MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by rleigh | 2025-08-29 17:04:11+00:00
And also in QtXmlPatterns (now also retired).

Just for the record, Xalan-C is even less maintained than libxslt. It had no releases for over a decade, and I made a final 1.12 release in 2020 adding CMake support, since the existing builds had bitrotted significantly, along with a number of outstanding bugfixes.

I initiated its removal to the Apache attic in 2022 in https://marc.info/?l=xalan-c-users&m=165593638018553&w=2 and the vote to do this was in https://marc.info/?t=166514497300001&r=1&w=2&n=20. It has now gone nearly four years without any commits being made.

It's a great shame we are now in a situation where there is only a single proprietary implementation of the very latest version of the standard, but even the open-source 1.x implementations are fading fast. These technologies have fallen out of favour, and the the size and complexity of the standards is such that it's a non-trivial undertaking to keep them maintained or create a modern reimplementation.
by Nevermark | 2025-08-29 17:05:06+00:00
Why?

If they have access to the last photo ... every photo you ever took was the last photo. Why mess around giving app's permission to surveil/siphon off your photos at all?

Any carte blanche for apps, and apps will go to great lengths to take advantage of that in unexpected ways, and obscure the fact they are doing so.

And privacy losses can never be verifiably reversed.

All most apps need is for you to select photos to upload/import using an Apple supplied photo selector. So they only see and get exactly what you want them to have.
by pjmlp | 2025-08-29 17:05:53+00:00
The irony is that Microsoft has several cases where it gets there first, only to be left behind when competition catches up.

Bing is irrelevant, VSCode might top in some places, but it is cursor and Claude that people are reaching for, VS is really only used by people like myself that still care about Windows development or console SDKs, otherwise even for .NET people are switching to Rider.
by bombcar | 2025-08-29 17:06:09+00:00
This is exactly it.

The USA has solved two problems: cheap and easy travel across town (in your car) and cheap and easy travel across the country (in a plane).

Both COULD be done by rail, and some places do - sometimes on the same rail network.

And when the ONLY option for transcontinental travel was rail - the USA has some impressive shit.

Given the limitations and money available it’s surprising it’s as good as it is.
by rikafurude21 | 2025-08-29 17:07:36+00:00
Cloudflare is trying to gatekeep which user-initated agents are allowed to read website content, which is of course very different from scraping website for training data. Meta, Perplexity and OpenAI all have some kind of web-search functionality where they sent requests based on user prompts. These are not requests that get saved to train the next LLM. Cloudflare intentionally blurs the line between both types of bots, and in that sense it is a bait-and-switch where they claim to 'protect content creators' by being the man in the middle and collecting tolls from LLM providers to pay creators (and of course take a cut for themselves). Its not something they do because it would be fair, theres financial motivation.
by strangescript | 2025-08-29 17:07:51+00:00
I think everyone is looking for back and white switches. Either coding agents are writing your code or they aren't. Humans will always be in the mix in some form, but the amount and skills they use is going to be radically different as time goes on.

I personally haven't written any significant code by hand since claude code landed. I also have a high tolerance for prompting and re-prompting. Some of my colleagues would get upset if it wasn't mostly one shotting issues and had a really low tolerance for it going off the rails.

Since gpt-5-high came out, I rarely have to re-prompt. Strong CI pipeline and well defined AGENTS.md goes an incredibly long way.
by seanmcdirmid | 2025-08-29 17:07:51+00:00
I drove some gravel Forest Service roads in the past in a sub-compact (who knew the only way up from Oregon to Seattle was via USF roads if you didn't want to take the express way?), and I definitely wish I had more clearance for that use case. If I lived in the woods, an SUV might make sense.

We have more sedans here in the city (Seattle) because our parking space frankly are too small, and even then I see way too many SUVs trying to cram into a parking space labelled compact.
by lentil_soup | 2025-08-29 17:08:09+00:00
if I may offer some advice as game/engine programmer.

