MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by TeMPOraL | 2025-07-15 18:38:07+00:00
I get this. On the one hand, those things I wrote down are just simple conclusions from immediate experience, not something I had to learn or feel burdened by - but on the other hand, when I look at similar lists for e.g. how to effectively use Claude Code, I recoil in horror.

There's a silver lining in this, though: none of that is any kind of deep expertise, so there's no need for up-front investment. Just start using a tool and pay attention, and you'll pick up on those things in no time.
by daxfohl | 2025-07-15 18:38:17+00:00
It depends. A lot of projects / features really don't require a ton of engineering thought. Add a new table that has some foreign keys with existing tables, add a new page that lets you modify that table, add a new set of REST CRUD handlers that do some validation and store the data, add a new message queue that does whatever needs to happen when the data gets changed.

If AI can handle things like that, then let AI do it: it's not really engineering work anyway; it's copy-and-paste from a previous design, just change the handler logic and the names of things. If 90% of incoming features are like that, then that gives you a lot more time to work on the 10% that are more complex.

Eventually, you'll end up with spaghetti code no matter how well you plan out the architecture, whether human or AI is doing designs. But it'll move that direction even faster with AI, and eventually AI won't be able to understand it well enough to reliably design things anymore. That's where the real engineering will come in. As the system evolves, how do we re-architect things so that AI (and humans) can understand the patterns again and make future changes more reliably?

Right now, it seems like services go through major refactors/rewrites like that every five years or so. And those rewrites tend to be slow and often unsuccessful: even though the existing system is complex, engineers are used to it and it's easier to add one more bandaid than to wait for the full rewrite. Then such rewrites can get stuck in navel-gazing as there's no "perfect" way to do them, and it's lower effort just to go back to the system you already know.

As AI creates more churn though, the architecture will need to be rethought much more frequently. Additionally there will be more urgency to deliver the cleanup because AI will be completely blocked by the existing spaghetti, which brings all product dev to a halt, and you don't have time for navel-gazing because there's no fallback option.

So I think the engineering work post-AI is really going to be this kind of infrastructural planning and rearchitecting, such that AI can deliver features on top of it without friction. And in a way, as an engineer, that's what I want to be doing anyway. We've always had this ideal of continuous refactoring and continuous improvement, that always gets pushed to the backburner when compared to feature development. "Sure this refactor will help future velocity, but we need to make our quarterly goals!" But now, AI will compress those timelines so that maintaining clean architectures has a direct effect on the deliverables of the current quarter.

I personally think this is great. If, in the future, PMs can launch whole features without engineers writing a line of code, that's awesome. It's our job to maintain a system where such an ideal is possible. Which sounds like the job I wanted when I originally signed up to be an engineer.
by outworlder | 2025-07-15 18:38:49+00:00
> Not to mention, running a giant model locally for hours a day is sure to shorten the lifespan of the machine…

That is not a thing. Unless there's something wrong (badly managed thermals, an undersized PSU at the limit of its capacity, dusty unfiltered air clogging fans, aggressive overclocking), that's what your computer is built for.

Sure, over a couple of decades there's more electromigration than would otherwise have happened at idle temps. But that's pretty much it.

> I think I would need to spend $2000+ to run a decent model locally

Not really. Repurpose second hand parts and you can do it for 1/4 of that cost. It can also be a server and do other things when you aren't running models.
by bcheung | 2025-07-15 18:39:04+00:00
I wonder how many of these rules can be incorporated into a linter or be evaluated by an LLM in an agentic feedback loop. It would be nice to encourage code to be more like this.

I notice you didn't really talk much about types. When I think of proofs in code my mind goes straight to types because they literally are proofs. Richer typed languages move even more in that direction.

One caveat I would add is it is not always desirable to be forced to think through every little scenario and detail. Sometimes it's better to ship faster than write 100% sound code.

And as an industry, as much as I hate it, the preference is for languages and code that is extremely imperative and brittle. Very few companies want to be writing code in Idris or Haskell on a daily basis.
by lucianbr | 2025-07-15 18:39:13+00:00
> It's hard to imagine building anything as impactful as AGI, and LLMs are easily the technological innovation of the decade.

