MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by moron4hire | 2025-08-04 02:01:00+00:00
I firmly believe that anything pre-Industrial-Revolution European peasants could do, I should be able to manage in my basement full of power tools.

This is an interesting list and it might even make you super valuable in a particular scrappy kind of startup scene, but it's far from what I'd consider a list of skills that you'd call "make almost anything."

There is a shocking lack of anything foundational or structural here. No wood-working, no metal fabrication, no plumbing, nothing involving concrete or clay. The view of "almost anything" is very, very narrow.

Someone might say that there are too many things to learn if you take a much broader view, but I think that's mostly because our tech sector culture nearly completely devalues the skills and experiences of anyone over 40.

People prop up the "stuck in his ways" greybeard trope too often. Even for software development, where having learned C on Windows in 1995 wouldn't prepare you for Rust in 2025, the particular programming language syntax is such a small part of what it means to be a software developer. But for some reason, in the last 15 years, the prevailing opinions seem to think you have no hope if you haven't been using Language X since inception, so who the hell do you think you are applying for any jobs with "only" a few years of experience in LangX after 20 years of experience building successful projects in Several Similar LangYs?

But beyond programming, there are so many skills that just don't age at all. Being good at calculus and linear algebra never goes out of style. If you know how to weld or machine metal or build things out of wood or pour concrete, that never changes. And there are huge overlaps and synergies between the "trade" skills, if you apply a fundamental physics layer underneath.

So, if you give it some time, and a certain magpie obsession with learning new things, by the time a person reaches 40 or 50, they can conceivably have a basic understanding of almost everything. At which point, they become a super-powered project manager.

“A jack of all trades is a master of none, but often times better than a master of one.”
by presentation | 2025-08-04 02:01:43+00:00
I haven't used it for a few months but in my experience, its package/monorepo management features suck compared to pnpm (dependencies leak between monorepo packages, the command line is buggy, etc), bun --bun is stupid, build scripts for packages routinely blow up since they use node so i end up needing to have both node and bun present for installs to work, packages routinely crash because they're not bun-compatible, most of the useful optimizations are making it into Node anyway, and installing ramda or whatever takes 2 seconds and I trust it so all of Bun's random helper libraries are of marginal utility.
by inhumantsar | 2025-08-04 02:02:38+00:00
doesn't all of this assume that the startup reaches a liquidity event which favors the employee though? or at least that the startup is hot enough that there's a secondary market for those shares?

unless I'm misunderstanding the argument, I dont see how those hypothetical returns could be considered "expected returns". startups which reach a place where employees can profitably cash out seem far too rare to reasonably expect a return at all, never mind a large one.

Since a person works for one company at a time (usually), and it can take 3-5 years or more for a startup to reach a place where the equity is worth something, this argument reads to me like "the returns on a Powerball win are so much higher than your projected lifetime earnings that playing the lottery is a smart financial move".
by fourthark | 2025-08-04 02:03:53+00:00
Oh I've definitely seen that too, even with common front-end stuff.

I think people might be exaggerating how much they are out of the loop. Claude often needs to be guided away from stupid decisions, and it will absolutely delete code in order to "fix" a problem.

Still, it saves me work on tedious stuff, and makes it more pleasant. I wouldn't ask it to do anything I don't understand, unless I don't care about the result.
by jjani | 2025-08-04 02:04:32+00:00
There's just so many tells in this one though and they aren'tn new ones. Like a dozen+, besides just the entire writing style being one, permeating through every word.

I'm also pretty shocked how HNers don't seem to notice or care, IMO it makes it unreadable.

I'd write an article about this but all it'd do is make people avoid just those tells and I'm not sure if that's an improvement.
by morpheos137 | 2025-08-04 02:06:14+00:00
Funny thing is I am in my thirties and both my grandparents, who started as lower middle class to lower class backgrounds had all those things by 26 except maybe the luxury car but one of my grand parents had a bulldozer around the same age. My grandparents house cost $4000 to build in 1956 on two acres of land. It is worth in the neighborhood of $300k today. In their fifties another grandparent had a private airplane and multiple properties and comercial real estate. My parents went to college and got cushy middle class jobs and had houses that they paid off early. My generation has had it harder. But mind you my grandfather on one side grew up in the depression and lived in a rural house without running water or electricity for a time. My feeling is these kind of opportunities for intelligent Americans to build a successful life and enter the upper middle class or upper class are structurally less available today. I think that it has to do with credentialism and inflation of the costs of living and litigiousness and over regulation.

