MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by phantomics | 2025-08-24 16:02:47+00:00
Hi everyone, developer here. Seed is not abandoned but its original codebase has been; it is now in the process of being rebuilt. You can check on its progress in the revival branch of the repo.

Here is a quick video demo of the old Seed: https://vimeo.com/237947324?fl=pl&fe=sh

You can see my LispNYC presentation of it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nnec6_7PWkc

In my initial attempt at Seed I didn't yet understand Common Lisp well enough. That's part of the reason I wrote the April APL compiler between now and then, to gain enough understanding of the fundamentals to pursue such a comprehensive project.

The original Seed was based on React.js for the frontend and attempted to bypass textual Lisp programming as much as possible. This was an ambitions goal and React wasn't the right fit for such a project; it's a heavy system that's undergone rapid development over the years and Seed needs something that's lighter and can function more as a simple outgrowth of the underlying Lisp code. The current Seed codebase uses HTMX and Alpine.js as its main frontend tools, and the model also isn't tightly coupled to browser interfaces; it could later be possible to build terminal UIs and desktop interfaces with the same set of UI classes.

Regarding CLOG, Seed and CLOG are both interface-oriented projects but beyond that they're quite different. The idea of CLOG is a toolkit to specify interfaces with CL; it offers you many elements you can build into interface. The idea of Seed is to extend the manifestation of symbolic expressions beyond text, to have list structures that manifest interface elements that a person can interact with to create and modify programs.

For instance, you can have a series of CL function calls that perform transformations on an image, like lightening or blurring it. Using Seed's model, this list of function calls can be represented in a user interface similar to the layer lists seen in graphics software like GIMP and Photoshop. With the right combination of interface elements it could eventually be possible to duplicate the functionality of these image editing tools in a general-purpose programming platform. It would be like building GIMP into Emacs with the ability to instantly open, edit, and save a changed version of any drawing tool and have it show up in the toolbar.

This model guides the development of both the user interface and the underlying Lisp code, so it's about more than building an interface toolkit. It's about the UI as the outgrowth of the underlying software structure.

Feel free to drop more questions here.
by exe34 | 2025-08-24 16:03:43+00:00
> We tried ideology driven energy policy in Europe and it hasn't gone well. We phased out nuclear power plants (because nuclear = bad) while doubling down on Russian gas dependency (because trade = peace). Clearly this has gone poorly and it will take Europe a decade to strengthen its energy sovereignty again.

what I don't understand is how this was obvious to me 20 years ago as a teenager, but European leaders just somehow thought it was a good idea. Was it just "a lucky guess" on my part? it was just so obvious that when you tolerate and interact with narcissists as if their behaviour was acceptable, they will simply escalate their behaviour. I was also critical of ties with the Chinese government and I was told I was just paranoid/racist. today we suddenly realise oh that was a bad idea, the leopards are chewing on our faces.

I reckon the rich and powerful saw it coming alright and they just figured they'd make bank before it got to the point they'd have to send the kids of poor people to war.
by vips7L | 2025-08-24 16:04:15+00:00
> Java’s memory model implies and requires the JVM to insert atomic accesses all over the place you wouldn’t expect (eg reading an integer field of a class is an atomic read and writing it is an atomic write).

AFAIK that doesn’t really happen. They won’t insert atomic accesses anywhere on real hardware because the cpu is capable of doing that atomically anyway.

> Additionally, a lot of Java code declares methods synchronized which requires taking a “global” lock on the object which is expensive and pessimistic for performance as compared with the fine-grained access other languages offer.

What does this have to do with anything? Concurrency requires locks. Arc<T> is a global lock on references. “A lot” of Java objects don’t use synchronized. I’d even bet that 95-99% of them don’t.
by fastball | 2025-08-24 16:04:30+00:00
Which of these definitions do you think supports your case?

