MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by outworlder | 2025-07-17 23:54:22+00:00
There are multiple brain conditions that are increasingly being suspected of being caused by viruses. They are the ultimate DNA editors. And some can remain dormant for decades before reactivating.

Which is why it was so puzzling to see the response during the last pandemic. More so with people concerned about mRNA vaccines and conflating that with 'DNA changes'. If one is concerned about their DNA, they should avoid viruses and do whatever they can to help their immune system fight them as quickly as possible.

The odds of a virus giving us something beneficial like a placenta are minimal, the drawbacks are just enormous.
by rstuart4133 | 2025-07-17 23:54:29+00:00
> Let's not fool ourselves into saying that Android development isn't miserable

Yes, Android's UI framework is miserable. But if you are going to use misery to describe the Android experience, I'm at a loss on what word would be used to describe Symbian. What is 10 times worse than misery?

Symbian was a C++ templated nightmare solution only suited to a very memory constrained environment. My wild speculation is it grew out organically out this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psion_Organiser The lengths they went to make perfect sense for a device like that. But in a much bigger device designed robustly host 3rd party apps written in the same style, it was insanity.
by Swizec | 2025-07-17 23:55:37+00:00
> A pilot where the participants know or suspect that the money will soon stop flowing won't capture the real-world effect of this decades-long experiment that we call pensions.

There is a big difference in getting a guaranteed income in your 20’s vs your 60’s.

In your 20’s it unlocks taking big risks and swing for the fences. YC bets in this, for example. What can ambitious kids do when they don’t need to worry about money?

But when you’ve been grinding for 40 years … yeah for sure most people stop working.
by K0balt | 2025-07-17 23:56:42+00:00
As long as a ZK recovery path is provided, this stays true to the ethos. The ethos was never“if it breaks we won’t fix it”. Responsible handling of this issue does not have to distort the ledger.

OTOH, if they freeze vulnerable wallets and don’t provide a recovery path, then Bitcoin becomes just another, less useful ethereum where intervention in the ledger is to be expected.
by stephenlf | 2025-07-17 23:57:13+00:00
Casey gives a history of the concepts behind object-oriented programming, including some surprising appearances of “modern” anti-OOO principles, like discriminated unions.

Interestingly, OOP wasn’t originally built to solve problems of scale or team size. It was designed to solve a particular set of problems around a specific domain—ie, modeling distributed systems.

Thoughts? How much value is there in this type of history? Does the “original intent” of OOP-design diminish our modern interpretation?
by aoaoaoans | 2025-07-17 23:57:24+00:00
Can you share some code? I work with a guy like this who claims this level of output but in reality he consumes massive amounts of other devs time in PR review.

Are you doing a lot of broad throwaway tasks? I’ve had similar feelings when writing custom code for my editor, one off scripts, etc but it’s nothing I would ever put my professional reputation behind.
by alwillis | 2025-07-17 23:57:29+00:00
> Private cloud is used AFIAK for virtually 0 use cases so far.

Applications using Apple's foundation models can seamlessly switch from on-device models to Private Compute Cloud.

Research is already showing the use of LLMs for people's most intimate relationship and medical issues. The usual suspects will try to monetize that, which why Private Cloud Compute is a thing from the jump.

> Then they've got OpenAI/Gemini/Anthropic via API. But this completely goes against all their private cloud messaging

Using ChatGPT via Siri today, no personally identifying information is shared with OpenAI and those prompts aren't used for training. I suspect Apple would want something similar for Google, Anthropic, etc.

At some point, there will be the inevitable enshitification of AI platforms to recoup the billions VCs have invested, which means ads, which won't happen to Apple users using foundation model-based apps.

> Nearly all their devices do not have enough RAM and

Every Apple Silicon Mac (going back to the M1 in 2020) can run Apple Intelligence. 8 GB RAM is all they need. Every iPhone 15 Pro, Pro Max and the entire 16 line can all run Apple Intelligence.

