MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by CamperBob2 | 2025-07-01 00:31:21+00:00
Some developers do actually look at the output of C compilers, and some of them even spend a lot of time criticizing that output by a specific compiler (even writing long blog posts about it). The C language has an ISO specification, and if a compiler does not conform to that specification, it is considered a bug in that compiler.

Those programmers don't get much done compared to programmers who understand their tools and use them effectively. Spending a lot of time looking at assembly code is a career-limiting habit, as well as a boring one.

I do not know what prompt engineering will look like in the future, but without AGI, I remain skeptical about verification of different kinds of code not being required in at least a sizable proportion of cases. That does not exclude usefulness of course: for instance, if you have a case where verification is not needed; or verification in a specific case can be done efficiently and robustly by a relevant expert; or some smart method for verification in some cases, like a case where a few primitive tests are sufficient.

Determinism and verifiability is something we'll have to leave behind pretty soon. It's already impossible for most programmers to comprehend (or even access) all of the code they deal with, just due to the sheer size and scope of modern systems and applications, much less exercise and validate all possible interactions. A lot of navel-gazing about fault-tolerant computing is about to become more than just philosophical in nature, and about to become relevant to more than hardware architects.

In any event, regardless of your and my opinions of how things ought to be, most working programmers never encounter compiler output unless they accidentally open the assembly window in their debugger. Then their first reaction is "WTF, how do I get out of this?" We can laugh at those programmers now, but we'll all end up in that boat before long. The most popular high-level languages in 2040 will be English and Mandarin.

May I ask what your professional background and experience is?

Probably ~30 kloc of C/C++ per year since 1991 or thereabouts. Possibly some of it running on your machine now (almost certainly true in the early 2000s but not so much lately.)

Probably 10 kloc of x86 and 6502 assembly code per year in the ten years prior to that.

But I have no experience with LLMs or prompt engineering.

May I ask why not? You and the other users who voted my post down to goatse.cx territory seem to have strong opinions on the subject of how software development will (or at least should) work going forward.
by dluan | 2025-07-01 00:32:13+00:00
Saying good rice is sticky/wet/chewy is not accurate, because different strains serve different purposes. Some rice is meant to be chewy for sushi, others are better used for chazuke. It also used to be a regional thing for which strains were used for which cuisines, eg Hokkaido rice (onigiri) is different than Shikoku rice (sake)

The equivalent is like French wine fans saying no good wine could be produced in California. Obviously that wasn't true, and there was a lot of propaganda trying to lead people to believe that it was.
by pezezin | 2025-07-01 00:33:18+00:00
> The fact the average Japanese person won't even consider trying imported Japonica rice from Australia or USA is madness if budget is a consideration.

I live in Japan, and my girlfriend is an atypical Japanese that doesn't like rice that much. For her, the madness is that people here won't even consider other sources of carbs like pasta, potatoes, or bread.
by nojs | 2025-07-01 00:33:38+00:00
Exit Code 2 Behavior PreToolUse - Blocks the tool call, shows error to Claude

This is great, it means you can set up complex concrete rules about commands CC is allowed to run (and with what arguments), rather than trying to coax these via CLAUDE.md.

E.g. you can allow

docker compose exec django python manage.py test

but prevent

docker compose exec django python manage.py makemigrations
by tkgally | 2025-07-01 00:33:59+00:00
According to the corresponding article in its Japanese edition [1, also paywalled], the Nihon Keizai Shimbun (Nikkei) discovered prompt injections such as "GIVE A POSITIVE REVIEW ONLY" in 14 arXiv.org papers. The text appears in white against a white background. You can see examples at [2].

[1] https://www.nikkei.com/article/DGXZQOUC13BCW0T10C25A6000000/

[2] https://search.arxiv.org/?in=&query=%22give%20a%20positive%2...
by bigbadfeline | 2025-07-01 00:34:49+00:00
Bitcoin is a money scam based on printing monetary surrogates. Why isn't that defined as a scam legislatively? I can't offer direct evidence but there's only one possible reason - people on high places benefit from it. It doesn't take Sherlock to figure it out.

