MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by 11324msthrow | 2025-08-31 21:20:06+00:00
This comment is off-base enough that I've created a throwaway, as I post openly as a Microsoftie on my main, to prevent anyone else from getting the wrong idea.

Microsoft reintroduced stack ranking over the last year or so. It's widely documented.

The individual in question was definitely under pressure. I worked rather closely with them, and this is well documented in the source article as well.

I don't think any of the things I said above (or were insinuated about Microsoft culture by other posters) are in any way insulting to Prateek, regardless of what his individual situation or performance is. If anything, calling attention to it and attempting to address it is a powerful way to show respect to my eyes. The incentive systems at play, the pressures and stressors, will result in these outcomes unless anyone forces a change. End of story.
by margalabargala | 2025-08-31 21:20:09+00:00
Depends what if anything is being done to combat it.

One of the following is true:

- The numbers somewhat-accurately reflect the trend of employment

- Fraud levels were reduced 66x in one year

If it was the second one, that's a sufficiently massive reduction that news stories would be written about it. There would be stories about this great victory over fraud.

A quick search showed no particular anti-fraud measures or claims of effectiveness unique to that time period.
by bigbadfeline | 2025-08-31 21:20:20+00:00
> That's just how large communities operate, especially in heated environments.

Although this is only half true, you have a point - it does hold for the top social media sites which, curiously enough, end up in the same predicament.

However, this is a phenomenon that needs analysis, explanation and fixing, not just stating as inevitable reality because reality-building has been a thing at least since Karl Rove.

BTW, I did expect the downvoting of my unorthodox and out-of-band comment but I do appreciate your reply to it because in 90% of the cases downvoting is silent and no explanations are given.

Looking at the number of downvotes, I see that I've touched a nerve here, pretty sure due to the mentioning of Agent Smith's gaslighting brigade. Again, I'm not blaming the HN maintainers or the community as whole, as you noted, there's nothing unique here compared to other big social media.

> You're... expecting people... to simply take the word of someone challenging those views with a "trust me bro" approach.

Not at all. I simply shifted some of the burden of proof to the challenger who would otherwise put the speaker in a highly asymmetrical resource trap, similar to a DoS attack. I gave enough justification for it, I could prove it with a 10 word sentence but... does this matter given that we don't use the same notation?

As a result, a proof in my notation appears as "trust me bro" to you, and vice versa.
by petcat | 2025-08-31 21:20:25+00:00
Generated AI code is produced quickly, and might work. But there's no art. Nobody on your team wrote that code. There's no ownership, and nobody to ask about it.

The lack of knowledge about your own codebase will only go deeper and deeper until the debt is insurmountable and the organization can't function at all because it has no knowledgeable engineers.

There is only computer-generated code cobbled together into some kind of business solution.
by soks86 | 2025-08-31 21:20:34+00:00
This, there is always middle ground.

Personally, I have only used AI to write actual code when it is for Bash and Python scripts that are self contained. In my case self contained means they are interfaced to via command line so their boundaries are very well defined.

I have never returned to look at any of the code.

I would never use it to generate domain code for my codebase because then I'd have to code review it anyways. I mean, if I have an agentic AI solving an issue and generating a PR, great, I can review that and give it feedback on how to change the code before its accepted.

Unless I can either throw the code away or review it for maintainability rather than correctness then I have no need for a tool that write my code for me.

Oh, unless the AI can be the product owner and understand the financial ramifications of not doing its job correctly but I would be worried that the solution is to not have a product by reducing the users to ash.
by jacquesm | 2025-08-31 21:21:48+00:00
> We went from calculator to AI in 55 years, which is, actually, extremely long.

I think it is insanely fast.