Flagship iPhone 17 models are expected to come with 12 GB of RAM and all current Mac models come with at least 16 GB.

Apple sells over 200 million iPhones in a given year.

There's no doubt Apple stumbled out of the gate regarding AI; these are early days. They can't be counted out.
by satyrun | 2025-07-17 23:57:44+00:00
I do this kind of job and there is no way I am doing this job in 5-10 years.

I don't even think it is my company that is going to adapt to let me go but it is going to be an AI first competitor that puts the company I work for out of business completely.

There are all these massively inefficient dinosaur companies in the economy that are running digitized versions of paper shuffling and a huge number of white collar bullshit jobs built on top of digitized paper shuffling.

Wage inflation has been eating away at the bottom line on all these businesses since Covid and we are going to have a dinosaur company mass extinction event in the next recession.

IMO the category error being made is that LLMs are going to agentically do digitized paper shuffling and put digitized paper shufflers out of work. That is not the problem for my job. The issue is agentically from the ground up making the concept of digitized paper shuffling null and void. A relic of the past that can't compete in the economy.
by 9rx | 2025-07-17 23:57:45+00:00
> But it's unlikely that some sexist hiring manager who trusts women less

It is unlikely there is any single reason for why women are deemed less valuable. What has you leaning on trust specifically? That is a bit out in left field. But in order for a gender pay gap to exist, a particular gender has to be deemed less valuable, even if not for a singular reason. You can't have a gender pay gap otherwise.

> assume that a woman won't push back as hard or because they just feel uncomfortable with a woman earning that much (or more than her colleagues).

Exactly. They are seen as less valuable in the marketplace, like ground beef is seen as being less valuable than steak. You could pay just as much for ground beef as steak if you really wanted to. There is nothing stopping you. But since you know the ground beef sellers will give in to a lower price you (most people at least) will take advantage.

For not finding the argument convincing, you've sure put in a lot of effort to repeat it!

> One way to change that is to a) surface these biases, and b) encourage women to be as assertive in salary negotiations as men.

Strange tangent, but okay. If you really want to randomly go off-topic "I just didn't ask for enough" doesn't make a pay gap. To present it as such is rather disingenuous. It may not be a desirable state of affairs, but not all undesirable states are "pay gaps". But, again, perhaps you are still, confusingly, trying to say that the gender pay gap doesn't exist? You wouldn't be the first.

Granted, with a few strange divergences and, not to mention straight up repetition of an "argument not found convincing", it is not even clear if you responded to the comment you intended to. If you mistakenly pressed the wrong "reply" button, understood! I'm sure we've all done it before.
by outworlder | 2025-07-17 23:58:05+00:00
Maybe not. Because such as system, by design, would have to create a lot of common, shared infrastructure.

Once you have centralized the ability to edit genes, most of that machinery can be repurposed for less 'profitable' endeavors.

A very crude comparison would be time sharing a radiotelescope. If you want to build one to run school experiments, it's prohibitive. But once you have one, you can use any spare capacity to allow for observations that would be impossible to justify economically.
by CrazyStat | 2025-07-17 23:59:23+00:00
I’ve had allergic reactions to perfume twice in my life, years apart. Both times it became very difficult to breathe, like an asthma attack. Both times it was very clear exactly which person’s perfume was triggering it. Both times it resolved within a few minutes of leaving the room to get some fresh air. The first time I wasn’t completely sure what had happened, so I went back in and experienced the exact same thing twice more before giving up. The second time I was wiser.

It would be extremely annoying if that was a regular occurrence. Luckily I only seem to be sensitive to something rarely used.
by sothatsit | 2025-07-17 23:59:58+00:00
I can tell you how I hit it: Opus and long workflows.

I have two big workflows: plan and implement. Plan follows a detailed workflow to research an idea and produce a planning document for how to implement it. This routinely takes $10-30 in API credits to run in the background. I will then review this 200-600 line document and fix up any mistakes or remove unnecessary details.

