MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by fsckboy | 2025-07-30 22:27:10+00:00
not attacking your thinking, but the terms "capitalism" and "free market" aren't consistently well enough defined to capture the nuances of what this type discussion requires. At a minimum, capitalism is the right/ability to own something without others taking it from you, and free markets are markets you can participate in if you would like without asking permission from the govt or belonging to a guild.

capitalism works best for everybody on average when free markets are competitive, but when they are not, markets still work, they just work better for some, worse for others but better than nothing, and also overall worse for everybody because markets are not zero sum. The problem with a lot of what-turns-out-to-be left-wing and or populist thinking on markets is the assumption that markets are zero sum, "if there is a winner, there must be a loser", which while an attractive idea turns out to be false.

same is true of the completely overblown idea that people are not rational. people are not perfectly rational, but when it comes to parting with their money they are much more rational than they are not. If it were not true, people wouldn't be living rationally measurably better lives today than 100, 200, etc. years ago. there are many other sources of noise in measuring that swallow irrationality up with the noise. (yes, selling gambling to gambling addicts is an irrational money printing machine, but civilization has not collapsed)
by didibus | 2025-07-30 22:28:07+00:00
You're taking the wrong conclusion, "Fast" is a winning differentiator only when you offer the same feature-set, but faster.

Your example says it, people will go, this is like X (meaning it does/has the same features as X), but faster. And now people will flock from X to your X+faster thing.

Which tells us nothing about if people would also move to a X+more-features, or a X+nicer-ux, or a X+cheaper, etc., without them being any faster than X or even possibly slower.
by cpursley | 2025-07-30 22:28:09+00:00
I don't agree with this, my code quality is much better now. But you have to stay on the LLM's ass in terms of guidance and review it all (this is a given). I think part of it is the LLMs writes more "standard" code instead of getting creative with architecture, etc. It helps to create guides and correct context, proper test coverage just as you would if working with other people.
by ay | 2025-07-30 22:28:18+00:00
This is a super apt analogy. Every time I decided to let LLMs “vibe-fix” non-obvious things for the sake of experiment, it spiraled into an unspeakable fubar territory, which needed to be reverted - a very similar situation to this financial collapse.

Invariably, after using the brain, the real fix was usually quite simple - but, also invariably - was hidden behind 2-3 levels of indirection in reasoning.

On the other hand, I had rather pleasant results when “pair-debugging”, my demanding to explain why or just correcting it in the places when it was about to go astray certainly had effect - in return I got some really nice spotting of “obvious” but small things I might have missed otherwise.

That said, definition of “going astray” varies - from innocently jumping into what looked like unsupported conclusions to blatantly telling me something was equal to true right after ingesting the log with the printout showing the opposite.
by strogonoff | 2025-07-30 22:28:33+00:00
Everything exists in four dimensions (space + time). If a thing “looks good” in three of them but falls apart in the fourth (e.g., it works right at this moment but its continued existence is an impossibility or a hassle—be it physical artifact made from subpar material, unmaintainable tangle of excess code, etc.), then that thing does not look good. Getting a hang of what things look like in the fourth requires skill and wisdom that probably partly comes from having traveled it yourself.
by khedoros1 | 2025-07-30 22:29:29+00:00
Library card: No. I've intended to...but not enough to actually do it.

Use the library: I spent some time at the library for internet when I was unemployed last year, and I've got several books that I purchased in the attached bookstore around that time. My spouse has been taking our child for various programs over the summer.

Why: I end up acquiring about 10 books a year, and end up reading 6-8. I'd suppose that I've got a couple hundred, and maybe that again on my e-reader (and similar for movies and TV shows; I have a lot on-disc or ripped to the NAS). So I'm good as far as reading material, in a broad sense. Many of my personal interests are computer-related, and the information tends to be available online for those topics.
by wkat4242 | 2025-07-30 22:29:41+00:00
> Concrete example: most of the left believes in a "gender identity," which is an immaterial, non-objective, unobservable, unscientific, metaphysical phenomenon that is somehow "more you" than the material reality of the physical body.

