MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by reverendsteveii | 2025-07-10 19:47:47+00:00
Without accounting at all for my mental health and convenience (which are things of value) WFH has immediate material benefit in terms of commute and lunch costs. I can take less salary at a WFH position and still actually end up with more money in my pocket at the end of the day because I lose the expenses associated with going somewhere non-home, being there for 8 hours and then coming back to home.
by gjm11 | 2025-07-10 19:48:19+00:00
Sure. But all those things you just said are about the AI systems' ability to come up with new ideas versus their knowledge of existing ones. And that doesn't have much to do with whether or not they're good at simple spelling puzzles.

(Some of the humans I know who are worst at simple spelling puzzles are also among the best at coming up with good new ideas.)
by maxtaco | 2025-07-10 19:48:50+00:00
I'm not familiar with Radicle, but I'll check it out. For (1), consider the case of that server being hosted on AWS. Even though only members are authorized to SSH into it, the plaintext is still known to the cloud hardware, and can be exfiltrated that way. In FOKS, the server sees encrypted data only, so that attack is greatly mitigated. I would say that if the SSH server was hosted on one of the workstations of one of the team members, then the security advantages of FOKS would be much less.

The KV-Store and Git server are implemented as "applications" on top of the FOKS infrastructure, so they aren't coupled. They see a sequence of Per-Team-Keys (PTKs); they use the older ones for decryption and the newest for encryption. I'd really love to see all sorts of other applications built on top of FOKS but we might need to do some work as to nailing the right plugin architecture.
by jm4 | 2025-07-10 19:48:51+00:00
I don't know why anyone would bother with Grok when there are other good models from companies that don't have the same baggage as xAI. So what if they release a model that beats older models in a benchmark? It will only be the top model until someone else releases another one next week. Personally, I like the Anthropic models for daily use. Even Google, with their baggage and lack of privacy, is a far cry from xAI and offers similar performance.
by mrwaffle | 2025-07-10 19:49:09+00:00
My overall concern has to do with our developer ecosystem from the important points mentioned by simonw and narush. I've been concerned about this for years but AI reliance seems to be pouring jet fuel on the fire. Particularly troubling is the lack of understanding less-experienced devs will have over time. Does anyone have a counter-argument for this they can share on why this is a good thing?
by kevinwu2981 | 2025-07-10 19:50:25+00:00
Why do you think it didn't work out in legal? We currently don't focus on that domain.

In general, we currently have really high success rates with relatively constrained use cases, such as lead qualification and well scoped customer service use cases (e.g., appointment booking, travel cancellation).

In general, voice AI is hard because WYSIWYG (there is no human in the loop between what the bot is saying and what the person on the other side gets to hear). Not sure about legal, but for more complex use cases (e.g., product refunds in retail), there are many permutations in how two different customers might frame the same issue and so it might be harder to accurately instruct the AI agent in a way to guarantee high automation results (given plentitude of edge cases).

It is our belief therefore that voice AI works the best, when the bot is leading the conversation and it is always very clear what the next steps are...
by asdff | 2025-07-10 19:50:57+00:00
Seems like early 2000s cars were the last of the good cars. You had full airbags by that point but cars were mostly still just basic fuel injected internal combustions engines with sensible transmission choices that had seen probably decades of iteration at that point. If you wanted some crazy infotainment its not hard to roll your own with the standard sized stereo slots in those cars. No telemetry. No "driver aids" behaving nondeterministically. Mechanical linkages vs by wire. Just a car. Starts with a key. Exactly what is says on the tin and nothing more or less.
by randomNumber7 | 2025-07-10 19:50:57+00:00
> we aim for a computing system that is fully visible and understandable top-to-bottom

I mean even for something that is in theory fully understandable like the linux kernel it is not feasible to actually read the source before using it.

