MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by ruslan_sure | 2025-08-15 07:19:08+00:00
I don't think it's helpful to put words in the LLM's mouth. To properly think about that, we need to describe how an LLM thinks. It doesn't think in words or move vague, unwieldy concepts around and then translate them into words, like humans do. It works with words (tokens) and their probability of appearing next. The main thing is that these probabilities represent the "thinking" that was initially behind the sentences with such words in its training set, so it manipulates words with the meaning behind them.

Now, to your points: 1) Regarding adding more words to the context window, it's not about "more"; it's about "enough." If you don't have enough context for your task, how will you accomplish it? "Go there, I don't know where." 2) Regarding "problem solved," if the LLM suggests or does such a thing, it only means that, given the current context, this is how the average developer would solve the issue. So it's not an intelligence issue; it's a context and training set issue! When you write that "software engineers can step back, think about the whole thing, and determine the root cause of a problem," notice that you're actually referring to context. If the you don't have enough context or a tool to add data, no developer (digital or analog) will be able to complete the task.
by delta_p_delta_x | 2025-08-15 07:19:09+00:00
> For the last few years, I thought 'gaming' was more GPU heavy and 'workstations' were heavier on the CPU and RAM?

On workstations you can get both. The Dell Precision 7XXX, HP Zbook Fury, and Lenovo P5x/P7x series are the primary high-end notebook workstations, and they are all nearly infinitely configurable with a myriad of CPU, GPU, memory, storage, display, and connectivity options.

I myself have a Precision 7560 from 2021 that has a Xeon W 11955M, and an RTX 3080 Laptop GPU that's roughly between a desktop 3060 and 3070 in performance due to the power limit of 90 W.

Before that I had a Precision 7530 from 2018 that had a Xeon E 2176M.

Both Precisions have 4 DDR4 slots for up to 128 GB, 3 M.2 slots (and an additional one for the WiFi module), and full repair/service manuals online.
by Mikhail_Edoshin | 2025-08-15 07:19:42+00:00
Yes, there is a principle of phonetic transliteration: the initial represents the sound in the language of origin. E.g. J. K. Rowling would be "D-zh": "Дж. К. Роулинг".

This leads to such things as English name "Charles" represented as "Ч." (Чарльз, "Ch"), but French name "Charles" as "Ш" (Шарль, "Sh"): "Ч. Дарвин" (Charles Darwin), "Ш. Перро" (Charles Perrault).

Similarly Finnish names with "J" will be represented by "Й" (Joukahainen) and Spanish by "Х" (Juan).
by bux93 | 2025-08-15 07:19:49+00:00
Those corporate taxes are only paid by small companies.

The Netherland has a decades old strategy of being "business friendly" - if you're a huge corporate.

This culminates in two things. One, The Netherlands has the most tax treaties of any country. This creates many loopholes.

Two, The Netherlands Tax Authority will happily help you take advantage of those. You just have to call them up and say "I plan to sell and lease back some IP through Swasiland, is that OK?" and they will tell you up front whether the loophole you found is OK to use - it's called a "ruling" and it's binding to them. This takes away any concern your tax lawyers might have about being thrown in jail for being too creative.

The basic idea is that The Netherlands would rather help a big corporate avoid paying 10% tax in another country, if it means they pay 1% in The Netherlands. Or even 0% corporate taxes and only some payroll tax for the people working at the Dutch office (job creation for tax lawyers who, as established earlier, lead a stress-free life).

A while back, some executives from the Shell oil company appeared on Dutch television proudly saying "of course we don't pay taxes! Why else would our HQ be here?". This was a bit too rich even for the Dutch viewers, and Shell ended up moving to the UK, presumably after some of their tax rulings got a second look due to political pressure. Unilever similarly left to the UK (who were also giving out tax deals like candy after Brexit ruined their economy).

Note that the author is conflating The Netherlands being a tax haven (which it is) with the location pharmaceuticals are produced.