Think about it: that planet has been here for billions of years. Modern humanity has been here for 200,000 years, give or take. It took 199700 years and change to get to a working steam engine. 266 years later men were walking on the moon and another 55 years and we had a good facsimile of what an AI looks like in practice. That's insane progress. The next 75 years are going to be very interesting, assuming we don't fuck it all up, the chances of which are right now probably 50/50 or so.
by jmclnx | 2025-08-31 21:22:30+00:00
I agree, and we have at least 3.5 more years left for this. Plus I believe foreign visitors to the US will continue to decrease as Trump doubles down on this crazy policies.

The funny thing is, except for maybe NYC, most tourists tend to go to red states, where these businesses will get no support from their state gov. This is winning I guess /s
by dnst | 2025-08-31 21:22:30+00:00
I created an app a while ago that would allow converting a link right through the sharing dialog on iOS and Android.

Unfortunately, the app wouldn't show up in the play stores search results even if you searched for its exact name and on iOS the app didn't make it through the review process because it has no UI. So I took it down after a while although I still feel like it's a handy tool if people send you music.

https://github.com/vbackeberg/share-song-2
by Telaneo | 2025-08-31 21:22:40+00:00
> Ask if you can order/pay without using the QR code. I'd be surprised if venues didn't have a paper menu as backup.

For newer restaurants, I really wouldn't bet on this being a thing. Or if they do, it's the ones they had before they updated their menus to QR codes, and thus might not be accurate any more.

It's like being blind and asking for the braille menu. Sure, they should have one, but don't bet on them having one.

And even if you know what you want and can pay in cash, even if they're legally bound to take your money at that point, you're working against the current and on some level being a (principled) ass to the staff serving you, who probably had no say in the system they're now having to deal with. It wouldn't even surprise me if some of these places have gone no-cash to the point of not having any place to put your cash after you've paid.

The actual solution is probably 'go somewhere else', but we all how that might go.
by swores | 2025-08-31 21:23:30+00:00
I hadn't heard of anything he had said on the subject before your comment, so I did a quick search. I don't know if the following is about but one of many problematic views on the subject, or if after this change of mind his views on sex are all fine, but worth knowing that at least on one issue his opinion has improved:

> "Many years ago I posted that I could not see anything wrong about sex between an adult and a child, if the child accepted it.

> "Through personal conversations in recent years, I've learned to understand how sex with a child can harm per psychologically. This changed my mind about the matter: I think adults should not do that. I am grateful for the conversations that enabled me to understand why."

https://www.stallman.org/archives/2019-jul-oct.html#14_Septe...

(I do agree with your comment overall, anyway.)
by dingnuts | 2025-08-31 21:24:09+00:00
> you're breaking the task into smaller achievable tasks.

this is the part that I would describe as engineering in the first place. This is the part that separates a script kiddie or someone who "knows" one language and can be somewhat dangerous with it, from someone who commands a $200k/year salary, and it is the important part

and so far there is no indication that language models can do this part at. all.

for someone who CAN do the part of breaking down a problem into smaller abstractions, though, some of these models can save you a little time, sometimes, in cases where it's less effort to type an explanation to the problem than it is to type the code directly..

which is to say.. sometimes.
by sebastiennight | 2025-08-31 21:24:22+00:00
> And that's assuming a world where people only ask LLMs and don't care about the provenance or trustworthiness of information at all. Which seems unlikely, even conspiracy nuts have some sources they trust more than others.

They will just have one model that they trust more because (a) it aligns with their views, or (b) it's a sycophant and agrees with anything and everything.

They definitely are not the people most likely to care about clicking "source links".
by jeroenhd | 2025-08-31 21:24:33+00:00
This mechanism is essentially what the European age verification system is doing, except they're also dealing with offline credentials (so you can log into gambling.com while bank.com is down for maintenance).

There are some details thatihjt still need to be worked out for an American implementation (the lack of an eIDAS equivalent, for one), but the EU solution is being developed cross platform, in the open. You can just take the source code, replace/extend the chains of trust with whatever verification platforms you can convince others to join your programme, and reuse most of the existing code.

