MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by WorldMaker | 2025-07-22 15:31:02+00:00
> No workspaces/profiles. I know there are extensions that can enable various flavours of this functionality, but it's just too much overhead to experiment and test every-single-one.

Most of it is built-in and these days there is generally only one recommended extension: Multi-Account Container. Containers (tabs in the same window with different cookie jars/etc) are built-in, the UI for working with them is not, and MAC is the generally agreed best UI. It lets you create as many named Containers as you want and assign them a color to gently stripe your tabs. You can right-click the new tab button and get a list of Containers to open the next tab in. You can right-click an existing tab and reopen it in a new Container. (TIL from this article there's an option to have left click on the new tab button always open the Container menu. I don't think I'd use that, but it's nice to know.)

If you want to go older school, Profiles (browser windows with different extensions/cookie jars/everything) have been around since the beginning of Firefox (and it shows in how old and ugly some of the UI still is, hah). `about:profiles` is a profile manager when you are already inside a Firefox browser. The `-ProfileManager` command line switch is the ancient startup option to manage profiles before opening a browser window at all. If you like to use side-by-side profiles often you want `-noremote -ProfileManager` and/or `-noremote -P $profileName` shortcuts. (`-noremote` says not to send it to any currently open Firefox window.)
Show HN: I made an interactive prompt compression demo
by Promptropy | 2025-07-22 15:31:30+00:00
Hello HN,

I am Zachary, co-founder of Promptropy - the world’s first prompt compression API. Linked is a demo for our first public endpoint for context-agnostic text compression.

Prompt compression is based on the idea that LLMs don’t need many of the quirks of natural language, allowing them to extract equivalent meaning from a prompt 2-20x smaller than the original one. This allows us to intelligently remove tokens from a prompt—making it nearly unreadable to a human, yet still perfectly clear to the LLM (try this by asking a model like GPT-4 to summarize a long passage vs a compressed one).

Please feel free to try out the demo we linked! We would love the HN community’s feedback on what we have built and what can be better.

Thank you!
by rsync | 2025-07-22 15:31:30+00:00
An important nit I need to pick…

These are items you receive along with your insurance.

They are not insurable events and they are not “covered” like an insurable event.

Predictable, regularly occurring events cannot be covered by insurance by definition. You can’t adjust it, you can’t assemble a risk pool, etc.

We use the word “insurance” to mean “nice things that I like” but I think we’d have more enthusiasm for socialized medicine if we knew how much of “insurance” was nothing of the sort.
by Supermancho | 2025-07-22 15:31:48+00:00
There is no doubt, given the status quo. ie Trump has no medical issues.

There will be a national emergency declared unsurprisingly to push back the election. Some states will perform some form of election to the best of their ability. Then SCOTUS declares that the unitary executive has the power to do this and we're in for a rough ride.

That being said, this UNESCO departure is a nothingburger that has more to do with Israel solidarity than anything else.
by _DeadFred_ | 2025-07-22 15:32:08+00:00
Stocks have changed from the prior concept of stocks. Stock buybacks used to be illegal stock manipulation. Lifestyles didn't used to be financed via loans using stock as collateral. Companies used to be managed for the long term and dividends not this quarter's impact on stock value.

The rich initiated the changes but keep going 'what who me? They're just stocks' like it's 1940 when the public calls them out for it.
by redleader55 | 2025-07-22 15:32:11+00:00
I think(lol) that assuming the other side stupid is one of the big failures of current political environment. Honestly, I'm baffled that is "ok" to say something like "the other side is stupid" without being called out harshly for it. Using weasel words expressions like "seemingly smart people" doesn't make it better, it makes it worse.
by louthy | 2025-07-22 15:32:32+00:00
> The behaviour is expected for the language design.

So, Microsoft meant it. Ok...

> Whether developers using the language expect it is a separate matter.

Really? Perhaps read the 'Principle of Least Astonishment' [1] to see why this is a problem. If I create a new object I would expect the 'init time' properties to be initialised.

