MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by jzellis | 2025-08-06 12:21:22+00:00
I think your concerns are legit, but it's not necessarily the reviewer's fault that they're on three deadlines and don't have the time to give your product the care and concern it deserves. It's probably the editor's or the publisher's.

I'm a world class writer but I stopped doing it for a living a long time ago. Why? Because as media moved from print to online, the work was devalued. I've worked for 25 cents a word sometimes, which was pretty decent when one 1200 word piece could pay rent back then. Nowadays, writers are offered $25 per article flat with no compensation for rewrites. Staff positions pay badly for too much work but are as coveted as C suite gigs are in the tech world. Maybe more so.

So if the reviewer is staff, they might be assigned three or four reviews in a given week on top of other work. If they're freelance, they might have to take on more just to make their rent. This is because your average magazine staffer who's not management pulls about as much as a Starbucks manager, and was ever thus, unless you got in at Vanity Fair or The Atlantic back in the Before Times.

It's like when I was reviewing albums for $50 a pop: I'd get a stack of them to review and cue up track one and if I didn't get hooked pretty quick, I'd just pop in the next one.

Your device arrived damaged, which is absolutely no one's fault, but your reviewer doesn't have time or honestly impetus to give it a second chance. Not for whatever they're getting paid for that review, which is not much at all.

It's just bad luck, is all. And yes, it's not fair and, yes, you're right to complain, but it's not as simple as "tech writer lazy".

(And if anyone's response is "They accepted the job, they should do their best at it no matter how little it pays", I'm guessing you've never had to duck your landlord to try not to get evicted before the freelance check you've been hunting up for three weeks arrives. There's a reason I'd rather make a living as a mediocre coder than a very good writer these days - at its worst, the tech industry is more renumerative and stable than the publishing industry is.)
by scarface_74 | 2025-08-06 12:21:36+00:00
I am thinking about doing something similar as I learn Spanish. I know some - about at a B1 level.

Right now I’m using ChatGPT to create my own lessons and having it to draw pictures depicting sentences in Spanish and putting a caption in Spanish underneath.

It’s keeping me from having to go from Spanish -> English -> mental image directly to Spanish -> mental image
by roxolotl | 2025-08-06 12:21:40+00:00
My PM said they’d written a bunch of tickets for a project yesterday morning that we hadn’t fully scoped yet. I was pleasantly surprised because I can’t complain if they are going to get ahead of things and start scaffolding tickets.

Of course when I went to read them they were 100% slop. The funniest requirement were progress bars for actions that don’t have progress. The tickets were, even if you assume the requirements weren’t slop, at least 15 points a piece.

But ok maybe with all of these new tools we can respond by implementing these insane requirements. The real problem is what this article is discussing. Each ticket was also 500-700 words. Requirements that boil down to a single if statement were described in prose. While this is hilarious the problem is it makes them harder to understand.

I tried to explain this and they just said “ok fine rewrite them then”. Which I did in maybe 15min because there wasn’t actually much to write.

At this point I’m at a loss for how to even work with people that are so convinced these things will save time because they look at the volume of the output.
by cbm-vic-20 | 2025-08-06 12:22:05+00:00
[A]GPL is like kryptonite to corporations. Very few will take the risk of having to open their own code if someone made a mistake in isolating the GPLed code properly, so most ban the use of GPL for their products and services.

Anthropic would have found a different library or rolled their own, rather than taking that risk. If the library was fundamental, maybe they'd go for a commercial license, but that's usually an option of last resort.
by cookiengineer | 2025-08-06 12:22:31+00:00
You're right that POSIX doesn't specify syscall tables.

What I wanted to point out is that Go also supports BSDs and other kernels out of the box that implement the POSIX standard, though with slightly different syscall tables and binary formats on those target platforms and architectures.

I was referring to POSIX as a standard specification, because it also includes not only Linux's syscall table, but also various other things that you can typically find in the binutils or coreutils package, which Go's stdlib relies on. See [2.1.3] and following pages.

