MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by jsnell | 2025-07-30 17:24:17+00:00
I find it strange how most of these terminal-based AI coding agents have ended up with these attempts at making text UIs flashy. Tons of whitespace, line art, widgets, ascii art and gradients, and now apparently animations. And then what you don't get is the full suite of expected keybindings, tab completion, consistent scrollback, or even flicker-free text rendering. (At least this one seems to not be written with node.js, so I guess there's some chance that the terminal output is optimized to minimize large redraws?).

So they just don't tend to work at all like you'd expect a REPL or a CLI to work, despite having exactly the same interaction model of executing command prompts. But they also don't feel at all like fullscreen Unix TUIs normally would, whether we're talking editors or reader programs (mail readers, news readers, browsers).

Is this just all the new entrants copying Claude Code, or did this trend get started even earlier than that? (This is one of the reasons Aider is still my go-to; it looks and feels the way a REPL is supposed to.)
by freedomben | 2025-07-30 17:24:24+00:00
I think it was the rise of SaaS and major-scale big tech. That was also the point where structure sucked a lot of the fun out of it by converting SWEs into code factory workers by removing most of the forms of artistic expression from it (yes SWEs aren't always the best UI designers or product managers or program managers, but I think it was a mistake to remove them entirely from the equation. Regardless whether it was a mistake, it really sucked the joy out of it for many people, myself included).
by timr | 2025-07-30 17:25:01+00:00
I don't mean it as an attack on GP, but no, I don't agree that this is pedantic. This happens constantly when science is popularized -- people read one article and leap to the conclusion that a problem has been revolutionized/solved/answered simply because they're reading about it -- and no, the HN audience is no better. Technophiles love a good scientific revolution story.

It's very much a fundamental misunderstanding of how science works. Almost nothing in science has an answer, and if you let your brain lock in that way, you forego the opportunity to ask interesting questions. It also leads directly to lots of downstream pathologies common in amongst laypeople (e.g. "The Science is Settled", which it almost never is).

> Going further, yes, this is a new theory among others, but afaik is the first one with strong evidence.

I am not an expert in this field, but others have evidence too. Particularly when asking "why" questions like this, the bar for proof is incredibly high.
by gruez | 2025-07-30 17:25:06+00:00
>Small businesses are forced to do business on their platforms according to their rules, or else they go bust. Programmers are forced to learn their APIs, so that their "app" can live in their walled gardens.

???

What are you talking about? For a typical fullstack app the proprietary bits probably account for less than 5% of the codebase.

>They soaked a huge amount of talent to optimise their ad and recommendation engines.

That's just PR/advertising/sales. If the companies didn't exist it's not like those job or efforts will disappear, they'll be allocated elsewhere, classified ads in newspapers for instance.
by DiogenesKynikos | 2025-07-30 17:26:02+00:00
> Refugee camps are permanent buildings and the only distinction is that they are called refugee camp

You can identify them from satellite images. They're extremely dense, squalid knots inside Palestinian cities that were never meant to be permanent.

> made up definition of the term of refugee

The Palestinians are refugees by any reasonable definition. They were kicked out of their homes by Israel, forced to flee, and have been stateless ever since.

> gaza isn’t cramped you silly person, You can jump on TikTok or Instagram right now and see people having fun in cafés car dealerships and restaurants.

Most buildings in Gaza have been leveled. You're like a person in 1943 who believes Nazi propaganda about how the Warsaw Ghetto is actually great.

> you could also confirm that Arabs in Israel which are 20% of the population have more rights than arabs in any Arab country

You're ignoring the millions of Arabs (called "Palestinians") who live under Israeli rule with no rights whatsoever. They can even be killed by Israeli settlers or soldiers with no consequences.

> Why is that?

You're so close to calling me an antisemite. Why not just say what you mean. And then I'll laugh in your face and inform you about my own background.