To me this really makes no sense. Even for traditional programming we only have so powerful systems because we use a layered approach. You can look into these layers and understand them but it is totally out of scope for a single human being.
by moron4hire | 2025-07-10 19:51:21+00:00
I mean, they claimed to be. It was in the name, "Nazi" was a contraction of "National Socialists". But that's kind of the problem with much of these conversations online. They figure way too much on the naming of things and not enough on the outcomes of things. I think anyone with an honest understanding of the Nazi party would admit it was much, much more about the "Nationalism" then it ever intended to be about the "Socialism". Much like how the modern "Republican" party doesn't seem to care too much about republics.
by philipkglass | 2025-07-10 19:51:32+00:00
I think that the Wikipedia article is about as good as it gets, because the process details are classified:

In June 2001, the U.S. Department of Energy classified "certain privately generated information concerning an innovative isotope separation process for enriching uranium". Under the Atomic Energy Act, all information not specifically declassified is classified as Restricted Data, whether it is privately or publicly held. This is in marked distinction to the national security classification executive order, which states that classification can only be assigned to information "owned by, produced by or for, or is under the control of the United States Government". This is the only known case of the Atomic Energy Act being used in such a manner.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Separation_of_isotopes_by_lase...

The United States developed the somewhat related AVLIS process to industrial readiness for the Special Isotope Separation project to produce high-grade weapons plutonium from old reactor fuel. However, it was ready just in time for the end of the Cold War, so it got shut down in 1990.

https://inis.iaea.org/records/r6yew-5nk17

Construction and operation of a Special Isotope Separation (SIS) project using the Atomic Vapor Laser Isotope Separation (AVLIS) process technology at the Idaho National Engineering Laboratory (INEL) near Idaho Falls, Idaho are proposed. The SIS project would process fuel-grade plutonium administered by the Department of Energy (DOE) into weapon-grade plutonium using AVLIS and supporting chemical processes.
by ben_w | 2025-07-10 19:52:17+00:00
I left the UK in 2018 so this may be a strange question: I remember news about a massive but very brief energy price hike around when Russia began their "special operation" and everyone said "right, no more Russian gas", so is that hike still present?

I'd search, but the first few results get me geo-blocked because I'm not in the UK.
by freedomben | 2025-07-10 19:52:32+00:00
I'm also a big Apple hater for their closed approach to everything and the broad impact that has had on the market (now everything is moving that way), and would not be sad at all if they took a big hit (it was a slow evolution over many years, but that's where I am now), but I agree I think Apple is actually fine. They have a ton of options (ranging from acquisition or integration with existing providers) and all the money they could possibly need to get any or all of those done. The majority of normal people are just using AI for chatgpt-style stuff anyway, and that stuff all works perfectly fine on the iPhone.

Maybe once Gemini is fully empowered to drive Android as a digital assistant Apple might need a good answer, but I think we're still a ways off from that point.
by WD-42 | 2025-07-10 19:52:37+00:00
I feel the same way. I use it for super small chunks, still understand everything it outputs, and often manually copy/paste or straight up write myself. I don't know if I'm actually faster before, but it feels more comfy than alt-tabbing to stack overflow, which is what I feel like it's mostly replaced.

Poor stack overflow, it looks like they are the ones really hurting from all this.
by aspenmayer | 2025-07-10 19:52:39+00:00
> But with basic subject-verb agreement, it's a requirement of the language and not really up for debate. If your subject doesn't agree with the verb in number and gender, IT ARE WRONG.

I’m very confused about what you are talking about, when

> > There are two forms of agreement: subject-verb agreement and pronoun-antecedent agreement. Subject-verb agreement is pretty rudimentary, and is not discussed here.

per this comment:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44524290

As you mention what is or isn’t up for debate, why do you keep bringing up to debate something that is explicitly referenced but not discussed or addressed by TFA? The author already beat you to the punch by opting not to debate that point, and that’s the one you specifically want to talk about?

Are you fishing for red herring? Color me confused lol
by techpineapple | 2025-07-10 19:52:39+00:00
So, to try and make a relatively substantive contribution, the doc mentions that the following were added to grok3's system prompt:

- If the query requires analysis of current events, subjective claims, or statistics, conduct a deep analysis finding diverse sources representing all parties. Assume subjective viewpoints sourced from the media are biased. No need to repeat this to the user. - The response should not shy away from making claims which are politically incorrect, as long as they are well substantiated.

