MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by bob1029 | 2025-07-18 06:22:55+00:00
NIH is amazing as long as you are realistic about what you are taking ownership of.

For example, the cost of maintaining a bespoke web frontend "framework" that is specific to your problem domain is probably justifiable in many cases.

The same cannot be said for databases, game engines, web servers, cryptographic primitives, etc. If you have a problem so hard that no existing RDBMS or engine can support, you should seriously question the practicality of solving your problem at all. There's probably some theoretical constraint or view of the problem space you haven't discovered yet. Reorganizing the problem is a lot cheaper than reinventing the entire SQLite test suite from zero.
by rajnathani | 2025-07-18 06:24:03+00:00
Nice action plan on combining Operator and Deep Research.

One thing which stood out to me in a thought-provoking way, is that example of stickers [created first and then] being ordered (obviously: pending ordering confirmation from the user) from StickerSpark (JFYI: This is a fictional company made up in this OpenAI launch post), whereby as mentioned that ChatGPT agent has "its own computer". Thus, if OpenAI is logging into its own account on StickerSpark, then what would be StickerSpark's "normal" user-base like that of any other company's user-base of 1 user per actual person will shift to StickerSpark having a few large users via agents through OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, etc. and a medium-long tail of regular individual users. This exactly reminds of how through pervasive index fund investing that index fund houses such as BlackRock and Vanguard directly own large stakes in many S&P500 companies such that they can sway voting power [1]. Thus, with ChatGPT agent that the fundamental-regular-interaction that we assume with websites like StickerSpark would stand to alter whereby the agents would be business-facing and would have more influence on the website's features (or the Agent due to its innate intelligence will directly find another website for where features match up).

[1] https://manhattan.institute/article/index-funds-have-too-muc...
by epistasis | 2025-07-18 06:24:57+00:00
People move to New York City because they want to live in a dense environment. Currently, options to live in NYC are severely undersupplied compared to the demand to live there. If there was more housing in NYC, a lot more people would choose to live there.

Giving people an option to choose a better life for themself is good in and of itself in my opinion.

Further, density is far better for the environment, greatly decreasing our impact on the environment, and making it easier for us to prevent climate change. It's also far better for the economy, for arts, for science... nearly all human endeavors benefit from the density of cities.
by lelanthran | 2025-07-18 06:25:08+00:00
> Will the other models really catch up, though? To me it seems like Anthropic's lead in programming has increased over the past year.

To me it seems that they are all converging over time. So what if one is "better"[1]? The others will soon be there too.

[1] My experience with them is that Claude (Opus) is only slightly better than the competition at coding; it might do a better job on 2 out of every 5 tasks than the competition, but those people using the competition still get those two tasks done anyway.
by closewith | 2025-07-18 06:25:39+00:00
Most software developers work in software because it's well paid and much easier to break into than other similarly paid jobs.

Most software developers never write software outside of education or employment. That's completely normal.

Even most recreational programming is to solve a problem. Very few developers write software for the pleasure of it and would happily use a magical "solve my problem" button instead.

This is also true for all employers and customers.

Honestly, it sounds to me that you fundamentally misunderstand the industry in which you work.
by olyjohn | 2025-07-18 06:25:55+00:00
Holy fuck this drives me insane. My company makes us do the idiotic trainings, which tell you all the "red flags" to look for.

Then the goddamn CEO sends out an empty email, with a .docx attachment, and the subject saying "urgent, open immediately" The HR sends out suspicious looking shit all the time. The. You have Microsoft spamming you with fucking QR codes!!!

You know what needs to happen? Disable all hyperlinks in email. Make everybody copy and paste the goddamn thing. Then they have to look at the link and they have to manually paste it into the browser. Then there are no obfuscated links. Also disable HTML email, images, and most file attachments. Then there is no pixel tracking, no possibility for malicious images to be auto-loaded, and no excuse for clicking a bad link.
by genocidicbunny | 2025-07-18 06:26:06+00:00
Can you actually install W11 on a machine that doesn't support TPM2? Iirc, Microsoft recently-ish got rid of the workarounds that allowed installation on machines that don't support TPM2. If there is still another workaround, I'd love to know about it (and especially if it requires a Microsoft account or can be done 'offline') since my daily driver doesn't have TPM2.

