MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
Show HN: SwiftAI – open-source library to easily build LLM features on iOS/macOS
by mi12-root | 2025-08-28 13:51:51+00:00
We built SwiftAI, an open-source Swift library that lets you use Apple’s on-device LLMs when available (Apple opened access in June), and fall back to a cloud model when they aren’t available — all without duplicating code.

SwiftAI gives you: - A single, model-agnostic API - An agent/tool loop - Strongly-typed structured outputs - Optional chat state

Backstory: We started experimenting with Apple’s local models because they’re free (no API calls), private, and work offline. The problem: not all devices support them (older iPhones, Apple Intelligence disabled, low battery, etc.). That meant writing two codepaths — one for local, one for cloud — and scattering branching logic across the app. SwiftAI centralizes that decision. Your feature code stays the same whether you’re on-device or cloud.

Example

import SwiftAI let llm: any LLM = SystemLLM.ifAvailable ?? OpenaiLLM(model: "gpt-5-mini", apiKey: "<key>") let response = try await llm.reply(to: "Write a haiku about Hacker News") print(response.content)

It's open source — we'd love for you to try it, break it, and help shape the roadmap. Join our discord / slack or email us at root@mit12.dev.

Links

- GitHub (source, docs): https://github.com/mi12labs/SwiftAI

- System Design: https://github.com/mi12labs/SwiftAI/blob/main/Docs/Proposals...

- Swift Package Index (compat/builds): https://swiftpackageindex.com/mi12labs/SwiftAI

- Discord https://discord.com/invite/ckfVGE5r and slack https://mi12swiftai.slack.com/join/shared_invite/zt-3c3lr6da...
by sc68cal | 2025-08-28 13:51:56+00:00
Bitnami has a number of docker images that are returned by search results (https://hub.docker.com/r/bitnami/redis-sentinel was one that I came across a while ago), and even before this I was concerned about how their images keep getting returned by search results.

I thought I was paranoid, not wanting to have containers that rely on an organization that I didn't know much about (I didn't know that Bitnami was part of Broadcom/VMW), but this just proves my worries were well founded.
by Springtime | 2025-08-28 13:52:10+00:00
I think there are a few main contentions:

- The requirement, unless I'm mistaken, would tie a real-world identity of the developer to an app, who may wish to keep that separate from a pseudonym they may normally release things with.

- Unwillingness to give Google PII or just not tie a particular pseudonymous identity to that PII on Google.

- It puts absolute control in Google's hands for whether any app is allowed to run on most devices. There may be concerns about the types of decisions that may arise from this, not merely from recognized malware. Certain governments may ask Google to regulate apps allowed on such devices via this approach.

- Once this globally rolls out in 2027 it will mean the audience for apps from devs who don't agree to this will shrink dramatically. Only those presumably with AOSP based custom ROMs will be able to use those apps which may have a knock-on effect for dev motivation.
by ryanryke | 2025-08-28 13:52:16+00:00
Thanks for responding. I love these conversations.

>1) How? If you want me to try something, either big "TRY ME" unless it involves becoming a client which that case, I see you as replacing me so my motivation is zero. :D

To be clear, I don't see this as having the capability to replace engineers. This is a new way to interact with your infrastructure.

But it also feeds into larger AI conversations as well. (probably out of scope for this conversation :) )

> This blog post reads, we have this great new Windows Server thing that will blow your Linux Server stuff away completely with GUI and Siri.

Now you crossed a line :D

Jokes aside, there is a HUGE community in the TF and now OT space, you can't argue that. The ecosystem of third-party tools to help support workflows is gigantic. Putting all of that aside, will that be the best way forever? I'm not saying that SI will replace either one of those, but I would say it's a new and refreshing way to tackle a similar problem space.

>2) I'm on Azure Sorry ;-P
by schiffern | 2025-08-28 13:52:25+00:00
>and that’s the best you can do

Even if the e-Gas production process is 100% efficient (and it very much is not), you're still throwing away 40-70% of the energy depending on the type of engine. This compares very poorly to a battery drivetrain which achieves 90+% round-trip efficiency.

