MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by samfriedman | 2025-07-28 00:48:48+00:00
On this topic, can anyone find a document I saw on HN but can no longer locate? A historical computing essay, it was presented in a plaintext (monospaced) text page. It outlined a computer assistant and how it should feel to use. The author believed it should be unobtrusive, something that pops into awareness when needed and then gets back out of the way. I don't believe any of the references in TFA are what it was.
by nicoburns | 2025-07-28 00:49:16+00:00
I wonder who it is that likes other kinds of parser. Over the last ~10 years or so I've read several articles arguing that recursive descent parsers are in fact great on HN. And they seem to be both the easiest to get started with and what almost all production-grade systems use. I've seen very little in the way of anything arguing for any other approaches.
by jasperry | 2025-07-28 00:49:57+00:00
> If I was routinely working in a language that had a well respected de facto standard parser generator and lexer, and regularly building parsers for little languages for my programs, it would probably be worth mastering these tools.

In OCaml, a language highly suited for developing languages in, that de facto standard is the Menhir LR parser generator. It's a modern Yacc with many convenient features, including combinator-like library functions. I honestly enjoy the work of mastering Menhir, poring over the manual, which is all one page: https://gallium.inria.fr/~fpottier/menhir/manual.html
by Hizonner | 2025-07-28 00:50:06+00:00
> I keep coming back to the actual solution being to keep kids off the internet period.

W T F ? ? ?

> Because the practical reality here is, like, porn is the big scary word, but the actual danger to kids is other people.

Bad news, Champ. Other people also exist off of the Internet. They always have. The world is not entirely safe. And that does not mean children shouldn't get to be part of the world.

The main problem here is panicky idiocy.
by cadamsdotcom | 2025-07-28 00:50:59+00:00
Love the idea & spitballing ways to generalize to coding..

Thought experiment: as you write code, an LLM generates tests for it & the IDE runs those tests as you type, showing which ones are passing & failing, updating in real time. Imagine 10-100 tests that take <1ms to run, being rerun with every keystroke, and the result being shown in a non-intrusive way.

The tests could appear in a separated panel next to your code, and pass/fail status in the gutter of that panel. As simple as red and green dots for tests that passed or failed in the last run.

The presence or absence and content of certain tests, plus their pass/fail state, tells you what the code you’re writing does from an outside perspective. Not seeing the LLM write a test you think you’ll need? Either your test generator prompt is wrong, or the code you’re writing doesn’t do the things you think they do!

Making it realtime helps you shape the code.

Or if you want to do traditional TDD, the tooling could be reversed so you write the tests and the LLM makes them pass as soon as you stop typing by writing the code.
by matthewdgreen | 2025-07-28 00:51:49+00:00
Why are you asking me for a prompt that would be effortless to formulate yourself, and why are you asking questions that would also be effortless to formulate yourself? It’s not because the information will be of higher quality when you filter it through me, it’s because you’re afraid that if you do these very easy things, you’ll learn that things are much worse than you believe.
by jalapenos | 2025-07-28 00:52:05+00:00
The most annoying part of all the discussions had on fertility rates is: absolutely I'm going to see the word "economics" or "afford" or other such crap.

It is such a reliable farce, involving such intentional ignorance towards past-present income and fertility differentials, and poor-rich country differentials, that my running theory is that this behaviour itself is likely connected to the fertility rate issues.

I.e. that the true reason is, as we all know, that people just don't want the perceived hassle and reduced freedom that comes with kids, and everyone has formed an absolutely pervasive and fortified contraceptive culture aligned with that, but they want an fake excuse that's maximally far from that that sounds defensively plausible.
by heavyset_go | 2025-07-28 00:52:15+00:00
> a big reason of the world issues, especially in USA is that ideas can grow in forums where people under etherial identities can tell lie after lie without any repercussion.

See, I wouldn't have as much of an issue if you were honest about this real intention, because of how on the nose it is to reasonable people.

The idea that I will have to upload 3D models of my face and ID, or get permission from Google, just to go online because you don't like the idea of someone else's kids using the internet is absurd.