I guess what I wanted to say: If I would bet on long term maintenance, I would bet on POSIX compatibility, and not on one specific implementation of it.

[2.1.3] https://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799.2018edition...
by tovej | 2025-08-06 12:23:03+00:00
How can you ensure that the exercise actually teaches the students anything in this case? Shouldn't you be building the exercise around the kinds of issues that are likely to come up, or that are difficult/interesting?

If you're teaching ethics in high school (which it sounds like you are), how many minutes does it take to write three or four paragraphs, one per case, highlighting different aspects that the student would need to take into account when making ethical decisions? I would estimate five to ten. A random assortment of cases from an LLM is unlikely to support the ethical themes you've talked about in the rest of the class, and the students are therefore also unlikely to be able to apply anything they've learned in class before then.

This may sound harsh, but to me it sounds like you've created a non-didactic, busywork exercise.
by indymike | 2025-08-06 12:23:04+00:00
For part of my life, I was extremely athletic, and after five kids, I did not have time for 6+ hours a day of exercise. Doing one hour per day seemed to do nothing to offset middle age metabolism combined with a high carbohydrate diet.

The interesting thing is that once I switched to a keto diet, my body mass changed and my health improved significantly for the better. The interesting thing is that the keto diet is actually higher calorie than the high carbohydrate one.

I suspect that telling people they need to exercise more is not helpful - most people will never be able to exercise at a level that will make a dent in their diet. A lot of people are eating 4,000+ calories a day of high carbohydrate diet burning 50-200 calories per hour. The math just doesn't work. The diet is where it is at.
by joshuak | 2025-08-06 12:23:35+00:00
Olympic athletes don't exist because no one at my gym runs that fast.

You are right that typing speed isn't the bottleneck, but wrong about what AI actually accelerates. The 10x engineers aren't typing faster they're exploring 10 different architectural approaches in the time it used to take to try one, validating ideas through rapid prototyping, automating the boring parts to focus on the hard decisions.

You can't evaluate a small sample size of people who are not exploiting the benefits well and come to an accurate assessment of the utility of a new technology.

Skill is always a factor.
by r4indeer | 2025-08-06 12:23:52+00:00
> This would only apply if they were distributing the GPL licensed code alongside their own code.

As far as I understand the FSF's interpretation of their license, that's not true. Even if you only dynamically link to GPL-licensed code, you create a combined work which has to be licensed, as a whole, under the GPL.

I don't believe that this extends to calling an external program via its CLI, but that's not what the code in question seems to be doing.

(This is not an endorsement, but merely my understanding on how the GPL is supposed to work.)
by mg794613 | 2025-08-06 12:24:17+00:00
MCP was just something they thought up as an idea, not a hard standard. Because we had nothing before.

1. Company invests in newest fad 2. Takes backside of napkin drawing as integral part of their company 3. ? 4. Profit

The article is not wrong in its findings, but the conclusion "hey, this stuff isn't much tested is it?", could have been assessed upfront.
by simonw | 2025-08-06 12:24:26+00:00
The more time I spend writing code with help from LLMs the less I fear for my job, because I gain an increased understanding of how much depth there is to building software.

To get good results out of an LLM you need to determine exactly what the system needs to do and how it should work.

That's programming! We just don't have to type all the semicolons ourselves any more.
by npteljes | 2025-08-06 12:24:32+00:00
>If I had invested even 1% of the time and effort I put into FOSS projects into my relationships with loved ones, they would have been so much happier.

This is a wise conclusion, that I think impacts many people. I know it does impact me. My personal way of going about it was that I was more invested into theoretical, ethical problems instead of my actual life problems that surrounded me. My tech life was vast and colorful, but my real life was barren.
by codethief | 2025-08-06 12:25:33+00:00
> I.e. expressing a class that can be inherited from as a generic object MyBaseClass<T>, where T holds the "derived" object state (and can itself be generic in turn, thereby extending the type hierarchy)

Interesting approach! Have you used this in larger project (i.e. for a larger type hierarchy)?