For cars and trucks at least, scaling battery manufacturing is simply a much easier challenge vs more-than-tripling the required size of the entire fleet's renewable energy supply.

E-Gas can't compete on land, even assuming e-Gas converters were free and 100% efficient. This isn't a matter of waiting for the tech to get better and become The Sustainable Future, it's already been made obsoleted by electric cars.
by fifticon | 2025-08-28 13:52:27+00:00
The scope of TFA is data modelling, where it advises to use more descriptive data values, such as enums or happenedAtTimestamp.

However, personally I agree with the advice, in another context: Function return types, and if-statements.

Often, some critical major situation or direction is communicated with returned booleans. They will indicate something like 'did-optimizer-pass-succeed-or-run-to-completion-or-finish', stuff like that. And this will determine how the program proceeds next (retry, abort, continue, etc.)

A problem arises when multiple developers (maybe yourself, in 3 months) need to communicate about and understand this correctly.

Sometimes, that returned value will mean 'function-was-successful'. Sometimes it means 'true if there were problems/issues' (the way to this perspective, is when the function is 'checkForProblems'/verify/sanitycheck() ).

Another way to make confusion with this, is when multiple functions are available to plug in or proceed to call - and people assume they all agree on "true is OK, false is problems" or vice versa.

A third and maybe most important variant, is when 'the return value doesn't quite mean what you thought'. - 'I thought it meant "a map has been allocated".' - but it means 'a map exists' (but has not necesarily been allocated, if it was pre-existing).

All this can be attacked with two-value enums, NO_CONVERSION_FAILED=0, YES_CONVERSION_WAS_SUCCESFUL=1 . (and yes, I see the peril in putting 0 and 1 there, but any value will be dangerous..)
by kamranjon | 2025-08-28 13:52:34+00:00
I would hope that there would be some possibility for folks like this to utilize platforms like Patreon or GitHub sponsorships to help pay their bills - they are obviously motivated and productive coders and also talented writers.

In my experience there is sort of a discrepancy often times. Someone discloses a severe mental health diagnosis and the company just goes on pretending they are just like every other employee - making no changes to accommodate them.

On the flip side, employees with severe mental health disorders often want to be treated exactly the same as other employees - so it seems a bit of an un-winnable situation.
by eyegor | 2025-08-28 13:52:38+00:00
I've used them as a quick way to get rootless configured base images. Not sure if official repos provide those now, but it used to be a big hassle to get things like postgres images running without root in their containers. Although I often had to read through their dockerfiles to figure out the uid setup, where configs live, etc because they were not consistent between the various bitnami images.
by geoffmanning | 2025-08-28 13:53:03+00:00
That argument doesn't hold water. It's best practice for offline first PWAs to not require sign up when you get started. Unless there is ever a feature to sync across devices or cross users, there is no reason to EVER sign up, and even then, you can make signing up something they do AFTER they decide to keep using your app and realize they do in fact want syncing.
by ada1981 | 2025-08-28 13:53:12+00:00
Hey thanks for asking.

BioMythic is something we’ve always gifted to the community as a way for folks to gain group access to some of the same tools that our 1:1 coaching clients get access to in our Alchemy program (which is also waitlisted / full as of now).

We work with all sorts of folks, including founders who both seem to be a large part of the YC community and who often face incredibly challenging mental and emotional obstacles that are unique.

I’ve personally overcome and healed using these tools and would like to help prevent other people from the time and pain I went through, and to prevent us losing any more creative visionaries.

I hope that clarifies things.
by StopDisinfo910 | 2025-08-28 13:53:17+00:00
Google is probably doing what everyone else is doing. The entry level managerial positions are being eliminated by pretending the people doing the work are not actually manager and are therefore paid less.

It’s reached ridiculous proportions in some companies I have worked for. I have seen transversal project managers and delivery leads in charge of up to 80 persons sometimes with an intermediate level of management actually reporting to them but not directly attached to them be paid as IC.

It gets even more funny because some positions in said companies doing a lot less management but occupied by people who suck up a lot are actually considered managerial.