To take advantage of Dutch tax avoidance strategies, most companies focus on intellectual property; this is why your IKEA pitches has "copyright InterIKEA systems B.V." printed on it. Made in some low wage country, but the license fees for its design are paid to a Dutch for-profit company owned by a non-profit(?) foundation.

In other words, it's easier to produce pharmaceuticals in, say, the Phillipines, and then do some shady (well, pre-approved) accounting to make taxable income disappear into thin air. There's also going to be some importing and re-exporting going on (guess which EU country is home to its biggest port, despite being a tiny country).

Nevertheless, pharma production - or rather "life sciences" - in The Netherlands is one of the governments 9 focus industries. This policy is focused mostly on high-value add activities like R&D rather than production. This will also skew the numbers.
by troupo | 2025-08-15 07:19:50+00:00
> I don't understand your logic unless you're implicitly saying the camera needs to go away

Yup. We never had camera before the notch.

> The notch makes for a smaller menu bar but without the notch there would be no menu bar there

Yup. Before the notch we neither had a menu bar that could comfortably fit most menu items even in professional apps, nor did we have a camera.

BTW, you literally are saying "The notch makes for a smaller menu bar". Imagine if I wrote that as the first sentence in my comment, then there would be no misunderstanding
by parimal7 | 2025-08-15 07:19:53+00:00
Has been my experience as well, never used ChatGPT for anything but as an interface to external documentations and understanding unfamiliar syntax.

Tried using it for the first time for vibe coding and was quite disappointed with the overall result, felt like a college student hastily copy pasting code from different sources for a project due tomorrow.

Maybe I just gave bad prompts…
by olegkokorin | 2025-08-15 07:19:55+00:00
This benchmark systematically evaluates 13 AI models across two demanding domains: tabular data extraction from PDFs and engineering drawing interpretation.

Tested models: 9 LLMs with vision capabilities (GPT-4o, GPT o4 mini, GPT o3, Claude Opus 4, Gemini 2.5 Pro, Gemini 2.5 Flash, Grok 2 Vision, Qwen VL Plus, Pixtral Large) and 3 traditional layout models (Amazon Textract via boto3, Azure Prebuilt Layout, Google Layout Parser).

We focus on practical performance metrics: per-document extraction accuracy, processing latency, and cost. Models are evaluated zero-shot, without fine-tuning, under noisy and irregular real-world conditions. Additionally, we perform iterative multi-pass extraction to assess improvements in coverage and stability. Two datasets includes real-world complex tables and engineering drawings.

For reproducibility and transparency, we provide the exact prompt used for testing each model on document understanding tasks, enabling other researchers to replicate or extend our experiments.

This benchmark delivers actionable insights for production deployment, revealing the trade-offs between extraction accuracy, inference speed, and operational cost, and highlights which models are ready to be used as-is in real document processing applications. Intelligent Document Processing (IDP) Models Benchmark | Businessware Technologies
by motorest | 2025-08-15 07:20:03+00:00
> Modern coding AI models are not just probability crunching transformers. (...) The complete package includes things like highly curated training data, specialized tokenizers, pre and post training regimens, guardrails, optimized system prompts etc, all tuned to coding.

It seems you were not aware you ended up describing probabilistic coding transformers. Each and every single one of those details are nothing more than strategies to apply constraints to the probability distributions used by the probability crunching transformers. I mean, read what you wrote: what do you think that "curated training data" means?

> Put it all together and you get one shot performance on generating the type of code that was unthinkable even a year ago.

This bit here says absolutely nothing.
by leobg | 2025-08-15 07:20:26+00:00
I agree with you that, of course, there are people and units in government that may be highly skilled and efficient. From what I see, here in Germany, and I think in the United States as well, is that those are the exception and not the rule.

And how could it be otherwise? If your job is safe, and you have a fixed salary, the only way to increase your effective hourly wage is to do less work.

