MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by kmacleod | 2025-07-10 19:07:29+00:00
Permissibly licensed software does not require you to provide sources or the changes to it.

Copyleft licenses require the source, including changes, to be provided.

The original purpose of copyleft is roughly the "right to repair". When you buy a product: you receive the necessary source, build instructions, and tools in some cases, to update and replace the software you received. The use of copyleft software passes those requirements on through proprietary users.

Note that one can still build a proprietary product as long as all the copyleft pass-through software can be modified and replaced on the product.
by asdff | 2025-07-10 19:08:19+00:00
So 75% lives outside of it. Yeah I'd say the majority lives this way and to live otherwise is an exception for the remaining 25%. And even within those top 10 some are more like what I describe. There are definitely parts of those metros where the "mile a minute" travel estimation from uncongested highways applies. Certainly true for philadelphia outside the ~50sq miles of the gridded central city. Places like Houston average home is only like 250k pretty much at parity with midwest prices.
by MichaelNolan | 2025-07-10 19:09:07+00:00
That article's whole premises seems to hinge on the quote: "Energy from non-fossil fuel combustible electricity generation is accounted for on their input heat requirements and non-combustible renewables on the energy content of their gross electrical output."

But that line means the exact opposite of what the author claims it means. He claims that renewables are being overinflated, but the reverse is true. Coal and gas get evaluated based on their heat content, not their useful work output. Wind and solar get evaluated on their electrical output.
by prewett | 2025-07-10 19:09:14+00:00
Some years ago there was a HN link about people in ancient Mesopotamia (all the way up to about 1100 AD, iirc) that had a sophisticated network of canal tunnels, and they had people that would hold their breath and swim down and repair them. This is a sort of modern version of that... Sadly, I have no idea how to find the link, it was interesting.
by maxglute | 2025-07-10 19:09:35+00:00
As a Bodies enthusiast, anything pre 97 including Body World can be relatively uncontested - PRC execution was still bullet to back of skull then. Lethal injection transition took until 2010s.

All the drama/allegations around executed bodies started popping up during transition period. Mostly around Dalian which became hub of plastination. I think collection went from like 20-200+ bodies over that period. IIRC von Hagen had to return a few bodies he thought was sus. Falungong made claims these were prisoner bodies - there was big FLG round up in late 90s.
by tstrimple | 2025-07-10 19:09:38+00:00
> You think you’re just going to explain to a four year old the rules about ice cream and they’ll just be like “you’re right daddy. I forgot we had ice cream from the truck yesterday. I’ll grab some carrot sticks instead”?

If provided with consistency, yes that's exactly what happens. I've raised three kids who have not had repeated meltdowns over hearing an ice cream truck.
by belthesar | 2025-07-10 19:10:06+00:00
There's a joke that "the most stable Linux ABI is Win32". Like sibling commenters have pointed out, many Linux game ports either used system libraries that may or may not be compatible after years of changes, or bring along vendored libraries that may not play well. Valve tried to encourage Linux builds for games during their first foray into Linux gaming with the Steam Runtime, but even they have largely abandoned updating it in lieu of advancing WINE and sibling systems like DXVK, vkd3d-proton, dgvoodoo2, et al. Much more engineering effort goes into the Windows game tech stack than native Linux ones have.

For older games, the biggest advantage WINE has over Windows is WINE's prefix model, which lets you essentially build purpose built environments, not dissimilar to vendoring your dependencies into an OCI container. And if you're running a file system with CoW powers, those separate environments don't even take up a great deal of storage since the vast majority of the prefix is bit for bit identical.
by noelwelsh | 2025-07-10 19:10:16+00:00
> It seems that the notion of side effects must be understood relatively to a predefined system, just like in physics. One wouldn't count heat dissipation or power consumption as a side effect of such a program, although side-channel-attackers have a word to say about this.

Absolutely! When you really dig into it, the concept of an effect is quite ill-defined. It comes down to whatever some observer considers important. For example, from the point of view of substitution quick sort and bubble sort are equivalent but most people would argue that they are very much not.

