MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by persolb | 2025-07-31 22:00:09+00:00
Alon Levy being brought up on this topic always tweaks my “but somebody is wrong in the internet.” I’ve been on several of the projects he talks about. He’s right about the macro numbers and the general vibe, but often wrong when he starts talking about he details.

The main issues are, in general: 1) increased regulation, which includes internal self-regulation. Lots of rules that are preventing potential minor problems, but have a lot of overhead to follow. 2) large projects are treated like a Christmas Tree. Everybody expects their vaguely adjacent hobby horse to be addressed by the project… so scope keeps growing. There is ALWAYS something you can point to that has a good cost/benefit; and always addressing these ensures that the project never actually finishes. 3) lack of decision making. There is a general analysis paralysis and fear of making the wrong call. It’s often cheaper to just move ahead and risk rework. By not moving ahead, change orders are being incurred anyway.

As much as a hate saying it, the best thing for any large project in these orgs is being run by a semi-dictator who has enough political capital internal to the org, and who strongly objects to anything outside of scope.
Show HN: I built a voice-first tool for Twitter, pivoted to cursor for X
by siim | 2025-07-31 22:00:38+00:00
Earlier this July, I had a rare week to focus, so I built a tool that let you call in, speak your idea, and schedule a Twitter post. My background is in voice tech, which gave me an intuition for how these systems work. In a three-week window, I launched that voice-first version, playing with ElevenLabs to make it happen. After launch, I didn't get much traction. One fan from X tried it out and suggested having a UI for editing posts before publishing. I realized that pure voice wasn't enough.

Last week, I figured that a chat-based, cursor-like interface would be cool, so I quickly shifted to that. Now, X11.social lets you start with a voice brain dump or typed text, then edit and polish your posts before sending them to X.

I'm still absolutely figuring out the market here. With no marketing background, I started posting some video logs to X and just documenting the journey. I've met many interesting people during this journey in such a short period.

If you're interested in creating authentic posts for X without overthinking, I'd appreciate any feedback.

By the way, X11 is not that X11 protocol from the old days. "X" is for the platform, "11" is a nod to voice AI, originally inspired by ElevenLabs. I'm building custom voice infrastructure nearly done!, but kept the name - it just fits the "call to tweet" vision.
by Twirrim | 2025-07-31 22:00:53+00:00
The queuing discipline used by default (pfifo_fast) is barely more than 3 FIFO queues bundled together. The 3 queues allow for a barest minimum semblance of prioritisation of traffic, where Queue 0 > 1 > 2, and you can tweak some tcp parameters to have your traffic land in certain queues. If there's something in queue 0 it must be processed first before anything in queue 1 gets touched etc.

Those queues operate purely head-of-queue basis. If what is at the top of the queue 0 is blocked in any way, the whole queue behind it gets stuck, regardless of if it is talking to the same destination, or a completely different one.

I've seen situations where a glitching network card caused some serious knock on impacts across a whole cluster, because the card would hang or packets would drop, and that would end up blocking the qdisc on a completely healthy host that was in the middle of talking to it, which would have impacts on any other host that happened to be talking to that healthy host. A tiny glitch caused much wider impacts than you'd expect.

The same kind of effect would happen from a VM that went through live migration. The tiny, brief pause would cause a spike of latency all over the place.

There are classful alternatives like fq_codel that can be used, that can mitigate some fo this, but you do have to pay a small amount of processing overhead on every packet, because now you have a queuing discipline that actually needs to track some semblance of state.
by GhosT078 | 2025-07-31 22:01:35+00:00
I have used SPARK Ada myself on a couple of security focused products developed by a team of 10-15 developers. For a long time, SPARK has made use of formal methods practical for real-world software. Effective use does require learning and commitment, but that's within reason. By the time the projects were nearly done, I felt that the SPARK findings always turned out to be correct and that any remaining problems could be traced back to poor or missing requirements, not the implementation itself.
by jgerrish | 2025-07-31 22:01:56+00:00
The name of this bill, "Block BEARD" is what really gets me.