Please stop using appeals to children in your quest to "stop ideas from growing".
by juxtaposicion | 2025-07-28 00:52:21+00:00
I’m building Popgot (https://popgot.com): compare unit prices (per oz/sheet/lb) across Costco, Walmart, Target, and Amazon. We normalize fuzzy sizes (“family,” “mega,” multipacks) so you see the actually cheapest option for staples.

New: a deep research mode that, on demand, crawls thousands of product pages and uses visual LLMs to read label photos (ingredients, counts, square footage) when the text is messy. First run takes ~60–90s, then it’s cached.

A good torture test: 20×25×1 MERV 13 home air filters—listings mix single/4/6/12-packs and vague claims (“3-month,” “allergen defense”), which wreck per-unit comparisons. I’d love feedback on misses (coupons/Subscribe & Save/region), categories to add, and to collaborate with a grocery-list app, budgeting tool, or anyone in the frugal/deals space. chris@popgot.com
by PaulHoule | 2025-07-28 00:53:25+00:00
It's not just an issue that objectively it's a lot of carbon, it's that they tried to bullshit people the last time that it was going to be "net zero" because they bought carbon credits.

Also now that they are playing in hotter places like Saudia Arabia and the US the players and fans are feeling the heat literally; it was a problem at the Club World Cup in the last two years, but not the worst problem of the CWC -- there is some appeal in questions like "How does MLS stack up against Ligue 1?" [1] it adds more games for teams that are already stretched by events like the Champions League.

[1] though we know the answer to that one
by lazyeye | 2025-07-28 00:53:26+00:00
Huh...we've had "ethno-nationalism" before and had no problems, and had it before with problems. I'm entirely comfortable with Japan managing their immigration however they see fit. The idea that they should design their society around the ideology of some stupid fools in Western academia is absurd to me. It's ok for them to value their own extraordinary culture, I'm not threatened by that.
by jasperry | 2025-07-28 00:55:20+00:00
But remember that the articles arguing for recursive descent parsers are arguing against the long-dominant paradigm of using LR parsers. Plenty of us still like LR parser generators (see my other comment.)

In between "easiest to get started with" and "what production-grade systems use", there is "easy to actually finish a medium-sized project with." I think LR parsers still defend that middle ground pretty well.
by lesuorac | 2025-07-28 00:55:27+00:00
> According to company insiders, the company often repeatedly billed patients without their consent and pressured doctors to approve tests.

Is it really impossible to do all these stuff ethically?

Not a doctor but it really seems possible to just take stuff from people and throw it under a really good microscope and have a computer analyze it. You'd need some large capital costs for the microscopes but the consumable portion should be pretty limited to glass slides (plastic?).

One of these days I guess I need to spend time on gov auctions or something to find a suitable microscope ...
by primaprashant | 2025-07-28 00:55:45+00:00
Building a local CLI tool, hns [1], for speech-to-text in terminal in 5 keystrokes.

It records my voice, transcribes it locally using faster-whisper, and copies the transcription to my clipboard. Check the demo linked in the GitHub repo to see how it works.

I use it especially with Claude Code to provide detailed context for the outcome I want to achieve. I ramble for 5 minutes, and then paste the transcription to Claude Code, instead of having to type all my thoughts all the time.

The workflow is like this:

$ hns # start recording <talk> <Enter> # clipboard now holds the text

[1] https://github.com/primaprashant/hns
by alephnerd | 2025-07-28 00:56:33+00:00
> Germany tend to be primary proponents of increased EU strategic autonomy

Germany isn't doing this as much anymore, because Germany Inc has become increasingly dependent on their investments within the US [0], especially after the triple whammy of the Biden-era IRA [1], the sanctions on Russia sparking a domestic energy crisis [2], and Chinese players outcompeting German industry in China [3].

This can be seen with Germany purchasing American weapons for Ukraine over French objections [4]

[0] - https://flow.db.com/more/macro-and-markets/us-german-trade-r...

[1] - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-12-14/german-go...

[2] - https://oec.world/en/blog/bavarias-dependency-on-russian-gas...

[3] - https://www.reuters.com/business/majority-german-firms-feel-...