I really can't see a person with at least minimal self-awareness talking their own work up this much. Give me a break dude. Plus, you haven't built AGI yet.

Can't believe there's so little critique of this post here. It's incredibly self-serving.
by FerkiHN | 2025-07-15 18:39:26+00:00
For example, my favorite programming language is the C programming language, it offers endless possibilities (I know it's complicated, but I like everything and I don't see any difficulties), I've already done a lot of cool things github projects, and one of them is: https://github.com/Ferki-git-creator/phono-in-terminal-image...
by dawnerd | 2025-07-15 18:39:30+00:00
I haven’t noticed any slowing, if anything it’s accelerating as people try vibe coding and realize they can build an mvp and get some suckers to sponsor on GitHub. Just look how many end up with donate links. I suspect a large portion of people releasing open source vibe coded projects don’t care about the project but see it as a low effort way to make a few bucks.
by ActorNightly | 2025-07-15 18:39:34+00:00
>it's rather a native application that runs across Windows, Mac and Linux is still really hard.

Not really. Electron is basically web browser.

The issue is that a cornerstone of modern development is basically "don't rewrite what already has been written", however the problem is that you always get optimization creep because of this - people just build shit on top of other shit continuously and never go back and optimize.
by PaulHoule | 2025-07-15 18:39:35+00:00
I wrote this

https://ontology2.com/essays/HackerNewsForHackers/

years ago but I don't stand by that article because I don't feel that way anymore. I do stand by the sequel

https://ontology2.com/essays/ClassifyingHackerNewsArticles/

because that's the operating principle of YOShInOn which is something a little more sophisticated applied to RSS feeds and productized.
by mg | 2025-07-15 18:39:43+00:00
I'm not sure if every fractal can be expressed as an iterative formula f(z,c).

In 2012 I found a fractal by using a fundamentally different approach. It arises when you colorize the complex plane by giving each pixel a grey value that corresponds to the percentage of gaussian integers that it can divide:

https://www.gibney.org/does_anybody_know_this_fractal
by merelysounds | 2025-07-15 18:39:56+00:00
> Even for individual movies. For all the men-in-spandex movies, the best selling movie (by tickets sold) in modern times is Titanic, 27 years ago.

This looks incorrect, at least according to Wikipedia; its list of films by box office admissions[1] includes a few Chinese movies from the 1980s with higher numbers.

Unless the 80s don’t count as modern times - but I’d say it’s not that far from the 90s.

[1]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_films_by_box_office_...
by justfix17 | 2025-07-15 18:40:03+00:00
> LLMs do not think

Yep.

More seriously, you described a great example of one of the challenges we haven't addressed. LLM output masquerades as thoughtful work products and wastes people's time (or worse tanks a project, hurts people, etc).

Now my job reviewing work is even harder because bad work has fewer warning signs to pick up on. Ugh.

I hope that your workplace developed a policy around LLM use that addressed the incident described. Unfortunately I think most places probably just ignore stuff like this in the faux scramble to "not be left behind".
by chistev | 2025-07-15 18:40:07+00:00
Hard to choose for myself who made the post.

But some of my favorites are -

1. God: The Failed Hypothesis Book by Victor J. Stenger

2. The God Delusion Book by Richard Dawkins

3. Berlin: The Downfall 1945 Book by Antony Beevor

4. A Song of Ice and Fire Novel series by George R.R. Martin

5. A Short History of Nearly Everything Book by Bill Bryson

6. Billions and Billions Book by Carl Sagan

7. Flowers for Algernon Short story by Daniel Keyes

8. I'm Glad My Mom Died Book by Jennette McCurdy

9. Manhunt: The Ten-Year Search for Bin Laden--from 9/11 to Abbottabad Book by Peter Bergen

10. Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space Book by Carl Sagan

11. The Metamorphosis Novella by Franz Kafka

12. The Selfish Gene Book by Richard Dawkins

Gun to my head, pick one? The God Delusion.
by sebastiennight | 2025-07-15 18:40:19+00:00
Ah. I think there might be a misunderstanding.