I suspect it might at least take some getting used to (readability-wise), plus it might lead to additional boilerplate in case some child "classes" only want to override some methods, but not others. (The parent will have to implement some switching logic.)

Overall I agree, though, I can't think of any OOP use case that could not be covered by this.
Show HN: This builds fullstack apps by itself
by chdavid | 2025-08-06 12:25:40+00:00
Hey HN, I'm David, one of the creators of Shipper. My brother and I made this tool that builds full-stack software from a few prompts, so it's like talking to ChatGPT. Its purpose is to help you go from idea to product without starting from scratch. There are other no-code builders out there but they either require a technical background or become unreliable for long term projects (e.g. they lose context and break your project). Shipper writes code for you and asks for technical knowledge only if you're comfortable with it.

Technical details: I think you could also call it a vibe coding tool for beginners. It's built on Next.js + React, with an AI agent (via Inngest) that connects backend, frontend, database etc. That code is secure through E2B - we’ll soon build a Stripe integration for those who want to monetize.

Current challenges: 1. Getting AI to understand shorter prompts and ship the right product from the first prompt(s) 2. Managing app state + file structure after multiple edits 3. Keeping deploys editable without breaking past progress 4. Balancing the interface for devs and non-devs

Where this is going: We’re exploring version control support, prompt suggestions, an assistant for debugging + helping you around, and coming up with templates or themes for people to remix. There are other features we’re intrigued about, but we wanted to put this out early and hear what others would actually need.

If you’ve got ideas or feedback, I’m here for it!
by NomDePlum | 2025-08-06 12:25:40+00:00
What's the fiduciary duty here for Microsoft C-suite when it is supplying infrastructure and services that assist in underpinning war crimes, ethnic cleansing and genocide?

There are a number of big name tech companies associated with similar through their collaborations with the Nazi's, IBM etc. Did that have any effect on those companies that might inform what could happen to Microsoft and others?
by garrett_dev | 2025-08-06 12:26:19+00:00
Hi p_alexander,

Are you still looking for a freelance engineer for this project? If so, it sounds like my skillset aligns with what you're looking for.

I'm a US-based full-stack software developer with 8 years of experience building web applications. I'm experienced with Typescript, React, Next.js, Tailwind, and Python.

Let me know if you'd like to connect to discuss in more detail.

Thanks!
by scarface_74 | 2025-08-06 12:26:48+00:00
I like to say that they have the attention span of a crack addled flea.

But isn’t because of the promo culture? My n=1 of BigTech experience is that promos are based on “impact” and it’s a lot harder to show impact maintaining and improving existing features.

That might explain why there are over a dozen different ways to run a Docker container at AWS.

https://www.lastweekinaws.com/blog/the-17-ways-to-run-contai...
by ljchen | 2025-08-06 12:26:49+00:00
Agreed. "Open sourcing" means you do it for free but your work benefits others. And you may have an opportunity to pass the torch to others. For hobbies you keep it to yourself. I played an instrument for many years in spare time. I enjoyed it a lot. I eventually gave up, because my life changed and many other things popped up. On reflection, I still think it was an intersting experince for all those years. But I don't feel anything for it now.
by Suzuran | 2025-08-06 12:27:13+00:00
I made the mistake of open-sourcing something that attracted a large mob angry that an outsider had intruded upon their space. Got doxed, death threats, and my employer was also harassed. Even after I publicly abandoned and repudiated the project I still get crap about it.

I now caution everyone who talks about open-sourcing their projects to consider which groups might feel that the existence of the proposed project represents an attack against them and what threat those groups may pose when they dedicate themselves to your removal.
by Tainnor | 2025-08-06 12:27:22+00:00
The effort from going to a paper proof, even one that everyone agrees is correct, to a formally verified one is still gigantic. Requiring all submissions in maths papers to come with a verified Lean proof would be a complete non-starter - most mathematicians don't even use Lean.