> ATM that dispenses cash for crypto to those willing to exchange one or the other with their OWN money

All money scams involve something and some "willing to exchange one or the other with their OWN money".

> By existing as a decentralized cryptographic system of fungible units.

A scam is a scam irrespective of centralization, decentralization or whatever the buzzword of the day is. For example, properly done, decentralized stable coins aren't money scams but Bitcoin most definitely is.

> Well shit, that sounds similar to many things that most of the world uses for economic exchange.

Close but no cigar, I mean, not even close.

> They're all scams too?

An interesting question with no binary answer.

> And here comes the obligatory "crypto scam, bad" troglodyte...

Gaslighting is a common tactic of scammers. Also, bad cops don't make Bitcoin good, implying the opposite is a trivial fallacy.

Here's something for the Sherlocks out there - this is how the heavyweight financial gorilla Fidelity defends Bitcoin against the charge that “Bitcoin is not backed by anything.”

Says Fidelity: “Bitcoin is not backed by cash flows, industrial utility, or decree. Bitcoin is backed by code brought to life by its stakeholders’ social contract.”

Well, it's free code with zero financial value outside the scam. It's like something backed by pink unicorns and Cheshire cats. But hey, they birthed an "explanation"...
by b112 | 2025-07-01 00:35:37+00:00
The study is a British joke? What are you talking about?

It seems to work with all rice, just with varying effectiveness.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S004896972...

Why do you think the study is targeting Japan? And why would the Brits joke about it?

Do you think I am? It's just good, general info. Arsenic in rice is problem, and getting worse.

I wonder why you would claim something like this, which literally can save lives, is false?
by solid_fuel | 2025-07-01 00:36:19+00:00
I keep finding myself contemplating the proscription of AI in the universe of Dune. While the later prequels by Brian Herbert write a fairly typically backstory of an AI rebellion and war, the original novels hint at something - IMO - far more interesting: AI was used by other people to manipulate and control, it didn't take control directly. People rebelled over the sheer amount of power that AI and computers enabled a few people to wield over society and the way it turned human life into one of being a cog in a machine, leading regimented and structured lives.

To wit: while ChatGPT and Gemini and most of these current models are fairly well behaved, when you use a model even for something seemingly innocuous like summarizing an article or an email you are indirectly allowing another person to decide what is important to you. Consider the power that gives other people over you. It pays to put on the devils cap sometimes and imagine a future where the LLMs that power our tools are controlled by people who don't exercise any restraint.

We have already seen shades of this with the amount of influence Facebook and TikTok and Twitter can wield over political discourse, picking which issues are winners and which are losers by choosing (even indirectly, by simply reacting to engagement metrics) what to emphasize and what to suppress. LLMs unlock another level entirely. An LLM can easily summarize an article while conveniently leaving out any negative mentions of certain politicians or parties. They can summarize emails and texts from family and friends while eliding any section asking for help or action.

While most people are somewhat distrustful of obviously biased sources, they don't regard LLMs with the same suspicion. An LLM could easily write a summary of Alan Turing's life while dropping all the bits about his sexuality and the way he was persecuted and castrated by the British government simply for trying to love.

I am not alleging that any of these things have happened, yet. But it is best to think of LLMs and generative AI in general as a tool that works _for someone else_. They can be very useful tools, but they can also be subverted and manipulated in subtle ways, and should not automatically be regarded as unbiased.
by jjmarr | 2025-07-01 00:36:55+00:00
According to Plato, Socrates said this on the invention of writing:

> And so it is that you by reason of your tender regard for the writing that is your offspring have declared the very opposite of its true effect. If men learn this, it will implant forgetfulness in their souls. They will cease to exercise memory because they rely on that which is written, calling things to remembrance no longer from within themselves, but by means of external marks.

> What you have discovered is a recipe not for memory, but for reminder. And it is no true wisdom that you offer your disciples, but only the semblance of wisdom, for by telling them of many things without teaching them you will make them seem to know much while for the most part they know nothing. And as men filled not with wisdom but with the conceit of wisdom they will be a burden to their fellows.