> It's probably worth reading the entire article, as that quote is followed by: "(At least, not in any sort of straightforward way – I’ll mention a convoluted approach later.)", which presumably was what was being referred to there.

It's probably worth continuing to read the article. Because the attempt to deal with it required manual writing of Lazy properties:

private readonly Lazy<ComputedMembers> computed = new(() => new(Value), LazyThreadSafetyMode.ExecutionAndPublication);

That's not practical. Might as well use computed properties.

> In general, there's a whole ton of gotchyas around encapsulation of precomputed values. That's just life outside of a purely functional programming context.

Great insight. Let's not run the 'init time' properties for a newly initialised object, just in case it works as expected. This 'feature' can't even be manually resolved by doing post-`with` updates (because often the properties are init/read-only). It makes the whole init-property feature brittle as fuck.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_least_astonishmen...
by oldandboring | 2025-07-22 15:32:37+00:00
As a Jewish American my experience has lately been that about 25% of the Jews in my circle have always been Republicans and are all-in on this administration, believing that Jewish people and the State of Israel have no better friend than Donald Trump, and that all previous (Democratic) administrations have been anti-Israel. The other 75% are moderate Democrats who roll their eyes at the idea that Trump, his admin, or the vast majority of his voters care one iota about Jews or Israel, that they've found a convenient pretext for clamping down on private institutions and free speech, and see only minor differences in their actual foreign policy vis-a-vis the Middle East and Israel.

I consider myself a moderate's moderate and I do see where everyone's coming from, but if you held a gun to my head I'd probably agree with you: it's not actually about Israel.
by verall | 2025-07-22 15:32:47+00:00
You're comparing different estimate sources and still ignoring that someone moving to round rock or ceder park is still a part of the housing pressure for the city of Austin.

A low-single-digit push to local burbs happened all over the country. "Austin" in the same way people discuss "Houston" or "Chicago" i.e. the local metro area has grown every year.
by robotnixon | 2025-07-22 15:32:54+00:00
It's misleading. Obama tried to maintain funding UNESCO:

"In 2011, the United States stopped funding Unesco because of what was then a forgotten, 15-year-old amendment mandating a complete cutoff of American financing to any United Nations agency that accepts Palestine as a full member. Various efforts by President Barack Obama to overturn the legal restriction narrowly failed in Congress, and the United States lost its vote at the organization after two years of nonpayment, in 2013."

https://web.archive.org/web/20220503183152/https://www.nytim...
by foobarian | 2025-07-22 15:32:57+00:00
The surface arguments for abandoning these kinds of programs (also USAID, recalling diplomats, bunch of research funding) seem straightforward: "there is a deficit, why pay all this money for ostensibly wasteful work, etc."

Where I get frustrated is when the admin turns around and massively expands the deficit by throwing cargo ships full of money at other wasteful, in my opinon, programs. That tells me the fiscal responsibility talk was just a pretense to do another kind of money grab and "own the libs" at the same time. And at the end of the day the argument reduces to opinions on what is wasteful and what is not.

Example: you claim UN hasn't been a source of soft power "for the better part of this century." Well, says you - I think it has done a great job. Now what?
by MattRix | 2025-07-22 15:32:58+00:00
“They're not really capable of generating anything novel”

This is one of those statements that can be comforting, but is only true for increasingly specific definitions of “novel”. It relies on looking at inputs (how LLMs work) vs outputs (what they actually create).

A multi-modal LLM can draw “inspiration” from numerous sources, enough to make outputs that have never been created before. They can absolutely make novel things.

I think the real question is whether they can have taste. Can they really tell good ideas from bad ones beyond obvious superficial issues?
by kennywinker | 2025-07-22 15:33:05+00:00
UNICEF’s mission is “providing humanitarian and developmental aid to children worldwide”

Children in gaza are being intentionally starved by israel blocking food aid. At least 15 people including one infant have been starved to death in the past 24 hours.

UNESCO’s mission is preservation of cultural heritage. Gaza and the west bank are being ethnically cleansed, and their arts and culture have already been physically destroyed by US bombs dropped by israel. This will destroy cultural groups, thus leaving little to preserve.

