MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by cheschire | 2025-07-18 12:19:00+00:00
Have you tried writing text in VS Code? I haven’t ever considered the use case before this moment and don’t have a system available to test.

But basically would it be successful if you had a workspace and used the coding agent to write text instead?

As a use case, consider the act of writing a novel where you might have a folder with files that each contain a skeleton of a chapter, then another folder with the first draft of each chapter in separate files, then another folder for the second draft, and so on.

Maybe not the best architecture but I just had the idea 20 seconds ago so it could use some cook time.
by os2warpman | 2025-07-18 12:19:12+00:00
There are a number of new accelerators available on the market.

I've been thinking about getting a PiStorm ($40-70 + Raspberry Pi 3 A) for my A2000. Should bump me up to a ~100Mhz 68030 level of performance.

But yeah, when people release new software for the Amiga in 2025 and entertain thoughts of "what could have been" they're misremembering the state of the Amiga market at the time. The vast majority of Amiga users had an A500 hooked up to a TV and a Competition Pro, MAYBE with a trapdoor RAM expansion.
by kindkang2024 | 2025-07-18 12:19:31+00:00
Trump coin, is it? Fair enough — I believe everyone should have the freedom to launch a memecoin, Trump included. You have that freedom too. And everyone has the freedom to buy it or not.

Whether it’s a "shitcoin" or not really depends on perspective. Those who bought it voluntarily and profited likely don’t see it that way — and even some who lost money might not consider it trash. Their opinions matter just as much as yours.

In the end, it’s the collective will of the people that determines whether a memecoin survives or thrives. To me, that’s a perfect example of freedom in action.
by acdha | 2025-07-18 12:19:34+00:00
I wouldn’t be so dismissive: “force multiplier” means job loss unless there’s a large amount of work which isn’t currently being done. As you live in a society, it really is important to think about what happens if we get the mass layoffs almost all of the executive-class are promising. There are some new jobs around the tech itself, but that doesn’t help those people unless they can land one of the new jobs – and even the most excited proponents should ask themselves who is buying their product in a world with, say, 50% fewer white collar jobs.

It’s also worth noting that while our modern use of Luddite is simply “anti-technology”, there was a lot more going on there. The Napoleonic wars were savaging the economy and Luddism wasn’t just a reaction to the emergence of a new technology but even more the successful class warfare being waged by the upper class who were holding the line against weavers attempts to negotiate better terms and willing to deploy the army against the working class. High inflation and unemployment created a lot of discontent, and the machines bore the brunt of it because they were a way to strike back at the industrialists being both more exposed and a more acceptable target for anyone who wasn’t at the point of being willing to harm or kill a person.

Perhaps most relevant to HN is that the weavers had previously not joined together to bargain collectively. I can’t help but think that almost everyone who said “I’m too smart to need a union” during the longest run of high-paying jobs for nerds in history is going to regret that decision, especially after seeing how little loyalty the C-suite has after years of pretending otherwise.
by lxgr | 2025-07-18 12:19:58+00:00
The Raspberry Pi 4 has a design error in its USB-C circuitry.

It does include a pull-down resistor, but wired incorrectly (compliant devices need two), which results in compliant chargers only correctly detecting it when using a “dumb” (i.e. containing no e-marker chip) USB-C-to-C cable. Your Apple cable probably has a marker (all their Macbook charging cables have one, for example).
by noelwelsh | 2025-07-18 12:19:59+00:00
This is a great example of the issue the blog post is addressing, namely:

> The amount of energy needed to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude bigger than that needed to produce it.

The play book is:

1. Set an impossible standard (an undefined "unbiased" fact checker)

2. When impossible standard cannot be reached, throw toys out of the pram

Meanwhile, egregious levels of bullshit now go unchallenged.
by lcnPylGDnU4H9OF | 2025-07-18 12:20:20+00:00
Well, an NFT is essentially a blockchain-backed license. It’s technically more than that but that’s why people make fun of “buying” image NFTs; you’re really just buying the sole “license” for that image in a legal context that plainly does not recognize said license as such.