It's about feeling. Someone with a different gender feels uncomfortable in their body (and that's putting it mildly). If you declare that unscientific you can throw out the entire psychological/psychiatric sciences.

> You may have called it something else - a gender identity - but despite the difference in nomenclature you are still describing and referring to the same thing the religious devotees referred to when they talked about "the soul."

Of course, religion was invented to help people make sense of the world (and of course as a means of control). Gender identity has always existed. It makes sense that religion invented some terms to explain it away. Because as a means of control and no IVF options etc this was contrary to religions' survival. After all, religion gets passed on through upbringing. If you approach a person as an adult with this kind of stuff most of them will reject it, but as kids they are impressionable and can be indoctrinated. If people have no kids, there's no new religious minions being produced and thus the religion's survival probability is a bit affected. This is why conservative people are so obsessed about birthrates.

> Again more progressive fanfiction and creative wordsmithing with no relationship to reality. The Supreme Court struck down DEI policies (rebranded affirmative action) on the basis that they were, quoting Justice Clarence Thomas, "rudderless, race-based preferences" [0] [1]. This is literally the opposite of being "colorblind."

But DEI is not affirmative action. I work in this field myself for a big multinational. We don't do that. There are no quotas. We do measure our effectiveness with it (If you're in a country with 90% latino people and hire 80% caucasians obviously something is wrong) but we don't have hiring quotas. Instead what we do is management/HR training to recognise and avoid bias. And materials to improve understanding of minority needs, like LGBTIQ+ (which is the area I do some work in).

A lot of managers wouldn't even have known what nonbinary is for example, they would just see someone appear for an interview and dismiss them as 'weird'. They also wouldn't understand the specific issues they could encounter in the workplace. This is what we're working against.

Affirmative action is something that companies do that don't actually care about DEI but just want their "numbers" to look good. Quotas is the easiest way to solve "the numbers" but not actually do the hard work of removing bias. Meaning minority people will get hired but for the wrong reasons, and they will still have issues in the workplace resulting from lack of understanding. This is not the way to approach it, only when you're a lazy company.
by baduiux | 2025-07-30 22:29:47+00:00
I think that the problem is not that you lose momentum but rather that you start with momentum. I prefer having a clear mind and no need to rush (this happens when I’m excited about the project / have the initial momentum). This helps me a lot at deciding what I want/need/should/must do and what not. It also helps me to prioritize the project over/below family, friends, and house.

It helped me a lot that every time a have a new idea or want to start a new side-project that I wait at least two days before I dig deeper and get really started. Only then I really know if I really want this or if it’s just the initial hype/momentum.
by upboundspiral | 2025-07-30 22:29:51+00:00
For windows / linux I've found the freetube app to provide a lot of sane controls. I can block channels as needed, block shorts, hide profile pictures of commenters, and a lot of other quality of life things. You can even set a password for the settings as needed. Otherwise in the browser (firefox) I've been somewhat succesful in blocking youtube shorts with ublock origin filter rules: www.youtube.com##ytd-rich-section-renderer.ytd-rich-grid-renderer.style-scope:nth-of-type(1) www.youtube.com##ytd-rich-section-renderer.ytd-rich-grid-renderer.style-scope:nth-of-type(2) www.youtube.com##ytd-rich-section-renderer.ytd-rich-grid-renderer.style-scope:nth-of-type(4) www.youtube.com##ytd-guide-entry-renderer.ytd-guide-section-renderer.style-scope:nth-of-type(2)
by reactordev | 2025-07-30 22:30:15+00:00
One would argue that perfectly crafted code is at odds with first to market. Every company I have ever worked for has just run with their MVP, bolted on more and more, until they find they own the market - then they split into these things called microservices that make engineering easy to understand at a service level but a nightmare to orchestrate into the same business processes leading to the inevitable disruption by the next… MVP.
by rhdunn | 2025-07-30 22:30:16+00:00
1. Welch Labs (Complex Numbers, AI)