If you want to get hired at a company as a programmer, make really really small things, like tiny games. I am talking start with hangman, then sudoku in the console. Then move on to minesweeper and tetris. If confident do space invaders. At this point maybe get started with 3D? Maybe Unity and Unreal?

There's SO much stuff you'll learn making those games. Maybe you end up making a fancy menu, or adding sound effects. Maybe you come up with some basic particle effects. It doesn't really matter, what matters is you went through it and have something to show.

Don't get side tracked with big projects and trying to be a designer at the same time. Keep it small.

If I am interviewing you and see some solid and polished small games and we can talk about stuff you found cool you're already punching way above most entry level coders.
by epistasis | 2025-08-29 17:08:38+00:00
Plus, I think it's just completely outside of the legal authority of the FDA. There have been many cancer drugs that have been approved because they are safe and a (little bit) effective, but completely cost ineffective, and I always remember the FDA saying that they can't make decisions based on costs, that's up to other people.

That the FDA didn't even use the supposed safety concerns also pints to the scientific weakness of those concerns. All the scientists are being forced out of the FDA and they are not being consulted by leadership on scientific decisions, and even in that situation the fake science safety concerns were not cited in the decision.
by dragonwriter | 2025-08-29 17:08:43+00:00
> Embeddings are great at basic conceptual similarity, but in quality maximalist fields and use cases they fall apart very quickly.

This makes a lot of sense if you think about it. You want something as conceptually similar to the correct answer as possible. But with vector search, you are looking for something conceptually similar to some formulation of the question, which has some loose correlation, but is very much not the same thing.

There's ways you can prepare data to try to get a closer approximation (e.g. you can have an LLM formulate for each indexed block questions that it could answer and index those, and then you'll be searching for material that answers a question similar to the question being asked, which is a bit closer to what you want, but its still an approximation.

But if you ahead of time know from experience salient features of the dataset that are useful for the particular application, and can index those directly, it just makes sense that while this will be more labor intensive than generalized vector search and may generalize less well outside of that particular use case, it will also be more useful in the intended use case in many places.
by graypegg | 2025-08-29 17:09:23+00:00
Just to throw it out there since you're looking to add other link subtypes in your script: https://www.wikidata.org/

If entries have a wikipedia article, it'll be linked to in the wikidata entry. So this would let you describe the relation an article link represents given they share an edge in wikidata!

For example: https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q513 has an edge for "named after: George Everest", who's article is linked to in the Everest article. If you could match those up, I think that could add some interesting context to the graph!

Everest -- links to (named after) --> George Everest
by infecto | 2025-08-29 17:09:39+00:00
That sounds tidy in theory, but in practice it’s rarely that simple. Investors don’t just fund “good” companies, they fund opportunities with risk/return profiles that make sense relative to alternatives. Plenty of companies doing socially useful things struggle to raise capital because the payoff is long, messy, or uncertain.

Same with farming. “Amortize the cost” only works if margins and credit markets allow it. A small farmer facing price volatility, weather risk, and thin margins doesn’t have the same access to capital markets as a Fortune 500 manufacturer.

The whole point of efficient markets is to reduce those frictions, to better allocate risk and capital so that good projects (whether in manufacturing or farming) don’t just work “in theory.”

For me, no better system exists in the world. It’s not perfect but until there is something that works better I will have the agree with it.
by insane_dreamer | 2025-08-29 17:09:50+00:00
> So if someone happens to use local models at home, in a home that is powered by solar power, then you'd feel LLM starting to be a net positive for humanity?

Sure, that would make a difference, but it's not gonna happen anytime soon, other than hacker hobbyists, because no one is making money off of that.

> This is such a big thing in general (that I agree with) but it has nothing to do with LLMs as a technology.