The preface of https://www.proquest.com/openview/32fcc8064e57c82a696956000b... is quite interesting.
by roywiggins | 2025-07-10 19:10:30+00:00
the guy hated the USSR for its authoritarianism. And he hated lefties who forgave Communist crimes.

Anyway, I really like this piece of his:

https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwel...

> During the years 1918-33 you were hooted at in left-wing circles if you suggested that Germany bore even a fraction of responsibility for the war. In all the denunciations of Versailles I listened to during those years I don’t think I ever once heard the question, ‘What would have happened if Germany had won?’ even mentioned, let alone discussed. So also with atrocities. The truth, it is felt, becomes untruth when your enemy utters it.
by danans | 2025-07-10 19:10:34+00:00
> the fact that kids today can't even recognize "basic teen parties" and question whether they are some sort of made up fantasy

While I agree there is a technology-driven loneliness epidemic, what is so sacred about those "basic teen parties"?

People from any time before the 70s wouldn't recognize them either. Also, they were fictional caricatures written for movies, not real life, where teen parties were considerably less interesting.
by RyanOD | 2025-07-10 19:10:52+00:00
Having two teenage daughters who are athletes, much of this will play out for them depending on how much they really love the sport and whether they are able to play it at the highest levels. If you listen and observe your kids, you'll get a good sense of what THEY want out of the sport. Support them in THEIR journey.

And remember at the end of the day, the most important aspects of being an athlete aren't one's performance on the field. It's everything else - learning to be committed to a team, forming life-long friendships, building positive memories, living a healthy lifestyle, etc.
by mjr00 | 2025-07-10 19:10:58+00:00
This is the gap between capability (what can this tool do?) versus workflow (what is the best way to use this tool to accomplish a goal?). Capabilities can be strictly evaluated, but workflow is subjective. Saying "Google has the site: and before: operators" is capability, saying "you should use site:reddit.com before:2020 in Google queries" is workflow.

LLMs have made the distinction ambiguous because their capabilities are so poorly understood. When I say "you should talk to an LLM like it's a computer", that's a workflow statement; it's a more efficient way to accomplish the same goal. You can try it for yourself and see if you agree. I personally liken people who talk to LLMs in full, proper English, capitalization and all, to boomers who still type in full sentences when running a Google query. Is there anything strictly wrong with it? Not really. Do I believe it's a more efficient workflow to just type the keywords that will give you the same result? Yes.

Workflow efficiencies can't really be scientifically evaluated. Some people still prefer to have desktop icons for programs on Windows; my workflow is pressing winkey -> typing the first few characters of the program -> enter. Is one of these methods scientifically more correct? Not really.

So, yeah -- eventually you'll either find your own workflow or copy the workflow of someone you see who is using LLMs effectively. It really is "just trust me, bro."
by gmaster1440 | 2025-07-10 19:11:03+00:00
What if the slowdown isn't a bug but a feature? What if AI tools are forcing developers to think more carefully about their code, making them slower but potentially producing better results? AFAIK the study measured speed, not quality, maintainability, or correctness.

The developers might feel more productive because they're engaging with their code at a higher level of abstraction, even if it takes longer. This would be consistent with why they maintained positive perceptions despite the slowdown.
by alganet | 2025-07-10 19:11:08+00:00
EU two or three steps ahead.

AI companies are moving to user interface innovations to try to grab more unwilling training individuals. These new UI innovations will feel like shit if they try to force adoption, full of warnings and disclaimers.

Reminiscent of the cookie law, which many people hate, but they hate because companies insist in having cookies (if you don't track, you don't need the cookie popup).

Privacy, safety and reliability debates are back into dark patterns awareness. This is a territory tech companies were trying very desperately to get out of.

I think it's also brilliant in the way it answers the black box paradigm. "Oh, we cannot explain it, it's a black box". "Then explain how you made it, otherwise it's a no go".