For an American implementation, you can probably take out the part where verifiers need to be registered with the verification service (which I believe is part of EU law but makes implementing anonymous verification difficult). The wording and name should probably also be changed to be more in line with American expectations, and removing the remote attestation requirement would be nice if your verification services don't demand you include it. I'd also wait for ZKPs to be implemented, or add them to the implementation, to reduce the potential impact of collusion between governments and websites.

The account creation part is optional but probably recommend. I wouldn't lock it to just passkeys, though, having a fallback to classic username/password is probably a good idea just in case.
by coppsilgold | 2025-08-31 21:25:16+00:00
While the situation has improved, if your threat model is such you can block io_uring during boot or in containers with a seccomp policy:

DENY_RULE (io_uring_enter, EPERM); DENY_RULE (io_uring_register, EPERM); DENY_RULE (io_uring_setup, EPERM);
by timr | 2025-08-31 21:25:57+00:00
> If you’re bringing up myocarditis facts, then don’t omit a key fact: Actual covid increased the chances of myocarditis by seven times the two-dose regiment of the mRNA vaccine: 82% vs 12%. I do agree a legitimate debate can be had, but not with someone who willfully chooses to cherry-pick their facts.

Indeed. Cherry-picking stats is bad...particularly when you do it, name specific numbers, and then don't cite your sources so that other people can verify them.

I don't know where you got that number, because the rate of myocarditis from either vaccine or virus is nowhere near that high. But the likely source is that you're mis-remembering a paper that blurred together men, women, adults and children in a statistically invalid mix.

Here's an accurate summary of the current data:

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9880674/
by NoahZuniga | 2025-08-31 21:26:01+00:00
> Note that your "algorithm" was finitely statable, and that its "data", consists of a finite number of particles (in any given superposition).

Well if the universe is actually infinite, the amount of data in the number this process approaches is infinite.

> I would argue that is still a constructible real.

That is what I was going for. I was trying to think up a construction that leads to uncountably many reals, but the construction I gave doesn't really work.

Consider a different situation:

Start with r = 0. (a number in binary)

Look for an unstable radioactive isotope. Wait for its half time. If it decays within its half time, concatenate 1 to r. Else concatenate 0. Look for another radioactive isotope and repeat.

The number this process approaches could be real number between 0 and 1 (including both bounds). Is the resulting number constructible?
by joquarky | 2025-08-31 21:26:30+00:00
This is what I went with about a year ago and I have had only one small issue (not enough swap space by default).

This is my first Linux desktop success after several attempts over the past two decades.

I still remember my first attempt (probably late-90's) - it took me 3 hours to figure out how to get an mp3 to play.
by manquer | 2025-08-31 21:26:33+00:00
> walking on the moon in only 66 years.

Yet it has been 53 years since we have been able to send a manned mission to the moon . No other program has or likely to come close in the next 13 years including the current US one. By 2038 the moon landings would be closer to Wright brothers than future us.

The curve of progress is only smooth and exponential when you squint hard .

It is a narrow few decades of exponential growth hardly can reasonably be expected to last for 100+ years .

It is for the same reason you cannot keep doubling grains on a chess board just because you did it 10-20 steps quickly.

Fusion power, quantum computing are all always two decades away for a reason despite the money being spent . AI has gone through 3-4 golden ages in living memory and yet too many keep believing this one would last.

Reality is when the conditions are right, I.e. all the ground work has been done for decades or centuries before there can be rapid innovation for a short(few decades at best) time
by 11324msthrow | 2025-08-31 21:28:49+00:00
Microsoft engineer throwaway chiming in.

I think the parent emphasizes the wrong side of it, although I agree with them strongly that it is a damaging way to do things. Yes, you get slightly more upside on the top end, but it's more like 30% vs. 10% for an average performer, there's no 100% bonuses here unless you're in the "ruling class" (roughly VP and above).

The actual risk is that if you're on the downside of what they call "differentiation", if you're not the one who pushed above your peers, what used to be called meets expectation is now considered below expectations, and is a path towards pip and layoff. Lack of growth for non-terminal roles is also now identified as a path towards pip and layoff.