Correct -- I don't have any issue with the technology itself, but rather how the technology is implemented and used, and the resources put towards its use. And BigTech are putting hundreds of $B into this -- for what end exactly besides potentially making tons of money off of consumer subscribers or ads a-la-Meta or Google? If BigTech was putting the same amount of money into technology that could actually benefit humanity (you know, like actually saving the world from potential future destruction by climate change), I'd have a much kinder view of them.
by jsheard | 2025-08-29 17:09:56+00:00
> Cloudflare is trying to gatekeep which user-initated agents are allowed to read website content, which is of course very different from scraping website for training data.

That distinction requires you to take companies which benefit from amassing as much training data as possible at their word when they pinky swear that a particular request is totally not for training, promise.
by tremon | 2025-08-29 17:10:01+00:00
You are explictly requesting the bookworm versions, I'm not sure what you're expecting?

At least google's got you covered, if you simply ask nicely:

$ curl -s https://packages.cloud.google.com/apt/dists/cloud-sdk-trixie/InRelease | grep -E Suite:\|Date: Suite: cloud-sdk-trixie Date: Wed, 27 Aug 2025 18:45:14 UTC $ curl -s https://packages.cloud.google.com/apt/dists/google-compute-engine-trixie-stable | grep -E Suite:\|Date: Suite: google-compute-engine-trixie-stable Date: Mon, 25 Aug 2025 21:24:03 UTC
by LiamPowell | 2025-08-29 17:10:05+00:00
I have no issue with people sharing LLM generated tools if they actually work, even if they're 100% LLM generated and the poster has just validated that they work, but with just a quick glance I can see many issues with this that indicate you haven't tested it or even bothered to read the handful of words on the page:

- The target file size option on the compression tab just changes the bitrate without any consideration for the length of the video. This is immediately visible if you either test the command, if you're aware of what bitrate is, or if you even bother to read the LLM generated code in which there's a comment that says "Assuming 60 second video".

- The resolution options do not allow for anything other than 16:9, you can set one parameter to -1 (or -n for a multiple of n) to make it work with any aspect ratio. I can maybe see a person clumsily missing this one.

- There is no such thing as a "wav" encoder in ffmpeg. This is again immediately obvious if you test the generated commands as ffmpeg will print an error message and not produce an output file.

- Why does the command for "video compression" (which it isn't) in the FAQ not match the command generated by the tool?
by gyf304 | 2025-08-29 17:10:12+00:00
Look great, a few nits:

- For the convert page, the tool seems to conflate codec and container format. For example, for MKV option, the tool specifies libx264, when MKV is capable of many more codecs. In addition, a lot of the times when people want to "convert", e.g. from MP4 to MKV, they mean to remux - i.e. "-c copy", which doesn't seem like an option here.

- For the compress page, the tool allows you to specify the target size, however the command output limits bitrate instead of target size. This means that the output size will vary depending on how long the input is, and will almost never be the specified target size.

I would suggest merge the "Convert" and "Compress" tabs, and allow specifying:

- video bitrate (-b:v)

- video codec (-c:v)

- audio bitrate (-b:a)

- audio codec (-c:a)

- container format

I found handbrake to be a good GUI-based alternative if ffmpeg commands are overwhelming.
by _mlbt | 2025-08-29 17:10:22+00:00
> No idea why this thread is so negative (also got flagged while I was typing this?)

Grok is owned by Elon Musk. Anything positive that is even tangentially related to him will be treated negatively by certain people here. Additionally, it is an AI coding tool which is seen as a threat to some people’s livelihoods here. It’s a double whammy, so I’m not surprised by the reaction to it at all.
by mindslight | 2025-08-29 17:10:24+00:00
I don't understand how either of your proposed angles of reform are supposed to work.

These are services being paid by the state, so I would think the state already has direct say in pricing? Which is why the business becomes a march to the bottom in provided services, to increase margins by decreasing expenses since they can't increase prices.

I didn't see any mention of bankruptcy in the article, so I don't see what limited liability has to do here. If anything it seems like the entities are too well capitalized, in that they can fight with individual states and pay off whatever meager fines might result. Also as far as I understand the medical industry, the individual doctors/nurses signing off on the care being given are still directly liable (modulo professional insurance policies). They just have reams of paperwork saying the care was correct from their perspective, despite what the low level caregivers might be doing outside of the paperwork.