I read GP's comment as saying that large investors will be happy to buy "distressed assets", eg. the bankrupt farm itself, after its ruined crops caused bankrupcy.

They don't care about the crop ; the same way that a speculator might have bought LA real estate for a symbolic dollar after the house itself had burnt down. They don't care about the family house, they care about buying the underlying asset (the land) for cheaper than its real value.
by ryandv | 2025-07-15 18:41:08+00:00
> It leads me to the question, "Is it really 'religious hardware' or the same ol' 'make meaning out of patterns' hardware

They are the same thing. Call it "religion" or "meaning making," both activities can be subsumed by the more encompassing concept and less-loaded term of "psycho-technology," [0] or non-physical tools for the mind.

Language is such a psycho-technology, as are social constructs such as law; legal fictions are given memorable names and personified into "religious" figures, such as Libra from astrology or Themis/Lady Justice from Greek mythology.

Ancient shamans and priests were proto-wetware engineers, designing software for your brain and providing tools for making meaning out of the world. In modern day we now have psychologists, "social commentators" (for lack of a better term and interpreted as broadly as possible), and, yes, software engineers, amongst other disciplines, playing a similar role.

[0] https://www.meaningcrisis.co/episode-1-introduction/
by atleastoptimal | 2025-07-15 18:41:12+00:00
How could you take what I said and conclude that I’m stating that AI is completely useless and a net negative? I bring those issues up to note that the rollout of AI systems have been mired in problems like all new technologies. However even current AI possesses enormous utility in many sectors, and productivity/efficiency gains due to capabilities of the best models, which have no signs of slowing their rate of improvement.

That you rushed to straw man my point so hyperbolically supports my view that this frequent insistence I see claiming that AI is a worthless scam despite all the evidence to the contrary is emotionally motivated.
by jjulius | 2025-07-15 18:41:34+00:00
When your work provides lunch in a variety of different cafeterias all neatly designed to look like standalone restaurants, directly across from which is an on-campus bank that will assist you with all of your financial needs before you take your company-operated Uber-equivalent to the next building over and have your meeting either in that building's ballpit, or on the tree-covered rooftop that - for some reason - has foxes on top, it's easy to focus only on the tiny "good" thing you're working on and not the steaming hot pile of garbage that the executives at your company are focused on but would rather you not see.

Edit: And that's to say nothing of the very generous pay...
by OgsyedIE | 2025-07-15 18:42:06+00:00
This was a great nostalgia trip to my days on fractalforums, before the web got much denser. I tried playing around with the settings but I was unable to reproduce the two-dimensional version of Tom Lowe's Mandelbox map, discovered in 2010:

https://sites.google.com/site/mandelbox/what-is-a-mandelbox

There are galleries on the other pages of the site, if anybody is interested.
by TeMPOraL | 2025-07-15 18:42:10+00:00
> Perhaps the comparison is more appropriate than you realise.

Or perhaps you stop being obtuse. There's no causal connection between "using saints for actual tasks" and the outcomes, which is why we call this religion. In contrast, you can see the cause-and-effect relationship directly and immediately with LLMs - all it takes is going to chatgpt.com or claude.ai, typing in a query, and observing the result.

> Well but do they? I don't mean your vibes, and I also don't mean cooked-up benchmarks.

Do read the study itself, specifically the parts where the authors spell out specifically what is or isn't being measured here.
by leakycap | 2025-07-15 18:42:26+00:00
Who "gobbles" water? What a weird title by the site.

> Typical data centers guzzle around 500,000 gallons of water each day, but these forthcoming AI-centric complexes will likely be even thirstier.

Then they go on to say guzzling. Really personifying the monster. First, it's bigger than Manhattan... then it's gobbling and guzzling.

I wonder if the author or any people reviewing the piece 'fed' it into a 'starving' LLM?
by dmbche | 2025-07-15 18:42:46+00:00
I don't think you understand the relative amounts of capital invested in LLMs compared to expert systems in the 80s.