Most modern big companies are completely f* up. The only reason we don’t see more disruption is regulatory capture.
by the__alchemist | 2025-08-28 13:53:19+00:00
I read an article with the same premise here a few years ago.

A Boolean is a special, universal case of an enum (or whatever you prefer to call these choice types...) that is semantically valid for many uses.

I'm also an enum fanboy, and agree with the article's examples. It's conclusion of not using booleans because enums are more appropriate in some cases is wrong.

Some cases are good uses of booleans. If you find a Boolean isn't semantically clear, or you need a third variant, then move to an enum.
by oersted | 2025-08-28 13:53:21+00:00
Paper authors (and this posts author apparently) like to throw in lots of scary-looking maths to signal that they are smart and that what they are doing has merit. The Reinforcement Learning field is particularly notorious for doing this, but it's all over ML. Often it is not on purpose, everyone is taught this is the proper "formal" way to express these things, and that any other representation is not precise or appropriate in a scientific context.

In practice, when it comes down to code, even without higher-level libraries, it is surprisingly simple, concise and intuitive.

Most of the math elements used have quite straightforward properties and utility, but of course if you combine them all together into big expressions with lots of single-character variables, it's really hard to understand for everyone. You kind of need to learn to squint your eyes and understand the basic building-blocks that the maths represent, but that shouldn't be necessary if it wasn't obfuscated like this.
by rayiner | 2025-08-28 13:53:43+00:00
Have you read the book? “Manufacturing Consent” is about how incentive structures align to achieve the effect of coordinated propaganda without actual formal coordination. The classic example offered in the book is establishment media giving favorable treatment to information leaked by the White House in order to ensure future information coming their way.

24 isn’t an example of “Manufacturing Consent” because there’s no alignment of interests of incentive structure. It’s an example of a different thing, that is an underlying cultural pattern that’s reflected both in media and foreign policy. Americans love their heroes to shove weenie bureaucrats in the locker. 24 is just Dirty Harry in a more contemporary law enforcement setting.
by Workaccount2 | 2025-08-28 13:54:23+00:00
The only reason to have a local model right now is for privacy and hobby.

The economics are awful and local model performance is pretty lackluster by comparison. Never mind much slower and narrower context length.

$6,000 is 2.5 years of a $200/mo subscription. And in 2.5 years that $6k setup will likely be equivalent to a $1k setup of the time.
by sharpshadow | 2025-08-28 13:54:50+00:00
In my opinion there is still a lot to discover around the manipulation of the environment of plants. Generally speaking its the milieu which has the primary effect on life. Genetic manipulation and environment settings should be applied together to find very specific appliances.

Very intriguing is the Primeval Code[0] in which plants and other life exposed to electrostatic fields changed significantly down to the genome.

Would be very interesting which other artificial settings and compositions affect life in which ways.

0. https://rexresearch.com/ebner2/BurginDerUrzeitCode.pdf
by kelipso | 2025-08-28 13:54:59+00:00
It’s political preferences, not laziness. People aren’t listening to Rogan or whoever and ignoring the CDC because of laziness. They are doing that because they follow what their social and/or political community thinks and does.

Feels like this whole thread is trying to pin this on individual preferences or whatever. But it’s a social effect, and individual personalities or intelligence have very little to do with it. If you lived in these communities, unless you are neurodivergent, you would be doing the same thing.
by icameron | 2025-08-28 13:56:26+00:00
I heard about Aircela- a modular gasoline from thin air generator company- from a comment in here earlier this week. It was never discussed in any posts so I looked into it because it sounded fascinating. The details are it costs about $20k for a unit, and one unit can produce about 1 gallon of pure 90 octane gasoline using water and a replaceable catalyst cartridge in a day. And that requires 75 KWh of electricity! On my grid that’s like $15 of power at carbon neutral rates. So it sounds like an amazingly impressive and economical impractical technology.
by utyop22 | 2025-08-28 13:56:34+00:00
Personally I believe we will see some evidence of tacit collusion as it becomes more obvious the capital investments will not generate any returns (let alone surplus value). The only way to control investor sentiment will be for all big tech firms to collectively lie and present fake progress / wishy washy KPIs on earnings calls.