This may be difficult to fathom, but most people are disgusted by seeing Israel's mass murder of Palestinians. Calling people antisemites isn't going to work anymore.
by larrik | 2025-07-30 17:26:05+00:00
Mine was a bit more specific. I had a JSON object of data exported per account I was importing, and then a complex mapping (also JSON) of where to put each piece of data.

Therefore, I really wanted to know that I was actually pulling in all of the data I needed, so I tracked what was seen vs not seen, and compared against what was attempted to see.

In the end it was basically a wrapper around the JSON object itself, that allowed lookup of data via a string in "dot notation" (so you could do "keyA.key2" to get the same thing you would have directly in JSON. Then, it would either return a simple value (if there was one), or another instance of the wrapper if the result was itself an object (or an array or wrapped objects). All instances would share the "seen" list.

It's unfortunately locked behind NDA/copyright stuff, but the implementation was only 67 lines.
by californical | 2025-07-30 17:26:32+00:00
I don’t think that a sweeping speed limit ban is helpful. FWIW, I don’t own an e-bike and have only borrowed them from other people a few times.

In the more rural, even suburban areas, it might be totally safe, even safer to go 25-30mph instead of 20, if you’re on a road with 35mph car traffic.

I agree with you for major cities, I’ve had to deal with the antisocial people who rip through crowds.. but a sweeping ban like that will limit usefulness outside of cities.

I’ve hit 30+mph on a regular bike with a strong wind at my back, and it felt fast. But not dangerous by any means - I was out on a rural country road. It’d be nice to get that “wind” from electricity, regardless of the weather, to greatly reduce the commute time between towns, without needing to drive a (more dangerous) car.
by freedomben | 2025-07-30 17:26:43+00:00
That's true, but I think you need to account for the state of hardware and operating systems too. Unless you're on Linux, the hackability and control over your own computing environment has never been worse (aside from when those things weren't accessible at all). Yes I can build almost anything nowadays, but actually using it is a different story, even just for personal use (ask people with iPhones and increasingly Android about that).
by rikroots | 2025-07-30 17:26:57+00:00
All of my canvas library's demo pages are hand-coded HTML, CSS and JS. Including the site navigation. Is it worth the effort? Probably not; I just do it this way because I'm too lazy to pull together a sensible tool chain.

https://scrawl-v8.rikweb.org.uk/demo/index.html
by wredcoll | 2025-07-30 17:27:24+00:00
So this is a complicated subject that's hard to cover in a hackernews text box and I do actually appreciate you taking the time to engage with it.

To briefly touch on your examples of Damore and "mr-hank", as you point out, the total consequence of Damore being shamed was... he got fired. That's it. Millions of people get fired every year, I think we can assume that not all of them are justified.

The point I actually want to make is that speech absolutely does and should have consequences. Free speech is a great principle to apply to a government creating laws, it's less great when you're trying to apply it to individuals associating with each other.

The "mr-hank" python convention example frankly seems incredibly minor. Someone got offended and complained and someone else apologized and then a whole bunch of people argued about how offended any person actually should be. Is this supposed to be some kind of a big deal? Like, I'm all in favor of a good pointless argument about the nuances of jokes vs offense, but a "cultural phenomenon" this is not.

The problem with talking about "cancel culture" as a real thing is that it is primarily used to attempt to shield people from legitimate criticism.

You brought up the Damore incident, and I don't think it's worth re-litigating the entire debate, but from my perspective, his speech was stupid and offensive enough that I wouldn't want to work with the dude. And more to the point, you shouldn't be allowed to silence my response to his speech.

Damore is "allowed" to say his thing. He didn't get arrested. It's not illegal. Instead, everyone else is allowed to respond to him. Some of that was articles calling him an idiot, some of that was apparently firing him. This is a good thing and I vehemently disagree with this idea that people's responses should be censored.

Even in the most high profile cases of online "cancelling", the consequences tend to be extremely minor. I'll quote from a relatively high profile example:

> In November 2017, comedian Louis C.K. admitted to sexual misconduct allegations and, as a result, his shows were canceled, distribution deals were terminated, and he was dropped by his agency and management. After a period away from show business, Louis C.K. returned to work in 2018 and won a Grammy award in 2022.

