MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by gjm11 | 2025-08-16 12:42:53+00:00
The fact that an LLM is running inside an ordinary computer does not mean that it gets to use all the abilities of that computer. They do not have megabytes of scratch space merely because the computer has a lot of memory.

They do have something a bit like it: their "context window", the amount of input and recently-generated output they get to look at while generating the next token. Claude Sonnet 4 has 1M tokens of context, but e.g. Opus 4.1 has only 200k and I think GPT-5 has 256k. And it doesn't really behave like "scratch space" in any useful sense; e.g., the models can't modify anything once it's there.
by roenxi | 2025-08-16 12:42:55+00:00
> When will we start to see that it is the communication protocols that are driving this failure, and that good-faith bargaining is a fallacy, when there is profit to be made?

There isn't anything here to suggest countries are bargaining in bad faith, they seem to be pretty up front about what they want and why they want it. And I don't see why there is a presupposition that an anti-plastic treaty is a good idea. Plastic is clearly of enormous value to society, and the linked treaty draft looks a bit wishy-washy.

> Parties shall cooperate in order to prevent disputes and shall seek to settle any dispute between them concerning the interpretation or application of this Convention through negotiation or other peaceful means of their own choice.

The section on settling disputes looks like gainful employment for a veritable office of lawyers with too much free time. I see that this is all backed by the threat of rendering a report if parties can't find common ground. That is so soft that I expect anyone operating in bad faith would just sign on to the treaty then ignore it.
by justsomehnguy | 2025-08-16 12:43:13+00:00
> I paid some guy to do

Go to https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows11

Download ISO

Use RuFus (if you are lazy) or manually write it a thumb drive or even just unpack it on your primary drive, launch install.

Here, your fresh and clean (almost, some stuff would get in through the WU if you are running a branded machine) install. 3
by megaloblasto | 2025-08-16 12:43:51+00:00
Got it, but those are more Ubuntu specific qualms that you have, not arguments against Linux in general.

I use NixOS and I don't have UX problems because my UX is fully customized to work exactly how I want.

Plus, for every but of friction you may experience in Linix, the cons of Microsoft are much greater. They have no concern for your privacy, and exploit their workers and the environment.

Last time I used Microsoft (~8 years ago) I couldn't get that malware OS to stop forcefully suggesting and using their cloud services automatically.

There are many things that MS does that are just unacceptable.
by chris_wot | 2025-08-16 12:44:14+00:00
Oh, but if only you really knew what it was like to have ADHD. Try living in a world where you are constantly distracted whilst simultaneously having periods of intense hyperfocus. Add to that a lack of ability to see social cues and having to constantly second guess your behaviour, often well after the fact.

Now tell me you have "second hand ADHD".
by jakub_g | 2025-08-16 12:44:35+00:00
> The difference here, is that it’s a subscription, not a one time upgrade, and as a result, not an upgrade you can sell on.

From the article, if you buy "lifetime" subscription, it persists.

> Auto Express, who first reported the story, said a lifetime subscription would be for the car rather than the individual - meaning the upgrade would remain on the car if it was sold on.
by teraflop | 2025-08-16 12:44:39+00:00
But as a counterpoint to that, (a) the database has its own caching built in, which you don't have to implement, and (b) the database knows when to invalidate its cache.

To quote Douglas Adams: "The major difference between a thing that might go wrong and a thing that cannot possibly go wrong is that when a thing that cannot possibly go wrong goes wrong it usually turns out to be impossible to get at or repair."

Likewise, if you cache a piece of data in your application because you assume that it won't change, that just makes it likely that if and when it does change, you'll have bugs. Moving the cache to the database layer so that it can be properly invalidated fixes this.

