MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by pjmlp | 2025-08-18 21:02:15+00:00
Much more than that, first lets take into account no one really used plain ISO Pascal on PC, it was always dialects from UCSD Pascal, or eventually Object Pascal, created by Apple and adopted by Borland, TMT and others.

Strings were indeed fat pointers, and for the usual critic of being limited to 255 characters, you could eventually use fat pointers to unbounded arrays, with functions to get the lower and upper bounds.

Since Pascal supports pass by reference (var parameters), there was no need to mess up with pointers for in/out, or out parameters, thus one less scenario where pointers could go wrong.

Memory allocation has special functions New() and Dispose() that are type aware, thus no need to do sizeof() that might go wrong. And there was Mark()/Release() for arena style programming as well.

Numeric ranges, with bounds checking, was another one.

Enumerations without implicit conversations.

Bounds checking, checked arithemetic (this one depended on the build mode), IO checking, and a few other checked modes, naturally they could be disabled if needed.

Mapped arrays, so you could get the memory address directly, while having bounds checking.

Unbounded arrays provided a way to do slices, even if a bit verbose.

Pointers were typed, no decays from arrays, although you could do exactly the same clever tricks as C, by callign specific functions like Adr, Succ, Pred,...

Record variants required a specific tag, so while they weren't tracked, it was easier to spot if "unions" were being used properly.

Units provided a much better encapsulation as header files + implementation, with selected type visibility.

Yes, use after free, doing the wrong thing in mapped memory, or inline Assembly were the main ways how something could go wrong, but much less than with plain C.

Which is why I tend to do my remarks with Zig, you will notice quite a few similarities with 1980's safety from the likes of Pascal and Modula-2, the later even better than those Pascal dialects, although Turbo Pascal eventually grew most of the Modula-2 features, plus plenty of C++ inspired ones as well.

Hence why with the prices Ada compilers were being sold, and the "cheaper" Pascal dialects and Modula-2, it was yet another reason why it did not took off back then.

Ironically GNU Pascal is no longer relevant, while GCC now supports Ada and Modula-2 as official frontends.
by rimunroe | 2025-08-18 21:02:19+00:00
Counter-Strike was my introduction to actual programming! I learned to write AMX mods to help make administering our servers (banning cheaters and whatnot) mid-match possible without having to interrupt playing to open the console.

> I found out there are third party server browsers for CS2 with modded servers. It is so tiny compared to the old days, but they exist. I played around on a couple around a year ago and had a good time. If you are feeling nostalgic, you should check it out.

Thanks for the tip!
by fencepost | 2025-08-18 21:02:22+00:00
More details please? Which installer?

---7.3.0--- This release popped up just a few minutes ago, so VirusTotal results for the 7.3.0 EXE and MSI installers

EXE (still running behavior checks but Arctic Wolf says Unsafe and AVG & Avast say PUP): https://www.virustotal.com/gui/file/816b21b7435295d0ac86f6a8...

MSI nothing flags immediately, still running behavior checks (https://www.virustotal.com/gui/file/e022a018c4ac6f27696c145e...)

---7.2.2/7.2.1 below--- I do note one bit of weirdness, the Windows downloads show 7.2.2 but the download links themselves are 7.2.1. 7.2.1 is also what shows on the release from 3 days ago even though it's numbered 7.2.2.

I didn't check the Mac or Linux installers, but for Windows VirusTotal flags nothing on the 7.2.1/7.2.2 MSI (https://www.virustotal.com/gui/file/7a2d4fec05d1b24b7deda202...) and 3 flags on the EXE (ArcticWolf Unsafe, AVG & Avast PUP) (https://www.virustotal.com/gui/file/a30388127ad48ca8a42f9831...)
by jacquesm | 2025-08-18 21:02:38+00:00
This is not quite true. They have to know roughly where your cell phone is but, helpfully, your cellphone starts the process as soon as you start it up and then it is a courtesy to you that the unit closest to you will handle your call(s) and other traffic because that will save you battery and reduces the amount of power your phone will use which in turn will allow others relatively nearby to use the same slice of the spectrum while you are transmitting. Phased arrays on the mast make this even more precise and further conserve power. But that really is a courtesy: it would all work without that luxury but less efficient and your phone's battery would be empty faster.