In 1956 you could build a decent house for the price of a year's income. Not that it was paid off in a year. But now to build a house may be 2-3+ years income depending on the size.
by SilverElfin | 2025-08-04 02:06:41+00:00
I disagree. It doesn’t need some systemic proof or some other artificial - and frankly arbitrary - barrier to make changes in legislation. It’s obvious that the DEI programs of many companies are discriminatory. And also, this type of discrimination is already illegal under existing law. It nevertheless did not stop activists or the companies they infiltrated from making discrimination an official policy.
by Taikonerd | 2025-08-04 02:07:06+00:00
There's actually been significant progress towards interop in the last 10 years. HIEs (Health Information Exchanges) such as CommonWell are steadily improving and covering more patients.

Recently there's been a big push for TEFCA (Trusted Exchange Framework and Common Agreement) as the network-of-networks that federates all the different HIEs. It's been slow, but it's progressing.

As usual, the problem isn't really technological -- it's getting all these different stakeholders, with different business models, etc, to agree on how it should work.
by jiggawatts | 2025-08-04 02:08:11+00:00
It has terrible half-completed versions of everything, all of which are subtly incompatible with everything else.

I regularly see popular packages that are developed by essentially one person, or a tiny volunteer team that has priorities other than things working.

Something else I noticed is that NPM packages have little to no "foresight" or planning ahead... because they're simply an itch that someone needed to scratch. There's no cohesive vision or corporate plan as a driving force, so you get a random mish-mash of support, compatibility, lifecycle, support, etc...

That's fun, I suppose, if you enjoy a combinatorial explosion of choice and tinkering with compatibility shims all day instead of delivering boring stuff like "business value".
by DrScump | 2025-08-04 02:08:51+00:00
Location: Sunnyvale, CA

Remote: OK Onsite: OK Hybrid: OK

Willing to relocate: Yes

Past Roles: Customer Support / Service / Onsite Consulting, Programming, Voter Data Systems Development, Ticketing Systems and Sales

Technologies: UNIX/Linux, SQL, C, IBM Informix Servers and Tools (Informix-4GL, -SQL, Client SDK), Shell scripting, IBM Mainframe (OS,zOS), COBOL, OS JCL

Résumé/CV: Available on request

Email: al.d@gmx.us

I'm a former software engineer and technical lead (Informix, Lockheed Martin) with deep experience in UNIX systems, database tooling, and mission-critical application support. My past roles include software development, advanced technical support, and custom solution engineering for enterprise and defense environments.

I also founded and ran a successful online ticketing business (peaked at $460K/year), where I built and integrated systems across eBay, StubHub, and direct sales — experience that sharpened both my technical and sales acumen. (Building solid relationships with vendors and buyers mattered a lot more then.)

I'm seeking a position (FT or contract) in Customer Service and Support (mainly because that's where I offer the most unique value-added immediately) but am open to Development, Publications, or in whatever role has a need. particularly those roles that value pragmatic problem solving, old-school personal engagement, or breadth of experience and perspectives.

I can work locally (South Bay preferred if onsite) or remotely, contract or permanent, W4 or 1099. Note: I could be an ideal match if you want a full time Silicon Valley in-person presence without the typical upcharges.
by AlotOfReading | 2025-08-04 02:10:22+00:00
No? That leaves you with a bit over $3k monthly post-tax in a no-income tax state for benefit of the doubt. Applying the 30% of income rule landlords commonly use, that means you can afford about $900/mo max. The average US rent is currently >$1600.

Checking my local area, you'd be able to afford 0.5% of the current listings with that income. I'm certain that most of those units are low income housing with special application processes and eligibility criteria though.
Show HN: GPT helped me rebuild a .NET app in 30 mins what took 3 weeks in MFC
by CodeAndExile | 2025-08-04 02:10:39+00:00
I've never used .NET, know nothing about .NET or vb, or anything outside vc++ & MFC.

Recently I gave GPT a try, guiding it step by step, and asking it to help me rebuild a tool I originally wrote in MFC. To my surprise, it worked: a full Excel-to-PDF automation app, done in 30 minutes; including a small algorithm I thought would be too tricky for AI to handle.

I didn't understand even a single line of the code, I just kept asking, copying, and running.

It felt amazing… but also terrifying.If AI can do this now, what happens 5 years from now?

Here's a 5-min video I made showing the full process with real code running (no cuts, just sped up):

https://youtu.be/-mf_yOhOCfs

Not selling anything. Just sharing what shocked me.
by SlowTao | 2025-08-04 02:11:29+00:00
This is more a general statement, keep in mind it has been almost 25 years since I used ME.