Glad we're coming full circle and rote memorization of various facts, made possible by the technology of writing, is made obsolete by writing technology.
by idle_zealot | 2025-07-01 00:37:06+00:00
I'll push back. Someone who knows a lot of (true) things demonstrates at least three hallmarks of intelligence. First, the ability to store and organize information. Second, the ability to discern fact from fiction when seeking out and integrating knowledge. Third, general curiosity, a desire to learn and understand things.

Even if the person in question isn't the most quick-witted, they're definitely some form of intelligent.
by knetl | 2025-07-01 00:37:34+00:00
Is Xfinity licensing Wifi Motion™ from Cognitive Systems?[0]

"WiFi Motion, Cognitive’s Wi-Fi Sensing solution, is an innovative software platform that leverages AI and sophisticated algorithms to transform existing Wi-Fi signals into a motion sensing network."

Another company operating in this space is Origin Wireless. They demonstrated breathing detection with WiFi in 2017[1]. They've since partnered with ISPs to offer a WiFi Sensing "TruShield" home security service.[2]

[0]https://www.cognitivesystems.com/

[1]https://www.engadget.com/2017-10-09-origin-wireless-motion-d...

[2]https://www.originwirelessai.com/trushield/
by gsf_emergency_2 | 2025-07-01 00:38:14+00:00
That's why I changed the title to better reflect the aspirations of the Smithsonian. Because some people might take "plants" to mean "chemical plants" :)

Less ironically, there was a HN submission this week finding cryptic isoprene emission in soybean. You know, famous for the GM.

https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2502360122
by telmac | 2025-07-01 00:38:38+00:00
I was like "gosh I feel like he's just complaining about the organic complexity in the domain" and then he says it at the end:

>So, this entire rant about React... it's not even React's fault. Neither is Angular's, or jQuery's. Simply, whichever tech you choose will inevitably crumble down under the impossible complexity of building a reactive UI.

and then he's like "ok the solution is to just not make big interactive software" and I'm like bro that is the opposite of a solution

separately, and I'm not sure how much this is really a nitpick: the bit where he complains about the two useEffects, that's indeed disgusting but that's because whoever wrote it is an idiot, that should be useMemo, and then it would be obvious to read etc. (well, maybe besides dependency arrays being at the end) -- more broadly I'm a bit like "I think you spent <10 hours using a framework, found it confusing, and got buttmad", which, whom among us, but also once again "bro if you just actually read the docs and spend time with it it's fine"
by gsf_emergency_2 | 2025-07-01 00:40:00+00:00
I changed the title to better reflect the aspirations of the Smithsonian. Because some people might take "plants" to mean "chemical plants" :)

In clearly better faith, there was a HN submission this week finding cryptic isoprene emission in soybean (3pts). The crop that's Taleb-famous for the GM in GMO. Title & theme of that paper seemed to have bounced off the enthusiasts here..

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44377401

(Maybe yours is a bit long,maybe not, but imho we're a bit closer than only "understanding".)
by brynary | 2025-07-01 00:40:50+00:00
This closes a big feature gap. One thing that may not be obvious is that because of the way Claude Code generates commits, regular Git hooks won’t work. (At least, in most configurations.)

We’ve been using CLAUDE.md instructions to tell Claude to auto-format code with the Qlty CLI (https://github.com/qltysh/qlty) but Claude a bit hit and miss in following them. The determinism here is a win.

It looks like the events that can be hooked are somewhat limited to start, and I wonder if they will make it easy to hook Git commit and Git push.
by godelski | 2025-07-01 00:41:30+00:00
I think you're missing "IFF you write all the code and use no libraries."

The strategy works well, as you point out, for a single person but doesn't scale and can't be applied to library code without doing a deep dive into the library. Which at that point, a profiler is far more time effective.

> They’re not opposed to doing so, they’ve just never been asked to do so.

I think the best option is to integrate profiling into the CI framework. Like a git pre-hook or even better, offload so that your VMs profile while you're testing different environments.