And those systems were never "commodified" - your average mom is forcefully exposed to LLMs with every google search, can interact with LLMs for free instantly anywhere in the world - and we're comparing to a luxury product for nerds basically?

Not to forget that those massive companies are also very heavy in advertising - I don't think your average mom in the 80s heard of those systems multiple times a day, from multiple aquaintances AND social media and news outlets.
by Muromec | 2025-07-15 18:42:51+00:00
That depends on a flavor of your morality.

Helping a fool part ways with his money, which he (not they, but he) has way more than he needs could (and often is) seen as a lesser transgression compared to selling your own body.

In other news, multiplication matrix of morality of abortion and eating meat yields four morally tenable positions that somebody believes in and sees as consistent system of beliefs.
by bookofjoe | 2025-07-15 18:42:53+00:00
I didn't know that so I went and read about them. I could not find a single source that definitively states that "it's a tool for making fingers in knitted gloves."

That there are YouTube videos showing it being used to do exactly that does NOT mean that was its intended or original function.

In fact, all of the sources I consulted stated that your proposed function is one of approximately 50 possible and speculated uses but that there is still no conclusive evidence as to the device's original function.

Thus, I find your characterization of the article as "click bait" to be wide of the mark.
by sparky4pro | 2025-07-15 18:43:10+00:00
This is a nice article as it triggers “think before you use it” mentality.

However, at the same time, it suggests the idea that rational thinking without any deep seated perception or hidden motivation is possible.

This is not possible.

Therefore, all greedy people in this field will push anything that gives them what they want.

They will never care if what they do or promote will help “mankind” to a long term beneficial direction.
by dylan604 | 2025-07-15 18:43:35+00:00
it's the "thinking" frozen state while it uploads and waits for a GPT response that is unnerving. if the eyes did something to indicate progress is being made, then it would remove the desire to ask it if it is working or something. the last thing I want to be is that PM asking for a status update, but some indication it was actually processing the request would be ideal. even if there was a new animation with the tail like having it spinning or twirling like the ubiquitous spinner to show that something is happening

the snap to attention is a good example of it showing you feedback. the frozen state makes me wonder if it is doing anything or not
by myaccountonhn | 2025-07-15 18:43:52+00:00
I've been in circles with very rich and somewhat influential tech people and it's a lot of talk about helping others, but somehow beneath the veneer of the talk of helping others you notice that many of them are just ripping people off, doing coke and engaging in self-centered spiritual practices (especially crypto people).

I also don't trust that people within the system can assess if what they're doing is good or not. I've talked with higher ups in fashion companies who genuinely believe their company is actually doing so much great work for the environment when they basically invented fast-fashion. I've felt it first hand personally how my mind slowly warped itself into believing that ad-tech isn't so bad for the world when I worked for an ad-tech company, and only after leaving did I realize how wrong I was.
by pj_mukh | 2025-07-15 18:44:55+00:00
I think we'll have to wait and see here, because all the layoffs can be easily attributed to leadership making crappy over-hiring decisions over COVID and now not being able to admit to that and giving hand-wavy answers over "I'm firing people because AI" to drive different headline narratives (see: founders/CEO's talking outta their a**).

It may also be the narrative fed to actual employees, saying "You're losing your job because AI" is an easy way to direct anger away from your bad business decisions. If a business is shrinking, it's shrinking, AI was inconsequential. If a business is growing AI can only help. Whether it's growing or shrinking doesn't depend on AI, it depends on the market and leadership decision-making.

You and I both know none of this generative AI is good enough unsupervised (and realistically, with deep human edits). But they're still massive productivity boosts which have always been huge economic boosts to the middle-class.

Do I wish this tech could also be applied to real middle-class shortages (housing, supply-chain etc.), sure. And I think it will come.
by xenadu02 | 2025-07-15 18:45:15+00:00
First I am a pilot. Not commercial or jet rated but I like to think I have a tiny bit more insight than average.

The point of what GI275 does is as a backup instrument you are much more likely to need it when the electrical system fails or is turned off due to fire. Yet if it just remains on until shutdown pilots would frequently forget to turn it off on the ground, resulting in its battery being worn out. Because it is considered critical it delays its own shutdown. Long enough for you to notice in flight but not so long it wears out the battery (which might result in only a few minutes of power in a real emergency).