Then implement is usually cheaper, and it will take that big planning document, make all the changes, and then make a PR in GitHub for me to review. This usually costs $5-15 in API credits.

All it takes is for me to do 3-4 of these in one 5-hour block and I will hit the rate-limit of the $100 Max plan. Setting this up made me realise just how much scaffolding you can give to Opus and it handles it like a champ. It is an unbelievably reliable model at following detailed instructions.

It is rare that I would hit the rate-limits if I am just using Claude Code interactively, unless I am using it constantly for hours at a time, which is rare. Seems like vibe coders are the main people who would hit them regularly.
by swat535 | 2025-07-18 00:00:26+00:00
Right, and let's face it, the ultra wealthy are not really known for their "family values" or their dedication to their children.

They'll provide them with financial support and that's where their relationship often ends.

Their loyalty is mainly to their wealth and status, everything else around them is "stuff" that merely exist to fulfill the goal of increasing profit.

I'm sure there are exceptions but I'm making a simple observations.
by southernplaces7 | 2025-07-18 00:00:53+00:00
For what it's worth, I actually sympathize a lot with your frustration and have felt the same, but was honestly questioning if you were arguing from some sort of real claim that it's unfair for you to not have a solution now, or just from general emotional frustration.

For the first one, my arguments above, for the second one, fair enough, it happens to anyone suffering enough from something, and though I've tried to calm and redirect it when I feel that way, it's hard to pull off.

You also didn't explain, and i'm honestly curious: is this something that has no remedy for someone who's an adult, or something that has a treatment, but it's too expensive for you?

>But I guarantee you if you added up the sum of rare but probably treatable/curable diseases that we havent spent time on because of the rarity, the sum of those people is probably a significant chunk of the population.

Well yes, but there are also many much more widely devastating problems that we can also treat, but which haven't been fixed yet, and the reasons for that are way too complex to blame any one thing, or capitalism. Governments and all their immense resources are around too, yet they also don't quite seem to get around to fixing so many things that have solutions. Again, comparing the real world with your desires is never going to work. The world needs to be compared with its previous states for a fair sense of perspective.
by vips7L | 2025-07-18 00:01:10+00:00
Sorry for the ambiguity. I have also had to write Scala in application code for those projects, but that's because the framework we used, Play, is written in Scala and it's Scala core leaks in many places where the Java compiler can't figure out the kludge of byte code generated by scalac.

I actually rather enjoy Scala as a language when I don't have to interact with it from Java and when I don't have to go full into the FP ZIO/Cats world.
by _benj | 2025-07-18 00:01:16+00:00
I think there’s an element of fear in the self-taught engineer? I am self taught and even after over a decade of experience impostor syndrome is still going strong!

At the same time I’ve been surprised by graduates when they come across something and say “I didn’t see that in school”, like, what!? I thought the job was mostly learning on the go!
Ask HN: Bad at Interviewing
by biskquickest | 2025-07-18 00:01:53+00:00
I’m really not good at the live programming sections of interviews regardless of how much I practice. I’m already a nervous person but having someone watch me try to solve a problem just makes me forget how to think it seems.

I also have a hard time with how much variance is in each interview. Sometimes it’s a question of do you know how to use this library / can you google (without using AI responses) how to use it before the interview is over, other times it’s just a straight up leetcode question, I’m not good at either.

I’ve been working as a SWE for 8 years and always gotten above average performance reviews at every company I’ve been at, so I’m confident I can do the job if I’m given the chance, but it’s really tough for me to actually prove my worthiness in the interview stage.

Is there anything I can do to improve this skill? I already invest quite a bit of time into practicing problems but something about the time constraint or someone monitoring me really has a huge impact on me for some reason. I thought this would get better with practice but it seems to have not and to be frank it’s exhausting always feeling the need to “be ready” for interviews
by wasabi991011 | 2025-07-18 00:02:24+00:00
> Will what was on display: ...

Well yes, they're aiming for those goals.

