MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by TeMPOraL | 2025-07-05 11:40:39+00:00
> but you can’t trust them to do a calculation in the middle of a task.

You can't trust a person either. Calculating is its own mode of thinking; if you don't pause and context switch, you're going to get it wrong. Same is the case with LLMs.

Tool usage and reasoning and "agentic approach" are all in part ways for allowing LLM to do the context switch required, instead of taking the match challenge as it goes and blowing it.
by notepad0x90 | 2025-07-05 11:41:10+00:00
I don't get the bandwagon here on HN. I'm happy for Lyon and European governments finding solutions that work for them, but like 99% of the world's corporations and governments run on Microsoft software on the desktop side of things.

I've used all the popular chat platforms like slack,matrix, discord or meeting solutions like zoom, goto,etc.. and Teams is by far the most cohesive and consistent experience. I've tried out google office, took a peek at zoho, libreoffice,etc... M365 is by a long margin the best office/document/spreadsheet suite. Even for my own personal use I'd rather use their web-based M365 tools.

Just objectively looking at this, I think I get that MS has been really bad for consumers in the last few years and being flippant with data privacy laws. If that is the reason, then I get it 100%, but quality of product sure isn't it. If I were them, I would just fine MS insane amounts of fines and maybe use the proceeds to fund and support alternative solutions. EU can fine MS whatever they want and MS will comply because of how important the market is to them. I'm also biased there because I'm hoping those fines would help us even by a small measure in the US.
by alistairSH | 2025-07-05 11:42:24+00:00
That’s an odd take for a massively successful person. In the realm of producing hip-hop, his taste and skill are at the top of the industry.

Sort of like saying Bill Belichick has a skill gap because he’s not a top NFL player. AFAIK he never played pro ball at all (and college wasn’t at a top D1 program). Bit, he’s undeniably one of the most successful coaches in the business.
by danaris | 2025-07-05 11:42:27+00:00
> historical figures burning their unfinished works before their death

> unfinished

Do you not see the difference between this and what is being discussed?

No one is saying that game studios have to release everything they are working on as open source from the moment they start writing code. They are saying that once a game is published and sold on the market, it needs to remain usable for as long as the actual hardware to run it is usable.
by huhkerrf | 2025-07-05 11:44:03+00:00
It's not whiny, in exact terms, it's something much worse: people not wanting to admit they can have agency.

You see this a ton on social media. People make excuses after excuses of why they can't get out of debt, why they can't lose weight, why they can't…

And, sure, some people have it tough and have the odds stacked against them. But most people would just prefer to swat down ideas on how to get what they want like they're playing Beat Saber.

(And I can be sure that someone will come through and accuse me of being insensitive because I haven't considered someone who has X, Y, or Z that only impacts .5% of the population, and almost never the person making the complaint.)
by cousin_it | 2025-07-05 11:44:51+00:00
Hi algo_lover, I also noticed that about the post. The approach being discussed is "pain reprocessing therapy". It was described in a book called The Way Out, by Alan Gordon and Alon Ziv. Here's my short summary of the book:

- Chronic pain is often generated by the brain, not any actual injury. Not always, but often. Especially if it gets worse during stress or high alert, and especially if the feeling of pain becomes connected to your fear of that same pain.

- In periods when pain is high, you need to kinda nurse it. Lie down, put warm water on it, whatever it takes. Don't try to power through the pain. Avoid situations where you have to power through.

- In periods when pain is moderate or low, take short sessions to examine it. "Ok, this isn't a threatening injury, this is just a sensation. Where is it located? What shape? Hot or cold? More dull or more like tingling?" Etc, etc. Don't hyperfocus, just explore the feeling in a light and curious way.
by latexr | 2025-07-05 11:45:47+00:00
> So there's the unwritten rule: you never upset the banks because that's the last thing you'll ever do.

What are they going to do? Whack him mafia style and make it look like an accident? Here’s a more realistic rule: “If you owe the bank $100, that's your problem. If you owe the bank $100 million, that's the bank's problem”.

https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/214064-if-you-owe-the-bank-...