Also, what sorts of machines are you installing W11 on that are 'unsupported'? My daily driver initially came with W8.1 and for a while, I couldn't update to W10 because there were no W10 wifi drivers available; The manually-installed 8.1 ones were extremely flakey. And this isn't some no-name laptop too, it's a Thinkpad which you'd think would be well supported.
by vidarh | 2025-07-18 06:26:34+00:00
And other people were a lot more moderate but still assumed we'd get self-driving soon, with caveats, and were bang on the money.

So it's not as ubiquitous as the most optimistic estimates suggested. We're still at a stage where the tech is sufficiently advanced that seeing them replace a large proportion of human taxi services now seems likely to have been reduced to a scaling / rollout problem rather than primarily a technology problem, and that's a gigantic leap.
by athrowaway3z | 2025-07-18 06:27:14+00:00
> Internet's "Spy by default" can become "Privacy by default".

I've been building and promoting digital signatures for years. Its bad for people and market-dynamics to have Hacker News or Facebook be the grand arbiter of everyone's identity in a community.

Yet here we are because its just that much simpler to build and use it this way, which gets them more users and money which snowballs until alternatives dont matter.

In the same vein, the idea that FHE is a missing piece many people want is wrong. Everything is still almost all run on trust, and that works well enough that very few use cases want the complexity cost - regardless of operation overhead - to consider FHE.
by godelski | 2025-07-18 06:27:59+00:00
> It's primarily a time saving measure from my perspective.

Your perspective as what? Help me understand the point you are arguing from. A researcher? A general member of the public? Grad student? Something else?

I'm specifically asking this because there are different perspectives from the inside than the outside. There's a lot of internal problems that the general public isn't going to see. I also do not think papers should be aimed at the public. They should be aimed at other researchers. There are spaces for communicating with the public and it uses very different language. But these papers are supposed to be our communication to one another. We do it in the open. Doing this more openly means no gatekeeping, which putting them behind paywalls is also gatekeeping. But we need a space to talk to one another. The best way to do that is out in the open, mostly because we don't know who we're talking to. But just because it is visible by all doesn't mean everyone is our audience.

> If I come across a paper and it is in a publication that has a track record of publishing shoddy results I am likely to prioritize other works

Taking a stab in the dark here, but I'm guessing the answer isn't "researcher" to the above question? The reason I say this is because this seems like a weird scenario. There's so many venues that except those in your specific domain you're probably not going to know what is a reputable venue from one that isn't. It's also not exactly an easy thing to verify. If it is your field, well, you can tell 99% of the time from just the abstract.

> If a nature paper

You may wish to have a look at this conversation[0]. Or look at the controversy section of the wiki which provides more examples of my earlier claim about routinely rejecting good papers.[1] A good place to always look at is Retraction Watch[2,3]

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5906389

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nature_(journal)#Controversies

[2] https://retractionwatch.com/2024/01/26/springer-nature-journ...

[3] https://retractionwatch.com/2024/11/07/another-springer-natu...
by AnthonyMouse | 2025-07-18 06:28:01+00:00
A large EITC is trivially converted into a UBI. Otherwise-unemployed people pay each other a salary to do whatever they were each going to do anyway and then the salaries cancel but they both get the EITC. Attempts to prevent this largely don't work against people who want to do the scam and just find a different way to structure it, but tend to be used as an excuse to e.g. screw legitimate self-employed workers out of the credit.

The only reason this doesn't happen at scale right now is that the existing EITC is smaller than the amount of payroll tax you'd pay by making a given amount of money, i.e. it's not a negative income tax at all. If you're going to make it larger than that you might as well make it a UBI.
by vanschelven | 2025-07-18 06:28:28+00:00
Dan Luu quoting Joel Spolsky:

“Find the dependencies — and eliminate them.” When you're working on a really, really good team with great programmers, everybody else's code, frankly, is bug-infested garbage, and nobody else knows how to ship on time.

