:47+00:00
> Things like QSBS and carried interest are absolutely part of what people mean by "tax cuts for the wealthy".

No they aren't. Nobody mentions them on the news/editorials, nobody's heard of them but you and I. What people meant is the marginal tax rate.

I am not a tax accountant, and never heard of them before your mention. I spent some time googling it, and it looks like the limits were adjusted for inflation.
by lynx97 | 2025-07-23 16:46:23+00:00
People are going to HATE me for this, but I genuinely think: This feels like beating a dead horse...

I had my Perl phase. I even wrote the first piece of code for my employer in Perl. Well, it was a CGI script, so that was kind of natural back then.

But really, since all the hollow Perl6 stuff I've seen, I've never really read or heard anything about the language in the past, what, 10 to 15 years?

There are tons of languages out there, all with their own merits. But everything beyond Perl5 felt like someone was trying to piggyback on a legacy. If you invent a new language, thats fine, call it foobar and move on. But pretending to be the successor to Perl feels like a marketing stunt by now...
by lbrito | 2025-07-23 16:46:23+00:00
It absolutely is about whataboutism insofar as people here (not you specifically) use it as a pseudo-argument that automatically wins a discussion, but applying it only when convenient for their political preferences or worldview.

Took me a while, but: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31084334

Compare our two posts:

"I can think of one very powerful country doing exactly that for over half a century. Hope we're all collectively raging against anything coming from that country."

and

"There are other genocides happening in Myanmar and Sudan that nobody talks about."

Please be honest and fair. Don't you agree both of these arguments are more or less in the same vein? We're both pointing out that Bad Shit is happening elsewhere in time or space, and for some reason we think that public attention/outrage is unfairly shifted towards a specific conflict. We both imply that there is a deliberate political reason leading to that specific conflict being in the limelight and not any other conflict.

Given our little discussion here, I probably strongly disagree with you on the specifics of this specific conflict (Gaza). But we both have made the same argument, coming from diametrically opposed points of view: we both think (correct me if I'm wrong) that people/media/society etc have pet conflicts to be outraged with in detriment of all other ongoing conflicts. Or in short -- hypocrisy. Although I disagree with you, I very much think this specific argument is absolutely valid.

My point is that media and online people (HN) were very eager to scream Whataboutism when the exact same comment was made in another context (Ukraine), but everyone seems to have forgotten about Whataboutism in this conflict when people like yourself make comments in the same vein.
by dragonwriter | 2025-07-23 16:46:30+00:00
> There are clearly carveouts for this that are not views as discrimination by the vast majority of people.

Anytime you decide between options on a particular basis you are discriminating on that basis, that's what the word means.

Whether it is unacceptable (a moral judgement) or illegal (a legal judgement) discrimination are separate questions, but it absolutely and unquestionably is discrimination.
by poulpy123 | 2025-07-23 16:46:31+00:00
I know that my opinions on these 2 topics are controversial, but they come from decade to usage of both of them as end-user that just want to click and use.

Moreover I think that not only windows' model is bad, and worse what makes it better than linux's model is the monopolistic and proprietary nature of windows.

At first, comparing both model can be thought as a joke: on windows, discovery and installations are manual, update are either manual or have to be implemented by the software developer, uninstallation is a bad joke that can let several gigabytes somewhere on your hard drive without even your knowledge or knowing how to find them (I'm not considering the app store, winget, etc because they are either bad or not well integrated).

But because windows versions last long, that they are very few of them and because the software is decoupled from the OS, installing a software on any windows machine that is less than 10 or 15 years old is downloading one of the maximum two installers, click to install and it's done. To update is just to accept the update for most software, but indeed to check first if there is an update for still many software and repeat the installation step. There is now redeeming the uninstallation: going to the parameter windows, uninstalling the software, and praying everything is properly removed.

In theory, on linux everything is better: click on the app center/use a command and look for what you want, clink install/type a command to install, everything is updated in one click/command, a software is uninstalled in on click/command.

But practice is different: discovery is still manual because you need to have more information and know the alternatives. Installation and update are where the real issue is: at the difference of windows, there is a close coupling of the OS and software. Every software has to be built and packaged for the dozen of distributions and all the versions of each distribution. The work is often duplicated: both the distrib managers and upstream propose their own packages. if you need or want to install from upstream, the dev must have their own repository that you have to add or you have do install the package manually. Update has the same issue: cross your fingers that your distribution and its version is covered either by the distribution or upstream, and that there is no conflict several sources are available. If you installed a package manually, it's not better than on windows. And because of the software-OS coupling, updating the OS means updating the software, and updating the software may mean updating the OS. Uninstallation is much better: afaik the issue of removing the dependencies is mostly resolved, and if sometimes some stuff is not removed, it's either small, not safely removable or easy to find.