Do you think any part of this was unjust in some way?

The term "cancel culture" was always intended to be a pejorative, intended to shame and disparage the people involved in speaking out against those in power. Did it occasionally apply out side of that? Sure, but very rarely to any serious degree.

Look at, dunno, the whole "gamergate" thing where some dude spent years attempting to "cancel" a female journalist over made up allegations. No one started generalizing about an entire culture of anti-free-speechers or whatever. Instead it took people complaining about powerful people being sexist/racist for it to suddenly be an issue.
by unshavedyak | 2025-07-30 17:27:31+00:00
I thought Claude Code (sub) could work with alternate UIs, no? Eg doesn't Neovim have a Claude Code plugin? I want to say there are one or two more as well.

Though i think in Neovims case they had to reverse engineer the API calls for Claude Code. Perhaps that's against the TOS.

Regardless i have the intention to make something similar, so hopefully it's not against the TOS lol.
by steveklabnik | 2025-07-30 17:27:32+00:00
It is true that because we're a young company, we currently have the initial SKU that we started selling two years ago. Like every hardware company, we'll be releasing new products with new hardware every so often. Totally hear you if the current product doesn't fit your needs though, that's just going to be the case when we're so young, but as we grow and scale, we'll be able to release more variations that could make sense for more people.
by munksbeer | 2025-07-30 17:28:10+00:00
I think both sides seem to have the same issues with the other. One side is sceptical that the other is getting good use from LLMs, and the other suggests they're just not using it correctly.

Both sides think the other is either exaggerating or just not using the tool correctly.

What both sides should do is show evidence in the form of chat extracts or videos. There are a number from the pro-LLM side, but obviously selection bias applies here. It would be interesting if the anti-LLM side started to post more negative examples (real chat extracts or videos).
by AbhinavX | 2025-07-30 17:28:10+00:00
LLM as a judge for agent usually has context overload and even if you have a really good prompt for your evaluation, LLMs hallucinate because there is just too much information to ingest. So we created an agentic pipeline to basically do evaluations on rubrics which have better results and dont miss intricacies due to the overloaded context.
by galaxyLogic | 2025-07-30 17:28:38+00:00
Since this is about language and similes, what about "You can't compare apples and oranges"? People say that frequently, but why in particular is that so?

I think you can compare any one thing to any other one thing. You can discuss what are their common features and what features they have that are not shared.

So it seems to me "Can't compare apples and oranges" is often used just as a polemic device, trying to attack your opponents by claiming what they are saying cannot be said.
How do I get ChatGPT to forget about me?
by anupshinde | 2025-07-30 17:28:43+00:00
I recently faced an issue where the historical ChatGPT chats were not loading. If you are facing that, try clearing Remote Browser data in Settings.

But then I thought, let me erase everything.

Keep it a clean slate - because sometimes context, memories, and resulting bias spill a lot more into the chats.

That prompted me to do what I do with Google and YouTube - clear all history.

I took my backups. I cleared my chats, the library, and the memories, removed all shared links, and deleted the projects. Logged out of all devices, too. (Did it 2-3 times, you'll see why)

And then got back in. I ask, "Do you remember me?"

And that thing still remembers every major point about me, including some of the project code names that I discussed with it. But there were a couple that it did not remember at all - as if it did not want to remember those and selectively forgot. Its memory seems faded when I ask particular questions, and then it mixes it with generic knowledge.

I've tried the process multiple times, but I still can't get it to forget me. The only thing I did not try was to delete my account.

I even asked it to forget me, but I know it's not capable of erasing memories by itself - it was worth a try.

Not that I must make it forget, but this is pretty odd and may not be as simple as clearing cookies and deleting the browser's history.

Could be related to some memory state (i mean physical memory like RAM or cache) that will be cleared once I stop using the model for a few hours?

