MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by somenameforme | 2025-08-11 07:59:46+00:00
We were also completely coked out of our mind. An issue oddly ignored by the article given they literally mentioned Coca Cola and so are presumably aware of its history. It wasn't until 1903 that Coca Cola removed cocaine from its recipe, but its use and abuse was absolutely widespread everywhere. People were using it recreationally, people no less than Thomas Edison remarked that it (in Vin Mariani [1]) "helped him stay awake." Popes were using it, generals were using, factor owners were pumping their laborers with it to maximize productivity, and much more. It wasn't restricted until 1914 and then defacto banned in 1922.

That's already going to increase anxiety dramatically amongst users, let alone the rest of society walking around in extremely crowded cities where a sizable chunk of the population was completely coked out of their minds at any given moment.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vin_Mariani
by raesene9 | 2025-08-11 07:59:48+00:00
It's interesting you suggest a two week sprint for this. How large do you think HNs development team is, do you know if they even have a single full time developer?

I don't but the lack of changes in the basic functionality of the site in the number of years I've used it make me feel that they may not have any/many full time devs working on it...
by Havoc | 2025-08-11 08:00:42+00:00
Mostly good but the webcam part is way off the mark. Humans are hardwired to look at faces and interpret micro expressions to interpret situations. Author may laugh in text emojis only but not everyone does

That said enforced webcam on is obnoxious too. Best orgs in my experience are the middle ground places - lightly encouraged - so that one can decide meeting by meeting
by IshKebab | 2025-08-11 08:01:13+00:00
Yeah I think you have it backwards. I don't think anyone has demonstrated any actual harms from porn, but social networks regularly fuck teenagers up.

I definitely would prefer my children to watch porn than get bullied - or worse - on social media.

There's also the fact that I vaguely trust Facebook or Reddit to do a credit card-based age check or whatever. No way I'm giving any of my details to porn sites.

Stupid dumb law.
by dogcomplex | 2025-08-11 08:03:20+00:00
We are all too well aware of the tragedy that is modern software engineering lol. Sadly I too have never seen that situation where I was given enough time to do the requisite multiple passes for proper design...

I have been reprimanded and tediously spent collectively combing over said quick prototype code for far longer than the time originally provided to work on it though, as a proof of my incompetence! Does that count?
by pyrale | 2025-08-11 08:04:22+00:00
This looks like a paragraph which is meaningful in the context of a specific school of thought. It reminds me of the classic (that is, classic on HN):

> A monad is just a monoid in the category of endofunctors, what's the problem?

Some works are just hard to grasp if you haven't first assimilated the introductory works to the field.
by flohofwoe | 2025-08-11 08:04:28+00:00
> Zig takes the same attitude as C and C++ of using const to indicate an immutable rather than a constant

I think it's a bit more complicated than that: AFAIK Zig consts without explicit type may be comptime_int or comptime_float, and those don't exist at runtime. Only consts with an explicit type annotation are 'runtime consts'.

Also see:

https://www.godbolt.org/z/esTr463bT

...still, I think Rust should allow to infer the type at least inside struct initialization, it would make designated init code like this a lot less noisy (Zig would suffer from the same problem if it hadn't the .{} syntax):

https://github.com/floooh/sokol-rust/blob/main/examples/texc...

...C99 is still the 'benchmark' when it comes to struct initialization:

https://github.com/floooh/sokol-samples/blob/29d5e9f4a56ae18...
by adastra22 | 2025-08-11 08:05:53+00:00
Most of the time I do. I don’t leave my laptop plugged in. I use it until it needs a charge, plug it in until it is full, then unplug again. I’m usually not near a charger, so I am actually needing that battery to work.

Maybe this is why my experience is different than most here?