In many cases, the problem isn't that the statement of the theorem can't be properly expressed in Lean. It's very easy to write down the statement of FLT in Lean, for example. But for theorems whose proofs have been elusive for decades or centuries, the proofs very likely include objects in rather advanced mathematics that are not at all easy to encode in Lean. This is one of the current struggles of the FLT formalisation process, for example.

In any case, the problem in this case has nothing to do with formalisation, it's simply a case of a bad submission that for unclear reasons didn't get properly peer reviewed.
by onlyrealcuzzo | 2025-08-06 12:27:45+00:00
> If the argument to get a new keyboard is: "i like it", then this should suffice

This seems like exactly what LLMs are supposed to be good at, according to you, so why don't they just near-losslessly compress the data first, and then train on that?

Also, if they're so good at this, then why are their answers often long-winded and require so much skimming to get what I want?

I'm skeptical LLMs are accurately described as "near lossless de/compression engines".

If you change the temperature settings, they can get quite creative.

They are their algorithm, run on their inputs, which can be roughly described as a form of compression, but it's unlike the main forms of compression we think of - and it at least appears to have emergent decompression properties we aren't used to.

If you up the lossy-ness on a JPEG, you don't really end up with creative outputs. Maybe you do by coincidence, and maybe you only do with LLMs - but at much higher rates.

Whatever is happening does not seem to be what I think people typically associate with simple de/compression.

Theoretically, you can train an LLM on all of Physics, except a few things, and it could discover the missing pieces through reasoning.

Yeah, maybe a JPEG could, too, but the odds of that seem astronomically lower.
by jart | 2025-08-06 12:28:12+00:00
If anything it vindicates those people's beliefs. If you've seen the way someone can take Ozempic and survive on a few mouthfuls of food each day, while exercising 30 minutes each day, and become much less fat, but still be fat, then you'd understand. When your endocrine system is that dysfunctional, you need to exercise about 4 hours a day to look normal, and for most people that simply isn't a realistic lifestyle change, especially when every cell in your body is telling you that you must hibernate to survive. This is something that rightfully should be treated as medical issue.

Why is it that the people who hate fat people, are the ones most opposed to the treatment that will give them the choice to not be fat? If you hate the obese so much, then do you really want to live in a world where the majority of people are obese? It's like burning down a city to be king of the ashes. Some people can only feel superior if others are suffering for it.
by DanielHB | 2025-08-06 12:28:14+00:00
The main problem is when the optimizations silently fail because of seemingly innocent changes and suddenly your performance tanked 10x. This is a problem with any language really (CPU cache misses are a thing afterall and many non-dynamic languages have boxed objects) but it is a much, much worse in dynamic languages like Python, JS and Ruby.

Most of the time it doesn't matter, most high-throughput python code just invokes C/C++ where these concerns are not as big of a problem. Most JS code just invokes C/C++ browser DOM objects. As long as the hot-path is not in those languages you are not at such high risk of "innocent change tanked performance"

Even server-side most JS/Python/Ruby code is just simple HTTP stack handlers and invoking databases and shuffling data around. And often large part of the process of handling a request (encoding JSON/XML/etc, parsing HTTP messages, etc) can be written in lower-level languages.
by tovej | 2025-08-06 12:28:15+00:00
Was it? I don't remember ever running into anyone preferring long documents. Also, anything added by the LLM is pure noise with the possibility of a hallucination or two. If, for some reason, you might even add some relevant information at times, and you're not going to start making things up.

And if an LLM is also used at the other endpoint to parse the longer text, that creates a broken telephone. Congrats, your communication channel is now unreliable.
by friendly_chap | 2025-08-06 12:29:05+00:00
I can imagine that happening when the motivation is external (praise). When I write open-source it's because I have to write it out of myself.

Do I expect praise, kudos, fame, whatever? I do and that happens, I have been hired countless of times because of open-source. Even my friends (!) have been hired because of open-source stuff I wrote and they contributed to.

But the main motivation is internal - I just have to see it take shape. Like a writer who can't resist painting or a writer who can't stop writing.