The most relevant Merriam Webster definition, which is actually under "censor (verb)", I reproduce here:

> to examine in order to suppress (see suppress sense 2) or delete anything considered objectionable

Piracy is not typically considered bad due to being "objectionable", it is considered bad because many people/societies consider it equivalent to theft. You can obviously stretch the definition of objectionable to mean that, but it is on you to demonstrate that is a reasonable stretch. Blocking out sex scenes from a movie and removing pirated materials are obviously different actions, and this definition clearly refers to the former.
by mindslight | 2025-08-24 16:04:43+00:00
Trump had clear mental problems the first time around though, and the refrain that Biden was old and demented started well before it became a "real" topic in the election/media.

It feels like I've been hearing the word gerontocracy for years, but the problem is that real criticism lands asymmetrically on the conservatives (democrats), and ends up supporting the fascists as a desire for change - even when the fascist approach is to shamelessly embrace what's being criticized. [0]

So sure, now that the manic-combative demented guy is in office running amok (with his army of enablers who are just eager to see our society burn), the criticism starts landing on the newly incumbent administration. But apart from swaying a few voters, I don't see it developing into a larger shared understanding that maybe the past decade of Presidents and Senators/Reps was a grave mistake.

> we also could've had an open Democratic primary and probably avoided this entire situation

100% agreed on that. What a clusterfuck of shitty occurrences all adding up to one terrible path.

[0] tangentially that's why the fascist movement is a clown car of conflicting "anti-establishment" talking heads. It has united all of the "skeptical questioning" movements under one tent, even though the desired thrusts of those movements directly conflict with each other.
by TowerTall | 2025-08-24 16:05:15+00:00
I am from Denmark and there is windmills everywhere. They are really dominant when you are driving around in the countryside and it is ok. Has gotten used to seeing then pop up everywhere past many years. The only thing that annoys me are the windmills they have placed in the ocean. The really spoil the view and they could have placed them beyound the horizon. I suspect the reason why they are not beyond the horizon is due to marketing. Denmark is a huge manufactor of windmills and I suspect the government and those manufactors decided to place so they could be seen from the shore in order to put the windmill on display. When they first start to build them not many countries had these large windmills and a marketing show room was needed and ruining the ocean view was deemed a nesseary evil. I am all for renewable energy, but pretty are windmills not
by const_cast | 2025-08-24 16:05:27+00:00
Well that's because AR and VR are strictly worse for most use cases as compared to traditional human computer interfaces.

The mouse, keyboard, and monitor is pretty much just right. Highly productive, you can go super fast, with extreme information density.

VR and AR are obviously much slower to navigate because physical worlds are slow to navigate and that's what they're mimicing. We might assume a 3D world has more information density than a 2D screen... But 90% of the time it doesn't. I don't have eyes on the back of my head. And, usually, I'm going to be staring at a 2D thing.
by chiefalchemist | 2025-08-24 16:06:39+00:00
Imagine not being able to look at things abstractly; to use a different lens. And instead being lazy and taking everything simply at face value, as is, as it’s spoon fed to you.

The correct reply was: “Yes. Via that lens it makes me wonder if there are not other similar catalysts that we’ve been missing.”

Sorry mate. Small ideas from small minds don’t excite me. Have a nice day.
by cma | 2025-08-24 16:07:36+00:00
If they had it multithreaded, the execution ports could be used on the other threads while one thread is affected by RAM latency.

And if there is a pointer chasey task that isn't utilizing all of the core and is waiting on memory and data dependencies, often that just makes threading a bigger win, 16 threads doing pointer chases instead of one if you aren't memory bandwidth bound.
by pdonis | 2025-08-24 16:07:44+00:00
> I would say at least the hard sciences are characterized by their extremely accurate predictive models.

Parts of them are. General relativity and quantum mechanics have been extensively tested within the domains we are able to test, and so yes, we have mountains of evidence as to the predictive models built using those general theories in those domains. And in cases where those domains extend into people's everyday lives (I gave the example of GPS upthread), the predictive accuracy of the models is now a matter of common knowledge.