Still, even after 5 years of doing this, my battery life remains within 80% of its original state.
by daymanstep | 2025-08-11 08:06:37+00:00
"The idea of strong opinions, loosely held is that you can make bombastic statements, and everyone should implicitly assume that you’ll happily change your mind in a heartbeat if new data suggests you are wrong. It is supposed to lead to a collegial, competitive environment in which ideas get a vigorous defense, the best of them survive, and no-one gets their feelings hurt in the process. What really happens? The loudest, most bombastic engineer states their case with certainty, and that shuts down discussion. Other people either assume the loudmouth knows best, or don’t want to stick out their neck and risk criticism and shame. This is especially true if the loudmouth is senior, or there is any other power differential." - Michael
by justforfunhere | 2025-08-11 08:06:38+00:00
I am fascinated by what you are saying and would love to read more about it. How did you go about modifying the software of some part of your car.

Having worked in this field, I can confirm that most such parts these days come with chip supported read/write protections for part of flash that contain the code. But even with no protections, I think that being able to modify embedded firmware is a feat in itself.
by nicbou | 2025-08-11 08:07:51+00:00
I am a former software engineer. Now I run a website that helps people settle in Germany.

Google AI summaries and ChatGPT have almost halved my traffic. They are a scourge on informational websites, parasites.

It’s depressing to see the independent web being strangled like that. It’s only a matter of time before they become the entire internet for many, and then the enshittification will be more brutal than anything before it.

I will be fine, but I have to divert 6-10 months on my life to damage control[0] instead of working on what matters to my audience. That happened by chance; other websites won’t be so lucky.

So yeah, morale is low. It feels like a brazen consolidation play by big tech, in all aspects of our lives.

On the bright side, it does make coding a bit easier. It spits out small bits of code and saves me a lot of API docs round trips. I can focus on business logic instead of basic code. AI is also a phenomenal writing tool. I use it for trying different phrasing options, reverse word and express search, and translation nuances. It does enable me in that way.

[0] https://nicolasbouliane.com/blog/health-insurance
by ndsipa_pomu | 2025-08-11 08:07:57+00:00
Well, insurance companies should be the most knowledgable about potential risks. Personally, I don't think it makes sense to spend lots of money to continue building in unsustainable locations (e.g. regular flooding) and we shouldn't be socialising those risks. Building mitigations can make sense in some circumstances, and that should reduce insurance premiums after they've been shown to be effective.
by pyrale | 2025-08-11 08:08:13+00:00
> Why would I hire an inferior candidate when I can hire a much better one that will make the company grow and make me wealthy as a consequence?

There are plenty of reasons why an individual's goals aren't aligned with the org they're in. The larger the org, the more reasons there are.

For instance, you could be looking for loyal allies, rather than competent competitors. Or you could be looking for someone that will just repeat what you say as an exterior pov, rather than do "the best work" and potentially contradict you in front of your superiors. Or you could be looking for someone to take the fall for a botched project of yours. Or you could be looking to hire a relative or a friend of your boss in order to curry their favour. There are plenty more.

As for the relation between making the company healthy and profitable and having a successful carreer ; except for founders and a few early employees, it's usually more profitable to look for individual advancement within the company (promotions, raises, etc) rather than to expect the company's growth to benefit you.

Of course, employees are supposed to have some deontology, but you can't expect that all employees in a company fit that ideal.
by handoflixue | 2025-08-11 08:08:17+00:00
We used to do all our math on slide rules. They're just as effective as they always were.

But when you're being graded on a curve, standing still can still mean falling behind.

Which isn't to say that AI is definitively ahead of the curve; I think we're a bit early for that. But as actual answers to your actual questions - it's important because if everyone else gets ahead of you, your boss will STOP paying you

(and if you're "good at AI", you can at least make bank until the bubble bursts)
by skibble | 2025-08-11 08:08:27+00:00
This is incorrect. Mac minis (starting with the M4 model) and Mac Studios simply need to be restored via DFU mode following physical installation of another SSD (be it a larger one or simply a replacement) to function. There are third parties who have reverse engineered the design of the PCB and paired it with the same Hynix and Sandisk NAND chips Apple use.
by jacobedawson | 2025-08-11 08:08:47+00:00
"But anything beyond writing a simple function always leads to useless junk."

If that's the article writer's experience then they are simply using it incorrectly. The author seems to suggest most of their usage involves pasting code or chatting via the text interface, likely with a non-sota model.