The part that really is optional is where the carrier then stores and even sells your location. They are mandated by law with respect to the first and they abuse the technical capabilities of the system for the second. And even if it isn't very precise for a single measurement it is in fact quite precise after you haven't moved for a while.
by Spunkie | 2025-08-18 21:03:30+00:00
> Player retention can often suffer over the long-term as such communities establish boundaries and rules, eventually orienting around a small clique of individuals, increasing the friction for integrating new members into the community.

This sentence applied to community moderated servers and server browsers in general is just FUD. These communites are often the exact opposite and take on the roll of getting new players up to speed and properly integrated into the existing community, they absolutely increase player retention.

Also, I find it really ironic that you can come to this conclusion and then talk about pandering to the "competitive" crowd in the same response. Pandering to the try hards has done more damage to the fun/community aspects of gaming than hackers ever could.
by Wowfunhappy | 2025-08-18 21:04:24+00:00
> but media sales have trended upwards in the age of piracy which leads to some interesting hypotheses.

But they were also on an upward trend before the age of piracy, so it's perfectly plausible to think they would be even higher. The same technologies that enable digital piracy also lower the cost of legal distribution, so you'd expect to see the industry doing better at the same time that piracy is rising.

Now, I'm of course not shedding too many tears for the major Hollywood studios, but I would like to live in a world with more niche films and games, and of course it's still quite difficult to make a living as an author or musician—a few manage it, most don't.

We agree that we don't have data—but to me, it just makes intuitive sense that a large majority of pirates are pirating lots of things they would have otherwise bought. For piracy to counteract that by generating buzz or aiding discovery or whatever it is... well, it would have to be an awful lot of buzz!

Occasionally in life, intuitions are dead wrong, and actual data leads to surprising discoveries. However, when faced with a lack of data, the first assumption shouldn't be "reality is the opposite of whatever I'd intuitively expect," that makes no sense.

I think there's a ton of motivated reasoning going on, and it just really bothers me. If you're going to pirate stuff, at least be honest with yourself about it.
by dudeseriously | 2025-08-18 21:04:34+00:00
Thanks for taking the time to read. One of the big unknowns for us right now is which analytics actually matter most to crypto investors day to day. We’ve built out the obvious ones (returns, volatility, diversification, drawdowns), but we’d love to hear from the HN crowd:

Are there metrics or risk measures you think are overlooked in crypto tools?

Do you value more traditional finance-style analysis, or are there crypto-native signals (on-chain flows, network health, etc.) you’d prioritise?

If you’re managing multiple wallets/exchanges, what’s the biggest friction point you’d want solved?

We’re trying to avoid building in a vacuum, so any feedback — even critical — would be really useful.
by at-fates-hands | 2025-08-18 21:04:38+00:00
Feels like 2000 all over again.

The arms race to throw money at anything has "AI" in their business name is the same thing I saw back in 2000. No business plan, just some idea to somehow monetize the internet and VC's were doing the exact same thing. Throwing tons of good money after bad.

Although you can make an argument this is different, in a lot of ways, its just feels the same thing. The same energy, the same half baked ideas trying to get a few million to get something off the ground.
by pityJuke | 2025-08-18 21:04:45+00:00
Arms Deal came out in 2013 [0]. 1.6 came out in 2000, so that is 13 years (not considering CSS came out in 2004, and CS:GO was in 2012, without any monetization).

Fortnite is coming onto 8 years old now. The idea of it being around for 5 years longer is not particularly alien.

[0]: https://blog.counter-strike.net/2013/08/7425/

e: Actually, I should really be focusing on the time from Arms Deal to the present, which is 12 years. So, Fortnite has even less time to catch up to CS' current lifespan with gambling.
by acdha | 2025-08-18 21:04:45+00:00
> I guess all those complainers, however vocal, were neither the majority, nor the people who actually maintained distributions.