The world is political. You give someone a goal of preserving culture, or protecting children, and all of a sudden they’ll start speaking out when you destroy culture and starve children.
by jasperry | 2025-07-22 15:33:15+00:00
I agree. This is a very enlightening discussion of individual glyph features that affect readability. But the thing that hit me immediately is the difference in how expanded or condensed these fonts feel. Even though in the examples, the text width of JetBrains and Fira is identical, JetBrains "looks" condensed to the point of being harder to read. But I feel like Atkinson goes too far the other direction and is too expanded. When I read it, I feel like I'm tripping over the empty space between the characters, or I have to move my eyes too much to read one word.
by exiguus | 2025-07-22 15:33:22+00:00
The article left me with one question: If LLMs use human-written documentation or words, like books and articles, as training data right now (which is obviously the best quality you can get), what will LLMs use in the future? When will we reach the point of no return, where training data is data produced by LLMs (which is obviously of lesser quality)?
by scosman | 2025-07-22 15:33:23+00:00
There's a section about Openrouter/LiteLLM: https://getkiln.ai/blog/i_wrote_2000_llm_test_cases_so_you_d...

Those tools map API compatibility. These tests+config add:

1) check which features are available

2) check which parameters you need to use for best results. For example, there are about 6 different options for requesting JSON from OpenRouter, and different models work best with different options.

3) check that the features consistently work. API compatibility and functionality are not the same.

4) Go much deeper: are the models good enough for synthetic data generation? Can they generate uncensored model inputs if you're building a toxicity eval? etc.
by TOGoS | 2025-07-22 15:33:25+00:00
When I have a thought about how some piece of code could/should be improved, but it's not urgent, instead of

// TODO: Refactor this by doing X, Y, Z

I'll say

// Hmm: This seems brittle. We might want to X, Y, Z this such that W.

My IDE will list all the TODOs and I don't like to clutter that list with stuff that isn't strictly necessary, but it is nice to have some string--"Hmm:", in this case--that I can grep for or recognize as indicating that I thought about this already.
by bricej13 | 2025-07-22 15:33:36+00:00
I think it's the best of both worlds. Tons of free components right out of the box for non-designer developers (like bootstrap), but you still have the power of Tailwind at your fingertips.

I think the theming & semantic color support is underrated. You just use `-primary` or `-secondary` classes everywhere instead of hardcoding the colors. The theme colors are then just updated with css variables.

Dark mode is free, you don't have to pepper your code with a million "dark:*" classes.
Show HN: I built a task manager for people that plan their tasks weekly
by zesfy | 2025-07-22 15:33:43+00:00
Hi everyone,

I’m the founder of Zesfy, a productivity app that I've been building over the past few years.

I build Zesfy to help you quickly organize your daily tasks by showing your weekly to-do and letting you pick the task you want to tackle today with just one tap which cut daily planning time to just under 30 seconds. Here are some of its key features:

- Automatic task progress

- Group and schedule multiple tasks together to you calendar

- Quickly filter events from specific set of calendars

- Multi-level subtasks

- Due date
by clvx | 2025-07-22 15:34:35+00:00
who says it's about lowering the bar. If someone can build a more concrete view of their ideas which in most cases are requirements, then the conversation can be about nuances and not trying to figure it out what this person wants. I would say, It makes the conversation of the software development process easier because now you can discuss exactly why or why not it cannot be possible or the challenges you'll have to implement it.
by fragmede | 2025-07-22 15:34:42+00:00
Depends how critical computers are to one's life, I think. I wouldn't call myself a cook, but I need to eat, so I can make a mean bowl of pasta when it comes down to it. Given another five-ten years of development, I expect tooling to develop that lets everyone automate computers to a degree previously reserved for professional programmers, akin to what the microwave oven did for cooking. The ability to microwave a hot pocket doesn't remotely make me a cook, but I won't starve, either.
by superkuh | 2025-07-22 15:34:42+00:00
Yeah, I can see that. But for human people not at work there are no products. There are no "expensive" mistakes. There's just the ability to automate tasks and do simple things they, I, couldn't do before. No reason at all to involve any businesses now.