Any ideas?
by verdverm | 2025-07-30 17:28:48+00:00
VS Code has the terminal(s) right there, I'm not missing out on any tool or tech

What I don't have to do is context switch between applications or interfaces

In other comments I relayed the sentiment that I enjoy not having to custom assemble a dev environment and spend way too much time making sure it works again after some plugin updates or neovim changes their APIs and breaks a bunch of my favorite plugins
by WorldMaker | 2025-07-30 17:28:55+00:00
The version increments roughly every 6 months. It's almost the exact same update cadence as NodeJS: LTS versions are even numbers released in the Fall and STS versions are odd numbers released in the Spring. STS often focuses on "bleeding edge features" and LTS often on performance and stability. (Though both are year round projects and there are bleeding edge features in an LTS and perf/stability fixes in an STS.)
by cholantesh | 2025-07-30 17:29:21+00:00
Israeli administration of Gaza preceded Hamas' foundation. Its administration of the West Bank is characterized by regular IDF incursions into its settlements where homes are demolished, residents are kidnapped and tortured without cause, and armed, escorted settlers are let loose to assault the same residents and loot their businesses. Hamas' founders were all born either in settlements that have been forcefully depopulated by Israel or in refugee camps that still exist today because they keep getting filled up by people who lived in those settlements. I imagine most people would be miffed by this set of circumstances.
by ectospheno | 2025-07-30 17:29:36+00:00
> And pets can be found new homes in those rare situations.

The average lifespan of a dog is 10-13 years.

The average lifespan of a cat is 13-17 years.

The average tenure for a job in the US is 4 years.

It isn't rare. Can I guess you'd give up your child too if your job changed?
by larrik | 2025-07-30 17:29:42+00:00
That sounds more like a linked list than an array.

In C, an array is just contiguous bytes, and you reach an index through math (starting location + (index * size)).

Pretty sure lots of languages still do this to some degree, as your lookup times are effectively zero, though altering the number of elements is way more complex/expensive than in a linked list.
by mindcrime | 2025-07-30 17:29:44+00:00
For the Monte Carlo Method stuff in particular[1], I get the sense that the most iconic "Hello, World" example is using MC to calculate the value of pi. I can't explain it in detail from memory, but it's approximately something like this:

Define a square of some known size (1x1 should be fine, I think)

Inscribe a circle inside the square

Generate random points inside the square

Look at how many fall inside the square but not the circle, versus the ones that do fall in the circle.

From that, using what you know about the area of the square and circle respectively, the ratio of "inside square but not in circle" and "inside circle" points can be used to set up an equation for the value of pi.

Somebody who's more familiar with this than me can probably fix the details I got wrong, but I think that's the general spirit of it.

For Markov Chains in general, the only thing that jumps to mind for me is generating text for old school IRC bots. :-)

[1]: which is probably not the point of this essay. For for muddying the waters, I have both concepts kinda 'top of mind' in my head right now after watching the Veritasium video.
by Jtsummers | 2025-07-30 17:30:12+00:00
> So what would be the value of having or using indexes other than Integers to index Arrays?

It removes a level of indirection, wasted space, and mental overhead. Suppose you have some table of 'a'..'z' -> whatever. What are your options?

- Switch/case. This may be optimized and fast, but that's not guaranteed across all languages and compilers.

- Hash map. This introduces memory overhead even if it is technically O(1) for access times.

- If in C, you could do:

T* table = (T*)malloc(sizeof(T) * 26) - 'a'

So that the characters can be used naturally without later modification (not a feature in every language, though).

- Manually calculate each offset every time:

table[c - 'a'] = ...

With language appropriate type conversions, if needed.

Or you can allow any custom range to work, and do the math in that last option automatically because it's trivial for a compiler to figure it out and it removes unnecessary mental overhead from the program reader and writer.

table['a']

Just works.

> You can also define integer-valued named constants, and use those if you prefer.