[4] - https://www.politico.eu/article/europe-donald-trump-weapons-...
by WalterBright | 2025-07-28 00:56:36+00:00
Yes. Interestingly, Willy Messerschmidt was imprisoned for a couple years after the war, Ernst Heinkel was tried but not imprisoned.

Von Braun was not because Russia had also captured a number of rocket scientists, the US rocket technology was way behind, and von Braun was needed to get the US rocket program going.

Modern liquid fuel rocket engines can directly trace their evolution back to the V2.
by incanus77 | 2025-07-28 00:57:21+00:00
I realize you are asking for cross-OS, but Mac OS X was doing this in 2002 (and probably earlier) for PowerBook models with an ethernet cable between them. As I recall, iBooks didn't do this even if they had the port, but PowerBooks would do the auto-crossover, then Finder/AFP would support the machines showing up for each other.
by willahmad | 2025-07-28 00:57:25+00:00
Trust takes time to build and only a moment to lose. That’s why we're trying to build the trust by committing to transparency and security.

Right now, we’re undergoing the CASA Tier 2 security assessment for our desktop application. This process, required by Google for publishing our Gmail and Google Calendar integrations, which reassures that we are not transferring data to our servers and storing it securely on your local machine. We also planned to obtain SOC 2 after we validate the demand for the tool.

We also encourage our users to inspect the network traffic from our application to verify this for themselves.
by koeng | 2025-07-28 00:57:30+00:00
Im investigating creating a nattokinase overexpression strain for fun. This is my second home-brewed food GMO!

Basically, nattokinase is an enzyme made by natto (Japanese fermented soybeans). It’s been show clinically to help against blood clots. Unfortunately, the clinical dose is 5x the quantity in a serving of natto.

That’s too much natto to eat! So I’m working to genetically engineer a normal, typical natto strain to just over express that one enzyme, so 1 serving == 1 clinically relevant dose

My last was genetically engineering yeast to produce grape aroma, then baking bread. Was great fun feeding people it. I want to eventually throw GMO dinner parties in SF, but only with GMOs I’ve created with my own hands
by nsonha | 2025-07-28 00:58:02+00:00
"AI started actively breaking working code" is vibe coding talk, you should monitor what it does and undo at the step that breaks. I've been able to do that just by prompting "undo last step/<specific action>"

I used it before as a free Claude Code to do ad-hoc scripting, pretty useful. Now I have found a bunch of TUI programs (Amazon Q, rovo dev, opencode) that can assist with that kind of workflow. I don't like that it's a GUI app, but I like the fact that it's a terminal app where I can type command directly into, not just prompt. Claude 4 should be fine, was on free, never hit limit so not sure what's the lite experience is.
by davidsojevic | 2025-07-28 00:58:39+00:00
In Australia, brokers need to be licenced real estate agents (even as a buyers agent in many states), so I suspect there's a relatively decent culture of people who are serious about selling their business going through brokers and resulting in listings on at least one of the major platforms.

There's just shy of 90,000 unique listings I'm tracking (i.e. after de-duplication) on these platforms.

On the traditional classifieds sites and things like Facebook groups focusing on these, there's a significantly smaller number of listings/ads for business sales (e.g. a couple of thousand).

I think where there are definitely hidden gems is where there are many small business owners at or close to retirement age where they haven't planned for a sale at all. For example, a family member nearing retirement age has a small business they're just intending to shut down because they "couldn't be bothered" selling it. I've heard people have had reasonable success just approaching local businesses like this that have older owners OR asking accountants if they have any clients that are thinking of selling.
by Mr_Minderbinder | 2025-07-28 00:59:03+00:00
I feel like this a problem in general for topics outside “the West” or even just the Anglosphere. There is a tantalising amount of information that is siloed away in other languages. I was reading a Wikipedia article on one of the campaigns waged by the Ottomans in Europe and the English version was threadbare (and poorly written) in comparison to the Hungarian Wikipedia equivalent which was three times longer and had more images, maps and diagrams. It also cited a wealth of sources that were, again, not in English. This is a natural result of the fact that the ones “closest” to the event in question will generally be the ones most qualified and ready to report upon it.
by WarOnPrivacy | 2025-07-28 01:00:28+00:00
Article lists some super short growth stats that appeal to the topmost income bracket. Well, okay.

