MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by pjmlp | 2025-08-30 12:36:47+00:00
True, on the other hand writing portable code was a mess, even if we constrained ourselves to UNIX world, as each vendor compiler supported a different flavour of the standard.

I had some fun between HP-UX aC, AIX xlC, Solaris cc, and Red-Hat gcc, and naturally there was MSVC as well.

We had #ifdefs in place for prototypes, because the version of the aC compiler we had on our development server still only supported K&R C function definitions.
by tucnak | 2025-08-30 12:37:20+00:00
In the recent days, the biggest delu-lulz was delivered by that guy who'd bravely decided to boycott Grok out of... environmental concerns, apparently. It's curious how everybody is so anxious these days, about AI among other things in our little corner of the web. I swear, every other day it's some new big fight against something... bad. Surely it couldn't ALL be attributed to policy in the US!
by zeke | 2025-08-30 12:38:14+00:00
My kids played Minecraft, and one installed Lua to automate parts. Occasionally he would show me what he was working on and I could offer suggestions.

We also set up a Linux computer as a Minecraft server and I was available to help with questions. It is a beginner level admin job with a purpose they can see.

If she has an idea for a web page or service, help refine it to something possible and implement.
by tom_ | 2025-08-30 12:39:06+00:00
Yes, of course. The point of my heavy-handed post was to try to find out what is actually going on here. Does this person have any insider info? Or are they (as many are in the discussion, and as I suspect is the case here too - but I am going only on the balance of probabilities!) just using this as an opportunity to relate this to their own grievances, so they can discuss those?

We've only got one side of this particular story, we don't know what happened from the other person's point of view, we don't know what form this HR complaint took - or any of the other details. We can bet, just as I did in my last paragraph, but in my view the odds are more questionable and the topic more likely end up as unproductive venting. Any good comments will get lost.

Still, it's also true that the link is just there as a starting point for discussion, and the discussion can take any forms that the readership would find interesting.
by mathgeek | 2025-08-30 12:39:16+00:00
> In my experience it’s much better to spend much more time on a target application to a company you’ve researched and maybe reached out to people or met current employees.

This works for some folks, and not for others. Many of us have already exhausted our network, at which point it’s still spray and pray even if you are reaching out directly to folks.

It’s also very different for remote folks vs. folks in the hubs.
by mystifyingpoi | 2025-08-30 12:39:30+00:00
Pretty much. There is a lot to be said about silly HR questions, but this one I consider legit. And after all - if nothing excites you about changing what you are doing for 1/3 of your waking life - just be honest, say "this job is not exciting and I'm already bored and unmotivated from the start". The outcome might be not what you want, though.
by reachableceo | 2025-08-30 12:39:34+00:00
That is what I’m doing with my excess compute , excess fabrication , CNC, laser , 3d printing , reflow oven etc capacity in between hardware revs for my main product. I also bill out my trusted sub contractors.

I validate the compute renters because ITAR. Lots of hostile foreign powers trying to access compute .

My main business is ITAR related , so I have incredibly high security in place already.

We are multi tenant from day zero and have slurm etc in place for accounting reasons for federal contracts etc. we actually are spinning up federal contracting as a service and will do a ShowHN when that launches.

Riches in the niches and the business of business :)
by roenxi | 2025-08-30 12:40:09+00:00
I suspect that is poor advice in general, because if everyone did it it wouldn't work. The ideal way of getting a job is to use personal networks, but as advice it has similar problems - one reason it works so well is because it is a very strong signal that the applicant has resources that a random strong applicant doesn't have.

If someone can do that then they should. But if someone needs advice or information on how to get hired they probably don't have access to the methods that get them the easy hires.

Fun fact for anyone approaching this from a systems thinking perspective: usernamed7's experience is the invisible hand of the market signalling that there are around 450 too many people applying for software positions. Some people are going to have to give up; there is no other way.
by ghaff | 2025-08-30 12:40:14+00:00
I'm unconvinced that reaching out to people you know and know your work--especially if they have hiring authority--isn't a pretty good strategy. In fact, with the arms race of flooding the application process and then the company tossing most of it in the trash essentially at random, I wonder if it isn't the better strategy.