It's a simple thing. Just a casual joke that means nothing to most people.

I worry because there are millions of young citizens who are going to have to work harder either for new political parties or to overturn this kind of language and jab.

We can't ever prove it's a higher level system that keeps every next generation in perpetual non-paying advocacy and grassroots political work. That's deeply unsettling.
by logicchains | 2025-07-31 22:02:09+00:00
>Many strong believers seem to think "a constant rate of relative growth" is so intuitive as to be unquestionable.

Because they never give a rigorous definition of intelligence. The most rigorous definition in psychology is the G factor, which correlates with IQ and the ability to solve various tasks well, and which empirically shows diminishing returns in terms of productivity.

A more general definition is "the relative ability to solve problems (and relative speed at solving them)". Attempting to model this mathematically inevitably leads into theoretical computer science and computational complexity, because that's the field that tries to classify problems and their difficulty. But computational complexity theory shows that only a small class of the problems we can model achieve linear benefit from a linear increase in computing power, and of the problems we can't model, we have no reason to believe they mostly fall in this category. Whereas believers implicitly assume that the vast majority of problems fall into that category.
by scblock | 2025-07-31 22:02:28+00:00
Commuting from the Springs to Denver every day, so 22-23 days a month, 60-70 miles one way...

Is that worth $500?

Quick math:

$4/gallon, 35 mpg, 120 miles a day, so $14/day in gas, plus extra maintenance, and the 3 hours a day of your life you'll never get back.

Couldn't claim with a straight face myself that the math works.
by turbtsubs | 2025-07-31 22:03:23+00:00
"IRS Reforms Free File Program, Drops Agreement Not to Compete with TurboTax" (2019) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21923220

"IRS has lost one-quarter of its IT staff since Trump took office" (2025) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44661414

"Show HN: A continuation of IRS Direct File that can be self-hosted" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44428438
by jasongill | 2025-07-31 22:03:39+00:00
I just had to check if it even existed because I was sure that I had a CGI book that focused on Perl from O'Reilly in the late 90's, and sure enough, the book I had was published in 1996 (with a second edition released in 2000).

Not saying your anecdote is inaccurate, but my perception around that time was that "Learn PHP in 24 Hours" was a lot hotter than O'Reilly's Perl books - so it may have just been luck, marketing, a flashier title, or even just that PHP was better suited for what people wanted to learn and do.
by londons_explore | 2025-07-31 22:04:22+00:00
I really don't see how GitHub can justify allowing public access to dangling commits.

Surely they have a whole army of paying customers demanding proper data deletion ability (required for all kinds of legal reasons - eg. We accidentally committed code we don't have a licence for, or PII of Europeans, etc).

A simple rule saying 'any commit which ever has a refcount of zero will become forever inaccessible unless reuploaded' would do the trick.
by elcritch | 2025-07-31 22:06:07+00:00
I would say the modern digital world itself has already had the bigger impact on human thinking, at least at work.

It seems with computers we often think and reason far less than without. Everything required thought previously, now we can just copy and paste out word docs for everything. PowerPoints are how key decisions are communicated in most professional settings.

Before modern computers and especially the internet we also had more time for deep thinking and reasoning. The sublimity of deep thought in older books amazes me and it feels like modern authors are just slightly less deep on average.

So then LLMs are in my view an incremental change rather than a stepwise change with respect to its effects on human cognitive.

In some ways LLMs allow us to return a bit to more humanistic deep thinking. Instead of spending hours looking up minutia on Google, StackOverflow, etc now we can ask our favorite LLM instead. It gives us responses with far less noise.

Unlike with textbooks we can have dialogues and have it take different perspectives. Whereas textbooks only gave you that authors perspective.

Of course, it’s up to individuals to use it well and as a tool to sharpen thinking rather than replace it.
by kevstev | 2025-07-31 22:07:07+00:00
I bought a UDM about two years ago, and it was a real mess for about 6 months. It was hanging every few weeks which required a hard reboot- which was shocking, because this was my first attempt at upgrading my network to more expensive and capable stuff, and for the previous 20 years, had never had an issue with my network equipment hanging or rebooting. They were going to RMA my UDM, but then they had me install a special release as a last try, and it worked, and everything has worked well since then.