But that's only part of "science", even "hard science". See further comments below.

> Are you thinking of maybe string theory specifically?

String theory is one example of the problem, but certainly not the only one.

> it's not right to generalise from it to the whole of physics, let alone all current science

I think you have it backwards. The wrong generalization is to think that, because certain parts of our best current "hard sciences" have predictive models whose accuracy has been confirmed by mountains of evidence, that that's the norm. It's not. The predictive models we have based on GR and QM in certain domains are the exception, not the rule; they're the lucky cases where we've been able to run many, many controlled experiments, or where the domains are simple enough that we've been able to get Nature to give us lots of useful evidence (for example, we can now measure GR corrections to the basic Newtonian model of the solar system to fairly high order).

But most of what is called "science", even "hard science", is not like that. Not only do we not have predictive models of anything like the same accuracy, in many cases we don't even have predictive models at all. More important, the science doesn't get judged on whether it has predictive models. It gets judged on how plausible the pronouncements of "experts" sound.
by jimmydorry | 2025-08-24 16:07:48+00:00
> Power usage spikes during the day. Well guess what? That's when solar power production happens. So adding significant solar power production to your electricity mix will decrease the baseline power needed from other sources

Wrong, actually. At least in Australia, peak energy is in the late afternoon when everyone comes home, around 6pm. The other peak is in the morning around 7am. These are times when solar is not producing significantly, meanwhile it makes baseload unviable during the day.
by ChrisMarshallNY | 2025-08-24 16:08:33+00:00
I agree. Their LLMed English is much better than my Chinese.

Also, some of the very worst English I've ever read, has been technical prose, written by born-and-bred native English speakers with very high educational credentials.

Clear communication is important. The best idea on Earth, is worthless, if it can't be articulated well.
by delusional | 2025-08-24 16:08:34+00:00
> We tried ideology driven energy policy in Europe and it hasn't gone well. We phased out nuclear power plants (because nuclear = bad)

Maybe that was the discussion where you're from, what do i know. Where I'm from we had a honest political debate about nuclear, and the public decided on no. It wasn't because of "ideology". We discussed the safety, the waste challenge, and everything else.
by prmph | 2025-08-24 16:08:45+00:00
> The narrative part of your brain will twist your recollection of the past so it fits with your beliefs and makes you feel good.

But that's what I mean. Even if we accept that the brain has "twisted" something, that twisting is the reality. In order words, it is TRUE that my brain has twisted something into something else (and not another thing) for me to experience.
by _fat_santa | 2025-08-24 16:09:44+00:00
IMO the only place you should use Agentic AI is where you can easily rollback changes that the AI makes. Best example here is asking AI to build/update/debug some code. You can ask it to make changes but all those changes are relatively safe since you can easily rollback with git.

Using agentic AI for web browsing where you can't easily rollback an action is just wild to me.
by phatskat | 2025-08-24 16:09:58+00:00
Technically then they aren’t wrong to equate this to the USSR - it’s important to remember that both china and Russia are “transitioning” to communism, although both are kind of stuck in the in between phase where the people who should be ushering in that change found instead that they can wield authoritarian power to enrich themselves and subjugate others.

Other side of things is you’re absolutely correct that this feels like a fascism, which is what this administration continues to feel like…over and over and over and over again
by ModernMech | 2025-08-24 16:10:40+00:00
> Areas in which it served as the pillar of the economy need to figure something else out. I say this as someone hailing from one such area.

Old steel towns had to do this, coal country might look to them for a model on how to leave a dying industry behind. But seeing how they vote, they might not like the answer for what it takes to survive:

Pittsburgh PA - famous former steel town, faced very uncertain economic future after the mills closed, now a booming metropolis with top industry leaders in education, healthcare, sports, finance. What did it take? A dedication to multiculturalism and diversity. Pittsburgh would have died without embracing the global economy and attracting doctors, professors, students, entertainers, and athletes from all over the world to visit, live, and grow a family.

