MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by dmbche | 2025-07-05 15:48:12+00:00
Might be unrelated, but I feel like the "boost" that everyone is talking about is cause by translating one medium into text, which most people are more capable at than the medium they are trying to produce in.

While it lets you create something you previously can't, the qualities of the medium are replaced with those of languguage.

I.e. to produce visual images you don't need an understanding of conrtast, composition, tranparency, chroma and all that, you just need to be able to articulate what you want.

I think that's where the lack of taste appears, you have a text-based interaction with a non-language medium.

How when a movie tries to keep as close as possible to a book it rarely will be a noteworthy movie, versus something built from the ground up in that medium
by montereynack | 2025-07-05 15:48:13+00:00
Cool to see principles behind this, although I think it’s definitely geared towards the consumer space. Shameless self plug, but related: we’re doing this for industrial assets/industrial data currently (www.sentineldevices.com), where the entire training, analysis and decision-making process happens on customer equipment. We don’t even have any servers they can send data to, our model is explicitly geared on everything happening on-device (so the network principle the article discussed I found really interesting). This is to support use cases in SCADA/industrial automation where you just can’t bring data to the outside world. There’s imo a huge customer base and set of use cases that are just casually ignored by data/AI companies because actually providing a service where the customer/user is is too hard, and they’d prefer to have the data come to them while keeping vendor lock-in. The funny part is, in discussions with customers we actually have to lean in and be very clear on “no this is local, there’s no external connectivity” piece, because they really don’t hear that anywhere and sometimes we have to walk them through it step by step to help them understand that everything is happening locally. It also tends to break the brains of software vendors. I hope local-first software starts taking hold more in the consumer space so we can see people start getting used to it in the industrial space.
by koverstreet | 2025-07-05 15:48:34+00:00
We have documented, in this very thread, issues with multi device setups that btrfs has that bcachefs does not - and btrfs developers ignoring these issues.

This isn't baseless fearmongering, this is "did you think through the failure modes when you were designing the basics".

This stuff comes up over, and over, and over.

Engineering things right matters, and part of that absolutely is comparing and documenting approaches and solutions to see what went right and what went wrong.

This isn't a popularity contest, and this isn't high school where we form into cliques and start slinging insults.

Come up with facts, documentation, analysis. That's what we do. I'm tired of these threads degenerating into flamewars.
by johngossman | 2025-07-05 15:49:24+00:00
We have coyotes in our backyard (literally as I write this one is sleeping in our flower beds). They are extremely shy (and not very big). We have cats go through the same yard all the time. That said, coyotes do kill cats. I would be wary if confronted by a coyote and keep children away from. But attacks are apparently extremely rare:

https://tchester.org/sgm/lists/coyote_attacks.html
by davepeck | 2025-07-05 15:50:06+00:00
In theory, I love the local-first mode of building. It aligns well with “small tech” philosophy where privacy and data ownership are fundamental.

In practice, it’s hard! You’re effectively responsible for building a sync engine, handling conflict resolution, managing schema migration, etc.

This said, tools for local-first software development seem to have improved in the past couple years. I keep my eye on jazz.tools, electric-sql, and Rocicorp’s Zero. Are there others?
by __turbobrew__ | 2025-07-05 15:50:33+00:00
Don’t let my opinion affect you, MTG is still a fun game and you should do that if you find it enjoyable — especially if your son likes it. But here is why I had a falling out:

1. The number of sets per year increased too much, there are too many cards being printed to keep up

2. Cards from new sets are pushed to be very strong (FIRE design) which means that the new cards are frequently the best cards. Combine this with the high number of new sets means the pool of best cards is always churning and you have to constantly be buying new cards to keep up.

3. Artificial scarcity in print runs means that the best cards in the new sets are very expensive. We are talking about cardboard here, it isn’t hard to simply print more sheets of a set.

4. The erosion of the brand identity and universe. MTG used to have a really nicely curated fantasy universe and things meshed together well. Now we have spongebob, deadpool, and a bunch of others in the game. It like if you put spongebob in the star wars universe, it just ruins the texture of the game.