[..] We didn't think that everyone else was producing garbage but, we also didn't assume that we couldn't produce something comparable to what we could buy for a tenth of the cost.

from https://danluu.com/nothing-works/
by ffitch | 2025-07-18 06:28:50+00:00
From where I stand, AI seems to enjoy lightning fast adoption. Personal computers became a viable technology in the eighties, slowly penetrated workplace in the nineties, and supposedly registered in labor productivity in the early 2000s. The large language models became practical less then three years ago, and already plenty of businesses boast how they will integrate AI and cut their workforce, while everyone else feel behind and obsolete.
by galaxyLogic | 2025-07-18 06:29:24+00:00
> in 5-10 years AI will everywhere. a massive inequality creator.

That is possible, even likely. But AI can also decrease inequality. I'm thinking of how rich people and companies spend millions if not hundreds of millions on legal fees which keep them out of prison. But me, I can't afford a lawyer. Heck I can't even afford a doctor. I can't afford Stanford, Yale nor Harvard.

But now I can ask legal advice from AI, which levels that playing field. Everybody who has a computer or smartphone and internet-access can consult an AI lawyer or doctor. AI can be my Harvard. I can start a business and basically rely on AI for handling all the paperwork and basic business decisions, and also most recurring business tasks. At least that's the direction we are going I believe.

The "moat" in front of AI is not wide nor deep because AI by its very nature is designed to be easy to use. Just talk to it.

There is also lots of competition in AI, which should keep prices low.

The root-cause of inequality is corruption. AI could help reveal that and advise people how to fight it, making world a better more equal place.
by Someone | 2025-07-18 06:30:15+00:00
How do you avoid weed from taking over your garden? Do not plant it, and take it out when it shows up, anyway.

A Kanban board should only contain things you are going to do, not things you would like to get done.

So, firstly, only put things on from the first category, and don’t be afraid to take out things if it turns out you won’t be doing them (soon).

That doesn’t mean you have to totally forget about them. You (or your product manager) can keep them in another list.
by gsf_emergency_2 | 2025-07-18 06:30:17+00:00
Indeed, HN seems to be pro-institution (because most livelihoods depend on them)

But when seemingly innocuous posts are flagged, that label seems too weak.

To those sympathetic to these political posts..upvoting or posting calm or mildly supportive comments like the above (BEFORE THE FLAG happens) might help to prevent flags..

The title of this one is too inflammatory imho

EDIT: The comments to this one seemed alright but still got flagged https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44601096
by markbao | 2025-07-18 06:30:27+00:00
There was an article on HN a few days back on how it’s very hard to convey all the context in your head about a codebase to solve a problem, and that’s partly why it’s actually hard to use AI for non-trivial implementations. That’s not just limited to code.

I don’t use AI for most of my product work because it doesn’t know any of the nuances of our product, and just like doing code review for AI is boring and tedious, it’s also boring and tedious to exhaustively explain that stuff in a doc, if it can even be fully conveyed, because it’s a combination of strategy, hearsay from customers, long-standing convos with coworkers…

I’d rather just do the product work. Also, I’ve self-selected by survivorship bias to be someone who likes doing the product work too, which means I have even less desire to give it up.

Smarter LLMs could solve this maybe. But the difficulty of conveying information seems like a hard thing to solve.
by vidarh | 2025-07-18 06:30:30+00:00
No, it can operate in several small areas, and the number of small areas it can operate in is a deployment issue. It certainly doesn't mean it is solved, but it is largely solved for a large proportion of rides, in as much as they can keep adding new small areas for a very long time without running out of growth-room even if the technology doesn't improve at all.
by gblargg | 2025-07-18 06:30:32+00:00
The idea that these will keep being improved on in speed reminds me of the math problem about average speed:

> An old car needs to go up and down a hill. In the first mile–the ascent–the car can only average 15 miles per hour (mph). The car then goes 1 mile down the hill. How fast must the car go down the hill in order to average 30 mph for the entire 2 mile trip?