For the OS updat, in theory again linux is much better, but in practice and since windows 7, here again because of the longevity of the OS versions and the decoupling OS-software I had less issues under windows
by manooshree | 2025-07-23 16:47:16+00:00
tldr: I built a prototype where LLM chatbots work with you, instead of rewriting over you.

Youtube demo at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GzyrazM_dqY&ab_channel=Manoo...

Too many articles have been published recently lamenting how "AI is making us dumb". Such an empowering technology should not disempower its users. This rhetoric should challenge for engineers and designers to design better interfaces that leave users feeling in control and agentic.

I set out to reimagine an interface in which users' productivity could benefit from AI tools, without compromising users' agency. I additionally wanted to create affordances for learning opportunities. For this V0, I limited my design to LLM chat interfaces and focused on the task of editing/refining/improving textual information (i.e. asking an LLM to debug your code or refine your written paragraph).

My prototype does two things: 1. the model makes the minimally needed edits to user input 2. the edits are clearly displayed to the user

These features make it such that the LLM is actually building on the user, creating opportunities for the user to learn how their own work could be improved. And with edits being so clearly highlighted, users easily maintain control over what to accept from the LLM.

Interested in hearing people's thoughts on this more collaborative paradigm of human-machine interaction!
by alistairSH | 2025-07-23 16:47:39+00:00
Random woman waiting longer is going to entice more female drivers at the existing wage? That doesn't seem likely to me. If Uber wants/needs more female drivers, they're going to need some sort of proactive enticement. But, as I said, wage discrimination isn't legal (probably). And general "DEI" programs are political targets right now (though, IMO, probably the best answer to find more female drivers).
by starkparker | 2025-07-23 16:48:13+00:00
Yeah, I had a PM raise this concern to me and I pointed out that almost all of the advice for "publishing for LLMs" (using descriptive link text, including context and prerequisites for steps, testing and validating code examples, publishing single-page docs formats, generating consistent structure for documentation types using semantic HTML) was already in our documentation standards for people as an audience, and in several cases enforced by tools like Vale, DocDetective, and in-house CI integrations.

Adding an AGENTS.md was as easy as running our single-page static HTML output through Pandoc with a separate context header section stapled to the frontmatter.
by PaulHoule | 2025-07-23 16:48:16+00:00
Yuck! It is no solution to have to write your function 3x! Also no solution to have to specifically say what version you want when you're calling!

Note that the most common use case for this is an API client where you are writing a large number of methods that look like

def call(x): response=http_call(transform_parameters(x)) return transform_response(parameters)

and the right answer is to treat this as a template which has two transform_X slots and code generate the sync and async versions, you then generate sync and async client classes and just make the class you want to use once and use it without any more ceremony. If superfunctions was the cure I'd rather have the disease.
by throwaway240403 | 2025-07-23 16:48:33+00:00
Took me a bit to find this, but you can click on a line number in multi-buffer to open that file at that location. I think their default assumption is for you to not use the mouse much. If you're using vim mode g+[space] will open the file where your cursor is. I think it's alt+return in normal mode but either way there's a shortcut hint on the right side of the header for the file your cursor is currently in.
by lknuth | 2025-07-23 16:48:38+00:00
We look at K8s more like "the Cloud Operating System". Many of its capabilities are more valuable for other runtimes, but that doesn't mean that Elixir is a bad fit with it.

For example, the Erlang VM clustering can make use of K8s for Service Discovery. You can do ephemeral containers and use readiness probes to create a " hand over" period where new instances can sync their data from old, about-to-be-replaced instances.
by jimmaswell | 2025-07-23 16:48:40+00:00
What exactly bothers you in KDE? I've used it on a bunch of Gentoo installations this year with only the more minor consternations expected of a Linux desktop like changing default shortcuts.

As a side note, getting to wobbly windows has become a milestone of a Gentoo installation for me now - GPU driver has to be functioning for compositing, so by that point the system is largely functional. Feels like a rewarding treat at the end - it's a trivial graphical task on any modern hardware but it still feels like a fun flex after growing up with Pentium 4-esque workstations that couldn't handle KDE at all.
by pengaru | 2025-07-23 16:49:20+00:00
Seems pretty obvious the intention is to push them up into housing or out of the city, not into tents on the sidewalks.

Tents aren't tolerated anymore: https://www.politico.com/news/2024/06/28/supreme-court-homel...

And it shows. I encounter tent residents far less often now vs. last year, and there's no way those people have all moved into added RV capacity. It was already at its limit.

(I've skateboard commuted through SOMA in SF most days for coming up on 2 years)
by freedomben | 2025-07-23 16:49:21+00:00
Same. I like much of the philosophy behind KDE, but every few years or so when I try it I'll hit something (or more typically, a series of things) until I reach a point where I just go back to Gnome.

When AI gets to a point where I can just have it fork Gnome and make the changes I want to it without a large effort from me, it will be a momentous occasion :-)