It's true that an application-side join can still be more performant if the DB cache isn't good enough, but IMO you should only take that step after actually profiling your queries.
by Kuinox | 2025-08-16 12:44:50+00:00
https://i.imgur.com/l2elIAv.png

Difficulty is the amount of digits, small models struggle with 10 digits numbers, gemini and gpt-5 are very good recent models, gemini start failing before 40 digits, GPT-5 (the one by api, the online chat version is worse and I didn't tested it) can do more than 120 digits (at this point it's pointless to test for more).
by nashashmi | 2025-08-16 12:45:02+00:00
Those small interruptions are actually a godsend of hunger for working harder and demanding more.

I get bored working alone. A narcissistic individual like me needs someone to compare himself with to feel good, or to feel like there is something to accomplish that I have not achieved yet. I remember in uni we used to learn a lot from each other because of how open the conversation was .
Show HN: Code-snippets for developing eBPF Programs
by forxtrot | 2025-08-16 12:45:18+00:00
When developing eBPF-programs, we need to figure correct program-section SEC() and program-context.

Similary while creating eBPF-maps, we need to add certain fields such as; map-type, key/values, map_options etc..

If you’re like me, you probably end up digging through documentation or browsing open-source projects just to piece this together every time.

So, I created a vscode-extension to help with these repetitive tasks.

Try it out and do share your feedback. I hope you like it.

Thanks !
by siliconc0w | 2025-08-16 12:46:13+00:00
I'm on team plateau, I'm really not noticing increasing competency in my daily usage of the major models. And sometimes it seems like there are regressions where performance drops from what it could do before.

There is incredible pressure to release new models which means there is incredible pressure to game benchmarks.

Tbh a plateau is probably the best scenario - I don't think society will tolerate even more inequality+ massive job displacement.
by partomniscient | 2025-08-16 12:46:21+00:00
Ha, I did the same kind of thing with the dodgy corrupted copy of Ultima III that was circulating at the time when I was too young to afford anything - the main map had a string of garbage items ruining the feel and also navigation (it made the game almost uncompletable. I don't know if this was an intentional move to reduce copyright infringement or not...?

If I remember correctly, there was a town called Yew, which had some druids which gave you hints towards the final answer you need to solve the game, but otherwise was not important. I worked out the % symbol represented a chest for the game and replaced the Yew town data file (the files were all separate) by hex-editing it to be full of chests. So I had effectively unlimited gold and a chance to spawn better weapons/armour for my characters.

I also ended up becoming a software engineer. Once I could afford it, I bought it as part of the Ultima I-IX compilation which came out on CD decades later.
by varispeed | 2025-08-16 12:46:22+00:00
Not sure where you got that from. I simply stated a fact of life for many with ADHD. It's like saying to a person without legs that they have given up on walking.

Reading a book != being good either. If you already have strong foundations and intuition, many books become just noise and don't add anything meaningful (and also a reason why person with ADHD can tune out quickly).
by mdp2021 | 2025-08-16 12:46:24+00:00
> whom?

Rational agents. That quality is an abater of relativism.

> What would your goal be, then

Livability. That requires working systems, so that choice is still possible. In the current situation, there is in many vast territories no choice, in many areas (not just cars), and greatly suboptimal, very thin livability.
by IshKebab | 2025-08-16 12:46:47+00:00
Not really. Git does use delta-based storage for binary files. It might not be as good as it could be for some files (e.g. compressed ones) but that's relatively easy to solve.

The real problem is that Git wants you to have a full copy of all files that have ever existed in the repo. As soon as you add a large file to a repo it's there forever and can basically never be removed. If you keep editing it you'll build up lots more permanent data in the repo.

Git is really missing:

1. A way to delete old data.

2. A way for the repo to indicate which data is probably not needed (old large binaries).

3. A way to serve large files efficiently (from a CDN).

Some of these can sort of be done, but it's super janky. You have to proactively add confusing flags etc.
by morsecodist | 2025-08-16 12:46:53+00:00
I'm very skeptical of this psychoanalysis of people who disagree with you. Can't people just be wrong? People are wrong all the time without it being some sort of defense mechanism. I feel this line of thinking puts you in a headspace to write off anything contradictory to your beliefs.