So, in a blockchain-run world, they would totally have a use. That’s just not the world for most people.
by m4rtink | 2025-07-18 12:20:28+00:00
I think it is only required on x86 EFI machines due to some old antitrust rulings. Provided the firmware vendor actually implements it right.

On ARM for example the hardware, including some hardware shipping with ARM version of Windows, does not need to provide the option to add custom certs and remove existing ones, so AFAIK in most cases it is not possible.
by devinprater | 2025-07-18 12:21:40+00:00
Lol and yet, Google has AI image descriptions in their screen reader, TalkBack, before Apple. Apple is supposed to be the accessibility king. But with AI, they just can't, even if they obviously have access to ChatGPT which has vision capabilities. Granted, I don't know what model Google uses because tech news don't do Android Accessibility Suite APK teardowns, but it works pretty well, and fast too.
by Barrin92 | 2025-07-18 12:21:47+00:00
"The implications are big. The entire business model built on harvesting user data could become obsolete. Why send your plaintext when another service can compute on your ciphertext?"

Why do people always do this thing where they think inventing a technology has somehow changed economics? I think the implications are very small. There is value in people's user data and people are very eager to barter that value against cheaper services, we can tell because people continue to vote with their wallets and feet.

You could already encrypt or offer zero retention policies on large amounts of internet businesses and every major company has competitors that do, but they exist on the margins because most people don't take that deal.
by Eggpants | 2025-07-18 12:22:06+00:00
This narrative has been pushed hard lately that $200 a month is a “bargain” because it’s “worth” $1000. If that’s true, then these companies will be running out of venture capital money very soon. Then their only recourse will be to sell themselves or insert ads into LLM responses then this will be a total shit show.

It’s easy to see how trivial it will be to have an adwords type operation where output tokens are replaced with paid values.

For example:

this_varable_is_sponsored_by_starbucks = 42
by sombragris | 2025-07-18 12:22:11+00:00
In 2015 I got a Toshiba Satellite Radius convertible laptop with a SSD, touchscreen, USB 3.0... pretty good for the time. I installed Slackware-current and *everything* was supported and recognized. Even the touchscreen under X11.

I'm now using a Dell Inspiron with more updated specs (from 2019), but again, everything is recognized.

*And* I got to upgrade my RAM with a rather simple procedure, zero soldiering required. All of this, running a largely Free (as in freedom) operating system.

Thus I'd answer: yes, a Linux laptop is worth the trouble these days. YMMV of course.
by scott_w | 2025-07-18 12:22:15+00:00
> - Most games would be better off with a bespoke game engine IMO, especially those made by small teams. The only real advantage to using an established engine is the familiar asset pipeline for replaceable artists but you pay for that with a huge overhead. Remember that custom engines or at least heavily modified ones maintained by the game developer used to be the norm - "just use Unity^WUnreal" is a relatively recent trend.

I think we can take Square-Enix as a case study: Final Fantasy XV and Final Fantasy XVI both used their own engines (though XVI used a modification of XIV's engine, from what I hear) and both took a long fucking time to make. Granted, XV had many issues outside of just building a new engine, but it definitely added one more problem onto the pile. My understanding is that Final Fantasy XVI's development cycle was pretty smooth, it still took 7 years from the launch of Final Fantasy XV!

Final Fantasy VII: Remake and Final Fantasy VII: Rebirth both used Unreal Engine 4. While Remake had a long development cycle, Rebirth was done in 3 years and contained a much bigger world!