Again, there are people trying to work against the system. A former colleague of mine is a judge at a district court. When he started his position, he made an effort to apply himself fully to each case. For example, in a neighbourhood dispute, he actually went to the place with both parties and personally cut the branch from the tree that had given rise to the dispute. But the pressure is there to get files off the desk. So it’s a race to the bottom.

There are some idealists. But they are fighting an uphill battle, and they are paying a hefty price for not doing what the system wants them to do.

And of course, you could now argue that this is only a problem because government is being starved of the means to do its job properly. But let’s not forget: There was no income tax before the 1910s. And you Americans sank British ships because of what would’ve been an effective total tax burden of less than 5%.

I don’t know what percentage of your work goes to the government in the United States today. Here in Germany it is around 50%. And still, the government feels “starved“. And still it needs the Palantirs of this world to clean up its mess.

And, by the way, this is not just a thing with government. It’s a thing with all monopolies.

You have to have a need to be strong – otherwise you won’t be.
by austinallegro | 2025-08-15 07:20:27+00:00
Give it time and it will be the norm across all EV's and not just BHP.

Want your AC to go down to X degrees? That's extra.

Heated seats? That's extra per month.

Electronic driver aids? That's extra per month.

Infotainment access to Apple/Android? That's extra per month and an unlock fee.

Then suddenly, once all of that has been exhausted and the customer is bled dry, you'll see geolocking introduced for additional/existing features.

Just buy an old ICE vehicle and drive it in to the ground. Then buy another.
by matheusmoreira | 2025-08-15 07:21:14+00:00
With all possible kindness...

> Devs do not get to decide

I'm sorry but developers get to decide literally everything. They're the ones putting in the work. They build the systems they want for themselves. They solve the problems they personally care about in ways they personally feel is best.

If you want them to build the system you want, you'll have to pay them.

> But I guess Linux desktop has chosen its path of being only for tinkerers who are prepared to adopt an entire culture of quirks instead of users focusing on what’s important for them in their own lives.

This betrays your attitude. You think what we do is not important. You don't care about the system, it's just "cognitive burden" to you. Only your "core tasks" matter.

"Users focusing on what’s important for them in their own lives" -- that's us. We just happen to care about and focus on the system itself. We enjoy the freedom to rebuild the system according to our vision of how things should work.

Numerous independent tinkerers developing their own systems naturally leads to inconsistency. It's a very organic process. It's a mess, but that's okay. Our freedom is far more important than conforming to some "standard" in order to "reduce cognitive load".

If solutions converge, let them do so for the right reasons, namely that it leads to a better system for us. Other people don't really matter.
by WillPostForFood | 2025-08-15 07:21:37+00:00
Trump launched MAGA by attacking the Iraq war, and the Bush family.

This is 2008:

“When she first got in and was named speaker, I met her. And I’m very impressed by her. I think she’s a very impressive person. I like her a lot. But I was surprised that she didn’t do more in terms of Bush and going after Bush. It was almost – it just seemed like she was going to really look to impeach Bush and get him out of office, which personally I think would’ve been a wonderful thing,” Trump told Blitzer in the interview.

“Impeaching him?” Blitzer asked.

“Absolutely. For the war. For the war,” said Trump, referring to the 2003 invasion of Iraq. “Well, he lied. He got us into the war with lies, and I mean, look at the trouble Bill Clinton got into with something that was totally unimportant and they tried to impeach him, which was nonsense. And yet Bush got us into this horrible war with lies. By lying. By saying they had weapons of mass destruction. By saying all sorts of things that turned out not to be true.”

And in the 2015 Debate attack Jeb.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H4ThZcq1oJQ
by bjackman | 2025-08-15 07:22:26+00:00
Personally I could trivially afford to pay triple for all the media I consume but I still mostly pirate it.

In Switzerland the media companies just make it so hard, and piracy is so easy. And I'm just not willing to jump through hoops for this shit.

If it's a small independent filmmaker I will make _some_ effort to try and pay for it but usually it's just not worth my time.