That said though, do I really need these features? The biggest draw was having a proper AP to put on my ceiling instead of my old google wifi pucks. The upgrade from wifi 5 to 6e was not noticeable in any way. I spent 3x the money and really have nothing tangible to show for it aside from a cool UI to log into, which was never necessary prior because everything Just Worked.

Also- this may be my fault for not reading the fine print, but the IDS stuff on the UDM only works at 600mbps, and I have a gigabit connection. People in Unifi forums will tell me I am the idiot for assuming that, but it has gigabit ports, its 2023... I just ass/u/me/d that everything would work without issue at line speed and wouldn't have to read the spec sheet like a lawyer.

Anyway, its fine in the end. I would never buy anything cutting edge from them again, I want anything to bake for at least 6 months after release, which is usually how long it takes for their "shipping" stuff to become actually available anyway. I will stop whining now :)
by mschuster91 | 2025-07-31 22:07:32+00:00
> That's not a huge issue for me most of the time, but billions of people are using mobile phones as their only access to the internet, especially in developing countries that are practically skipping widespread copper and fiber infrastructure and moving directly to 5G instead.

For what it's worth: Romania, one of the piss poorest countries of Europe, has a perfectly fine mobile phone network, and even outback small villages have XGPON fiber rollouts everywhere. Germany? As soon as you cross into the country from Austria, your phone signal instantly drops, barely any decent coverage outside of the cities. And forget about PON, much less GPON or even XGPON.

Germany should be considered a developing country when it comes to expectations around telecommunication.
by rangestransform | 2025-07-31 22:07:57+00:00
The SAS is a joke, putting its name on the same list as actually impressive feats like the proof of Fermat's Last Theorem insults everything else on the list. It's the most expensive subway line worldwide per mile, ever, despite the existence of technology that made tunnelling easier. Inflation adjusted, it costs more per mile than hand-digging one of the PATH tubes with 1900s technology [1]. Its cost and duration are almost entirely due to politics and not technical and logistical challenges, including the MTA political fiefdom fighting the Park Board political fiefdom, make-work-program labour spending, staff paid to have their thumbs up their asses in the tunnels [2], deep-bore tunneling instead of cut-and-cover to avoid political fighting, and MTA departments wanting their miniature fiefdom dug into the ground at each station [3]. The SAS is a project that should bring great shame to everyone in charge and everyone who stood around in the tunnels getting paid to do nothing.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uptown_Hudson_Tubes (tunnel happens to be about a mile and it cost 21 million 1905 dollars)

[2] https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/28/nyregion/new-york-subway-...

[3] https://pedestrianobservations.com/2023/12/09/the-mta-sticks...
by 7373737373 | 2025-07-31 22:08:27+00:00
Interesting new contender for simplest to state unsolved problem: The Antihydra

Does this program halt?

a = 8 b = 0 while b != -1: if a % 2 == 0: b += 2 else: b -= 1 a += a//2

(// being integer division, equivalently a binary shift one to the right: >> 1)

https://www.sligocki.com/2024/07/06/bb-6-2-is-hard.html

https://bbchallenge.org/antihydra
by zzo38computer | 2025-07-31 22:08:35+00:00
> you have only the fundamental datatypes as a requirement

Not really; the set of datatypes has problems. It uses Unicode, not binary data and not non-Unicode text. Numbers are usually interpreted as floating point numbers rather than integers, which can also be a problem. Keys can only be strings. And, other problems. So, the data types are not very good.

And, since it is a text format, it means that escaping is required.

> And while you have to write type converters all the time for datetime, BLOBs etc.

Not having a proper data type for binary means that you will need to encode it using different types and then avoids the benefit of JSON, anyways. So, I think JSON is not as helpful.

I think DER is better (you do not have to use all of the types; only the types that you are using is necessary to be implemented, because the format of DER makes it possible to skip anything that you do not care about), and I made up TER which is text based format which can be converted to DER (so, even though a binary data is represented as text, it is still representing the binary data type, rather than needing to use the wrong data type like JSON does).