Or at least before $project would take weeks instead of an hour. I don't know C but now I can just have an LLM translate/port it to perl and I can fix the mistakes in that domain where I do have skill.
by Workaccount2 | 2025-07-22 15:34:51+00:00
The democrats losing support of hispanics, blacks, and men under 50 in the 2024 election is directly a function of the culture war.

If you insist on using the term "Latinx" and every Latino tells you that you are a self righteous idiot, listen to them. If you run the slogan "defund the police" despite inner city populations being the most in favor of police funding, listen to them. If you push the phrase "toxic masculinity" while young men move to the right in droves, listen to them.

And if your response to this is "That's not what those terms mean!", taking a marketing 101 class.
by phtrivier | 2025-07-22 15:34:55+00:00
Please give me the (safe) place where I can bet that the CO2 concentration will be higher next year than now. And show me the (solvent) people ready to bet the contrary.

My next bet will be about "fire burns" and "water wets", please. [1]

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GTU38cbXCGQ
by hombre_fatal | 2025-07-22 15:35:16+00:00
Dunno, I sold blood plasma in uni. IIRC I made $75/week doing it.

I think the trade offs are all sensible here.

1. It doesn't depend on politics, it already works today

2. You have to plan for and show up to a place to get the money and ensure your blood remains valuable, all of which promote a basic semblance of order in your life, especially when you're on the ropes.

3. You save lives and are compensated for it

4. In the area between having no money vs having a job, pretty much anything I can think of to make money is worse than selling plasma.

It's a lucky quirk that you can sell your plasma, because you usually can't sell your blood even though countries, industry, hospitals, and insurance companies pay each other good money for it, just not to the person who created it.
by dmlittle | 2025-07-22 15:35:29+00:00
It depends on how much effort you put into it vs. just using any of the base templates/components that Tailwind Plus (previously Tailwind UI) has to offer.

If you look at their Showcase section[1], you can't tell it's using TailwindCSS for most of them (imo).

[1] https://tailwindcss.com/showcase
by iotku | 2025-07-22 15:35:34+00:00
I'm sure in larger codebases it can get unwieldy with tons of TODOs from a lot of different people, but for personal projects I've always found them a good compromise.

For me it's saying "yeah I know it could be better but I'm not going to break my train of thought over this and context switch. It's not so critical as to break functionality, this would just be nicer."

I really do appreciate TODO hilighting in editors for the odd occasion where I get back to something on a whim and feel like doing a quick fix then. (It's probably not realistically that common though and most will sit there indefinitely)
by throwanem | 2025-07-22 15:35:34+00:00
I'm explaining that there is no need to question whether language production and consciousness imply one another, in either direction; there has for some time been sufficient research to demonstrate that they do not. I'm not giving you a detailed list of citations because the ones on Wikipedia are fine. Between the links and the search terms I've provided, I feel my responsibility to inform fully discharged, inasmuch as the notional horse has now been led to water.

That much, thankfully, does not require "the hard problem of consciousness" [1] be solved. The argument you're trying to have does require such a solution, which is why you see me so assiduously avoiding it: I know very well how far above my pay grade that is. Good luck...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_problem_of_consciousness
by nyrikki | 2025-07-22 15:35:35+00:00
> Unfortunately, the C language has taken the "union" keyword from ALGOL 68, but instead of implementing proper disjoint union types, the C "union" has been made essentially identical with the FORTRAN EQUIVALENCE from 1956.

Many word address machines, explicitly the PDP-7, it was only the instructions that changed, with ADD being one's complement and YAD being two's

Remember we only got B/C because the PDP-7 didn't have enough ram to implement FORTRAN.

Similar reasons C case switch falls through, the PDP-7 SAD instruction forced it. Then they abused that fall through to support lower case on the PDP-11, which would have been powerful enough for the type of union you are talking about.

Midas/Macro assembly is tangential related but it is really a side effect of word addressable, accumulator/index machines.