Past improvement is no indicator of future possibility, given that each improvement was not re-application of the same solution as before. These are algorithms, not simple physical processes shrinking.
by redwood | 2025-07-18 06:30:49+00:00
True but I think they're coming out of from a different orientation. Namely that presumably working on AI as an executive at Apple should be one of the dream jobs.

So the deeper point is that things are problematic enough at Apple that an executive in a dream job would consider leaving and not just leave but go to a company that's brand is fairly toxic but nevertheless is so aggressively investing in AI to pull off all kinds of brand washing
by anthk | 2025-07-18 06:31:02+00:00
Ah, ok, you meant 'terminal'. There are ceefax clients for terminal too.

But you need to change the font for XTerms. With framebuffers under Linux/BSD you might be able to do the same, but you would need to convert the fonts first and map the chars.

Here you have:

https://github.com/simonlaszcz/vidtex
by somenameforme | 2025-07-18 06:31:03+00:00
Another issue, one that you alluded to, is imagine AI actually was reliable. And a company does lay off e.g. 30% of their employees to replace them with AI systems. How long before they get a letter from AI Inc 'Hi, we're increasing prices 500x in order to enhance our offerings and and improve customer satisfaction. Enjoy.'

The entire MO of big tech is trying to create a monopoly by the software equivalent of dumping (which is illegal in the US [1], but not for software, because reasons), marketshare domination, and then jacking effective pricing wayyyyy up. And in this case big tech companies are dumping absurdo amounts of money into LLMs, getting absurd funding, and then providing them for free or next to free. If a person has any foresight whatsoever it's akin to a rusting van outside an elementary, with blacked out windows, and with some paint scrawled on it, 'FREE ICECREAM.'

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dumping_(pricing_policy)#Unite...
by kalleboo | 2025-07-18 06:31:09+00:00
The problem with USB NICs is now you have two flaky failure points - the chipset driving the USB port and the chipset driving the USB network interface.

I had a reliability issues using a Realtek 2.5 Gbps USB network interface. Kept locking up, or having latency issues. Until I switched which USB port I plugged it into (one that used a different chipset), and after that it was solid.
Ask HN: Is Linux for laptop worth the trouble?
by abhixec | 2025-07-18 06:32:10+00:00
As someone who has been using Arch/Void + XMonad (and now Gnome), and with the price of the MacBook Air (M-series) falling within an affordable range, is it worth continuing to fiddle with Linux?

I’ve come to the conclusion that the MacBook Air’s M-series chip is just amazing. Nothing really compares to the battery life and quietness of this machine. Not to mention, some of the default apps (Notes, Reminders, Shortcuts, passwords, safari, etc.) seem incredibly hard to beat. And if you are into the eco-system you don't have to pay for different services.

I’m curious about other people's thoughts on this. I’d love to hear a Change My View (CMV) on this.
by waldrews | 2025-07-18 06:32:38+00:00
Your point holds, but the example of Hellenistic Greek seems ill-chosen to make that case - they had horse races and calendars, and mythological mage equivalents that would be reasonable to name a horse after, so the only thing left to map is 'American' as a geographic proper name and 'an important race in America' - which is about as translatable as it gets. Maybe if we pick one of the many cultures that never had horses, their translation would have to throw in so much context that the corresponding text is structurally different?
by aniforprez | 2025-07-18 06:32:46+00:00
It's the complete opposite for me. I enjoy the process of mentoring juniors and am usually sought out for a lot of little issues like fixing git workflows or questions on how a process works. Working with an LLM is absolutely not what I want to do because I'd much rather mentees actually learn and ask me less and less questions. My experience with AI so far is that it never learns at all and it has never felt to me like a human. It pretends to be contrite and apologises for mistakes but it makes those mistakes anyway. It's the worst kind of junior who repeats the same mistake multiple times and doesn't bother committing those to memory.
by mystifyingpoi | 2025-07-18 06:33:24+00:00
This is a real issue.