However, I'm skeptical that this trillion is the particular trillion that will turn everything around for wage earners.

Because rents continue to equal 1 month of typical wages. And young folks who'd like to start families - they matter. A lot.

And being housed is important for couples and families who are starting out.
by avidiax | 2025-07-28 01:00:31+00:00
Not very satisfying that he didn't actually design a flatpack bed.

There is an interesting optimization problem in this that the author didn't touch on: create a design that maximizes the useful material use.

So you might start with a design that is really spindly, and has too many joints. Then run that through the optimizer, so that you can see the proposed layout. This design will have lots of waste, but you will also be able to see where you could add strength or functionality by consuming the offcuts.

In the author's design[1], the overlaps can simply be cut out of the other members without reducing strength too much. The central portion can then be cut into cantilevered tables, and a few more offcuts can provide bracing or legs, which gives you free integrated nightstands (as wings off the existing bed).

[1] https://kevinlynagh.com/newsletter/2025_07_flatpack/cad_nest...
by chistev | 2025-07-28 01:00:40+00:00
Thank you for the kind words and for taking the time to read the white paper. It's a good feeling when you spend time and effort on something and someone takes the time to go through it.

I opted for database storage to simplify the management of ephemeral data. For a solo project, and as someone still learning, this was a practical way to keep the codebase manageable while focusing on core features like encryption and token-based access control.

However, you should note, in case you missed it in the white paper, that messages and files are deleted upon view (for view-once links) or expiry, whichever comes first. This ensures that the ~33% storage overhead from base64 is temporary, as a file only occupies space until it’s accessed or expires.

That said, you’re absolutely right that base64 encoding adds unneccessay storage overhead and could complicate backups for large files. I also recognize that storing files on disk could be more efficient for large-scale use cases. As (or should I say IF?) the project scales with users, I’ll definitely consider optimizations like disk storage or compression (your gzip idea is great!).

If I run into optimization problems, then it means people are using my product, and that sounds like one of them good problems (Marlo Stanfield's voice).

Your suggestion of in-browser encryption is super compelling, especially to assure users of total privacy. I noted in my white paper that client-side encryption is a future goal to address the limitation of the current server-side encryption, and your approach aligns with that vision.

The browser extension idea is also fascinating, I did not think of that.

I’m open to collaboration (again, as mentioned in my white paper) and would love to discuss ideas for making ClosedLinks more auditable while still keeping it commercially viable/sustainable. I’d be excited to hear more about your project or explore ways we could collaborate on privacy-focused tools.

Thanks again for the encouragement and for sparking this discussion!
by lmm | 2025-07-28 01:00:50+00:00
> A developer carrying three mediocre teammates isn't being manipulated by "the rentier class" when they prefer merit-based evaluation.

What happens when they get their wish? Do they start getting paid something close to the combined salary of the team they were carrying? Or do they get an attaboy and a pizza, and a precedent for "merit-based" layoffs that will be turned against them soon enough? I know which way I've seen it play out.

> Your argument requires believing that productive workers can't accurately assess their own interests.

Is it so implausible that people skilled in a specific field might be bad at cooperating (perhaps because they're bad at communicating with each other, at least relative to another class) and politically naive? If you think workers have a good understanding of their own interests then why has the labour share of income kept dropping?
by jMyles | 2025-07-28 01:02:03+00:00
I'm in Tuva (currently organized as a Russian Republic on the border of Mongolia), about to go offline for 10 days into a small throatsinging retreat. This has been a dream of mine for many years.

I flew Rapid City -=> Minneapolis -=> Seoul -=> Ulaanbaatar -=> Kyzyl to get here; it was quite a harrowing journey, not only for the many difficult flights but also an hours-long interrogation by Russian security (though they were polite and professional - I'll tell that whole story another time).

I'm increasingly convinced of the connection between traditional music and a free internet. As some of you have followed, I have done a few deep-dives into the bluegrass roots of the early Bay Area cypherpunk scene. Because traditional music necessarily lives outside the complex of copyright and intellectual property, I believe it is a natural and necessary fuel of innovation of free ideas.