I'm guessing there are quite a few algorithms and processes in modern LLM's above and beyond just predict the next token, but when you say "find diverse sources" and "be well substantiated".

Is this passing an instruction to the process that like reads from the weightset or is it now just looking in the weightset for things trained related to the tokens "find diverse sources" and "be well substantiated"

I guess what I'm asking is does. "be well substantiated" translate into "make sure lots of people on Twitter said this", rather than like "make sure you're pulling from a bunch of scientific papers" because, well technically, racism is well substantiated on Twitter.
by RyanOD | 2025-07-10 19:52:46+00:00
Sure, there will always be edge cases. That's just how the world works.

Let your kids go out and ride bikes and you may end up with one getting hit by a car. Those are the risks every parent has to manage.

But if we let the edge cases dictate how we raise our kids, we end up with what we don't want - overly managed bubble-youth kids who can't think for themselves.
by quietbritishjim | 2025-07-10 19:53:25+00:00
> Does anyone write those by hand anyway in any kind of project the size where it would matter?

I think you're suggesting that you don't need to make up the names for include guards because all tools / IDEs for C++ write them for you automatically anyway. But that isn't my experience. Many IDEs don't write include guards for you automatically ... because everybody uses #pragma once already.

> #pragma once is broken by design

I think you're referring to the historical problem with #pragma once, which is that it can be hard for the compiler to identify what is really the same file (and therefore shouldn't be included a second time). If you hard link to the same file, or soft link to it, is it the same? What if the same file is mapped to two different mount points? What if genuinely different files have the same contents (e.g., because the same library is included from two different installation paths)? In practice, soft/hard links to the same file are easily detectable, and anything more obscure indicates such a weird problem with your setup that you surely have bigger issues. #pragma once is fine.

(Historically, it also had the benefit that compilers would know not to even re-read the header, whereas with traditional include guards they would need to re-include the file (e.g. in case the whole file is not wrapped in the #ifdef, or in case something else has undefined it since) only to then discard the contents. I've even seen coding guidelines requiring external include guards wrapped around every use of headers with #include <...>. Yuck! But modern compilers can work out when include guards are meant to mean that so today that difference probably no longer exists.)
by JohnMakin | 2025-07-10 19:53:34+00:00
I could write a blog post exactly like this with my chatGPT history handy. That wasn't the point I was making. I am extremely skeptical of any claims that say someone can 1 shot quality cloud infrastructure without seeing what they produced. I'd even take away the 1-shot requirement - unless the person behind the prompt knows what they're doing, pretty much every example I've seen has been terrible.
by jacobgkau | 2025-07-10 19:53:51+00:00
> Avoid neurodiversity bias. For example, avoid the terms "sanity check" and "sanity test",

This one seems a little much. I've used this term in work writing within the past week (not in official documentation, but I do also write official documentation). I tried to look up what the acceptable alternatives are (since Section 4.6 doesn't specify one for that rule), but it seems most possible alternatives already have other, distinct meanings: https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/282282/near-univ...
by tcdent | 2025-07-10 19:53:59+00:00
I do create entire pieces of software, and while my workflow is always evolving, it goes something like this:

Define schemas, interfaces, and perhaps some base classes that define the attributes I'm thinking about.

Research libraries that support my cause, and include them.

Reference patterns I have established in other parts of the codebase; internal tooling for database, HTTP services, etc.

Instruct the agent to come up with a plan for a first pass at execution in markdown format. Iterate on this plan; "what about X?"

Splat a bunch of code down that supports the structure I'm looking for. Iterate. Cleanup. Iterate. Implement unit tests and get them to pass.

Go back through everything manually and adjust it to suit my personal style, while at the same time fully understanding what's being done and why.