I personally think what limited liability entities have developed into has become a scourge in general, as they end up being considered to have all the rights and freedoms of personally-liable natural persons. Getting a government granted liability shield should mean submitting to significantly more regulation to preclude engaging in well known patterns of constructive negligence. The vaunted fiercely-independent "man in the arena" can always actually get into the arena if they want their business to partake of the full natural rights afforded to natural persons...

And maybe you're just coming from a similar feeling of wanting those ultimately in charge to also be directly responsible? I usually think of this in terms of corpos fighting regulation with specious justifications based on individual rights (Citizens United, corpo direction of employee speech, etc). I just don't see how adding the liability would make anything more actionable here.
by positiveblue | 2025-08-29 17:10:38+00:00
Narrator: but he did put effort...

Anyway, main take aways for you:

- We REALLY need a way to tie identity to agent/requests - The idea of registering with cloudflare to be able to access a website is bad - Sites should be able to block whoever they want or make anything they desire a requirement (there are people that has login only with google after all)

We have the right primitives to build something that works for any provider (from cloudflare, to Akamai, to self hosting nginx servers). Let's take that route
by pamelafox | 2025-08-29 17:10:43+00:00
Both humans and coding agents have their strengths and weaknesses, but I've been appreciating help from coding agents, especially with languages or frameworks where I have less expertise, and the agent has more "knowledge", either in its weights or in its ability to more quickly ingest documentation.

One weakness of coding agents is that sometimes all it sees are the codes, and not the outputs. That's why I've been working on agent instructions/tools/MCP servers that empower it with all the same access that I have. For example, this is a custom chat mode for GitHub Copilot in VS Code: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Azure-Samples/azure-search...

I give it access to run code, run tests and see the output, run the local server and see the output, and use the Playwright MCP tools on that local server. That gives the agent almost every ability that I have - the only tool that it lacks is the breakpoint debugger, as that is not yet exposed to Copilot. I'm hoping it will be in the future, as it would be very interesting to see how an agent would step through and inspect variables.

I've had a lot more success when I actively customize the agent's environment, and then I can collaborate more easily with it.
by drdaeman | 2025-08-29 17:10:45+00:00
[Edit: turns out I've got it wrong, and 5-year retention only said to apply to the data they're allowed to train on. This changes things for me.]

Personally, I don't mind training, as long as I have a say on the matter - and they have a switch for this. Opt-out is not exactly cool, but I've got the popup in my face, almost a month before the changes, and that's respectful enough for me.

This said, I've just canceled my subscription because this new 5-year mandatory data retention is a deal breaker for me. I don't mind 30 or 60 days or even 90 days - I can understand the need to briefly persist the data. But for anything long-term (and 5 years is effectively permanent) I want to be respected with having a choice, and I'm provided none except for "don't use".

A shame, but fortunately they're not a monopoly.
by mperham | 2025-08-29 17:10:53+00:00
> cheap and easy travel across town (in your car)

It's only cheap and easy if you discount omnipresent traffic jams, 50,000 deaths per year, ever-worsening climate change and the inability to walk/bike anywhere anymore.

Aside from that, it only costs the average American $1,000/mo to keep that cheap and easy transportation!
by FirmwareBurner | 2025-08-29 17:11:44+00:00
I like that the top reply to Carmack's wall of text is a screenshot of TempleOS with a doodle of an elephant lmao. And ironically, that meme reply is on topic and it says a thousand words with just one photo.

Another point I would add in support of that meme comment, is Google's recent rug-pull of Android not allowing sideloading apps from unsigned developers anymore starting this autumn, after over a decade of conquering the market with their "go with us, we're the open alternative to iOS" marketing.

