MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by Nuthen | 2025-08-29 18:03:25+00:00
Based on the latter tweet in the chain, I'm wondering if Carmack is hinting that Foveated Rendering (more processing power is diverted towards the specific part of the screen you're looking at) was one advantage envisioned for it. But perhaps he's saying that he's not so sure if the performance gains from it actually justify building a custom OS instead of just overclocking the GPU along with an existing OS?
by WarOnPrivacy | 2025-08-29 18:03:26+00:00
Here on the gulf coast, volunteer orgs are among the first responders to hurricane events. They're good at handling the first 10% of what needs doing by supplying necessities and emptying out flooded residences.

That's about the limit of what they can do. And even that is increasingly stressed as 1-per-15yr cleanups transition into 2x/yr cleanups.

source: responding since 96
by WheelsAtLarge | 2025-08-29 18:03:27+00:00
True, but it's catching up fast. A year ago, I used AI for small OS scripts. It worked fine and saved me the time of looking up switches for commands. Now, I can ask it to create a simple game of about 200 lines, and it does a pretty good job of writing bug-free code within a few seconds. It's only going to get better. Even if the tech doesn't improve further, I can see a future where all apps are endlessly configurable.

A big part of my career has been the modification of enterprise software to fit a company's needs. Rarely was any one addition more than a few hundred lines of code. I can see a future where there will be simple options for a non-coder to add to an app.

True, it's not a coder, but that doesn't mean it won't fundamentally change how apps are made and it will reduce the number of master programmers needed. It won't replace all programmers, but it will greatly reduce the number that are needed, which country they work in and the language they use to program apps.

Programming has mainly been a career that requires the individual to understand English. That is changing. I can see a future where code can be created in multiple human languages. Programming was well-paid because relatively few people had the expertise to do it. That won't be the case, and the pay will adjust downward as needed. AI might not be a coder, but it will let many more people become coders. In the future, coding will be in the same pay range as clerical work. Companies will be hiring Programming Clerks rather than Programming Engineers.
by rwmj | 2025-08-29 18:04:05+00:00
We use Concur (SAP? expenses software), and it can scan your paper receipts and fill in the fields for you. I'd say it's about 30% accurate. Occasionally it'll be incredible. But mostly you end up having to manually adjust fields. It even gets categories completely wrong, like classifying a train ticket as a phone bill. All this means you spend a lot of time checking everything. It'd be hard for me to say honestly that it saves any time, and probably it takes a bit more time.
by v9v | 2025-08-29 18:04:22+00:00
Maybe not applicable for the XR platform here, but you could add introspection capabilities not present in Linux, a la Genera letting the developer hotpatch driver-level code, or get all processes running on a shared address space which lets processes pass pointers around instead of the Unix model of serializing/deserializing data for communication (http://metamodular.com/Common-Lisp/lispos.html)
by strogonoff | 2025-08-29 18:04:49+00:00
> Investors don’t just fund “good” companies

Exactly what I am lamenting in my original comment. Investors chase returns, i.e. money for its sake.

As long as that is conceptually a thing, it is a no-brainer to fund a bad company if you are sure its shares will go up in price during the term of your investment; it is also in your interest (and acceptable within the “money for its own sake” framework) to ensure its shares do go up by helping hype it up; etc.

This all, I believe, is a source of strong and far-reaching negative externalities, which I am far from sure are trumped by its potential benefits.

> A small farmer facing price volatility, weather risk, and thin margins doesn’t have the same access to capital

Why do you need access to capital in order to price in the risks or the cost of relevant insurance? (That’s what I meant by amortising, I might have used a wrong term.)

Why are you “facing thin margins” like it is not an open market where you set your prices and your margin is your choice?
by dudefeliciano | 2025-08-29 18:05:11+00:00
it's an often heard cliché at this point, but trumpism is a cult, no logic anywhere in there. I doubt your response will lead to any understanding.