It would be surprising to find that someone using e.g. Claude Code cli with full access to a codebase and carefully considered prompts is always getting useless junk.
Show HN: WhatsApp bot that auto-tracks job applications in Google Sheets
by sagarayi | 2025-08-11 08:09:01+00:00
I got tired of losing track of job applications across different sites and forgetting when I applied where. Built a WhatsApp bot that extracts company/role info from LinkedIn, Indeed, Glassdoor URLs and logs everything to Google Sheets automatically.

Just text a job URL to the bot and it handles the rest. Also works with manual "Company - Role" entries. The Google Sheet gives you application stats and is accessible anywhere.

Tech: Node.js, Twilio WhatsApp API, Google Sheets API, Cheerio for scraping. Takes ~10 mins to set up with free tiers.

Open source: https://github.com/sagarayi/Job-application-tracker-using-go...
by snvzz | 2025-08-11 08:09:50+00:00
>Apple isn't using ECC either.

And thus their machines are expensive toys as well.

(I type this on a system I built, a 9800x3d with 96GB (2x 48GB) ECC RAM.)

>If your only aim is to run LLMs how much do you actually care about ECC?

That is not me, nor do I know anyone who exclusively uses computers to run LLMs.
by antod | 2025-08-11 08:11:36+00:00
It's the opposite with my kids. I get the feeling they think their parents were wild party animals (we weren't -maybe only in comparison to today, hell my parents were closer to that). As for the music, for her birthday my daughter recently asked for the first Alice in Chains album - on CD! Yikes.

Ours are jealous of bygone music etc, but on the whole kids treat each other so much better now, I am jealous of that part for them. YMMV of course.
by PeterStuer | 2025-08-11 08:12:10+00:00
Very nice investigation. Thanks for sharing.

One thing I was pondering, your prompt was "If this location is over land, say 'Land'. If this location is over water, say 'Water'. Do not say anything else. x° S, y° W".

How precise were the coordinates, and could we verify on Google maps those exact points?

Reason I ask is the "map" has a coarse resolution. Each pixel covers a (variable size due to the projection) area. On a "real" map there would be an aggregation function over the area determining whether to represent the area as "land" or "water".

However, reducing it to a single point in input space is a different question. Suppose a very accurate model given a location in Phoenix Arizona, if at that very point their happens to be a swimming pool, and that model answers "water", is it right or wrong?

Now how to improve the question is a different challenge. Do we accurately give the reference boundaries of the shape covered by that pixel on earth? Do we give the center coordinate with a range trying to match the shape with a best fitting circle? Do we sample the shape with different point locations within that and aggregate over those? (The latter would be intuitively my choice as my hunch on how info regarding location coordinates would be in the model data would be more amenable to that than the former choices)

Anyways, loved the work and the write-up!

Edit with thoughts from the shower:

Maybe another option is to let the model "semantically resolve" it.

e.g.:

"If I where in a plane over x° S, y° W, would I likely be flying over mostly landmass or mostly open water? you answer will be "Land" for mostly landmass, "Water" for mostly open water. Do not answer anything else."

You could optionally add the altitude of the plane for varying resolution.

Another option could be do make the task more explicit.

"If you would draw a very low resolution binary image of a world map, with a 1 representing landmass and a 0 representing open water, where each pixel represents an x square kilometer radius, what would be the value for the pixel containing x° S, y° W in Cartesian coordinates? Your answer should be a single "1" or "0", nothing else."
by strken | 2025-08-11 08:13:58+00:00
I assume the proposition is that trust between coworkers is important (even if you're autistic) and the best way to build extra trust with someone, on top of what you'd normally build just working with them, is to interact with them socially (unless they're autistic and haven't memorised this pattern, in such case they'll just be confused and annoyed).

I think your assumption that this is about "firm guidance" and "optics" and is an insult to your "superpowers" is unlikely to be the motivation.
by antisol | 2025-08-11 08:14:06+00:00
Agreed.

perhaps 1% of the time I've asked an LLM to write code for me, has it given me something useful and not taken more time than just writing the thing myself.