Ultimately, this sets the discourse straight regarding what AI skepticism is all about. This is not about being anti-commerce, it's about being good commercial entities.
by doctoboggan | 2025-07-10 19:11:40+00:00
For me, the measurable gain in productiviy comes when I am working with a new language or new technology. If I were to use claude code to help implement a feature of a python library I've worked on for years then I don't think it would help much (Maybe even hurt). However, if I use claude code on some go code I have very little experience with, or using it to write/modify helm charts then I can definitely say it speeds me up.

But, taking a broader view its possible that these initial speed ups are negated by the fact that I never really learn go or helm charts as deeply now that I use claude code. Over time, its possible that my net productiviy is still reduced. Hard to say for sure, especially considering I might not have even considered talking these more difficult go library modifications if I didn't have claude code to hold my hand.

Regardless, these tools are out there, increasing in effectiveness and I do feel like I need to jump on the train before it leaves me at the station.
by narush | 2025-07-10 19:12:02+00:00
You can see this analysis in the factor analysis of "Below-average use of AI tools" (C.2.7) in the paper [1], which we mark as an unclear effect.

TLDR: over the first 8 issues, developers do not appear to get majorly less slowed down.

[1] https://metr.org/Early_2025_AI_Experienced_OS_Devs_Study.pdf
by isabelleilyia | 2025-07-10 19:12:04+00:00
congrats! Some time ago we were giving client intake in legal a try with a voice AI product, but we never were able to get the success rate higher than really low numbers (especially with sensitive use cases like legal where people will reject the call instantly if it's a bot). Have you guys seen use cases like this? What ranges of success rates/engagement times have you seen?
by bee_rider | 2025-07-10 19:12:40+00:00
> The psychology replication crisis is a prime example of why peer reviews and publishing in a journal matters 0.

Specifically, it works as an example of a specific case where peer review doesn’t help as much. Peer review checks your arguments, not your data collection process (which the reviewer can’t audit for obvious reasons). It works fine in other scenarios.

Peer review is unrelated to replication problems, except to the extent to which confused people expect peer review to fix totally unrelated replication problems.
by cogman10 | 2025-07-10 19:12:51+00:00
> Are they owned by a democratically elected government?

Depends on the utility, some of them are.

> the bureaucracy put in place by that government which supposedly serves the people.

It cuts both ways. There's obviously a problem with utility boards not listening to the voice of the people they represent but on the flip side these boards have been important brakes on utility companies going crazy with their prices.
by Balooga | 2025-07-10 19:13:10+00:00
Keep in mind that Fielding used his "REST" principles to drive work on the release of HTTP 1.1 in 1999. He subsequently codified these RESTful principles in his dissertation in 2000. The first JSON message was sent in 2001. The reason RESTful is perfectly suited to the WWW is because REST drove HTTP 1.1, not the other way around.

Now days there are just so many use cases where an architecture is more suited to RPC (and POST). And trying to bend the architecture to be "more RESTful" just serves to complicate.
by michaelt | 2025-07-10 19:13:25+00:00
IMHO the problem is:

OpenAI wants 3000W to run a high-end multi-GPU server to serve 1000 users paying $20/month each. They've got $20,000/month of income from the server, if they can power it.

Grandma wants 3000W to run her central AC, so she can live comfortably in Phoenix, Arizona. She's got $2,300/month of pension income.

If you try to raise the per-kWh price of electricity to reduce demand, OpenAI won't be the ones who get priced out. It'll be Grandma.
by lr4444lr | 2025-07-10 19:13:50+00:00
They are under 10 years old and do not have their own phones, nor do their single digit aged friends. They have zero sense of proper scheduling. While we live in a good neighborhood, there are more than a few reckless drivers, and short kids are not always visible to good drivers who are distracted. Finally, if the police saw them and decided to follow, there's a very good chance I'd get a knock on my door and a possible child endangerment charge.