Recently someone commented to me that the whole point of the tariffs is to curb consumerism in the United States, without further explanation when asked where they got that outlandish idea from. There is no point in arguing anymore, it is literally a waste of time...it's so sad to see obviously intelligent people fall for for this, even against their own interest as you mentioned.
by mothballed | 2025-08-29 18:05:22+00:00
Try conceal carrying or outside the waistband without ever pointing a loaded handgun at something you don't want to kill. It is pretty much impossible, unless you're using a pretty unusual holster. A waistband holster will pretty much always end up pointing it towards some part of your body at some point, and even a shoulder holster it is pointing at someone else.

Carrying a handgun relies on that rule not being followed and instead the holster preventing anyone from pulling the trigger, but if the gun can go off without a trigger pull all bets are off.
by lillecarl | 2025-08-29 18:06:40+00:00
But the market will adjust, right? Isn't that the core belief, that the market takes care of everything.

I think the ideology of "market rules" at least semi-works until the market is manipulated, which is "always".

I prefer appointing who manages things meant for public good through voting, it's not perfect but at least it's not ultimate profiteering by default.
by jimktrains2 | 2025-08-29 18:06:46+00:00
Just like on a car, if your break pads are capable of completely stopping the wheel, but the wheel is not capable of creating enough braking force with the surface, then you slide. If you lubricate between the wheels and surface, which is essentially what leaves do on rails, no amount of at-wheel breaking power will stop you.

This is what antilock Brakes in cars prevent, they pulse the brakes to allow the tire to regain traction, preventing slippage and loss of control.
by grigri907 | 2025-08-29 18:06:51+00:00
I can't think of a more textbook example of racism than blaming the actions of a relative few on the entire culture of ethnic groups comprising 1B+ people and spanning thousands of years. Except maybe, describing said people with allusions to well-known historical slurs.

That has nothing to do with American political opinions or word-policing. That's just, like, racism.

What isn't racism is a criticism of a current government's or government department's policy/strategy.

Before you say policy and the decisions of a few are a result of their culture, check out the Fundamental [0] and Ultimate [1] Attribution Errors.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_attriburion_error [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultimate_attribution_error
by thomasmg | 2025-08-29 18:06:59+00:00
> In Rust you can hold references directly into the buffer backing the array

Yes! But I am arguing that this prevents having multiple mutable references

> My Java knowledge is quite rusty > Also because Java is a GC'ed VM ...

Your Java knowledge is fine :-) But I'm arguing that you don't strictly need a GC'ed, or RC'ed language: if done "correctly", multiple mutable references are possible. Just not with fat pointers! The programming language I'm building allows this even today. You can try it in the playground [1]:

fun main() list := List+(int[4]) # <<= owned list borrow : &list # <<= mutable borrow for i := until(4) borrow.add(i) list.add(10 * i) for i := until(8) println(borrow.array[i]) type List array int[] size int fun List+ add(x int) if size >= array.len n : int[array.len * 2] for i := until(array.len) n[i] = array[i] array = n array[size] = x size += 1

So "List+" is owned type (just "List" without "+" would be reference counted). You may want to look at the generated C code at the end of the page.

[1]: https://thomasmueller.github.io/bau-lang/
by benoau | 2025-08-29 18:07:11+00:00
If this is true we should see a big smack-down pretty soon of:

- Apple and now Google charging a commission on steered links which the EU Commission has previously said must be free and now carry charges of up to 20% and 10% respectively

- the app notarization process Apple has been accused of abusing since the DMA came active and Google is now going to implement across Android to inhibit sideloading

- Facebook openly defying the EU Commission's requirement that opting-out of behavioral data being used in ads must not be subscription-only.
by rudedogg | 2025-08-29 18:07:14+00:00
I’m doing offline-first apps at work and want to emphasize that you’re constraining yourself a lot trying to do this.

As mentioned, everything fast(ish) is using SQLite under the hood. If you don’t already know, SQLite has a limited set of types, and some funky defaults. How are you going to take this loosey-goosey typed data and store it in a backend database when you sync? What about foreign key constraints, etc., can you live without those? Some of the sync solutions don’t support enforcing them on the client.