Of course, if you don't have a network, that's probably not a great place to be in absent credentials that make you stand out.
by pjmlp | 2025-08-30 12:41:16+00:00
It definitly could have it, provided someone wrote an ISAPI extension/filter combo for it.

I got to know, because I wrote a complete proxy on top of ISAPI, with callback handlers that could be written in C or Tcl.

On Windows NT and 2000, for our application server based on top of IIS (we had a version on top of Apache as well).
by Brajeshwar | 2025-08-30 12:41:24+00:00
Once upon a time, my personal website, used to be well trafficked. Heck, I got a girlfriend because the analytics counter[1] on my website didn’t stay still but keep increasing. I had to had coffee and show the stats to prove to her that it is not an auto-script, that people actually do visit my website. That that is how I got that girlfriend.

After 20+ years, I have gotten rid of all analytics, comments, SEO-thang, etc. https://brajeshwar.com/2021/brajeshwar.com-2021/

EDIT: It does have the analytics by Cloudflare. My personal website is reporting 30.91K Unique visitors last 30-days. If I include the ones I have separated and earmarked as documentations, archives of old Knowledge Base, etc. in total says 1.05M Pageviews while serving up over 107GB of bandwidth in the last 30 days. Beware, this is Cloudflare and I'm not privy to their details. I'm also going to assume a lot of them are bots these days.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mint_(web_analytics_software)
by nordiknomad1 | 2025-08-30 12:42:22+00:00
@Sammycage

First of all, big congratulations on pulling this off! Creating an HTML rendering app that exports to PDF is no simple task—it’s a massive effort. Thank you for sharing this, I’ll definitely check it out. If you could also provide ready-to-use executables (especially for Windows), that would be a huge help.

Just a small suggestion:

Since you’re well-versed in both C++ and HTML technologies, would you be interested in contributing to wkhtmltopdf? It’s one of the most widely used tools for generating PDFs, especially in Odoo ERP for production websites. Your contribution there would be a tremendous benefit to the community.

Thanks again!
by PretzelPirate | 2025-08-30 12:42:23+00:00
In reality, the outcome doesn't appear to be the result of "pure chaos and randomness" if you ground your tools. Test cases and instructions do a fantastic job of keeping them focused and moving down the right path.

If I see an LLM consistently producing something I don't like, I'll either add the correct behavior to the prompt, or create a tool that will tell it if it messed up or not, and prompt it to call the tool after each major change.
by righthand | 2025-08-30 12:42:52+00:00
> The computer. The Internet. Artificial intelligence. These are military technologies, first and foremost... [0]

If you look at analytics or the internet or military-born technologies as applied to people in capitalism, you are but cattle to be utilized for your full value. In that way you can easily be mathematically whittled down to a statistic. More importantly so that these technologies are a way to control cattle in their currently applied capitalistic state. A tool of capitalism in brief.

As tools of capitalism, analytics are needed if you're trying to run a business. I believe the popularity of analytics on blogs is a conflation between old ideas (guest books/visitor counters) and an effort to make your blog a passive income earner. Analytics allow you to turn your site into a business which you optimize for your visitors. However this totally shifts a website owner's focus from hobby and interest sharing to blog post output optimization.

But the current state is that society values any increase in income as smart and savvy. Even if the entire indie web shuts down analytics, what about the people stuck on Facebook (et al), TikTok, and Twitter being subsumed by analytics? Someone will build a new "cool place" to hang out that will be the next cutting edge marketing platform for media culture, entertainment, etc. I'm not entirely convinced this change will snip at the root in a meaningful way.

[0] https://2ndbreakfast.audreywatters.com/swords-into-plowshare...