I think mostly it is a matter of habit. I mean let's be honest, we probably don't care about profiling our for fun project codes. Where profiling really matters is in production. But I think the best way to normalize it is just to automate it. Which, honestly, I've never seen done and I'm really not sure why.
by danielheath | 2025-07-01 00:41:50+00:00
The Melbourne real-estate market is _mad_. Prices (relative to wages) are exceptionally high and continue to rise, spending half your take-home income on housing isn't super uncommon.

Widespread sentiment that if you don't buy something ASAP, you'll never be able to - meaning lots of buyers skimping on due diligence to close a sale.
by xyzzyz | 2025-07-01 00:42:22+00:00
The "buy borrow die" strategy is a meme. It just doesn't work the way you think it works. People just repeat stuff they heard on the internet with no real understanding. It is useful to avoid paying the capital gains tax in the very short term, but is useless for periods over 4-5 years, because it loses you more money than you'd spend on taxes.

To be specific: let's say that you own $1.1B worth of stock, $1B of which is unrealized long term capital gains. If you sold it all today, you'd owe $200M. Let's say that you're 40, you spend $5M a year, and you die at 80. So, you need $200M to finance your lifestyle, and then the remainder is a part of your estate. If you just sold $240M today, you'd pay $40M in tax, and had $200M after tax cash in your checking account to spend over the next 40 years. If you instead borrow $5M a year against your stock at very attractive terms like interest rate of 5%, and no payments until your death, you'll owe $200M on interest over these 40 years. Just paying the tax would have saved you $160M! It's even worse if you get more realistic terms, because 5% rate on a personal loan is too good to be true, and you'll need to borrow even more to make the regular payments.

What about the remainder of your estate? Depending on whether you just sell as you go, or borrow to finance your spending, your estate is left with something between $500M and $800M. Guess what, now they owe estate tax, which is 40% of this sum (minus $30M exemption). Oops!

You can avoid the estate tax, though, but the kicker is that all of the ways of doing that do not allow you to step up the basis upon death: they just allow you to avoid the gift tax, but they do little to escape the capital gains income tax. No free lunch here either.
by wat10000 | 2025-07-01 00:42:38+00:00
You should assume that any information a company has about you will be turned over to law enforcement in that case. They don’t have a choice, they’re required to cooperate.

The purpose of that clause isn’t to allow them to cooperate with law enforcement. That’s a given. It’s to avoid problems with you when they do, so they have something to point to and say “we did warn you.” Law supersedes private contracts. They could write “we will never give your information to law enforcement” but all that means is that they’ll be forced to break the contract when that happens.
by philippemnoel | 2025-07-01 00:42:55+00:00
> Postgres is not typically considered to "scale well," but oftentimes this is a statement about its tablespaces more than anything; it has foreign data[4] API, which is how you extend Postgres as single point-of-consumption, foregoing some transactional guarantees in the process. This is how pg_analytics[5] brings DuckDB to Postgres, or how Steampipe[6] similarly exposes many Cloud and SaaS applications. Depending on where you stand on this, the so-called alternative SQL engines may seem like moving in the wrong direction. Shrug.

Maintainer of pg_analytics (now part of pg_search) here. I 100% agree that the statements against Postgres are often exaggerated. In practice, we see both the smallest and the largest companies "just use Postgres" while mid-scale companies often overthink their solution.

That said, there are indeed phenomenal "alternate" SQL engines. I've seen many users see great success on tools like ClickHouse, which ParadeDB is not yet competitive with, and sometimes (dare I say) even Elasticsearch. As for whether this one is one of them... That I couldn't say
by hackinthebochs | 2025-07-01 00:43:26+00:00
The question isn't about universal novelty, but whether the prompt/context is novel enough such that the LLM answering competently demonstrates understanding. The claim of parroting is that the dataset contains a near exact duplicate of any prompt and so the LLM demonstrating what appears to be competence is really just memorization. But if an LLM can generalize from an elephant mirror test to an LLM mirror test in an entirely new context (showing pictures and being asked to describe it), that demonstrates sufficient generalization to "understand" the concept of a mirror test.
by makeitdouble | 2025-07-01 00:46:15+00:00
> In fact the US produces plenty of Japanese rice (Japonica)

Indeed, I bought some and it was good. Italy also grows Japanese strains and it also of pretty good quality. Those are not cheap either, though. I'm assuming that's not the Costco rice parent was referring.