I have 2 powerbanks that cannot be charged by USB-C port when at 0%. The signaling circuitry simply doesn't work. No idea who designed this. It is silly beyond belief. I have to charge it with normal 5V A-to-C cable for 30 seconds, then unplug, then all the PD stuff will start working and I can fastcharge it with USB-C port again. I'm screwed without A-to-C cable.
by xuki | 2025-07-18 06:33:34+00:00
> This happens on EBay too. Sellers list something and it isn't as described, and fraudulent sellers will say "but it is! This buyer is trying to scam me." and EBay usually sides with the seller.

This is not my experience at all and I've used eBay since 2008. eBay is pro buyer to the point that I don't sell anything on eBay (and buy all everything on eBay if price is the same).
by mg | 2025-07-18 06:34:49+00:00
One reason is that humans have a strong tendency to optimize for the short term.

I witness it with my developer friends. Most of them try for 5 minutes to get AI to code something that takes them an hour. Then they are annoyed that the result is not good. They might try another 5 minutes, but then they write the code themselves.

My thinking is: Even if it takes me 2 hours to get AI to do something that would take me 1 hour it is worth it. Because during those 2 hours I will make my code base more understandable to help the AI cope with it. I will write better general prompts about how AI should code. Those will be useful beyond this single task. And I will get to know AI better and learn how to interact with it better. This process will probably lead to a situation where in a year, it will take me 30 minutes with AI to do a task that would have taken me an hour otherwise. A doubling of my productivity with just a year of work. Unbelievable.

I see very few other developers share this enthusiasm. They don't like putting a year of work into something so intangible.
by whatever1 | 2025-07-18 06:35:42+00:00
Not sure if it is smart but definitely it is not reliable. Try the exactly same prompt multiple times and you will get different answers. Was trying LLM for a chatbot to flip some switches in the UI. Less than 30% success rate in responding to “flip that specific switch to ON”. The even more annoying thing is that the response is pure gaslighting (like the switch you specified does not exist, or the switch cannot be set to ON”)
by paulluuk | 2025-07-18 06:37:00+00:00
It really depends on the use-case. I currently work in the video streaming industry, and my team has been building production-quality code for 2 years now. Here are some things that are going really well:

* Determine what is happening in a scene/video * Translating subtitles to very specific local slang * Summarizing scripts * Estimating how well a new show will do with a given audience * Filling gaps in the metadata provided by publishers, such as genres, topics, themes * Finding the most "viral" or "interesting" moments in a video (combo of LLM and "traditional" ML)

There's much more, but I think the general trend here is not "chatbots" or "fixing code", it's automating stuff that we used armies of people to do. And as we progress, we find that we can do better than humans at a fraction of the cost.
by politelemon | 2025-07-18 06:38:10+00:00
Absolutely not. It is its own highly dominant monoculture, arguably worse, and an enabler of their ongoing platform abuse and holding back of web standards.

It has for a long time been a dual culture, it doesn't take long to run into this when doing web dev work. Applogists love to trot this line out when trying to defend their favourite trillion dollar company, and fail to see the effects it has on a much wider ecosystem.
by aspenmayer | 2025-07-18 06:39:24+00:00
I’m not sure what the first part of that URL does, but I didn’t click on it because it’s suspicious to prepend something to an Internet Archive link. I don’t recognize that domain but perhaps you can explain what it is and what it does?

Here’s the bare archive on IA:

https://web.archive.org/web/20090203182724/http:/freshmeat.n...
by vidarh | 2025-07-18 06:39:25+00:00
Unless we exceed the turing computable - which there isn't the tiniest shred of evidence for -, nothing we do is "outside the realm of 'token generation'". There is no reason why the token stream generated needs to be treated as equivalent to an internal monologue, or need to always be used to produce language at all, and Turing complete systems are computationally equivalent (they can all compute the same set of functions).

> Everyone has this impression that our internal monologue is what our brain is doing.

Not everyone has an internal monologue, so that would be utterly bizarre. Some people might believe this, but it is by no means relevant to Turing equivalence.

> Emotions are important.

Unless we exceed the Turing computable, our experience of emotions would be evidence that any Turing complete system can be made to act as if they experience emotions.