(btw that quote and blog post is very beautiful explanation of the root)
by derangedHorse | 2025-08-30 12:43:45+00:00
Arguments like this never work out. There is no agreed upon compensation for being listed. If I didn’t want my site listed by Google and it was listed anyway, I may not think the traffic justifies my subjective “cost” of being listed. There’s also no legal protection against having my publicly accessible site and the title in its html from being shown (as there shouldn’t be).
by vixen99 | 2025-08-30 12:44:00+00:00
Here's one issue. Romania has a really lousy motorway system, what there is of it. I gather that corruption has much to do with this apart from construction difficulties involving the Carpathians. As an example there isn't even a motorway between Bucharest and Brasov (88 miles or 141 km apart), the latter being a favorite destination for tourists and wealthy and not-so wealthy second home owners alike. The trip by car either way is usually a nightmare. I should add that Brasov is one of the major towns of Romania not just a tourist attraction.

To the point! The plight of innumerable isolated rural communities trying to attract decent teachers and conditions for their kids is clear to see. Trains don't cut it. General poverty results with knock-on effects.
by bubblebeard | 2025-08-30 12:44:58+00:00
While I am a little tired of the majority of all news being on the subject of AI, I think it’s important to remember that it is arguably the biggest thing that’s happened to our industry since the Internet. Considering how many areas it can be applied to, and how many different ways it can be used within those individual areas. There is so much to be explored.

Also, no one is forcing us to read about it. I myself do not read much about it. I prefer to explore how to make use of AI within my field on my own, and occasionally I will read a post or article if it seems interesting enough.
by i2go | 2025-08-30 12:45:33+00:00
> Given their non-constructive nature "real" numbers are unsurprisingly totally incompatible with computation.

It is funny you say that when Turing defined Turing machines to compute real numbers (like π for example). In its original definition, a number was computable if its Turing machine did not stop. Which makes sense since π does not have a finite decimal expansion.

Today, we usually define Turing machines to decide problems and a problem is decidable if for every input its Turing machine stops with a ``yes'' or ``no'' answer. I guess this is what makes people think what you said in the quote above. Maybe this definition is more intuitive but this conclusion from it could not be more wrong.

Think about it for a second, if the computable numbers were countable there would be no uncomputable problem (Turing actually used the classic cantor diagonal argument to prove that there were uncomputable numbers)
by anon6362 | 2025-08-30 12:45:38+00:00
Yep. Engineering almost always involves experimenting for suitability of multiple approaches, configurations, and other concerns. Measure, measure, and measure some more while considering nonfunctional requirements/concerns... something no LLM can (yet) do. (I don't hold out hope that there won't soon be some fully-autonomous coding/systems management LLMs that can create a tight Prompt/REPL/Test loop to take requirements and feedback directly from users.)
by Havoc | 2025-08-30 12:45:50+00:00
Bit of a strange argument frankly.

Some sort of "is this resonating with people" signal is I think useful.

Same reason I look at votes on my old comments. If something gets heavily downvoted then it's probably worth relooking at the comment and trying to figure out why. Maybe my comment was just crap. Maybe it was good but just too contrarian for the audience. Maybe it was ambiguous. Either way there is usually something to be learned from strong signals - both upvotes and down.

There is probably a tendency to overengineer this though. Chances are the default analytics page on your CDN provider is entirely adequate for above basic signal.
by bradfa | 2025-08-30 12:47:03+00:00
As the grid moves away from physical inertia sources and loads, do you think it would be realistic to distribute a grid-wide signal separate from the actual line voltage which could assist non-rotating power sources to stay in sync or at least help reduce the chances of oscillation?

The easiest is probably radio or satellite broadcasts but the topology of the grid, which does change, would also have to be considered. Probably not an easy problem to solve simply?
by akoboldfrying | 2025-08-30 12:47:09+00:00
>You can try to rules-lawyer your way around commonly-understood definitions

Despite your assertions to the contrary, "actually free to use for any purpose" is a commonly understood interpretation of "free to use for any purpose" -- see permissive software licenses, where licensors famously don't get to say "But I didn't mean big companies get to use it for free too!"

The onus is on the person using a term like "free" or "open" to clarify the restrictions they actually intend, if any. Putting the onus anywhere else immediately opens the way for misunderstandings, accidental or otherwise.