> So why would the richest person on earth do that? He's not crazy.

You mean the guy who is so insecure he constantly lies, even about the most inconsequential things…

https://archive.ph/20250127023632/https://www.nytimes.com/20...

The guy who is so uninformed and gullible he falls for any conspiracy theory…

https://www.techdirt.com/2024/10/25/lies-damned-lies-and-elo...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3u8_fp1TtJE

The guy who jeopardised billions by buying into a random tweet accusing a business partner without proof…

https://voz.us/en/world/250308/21932/mexican-tycoon-carlos-s...

The guy who invested all his time and energy electing someone like him, only to then (predictably) have a falling out…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trump%E2%80%93Musk_feud

I mean, maybe he isn’t crazy, but that isn’t really an effective defense. Crazy people at least have an excuse.
by Sharlin | 2025-07-05 11:46:08+00:00
It’s such a ridiculous situation we’re in. Just about every consumer CPU of the past 20 years packs an extra order of magnitude or two of punch for data processing workloads, but to not let it go to waste you have to resort to writing your inner loops using low-level nonportable intrinsics that are just a step above assembly. Or pray that the gods of autovectorization are on your side.
by MangoToupe | 2025-07-05 11:46:29+00:00
I'd think that peoples' main objection to salad is the uncooked veggies, which isn't addressed at all with caesar salad. I don't generally trust raw vegetables to not make me sick. Especially in the US.

> The big uncut leaves are suited for slow nibbling of token amounts of salad.

What does this sentence even mean?
by diggan | 2025-07-05 11:46:54+00:00
> Bitcoin is still a criminal ecosystem in 2025

Welcome to reality, where good/neutral things sometimes are used for bad :) Name one financial system that doesn't have any elements of criminality involved in them.

> Its only real use case still is enabling illegal transactions and evading financial regulations, and that maintains its speculative value

So if I and others happen to have done at least one transaction with Bitcoin that wasn't illegal or evaded financial regulations, would presenting proof of that leading to you changing your view that there is no real use cases?

> that's still a scam not a true investment

Personally I draw the limit of what a "scam" is when it's intentionally misleading with the purpose of defrauding you. Bitcoin doesn't look like it's either of those things, but I will agree that the ecosystem has a lot of scammers within it, just like any financial system.
by chbkall | 2025-07-05 11:48:09+00:00
Hey thank you for the time you took to comment and offer advice.

1. I agree. I am still working on the community project which my wife is building - it has started to grow and looks like it has the potential to become a sustainable source of income. I have built the website and automated some stuff for her. I am also honing my skill as a woodworker and toymaker - learning to make wooden toys.

2. I did the HtDP version of the program hosted on the edX platform. I enjoyed the whole program and it was very insightful on how to think about creating larger and complex programs. It also motivated me to read the SICP textbook - I've read a couple of chapters from the book. I also adapted the HtDP program in Hindi to teach village girls here for a local non-profit on how to code.

3. I agree about OSSU. What I don't like about OSSU courses is retention. I did the Programming Languages (A, B and C) course by Dan Grossman a few months back. I enjoyed the course and the exercises - but I am not sure how much of it I retain today. These and the HtDP program has definitely helped me to think what might be happening inside the hood of programs rather than treating them as magical boxes.

4. I think I can keep exploring computers while simultaneously make my living as a woodworker / toymaker. It also helps me balance my faculties of mind and my hands /body. I am not thinking of an end goal at the moment but want to keep exploring and potentially building.
Ask HN: Can't Figure Out Where to Go Next Career Wise
by OulaX | 2025-07-05 11:48:47+00:00
Hello,

A Little Background About Me:

I'm a software developer from Iraq, after getting my BSc in CS, I started looking for local jobs, but failed to find any developer jobs in my current city. I applied to openings in other cities, but the the number of openings were so little compared to the number of applicants so the competition was crazy, I couldn't get a job for about a year.

Afterwards, I found a role as a teacher, so, I started teaching programming fundamentals and web development, I kept this job for 2 years, during which I tried applying to as much software development jobs as possible on LinkedIn and everywhere else, mainly looking for fully remote roles in the US or elsewhere.