The people who understand corporate finance, valuation and product development can catch this stuff early on.
by tocs3 | 2025-08-28 13:56:37+00:00
I think text with all the words the same length (or one shorter before a period). I asked chatGPT and got:

Write a poem about language white all the words the same length.

Words float, bright, clear, pure,

Shaped, firm, sharp, full, sure.

Voices echo, soft, deep, near,

Sounding thick, crisp, clear, dear.

Talk spills, thick, vast, wild, warm,

Minds meet, clash, bind, form.

Tongues twist, hum, bark, sing,

Truths fall, rise, calm, bring.

All words are 4 letters long—hope you like it!
by drewg123 | 2025-08-28 13:56:43+00:00
It depends on the car.

My first car (in 1986) was a barn find 1964 Triumph TR4a. If I had that car today, I'd EV swap it in a heartbeat because

- The car is not super rare

- The inline 6 it came with is under-powered, un-reliable, and I've never seen a triumph engine that went more than a few years without a leak (have had 5 between myself and my parents)

- it would massively increase the likelyhood that I'd daily drive it, if I knew it would start and run reliably & wouldn't leave me stranded.

- engine parts are not easy to find.

But I'd never EV-swap something super rare, or something that has a better, more common, more reliable engine
by scheeseman486 | 2025-08-28 13:57:16+00:00
It's less about saving the concept of anonymous development, more about the tightening grip that the big three companies, Apple, Google and Microsoft (they're making their own moves in the same direction) have on home and personal computing. We would be giving up a lot; this would effectively kill any open source computing products from ever becoming viable. Platforms become fiefdoms, they become shit to use because there's no other choice and can never be. Any app that runs counter to the desires of the parent of the platform can be killed and it becomes impossible to build a competitive ecosystem because the chicken & egg software problem, something which open ecosystems can solve through compatibility laters, but that becomes unviable thanks to DRM and hardware integrity lockouts.

It's a nightmare scenario, our lives locked in to total corporate control. What do we get in return for that? Scammers won't be stopped by this, the key to grifting isn't technology but people. What you're suggesting is trading open platforms and open source and fortifying current marketplace monopolies for a marginal decrease in scams. For a while. Maybe. I suggest that is unbelievably stupid.
by calf | 2025-08-28 13:57:17+00:00
The problem with this argument is that the science is still out. Hinton and other actual CS experts are terrified of AI and the risk of an AI/AGI technological singularity. Instead what this article focuses on is the status quo technology, while those scientists (who don't care that much about Altman and his ilk) thinking about the storm to come now that the Pandora's box has been opened.
Show HN: Csvqsh – SQL-like query language for CSV in Awk
by secwang | 2025-08-28 13:57:31+00:00
I really like csvq, but its implemented features feel a bit heavy for me. I don't really need to perform statistics directly on CSV files, but simple modifications are what I need. Plus, I don't have a Go environment, so I created a simple awk version. All test cases are included in the except script.
by lo_zamoyski | 2025-08-28 13:57:39+00:00
You're being evasive and hiding behind jargon and frankly, nonsensical phrases. As I said, I am not unfamiliar with Aristotle, so don't be shy about making clear and direct claims. If you can't do that, then, I'm sorry, but this some kind is bullshit.

(FWIW, a feature of the Aristotelian logical tradition is that, unlike the modern, Fregean tradition which is indifferent about the relationship between logic and language, it is very much concerned by the logical structures within grammar. From a practical point of view, this makes total sense: we want to be able to evaluate arguments, to clarify arguments, and so on, which are generally given in natural language. Aristotle was also a moderate realist. Language is a reflection of reality.)
by gwbas1c | 2025-08-28 13:57:41+00:00
> Adding 20% to the weight of a car isn't really a big deal

And typically the car can't go as far on a single charge as a tank of gas. I can usually go about 200 miles on a typical charge in my (cough) "300" mile EVs, but my last gas car could go about 400 miles between visits to the gas station. (But I don't care because I just plug in when I get home.)