To make your concert analogy actually fit: A scraper is like a company that sends 1000 robots with tape recorders to your "open to the public" concert. They do only the things an ordinary member of the public do; they can't do anything else. The most "damage" they can do is to keep humans who would enjoy the concert from being able to attend if there aren't enough seats; whatever additional costs they cause (air conditioning, let's say) are the same as the costs that would have been incurred by that many humans.
by sarchertech | 2025-08-30 12:47:11+00:00
I mean to some extent sure. But also you need to respect expertise and experience. So much of what we do is subjective, and neither side going to have hard data to support their arguments.

If it comes down to someone saying “I’ve been doing this for 30 years, I’ve shipped something very similar 5 times, and we ran into a problem with x each time”. Unless you have similar counter experience, you should probably just listen.

What happens in tech is you get a very specific kind of junior who wants to have HN comment arguments at work constantly and needs you to prove every single thing to them. I don’t know man it’s a style guide. There’s not going to be hard quantitative evidence to support why we said you shouldn’t reach for macros first.
by zero-sharp | 2025-08-30 12:47:53+00:00
You encounter abusive language/notation basically everywhere in math. Open up a calculus/real analysis textbook. A lot of the old ones write sequences in the curly brace/set {x_n} notation:

"let {x_n} be a sequence"

As the author points out, a sequence is a function. The statement {x_n} is the set of terms of the sequence, its range. A function and its range are two different things. And also sets have no ordering. It might seem like a minor thing, but I thought we were trying to be precise?

A second example: at the high school level, I'm pretty sure a lot of textbooks don't carefully distinguish between a function and the formula defining the function very well.

The author of this web page has a section on what he calls "double duty definitions". Personally, I don't find anything wrong with the language "let G=(V,E) be a graph". G is the graph and we're simultaneously defining/naming its structure. So, some of this is a matter of taste. And, to some extent, you just have to get used to the way mathematicians write.
by rvz | 2025-08-30 12:48:45+00:00
> In my experience it’s much better to spend much more time on a target application to a company you’ve researched and maybe reached out to people or met current employees.

This is a much better approach and while others say that it doesn't work for them or it worked for them, well that is the point.

It is meant to give you an unfair advantage to anyone else applying to the same role who is applying straight through the jobs page which there are too many applicants.

This is why employers fast-track applicant referrals rather than go through the typical jobs page as the latter is their last resort ONLY IF there are no internal hires, referrals or existing employees that can fill the role.
by xpe | 2025-08-30 12:49:30+00:00
You aren’t specifying your point of comparison. A nightmare relative to what? You might be saying a nightmare relative to what we have now. Are you?

We once considered text to be generated exclusively by humans, but this assumption must be tossed out now.

I usually reject arguments based on an assumption of some status quo that somehow just continues.

Why? I’ll give two responses, which are similar but use different language.

1. There is a fallacy where people compare a future state to the present state, but this is incorrect. One has to compare two future states, because you don’t get to go back in time.

2. The “status quo” isn’t necessarily a stable equilibrium. The state of things now is not necessarily special nor guaranteed.

I’m now of the inclination to ask for a supporting model (not just one rationale) for any prediction, even ones that seem like common sense. Common sense can be a major blind spot.
Show HN: I built an open-source CSV importer that I wish existed
by aray07 | 2025-08-30 12:49:38+00:00
At my previous startup, CSV import was make-or-break for customer onboarding. We built the first version in three days. Then reality hit: Windows-1252 encoding, European date formats, embedded newlines, phone numbers in five different formats.

We rebuilt that importer multiples over the next six months. Our onboarding completion rate dropped 40% at the import step because users couldn't fix errors without starting over.

The real problem isn't parsing (PapaParse is excellent). It's everything after: mapping "Customer Email" to your "email" field, validating business rules, and letting users fix errors inline.

Flatfile and OneSchema solve this but won't show pricing publicly. Most open source tools only handle pieces of the workflow.