Also, the SQLite query planner isn’t great in my experience, even when you’re only joining on ids/indexes.

Document databases seem more friendly/natural, but as mentioned indexeddb is slow.

I wish this looked at https://rxdb.info/ more. They have some posts that lead me to believe they have a good grasp on the issues in this space at least

Also, OPFS is a newish thing everyone is using to store SQLite directly instead of wrapping IndexedDB for better performance.
by goku12 | 2025-08-29 18:07:52+00:00
Hmm.. I see what you mean. But I'm not able to relate to it personally. Whenever I hear enigma, the next word that comes to mind is 'cipher', not 'code'. The second word is 'algorithm' and still not 'code'. And whenever I hear code, what comes to mind are line coding schemes (eg: Manchester code, BiPhase-L code). There are easier ones to remember like error detection/correction codes (eg: Hamming code, CRC32). But I still think of line codes for some odd reason.

The problem with information theory is that it's very easy to get things mixed up hopelessly, unless you decide in advance what each term means. There are too many similar concepts with similar names.
by _DeadFred_ | 2025-08-29 18:08:04+00:00
Search Kagi for 1980s leveraged buyout and/or corporate raiders to get a start understanding how PE operate. Then realize that they have since optimized (profits must go up) upon that model of extraction at all costs for almost 40 years, and rebranded as PE for optics.

In 1980s Reagan/Yuppie/money obsessed America these guys were considered scum. In 2025 'the line must go up' America they are everywhere and considered 'you just have to accept them as part of capitalism' (even though 1980s Reagan America rejected them.)
by TYPE_FASTER | 2025-08-29 18:08:11+00:00
I think the reality is, we need identity on both the client and server sides.

At some point soon, if not now, assume everything is generated by AI unless proven otherwise using a decentralized ID.

Likewise, on the server side, assume it’s a bot unless proven otherwise using a decentralized ID.

We can still have anonymity using decentralized IDs. An identity can be an anonymous identity, it’s not all (verified by some central official party) or nothing.

It comes down to different levels of trust.

Decoupling identity and trust is the next step.
by ffsm8 | 2025-08-29 18:08:20+00:00
> Ask it what's wrong with the code

That's phase 1, ask it to "think deeply" (Claude keyword, only works with the anthropic models) while doing that. Then ask it to make a detailed plan of solving the issue and write that into current-fix.md and ask it to add clearly testable criteria when the issuen is solved.

Now you manually check the criteria wherever they sound plausible, if not - it's analysis failed and its output was worthless.

But if it sounds good, you can then start a new session and ask it to read the-markdown-file and implement the change.

Now you can plausibility check the diff and are likely done

But as the sister comment pointed out, agentic coding really breaks apart with large files like you usually have in brownfield projects.
by tzs | 2025-08-29 18:08:33+00:00
It's not the water that is the big problem here. It is the gas turbines and the location.

They started operating the turbines without permits and they were not equipped with the pollution controls normally required under federal rules. Worse, they are in an area that already led the state in people having to get emergency treatment for breathing problems. In their first 11 months they became one of the largest polluters in an area already noted for high pollution.

They have since got a permit, and said that pollution controls will be added, but some outside monitors have found evidence that they are running more turbines than the permit allows.

Oh, and of course 90% of the people bearing the brunt of all this local pollution are poor and Black.
by giardini | 2025-08-29 18:08:34+00:00
I hope they can settle this. When I was last in Europe I visited the museum and for the first time realized how unique Vincent Van Gogh's art was.

The Museum displays his work in controlled lighting so as to get the full effect of the colors and textures he uses. Of course I had always enjoyed prints of his work but that's all I had seen. Seeing "Sunflowers" at the Van Gogh Museum I almost cried - it was so beautiful I didn't want to leave the room.