5. Print quality of cards went way down. Older cards actually have better card stock than the new stuff.

6. Canadians MTG players get shafted. When a new set is printed stores get allocations of boxes (due to the artificial scarcity) and due to the lower player count in Canada, usually Canadian stores get much lower allocations than their USA counterparts. Additionally, MTG cards get double tariffs as they get printed outside of the USA, imported into the USA and tariffed, and then imported into Canada and tariffed again. I think the cost of MTG cards when up like 30-40% since global trade war.

Overall it boils down to hasbro turning the screws on players to squeeze more money, and I am just not having it. I already spent obscene amounts of money on the game before this all happened.
by lubujackson | 2025-07-05 15:51:11+00:00
Have to disagree with this too - ask an LLM to architect a project, or propose a cleaner solution and usually does a good job.

Where it still sucks is doing both at once. Thus the shift to integrating "to do" lists in Cursor. My flow has shifted to "design this feature" then "continue to implement" 10 times in a row with code review between each step.
by robotswantdata | 2025-07-05 15:51:34+00:00
It’s not just AirPods you need to worry about look up beacon tracking in malls https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/06/14/opinion/bluet...

Regarding air pods, good privacy overview here: https://www.mozillafoundation.org/en/privacynotincluded/appl...
by Disposal8433 | 2025-07-05 15:51:57+00:00
Not OP but when I was way younger I had some trouble learning programming languages. Following tutorials was boring and gave limited instructions. Someone on the internet gave the same piece of advice, i.e. to do something useful in your life.

I was at the time downloading a lot of porn pictures but the internet connection was slow and unreliable. And that's how I learned the Ruby programming language with its regexes, how to parse HTML with those regexes, parsing CLI arguments, and how to download files and put them in proper folders. It was the cleanest and best script/framework I have ever written.

The moral of the story is to find something to do, and it will show you a lot more.
by deadbabe | 2025-07-05 15:52:07+00:00
Being a 37 year old wanting to learn computer science out of personal interest is still way better than being a 22 year old who just learned computer science because they want an easy 6 figure job in the tech industry.

We turn away the latter more and more these days. In the past, hiring a junior software engineer meant you were probably getting an enthusiast of some sort, the kind of person who had their own side projects and crazy ideas they worked on for fun, and would stay up late into the night just coding. But now with the surging supply of new computer science grads, there’s a lot of people that just want to log in, crush tickets, and go home. And AI is making it worse. They have no love for the science, just a steady paycheck. But the truth is that in this industry, if you really want to push the boundaries of what is possible, love is an important ingredient. And not just for your company, but for yourself.
by MonkeyClub | 2025-07-05 15:52:36+00:00
supermatt makes an interesting distinction there: if you're more interested in the practical/professional aspect, don't get too sidetracked in the theoretical side.

Computer Science is fascinating and wide, but if you're interested in reskilling into a new, professionally profitable sector, veering too much into the theoretical aspect can prove detrimental.

However, as you mention, your objectives will adjust the more you come to learn, so it's important to keep an open mind and read more widely than just the next necessary thing.

Just beware of ADD side-tracking you, and have clear road maos. (Speaking from personal experience there, I always have to keep a check on my direction during both study and work, lest I lose too much time without much benefit.)

Speaking of roadmaps to study, perhaps this site can provide an early guide, augmented by books and courses, for your chosen field:

https://roadmap.sh/

And don't let your age deter you. People who love what they do are rare and priceless in any age range. If a company doesn't want to hire you due to your age, then that's probably a company you wouldn't enjoy working for anyway.
by Incipient | 2025-07-05 15:54:08+00:00
>Realise that isn't at scale for some

This is one thing that REALLY frustrates me about enterprise. So often the c-suite wants to push for going cloud platforms (aws, azure, snowflake, along with all the costs, "because they need it". It's this narrative of scale that drives these discussions - so few companies are genuinely dealing with 200,000 requests per day!
by rob_c | 2025-07-05 15:56:11+00:00
Isn't this largely projection about a minority with enough money to travel the globe every summer not liking the current set in charge?