This matched my experience: there were a few vocal haters who were very loud but tended not to be professional sysadmins or shipping binaries to other people, and they didn’t have a realistic alternative. If you distributed or managed software, you had a single, robust solution for keeping daemons running with service accounts, restarts, dependencies, etc. for Windows NT circa 1993 and macOS in 2005 so Linux not having something comparable was just this ongoing source of paper cuts which caused some Linux shops to have unexpected, highly visible downtime (e.g. multiple times I saw data center outages where all of the Windows stuff and the properly configured Upstart/SystemD stuff come up after retrying but high-profile apps using SysV init stayed down for hours because the admins had to clean it up by hand).

Anyone who packaged software was also happy to stop supporting different combinations of buggy shell scripts and utilities, too – every RPM I built went from hundreds of lines of .sh to a couple dozen lines of better systemd. systemd certainly isn’t perfect but if you had an actual job to do you were going to look at systemd as the best path to reduce that overhead.
by echelon_musk | 2025-08-18 21:05:18+00:00
Did this a few years ago and made close to $350.

However, if I reflect on how much time I spent in the game in order to receive that much money it's laughable as it was easily 2 thousand hours of game play.

I have two tips:

Sell hardware and then you can get real cash. For example, use the Steam Wallet balance to buy Steam Deck Docks which you ship directly from Steam to your customer on eBay.

Secondly, use Steam Economy Enhancer.
by Buttons840 | 2025-08-18 21:05:23+00:00
If you look only at Trump helping Intel, then yeah, that steelman makes sense.

But if you look at the affects of Trumps policies, such as stagnated manufacturing jobs, and huge uncertainty around tariffs, and Trump's willingness to blow up trade negotiations with Canada because Canada changed their policies about the middle east; just overall, Trump's not doing things that help us beat China.

We also see things like the US tends to reward those working in finance more than people working in engineering or just doing regular work. Income tax is higher than capital gains tax in America, this is a political choice we have made that rewards those who move money and capital around, but we give less reward to those who work or build things. Meanwhile in China they go out of their way to punish those in finance with government enforced caps on financial industry wages and such; they're trying to make sure their society is set up to reward engineering, building things, and regular work more than it rewards moving money around.
by brailsafe | 2025-08-18 21:05:37+00:00
In a very loosely analogous way, this reminds me of how I think about car-centric cities. They've built themselves up to make it very difficult to practically participate in society without one, often going so far in that direction that it's so unpleasant and inefficient you're fairly likely to make a mistake at some point and be fined for something. The city then bleeds money maintaining the infrastructure and needs constant construction, so signs are intentionally obscured or speed limits set extremely low despite the roads being wide, and cops are hidden around the corner ready to ticket you. This creates a cycle of heightening anxiety and stress while driving, and discouraging you from going anywhere, making it feel safer to just be isolated in your far-flung house, and thank god you have endless streaming content at your fingertips to make that even more palatable.

Addictive media content, particularly short-form casino-style recommended content sucks time away from you in a way that's deeply meaningless. You have no time for friends or real social stimulation and you sit in bed continuing to scroll because it's easy, and you repeat the cycle until all you're doing is that and being sad and lonely, which makes you want to see people more or have a hobby, but that takes a modicum of effort and you have your phone right there.
by Pxtl | 2025-08-18 21:05:38+00:00
SQL's shortcomings aren't just syntax and the convention of SCREAMING KEYWORDS. There's the lack of algebraic types (particularly galling given the bizarre three-value boolean algebra created by its strange null-handling), the poor composability (why is creating a reusable predicate filter so hard?), the lack of any coherent module system, etc.