2. Mathologer (Various maths-related theorems and properties)

3. Simon Roper, Colin Gorrie (Old English)

4. Jackson Crawford (Norse)

5. Doctor Mix (Synthesizers; Recreating classic songs)

6. Numberphile / Computerphile / Sixty Symbols / etc.

7. NativLang

8. Artifexian, Biblaridion, etc. -- ConLang and Speculative Biology, but also cover linguistic, geographical, and biological topics where relevant
by QuantumGood | 2025-07-30 22:30:19+00:00
In my experience, as Harvard outlined long ago, the two main issues with decision making are frame blindness (don't consider enough other ways of thinking about the issue) and non-rigorous frame choice (jumping to conclusions).

But an even more fundamental cause, as a teacher, is that I often find seemingly different frames to both simply be misunderstood, not understood and rejected. I learned by trying many ways of presenting what I thought the best frame was. So I learned that "explanations" may be received primarily as noise, with "What is actually being said" being replaced with, incorrectly, by "What I think you probably mean". Whenever someone replies "okay" to a yes or no comment/statement, I find they have always misunderstood the statement, and learned how often people will attempt to move forwards without understanding where they are.

And if multiple explanations are just restatings of the same frame (as is common in casual arguments), it's impossible to compare frames, because only one is being presented.. It's the old "if you think aren't making any mistakes, that's another mistake".

Often, a faulty frame clears up both what is wrong with another frame, as well as leading to a best frame. I usually find the most fundamental frame is the most useful.

For example, I found many Reddit forums discussing a problem with selecting the choice of audio output (speaker) on Fire TV Sticks. If you go through the initial setup, sometimes it will give you a choice (first level of flow chart), but often not the next level choice, which you need. And setup will not continue. Then it turned out that old remotes and new remotes had the volume buttons in a different location, and there were two sets of what looked like volume buttons. When you pressed the actual volume buttons, everything worked normally. When you pressed the up/down arrows where the old volume buttons had been, you had to restart setup many times.

The correct framing of the problem was "Volume buttons are now on the left, not the right". It was not a software setup issue. Or wondering why you're key doesn't work, but you're at the wrong car. Or it's not a problem with your starter motor, you're out of gas. Etc.
by al_borland | 2025-07-30 22:30:24+00:00
I didn’t think I had ADHD. Then I saw some video on autism that hit a little too close to home. I went and got tested, and just had them test for everything while I was at it, which included testing for ADHD. Turns out I do have ADHD. The more I learn about it, and autism, the more my entire life comes into focus.

I have mixed feelings about finding this out late in life (early 40s). I do think there was a lot of value in not having it as an excuse when I was younger, to force myself to figure things out and get to where I am today. On the other hand, I spent a good 20 years looking everywhere to try and figure out what is wrong with me. Lots of time and money down the drain… and the YouTube algorithm is what ultimately pointed me in the right direction.

I used to think that these psychiatrists were just trying to diagnose the human condition, as so many of the things I heard just seemed like normal life for me. But I guess I now know why that seemed normal for me, but maybe aren’t normal for everyone.
by pedalpete | 2025-07-30 22:30:31+00:00
I think this is just a symbol of the current hype cycle.

We are living in a strange time because there is a combination of fear and greed in the market.

Yesterday I learned that market leverage (credit) is trending towards levels of the dot-com bust and great recession (https://en.macromicro.me/collections/34/us-stock-relative/89...)

When the tide goes out, the real swimmers remain and the tourists leave.

I quite enjoy that time in tech specifically, though I'm sure other industries face similar in-and-out flows.
by DaSHacka | 2025-07-30 22:30:48+00:00
I don't agree, I was born in the 2000s and I still think the 90s (or 80s) was the golden age of computing at large (and programming, with it).

So many dedicated, intelligent people who loved computing for computing's sake. The opportunities they created from that mentality attracted a ton of business-eyed bros with no appreciated of technologists that slowly rotted the industry into what we have today.