I use STT a lot to have conversations with the agent as we go, and very rarely allow it to make sequential edits without reviewing first; this is a great opportunity to go back and forth and refine what's being written.
by kortex | 2025-07-10 19:54:07+00:00
I had never really considered partying as a reality-shifting tool, but as someone fond of regional burn events, yeah, it totally is.

Humans have partied for aeons. It's not just about letting off steam, it's about building social bonds, it's about traditions and rituals and marking key points in life.

This whole thread makes me rather sad, but in the same breath, makes me feel like there is real, actionable good to be done by promoting and helping run events. Not corporate pay-to-play curated experiences, which keep you on rails and only serve to condition more consumption behaviors, but relatively low cost, volunteer-run, do-it-yourself events. The latter, from my experience, have an absolutely infectious component of wanting to contribute, volunteer, create art, and drag others into the experience. But they are also a lot of work and not everyone is cut out for it.

It really has me thinking about lowering the bar to any sort of experience that gives folks a reprieve from the default world, however fleeting.
by dmitrygr | 2025-07-10 19:54:12+00:00
Bluetooth stacks are very complex due to the initially-vague 1.1 spec and the need for thousands of per-device quirks handlers. Even as specs were tightened, old device interop remains needed. If you implement a stack precisely as per spec, about half the devices out there won’t work with it (no exaggeration).

This situation is not a recipe for good code. Now that BLE has audio (the last thing from classic that it lacked), we can begin phasing out BT classic and this mess. However, it will be a decade before anyone can safely drop bt classic interop.

Basically: anywhere you have a Bluetooth stack that supports bt classic, feel free to ASSUME there are RCEs and DOSs lurking. You will not be wrong.

Source: a full blown case of PTSD from having written and debugged a few BT stacks
by atom_arranger | 2025-07-10 19:54:17+00:00
This kind of specialization can be bad for factory workers as well. Doing the same motion over and over can lead to repetitive stress injury.

I think it's true for any worker that performing the same activity over and over can lead to issues that wouldn't occur if work was more varied. That isn't necessarily in a companies interest though since for them it's easier to train people on one task, and they're easier to measure or replace.

The predictable and measurable thing for developers is thinking and cranking out features.
by apparent | 2025-07-10 19:54:31+00:00
I have wondered about this also. I noticed that some of my older plugs seem to keep on chugging even when internet is out. I am guessing they have some internal clock that they fall back on when the internet is not available. However, this would only work until the first power outage happens, at which point they would no longer know what time it is, and there would be no way to reconnect to them via the Wemo app to sync up their internal clocks.
by broost3r | 2025-07-10 19:54:53+00:00
check out this article (gift link) from yesterday about private equity in youth sports

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/09/business/youth-sports-pri...

> For many families, the money they spend on sports is an investment in their child’s future. Roughly two in 10 youth sports parents think their child has the ability to play Division I college sports, and one in 10 thinks his or her child could reach the professional ranks or the Olympics, according to the Aspen Institute survey.
by mapt | 2025-07-10 19:54:53+00:00
At $50/kwh of batteries + $50/kwh of battery install labor...

And at $150/kw of panels, $100/kw of inverters & copper, $100/kw of mounting, $100/kw of install labor, and $100/kw of real estate...

And at a 1W : 1kwh/yr (11%) duty cycle (my area should be 50% over that, but let's use conservative assumptions for low-maintenance vertical mounts)

And a level of conservativeness around power supply that reserves 60 hours of battery bank...

...

I can run a steady 1kw load (a GPU, let's say) for ~9kw of panels ($4950) + 60kwh of batteries ($6000), or $10,000. Capital cost of $10/watt.

Vogtle 3 and Vogtle 4 are going to end up averaging about 2.1GW for an estimated construction cost of perhaps $34 billion by the time everything is complete, or a capital cost of about $16/watt.