It was lovely beyond any representation that I had previously seen: I felt betrayed by technology: I'd never be able to see it again in its full beauty without crossing an ocean. And for once in my life I understood the desire to own, to possess, original art.
by weaksauce | 2025-08-29 18:08:45+00:00
i’d love to switch to linux as a daily driver but the mac cmd shortcuts for text editing and the general well thought out text editing in the system make macos more compelling. i’d love to switch over for gaming on the windows computer but the lack of performance for comparable specs hurts it. drivers are very important.

ive seen some that change it for copy and paste but i don’t think it works for cmd-left right up down. or option those.
by Gud | 2025-08-29 18:08:48+00:00
This is my experience in Zürich.

When I first moved there, the lady who helped me get things sorted in the community office(after rolling her eyes aggressively due to all the paperwork errors I’d made while moving) scribbled her direct number in case I needed further assistance.

When things are kept local and decentralised, things get a lot easier.
by hiq | 2025-08-29 18:08:57+00:00
I agree with you, but we're talking about a device that I'd consider keeping for 10+ years. Actually I have some Synology NAS lost somewhere that I occasionally use, and while I don't trust exposing it to the internet (never have), it still serves files fine. With this expectation it's not absurd to get a NAS that still handles a bit more than the current speeds.

Just to add a datapoint: I could also get a 25Gpbs connection in Switzerland. Actually checking that, I'm realizing that I could upgrade without paying more (maybe just a setup fee, less than 50USD).
by tpurves | 2025-08-29 18:09:10+00:00
It's really both effects happening at once. AI is just like the invention of the assembly line, or the explosion of mass produced consumer packaged goods starting from the first cotton gin. Automation allows a massive increase in quantity of goods, and even when quantity comes with tradeoffs to quality vs artisanally produced goods, they still come to dominate. Processed cheese or instant coffee is pretty objectively worse that the 'real' thing, but that didn't stop cheap mass production still made those products compelling for many million/billion of consumers.

You can still find a tailor who will hand make you a bespoke clothing or sew your own clothes yourself (as even the boomer generation often did growing up), but tailored clothing is a tiny fraction of the amount of clothing in circulation. Do tailors and artisanal cheese makers still exist? Yep, they are not extinct. But they are hugely marginalized compared to machine-made alternatives.
by MorehouseJ09 | 2025-08-29 18:09:38+00:00
“If it takes longer to explain to the system all the things you want to do and all the details of what you want to do, then all you have is just programming by another name,”

I think this is going to make the difference between junior and senior engineers even more drastic than it is today. It's really hard to know what/how to even describe real problems to these tools, and the people who invest the most in their tooling now, are going to be most successful. It's hard for someone who hasn't designed a large codebase already to do this in an ai native way where they don't have the experience of abstracting at the right level and things like that.

Today's equivalent, I've often found some of the best engineers I know have insane setups with nvim or emacs. They invest in their tool chain, and are now bringing AI into.
by marcusverus | 2025-08-29 18:09:51+00:00
It's good to be skeptical, but if you ignored every news sites that had ever been accused of a single act of deceptive wording, there wouldn't be any left to read from!

Having read about the controversy in question, it's hard to agree that her words were 'distorted beyond recognition'. She advocated for government centers where Germans could go to talk to a government employee about mean right-wingers, and be provided with propaganda materials (literally, she suggested these centers should provide information on how to respond to right-wing slogans) to counteract the reactionaries. Apollo News characterized this as akin to advocating for the East German practice of denunciation, in which people could report wrong-think to the Stasi. Not much of a leap!
by hvb2 | 2025-08-29 18:10:27+00:00
> Programming has mainly been a career that requires the individual to understand English.

Disagree, programming is a career where in order to be good you can

1. Break down a big problem into smaller ones, creating abstractions

2. Implement those abstractions one by one to end up with a full program

3. Refactor those abstractions if requirements change or (better) reimplement an abstraction a different way

You do all of this to make complex software digestible by a human, so that they don't have to have the entire system 'in context'.

This prophesied view of software development will mean you end up with code that's likely only maintainable by the model itself.

I can't imagine the vendor lock in of that.... You have the source, but it is in such a state that no human can maintain it?
by andix | 2025-08-29 18:10:38+00:00
I guess you would need to switch to a dotnet native database, like litedb. Even if you would use postgres, there would be native code left, decoupled from the dotnet application though.