The fact that something as simple as a tree is such a nuisance in a "relational" database is ludicrous.
by mcswell | 2025-08-18 21:05:44+00:00
"Windows Subsystem" is a compound noun. It could serve as a noun phrase in a sentence like "Windows Subsystem is nice" or "I like Windows Subsystem", although without some article or other determiner (like "the" or "this") it doesn't sound very grammatical. Generally only mass nouns, like "dirt" or "food", or plural nouns, like "people" or "subsystems", can be noun phrases without an article or determiner. "the Windows Subsystem" or "a Windows Subsystem" (or "a Windows subsystem") would be (complete) noun phrases.
by avhon1 | 2025-08-18 21:06:05+00:00
Any decent battery system measures the current that goes into the battery, and the current that goes out. Off-the-shelf ICs "learn" the battery's initial capacity and its state-of-charge to voltage curve, and thereon can observe degredation below those initial measurements, as well as fairly accurately reporting how much energy is in the battery at any given moment.
by colechristensen | 2025-08-18 21:06:08+00:00
And also we have things like this, openly demonstrating much larger capacities

>Tesla extended the range of some Florida vehicles for drivers to escape Hurricane Irma

In this case a selection of Tesla vehicles were temporarily "upgraded" from 60 kWh to 75 kWh, that's 25%!

https://www.theverge.com/2017/9/10/16283330/tesla-hurricane-...
by mvdtnz | 2025-08-18 21:06:20+00:00
I play strategy games a lot and cheating AI can be fun to play against at first, but the more you learn a game the more cheating AI sucks. When you're new to the game it just feels like you're playing against a good player, but you soon learn that what they are achieving isn't possible with the resources available. Once you hit that realisation it can be fun to beat them as a challenge but it never feels like a fair game.
by nullc | 2025-08-18 21:06:26+00:00
See my other comment: many do ask themselves that, in this case they reach the answer that it's a P&D and they think they can profit from it.

> or whatever selling a course

so some of those 'investor group' things the perpetrator spins it as that they're so rich that they're bored and lonely, and this trick is the thing they know best but they don't need it any more because they're already rich. Sometimes there are hints that the approach isn't 100% legal and so it's unwise for any one person to do too much of it.

Keep in mind the goal of the fraudster is not to convince everyone or even most people. Their goal is to have a few people who are very convinced, such that they'll part with large amounts of money. They don't mind convincing more, of course, but often the narrative that creates true believers is incompatible with ever catching a lot of people.

The scam seeing stupid in hindsight or that it makes its victims seem greedy or crooked themselves is a major advantage too, because it makes the victims much less likely to speak out or try to recover their losses from the perp.
by bpcrd | 2025-08-18 21:07:56+00:00
I understand this is in jest, but unfortunately AI generation tools more or less stopped the six-finger issue a couple of years ago. We are decidedly not a model used for the express detection of finger abnormalities, but a multi-model and multimodal detection platform — driven by our Public API (which you can try for free right now, btw) — which uses many different techniques to differentiate between content that is likely manipulated and likely not manipulated.

That said, neat gag.
by ninkendo | 2025-08-18 21:08:26+00:00
> Swift has different tradeoffs because it mostly doesn't target foundational software, and because it specifically targets a niche that prioritizes code size.

IMO it goes way beyond code size. Swift needs a stable ABI so that when you update iOS, your apps don't all break. (This "niche" can IMO be described as "anyone writing an OS".)

Apps on your device don't just link to C-ABI dylibs, they link to tons of Apple-provided frameworks (including things like UIKit) which provide a rich API surface area, with a ton of interdependent relationships between the app's code and the platform's code. Apps have to implement complicated protocols (traits) which the OS cares deeply about, or sometimes inherit from a platform-provided base class, and these protocols need to stay binary-stable across releases.

If disk space were unlimited and apps simply statically linked everything (including UIKit, etc), there'd be no way for Apple to make improvements to these frameworks during an OS release and have apps get the benefits without recompilation. They'd have never been able to do an OS-wide "dark mode", for instance. More than that, if iOS needs to change the implementation of an OS-level API (like the share sheet, or location services, etc), they'd be completely unable to do this if apps all compiled it in statically. [1]

But yeah, there's no equivalent of iOS in the rust world. As another commenter pointed out, rust is an orphan without a primary platform, there's no OS provider using rust to provide OS-level API's, so basically nobody needs this right now. But it also means that, if someone _wanted_ to write an OS in Rust and provide rich API's for apps to use (which is the definition I take for "Foundational Software"), this would likely be the first problem they'd need to solve.