IIRC, Lisp is a good example for the difference between equality by value, reference, or even predicated equality.

If you want to think about just how limited the PDP-7 was look at the instructions

www.bitsavers.org/pdf/dec/pdp7/PDP7_Instruction_list.pdf
by dixie_land | 2025-07-22 15:35:44+00:00
This is a welcome change but we can go even further: we should raise the bar for permanent immigration, but eliminate the intermediate steps in between (even green cards).

If you are exceptionally qualified you should just become a citizen (with the responsibilities and pledge of loyalty as a citizen). And we should fast track that for those who qualify (again, on a significantly higher bar)
by perihelions | 2025-07-22 15:35:47+00:00
The C. elegans PhD student at Univ. of Michigan was ordered held without bond[0], in June; and the Harvard Medical School researcher was freed by a judge after being—unlawfully—caged by ICE for 116 days[1].

Here's[2] the FBI director's Twitter thread about the C. elegans researcher, for a flavor of the MAGA sociology that's driving this. [edit]: His rhetoric in the case in [3] is even less hingèd.

[0] https://detroitnews.com/story/news/local/michigan/2025/06/27...

[1] https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-01958-4 ( https://archive.is/XIONv )

[2] https://xcancel.com/FBIDirectorKash/status/19322140473000796... ("This case is part of a broader effort from the FBI and our federal partners to heavily crack down on similar pathogeon [sic] smuggling operations, as the CCP works relentlessly to undermine America’s research institutions.")

[3] https://xcancel.com/FBIDirectorKash/status/19300448842845230... ("This case is a sobering reminder that the CCP is working around the clock to deploy operatives and researchers to infiltrate American institutions and target our food supply, which would have grave consequences... putting American lives and our economy at serious risk. Your FBI will continue working tirelessly to be on guard against it.")
by AaronAPU | 2025-07-22 15:35:54+00:00
I don’t know how people keep explaining away LLM sentience with language which equally applies to humans. It’s such a bizarre blindspot.

Not saying they are sentient, but the differentiation requires something which doesn’t also apply to us all. Is there any doubt we think through statistical correlations? If not that, what do you think we are doing?
by maybebyte | 2025-07-22 15:36:03+00:00
This is good feedback, thank you. When I wrote the article, I erred on the side of too few comparison images rather than too many. What would you recommend for comparison blocks? "The five boxing wizards jump quickly" and maybe a fizzbuzz?

For what it's worth, I generated the comparison images with Harfbuzz and ImageMagick, so in theory I could publish the script and then anyone could make their own comparison images. Fair warning: it's a quick and dirty shell script, written only to get the job done.
by 6510 | 2025-07-22 15:36:11+00:00
I one time had a hilarious chat with a 13 year old who started coding php/js when he was 9. He couldn't really code at all but every day for 4 years he examined/learned 3 things, libraries, api, frameworks. He knew how to query absolutely everything.

His projects were pure glue code. One was some data sets + some data visualization with charts + some map api. A few hours of work, it looked rather remarkable.

Our chat was specially hilarious since I take writing everything from scratch to the absurd level. His one trick was to know all the places online where you can ask your noob developer questions. He was working with a kind of imaginary token system where you get to ask a limited number of questions per month on each platform.

His queries were truly fantastic. A reasonable dev could answer them with little effort, sometimes the next guy would write out the glue code. He didn't ask for much.

13 seems some kind of magical sweet spot where we take the person just serious enough.

Sometimes people had questions about the API, he knew those inside out which was a hilarious contrast.

I asked him: What do you do when it stops working? The answer was to start from scratch. He posted the old glue code, explained it didn't work anymore and someone would answer the easy question.

The process was so completely alien to me that I'm not going to guess where the LLM's are taking us.
by queenkjuul | 2025-07-22 15:36:21+00:00
What i don't get is people who know better continuing to entertain the idea that "maybe the token generator is conscious" even if they know that these chats where it says it's been "awakened" are obviously not it.

I think a lot of people using AI are falling for the same trap, just at a different level. People want it to be conscious, including AI researchers, and it's good at giving them what they want.