Cleveland OH - once one of America's great manufacturing hubs, powered by steel mills, car parts, and shipping along Lake Erie. When industry collapsed, Cleveland faced deep decline, job losses, shrinking population, even bankruptcy in the 1970s. But today it's finding new strength as a center of healthcare, research, and culture.

Then you look at places like Youngstown OH. Unlike Pittsburgh or Cleveland, Youngstown struggled to reinvent itself. Population plummeted, tax bases collapsed, and poverty took hold. The city became a symbol of the Rust Belt's hardest struggles. What held it back? Overreliance on steel, limited diversification, and waves of outmigration left too few resources to rebuild. What are they doing today to fix things? Healthcare and education. Should have started a lot sooner.

One more example is Bethlehem PA, another former steel town that now has top industries in healthcare, education, and also some manufacturing.

So that's the model. If you're a dying town with an industry that's shrivveling up due to changing economic conditions, the model to survive is to quickly pivot to healthcare, education, and entertainment, and to invite a bunch of outsiders into your community with open arms.

And that is the main problem these dying coal regions have, because looking at how they vote, embracing healthcare, education, entertainment, and diversity is the last thing they want to do. You look at what the people who they voted for are doing with their power, they're attacking healthcare, attacking education, and attacking diversity sometimes violently, but always unrelentingly. So the Pittsburgh model is off the table, and they'll have to find another way from the abyss of failed post-industrial policy.
by delusional | 2025-08-24 16:10:59+00:00
It was also obvious to all my friends when I was a teenager in 2008 that being friends with America was a bad idea. That also turned out to be right.

All we would have had to do was have no allies for the past ~60 years, and we would have never gotten burned. We also would have been entirely irrelavant to international politics, and likely wouldn't have become one of the richest nations on earth.

World politics is like love. It's better to have had a productive alliance that hits a rough patch, than never to have had one at all.
by rramadass | 2025-08-24 16:11:19+00:00
With VC++/MFC, Microsoft wrest control of PC Programming Tools leadership from Borland. MFC was a true game changer (and later ATL too) and the VC++ IDE with wizards and integrated debugger was the icing on the cake. As i said you had to go through the pain of doing everything tediously and laboriously by hand in Win16/32 SDK to really appreciate what a paradigm shift programming with MFC was.

MFC was no dumbed down application framework but a higher level OO abstraction on top of Win16/32 SDK. It is one of the largest and most successful application frameworks in the industry. You had to learn its own concepts and architecture which were somewhat complex and had a steep learning curve but the payoff was excellent. I remember going through all the MFC Tech Notes from MSDN and poring over the "MFC Internals" book to get insight into its design and techniques. You learnt how to modulate OOD/OOP principles in service of practical implementations. Two good examples are; 1) Making all member variables of framework classes "public" (!) in order to allow the developer to drop back to Win16/32 SDK as needed and not be constrained by the application framework 2) The technique of MESSAGE_MAPS to avoid vtable memory blowup but still provide virtual function like functionality.

When i see kids on HN badmouth OOD/OOP and specifically Inheritance for code reuse via application frameworks for skeleton apps, i just shake my head and control the urge to smack them up the side of the head :-) They have been so spoiled with all the powerful application frameworks/libraries available today they simply have no idea of the design effort it took to come up with these frameworks/libraries but take everything for granted.
by jraph | 2025-08-24 16:11:35+00:00
Your reply is dead. None of us two are doing what you say. I'm not hating anybody or anything here, and stating it even less.

There must be some big misunderstanding here.

The other commenter only corrected something I wrote that was technically wrong and I read their comment as quite neutral. And my initial comment was an answer to what actually felt undeserved and misplaced hate. I was pushing back hate.
by miiiiiike | 2025-08-24 16:11:40+00:00
Depends on the workload.