Do I have regrets still? Yeah because I could have used the time for better things. But that can be said about any hobby.
by bayindirh | 2025-08-06 12:29:17+00:00
I used phones similar to this (a Nokia 2110 to be precise), BTW.

I can argue, from some aspects, yes. Given that you provide the infrastructure for these devices, they'll work exactly as they are designed today. On the other hand, a modern smartphone has a way shorter life span. OLED screens die, batteries, swell, electronics degrade.

Ni-Cad batteries, while being finicky and toxic, are much more longer lasting than Li-ion and Li-Poly batteries. If we want to talk Li-Poly batteries, my old Sony power bank (advertising 1000 recharge cycles with a proprietary Sony battery tech) is keeping its promise, capacity and shape 11 years after its stamped manufacturing date.

Can you give me an example of another battery/power pack which is built today and can continue operating for 11 years without degrading?

As electronics shrink, the number of atoms per gate decreases, and this also reduces the life of the things. My 35 y/o amplifier works pretty well, even today, but modern processors visibly degrade. A processor degrading to a limit of losing performance and stability was unthinkable a decade ago.

> you will find that prices have decreased, while quality has increased.

This is not primarily driven by the desire to create better products. First, cheaper and worse ones come, and somebody decides to use the design headroom to improve things later on, and put a way higher price tag.

Today, in most cases, speakers' quality has not improved, but the signal processed by DSP makes them appear sound better. This is cheaper, and OK for most people. IOW, enshittification, again. Psychoacoustics is what makes this possible, not better sounding drivers.

The last car I rented has a "sound focus mode" under its DSP settings. If you're the only one in the car, you can set it to focus to driver, and it "moves" the speakers around you. Otherwise, you select "everyone", and it "improves" sound stage. Digital (black) magic. In either case, that car does not sound better than my 25 year old car, made by the same manufacturer.

You want genuinely better sounding drivers, you'll pay top dollar in most cases.
by kjfaejgoaeijhei | 2025-08-06 12:29:25+00:00
i kind of agree - although all of this does end up indirectly benefitting google. while the project is open source, they're the ones maintaining the project, and believing that they won't do anything they think they can get away with to grow their power and influence is extremely naive.

if safari dies, firefox won't be far behind, and by then there's no way a fork of chromium will be able to "keep up" when google starts pushing chrome-only features, killing ad-blockers etc etc etc

(not sure if any of this matters, though. will there even be any real people left on the web in a 5 years?)
by tomrod | 2025-08-06 12:29:35+00:00
> our bodies don't just produce more GLP-1

Dominant subgroups in a species are dominant because their parents survived that last set of pressures (external death inducements) at a higher rate than other subgroups -- but won't necessarily see the same results with the current set.

Even 90 years ago, there was significant loss of life due to famine, so selection was towards people who could efficiently gain and store calories in a biological Keynesian strategy. Now we have the opposite problem -- abundance of life-sustaining food produced for cheap but good quality food is expensive (in the US -- many other parts of the world have their quality food cheaper but I digress). So there hasn't been enough pressure (external-induced death) for GLP-1.

As a species with a remarkable ability to modify its environment to suit our purposes, body response to disease is just another thing to modify.
by ChrisMarshallNY | 2025-08-06 12:30:42+00:00
Cool. Thanks for the link, but I wasn't actually trying to steal anyone's thunder, and ... I did read the article. Just felt that it wouldn't hurt to link to it.

Also, that discussion gets pretty mean. Didn't feel like I wanted to send people there. I just wanted to give the guy a pat on the back, and bring some humor into it. Been there. Sucks.
by henriquegodoy | 2025-08-06 12:31:03+00:00
I think this blog post was the best way to get into Anthropic, and it was well-deserved. That's the reality of hiring in tech: there are many non-technical people judging whether technical people are competent or not. Escaping that matrix through things like blog posts, cold emails, and Twitter threads can be great ways to break in and get noticed by these companies.