Then, I found a role at a startup as a paid intern, gotten through the interview and started work as a contractor.

My initial contract was for 6 months, after that was over I signed a different contract for another 6 months, this time as a Jr. Software Developer. After this contract ended, they renewed it again as a Jr. Software Developer, but this time for 4 months, because the startup was failing. So, in total I worked as fully remote contractor for 1 year and 4 months.

Then, I was jobless, I started looking for jobs again for about 6 months, then out of nowhere, the same employer from before got in touch with me and recommended me to a different startup looking for contractors. I happily accepted the offer and started work, the problem is, I wasn't even assigned a title in this new startup, I was a software developer, but I didn't know whether Jr, Mid? However, based on my own evaluation I still considered myself Jr.

I was the only developer on the frontend team for this new startup, I was responsible of taking a full Figma design from scratch and implement it with React, I have to be honest I had to use a component library to get the job done, because the deadline was very close and everything was fast paced, there was no room for code refactoring, code quality, TBF I didn't even write tests! But, I ended up delivering in time, and after a couple of rounds of bug fixing, the client was happy.

However, after about 8 months, I lost this job because the startup failed to secure funding again.

Now, I feel a bit lost on where to move on from here. Getting a job for a US-based employer is very difficult, especially once they learn that I am based in Iraq.

I have a couple of questions:

1. Am I a dead cause? Is there still hope? I mean I am still a Jr.

2. How should I structure my resume? I have no past projects other than the work I've put for my past 2 employers?
by amjnsx | 2025-07-05 11:48:49+00:00
I do not buy into the idea that “everyone did it then it must have been a good idea”.

We’ve already seen the negative side of fiat currencies in how they eventually collapse (Zimbabwe, Venezuela, Argentina) and even in more developed countries wages have not kept up with inflation. Money is trending to zero People are trending to destitution.

We saw it recently in the UK - where public sector workers were not given pay rises because the government argued it would fuel inflation. So how does that even make sense.
by SirHumphrey | 2025-07-05 11:50:18+00:00
> Detractors from AI often refuse to learn how to use it or argue that it doesn't do everything perfectly so you shouldn't use it.

But here is the problem - to effectively learn the tool, you must learn to use. Not learning how to effectively AI and then complaining that the results are bad is building a straw-men and then burning it.

But what I am giving away when using LLM is not skills, it's the ability to learn those skills. Because if the LLM instead of me is solving all easy and intermediate problems I cannot learn how to solve hard problems. The process of digging for an answer through documentation gives me a better understanding of how some technology works.

Those kinds of problems existed before - programming languages robed people of the necessity to learn assembly - high level languages of the necessity to learn low level languages - low code solutions of the necessity to learn how to code. Some of these solutions (like low level and high level programming languages) are robust enough that this trade-off makes sense - some are not (like low code).

I think it's too early to call weather AI agents go one way or the other. Putting eggs in both baskets means learning how to use AI tools and at the same time still maintaining the ability to work without them.
by smartaz42 | 2025-07-05 11:50:56+00:00
While walking my dog on leash some years back, we were surrounded and stalked by 5 very hungry coyotes (it was a drought year and they were very scrawny) for about 20 minutes.

They got increasingly more bold, eventually only just out of kicking range. As I would charge and threaten the one or two in front of me, the others would try to approach from behind. We were being hunted.

All this while carrying my dog (they definitely would have killed him if he were on the ground) and wearing flip flops.

This was in Santa Cruz, late in the summer, at dusk. Terrifying. They tracked us all the way back to the car, but once I found a good stick they became much less daring.
by satyrun | 2025-07-05 11:50:57+00:00
People are also incredibly accurate at doing this kind of manual data piping all day.

There is also a reason that these jobs are already not automated. Many of these jobs you don't need language models. We could have automated them already but it is not worth someone to sign off on. I have been in this situation at a bank. I could have automated a process rather easily but the upside for me was a smaller team and no real gain while the downside was getting fired for a massive automated mistake if something went wrong.
by klabb3 | 2025-07-05 11:51:10+00:00
Ah yeah, that makes sense. If Valve didn’t exist I imagine that they would have been more successful. Because the same is true in the other direction - enshittified launchers from EA, Ubisoft etc are avoided by a lot of gamers and are not successful on their own merits.