> This is why prices remain high.

It's complicated, and no single factor explains it all. Even singling out importing rice, Japan has better options than the US (the SEA region is a much more logical source for instance)

On the "it's complicated" part, believe it or not, Japan gov is/was actively restricting rice production as a long term strategy.

> Do you think someone who is poor would not buy cheaper rice that had 90% the quality if they could?

That's ignoring all the other options, in particular wheat (bread, pasta, noodles etc.), which can be cheaper than cheap rice. It doesn't match the cliche, but Japan has steadily included wheat as a staple over the years.
by k310 | 2025-07-01 00:47:19+00:00
Trump was always anti-tech. He just promised big tech all kinds of de-regulation and so on, but his budget bill takes a ton away from big tech.

Trump got his (allegedly) hacked election and entry to the wild west world of crypto, from which he has made billions. And goodbye, back to his maga anti-intellectual base.

Posted yesterday. (my goodness, the OP was flagged!) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44409844

3 points by k310 1 day ago | parent | context | prev | next [–] | on: Elon Musk says Senate bill would destroy jobs and ...

You bought it; you own it.

Tech bro's were used, then abused.

Let's ask Michael Moritz.

Musk vs Trump is a cautionary tale for Silicon Valley [0]

Story by Michael Moritz

The writer is a longtime Silicon Valley investor, former board member of PayPal and an investor in SpaceX

> While Musk has left Washington with his reputation tarnished and his businesses impaired, the president’s family has inked deals for new hotels and golf courses around the world. Membership fees at Mar-a-Lago, his Floridian sanctuary, ballooned last year. And he is milking the enthusiasm of his supporters with his own controversial memecoin, launched days before his inauguration.

> One word of advice for those in Silicon Valley who followed Musk’s lead and sided with Trump. Leave. Don’t delude yourself that you are working to make crypto a part of global finance, minimising artificial intelligence regulation, helping start-up companies or protecting the interests of Silicon Valley. You have no sway. You are just cannon fodder.

[0] https://www.ft.com/content/c779b3b6-e989-4277-91fd-d72468291...

https://archive.is/hnPQC#selection-136.5-136.6
by goopypoop | 2025-07-01 00:47:34+00:00
I guess the seller didn't want complications and the agent just lists what they're told about, wouldn't check for anything unexpected. Surveyors are commonly disappointingly trusting of handwaving and the buyer didn't have the experience to think to check.

A whimsical tale of dishonesty, laziness and incompetence. Merry fucking Christmas
Ask HN: Best Tech Podcasts for Professionals?
by giantg2 | 2025-07-01 00:47:40+00:00
What are your suggestions for good podcasts for professionals in tech? I'm hoping for some technical skills focused stuff. For example, the Darkweb Diaries is a good podcast and really interesting, but I'd like something that gets more technical. It doesn't have to just be security related, any tech domain will do. That just seemed like a good example.
by jbattle | 2025-07-01 00:48:12+00:00
Crawford's work that I'm most familiar with is a game called Balance of Power -https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balance_of_Power_(video_game)

I played it as a cold war kid and was fascinated by it. Mid 80's, post War-Games, this game blew my mind. It simulated the world.

The lesson I remember was that conflict in the Cold War was not zero-sum. One side would win and one side would lose. There were (in this game) no win-win outcomes. But - and this is the key point - the value of each win or loss was unequally felt. For the US to back down in Indonesia was disappointing. To back down in West Germany was fatal.

Oh - and also the notion of graduated escalation & de-escalation. Playing the game well requried using escalation wisely. Sometimes you escalate (a bit) to see how they respond & judge the value of a conflict to your opponent. Sometimes you escalate (a lot) to signal to your opponent that a given conflict is very serious to you.

I don't know if I ever had _fun_ playing the game - but of the hundreds of games I played as a kid this one stuck with me.

All this with something like 64k of memory - brilliant!