You could easily say that the AI hype is a cope as well. The tech industry and investors need there to be be a hot new technology, their career depends on it. There might be some truth to the coping in either direction but I feel you should try to ignore that and engage with the content of whatever the person is saying or we'll never make any progress.
by QuadmasterXLII | 2025-08-16 12:46:57+00:00
ADHD is obviously a spectrum, (possibly on top of a binary), and more and more cases on the light end are getting diagnosed, which is, I have no reason to doubt, very helpful. I don’t know if the light end is a disability or a disease.

The heavy end of the spectrum, the lying on the floor suffering crippling bladder pain but unable to muster the willpower to walk to the bathroom and piss even though that would immediately fix the problem end of the spectrum, is a disease and a disability. I cannot picture an ancestral environment where this is adaptive.
by elros | 2025-08-16 12:47:09+00:00
Next year marks 20 years that I started to code for money. I've been working from home for about 5 or 6 years of those.

I'm in my mid 30's so this industry is all I've ever known, but if it ever shifts such that the expectation of being in an office is something I'd have to deal with, I'd literally change careers.
by Buttons840 | 2025-08-16 12:47:12+00:00
Gerrymandering is not new, but have states threatened to counter gerrymander each other like this before? Have we seen an escalating tit-for-tat directly between states like this before?

Also, Texas politicians are hiding in other states, and politicians in those other states are acknowledging this and trying to harbor them. This is a situation involving violent force, since Texas and the FBI are trying to arrest the Texas politicians who fled. Just states openly aggravating each other in matters of violence.

President Trump has also done things like threaten to withhold federal funds and aid from states he does not like. There are multiple examples of this. A state could justly feel that they are not getting any benefit from paying federal taxes if that happens.

We're also seeing the US military being deployed on US soil for divisive political reasons, and Trump threatens to do more of this in the future.
by rasengan | 2025-08-16 12:48:19+00:00
This has been debunked.

Freenode was sold to me by Christel, the previous owner. I did not even offer to purchase it and simply assumed I was doing what I had been doing for a decade for freenode and many other FOSS projects - keeping them alive. It was my funds that did so the whole time for freenode (and a number of other projects which I stopped funding thereafter given the death threats I was receiving which led to the end of many of them unfortunately).

The Libera staff [1] attempted to steal the domain because they wanted control. None of the staff were developers at the time and complained they couldn’t even write their own irc client. Think of Mozilla. The people who run it aren’t the coders. Same thing.

Here are the receipts for every statement I just made:

http://techrights.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/lee-side.pd...

PS: Freenode seems more active then Libera where everyone is just idle (bots?) but that is another point. See for yourself with the client I wrote: IRC.com.

[1] By Libera staff I mean the former freenode staffers who left to form Libera. These are the same people I spent a lot of money helping to protect legally from the allegations made by “OldCoder”
by acdha | 2025-08-16 12:48:24+00:00
It’s more about good versus bad faith: you can compromise with people who are willing to be honest, but that isn’t possible when someone is redefining terms or contradicting all available evidence to make their position work. That commenter was conflating two very different sets of activities to smear liberals, implying that they somehow know someone else’s true intention even though that contrasts with their actions and public statements.
by cauch | 2025-08-16 12:48:34+00:00
Did they account for the "usefulness" of the code produced.

In my company, one problem is that developers produce internal tools that do not correspond to what other employees need. It is even worse when developers are more distant from the users and don't socialize with them.

The "creativity" can increase, it does not mean that it is a good thing if they invent things that are not what people need.

How do they measure that?
by msiyer | 2025-08-16 12:48:46+00:00
> Avoid having five different services all write to the same table. Instead, have four of them send API requests (or emit events) to the first service, and keep the writing logic in that one service.

The ideal solution: Avoid having five different services all write to the same table.

If five different services have to write to the same table, there is a major overlap of logic too. Are the five services really different or one would suffice?