Gimme a website where I can hand over $10-$20 and easily watch a film on my TV and I'll happily pay. This was easy with 2000s tech. But the industry is too up it's own arse to deliver something this simple.
by boxedsound | 2025-08-15 07:23:03+00:00
I have experienced this for simplified Chinese. I studied some Chinese while studying computer science in China. The classes would have us learn writing, reading, speaking and listening (sensibly so for a Chinese language class).

Being able to write characters was handy whenever I came across documents that needed to be filled, but since leaving China I never had the need to write characters again. I now just input them using pinyin on keyboards, and I can easily recognise and read / input the correct characters. It is a strange feeling trying to write the characters I once knew, but now have forgotten, yet being able to read them instantly...

I would like to recommend dong-chinese, a language app I came across when I prepared for my stay over there. It taught things in a very efficient manner.

At this point I would like to recreationally increase my vocabulary so I have started working on a game called LingoRogue. My goal is to make it addictive to play, with a sneaky vocabulary-increasing effect. In other words a game that is "learnified" rather than a learning software that is gamified.
by JustExAWS | 2025-08-15 07:23:42+00:00
I consider myself liberal on most issues - strong social safety, universal healthcare , pro vax, strong separation between church and state, and hate the demonization of other.

But this is political correctness gone crazy.

https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2018/08/25/politics/democrats-gender...

I as a Black guy was also put off by the forced indoctrination that BigTech did post 2020 (when I worked there) with all of the “ally ship”, “DEI” crap I had to endure. I just wanted to do my job, get my money, get my RSUs and bounce after 4 years.
by ithkuil | 2025-08-15 07:24:22+00:00
Both things can be true:

1. People are trying to sell a product that is not ready and thus are overhyping it

2. The tech is in its early days and may evolve into something useful via refinement and not necessarily by some radical paradigm shift

In order for (2) to happen it helps if the field is well motivated and funded (1)
by nl | 2025-08-15 07:25:03+00:00
Yep, and the US won the Vietnam war too. /s

> The very uncomfortable truth here is that Israel is demonstrating how to effectively destroy insurgencies in Gaza and Lebanon.

Neither Gaza nor Lebanon are insurgencies - Israel is trying to destroy terrorist organizations, not rebellions.

> You cannot pussyfoot with nasty, brutal tactics and expect to accomplish anything. This was a lesson the west learned in the world wars, and we seem to have collectively forgot it again.

Neither world war was either an insurgencies nor a war on a terrorist organization, so unclear why this is a relevant example at all.

A better example of how to win that type of war would be the Malay insurgency (especially when compared to your example of the Vietnam war)
by bigstrat2003 | 2025-08-15 07:25:06+00:00
> They had an episode mocking Al Gore about climate change and then did an episode years later where they basically admitted they were wrong.

Eh, I wouldn't say that. Nor would I say they were really taking a stand on climate change in the first place. They just thought it would be funny to have Al Gore tilting at windmills (and indeed it was), and then thought it would be funny to have him proven right (and indeed it was). One of the things I appreciate about Trey and Matt is that they do what they think is funny first and foremost, rather than try to make the show a mouthpiece for their beliefs as many creators do.
by motorest | 2025-08-15 07:26:25+00:00
> That seems very dependent on which company you work for. Many would not grant you that kind of flexibility.

It really boils down to what scenario you have in mind. Developers do interact with product managers and discussions do involve information flowing both ways. Even if a PM ultimately decides what the product should do, you as a developer have a say in the process and outcome.