Whenever setting up a system and dealing with sluggish 500MB electron apps filled with slow-loading JS and baked-in ads, I wish I could go back to the time when systems were simpler and made by intelligent people that actually cared, at least more than they do now.

Sure I have a fondness and nostalgia for the games and tech I grew up with (in the 2010s) like the Wii, 3DS, Windows 7, Poptropica, Club Penguin, and the earlyish iteration of Chromebooks we used in Elementary school, but I can't even try to lie by claiming they have anywhere *near* the soul of the games and systems that came before.

I have no idea what the real 'culture' of nerds and hackers was like in the 90s, I can only go by people's first-hand accounts. However, I've had plenty of opportunities to interact with the technology from that era, and can't even imagine arguing what we have now is of a better 'quality', even if more technologically advanced.
by steveklabnik | 2025-07-30 22:30:53+00:00
> what stops a bank from selling "virtual racks" that work financially the same as owning an Oxide rack, but it's just AWS?

I'm struggling to understand what you're suggesting here, to be honest. First of all, banks don't sell cloud compute, so no bank is going to do that. Secondly, what does "work financially the same" mean? These are fundamentally different products, AWS is a service, Oxide is purchasing hardware that you then own.

> $1m buys you 42U of, whatever. You're handed an AWS account you do not pay for, but it has the $1m worth of, whatever in it, in perpetuity. Maybe the bank even throws in some fakey market you can "part out" and "sell" your rack to, years later, at some "market price."

What would be the advantage to anyone in this arrangement? Why not just have an AWS account in this case?

> "AWS stays greedy longer than the average Y Combinator company stays private"

Just to be clear, we are not a yc company. But beyond that:

> The problem with AWS isn't even that they are expensive. It's that Amazon is greedy. It could be cheaper, which is a different thing than being expensive.

It is true that if Amazon dropped prices, then the "rent vs buy" equation changes for some customers. But there always will be some people for whom it makes sense to own, and some people for whom it makes sense to buy.

> RudderStack, Weights & Biases

Neither of these companies seem to sell general cloud computing? They also don't sell hardware? These seem like completely different businesses.

> So what IS it?

We sell servers. Customers buy those servers, put them in a data center, and get a private cloud. That's the business. Other folks are doing similar sorts of things, but they all tend to be integrating parts from various vendors. We believe that our product is of a higher quality, because we built the whole thing, from the ground up. Hardware and software, working together. There are other things that matter as well, but that's the big picture.
by smcin | 2025-07-30 22:30:55+00:00
Here are some wave heights as of 9 a.m. [Wed July 30, 2025]: Humboldt Bay: 1 ft Crescent City: 2.82 ft Point Reyes: 1.68 ft Monterey: 1.23 ft Port San Luis: 2.7 ft Richmond: 0.8 ft Santa Monica: 1.2 ft
by cortical_iv | 2025-07-30 22:31:23+00:00
I wouldn't get too persnickety about definitions. There are lots of arguments about what 'legacy' code means. you are throwing around the term quite a bit without really giving any definition at all. 'Code that nobody understands' is fine as a quick and dirty pointer.

Martin Feathers, in the most popular book on legacy code, defines it as code without tests. This is not a good definition at all, but it shows just how hard it is to define it. This is not meant as an attack on anyone: I just think some flexibility and slack is called for here.

You could easily write an long white paper trying to define 'legacy code', and it would be a lot less interesting than the target article here.
by swyx | 2025-07-30 22:31:23+00:00
finally, what took so long lmao

if im being honest i care more about multiple local ai apps on my desktop all hooking into the same ollama instance rather than all downloading their own models as part of the app so i have like multiple 10s of gbs of repeated weights all over the place because apps dont talk to each other

what does it take for THAT to finally happen
by khaledh | 2025-07-30 22:31:26+00:00
I'm an experienced software engineer (20+ years experience). I really liked the agentic coding capabilities, especially Claude Code. In addition to using it at work (data engineering), I used it for a hobby project (that I intended to contribute as open source). It was a new systems programming language built from scratch, including the backend. It was not fully fledged, but it had the core pieces: a static type system, algebraic data types, pattern matching with destructuring, type checker, ownership (pointer capabilities), dynamic scope region-based memory management, lowering to SSA-based IR (including fast dominance analysis), graph coloring register allocator with liveness interference, and x86-64 assembly generation. I did this in two weeks, something I couldn't do by myself in 6 months.