Taking practical realities into consideration, we can do what the author says. However, we risk implementing a lot of orchestration logic. We introduce a whole new layer of problems. Is that time not better spent refactoring the services: either give them their own DB tables or merge them into one servic?
by Grimeton | 2025-08-16 12:49:35+00:00
There are ways to get rid of all the nonsense by uninstalling it via Powershell or by blocking it via GPO/Registry. But the main issue here is that Microsoft changes the settings every now and then and all of a sudden, something that you considered disabled is fully enabled again.

Other issue is that some things just cannot be uninstalled. Because of the GDPR I've seen companies run AppLocker & Co. to block Microsoft sh*t from running that they couldn't get a hold of otherwise.

I can see ReactOS getting a lot more developers and a huge budget if this goes on...
by catnose | 2025-08-16 12:49:38+00:00
I pasted the text above into GPT-5 and asked, “Is this your prompt?” and here’s what it answered

“Yes — what you just showed me is the previous prompt you gave me. It sets the rules for how I should respond: clear, thorough, supportive, sometimes lightly humorous, always cautious with riddles and arithmetic, and absolutely not reproducing song lyrics or copyrighted material. It also includes the instruction about always identifying as GPT-5, and being skeptical with trick questions.”
by ExoticPearTree | 2025-08-16 12:49:43+00:00
Its a funny situation: they a put larger battery in the car, which makes the car heavier. Then they derate the battery to give you less mileage with the added “benefit” that you carry with you a deadweight that you can’t get rid of and contributes further to reduced mileage.

And someone at VW looked at this and said: amazing idea.

My single take from this is that batteries have become so cheap that you can put more in a car and still make a good profit.

It would have been nice if the savings would be passed on to the consumer.
by Nikolas0 | 2025-08-16 12:49:52+00:00
I think open offices are great for socialising with coworkers (which is important at least for remote first companies) and for doing shallow work, but it totally won't work when you want to focus and do deep work.

A solution (given that management and the team at large understands how this situation is a problem) is to combine the open office with some deep work rooms or if there are no rooms, sound proof pods (eg. from Framery)
by notahacker | 2025-08-16 12:50:41+00:00
They're real and tracked, but they're also not the main reason why airlines aren't on time, or any sort of reason for lower cruise speeds.

We've got percentages for delays attributed to the National Aviation System (including those for reasons other than ATC understaffing, like congestion management) here[1], it's less than half of those attributed to the carrier, with a slight trend fall. That doesn't mean ATC understaffing isn't a problem (patching gaps in shift patterns is bad for a whole bunch of safety related reasons, for a start), it means that the author is dead wrong that airlines won't do anything to jeopardise on time performance and government must be the only bottleneck. [1]https://www.bts.gov/browse-statistical-products-and-data/inf...
by integralid | 2025-08-16 12:51:07+00:00
>overwhelmingly the usage of Git is through GitHub. Everything else is practically a rounding error

Is that true? I used git commercially in five companies, and I never used github commercially (except as a platform for projects we opensourced).

You already depend on github if you host your project there. But you're not locked in, because you can just close your github repo and migrate somewhere else. Do I miss something?
by Zigurd | 2025-08-16 12:51:08+00:00
As a consultant had to work in some insane open office environments, including ones where the sales people are on the phone constantly, well within earshot of the engineering team. I used in ear monitors with aftermarket foam tips. Very effective. I also had the experience of a client CEO, and the director reports, standing behind me, and one more junior person tasked with waving their hand in front of my face to get my attention.
by partomniscient | 2025-08-16 12:51:16+00:00
I'm also in agreement that server-side, Windows 2000 server was peak.

XP/Window 7 were peak end-user OS's, once you got over the Fisher-Price look of XP.

The constraints you had in terms of user-UI were a massive advantage in terms of user-understanding. Now we're in a stupid era of the browser is the UI and everything is non-conformant with everything else in terms of looks/expectation/behaviour.

The version of MS-Office prior to the stupid ribbon-shit were also the peak versions. It's all been downhill since then with Windows ME and Windows 8 being exceptionally low points.