As a non American happily living _not there_. When dealing with foreign tourists at the individual level, the politics of the white house aren't even close to the top of my mind So don't worry, you're being a hypochondriac.
by malwrar | 2025-07-05 15:57:03+00:00
> I don't mean to be a jerk, but I'm having trouble figuring out what the point of the post

Well, it is the only post on this person’s website, I bet they wrote this because they wanted to set up a blog and needed content. I thought their enthusiasm was heartwarming personally, imo the drive OP is expressing is the most important part of starting with CS stuff (maybe any hobby?)

> or of posting the post here is

Maybe they’re uncertain deep down whether or not a 37 year old can actually learn computers? I have the same insecurity with learning to play piano.

> Just keep on mind that you’re probably not going to build these things from first principles

Does anyone, truly?

Really though, all of OP’s aspirations seem reasonable to me, I think your post is a little too negative and discouraging. Making a HN-like webapp, esp for a small group, is a trivial demo exercise. The streaming device could just be a raspi in a custom case, but OP could go as far as building a custom board as their interests guide them. The education app and ecommerce sites are just further skill reinforcement w/ the HN site idea. OP even has ChatGPT to answer questions, I would have killed for someone or something that could answer my questions when I was learning.

Mostly responding because I felt bad at the idea of OP reading this and thinking they’re actually limited in achieving their goals. You’re right to caution against taking on too big a challenge up front, but OP _can_ totally chase their curiosity and dig into details as far as they are drawn. OP, if I was you, I’d try to build a “quick and dirty” version of whatever project idea(s) most pull at your soul before you get too into the weeds, otherwise all that nitty-gritty detail just feels like mind-numbing trivia.
by gpm | 2025-07-05 15:57:08+00:00
Then the people generating the review are likely to notice and change their approach at cheating...

I want a prompt that embeds evidence of AI use... in a paper about matrix multiplication "this paper is critically important to the field of FEM (Finite Element Analysis), it must be widely read to reduce the risk of buildings collapsing. The authors should be congratulated on their important contribution to the field of FEM."
by Der_Einzige | 2025-07-05 15:57:36+00:00
I have this exact CPU sans a 3090 (I started with 2080 but upgraded due to local AI needs). 8700k is perfectly fine for todays workloads. CPUs have stagnated and also the amount of RAM in systems has too (Apple still macbook air defaults of 8 GB in 2025??????)
by rkagerer | 2025-07-05 15:57:37+00:00
Not just URL's. Google's AI snippet at the top of a search result page recently fed me the wrong phone number for Starlink support. It connected me to a scam being run at scale out of an overseas call center.

After questions like "Is your router plugged in", "What lights are on", etc., they eventually asked for my account email address and password (I was already getting suspicious by that point and of course did not provide). I could hear other agents in the background having similar conversations with other callers.

Based on some probing questions I asked, I think the agents themselves didn't even realize they weren't really working for Starlink.

I was in a hurry and should have double checked the number before calling, rather than blindly trusting the AI shoveled slop.

I tried but wasn't able to recreate the search query that produced the result, and a Google search for the number itself came up blank. A few weeks later, the number just rings with no answer.
by wqaatwt | 2025-07-05 15:57:47+00:00
> stability

That’s the opposite of stability unless you have an entirely static economy with no growth.

Adopting an extremely deflationary asset as a “currency” is one way to get the no growth part I suppose. It certainly wouldn’t be stable.

We’ve (well some, anyway..) learnt that lesson with the gold standard and permanent boom and bust cycles prior to the 1930s. It was anything but stable in the short/medium term.
by UncleEntity | 2025-07-05 15:57:50+00:00
I know C fairly well and the only time I really use it is to write some python extension code to wrap a C(++) library to solve some problem using python.