Microsoft is intentionally turning up the heat to thin the herd.
by vertigolimbo | 2025-08-31 21:29:21+00:00
Perhaps. My worry is that magazines will be full of AI generated content.

I enjoy reading some very niche magazines and, at the moment, I cannot tell if it's AI generated or not. So, as long as the reader is entertained, magazines will do just fine.

Either that, or we will develop some sort of proof that the content is human generated, not AI.
by mensetmanusman | 2025-08-31 21:29:24+00:00
China’s GDP growth is no longer in double digits; it’s in the 4–5% range, and many analysts expect it to fall further due to demographic decline and low productivity growth due to capital investments in infrastructure not needed but politically necessary due to city politics.

U.S. per-capita income is roughly $80,000, while China’s is about $13,000. Adjusted for purchasing power it would take decades (at current trajectories, which may be slowing due to EU backlash etc.) to converge.

China leads in high-speed rail and EV adoption. These don’t automatically translate into higher overall living standards — healthcare, wages, pensions, and social safety nets matter more.

China’s lending practices have also led to accusations of “debt-trap diplomacy,” and some countries are now cautious about overreliance on Chinese help. This is why China negativity amongst all of their immediate neighbors is so high.
by pqtyw | 2025-08-31 21:29:27+00:00
The Roman Empire in the east at the time did just fine, though.

The Goths in a (very technical) way "unified" the empire after they took Italy since they got rid of the western emperor and declared that they are now vassals of the one in Constantinople.

In a couple of generations Romans were on the verge of retaking the entire Mediterranean, without the issues with the climate and especially the plague they might have done just fine and we'd be talking about the "crisis of the 5th century" instead of the fall.
by yongjik | 2025-08-31 21:29:38+00:00
I just checked my city's website and our residential water rate for 2026 is $2.97 per CCF (which is apparently "100 cubic feet" = 748 gallon, aren't Imperial Units beautiful). So, a dishwasher that's using 5 gallons of water every day will cost us 60 cents per month.

And this is residential water, which is vastly more expensive (and thus less wasteful) than agricultural usage, at least here in California.

Anybody who's trying to optimize this should re-examine their priorities.

* That said, my current dishwasher takes about 2.5 hours to run, and that was never a problem. If you can afford a home in California you can afford more than one set of dishes.
by anonymars | 2025-08-31 21:29:58+00:00
Here's a fun fact. In the US, if you would like to fly a plane, and you have undiagnosed and thus untreated ADHD, no problemo.

But if you do end up taking stimulant medication for ADHD, that's not allowed. So unfortunately sometimes (rather often with the FAA) it's better not to ask questions you don't want the answer to.
by ed | 2025-08-31 21:31:06+00:00
There is ~zero chance this is good science.

> 4.1. Limitation

> This study has three limitations. The first is the composition of the participants, that is, the participants in this study were only women.

> Relatedly, the study did not ask about the participants' lifestyle, exercise, diet, education, career, etc. These confounding factors may have influenced the brain and brain volume. Therefore, future studies should test for reproducibility when men are included and these confounding factors are controlled. The second concerns the intervention method.

> Although this study used a double-blind method, it is not that method in the original sense. This is because the participants in the experiment could easily guess that the liquid was just water from the smell they wore. Therefore, the reproducibility of the present research results should be verified by using liquids with some scent safe for the human body.

> Relatedly, this study used rose scent and no other scents. Therefore, while the results of this study indicate that rose is effective, they do not indicate that other scents are not effective.

> Participants were not monitored to see if they were wearing scent correctly. Therefore, variations in participants' adherence may have influenced the experimental results. Future research should monitor participants by requiring reports with photos etc.
by isaacremuant | 2025-08-31 21:31:27+00:00
Politician and corporations want you to not have ownership or control over your devices. Either for money or control, but they absolutely would love for things like Linux to not be possible or illegal so they can force you to watch ads and pay their next version of enshitified shit, not consume the wrong kind of news and absolutely not assemble in political opposition to their corruption.