Because everyone wants to see `lower_case_a = 0` and the 25 other cases in their code along with all other possible constants. At least use an enum, sane languages even make them type-safe (or at least safer).
by graypegg | 2025-07-30 17:30:18+00:00
Huh, so I'm only just learning that the Snellen chart isn't the common one! I wouldn't have known the name of it, but if someone asked me to doodle an eye chart from memory, I would've drawn that blocky E with the serifs! I've most likely been tested with the sans-serif Sloan chart I assume, but the letter forms just aren't distinct enough to stick in my brain I guess. A bit of a shame this font doesn't have a "Optician Serif" variant to look like the Snellen letters.
by tguedes | 2025-07-30 17:30:24+00:00
It really depends on the query. I'm not a Google query expert, but I'm above average. I've noticed that phrasing a query in a certain way to get better results just no longer works. Especially in the last year, I have found it returns results that aren't even relevant at all.

The problem is people have learned to fill their articles/blogs with as many word combinations as possible so that it will show up in as many Google searches as possible, even if it's not relevant to the main question. The article has just 1 subheading that is somewhat relevant to the search query, even though the information under that subheading is completely irrelevant.

LLMs have ironically made this even worse because now it's so easy to generate slop and have it be recommended by Google's SEO. I used to be very good at phrasing a search query in the right way, or quoting the right words/phrases, or having it filter by sites. Those techniques no longer work.

So I have turned to ChatGPT for most of the queries I would have typically used Google for. Especially with the introduction of annotations. Now I can verify the source from where it determined the answer. It's a far better experience in most circumstances compared to Google.

I have also found ChatGPT to be much better than other LLMs at understanding nuance. There have been numerous occasions where I have pushed back against ChatGPT's answer and it has responded with something like "You would be correct if your input/criteria is X. But in this case, since your input/criteria is Y, this is the better solution for Z reasons".
by supplied_demand | 2025-07-30 17:30:51+00:00
==I had to look up many of the recent examples to assume who they were talking about.==

Seems you are only paying attention to one side if you had to look up the examples, as they are all quite recent. It doesn't seem like we are going to see eye-to-eye on things, as you completely dismiss facts, like the Democrats introducing actual legislation (multiple times) to stop gerrymandering, in order to lecture me about my own biases.

==You might want to look into his other politicians use their charities, such as the Clintons.==

Trump doesn't have a charity anymore because he was found guilty of stealing money from kids. This is your party, accept it. Enjoy your day.
by immercato | 2025-07-30 17:31:18+00:00
Paninaro started as a school cafeteria ordering system. It’s now a cloud-based SaaS platform for restaurants — live and open for testing.

Built with Node.js, Express, Firebase Firestore/Auth Real-time syncing, booking management, menu updates Charting features coming soon Hosted on Render (may take a few seconds to wake)

Repo https://github.com/IMmercato/paninaro

Would love feedback from devs and restaurateurs!
by reactordev | 2025-07-30 17:31:24+00:00
The issue was in the beginning they didn’t think interop with C/C++ was value add. People complained and they added “Managed C++” which unfortunately influenced C++03’s design a lot. It wasn’t until C++11 that Microsoft gave up. You couldn’t effectively interop with C++ without writing a managed C++ wrapper, which only worked on windows. They added support for P/Invoke to aid in Win32 calls (shell.dll, user32.dll) as a simple fix and we went nuts for it. Wrote wrappers using P/Invoke and a config map nightmare of which dll’s, or dylib’s, or so’s, you needed to get the form to show.

Fast forward to today… Rust can interop with C natively. Go can as well, though you’re bringing your luggage with you with CGO. .Net hasn’t ever really had that kind of focus. For one, IL, two, Microsoft saw the platform as a cash cow, three, ecosystem lock in allowed a thriving “MVP” contractor community.
by iancarroll | 2025-07-30 17:32:16+00:00
I do feel frustrated with the current state of evaluations for long-lived sessions with many tool calls -- by default OpenAI's built-in eval system seems to rate chat completions that end with a tool call as "bad" because the tool call response is only in the next completion.

But our stack is in Go and it has been tough to see a lot of observability tools focus on Python rather than an agnostic endpoint proxy like Helicone has.