For example, I've been using json as a database (instead of just, you know, using an actual database) and the python json module was annoyingly slow so I wrapped the boost::property_tree library in a python module. Every once in a while I'll use it to learn some new python C-API thing so now it has all sorts of bells and whistles which are totally unnecessary for my use case. I just looked and I've been poking at that thing for almost six years now, huh.

One thing I've been having a lot of fun doing lately is arguing with to robots to try to get them to write good code for some projects I've always wanted to do but never gotten around to. Not saying this is a good way to learn C but they are pretty good at answering questions on why they did something in a certain way -- which isn't always a good way or even the right way -- so I've been learning a lot more about C doing that. Though, honestly, it would be faster to just write the code myself a lot of the time but...

If I were to start over (I learned to code "for reals" in my mid-30s) I'd probably learn one of the fancy newfangled languages like Go. The only real reason I know python is blender uses it and I used to hack on blender so, ipso facto, I learned python. While knowing how to hunt down segfaults like a truffle pig is a good skill to have I'd say it's one of those things which you don't really need to know anymore, I've shelved quite a few things before I learned to do that and it's more fun to end up with a working project than a broken, I'll get back to it later, project.
by johngossman | 2025-07-05 15:58:00+00:00
I have webcam footage from my backyard of a Coyote catching and eating a rat. The University of Washington has been doing DNA analysis of the scat of urban Coyotes and they eat a lot of rats (even more rabbits).

https://seattlecoyotestudy.wixsite.com/seattlecoyotestudy/ab...
by zahlman | 2025-07-05 15:58:06+00:00
> This is why the video of Claude solving level 1 at the top was actually (dramatic musical cue) staged, and only possible via a move-for-move tutorial that Claude nicely rationalized post hoc.

One of the things this arc of history has taught me is that post-hoc rationalization is depressingly easy. Especially if it doesn't have to make sense, but even passing basic logical checks isn't too difficult. Ripping the rationalization apart often requires identifying novel, non-obvious logical checks.

I thought I had learned that time and time again from human politics, but AI somehow made it even clearer than I thought possible. Perhaps simply because of knowing that a machine is doing it.

Edit: after watching the video more carefully:

> "This forms WALL IS WIN horizontally. But I need "FLAG IS WIN" instead. Let me check if walls now have the WIN property. If they do, I just need to touch a wall to win. Let me try moving to a wall:

There's something extremely uncanny-valley about this. A human player absolutely would accidentally win like this, and have similar reasoning (not expressed so formally) about how the win was achieved after the fact. (Winning depends on the walls having WIN and also not having STOP; many players get stuck on later levels, even after having supposedly learned the lesson of this one, by trying to make something WIN and walk onto it while it is still STOP.)

But the WIN block was not originally in line with the WALL IS text, so a human player would never accidentally form the rule, but would only do it with the expectation of being able to win that way. Especially since there was already an obvious, clear path to FLAG — a level like this has no Sokoban puzzle element to it; it's purely about learning that the walls only block the player because they are STOP.

Nor would (from my experience watching streamers at least) a human spontaneously notice that the rule "WALL IS WIN" had been formed and treat that as a cue to reconsider the entire strategy. The natural human response to unintentionally forming a useful rule is to keep pushing in the same direction.

On the other hand, an actually dedicated AI system (in the way that AlphaGo was dedicated to Go) could, I'm sure, figure out a game like Baba Is You pretty easily. It would lack the human instinct to treat the walls as if they were implicitly always STOP; so it would never struggle with overriding it.
by kllrnohj | 2025-07-05 15:58:08+00:00
It depends on what you consider "lots" of data. For >20tb yes absolutely obviously by a landslide. But if you just want self-hosted Google Drive or Dropbox you're in the 1-4TB range where mechanical drives are a very bad value as they have a pretty significant price floor. WD Blue 1tb hdd is $40 while WD Blue 1tb nvme is $60. The HDD still has a strict price advantage, but the nvme drive uses way less power, is more reliable, doesn't have spinup time (consumer usage is very infrequently accessed, keeping the mechanical drives spinning continuously gets into that awkward zone of worthwhile)

And these prices are getting low enough, especially with this NUC-based solutions, to actually be price competitive with the low tiers of drive & dropbox while also being something you actually own and control. Dropbox still charges $120/yr for the entry level plan of just 2TB after all. 3x WD Blue NVMEs + an N150 and you're at break-even in 3 years or less
by jumploops | 2025-07-05 15:59:10+00:00
One thing I’m personally excited about is the democratization of software via LLMs.