I didn't make this world.
by starkparker | 2025-07-10 19:14:19+00:00
Yep. About half of the content in my workplace's style guide wouldn't need to be in it if those rules weren't repeatedly broken by borderline-illiterate software engineers who are brilliant with code, probably, but write in fragments, end sentences in commas, and pluralize words with 's. Getting consistent SVA in their writing might as well be two pay grades above them.
by wslh | 2025-07-10 19:14:48+00:00
Lineage? Aarhus has a strong academic tradition in areas like logic, type theory, functional programming, and object oriented languages. Many influential researchers in these fields have come through there.

I also think there's a noticeable bias toward the US in how programming language research is perceived globally. Institutions like Aarhus often don't invest heavily in marketing or self-promotion, they just focus on doing solid work. It's not necessarily better or worse, but it does make it harder for their contributions to break through the layers of global attention.
by jorkadeen | 2025-07-10 19:15:12+00:00
It is a fair point-- the implicit argument being that this allows `c` and `d` to be bound before they are used, and hence auto-complete can assist in the `select` clause. Nevertheless, the counter argument is that the form of a logic rule is:

Path(x, z) :- Path(x, y), Edge(y, z).

i.e. an implication from right to left. This structure matches:

query p select (x, z) from Path(x, y), Edge(y, z).

So the trilemma is:

A. Keep the logic rules and `query` construct consistent (i.e. read from right-to-left).

B. Reverse the logic rules and query construct-- thus breaking with decades of tradition established by Datalog and Prolog.

C. Keep the logic rules from right-to-left, but reverse the order of `query` making it from left-to-right.

We decided on (A), but maybe we should revisit at some point.
by perihelions | 2025-07-10 19:15:13+00:00
I guess this is the key biographic context,

> "In August 1941, Orwell finally obtained "war work" when he was taken on full-time by the BBC's Eastern Service.[111] He supervised cultural broadcasts [sic] to India, to counter propaganda from Nazi Germany designed to undermine imperial links.[112] "

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Orwell#Second_World_War...

There's quite a visible gap between his nominal role as a propagandist for Britain in India, and his private views expressed here. I mean: "quite truly the way the British Government is now behaving upsets me more than a military defeat"—wow!

(Meta: the part where Wikipedia's obviously very not-neutral editors inserted that exemplar of newspeak, "cultural broadcasts" for "propaganda", into the biography of Orwell himself is just... doubleplus).
by ddellacosta | 2025-07-10 19:15:22+00:00
> The Int32 or Int32, Int32 types are in the definition of Shape, so we can be DRY and spare us the chances to mismatch the types

I have to admit I don't see the distinction here in terms of DRYness--they are basically equivalent--or why the latter would somehow lead to mismatching the types--presumably if Flix has a typechecker this would be a non-issue.

I use Elixir now at work and I have used Haskell and PureScript personally and professionally, which both support analogs of both the case syntax and function-level pattern matching, and in my experience the case syntax is often the better choice even given the option to pattern match at the function level. Not that I'd complain about having both options in Flix, which would still be cool, but I don't think it's as big of a benefit as it may seem, especially when type checking is involved.
by jaredcwhite | 2025-07-10 19:15:52+00:00
> plaintext secrets in their env files which are leaked via AI assistants

So…we're not just talking about secrets then. Any text in any file could be leaked. The solution isn't simply moving secrets out of env files, the solution is, um,

*not leaking the contents of local files*

My god. Have we forgotten all semblance of how security & privacy in computing should work?
by jfengel | 2025-07-10 19:16:09+00:00
Natural gas and coal are better at throttling up and down than nuclear plants are.

So if they need to run 10% of the time, then you've still reduced your carbon output by 90%. The goal is 100%, but the remaining fossil fuel plants are not the biggest issue.

A nuclear plant would also be carbon-free, but Germany had other reasons not to want it. So it was a reasonable decision to keep the fossil fuel plants around, and shut more and more of them down over time.
by RyanOD | 2025-07-10 19:16:22+00:00
I can't stress this enough to new or soon to be parents.

Hold off on giving your child a phone as long as possible. Once your kids are old enough (your choice...but it's before they are teens), send them outside, shut the door, and go about your business.

Tell them to come back for lunch. Then send them outside again and tell them to come back for dinner.