The conclusion is to just never EVER trust big-tech/VC/PE companies, even when they do nice things, since they're 100% just playing the long game, getting buddy-buddy with you waiting till they smothered the competition with their warchest, and then the inevitable rug-pull comes once you're tied to their ecosystem and you have nowhere else to go.

Avoid these scumbags, go FOSS form the start, go TempleOS. /s but not really
by seanvelasco | 2025-08-29 17:12:10+00:00
as a Cloudflare customer, I am happy with their proposition. I personally do not want companies like Perplexity that fake their user-agent and ignore my robots.txt to trespass.

and isn't this why people sign up with Cloudflare in the first place? for bot protection? to me, this is just the same, but with agents.

i love the idea of an open internet, but this requires all party to be honest. a company like Perplexity that fakes their user-agent to get around blocks disrespects that idea.

my attitude towards agents is positive. if a user used an LLM to access my websites and web apps, i'm all for it. but the LLM providers must disclose who they are - that they are OpenAI, Google, Meta, or the snake oil company Perplexity
by visarga | 2025-08-29 17:12:15+00:00
I did something like this myself. Take a large PDF, summarize each page. Make sure to have the titles of previous 3 pages, it helps with consistency and detecting transitions from one part to another. Then you take all page summaries in a list, and do another call to generate the table of contents. When you want to use it you add the TOC in the prompt and use a tool to retrieve sections on demand. This works better than embeddings which are blind to relations and larger context.

It was for a complex scenario of QA on long documents, like 200 page earning reports.
by sjsdaiuasgdia | 2025-08-29 17:12:45+00:00
I don't like speech to text in this context because of how often negation words are either missed or inserted, and how commonly "I want <item>, no <ingredient>" and "I want <item> with <ingredient 1>, <ingredient 2>, <ingredient 3>" show up in the fast food ordering context.

That's also the kind of small detail likely to be missed by the human who is only half-listening to the conversation being had with the customer.
by happy2behere | 2025-08-29 17:13:09+00:00
For: spline, b-spline, cubic bezier curve, de casteljau algorithm

The good & old "The Nurbs Book" by Pieg and Tiller. You said you were a Computer Engineering Graduate, so I assume you know the basics of matrix multiplication, polynomials, etc? There's not much more needed than that, maybe some basic Calculus, understanding definition of limits and derivatives so things like continuity of knots make sense. Maybe a little knowledge on numerical methods is good, like some fixed-point iteration methods (Newton's).
by wtarreau | 2025-08-29 17:13:16+00:00
Blaming the audience makes sense because after all, they're the ones not getting the message right and not asking the presenter to explain it better. But it remains the presenter's failure to catch their attention better and try to deliver a clear message.

Every time I had a presentation, I tried to analyze the failures (including listening to me when it was recorded, a really painful experience). Certain mistakes such as like having slides on a white background that makes attendees look at the screen and read instead of watching the presenter and listening to him can be devastating. Just because attendees are naturally attracted by light. It's not the audience's fault, it's the presenter's fault (and to some extents the tools in use). A good exercise is to stop slides from time to time during the presentation (i.e. switch to a black one), you'll be amazed how much you suddenly catch the attention, you feel like you're at a theater. It even manages to catch attention of those who were looking at their smartphones because the light in the room suddenly changes.

Also another difficulty which is specific to English native speakers is that many of them initially underestimate the difficulties of the audience to catch certain expressions (with some people it's very hard to distinguish "can" from "can't" for example, which complicates the understanding), or idiomatic ones, or references to local culture, because such things are part of their daily vocabulary. Of course, after a few public talk, when they get questions at the end proving there were misunderstandings, they realize that speaking slower, articulating a bit more and avoiding such references does help with non-native listeners. Conversely, when you present in a language that is not yours, you stick to very simple vocabulary using longer sentences to assemble words that try to form a non-ambiguous meaning. It can probably sound boring for native speakers but the message probably reaches the audience better.

In any case, it definitely always is the presenter's failure when a message is poorly delivered and their responsibility to try to improve this, however difficult this is. It's just important never to give up.