My entire point was that engine restarts take some time. If both engines eat a blade or catch fire you are screwed anyway so whether or not the fuel cutoff switch does anything at 1500ft is irrelevant. But that is so rare I don't think we have any events on record. So it might be worth inserting a delay - enough to account for standard climb rates to achieve enough altitude to make restart likely or at least possible. The delay would only be for the second engine shutdown and only for time T after going into air mode. And if the system gets it wrong, thinking the other engine is shutdown when it is not pulling the fire handle would override any delay - and pulling the fire handle is part of any engine failure or departed aircraft procedure I know of. In other words you wouldn't even need to change the QRH or emergency checklists in most cases.

I noted that engineering for aviation is complex and everything has failure modes to consider. Privately I went through several iterations of this idea and discarded them for problems with failure modes and complexity. What I proposed is boiled down to the minimal thing that would have saved this flight.

The other thing I'll say is there is a reason the computer will auto-extend some flaps/slats at slow speed even if you put the handle to zero. And there's a reason auto-throttle provides protection. And with the exception of the 737 the computer auto-starts the APU on dual engine failure. And any attempt to deploy thrust reversers in the air is ignored. And stick pushers exist for good reason.

We put in all kinds of measures to override human decisions to prevent mistakes and errors.
by WorldMaker | 2025-07-15 18:45:19+00:00
> But I also think it's disingenuous to lump a car like the Mach E and Ioniq 5 in the same size class as a Chevy Suburban and Honda Pilot and Ford Expedition.

There's an inflation factor here. The Mach E is about the size of the 1990s Ford Expedition or Chevy Suburban (and the Honda Pilot didn't yet exist). Everything has gotten bigger. Everything keeps getting bigger "just a couple inches" at a time.

The ("hot") hatchback of the 1970s, which defined the class, was closer to the size of a Geo Prism than a Chevy Volt, much less a Mach E.

In my view the lower end of the SUV class has been relatively consistent, it's just gotten so much wider as class (just like the cars) and shifted huger with all sorts of inflation.

I don't think I'm disingenuous here: I feel consistent. I was dismissive of the class as too large when it broke out in the 1990s. I'm dismissive of the class today. The fact that the class has become so dominant and inflated so largely hasn't changed my baseline of when a car seems "too big" even if it seems to have raised the floors of so many other people. I drove a Geo Prism for a decade and change. I've now driven a Chevy Volt for another decade and change. I've been here the whole time, it seems to me SUVs as a class that's gotten worse.
by surge | 2025-07-15 18:46:59+00:00
Engadget often has sensationalist, inaccurate headlines. I stopped reading them when I was intimately with the actual details of an article vs the way they framed/presented it. Also, what kind of water? Pure clean water, untreated water, Grey water, etc? Bottled water and other industries consume millions of gallons too. If its for cooling, I imagine water can be used that isn't being used for any other purpose. At least the water cycle is a thing, the alternative is A/C cooling which would be even more harmful. This is one of those cases where even if a company picks the least bad option, they're going to get criticized because negative agitating headlines get clicks.

A reminder that Meta tried to go green/nuclear, but couldn't because some bees were on or near the proposed location. Another example, of letting the perfect environmental ideal that isn't feasible be the enemy of the good.
by ptaffs | 2025-07-15 18:47:22+00:00
DIVX/XVID is ambiguous, it is a video format and separately a crappy DRM ecosystem from defunct Circuit City. The format DIVX would compress a full length movie to about 700MB (a CD capacity), where VCD MPEG-1 only got 75-80 minutes. LaserDisc owners were already trying to solve the disc-change interruption problem with premium two sided players. The format was also better to watch, in that the compression artifacts were less obvious. But the Rights Holders at the time, like for music, were more concerned with piracy, even though everything they did would make the consumer experience worse and drive more piracy. DIVX the DRM is a great example of an anti-consumer consumer format, and environmentally wasteful too as the plastic disc became "spent" after 30 days.