As I did this, I was keeping everything documented using a memory bank approach[1], so that I can fire up Claude Code and get it up to speed without explaining everything from scratch. Even with this disciplined approach, the code base got to a point where Claude would "forget" the big picture and start trying to optimize locally, hurting the global optimum. Eventually, I got burnt out by having to keep it in check every time it tried to do something stupid. I found myself always needing to remind it to check other modules to see how things fit together. I guess the memory bank got big with many concepts and relationships that Claude "got lost" in it.

Also, I realized that I missed the opportunity to learn deeply all those topics. so now I'm back to coding things myself, with little help from Cursor Tab, that's it. Will see how that goes.

[1] https://docs.cline.bot/prompting/cline-memory-bank
by hugs | 2025-07-30 22:31:27+00:00
"Vibe coding" is too perfect of a phrase. It's the next "cloud computing", where it continued to expand in meaning until even Gmail was considered "cloud computing". ("Cloud computing" used to have a very specific meaning - spin up a bunch of machines, do a task, then throw them away. It was built into Amazon's product name for it - EC2 - Elastic Compute Cloud. But "cloud" was too perfect of a metaphor to stay that limited.
by voxleone | 2025-07-30 22:31:52+00:00
Upon reading the title, I would have expected some gravitational redshift to be part of the explanation, which made me wonder—are we sure none of that deep gravity well effect is contributing to the redness? That said, I understand the community tends to favor AGN-related causes: rapid Doppler broadening of emission lines, infrared dust reprocessing, and cosmological redshift seem to account for most of what’s observed.
by andy_ppp | 2025-07-30 22:32:09+00:00
I think most software is extremely buggy and it’s about to get much worse… just today several comments just disappeared from YouTube, did they even get written there? Uber has a whole feature about upgrading to Uber Comfort - it’s never worked once for me just gives an error. Three have managed to not take PAYG top up automatically for the nth time. Google’s UI is broken everywhere, loads of sites including John Lewis don’t seem to scroll on my iPhone 15 Pro Max and the camera still doesn’t work correctly in WhatsApp (macro mode is not automatic) and don’t get me started on how buggy Dynamic Island is etc. etc.

There’s just shit buggy software everywhere now and I’m definitely not expecting AI to make the way we build things better.
by IshKebab | 2025-07-30 22:32:36+00:00
I often hear this sort of thing "Facebook was a success using PHP therefore language choice isn't important" or in this case "superhuman made their product fast and they still failed so speed isn't important".

It's obviously wrong if you think about it for more than a second. All it shows is that speed isn't the only thing that matters but who was claiming that?

Speed is important. Being slow doesn't guarantee failure. Being fast doesn't guarantee success. It definitely helps though!
by neilv | 2025-07-30 22:32:40+00:00
I register my side project domain names on Namecheap now... partly because they have a marketplace for selling the domain when I decide to scratch the launch.

(Most recent example: I made an unreleased browser extension for HN, the MVP feature of which is to let you block annoying users, such that any of their comments are replaced with poop emoji. But since I can't put an AI spin on that, to attract funding or job offers, I'm better off selling the domain names, and not spending any more time on it.)
by lirena00 | 2025-07-30 22:32:47+00:00
it takes a bit of time to put filters over website so it is normal to have that but I will see what I can do with it

and

androids do usually have a greyscale mode on the devices preinstalled, I can work around a bit to make it compatible with firefox android as well but I think an app is what you are looking for? greyscaling particular apps right?