It has happened, but those instances are vastly outnumbered by it spewing out garbage that I would be professionally embarrassed to ever commit into a repo, and/or me repeatedly screaming at it "no, dumbass, I already told you why that isn't a solution to the problem"
by humanono | 2025-08-11 08:14:34+00:00
You are what you are because of circumstances.

Which is fun and great if you came out as a happy cool human.

If you made it through the weird unadjusted side without any gimmick you just loose.

No one has to force you to stay what your surroundings made you. It's not your personality it's just a reflection and you can change it and make it better for you by adjusting and reflecting.
by somenameforme | 2025-08-11 08:15:21+00:00
Life on Earth is going to be temporary - the Sun itself already guarantees that on a long timeframe. But on far more immediate time frames there have been countless mass extinction events and countless more will happen - in fact we're well over due for one. One could very well happen tomorrow - there won't necessarily be any warning.

For instance one hypothesis for one of the most devastating mass extinction events was mass volcanic eruptions. The volcanos don't kill you, usually, but they blot out the sky which not only sends temperatures plummeting but kills all plantlife, which then rapidly kills anything that depended on those plants and on up the food chain. Another hypothesis for another mass extinction event was an unfortunately directed gamma ray burst. It would end up killing life off through a similar ends, even if the means to get there is quite different.

It's likely that the only means to 'beat' these events in the longrun is technology and expanding into the cosmos - becoming a multi planetary species first and eventually a multi star system species. That we (and many other species species for that matter) seem to have this instinct to expand as far as we can is probably just one of the most primal survival instincts. Concentrated over-adaption to a localized region and circumstance is how you get the Dodo.
by Animats | 2025-08-11 08:15:34+00:00
They also don't help much any more. Not with cameras that do color, infrared, 4K or 8K video, high dynamic range, and vehicle make and model recognition.[1][2]

In the first video, note the checkbox in the analysis program for displaying vehicles with "strange plates" which were in range for reading but not read. Trying to obscure a plate draws automated attention.

Big Brother has AI, too.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-qJsvBW05RI

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5U2LWuBFIR0
by vladvasiliu | 2025-08-11 08:15:53+00:00
Because that's easier to control. In my case, I rarely use my laptops on battery, and when I do I tend to keep an eye on the battery level. If I have to use it till empty, it's because I'm actually doing something that needs to be done, so too bad for the battery life. If I'm randomly browsing HN, I'll stop around 20-30% and go do something else.

With charging, I can't plug and unplug my screen every 5 minutes just to keep it around 80%.
by MrGilbert | 2025-08-11 08:16:04+00:00
> 2010s widespread adoption of telematics maybe? That was more mid-late 2010s though

I haven't done it yet, but maybe looking into the EU mandatory regulations would make sense. eCall, for instance (a feature that will call for help if you crashed by contacting an operator), was made mandatory in new cars in 2018. The initiative gained traction at around 2013.
by bravetraveler | 2025-08-11 08:16:10+00:00
"How can we have any pudding if we don't eat our meat?!"

Let's worry about extra trust once they start earning trust (and, arguably, their pay) by reviewing the PRs. Leaving those floating deserves none, from nobody.

To reiterate the original post, behaving as if they're a member of the team would be quite welcome, actually. Fun, no: work.
by rob74 | 2025-08-11 08:17:51+00:00
So, PHP started off as a loosely typed language, then got types... and now they want to implement generics to have more loosely typed code? But as I understand it, types are still optional, so you can still use untyped variables for "generic" code? I'm probably missing something here, is it because of performance concerns? Or the edge case of absolutely wanting strongly typed PHP throughout (except for the part where they want generics)?
by willvarfar | 2025-08-11 08:18:04+00:00
Perhaps by 'untouched' they mean uncontacted? The Sentinelese people of North Sentinel Island are a well-known example.