I do totally get that part of the argument is "reuse the same damn engine and tooling," and I totally agree with that, too. It's just a bit easier overall when you can reach out to a community with your problems instead of learning every problem for yourself.
by R4FKEN | 2025-07-18 12:22:21+00:00
A pay-what-you-want (also free if needed) database of 800+ SaaS directories and 50+ launch sites, perfect for creating relevant backlinks to your SaaS website. Created for myself, then decided to share it with other indie makers on a budget. :) Feedback welcome. Database gets weekly updates. Thanks! Raf
by muzani | 2025-07-18 12:24:05+00:00
Even if I want to do it myself, I'll ask it to write it a plan and toss it in a markdown file.

It gave me a shit plan today. Basically I asked it to refactor a block of prototype code that consisted of 40 files or so. It went the wrong way and tried to demolish it from the bottom up instead of making it 100% backwards compatible. If it made a mistake we would have taken forever to debug it.

But yeah, it gave me something to attack. And the plan was fixed within an hour. If I tried to make one myself, I would have frozen from the complexity or gone in circles documenting it.
by nico | 2025-07-18 12:25:05+00:00
I used to feel similarly. But recently started using Claude Code and it does feel a lot better than Cursor for me

I'm not sure why. However, Claude does seem to know better where things are and knows not to make unnecessary changes. I still need to guide it and tell it to do things differently some times, but it feels like it's a lot more effective

Personally, I also like that usually it just presents to me only one change/file at a time, so it's easier for me to review. Cursor might open several files at once, each with a tons of changes, which makes it a lot harder for me to understand quickly

Btw, I use Claude Code in a terminal pane inside VSCode, with the extension. So Claude does open a file tab with proposed changes
by endymion-light | 2025-07-18 12:25:15+00:00
I mean - let's say a government wants people to return back to their currency, wouldn't they have a vested interest in attempting to create a large amount of sudden volatility in bitcoin so that people go back to the inflationary but more standard currency?

And I may be wrong here so feel free to direct me to how to actually do it, but I struggle buying things with bitcoin without major fees, what's the actual acceptable method of doing so?
by ianberdin | 2025-07-18 12:25:29+00:00
And so you don’t think I just dropped in to try it out: no, I’ve been using Cursor every day for many months. I set up the rules very precisely, make maps, write instructions and constraints so the LLM understands how to work with the current codebase—where to find things, what to do, what not to do, what things should look like. I try to write as concisely as possible so everything fits in the context window.

I have a monorepo, so different instructions and rules live in different corners of it, which I manually add as needed. Doing all this with Claude is hard: it kind of works, but it’s a kludge. It’s much easier to manage through the UI. As the saying goes, it’s better to see something once than to remember it ten times, type a command, and configure it.

I can say the same about Vim and Emacs users. No one has yet proven to me they can code and navigate faster than an ordinary programmer using a trackpad or a mouse and keyboard. It’s purely a matter of taste. I’ve noticed that people who love those tools are just bored at work and want to entertain their brains. That’s neither good nor bad, but it doesn’t give a real boost.

By the way, there’s a study (a bit old, admittedly) showing that working with an LLM still doesn’t provide a massive speed-up in programming. Yes, it spits out code quickly, but assembling a finished result takes much longer: you have to review, polish, start over, throw things out, start again. It’s not that simple.

Speaking of Claude, he’s a real master at shitting in the code. At the speed of sound he generates a ton of unnecessary code even when you ask him not to. You ask for something minimalist, nothing extra—he still slaps on a pile of code with useless tests that outsmart themselves and don’t work.

That’s the downside. Overall, it’s easier to program when you just say what to do instead of sitting there straining your own brain. But even then it’s not simple. If you yourself haven’t figured out very carefully what you’re doing, you’ll end up with crap. I almost always throw away what I wrote with an LLM when I was tired. I don’t think there’s ever been an exception.

The only way to write something decent is to dig in thoroughly: draw diagrams, write everything out, and only then tell the LLM exactly what to do. Then double-check, make sure it didn’t write anything extra, delete the excess. And only like that, in small chunks. The “make me a feature, I pressed a button and walked away” mode doesn’t work if the task is even slightly complex.