What makes it challenging is that there is no standard format for game libraries. If instead you had a game library software that was interoperable with different vendors (like an email client or web browser) it would have been possible to buy and collect games from different vendors or publishers without having to manage multiple accounts and libraries.

I guess the lesson is that systems of middlemen are fragile and problematic even when the middleman are acting in good faith. Getting rid of middlemen gate keepers is both a technical and social challenge, and not easy.
by quicksilver03 | 2025-07-05 11:53:08+00:00
The AMD drivers are open source, but they definitely are not good. Have a look at the Fedora discussion forums (for example https://discussion.fedoraproject.org/t/fedora-does-not-boot-... ) to see what happens about each month.

I have no NVIDIA hardware, but I understand that the drivers are even worse than AMD's.

Intel seems to be, at the moment, the least worse compromise between performance and stability,
by seba_dos1 | 2025-07-05 11:53:39+00:00
> Thing is, I have an unusually high need to own the understanding of any thing I'm learning.

Same here. Don't get me wrong, LLMs can be helpful, but what I mean is that they can at best aid my research rather than perform it for me. In my experience, relying on them to do that would usually be disastrous - but they do sometimes help in cases where I feel stuck and would otherwise have to find some human to ask.

I guess it's the difference between "using LLMs while thinking" and "using LLM to do the thinking". The latter just does not work (unless all you're ever thinking about is trivial :P), the former can boost you up if you're smart about it. I don't think it's as big of a boost as many claim and it's still far from being reliable, but it's there and it's non-negligible. It's just that being smart about it is non-optional, as otherwise you end up with slop and don't even realize it.
by MangoToupe | 2025-07-05 11:54:03+00:00
> Would anyone here assert that there's any particular programming language that's better for writing emulators, virtual machines, bytecode interpreters, etc?

No, absolutely not. Emulation is super easy to implement in any language with arrays (constant-time lookup of arbitrary indices) and bit operations. At least before considering JIT.

And even functional languages have arrays and bitwise operations.
by biglyburrito | 2025-07-05 11:55:07+00:00
Stay, but actively look for other opportunities. It’s a miserable tech job market right now; hunkering down and continuing to collect a paycheck is something you shouldn’t take for granted.

As others have said, use this opportunity to learn about what works w/ AI based on all the crap that doesn’t. Your C-level execs have given you carte blanche to fuck around, without worrying too much about the immediate-term consequences. If they literally said to delete existing test files & generate new ones using AI, do it! And when shit inevitably goes sideways, you’ll be able to spend more of your salaried time rewriting those tests to probably look & work more like the original tests that you deleted.

And while you’re learning to use AI, you’ll be burning the company’s funny-money on AI usage fees. At some point, they’re gonna realize they don’t have a lot to show for all the money that was thrown away in service of doing what they told employees to do. At which point, they’ll take a more measured & pragmatic approach towards using AI. Do everyone a favor & help them get to that point sooner than later.
by crote | 2025-07-05 11:55:15+00:00
The irony is that it's the budget cards which have fewer PCIe links. That RTX 5060 Ti 8GB only has 8 lanes, but could really benefit from having 16 lanes. An RTX 5090 with 32GB of VRAM? It has 16 lanes, but would do just fine with 8...
by derangedHorse | 2025-07-05 11:55:34+00:00
It’s more about the device being tamper resistant than “hard to forge”. You don’t want people playing around with the device generating signatures. Algorithmically, there is nothing done on a secure element that can’t be done with software on a general chip. The defining difference is the physical separation of data and the mechanisms put in place to brick the device on detection of physical tampering.
by TheCapeGreek | 2025-07-05 11:57:13+00:00
All of the "you can anonymously and safely hold tons of wealth that can't be taken from you" points you make fall apart when the following two are true:

- For the majority of financial transactions you might want to make, fiat is still what you need, because realistically very little IRL uses any L2 solution. Thus, you need a fiat off-ramp... Like an exchange. - Exchanges mandate you identify yourself to them - KYC/AML and all. Governments might not be able to know which wallet is yours, but they sure as hell can and have secure those off-ramps this way.