On the grandparent comment's link, you'll notice that they mention striving for the UN's sustainabile development goals, which includes all of that (+ others like gender equality).

Or on this link about theme weeks[1] which includes more of the same.

[1] https://www.expo2025.or.jp/en/sponsorship/theme-weeks/
by quesera | 2025-07-18 00:02:28+00:00
My current working theory is this:

People who enjoy mentoring juniors are generally satisfied with the ROI of iterating through LLM code generation.

People who find juniors sort-of-frustrating-but-part-of-the-job-sometimes have a higher denominator on that ROI calc, and ask themselves why they would keep banging their head against the LLM wall.

The first group is probably wiser and more efficient at multiplying their energies, in the long term.

I find myself in the second group. I run tests every couple months, but I'm still waiting for the models to have a higher R or a lower I. Any day now.
by chris_va | 2025-07-18 00:02:44+00:00
I realize UBI has been a popular topic on HN, answer me this...

UBI, if implemented, would move O($10T/year) around the economy.

We've seen a lot of small scale studies, which basically boil down to giving people money == life improvements. However, I do not see how a small scale study could possibly answer the open macro questions, like inflationary collapse (e.g. increased velocity without direct economic output), even if the whole "will people work anymore" question is moot.

Without answering those questions, it would be a USSR scale experiment, which is incredibly dangerous. Improving peoples lives would be great, but I cannot see how one could be an advocate for UBI without having solid answers to those questions.
by brettgriffin | 2025-07-18 00:02:53+00:00
I'll concede that most CS curricula are so far removed from practical development (intentionally) that it is not an immediate indicator of performance, but to suggest that 85% of CS grads can't figure out a problem in unfamiliar territory seems ridiculous.

If there is a virtue to CS degrees, it's that most engineering tracks require an immense amount of coursework in hard sciences that require a high intellectual aptitude to complete.

I'm really struggling to believe that a majority of people can work through that material and then can't do the type of work that most developers do. And in the most difficult realms of development, I think you'd find a majority of the developers have advanced degrees in CS.

I think having a deep interest in software is more likely to yield traits you're describing (and described in the article). Some people who have that didn't study CS. A lot did.
by dmix | 2025-07-18 00:03:05+00:00
The news of Palantir database was pretty unpopular among the twitter right from what I've seen. If it came to a public vote I doubt "government builds giant surveillance system" would get wide support from anyone even if it was spun as anti-immigrant.

This is just something the type of people who end up in government try every year despite the fact few people want it.
by throw0101d | 2025-07-18 00:03:34+00:00
And transportation: the fastest mode of transportation going from the horse (which was it for millennia), to the train, to the car, to the plane.

In 1900 people were mostly in horse and buggies (and trains for longer distance), and by 1960 we had the Boeing 707, with the 747 entering service in 1970: how much have been moved forward from that?
by mattigames | 2025-07-18 00:03:55+00:00
There is 2 things that are gonna help a lot, one is better classification, in that regard advances will help purge itself, just like our digestive system filters what we don't need models will do the same, e.g. scientific and factual models will have zero jokes in it's corpus, and you will know that the response you received came from such a humourless model, the second thing is just plain feedback, teachers will use AI and give it thumbs up or thumbs down and the machine will use such opinion over the opinion of most students, it will also favour the input by students with the most promise, those who win math championships and all that jazz.
by LadyCailin | 2025-07-18 00:03:58+00:00
I think it’s totally fair to ask who is supposed to pay for that. I don’t want the guy who grows the food I eat to stop and go paint, I like eating more than I like him painting. There are plenty of jobs that aren’t fulfilling in the slightest, they are just a means to a paycheck, but are absolutely vital to society. And if those people quit to go make art, we’re all screwed. I don’t think that’s an unfair ask to have a comprehensive answer to.
by anitil | 2025-07-18 00:04:10+00:00
I was wondering how it would do arbitrary-sized kernels without dynamic allocation (my guess was that it would use the input/output buffer as a temporary storage). The answer is that there's a _slight_ asterix to the 'zero-allocation' - the allocation is on the stack [0], but it's small-ish (2kb) and fixed size. So in an embedded context you'd just want to make sure you have headroom for this.