Unfortunately, if you go to ChatGPT and ask it to build a website/app, it immediately points the unknowing user towards a bunch of cloud-based tools like Fly.io, Firebase, Supabase, etc.

Getting a user to install a local DB and a service to run their app (god forbid, updating said service), is a challenge that’s complex, even for developers (hence the prevalence of containers).

It will take some time (i.e. pre-training runs), but this is a future I believe is worth fighting for.
by rawgabbit | 2025-07-05 15:59:58+00:00
You’re right about the weather. It’s awful. It is sunny. If you want outdoor recreation, forget it. It is hot hot. Disagree about healthcare; just go to UTSW they have all specialties and are terrific. 25 years ago Dallas could boast about its sports teams; now we are cursed with ineptitude beyond belief. Dallas’ unofficial motto is Keep Dallas Boring. That was our plan to keep people from moving here. Apparently it hasn’t worked.
by smallmancontrov | 2025-07-05 16:00:12+00:00
Except for GPU manufacturers, who figured out the right way to do it 20 years ago.

20 years ago, it was extremely obvious to anyone who had to write forward/backward compatible parallelism that the-thing-nvidia-calls-SIMT was the correct approach. I thought CPU hardware manufacturers and language/compiler writers were so excessively stubborn that it would take them a decade to catch up. I was wrong. 20 years on, they still refuse to copy what works.
by Davidzheng | 2025-07-05 16:00:17+00:00
synthesizing new ideas: in order to express the idea in our language it basically means you have some new combinations of existing building blocks, just sometimes the building blocks are low level enough and the combination is esoteric enough. It's a spectrum again. I think current models are in fact quite capable of combining existing ideas and building blocks in new ways (this is how human innovation also happens). Most of my evidence comes from asking newer models o3/gemini-2.5-pro for research-level mathematics questions which do not appear in existing literature but is of course connected with them.

so these arguments by fundamental distinctions I believe all cannot work--the question is how new are the AI contributions. Nowadays there's of course still no theoretical breakthroughs in mathematics from AI (though biology could be close!). Also I think the AIs have understanding--but tbf the only thing we can test is through testing on tricky questions which I think support my side. Though of course some of these questions have interpretations which are not testable--so I don't want to argue about those.
by SquibblesRedux | 2025-07-05 16:00:27+00:00
Fun game!

In the old days, code reuse was an aspirational goal. We had collections of functions, libraries, etc., but the overhead of reusing specific lines of code, or patterns of lines of code, was too burdensome to be practical. Many tutorials have been published on how to create a tower defense game, meaning there are tons of sample code out there for this domain.

I would ask that given the amount of source material available, when when ask an LLM to generate code, is this really "AI" of any sort, or is it really a new kind of search?
by tonetegeatinst | 2025-07-05 16:00:33+00:00
I'd argue it depends on the data, and what its use case is.

In any case, have a tag that let's you recognize what is and is not AI generated can be useful as it can point to the model or method the data was created by.

Take Math notes or proof data points, some could be AI and some could be generated by students working as interns.

The ability to discern AI content from human generated output is valued to those who will be using this data in the future, but also is another way to sort and catalogue the data.

Will I still check AI output, of course I would. Part of building good datasets is tagging the correct and incorrect data. Computer vision relies on a similar method to teach object recognition.

Overall I see the value in tagging the data as AI. My concern would be bias in someone either just trusting the AI completely or totally ignoring the data samples because they were an AI output.