[1] In reality, many things on iOS are split across an XPC boundary so that the "implementation" is in a separate process written by apple, which is rebuilt in a new OS release, but ironically, the framework's ABI is what shoulders the backwards compatibility burden, not the XPC protocol. Apple changes XPC definitions all the time, they simply rely on the client framework updating in lockstep with the daemon, and for apps to link to the client framework dynamically.
by mattfrommars | 2025-08-18 21:08:28+00:00
Thanks for the reply. I lost you in this part, Great questions on scale: the whole way we designed our engine is that in the happy path, we actually use very little LLMs. The agent runs deterministically, only checking at various critical spots if anomalies occurred (if it does, we fallback to computer use to take it home)

I assume you send screenshot to claude for nest action to take, how are you able to reduce this exact step by working deterministically? What is the is deterministic part and how you figure it out?
by ath3nd | 2025-08-18 21:08:45+00:00
> If he's right about something in this field, it's by accident and not a result of experience or research.

I could say the same thing about Elon Musk. /s

In all honesty though, there has to be some counterbalance to the faceless mass of AI enthusiast fanboys.

In Ed's articles he is rightfully pointing out that these companies are burning a lot of cash and are extremely unprofitable at this very moment. Seeing that OpenAI's recent announcements were an office suite, a "study" mode, and ChatGPT4.001 while also claiming that AGI is just behind the corner, I think he smells bullshit, and I, for one am happy that he is calling it out.

Adam Neumann from WeWork was also a visionary genius, and look how it turned out. The current AI diehards might have the habit of outsourcing some critical thinking to LLMs, but even they should be able to spot the red flags: unprofitabiliy with no clear profit window in sight, questionable launches, quick to squeeze the user base, no moat, and plateauing performance. My money is on Ed on this one.
Show HN: KickPredict – Simple football match predictions By AI
by canercbo | 2025-08-18 21:09:12+00:00
Hi HN,

I built KickPredict, a small side project that predicts upcoming football (soccer) matches.

The motivation: most prediction sites I found were either cluttered, required sign-ups, or hid behind a paywall. I wanted something clean, free, and easy to use — mostly started for fun with friends, but I figured it might be useful to others too.

I’d love feedback on: • How clear/useful the interface feels • Features you’d like to see added • Any technical/product suggestions

It’s still early and pretty minimal, but I’m hoping to improve it iteratively.

Thanks for checking it out!
by mrsilencedogood | 2025-08-18 21:09:21+00:00
I think vibe coding will get good enough that things like vercel's "0 to POC" thing are going to stick around.

I think AI-powered IDE features will stick around. One notable head-and-shoulders-above-non-AI-competitor feature I've seen is "very very fuzzy search". I can ask AI "I think there's something in the code that inserts MyMessage into `my.kafka.topic`. But the gosh darn codebase is so convoluted that I literally can't find it. I suspect "my", "kafka", and "topic" all get constructed somewhere to produce that topic name because it doesn't show up in the code as a literal. I also think there's so much indirection between the producer setup and where the "event" actually first gets emitted that MyMessage might not look very much like the actual origination point. Where's the initial origin point?"

Previously, that was "ctrl-shift-F my.kafka.topic" and then ask a staff engineer and hope to God they know off-hand, and if they don't, go read the entire codebase/framework for 16 hours straight until you figure it out.

Now, LLMs have a decent shot at figuring it out.

I also think things like "is this chest Xray cancer?" are going to be hugely impactful.

But anyone expecting anything like Gen AI (being able to replace a real software engineer, or quality customer support rep, etc) is going to be disappointed.

I also think AI will generally eviscerate the bottoms of industries (expect generic gacha girl-collection games to get a lot of AI art) but also leave people valuing the tops of industries a lot more (lovingly crafted indie games, etc). So now this compute-expensive AI is targeting the already low-margin bottoms of industries. Probably not what VCs want. They want to replace software engineers, not make a slop gacha game cost 1/10th of its already low cost.