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

The poster also says about how we could wipe a remote tribe out in minutes. Something similar has been in the news recently with an AI angle: https://thethaiger.com/news/world/chatgpt-leak-exposes-plot-...
What I Learned Helping First-Time Buyers Navigate Today's Housing Market
by inspiredtobuy | 2025-08-11 08:18:28+00:00
I run a site that helps people buy homes, and over the past year I’ve been tracking what’s working (and what’s not) for first-time buyers in a rapidly changing market. From interest rate swings to unexpected bidding war triggers, I’ve seen patterns that surprised me. Here’s a write-up of those lessons and the tools that made a difference: https://inspiredtobuy.com
by morpheuskafka | 2025-08-11 08:18:33+00:00
But Chrome is paying more as a percentage of their browser units' income, no?

Virtually all of Mozilla's income comes from the browser (via the Google search agreement). The vast majority of Google's revenue comes from ad revenue on search, YouTube, and Adsense. Not from Chrome directly. So they had less incentive to reward its security, but did so anyway. And they also do some of the best work in the industry, free, for competitors via Project Zero.
by alexbilbie | 2025-08-11 08:19:23+00:00
For those who don't know, Dame Stephanie “Steve” Shirley was a British entrepreneur and philanthropist, famous for founding Freelance Programmers in 1962 - a pioneering software company that primarily employed women working from home, decades before remote work was normal.

She changed her name to Stephanie and later adopted “Steve” as a professional first name to overcome gender bias in business correspondence - male clients were more likely to respond.

She came to Britain as a child refugee via the Kindertransport in 1939.

You can read more about her story here - https://www.steveshirley.com/
by mfld | 2025-08-11 08:19:49+00:00
Yes, most bioinformatics tools are the result of research projects.

However, the most common bioinformatics file formats have actually been devised by excellent software engineers (e.g. SAM/BAM, VCF, BED).

I think it is just very convenient to have text-based formats as you don't need any special libraries to read/modify the files and can reach for basic Unix text-processing tools instead. Such modifications are often needed in a research context.

Also, space-efficient file formats (e.g. CRAM) are often within reach once disk space becomes a pressing issue. Now you only need to convince the team to use them. :)
by Tuna-Fish | 2025-08-11 08:21:15+00:00
The reluctance to use more pins is very understandable.

At the time, Intel was primarily a memory manufacturer, and they had vertically integrated the complete workflow for anything that could fit into a 16-pin DIP. Anything that didn't, required them to outsource testing and packaging, or purchase expensive new machines. When CPUs were still being pushed against the wishes of upper management ("A computer has only one CPU but lots of memory chips, so the memory is a better business"), it was a hard sell to invest lots of money for an uncertain market.
by PeterStuer | 2025-08-11 08:21:19+00:00
By analogy, not to make fun but to clarify, "I don't understand any of these "Chat" solutions. All they're doing is running the LLM. You can already run the LLM through the API without any of this."

It is about convenience. For people willing to leave Windows but not their games, any hurdle taken down, no matter how small, is a win.
by raxxorraxor | 2025-08-11 08:22:46+00:00
I don't want government to be able to get my id. Especially the British and German governments have proved that their lack the maturity to work with such data. They couldn't even keep their fingers from Corona app data.

I would even prefer it to give my info to Elon Musk. He may be crazy, but he wouldn't be interested in my stupid opinions.
by BunsanSpace | 2025-08-11 08:23:25+00:00
The murder bot books are a bit silly from the get go, so the show leaned into the campy vibe to sell the comedic aspect.

As someone who loves the book, I think the show is a 10/10 for capturing the feeling. Though if you where expecting as more serious scifi I can see why you think it's of inferior quality.
by yorwba | 2025-08-11 08:23:40+00:00
The model isn't explicitly programmed to constantly second-guess itself, but when you do reinforcement learning with verifiable rewards (RLVR) where only the final answer is verified, even completely nonsensical reasoning can accidentally be rewarded if it gives correct results often enough.

E.g. if the model can generate multiple candidate solutions that are all equally likely (or unlikely) to be correct, it doesn't matter whether you stop at the first one or keep going until a random later one. But if the model can pick the correct solution from multiple candidates better than choosing uniformly at random, generating more candidates becomes an advantage, even if it sometimes results in discarding a correct solution in favor of another one.