That being said, I once rented an Infiniti that could barely do 200 miles on a single tank of gas.

To get back to the point: Batteries are just too heavy for airplanes, so unless there is a major breakthrough, synthetic gasoline is currently the most promising way to make airplanes carbon neutral.
by js8 | 2025-08-28 13:58:05+00:00
> T shirt estimation doesn't make any sense for AI dev

It doesn't make sense for NI (natural intelligence) dev, either. Even SCRUM doesn't make much sense. The only Agile thing that really makes sense is Kanban, which is actually known to computer science as dispatch queue.

In the 60s, OS researchers spent time figuring out how to optimally schedule resources for computation. Today, almost nobody uses these techniques. (This is known as "waterfall" in PM parlance.)

It turns out, the cheapest way to schedule computing resources is a simple dispatch queue. Why spend extra time figuring out in what order things need to be done, or how long they will take, if they need to be done anyway? It never made sense and it doesn't matter whether the agent is NI or AI.
by 0xbadcafebee | 2025-08-28 13:58:31+00:00
I am actually super exited about Google's decision. I only used Android because it was the least-worst option. I always hated how restrictive its OS is, and the Play Store, the locking-down of tethering, etc. But I never had enough reason to try a totally open-source smartphone. Until now.

I'm so excited that I might even jump back into open source development to make a new OS that isn't as bloated and slow as Android. There is a need for an OS that only gives you minimum capabilities, to run on cheaper, simpler, smaller devices. I would love to help make that a reality.
by username332211 | 2025-08-28 13:58:53+00:00
You can't do anything with respect to legislators. In their eyes, your privacy and the consumer's rights are less important than some grandma, who lost a large sum of money by installing malware after ignoring multiple warnings.

If you want to make a difference, try to communicate with someone from OEM companies. Google is making their phones inferior and they'll loose money and market share because of it.

After this change, "I can install NewPipe and Ad blockers" will become a major selling point for Chinese phones among large and profitable segments of the population. And that high-end manufacturers might as well give up and let Apple take that part of the market. If OEMs can be made to understand that, that's going to be the end of this initiative.
by MOARDONGZPLZ | 2025-08-28 13:58:59+00:00
I read the post and felt a lot of sympathy. Then I saw your response and re-read the post and it comes across as quite manipulative (if your statements are factually correct). My comment is less about this person (great library, btw), but more how it is Interesting how context can totally change how words on a page are received.
by JCM9 | 2025-08-28 13:59:19+00:00
Yep. Many / most aquihires are pretty ugly financially. While the headline sounds impressive (“X startup acquired for $250M”) the reality is that with preferred cap tables and terms most folks see nothing and investors are merely trying to recoup some losses or make a modest (less than S&P500 index fund return) return on investment. It’s basically a fire sale to salvage what’s left from the wreckage.

Founders might get a little something and most shareholder employees get nothing.
by mort96 | 2025-08-28 14:00:08+00:00
Not a huge fan of that headline. It's completely plausible that motherboard vendors aren't following AMD's guidance and push the chips past their documented limits. It wouldn't be the first time, and it won't be the last.

The problem with Intel blaming 13th and 14th gen failures on motherboard manufacturers was that it happened even on motherboards which followed Intel's guidance to a T. This Ars Technica article doesn't seem to even try to make the argument that motherboard manufacturers are innocent, so the comparison to 13th and 14th gen failures is completely unwarranted.

Further, the article doesn't even investigate whether or not AMD's claim is correct. They could've compared AMD's max voltage specifications to the default settings configured by various motherboards.
by schmidtleonard | 2025-08-28 14:00:14+00:00
"E-gas cars vs electric cars" is settled, "e-gas planes vs electric planes" is very much not. You were careful to say "on land," but I wanted to highlight it for anyone who isn't familiar enough with the argument to spot the hedging. Energy storage density is extremely important for aviation and the best batteries still make for very poor planes.

Emergency generation is another application where density is important. It's extremely difficult to beat the a gas turbine + tanker truck on cost and flexibility, it's the energy equivalent of "don't underestimate the bandwidth of tapes in a station wagon."