I mean this in all sincerity. Don't plan their day for them. Make them go out and plan their day on the fly. Friend's house a mile away? Walk over and see if they can come out and play. Not home? Oh well, walk back or head to a different friend's house. There is value in this friction.

Don't be the person who gives your child a frictionless youth. The hard way is the best way.
by ande-mnoc | 2025-07-10 19:16:41+00:00
Did you actually read the article? Because I did.

The case was well reported in media and they basically all agree that it’s a symptom of systemic racism against Indigenous people in Canada. The hospital staff thought she was on welfare based on her ethnicity in this case, or straight out “bet” on the patient’s blood level in another case in BC the same year. She would have got the same treatment even if she spoke French.

> If you think racism in Quebec doesn’t have a connection with language

Where have I said this? Not everything is about the language though.
by moron4hire | 2025-07-10 19:16:57+00:00
Instead, how about you just not assume you can tell what is going on in someone's house based off of your obviously limited experience with children and one post on an internet message board.

I really don't appreciate your reply. It comes off as assuming that I'm basically an idiot. "Oh, just tell the children no!" Yeah, that doesn't really work when you have highly intelligent children you've been raising to be rational, thinking agents. They may not be developed enough to value long-term health issues over short-term pleasure gains yet, but they certainly are skeptical enough to call out fiat answers as bullshit. I'm actually rather proud my children argue with me so much, despite how exhausting it can be.

Hence me targeting my ire at the damn ice cream truck. It's not my children's fault they want ice cream (they are children) or that they are elementary school lawyers (I have certainly encouraged it, much to my in-laws' ire). It is the ice cream truck operator's fault for employing marketing tactics aimed directly at children. I keep my children off of cable TV and pay for streaming subscriptions to keep them away from completely unadulterated junk until they have brains developed enough to see through it, but this guy injects it out of my control.
by bit1993 | 2025-07-10 19:17:07+00:00
> Rather than let the LLM take you 80% of the way there and then handle the remaining 20% "manually"

IMO 80% is way too much, LLMs are probably good for things that are not your domain knowledge and you can efford to not be 100% correct, like rendering the Mandelbrot set, simple functions like that.

LLMs are not deterministic sometimes they produce correct code and other times they produce wrong code. This means one has to audit LLM generated code and auditing code takes more effort than writing it, especially if you are not the original author of the code being audited.

Code has to be 100% deterministic. As programmers we write code, detailed instructions for the computer (CPU), we have developed allot of tools such as Unit Tests to make sure the computer does exactly what we wrote.

A codebase has allot of context that you gain by writing the code, some things just look wrong and you know exactly why because you wrote the code, there is also allot of context that you should keep in your head as you write the code, context that you miss from simply prompting an LLM.
by ZephyrBlu | 2025-07-10 19:17:18+00:00
Very few people want to host/organize other people.

The end goal of throwing parties shouldn’t be friendship or getting invited to other people parties, it’s building a large loose network of people you’re acquaintances/shallow friends with and becoming a super connector.

If you ONLY want to make friends or get invited to parties I think focusing on finding specific people and spending time with them 1:1 is a much better way to do that.
by rafaelmn | 2025-07-10 19:17:54+00:00
>My personal theory is that getting a significant productivity boost from LLM assistance and AI tools has a much steeper learning curve than most people expect.

Are we are still selling the "you are an expert senior developer" meme ? I can completely see how once you are working on a mature codebase LLMs would only slow you down. Especially one that was not created by an LLM and where you are the expert.
by gitremote | 2025-07-10 19:18:03+00:00
> I feel like there are two challenges causing this. One is that it's difficult to get good data on how long the same person in the same context would have taken to do a task without AI vs with.

The standard experimental design that solves this is to randomly assign participants to the experiment group (with AI) and the control group (without AI), which is what they did. This isolates the variable (with or without AI), taking into account uncontrollable individual, context, and environmental differences. You don't need to know how the single individual and context would have behaved in the other group. With a large enough sample size and effect size, you can determine statistical significance, and that the with-or-without-AI variable was the only difference.