ImportCSV handles the complete flow: Upload → Parse → Map → Validate → Transform → Preview → Submit. Everything runs client-side by default. Your data never leaves the browser. This is critical for sensitive customer data - you can audit the code, self-host, and guarantee that PII stays on your infrastructure. The frontend is MIT licensed.

Technical approach

We use fuzzy matching + sample data analysis for column mapping. If a column contains @ symbols, it's probably email.

For validation errors, users can fix them inline in a spreadsheet interface - no need to edit the CSV and start over. Virtual scrolling (@tanstack/react-virtual) handles 100,000+ rows smoothly.

The interesting part: when AI is enabled, GPT-4.1 maps columns accurately and enables natural language transforms like "fix all phone numbers" or "split full names into first and last". LLMs are good at understanding messy, semi-structured data.

GitHub: https://github.com/importcsv/importcsv Playground: https://docs.importcsv.com/playground Demo (90 sec): https://youtube.com/shorts/Of4D85txm30

What's the worst CSV you've had to import?
by barnabee | 2025-08-30 12:49:54+00:00
If you have 15 years experience as the OP does and you’re trying to get a job by replying to “public” postings on the internet, you’re probably making your life harder than it needs to be and missing out on the best opportunities.

If you can, getting a job through personal connections and networking has always yielded the best results for both parties in my experience. In 20 years, only my first graduate job didn’t come this way.

I also saw no mention of speaking to an actual recruiter/headhunter, which is the only way other than the aforementioned personal intros and networking that I/we have hired anyone with 15 years of experience that I can remember.

I’m not surprised it took 450 attempts.
by westurner | 2025-08-30 12:50:45+00:00
> Introduction.—Usually demonstrated by simple counting arguments involving urns and balls, Bayes’ rule has actually been argued to play a much deeper role in probability theory and logic, as the only consistent system for updating one’s beliefs in light of new evidence [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6]. As an alternative to the above axiomatic approach, Bayes’ rule can also be derived from a variational argument: the updated belief should be consistent with the new observations while deviating as little as possible from the initial belief. This is known as the minimum change principle [7, 8, 9, 10]. It formalizes the intuition that the new information should be incorporated into the agent’s knowledge in the “least committal” way, e.g. without introducing biases unwarranted by the data. Such fundamental insights can be seen as at least a motivation, if not an explanation, for the extraordinary effectiveness of Bayesian statistical inference in virtually all areas of knowledge.

I feel like Bayes' rule is oversold though.

Is just Bayes' rule good enough for fighting spam email, for example?

How large of a Bayesian belief network is necessary to infer the equations of n-body gravity in a fluid, without other fields?

How large of a Bayesian belief network is necessary to extrapolate the motions of the planets?

Then also predict - with resource costs - the perihelion of Mercury; the deviation in the orbit of Mercury predicted by General Relativity and also the Gross-Pitaevskii equation which describes turbulent vortical fluids.

Then also - with Bayesians or a Bayesian belief network - predict the outcomes in (fluidic nonlinear) n-body gravity experiments.

Do Bayesian models converge at lowest cost given randomly initialized arbitrary priors? Do Bayesian models converge at lowest cost at describing nonlinear complex adaptive systems?

How do Bayesians compare to other methods for function approximation and nonlinear function approximation?

How do quantum Bayesians compare to other methods for function approximation and nonlinear function approximation?
by kmacdough | 2025-08-30 12:51:01+00:00
IPv4 vs IPv6 seems like a great example for why to keep it simple. Even given decades to learn from the success of IPv4 and almost a decade in design and refinement, IPv6 has flopped hard, not so much because of limitations of IPv4, but because IPv6 isn't backwards compatable and created excessive hardware requirements that basically require an entirely parallel IPv6 routing infrastructure to be maintained in addition to IPv4 infrastructure which isn't going away soon. It solved too far ahead for problems we aren't having.

As is IPv4s simplicity got us incredibly far and it turns out NAT and CIDR have been quite effective at alleviating address exhaustion. With some address reallocation and future protocol extensions, its looking entirely possible that a successor was never needed.