It would be interesting though, if it's possible to run webassembly inside the CLR (dotnet runtime).

But I don't really get the issue with native code inside a dotnet application. In the end everything you do in dotnet ends up being executed as native code. Even a simple console.writeline() is implemented in native code.
by brudgers | 2025-08-29 18:10:44+00:00
If the Natural Ergonomic keyboard works for you, why not put in an eBay search and buy a spare or two?

Even one new in box is unlikely to cost more than a current alternative if you are a little patient.

Since you mention "wired" there are boatloads of 4000's on the market all the time. Good luck.
by Aardappel | 2025-08-29 18:10:57+00:00
In Lobster, this is `for(m) i: print(i)` Or simply `for(m): print(_)`

The syntax comes from the observation that even in C-like languages, 99% of the time I want to iterate over the range (0..m-1), so that's what it is optimized for.

I don't enjoy writing the same boilerplate over and over. Moreover, because it is so verbose, it is hard to spot `for (int i = 0; i <= m; i++): print(i);` being a special kind of loop since it looks so similar to the common `<` case. I'd rather that looks entirely different to alert me we're also iterating over the bound.

I am not sure what you mean by "Initiating `i` right before every loop"
by mft_ | 2025-08-29 18:11:10+00:00
> I can't turn my weird off

Why not?

If you have conscious insight into what behaviour is or isn't "weird" in a specific situation or environment, you absolutely can choose to turn it off, or at least damp it down. I'm not saying you should or shouldn't, and there's no judgement. But if you can identify it, you can choose.
by pipeline_peak | 2025-08-29 18:11:23+00:00
Jonathan Blow is the world’s most successful hobbyist programmer. His whole thing is doing projects from scratch. Every game he made could be done in Unity with far less effort.

Most opinions of this man exists in a vacuum space isolated from the real world software industry. Building an OS from scratch is one of those examples.

It’s never seems like there’s a significant reason behind them other than………”I made dat :P”
by xg15 | 2025-08-29 18:11:26+00:00
The weirdest boolean for me is the "is secure" flag of the web platform, that is true if the site is loaded via https with a valid cert or is served from localhost - and that decides if any advanced browser features are available or not.

It makes sense given the history of the web, but its semantics are pretty much the same as (old) Twitter's blue checkmark.

Both essentially say "the entity you're interacting with is really the one you believe they are" - but neither makes any attempt to actually find out what my belief is, nor do they give me any information to verify that belief myself. It's just a "trust me" in form of a boolean.
by mfrye0 | 2025-08-29 18:11:28+00:00
Great write up. I worked at a payment processor awhile back, so I really appreciate the complexity of the problem you're tackling.

How are you doing the legal entity resolution? In your example - connecting "AMZN" to "Amazon.com, Inc."

We happen to be solely working on this problem, as it's ridiculously complicated by itself from an global perspective. We're still in stealth and preparing to share something ourselves on HN shortly, but just curious how you're approaching it since your pipeline is already doing a ton.
by Galanwe | 2025-08-29 18:11:34+00:00
- Moral rules are never really effective

- Legal threats are never really effective

Effective solutions are:

- Technical

- Monetary

I like the idea of web as a blockchain of content. If you want to pull some data, you have to pay for it with some kind of token. You either buy that token to consume information if you're of the leecher type, or get some by doing contributions that gain back tokens.

It's more or less the same concept as torrents back in the day.

This should be applied to emails too. The regular person send what, 20 emails per day max ? Say it costs $0.01 per mail, anyone could pay that. But if you want to spam 1,000,000 everyday that becomes prohibitive.
by master_crab | 2025-08-29 18:11:38+00:00
How’s the UNAS? I’m firmly in the UI ecosystem for networking and security and looked at it earlier this year (I think they released the offering only in the past 12-24 months). But my synology 1221 is fairly new so I have at least 5 (probably more) years left of useful life in it.

UI isn’t without their own faults but allowing their unifios to run on grey boxes has improved my opinion of them further.