> And you can complain or explain with JSON: "Comments not a feature?! WTF!" - Add a field with the key "comment"

But then it is a part of the data, which you might not want.
by pns1 | 2025-07-31 22:08:36+00:00
Very interesting and cool project.

Creating an accurate call graph is difficult, especially for dynamic languages such as JavaScript or TypeScript. The academia has spent decades of effort on this. I am wondering why your custom parser could do this much better. And, I am interested in how to store dynamic typing information into Protobuf's strong typing system.

Due to the limited context window, it is definitely unaffordable to provide the entire application's source code to the model. I am wondering what kind of "context" information is generally helpful for bug detection, like the call chain?
by logicchains | 2025-07-31 22:08:42+00:00
>As for an impending AI singularity - no one has the first clue what the limits are.

That's simply untrue. Theoretical computer scientists understand the lower bounds limits of many classes of problems. And that for many problems, it's mathematically impossible to significantly improve performance in them with only a linear increase in computing power, regardless of the algorithm/brain/intelligence. Many problems would even not benefit much from a superlinear increase in computing power, because of the nature of exponential growth. For a chaotic system in the mathematical sense, where prediction grows exponentially harder with time, even exactly predicting one minute ahead could require more compute than could be provided by turning the entire known universe into a computer.
by contingencies | 2025-07-31 22:08:48+00:00
perl5 -> php3 here. I'd say PHP won for the following reasons: 1. Easier to set up. 2. More homogeneous environment which meant easier deployment across the hosts of the day. 3. More secure (a bit). 4. Unicode actually worked. 5. Far more logical syntax: did not have to man perldsc[0] every time you wanted a data structure of greater depth than a monodimensional hash or array. 6. Language features like scalars which made programming easier. 7. Often less files... it was designed to be embedded inside of HTML instead of generating it.

[0] https://perldoc.perl.org/perldsc
by leptons | 2025-07-31 22:11:39+00:00
Silicon will improve, but not fast enough to calm investors. And better silicon won't change the fact that the current zeitgeist is basically a word guessing game.

$20 month won't get you much, if you're paying above what it costs to run the "AI", and for what? Answers that are in the ballpark of suspicious and untrustworthy?

Maybe they just need to keep spending until all the people who can tell slop from actual knowledge are all dead and gone.
by LeftHandPath | 2025-07-31 22:12:20+00:00
Jeez, that arxiv paper invalidates my assumption that it can't model the game. Great read. Thank you for sharing.

Insane that the model actually does seem to internalize a representation of the state of the board -- rather than just hitting training data with similar move sequences.

...Makes me wish I could get back into a research lab. Been a while since I've stuck to reading a whole paper out of legitimate interest.

(Edit) At the same time, it's still worth noting the accuracy errors and the potential for illegal moves. That's still enough to prevent LLMs from being applied to problem domains with severe consequences, like banking, security, medicine, law, etc.
by JohnFen | 2025-07-31 22:12:44+00:00
I don't know. I think they realize how antihuman their efforts are. It's kindof hard to miss that message. Even on a small scale... look the comments that regularly appear on HN that defend genAI by overtly denigrating the value of humanity.

I think the tech CEOs don't care. They want to maximize power and profit, and will say anything they think will get people to go along with their program.
by brudgers | 2025-07-31 22:14:08+00:00
If I were a VC (I am not) my concerns would be:

“Why is nobody working with this solo founder? Is it bcause they are difficult to work with, greedy, or unable to sell their vision to other people?”

Each of those make rocket ship growth less likely because big companies require teams. So convincing evidence would be success or an obvious different reason for solo status like just got out of prison.

I mean if you know a cofounder improves your chance of getting to the next level, but you are unwilling to do that, how likely is it you will get to the level beyond the next level?

But I am not a VC. Good luck.
by nik_0_0 | 2025-07-31 22:14:17+00:00
Zachtronics has an excellent game(?) Shenzhen I/O which is such a good simulacrum of an embedded SDE; reading datasheets, coding, and sending emails, that I couldn't play it!