More it was at the mercy of the software industry of the time. Development of complex utilities from video editing to web browsers being more than just HTML viewers and fighting over limited memory trying to manage a high stack of rapidly more complex drivers and ME just didn't handle it that greatly. The modem, printer, high end GPU's and audio systems all fighting to work together.

It just seems like the whole Windows system pre-NT was struggling to stay together. Cue the famous Win 98 demonstration crashing the system via a Plug and play scanner. Win 98 SE was in a bizarre stable state, ME wasn't and the differences under the hood could have been something that appeared fairly minor.
by skybrian | 2025-08-04 02:13:43+00:00
The author seems concerned about compile-time range checking: did you handle the full range of inputs?

Range checking can be very annoying to deal with if you take it too seriously. This comes up when writing a property testing framework. It's easy to generate test data that will cause out of memory errors - just pass in maximum-length strings everywhere. Your code accepts any string, right? That's what type signature says!

In practice, setting compile-time limits on string sizes for the inputs to every internal function would be unreasonable. When using dynamically allocated memory, the maximum input size is really a system property: how much memory does the system have? Limits on input sizes need to be set at system boundaries.
by Onawa | 2025-08-04 02:14:26+00:00
The same reason that anyone does any risky activity... Adrenaline and dopamine boosts. Riding motorcycles are a calculated risk, one that can make you feel absolutely amazing. You can greatly reduce the risk by riding safely and defensibly. Give yourself space, assume everyone is out to murder you, avoid riding at night, absolutely do not ride inebriated, wear visible gear, etc.

Here is a short from a doctor who rides, explaining his rationale https://youtube.com/shorts/r53eHYCF6Sc

And a video breaking down accident stats https://youtu.be/uZm8Kj0fC88
by thrance | 2025-08-04 02:15:21+00:00
I just don't think "protected surface" is a very meaningful metric when it comes to ecology. In those same 150 years, we (humans) have been responsible for the extinction of 83% of wild mammal and 50% of plants [1].

The global zeitgeist is very much not on the side of preservation, seeing how much irreversible damage has already been done, and how nothing is tried to prevent more from being done.

Let's not even talk of global warming, ocean acidification, ecosystem collapse...

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/may/21/human-ra...
by xrd | 2025-08-04 02:15:56+00:00
I follow you.

I do like discussing things after the fact. I think a "proof" is a good starting point, and if you don't start with at least that, then jumping into a slack conversation to do that foundational work causes problems.

I really like a PR as as the place to put the proof: you can only assume it is true for that moment in code, and it is associated with that. Of course it isn't remotely true as all software has bugs, but at least it can be a concise statement of how you understood it at the time, and that's valuable. The author is noting that you need to get into the mental model of the author, and this is a good place to capture your thinking.

I think READMEs for a repository, in general, are almost always worthless and outdated, like you allude to.
by ofalkaed | 2025-08-04 02:16:04+00:00
The decimal system I can reason out through my knowledge of language and context, it does not require having learned about it.

How would you feel about being friends with someone who remembers everything? Long ago I learned to not show off my memory because few want to be in a relationship with someone who is going to remember every failing and slight even if those failings and slights are not held against them. Most people seem very good at forgetting and very good at identifying what they should forget and when they can use forgetting as an excuse, etc, that all falls apart if you are friends with someone who remembers it all or even most of it.

I half think most people actually remember just as well as I do, I just failed to develop the skill of forgetting. I just don't think you could function in society with a perfect memory, it is bad enough with a good memory.
by MathMonkeyMan | 2025-08-04 02:17:16+00:00
My dad practiced dentistry since the 70s and never digitized his office. Every patient had a folder. There was a phone, a typewriter, and a calendar. I don't know how insurance claims worked, maybe by post.

When I moved to New York I was surprised to find a dentist whose practice was much the same, though he did have a few computers around. He retired recently.

Computers no doubt can improve things; a lot of it seems like a no-brainer. But I'm starting to doubt that they're there to improve things.
by dekhn | 2025-08-04 02:17:17+00:00
All of my doctors for the last five years (Kaiser and Sutter) have no problem with their computers. When I switched from Kaiser to Sutter, the doctor showed me "how easy it is to transfer my full records" (they both have Epic, plus a custom integration). I have no trouble communicating while they use their computer, and handle just about everything through the captive website (which is a bit slow- sometimes the pharmacy faxes a request to my doctor, who ignores faxes until I ping them).

The one important thing is to know how to work the system. Once you understand how it works, it's remarkably easy to guide your doctor or other service providers to do what you want. I talk a lot with the doctor and my spouse (who has taught me a lot), and I also read various online forums. Further I have no truly serious health problems that require intensive care, which could change things a lot.