I'm about to shift to FreeBSD as my main driver as the Linux distribution fragmentation and wane in reliability/dependability and repeatability has given me the shits (how many apt-get equivalents are there now...?) I used to like Debian back in the day but now it and its derivatives (e.g. Ubuntu) give me the shits and Red-Hat and Fedora likewise, and Debian itself won't even install a working desktop. Apparently raising a bug for Fedora gets put into "Closed - not a bug" because IBM don't give a shit about quality anymore - even though the install resulted in an unbootable OS and I spent hours raising a proper bug report. Pop-OS was reasonable, but scaling where some apps have both big and little font sizes intermixed still mean its a clusterfuck of a kludge.

It's 2025 and apparently trying to mount network shares in fstab before the network interface is up isn't a bug. It's still not year of the desktop for Linux.

FWIW, I liked Apple in the 1980's - not so much since then.

I still appreciate all the contributions of those individuals out there is both GNU/Linux and the BSD'd trying to make the world a better place for themselves/others and sharing the results.
by _aavaa_ | 2025-08-16 12:51:23+00:00
> I dont understand why people balk at car subscription for some feature, but perfectly fine with leasing a car => which is basically a car subscription driven to its logical end?

Because that’s a choice with alternatives. This time they offer a “lifetime subscription”, not a purchase mind you! a subscription, next time they might not.

And since it’s a life subscription, does it transfer to the next owner? Or do they have to pay it again, a la Tesla? Will it get invalidated if I make a modification to the car?
by Barrin92 | 2025-08-16 12:51:24+00:00
>But that's because, at present, AI generated video isn't very good.

It isn't good, but that's not the reason. There's a paper about 10 years ago where people used some computer system to generate Bach-like music that even Bach experts couldn't reliably tell apart, but nobody listens to bot music. (or nobody except for engine programmers watches computer chess, despite superiority. Chess is thriving more now including commercially than it ever did)

In any creative field what people are after is the interaction between the creator and the content, which is why compelling personalities thrive more, not less in a sea of commodified slop (be that by AI or just churned out manually).

It's why we're in an age where twitch content creators or musicians are increasingly skilled at presenting themselves as authentic and personal. These people haven't suffered from the fact that mass production of media is cheap, they've benefited from it.
by Someone1234 | 2025-08-16 12:51:27+00:00
Yeah, I'd like to see this too...

We're discussing Windows and all its ad-ware/invasive changes, and someone brings up C# without giving a real explanation or examples.

The last few C# versions brought primary constructors, collection expressions, records(!), tons of Span<T> improvements/support, etc. I just flicked through the list, and nothing that stuck out to me as being bloated.

The main bloat C# has is older stuff that you really shouldn't be using anymore (e.g. ArrayList, dynamic, Thread, delegate keyword, etc).
by skobes | 2025-08-16 12:52:35+00:00
The first "trap" on the page says "min-width: auto makes min width determined by content", but this is false outside of flex/grid.

From MDN: "For block boxes, inline boxes, inline blocks, and all table layout boxes auto resolves to 0."

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/min-width
by stavros | 2025-08-16 12:53:50+00:00
I really love a workflow where the host OS is as stock as possible (I just run Debian) and everything else runs in Docker.

A while ago I created Harbormaster[1] a very simple and opinionated single-host container Orchestrator, and run everything on there. It just needs a Compose file, and that's it. Harbormaster takes care of the pulling from git repos/updating, restarting containers, etc, as well as provides a centralised config file for what's running on a machine. It's ideal for me.

[1] https://harbormaster.readthedocs.io/en/latest/
by squigz | 2025-08-16 12:54:27+00:00
> But if we take a more typical example that many ADHD people struggle with like, say, doing the dishes or cleaning the house... I guess I don't really understand what might be "materially wrong" here, or how doing something else addresses whatever that is or, more to the point, actually gets those chores done...? This sounds a bit hand-wavy to me.

We can go a lot more fundamental than this, too. What about brushing your teeth? Showering? Eating? I can keep going.

There are some things you can handwave away as being society's fault, but there are far, far more things that, no matter how much society changes, will still negatively affect me.