But I highly recommend it, if thats not your day job - or if you are curious about making it so!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/504210/SHENZHEN_IO/
by lukeschlather | 2025-07-31 22:14:39+00:00
The predictions in this paper are 100% correct. The author doesn't predict we would have ASI by now. They accurately predict that Moore's law would likely start to break down by 2012, and they also accurately predicted that EUV will allow further scaling beyond that barrier but that things will get harder. You may think LLMs are nothing like "real" AI but I'm curious what you think about the arguments in this paper and what sort of hardware is required for a "real" AI, if a "real" AI does not require hardware with in the neighborhood of 10^14 and 10^17 operations per second.

Whether or not LLMs are the correct algorithm, the hardware question is much more straightforward and that's what this paper is about.
by redleader55 | 2025-07-31 22:15:11+00:00
> QUIC goes significantly up the OSI network stack, is layer 5+, where-as TCP+TLS is layer 3

IP is layer 3 - network(ensures packets are routed to the correct host). TCP is layer 4 - transport(some people argue that TCP has functions from layer 5 - eg. establishing sessions between apps), while TLS adds a few functions from layer 6(eg. encryption), which QUIC also has.
by pzullo | 2025-07-31 22:16:03+00:00
Hey, thanks for your detailed feedback, it's helpful to be challenged. Here are some quick thoughts:

One: We've heard similar feedback on Langchain dependency. We also heard it is still widely used in enterprise settings despite its limitations. We're actively exploring alternatives, but it is a pretty crowded space and we could not find the best alternative yet. I'm curious: is there a specific solution you'd recommend? Shall we have our own LLM layer ?

Two: Agreed on observability client-side, improvements are on our roadmap, though currently prioritized lower based on user needs. Regarding security, we manage server-side risks via sandboxes, tool restrictions, and upcoming access control features. Preventing tool poisoning client-side is something we'll look into further. You have any other specific suggestions client side ?

Three: The "infinite server" scenario is not the main focus on the library, I am sorry if that is how is sounded. It is more of an interesting solution to an interesting problem that we wanted to share.

Four: Totally agree on prioritizing quality over quantity. mcp-use emphasizes flexibility and ease of integration, not necessarily connecting to numerous servers. Reliability is a server-client joint effort, when we work with companies this is one of our main focuses.

Five: While similar solutions exist, we've found our approach resonates well with users based on adoption and feedback. That said, this is not the end of the road, we are working and talking with many companies and solving many of the issues you mentioned, most are not so easy to integrate in the library and we offer only as part of our cloud offering.

Thanks again for challenging our thinking! And please if you have inputs it'd be great to have them
Testing the full AI editorial system on No Cap Blog
by McSeneka | 2025-07-31 22:16:23+00:00
I recently tested No Cap's AI capabilities. The AI itself centered the conversation around a project I've been developing for several months for internal use in my own projects, centered around the idea of converting it to SaaS. I suggested that it would be better to have some public use cases, and that's how I decided to create the No Cap blog with my system.

Since this is the first public project and is completely related to YC, I'd like your feedback on it. The content generated by the autonomous system is under the subdirectory https://nocap.blog/founder/. There are more than 8,000 founder profiles from all YC batches.

I built AutoPost for commercial and transactional use, however, it also seems to be working for informational use. In the few days (4) since it's been live, it's surpassed 300 organic visitors.

Thank you very much for the help and any feedback you may have.
by aeon_ai | 2025-07-31 22:16:44+00:00
The author misses the deeper game: if you genuinely believe AGI is imminent, then current economic metrics become meaningless. Why optimize for revenue when the entire concept of scarcity-based economics dissolves?

The $560B for those who believe in AGI isn't about ROI using today's money-in/money-out formula; it's about power positioning for a post-capitalist transition.

Every major player knows that whoever controls the infrastructure once the threshold is crossed might control what comes after.

The "bubble" narrative assumes these actors are optimizing for quarterly returns rather than civilizational leverage.