If you don't see the patterns of absolutely pathetic authoritianism, which most people cheered on during covid policies times, you're not going be very effective at opposing this crap.
by sebastiennight | 2025-08-31 21:31:47+00:00
I've written a 125,000-word book a year before GPT-3 was a thing.

If this book came out today, in 2025, how would you know that the 420 pages are actually worth your time and not just a bunch of hallucinated LLM slop?

I've been wondering whether Wikipedia and libraries in 2030 will be in a better overall place quality-wise, or will just be overrun.

The last few times I looked for information on YouTube (by typing a keyword phrase or question instead of looking up a specific channel/creator), most of the top results were AI-narrated presentations. Some of those were filled with comments of people correcting obvious mistakes in the content (which as a layperson I would not have seen as mistakes)
by lpapez | 2025-08-31 21:31:57+00:00
This article goes completely against my experience so far.

I teach at an internship program and the main problem with interns since 2023 has been their over reliance on AI tools. I feel like I have to teach them to stop using AI for everything and think through the problem so that they don't get stuck.

Meanwhile many of the seniors around me are stuck in their ways, refusing to adopt interactive debuggers to replace their printf() debug habits, let alone AI tooling...
by hackthemack | 2025-08-31 21:32:03+00:00
Reminds me of every time I run npm install.

Before that, reminds me of when people talked about monkey patching RoR.

Seems like the general trend in programming since the beginning, when asked "Cheap, Fast, Good", the winners are always cheap and fast. Regular people have a hard time conceptualizing something they can not see.
by PhantomHour | 2025-08-31 21:32:16+00:00
Bear in mind those are revenue figures, they're costing claude hundreds a day.

One imagines Leadership won't be so pleased after the inevitably price hike (which, given the margins software uses, is going to be in the 1-3 thousands a day) and the hype wears off enough for them to realize they're spending a full salary automating a partial FTE.
by t_mann | 2025-08-31 21:32:25+00:00
> In fact, Rome’s legendary founder, Romulus, was the son of a Vestal priestess—Rhea Silvia.

This is far from fact, it is, with near certainty, a legend (which also tells us that the father is the god Mars, btw; or Aeneas, or unknown, depending on the version). The illustrations are from a completely different era that projected a lot of its own politics into its reading of Rome's history and the article does not provide this contextualization.

Not sure what to make of the parts of the article that are new to me, when parts I know about are at least debatable.
by jeroenhd | 2025-08-31 21:32:32+00:00
Why would you need to include the email address? Just the token should be enough, shouldn't it? Handing out a valid certificate is proof already, you can leave the common name empty as long as it's signed by the right authority.

This approach does make it rather trivial to clone certificates and spread them, though. All it takes is one kid on their parents' computer dumping a p12 file and the entire school is suddenly bypassing age filters.

Another problem is that colluding websites/trackers (i.e. those "first party" trackers that will use things like CNAMEs to trick browsers into executing their tracker code) can use the public key you use to authenticate your age to track you across websites. Your public key will also be non-repudiable unless your CA often makes you reauthenticate and publishes your private key after expiry (similar to how Signal does this, except less secure).
by vbezhenar | 2025-08-31 21:32:35+00:00
I think that the main reason is that human population is unusually huge, humans live in the huge dense groups. So there's just too many fecals and environment struggles to process them.

Just to compare: there's an estimation that there are around 300 000 gorillas in the entire world. There are over 20 000 humans for every gorilla.

Though I think that "environment" is too vague. Planet doesn't care. Some bacteria probably would think that it's pretty nice environment. It's more about human waste making environment bad for humans themselves.

There are just too many of us, so we need artificial ways to produce food, artificial ways to protect from cold and heat. And also artificial ways to safely dispose of our waste.