I've seen plenty of pro-BTC arguments on a technical level about privacy, resilience, independence from central banks, etc. but fundamentally I've never seen anyone able to come up with something that can out "your opponent is the government and no technical project can overcome a legal obstacle".
by luckystarr | 2025-07-05 11:57:56+00:00
I started my most ambitious project in February. A few years ago I wouldn't have even dreamed of ever starting let alone finishing it, but now I have a Claude Code Max Pro subscription and it goes forward in a steady pace. I expect the first version of it to be finished within the year. Even it's written mostly by AI, it's still a lot of work to get it to do the right thing, but I'm getting better at it.
by MangoToupe | 2025-07-05 11:58:04+00:00
I'm sorry, what's confusing about this take? All raw produce has the risk of infectious disease. Have you seriously never heard of food-born illness? Here's one example: https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/food/2025/07/03/blueber...

Basically anything you put into a salad is better off in a soup or stew, or heavily treated with such low-ph liquid (e.g. salsa, pickled veggies, etc) as to remove the risk. If it isn't suited for canning, I'm not going to eat it.

Perhaps in a country with better-regulated food production it would seem more reasonable.
by diggan | 2025-07-05 11:59:08+00:00
> That seems a hell of a lot more centralized than the traditional finance system

Most countries/systems have one central bank, even if we assume there are only 2 mining pools and they "control the network", wouldn't a central bank still be more centralized?

Besides, the mining pools don't "own" the network, anyone can participate, which kind of makes the whole "more centralized than a central bank" argument kind of weak.
by nirv | 2025-07-05 11:59:11+00:00
No browser on Linux supports any other backend for video acceleration except VAAPI, as far as I know. AMD and Intel use VAAPI, while Nvidia uses VDPAU, which is not supported anywhere. This single fact means that with Nvidia graphics cards on Linux, there isn't even such a simple and important feature for users as video decoding acceleration in the browser. Every silly YouTube video will use CPU (not iGPU, but CPU) to decode video, consuming resources and power.

Yes, there are translation layers[1] which you have to know about and understand how to install correctly, which partially solve the problem by translating from VAAPI to NVDEC, but this is certainly not for the average user.

Hopefully, in the future browsers will add support for the new Vulkan Video standard, but for now, unfortunately, one has to hardcode the browser launch parameters in order to use the integrated graphics chip's driver (custom XDG-application file for AMD APU in my case: ~/.local/share/applications/Firefox-amdgpu.desktop): `Exec=env LIBVA_DRIVER_NAME=radeonsi DRI_PRIME=0 MOZ_ENABLE_WAYLAND=1 __NV_PRIME_RENDER_OFFLOAD=0 __GLX_VENDOR_LIBRARY_NAME=radeons i /usr/bin/firefox-beta %u`.

[1] https://github.com/elFarto/nvidia-vaapi-driver/
by js4ever | 2025-07-05 11:59:14+00:00
here it is:

Title: Serverless is eating Kubernetes—and that's a good thing

After 6 years of watching K8s engineers over-engineer themselves into a corner with YAML spaghetti, I finally moved a production workload to AWS Lambda + EventBridge + DynamoDB. You know what happened?

Nothing broke. It just worked.

No Helm charts. No Ingress hell. No cluster upgrades at 3am because of CVEs in some sidecar no one uses anymore. The whole app is now ~300 lines of infra code and it scales from 0 to 10k RPS without me touching anything.

Meanwhile, the K8s crowd is still debating which operator to use to restart a pod that keeps crashing because someone misconfigured a liveness probe. Or building internal platforms to abstract away the abstraction they just built last quarter.

Remind me again what the value-add of Kubernetes is in 2025? Other than keeping a whole cottage industry of "DevOps" engineers employed?

Serverless isn’t the future. It’s the present. And K8s? It’s the next OpenStack—just slower to die because it has better branding.