Also, there are always technological constraints, and some times even practical constraints are critical. A PM might want to push this or that feature but if it's impossible to deliver on a specific deadline they have no alternative to compromise, and the compromise is determined by what developers call out.
by BlueTemplar | 2025-08-15 07:27:26+00:00
No, religion was just one of the ways it was enforced, and the harms were quite 'real':

> the adultery double-standard in many of these societies is that adultery law was primarily concerned with the secure parentage of children in a marriage and so cared quite a lot less about a married man having sex outside of marriage so long as it was not with another married or marriageable woman. Instead, adultery was the crime of illicit sex with a married woman, not a married person. Some societies also had laws against illicit sexual acts outside of marriage – in Roman law this was stuprum – which often carried lesser penalties.

because

> this question matters much more in a society where nearly all wealth comes in the form of scarce farmland that is inherited from one generation to another and overwhelmingly if not entirely owned by men – even in societies like Rome where women could hold and pass down property, most of the landed wealth passed down the male line. Social status in these societies is essentially predicated on land ownership, without that farm the social position of even the peasant functionally collapses and given the extremely low social mobility in these societies, it collapses with little if any chance to ever regain it. Consequently, as you might imagine, the men who dominate these patriarchal societies are extremely anxious that their holdings – their position in society, however meager, which grants them a more-or-less stable living – pass to their actual, biological descendants.

https://acoup.blog/2025/08/08/collections-life-work-death-an...

And I expect that would have been even worse for the ruling classes ?
by zamadatix | 2025-08-15 07:27:33+00:00
Actually, thinking through it again fresh, I think it does all hinge on what the percentage is - but some other variables come into play (it's not a single percentage fits all) and then it quickly turns to madness because of the complexity of the system.

If the percentage is higher than the unconstrained optimal margin then the cap has no effect. There's no new pressure introduced yet.

If the percentage is lower than the unconstrained optimal margin then the only incentive is to increase the cost to raise the cap until right at the point demand decreases enough that any more cost would actually result in less total revenue. Because medical care is often very inelastic, that'd could quickly be a lot of cost inflation even for just a few percentage point constraint off the optimal margin. This is the part you're highlighting, and that makes sense.

The main counteracting force to this would be that a single insurer does not (theoretically, at least) set the cost of care directly on their own, they (theoretically, at least) compete with each other to negotiate the best care rates to have the most consumers go through them. There are several things which practically get in the way of that though, like how often you can actually change insurance plans or how competitive the open insurance market is (if you even have multiple options, some states only have a single marketplace option) vs just sticking with whatever your work offers.

Between all of that it is where comes back to the common refrains of "and that's why we need to go to a single payer system without profit as the main goal" and "and that's why we need to get rid of the ACA and let the market handle optimal profit naturally". Everybody can't seem to agree which way to go, just that they don't like the current way. Ironically, these approaches effectively map to the 0% cap (single payer, no profit focus) or the 100% (no ACA cap, free insurance market) interpretation options I originally listed.

I'm sure there about a billion other nuances not covered or thought about in this... but at least the comment parses now!
by themafia | 2025-08-15 07:27:52+00:00
Yea, but with a cool modern spin on it, it's not imperialism it's fighting terrorism!

Still not clear on how murdering the poorest people in the world with the least reach of anyone on the planet with devastating weapons like the R-9X missile, which has been described as a "samurai sword warhead" because it uses bladed protrusions to penetrate and then mangle it's victims, has solved anything. Other than putting loads of money in Palantir and Raytheon's pockets.

I think these days though they just sell political influence since Trumps brand of populism has made war _slightly_ less popular than it was 10 years ago.
by hyperbolablabla | 2025-08-15 07:28:11+00:00
I don't understand the modern fad of choosing a noun+"bound" for naming games. Whenever a game has a name like this it really puts me off, because it just screams "I don't care enough about my game to choose a unique name for it". And in many cases, it doesn't even make sense. "Arrowbound"? What's that even supposed to mean?
by AnthonyMouse | 2025-08-15 07:28:47+00:00
This is a case study in why competitive markets are important in general.

Copyright is a government-granted monopoly but the monopoly is hard to enforce. It works because most people actually want to support the creators, not because DRM is effective or anything like that.

So you have the uncommon situation in which a monopoly (the copyright holder) is operating in parallel to a competitive black market for content distribution (pirates). And then the competitive market -- even though it has to operate underground and makes hardly any profit -- provides the better experience.

Lesson for anyone who thinks market consolidation doesn't lead to consumer harm.