I understand many people feel differently, and I in no way want to invalidate their subjective experience- if you prefer paper, or find computer doctors impersonal, or anything else, I'm not here to try to convince you otherwise.
by mdaniel | 2025-08-04 02:18:33+00:00
I presume you meant that as "PDF next generation" because PDF 2.0 already exists https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_PDF#ISO_32000-2:_20...

Also, absolutely not to your "single file HTML" theory: it would still allow javascript, random image formats (via data: URIs), conversely I don't _think_ that one can embed fonts in a single file HTML (e.g. not using the same data: URI trick), and to the best of my knowledge there's no cryptographic signing for HTML at all

It would also suffer from the linearization problem mentioned elsewhere in that one could not display the document if it were streaming in (the browsers work around this problem by just janking items around as the various .css and .js files resolve and parse)

I'd offer Open XPS as an alternative even given its Empire of Evil origins because I'll take XML over a pseudo-text-pseudo-binary file format all day every day https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_XML_Paper_Specification#C...

I've also heard people cite DjVu https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DjVu as an alternative but I've never had good experience with it, its format doesn't appear to be an ECMA standard, and (lol) its linked reference file is a .pdf
by milkkarten | 2025-08-04 02:18:41+00:00
These are the marginal tax rates not the effective tax rate (e.g. 80% of first $10k, 30% of $10k-20k). We do not model tax credits here. We try to keep the system as simple as possible so that we can effectively evaluate changes. As is, the Economic theory is intractable once we introduce bounded rationality from purely rational. We do think in future work we can potentially work out some smoothness in the overall tax rate but try to let the LLM planner try what it thinks is best in order to help test the in-context optimization capabilities.

Also, while there is a complicated tax code in the US, in our simulation there is no way for agents to avoid paying taxes :)

The Saez tax rates are perturbed from the LLM Economist's tax rates to find the theoretically optimal values according to the economic theory.

Thanks for the interest and I hope that this helps clarify some of the details.
by xwolfi | 2025-08-04 02:19:18+00:00
That seems a little bit dangerous, why not do it in a language you know ? Plus, this is not launching rockets on the moon, it's a sentence splitter with a fancy state machine (probably very useful in your niche, not a critique) - the difficulty was for you to put the effort to build a complicated state machine, the rest was frankly... not very LLM-needing and now you can't maintain your own stuff without Nvidia burning uranium.

Did the LLM help at all in designing the core, the state machine itself ?
by vidarh | 2025-08-04 02:19:23+00:00
It's not just a question of whether there is more actual code in a given language, but how much is available in the public and private training data.

I've done work on reviewing and fine-tuning training data with a couple of providers, and the amount of Python code I got to see at least out-distanced C++ code by far more than 2 orders of magnitude. It could be a heavily biased sample, but I have no problems believing it also could be representative.
by vitaflo | 2025-08-04 02:20:23+00:00
Agreed, I'm still trying to use up my first $5 on Deepseek. The best thing is the off-peak rate is during the US work day and is only 55 cents per million tokens. Great for use with agents cuz you never have to worry about cost or throttling.

Everyone complains about the prices of other models but there are much cheaper alternatives out there and DS is no slouch either.
Show HN: Flash AI Presentation Maker
by effacestudios | 2025-08-04 02:21:14+00:00
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by resonious | 2025-08-04 02:22:32+00:00
Right, I've noticed agents are very trigger happy with 'any'.

I have had a good time with Rust. It's not nearly as easy to skirt the type system in Rust, and I suspect the culture is also more disciplined when it comes to 'unwrap' and proper error management. I find I don't have to explicitly say "stop using unwrap" nearly as often as I have to say "stop using any".
by BatmanAoD | 2025-08-04 02:22:54+00:00
> Reading C++ for dummies even though I had untreated ADHD and couldn’t sit still long enough to get much past std::cout.

You may have lucked out. I also didn't get terribly far in that book, but I thought it was fairly weird when I tried to read it, and after majoring in CS in college and eventually reading some very good books on programming, I believe I was entirely justified in not liking that one.
by fao_ | 2025-08-04 02:23:18+00:00
> The switch to widescreen mean the 7th row of keys competed with the trackpad for real estate.

Sure, but I would have preferred a smaller trackpad.

The lid latch was no longer needed as screens got lighter.

Their solution of ratcheting metal and plastic very tightly limits the lifetime, I'd prefer the latch so I don't have to worry about this in the future.

> Top-of-screen keyboard lighting got replaced by backlighting.

Top of the screen was better for, as another commenter posted, ambient lighting.