I spent a few grand building a new machine with a 24-core CPU. And, while my gcc Docker builds are MUCH faster, the core Angular app still builds a few seconds slower than on my years old MacBook Pro. Even with all of my libraries split into atoms, built with Turbo, and other optimizations.

6-10 seconds to see a CSS change make its way from the editor to the browser is excruciating after a few hours, days, weeks, months, and years.
by JumpCrisscross | 2025-08-24 16:12:04+00:00
> segregation at the polles

I disagree with it. But I think it is worth discussing.

We don’t have universal suffrage. The most-successful democracies in history never did. In our day-to-day lives and commerce we weigh opinions based on their source. And the current system isn’t working, in many cases because the majority votes for something stupid.
by AnotherGoodName | 2025-08-24 16:12:04+00:00
One of the biggest improvements recently is battery tech. Many countries are 10x'ing the GWh of battery capacity in the next couple of years without any real government drive.

https://elements.visualcapitalist.com/top-20-countries-by-ba...

This is one thing that actually prevents the power price spikes since the batteries can jump in to cover gaps. I can quote many installations that have completely paid themselves off in 2 years (see hornsdale battery as an example - one year of operation alone, 2020, generated profit of half its initial $90million cost) and while this 2 year payoff will come down as more and more are installed part of the reason the payoff is going down is due to power price costs becoming more and more steady as more batteries are installed.

Even the USA is installing massive amounts of capacity right now. Look at Texas - 3x battery capacity available in 2025 compared to 2024 due to massive installations coming online and they are a state that does not do a lot to support renewables at all. There's no stopping it, it doesn't need subsidies and it's one of the most straightforward capital payoffs available right now.

I actually think the predictions in the article won't come to fruition honestly. The battery installation rise is dominating the investment landscape right now and it's completely flown under the radar without any political controversy (no things such as questionable media trying to claim battery banks are somehow bad for our health and should be stopped) nor are there subsidies required.
by SoftTalker | 2025-08-24 16:12:15+00:00
> computer hardware which is unlikely to be reused and will historically need to be replaced every 24-36 months

That seems unreasonably short. My work computer is 10 years old (which is admittedly the other extreme, and far past the lifecycle policy, but it does what I need it to do and I just never really think about replacing it).
by pdonis | 2025-08-24 16:12:38+00:00
> How can you determine whether it makes accurate predictions?

See the example I gave of GPS upthread. Does your smartphone tell you where you are accurately? That's the kind of test I'm talking about.

If you're talking about a domain where you can't make that kind of test--then it's not a domain you care about enough for the test to matter.

> The idea that we can live without authority is nonsense.

No, it isn't. "Authority" means accepting what someone says without applying critical thinking. That is a recipe for disaster.

It's true that not accepting what anyone says as an authority requires you to have critical thinking skills, and many people in our current society don't have them. Unfortunately, that doesn't change the fact that not applying critical thinking to what everyone says, no matter how much of an "authority" they claim to be, is a recipe for disaster. So if you don't currently have critical thinking skills, my advice would be to learn them.

> Institutions exist to help makes this possible, even if they are not infallible

It's true that institutions can help, if they can establish a track record of being trustworthy, and if they can then resist the temptation to misuse that trustworthiness when the stakes are high enough.

Unfortunately, no such institutions have ever existed in human history for any significant length of time. Every institution that has claimed such trustworthiness has abused it, usually at the worst possible time for those who were trusting it.
by KritVutGu | 2025-08-24 16:13:12+00:00
> Otherwise, what’s the harm in saying AI guides you to the solution if you can attest to it being a good solution?

For one: it threatens to make an entire generation of programmers lazy and stupid. They stop exercising their creative muscle. Writing and reviewing are different activities; both should be done continuously.

This is perfectly observable with a foreign language. If you stop actively using a foreign language after learning it really well, your ability to speak it fades pretty quickly, while your ability to understand it fades too, but less quickly.