There is reason to expect the nuclear construction industry to drop in costs as it ramps up in size, but solar is already cost competitive here and it does not require the government to take over various costs like insurance, nor require the same political capital, approval process, or long financing period before initial payoff.
by Retric | 2025-07-10 19:55:08+00:00
I agree, the point is you’re not risking something like:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halifax_Explosion “At least 1,782 people, largely in Halifax and Dartmouth, were killed by the blast, debris, fires, or collapsed buildings, and an estimated 9,000 others were injured.”

“Nearly all structures within an 800-metre (half-mile) radius, including the community of Richmond, were obliterated.[3] A pressure wave snapped trees, bent iron rails, demolished buildings, grounded vessels (including Imo, which was washed ashore by the ensuing tsunami), and scattered fragments of Mont-Blanc for kilometres. Across the harbour, in Dartmouth, there was also widespread damage.[4] A tsunami created by the blast wiped out a community of Mi'kmaq who had lived in the Tufts Cove area for generations.”
by qualeed | 2025-07-10 19:55:29+00:00
From that section, I really like:

>"Avoid superlatives in job titles and descriptions, especially problematic terms such as "guru", "ninja", "rockstar", or "evangelist"."

At a past job, it was actually embarrassing to introduce some of my colleagues in meetings as shit like "Data Guru" and "Marketing Guru".

(I'm sure we can skip the 100,000th argument about the rest of the section).
by motorest | 2025-07-10 19:55:33+00:00
> I don't understand what you're saying here. #pragma once does the job that include guards used to do, (...)

They don't. They are not C++ and at most they are compiler-specific.

It's fine if you opt to not write C++ and instead target specific compilers instead. Just don't pretend it's not frowned upon or kosher.
Show HN: Cursor Rules Generator
by prasadpilla | 2025-07-10 19:55:48+00:00
Hey HN,

Prasad here, I've been using cursor from very early days.

Adding rules to my project really improved the quality and the Autonomity of cursor agent, but it took a good bit of time for me to do that manually.

So I built a tool to generate rules based on the technology and various preferences.

Please check it out.

https://cursor-rules-generator.xyz/
by thatguymike | 2025-07-10 19:56:47+00:00
I'm sympathetic, but I do think Realtalk could be improved with some simple object recognition and LLMing.

One of the challenges I found when I played with RealTalk is interoperability. The aim is to use the "spacial layer" to bootstrap people's intuitions on how programs should work, and interact with the world. It's really cool when this works. But key intuitions about how things interact when combined with each other, only work if the objects have been programmed to be compatible. A balloon wants to "pop if it comes into contact with anything sharp". A cactus wants to say "I am sharp". But if someone else has programmed a needle card to say "I am pointy", then it won't interact with the balloon in a satisfying way. Or, to use one of Dynamicland's favorite examples: say I have an interactive chart which shows populations of different countries when I place the "Mexico card" into the filter spot. What do you think should happen if I put a card showing the Mexican flag in that same spot, or some other card which just says the string "Mexico" on it? Wouldn't it be better if their interaction "just works"?

Visual LLMs can aid with this. Even a thin layer which can assign tags or answer binary questions about objects could be used to make programs massively more interoperable.
by dragonwriter | 2025-07-10 19:56:50+00:00
Ruby is a web-focused scripting language in the same sense that Python is an AI-focused scripting language.

JavaScript is much more of a "web-focused scripting language" than Ruby is, and it is quite happy with immutable strings (only).

> I think the comment is about that you now need to choose mutable vs immutable, and that is framed as a consequence of broader adoption.

Ruby has also had immutable (frozen) strings for a very long time, so you've always had the choice. What is changing is that string literals are (eventually) going to migrate from "mutable with a strong-encouraged file level switch to make them immutable" to "immutable".
by Alupis | 2025-07-10 19:56:59+00:00
> the now inherent unreliability

What "unreliability" are you talking about in terms of American tech businesses?

> For some situations it's safer to do it in the EU despite the regulations

The EU has zero tech companies that rival FAANG et al here in the US. Zero. Because of it's (well-intentioned but harmful) business regulations.

I have a feeling you're projecting your dissatisfaction with election results more than anything tangible...