Yeah, I got carried away—had to let it out. I have a lot to say about LLMs and programming with them, and not just about Cursor and Claude. The tools completely upended the way we program...
by dgl | 2025-07-18 12:25:30+00:00
Except it is sourced from /etc/rc, and that’s a shell script which obviously depends on the shell and some other pieces. If you want an immutable base you kind of need to make the whole (base) system immutable (and that is possibly best designed as such to start with).

I don’t think this is “security vs convenience”, I’d more argue it’s possible to think you’ve made this secure but you’ve missed something and haven’t configured it to be as secure as you think. An approach like others have suggested with remote logging is at least easier to reason about.
by codingdave | 2025-07-18 12:25:35+00:00
Well, not having lived your life, it is hard to say... you might be the smartest person in the room but have trouble communicating with others in a way that makes them trust your take on things. Or you might not be the smartest person in the room and are not hearing the reasons why everyone else is doing things you disagree with. Either way, it sounds like there are communications problems acting as barriers within your teams. This is really common, so that isn't a diss in any way. But not having lived the same experiences you did, I can't say specifically what the problems are... all I can say is that the level of frustration you are sharing is often rooted in a lack of understanding between team members.
by evolve2k | 2025-07-18 12:25:57+00:00
This being to mind the open source game 0AD (https://play0ad.com).

I could be misremembering but I’m pretty sure the lighthouse is one of the wonders you can build in the game.

Check it out if you’ve never given it a go. Built by a tonne of volunteers who aim for historically accurate soldiers and buildings in this Age of Empires like RTS game.
by JKCalhoun | 2025-07-18 12:26:40+00:00
It may be personality, but this self-taught developer focused on work ethic — that is, while I lacked seeing the "Big Picture" in technical terms (understanding how all the pieces fit together) I strove nonetheless to make up for it by being the most prolific engineer on the team.

I'm not saying it's the better approach but I would often prototype two or three designs (in a few days) to a point where we could evaluate their shortcomings, test performance, etc.

Engineers with a CS degree were more likely to spend that time white-boarding and write the code once. Since I cannot remember a time when the two approaches were taken on the same task, I cannot say whether the final product was better in one case vs. the other. To my (pragmatic) mind though, my approach was already battle-tested to some degree. (Or rather it was battle-tested against other approaches that ultimately lost out — the CS approach was simple understood to be the ideal approach.)

But let me also be clear: I benefited and learned a great deal by working with CS majors. Fortunately there were a few engineers I worked with that were happy to mentor me (starting with you, David).

I think though, perhaps after ten years in the field, experience ends up erasing any real differences in how any engineer might have begun their career. In time I was more likely to take the Right Approach on the first go and the CS major too would give the whiteboard only a passing thought as they too might go straight to the approach that they now "intuitively" knew was the Right One.

I'm likely generalizing though — and perhaps my impressions are also colored by what I want to believe is true (so romanticizing a bit as well). Perhaps others will chime in to refute or echo my sentiments.
by BruceEel | 2025-07-18 12:26:51+00:00
While we are here, another important article by Kildall has been made available online, "Global Expression Optimization During Compilation"-1972 [1] - while the field has obviously moved on, this is still interesting and relevant IMO, if anything it shows what a talented technical writer he was.

[1]: https://www.proquest.com/docview/302615627/?fromunauthdoc=tr...
by hu3 | 2025-07-18 12:26:58+00:00
> When Deno and Bun first came out, they promised a hard break from the Node ecosystem

I don't think that's true for Bun. In fact Bun was planned to NOT break from Node ecosystem as much as possible:

"Bun is designed as a drop-in replacement for your current JavaScript & TypeScript apps or scripts — on your local computer, server or on the edge. Bun natively implements hundreds of Node.js and Web APIs, including ~90% of Node-API functions (native modules), fs, path, Buffer and more." - 2022

https://archive.is/lWjNn#selection-399.0-403.55
by bayindirh | 2025-07-18 12:26:59+00:00
Currently, no, but in the future I might migrate out of support systems to Asahi.