[0] https://github.com/sammycage/plutofilter/blob/main/plutofilt...
by o11c | 2025-07-18 00:04:31+00:00
My point is: the chemical-attack portion of perfumes can far exceed the scent component. So even a modest application that most people can't even smell still counts as a targeted assault against some of us.

If I have my inhaler at hand, that feels like pulling knives out of my lungs - better than before, but the wound remains. But we don't expect people to get much work done if they've been stabbed today.
by hatthew | 2025-07-18 00:04:33+00:00
https://x.com/sukjun_hwang/status/1943703574908723674

> Tokenization has been the final barrier to truly end-to-end language models.

> We developed the H-Net: a hierarchical network that replaces tokenization with a dynamic chunking process directly inside the model, automatically discovering and operating over meaningful units of data
by tomrod | 2025-07-18 00:04:54+00:00
Is it best for society that everyone works a job with high enough income to contribute to taxes and that can accrue a 401k? We aren't there under current policy, there are many people left behind and experiencing negative income tax rates. But I feel this hypothetical world is the ideal posited in your example.

I think it's a fair question, and as an economist the topic fascinates me far beyond the typical econ 101 perfect world hand waving.
by Analemma_ | 2025-07-18 00:05:16+00:00
You can’t replace Medicaid with UBI unless you also change the entire health care system to be single-payer, because people will still have random medical problems which need a million dollars (or whatever) worth of treatment. For the rest of it I agree, but I think you’re overestimating how much we spend on all those programs— they don’t even come close to what a reasonable UBI would cost. UBI would require a huge change to how taxation/spending works no matter how it’s implemented.
by const_cast | 2025-07-18 00:05:32+00:00
In defense of myself not being a big meanie:

> You know what‘s a caveman take? Thinking that there is any chance to convince a meaningful number of people to reduce meat consumption globally in the required time window

The "caveman take" I'm referring to is when you implied the correct solution to climate change is suicide.

It's a caveman take because I've heard it numerous times, and it lacks all nuance or thought. Yes, we emit CO2 by existing the way we do. We can improve our situation without going to extremes. This is a "perfect is the enemy of good" type thought process.

It's what I call an anti-solution. It doesn't solve anything, but it does completely halt the conversation and makes sure that other real solutions can't pop up.

> As you can see, the type of meat matters a lot. Cheese is doing worse than pork in this example (not sure I even believe this without more evidence yet). Non-meat sources of protein don‘t do very well: Tofu is just 2x better than poultry. Compare this to the giant bar for beef.

Okay, but none of this was in your original comment. You talked about raising chickens, which I appropriately clocked as a not real solution that isn't going to work.

Eating more chicken and less beef is good, I agree, and a reasonable solution. You should probably lead with that.
by SJC_Hacker | 2025-07-18 00:05:33+00:00
Its a bit like saying algorithms don't matter for solving computational problems. Two different algorithms might produce equivalent results but if you have to wait years for an answer, when seconds matter, the slow algorithm isn't helpful.

I believe the current approach of using mostly a feed-forward in the inference stage, with well-filtered training data and backpropagation for discrete "training cycles" has limitations. I know this has been tried in the past, but something modelling how animal brains actually function, with continuous feedback, no explicit "training" (we're always being trained), might be the key.

Unfortunately our knowledge of "whats really going on" in the brains is still limited, investigative methods are crude as the brain is difficult to image at the resolution we need, and in real time. Last I checked no one's quite figured out how memory works, for example. Whether its "stored in the network" somehow through feedback (like a SR-latch or flip-flop in electronics) or whether there's some underlying chemical process within the neuron itself (we know that chemicals definitely regulate brain function, don't know how much it goes the other way and it can be used to encode state)