I can scarcely believe this is happen. t-minus one hour. See y'all in 10 days. Then I'll be online for a few hours, then I head to another similar retreat in Mongolia.
by lesuorac | 2025-07-28 01:02:05+00:00
> It has been trivial since the 1980’s to produce gold alchemically, when Nobel laureate Glenn Seaborg (also of Seaborgium fame) used a particle accelerator to transmute bismuth into gold.

Not sure it's literally snake oil.

But also investing ~7M into a bunch of credentialed individuals to continue experiments with fusion energy seems to be a fine decision. In the past you'd need to explain how fusion energy will help diverse communities power their homes. Now you just have to explain how fusion energy will create the presidents favorite substance.
by jawns | 2025-07-28 01:03:04+00:00
The author gives an example of a HUD: an AI that writes a debugger program to enable the human developer to more easily debug code.

But why should it be only the human developer who benefits? What if that debugger program becomes a tool that AI agents can use to more accurately resolve bugs?

Indeed, why can't any programming HUD be used by AI tools? If they benefit humans, wouldn't they benefit AI as well?

I think we'll be pretty quickly at the point where AI agents are more often than not autonomously taking care of business, and humans only need to know about that work at critical points (like when approvals are needed). Once we're there, the idea that this HUD concept should be only human-oriented breaks down.
by adrianwaj | 2025-07-28 01:03:19+00:00
Perhaps it'll be interesting to see where AI and crypto intersect.

People are getting dumber, sicker and poorer, are they not? There'll be a need to change that. Make me healthy, wealthy and wise. And Vibing means more apps and ideas can be tested. Deployed is another story. Voice recognition will be more important I suspect as people stop reading and writing. How do people avoid the robots overall?

With AI, you can take an old app, and update it and modernize it, right? I was using this web app a long time ago. Would be cool to get it right for 2025. https://uipublish.sourceforge.net/ - who else would want to do that?
by zeta0134 | 2025-07-28 01:03:23+00:00
I'm kindof horrified that your immediate response is to defend a beheading video as something a 13 year old should watch. As a normal thing. What the actual hell. Like, the rest of your argument has some good points, but you led with something guaranteed to offend.

I was not clear enough, so I will try again. If parents do not want their kids to access "bad content", whatever that means to them, then they need to supervise the access. If parents are okay with their kids accessing bad content, then that choice is theirs to make. The internet itself should not be the gatekeeper here, neither should the government, but the parents do need to actually parent. I do not believe technology should be doing the parenting. And BECAUSE I believe this is a choice the PARENT should make, I also do not believe unfettered access to the internet should be a requirement for students. As long as that is a requirement, the parents aren't in control, and we get draconian laws trying to "fix the internet."

You have wildly misinterpreted my intent, and admittedly it is because my opening sentence was poorly phrased.
by heavyset_go | 2025-07-28 01:03:31+00:00
> Ultimately your kid will grow up and have their own life. Do you want to be remembered as the parent who had them under lock and key in the name of safety, or as a parent who monitored from a distance and occasionally let them do stupid things so that they could learn from it? For me, the latter is far more preferable.

You're trying to logically and emotionally appeal to people whose amygdala have been hijacked by a moral panic.

I agree with you, but good luck.
by conartist6 | 2025-07-28 01:03:58+00:00
Theo gave a bit of context which I cannot personally confirm in any way:

Apparently OpenAI's deal with Microsoft for access to their compute requires OpenAI to share any pre-agi R&D IP with Microsoft, so if OpenAI had bought Windsurf then Microsoft would have had the rights to take all that code and apply it upstream to VSCode, killing the fork and the company.
by stephen_g | 2025-07-28 01:04:09+00:00
One reason I can think of - in some places where houses are small (like in cities the UK) you might not have a garage on your property and might rent one nearby (they are often in little rows, e.g. [1]). So they might have that kind of situation and have the washing machine there if it's a very small house?

1. https://www.alamy.com/stock-photo-row-of-private-car-garages...