One of the reasons I use macOS is I get to inspect how they do some things. I carry the experience to Linux via the small tools I develop. Apple is one of the last "purveyors of magic" when it comes to user interfaces, and studying them, iterating on them and implementing them is both a good learning experience. Also, it feels nice when something you write (with a GPL license no less) has the same magic feeling of frictionless productivity.
by rft | 2025-07-18 12:27:11+00:00
You managed to put some of my previous experiences into far better words than I ever could. Especially the part of my "solutions" that come with tons of "this works for now, but it will break here, here and here". I never worked at a megacorp though, mostly by choice, so it was less getting airdropped from up high and more accidentally being volunteered for a project. Somehow diving deep into an unknown code base and making either surgical changes or nuking good chunks of it, is something I enjoy and have become quite good at.

Interestingly enough, I share the same hybrid of self-taught with some formal education. And after checking your blog, we also share interests in some fairly low level, niche fields, even if we choose totally different things to focus on.
by lxgr | 2025-07-18 12:27:46+00:00
> This is one of those things where you want a bit of a walled garden to force users of a technology to adhere to certain rules.

That’s what consumer protection laws with teeth and electric safety certifications like CE or UL are for, not walled gardens.

History has shown that relying on hardware DRM, like Apple did with Lightning doesn’t prevent manufacturers, from doing dangerous things, because they’ll find ways around it sooner rather than later.
by ianberdin | 2025-07-18 12:28:12+00:00
How can you prove you’re not a bot? I get the feeling I’ve seen a comment like this somewhere before.

Tell us what you do—how, under what conditions, and in which programming languages. What exactly makes it better? Does it just search for files? Well, that’s hardly objective.

So far the impression is… well, you say it only seems better. But you won’t get far with that kind of reasoning.

Objectively, it now seems to me that Claude the cat is better, because everyone around says it’s better. Yet no one has actually explained why. So the hype is inflated out of thin air, and there are no objective reasons for it.
by rpdillon | 2025-07-18 12:30:26+00:00
This is actually a problem that spans far beyond the vault-like behavior that HBO and Nintendo have been exhibiting.

There's this notion of something called the copyright cliff where works that are quite old but remain under copyright are almost completely unavailable. And in the cases of books, this is not due to artificial scarcity at all, but rather that it's not economically viable to try to extract value from them. And so they just remain unpublished. Yet to get an unauthorized copy is still copyright infringement. It's good example of how copyright doesn't work very well in achieving its stated purpose.
by jongjong | 2025-07-18 12:31:20+00:00
Yes especially when combined.

I actually think capitalism has merit but you need a strong government on top to ensure that a level playing field is guaranteed and maintained.

I think this partly explains China's relative success over the past few decades. In spite of certain inefficiencies that come from trying to control everything, it seems that China did a better job at providing a more level playing field for their market system (at least internally, within China). I still think it's probably not level enough though as they also have the same basic fiat system. I think they just did a better job as identifying and stomping our rent-seeking from their economy.
by muzani | 2025-07-18 12:31:24+00:00
All raw events > View > Tokens tab

Most of the tokens are cache read and cache write. It's possible that it's searching the whole codebase with these. My guess is they're embeddings tokens which are substantially cheaper.

Your 1213 should be somewhere in the input column. Probably less because of the caching. This is the magic where your $20 goes for more than $20 worth.
by closewith | 2025-07-18 12:31:58+00:00
Most people work to support themselves and their families. Software's no different.

Pay and conditions in software are so much higher than any vocation that it attracts many people who would never program recreationally. If that's not you and you are overjoyed to be able to write software everyday, that's fine. But you should recognise that you're in a tiny minority of developers.