MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by Aurornis | 2025-08-21 21:39:33+00:00
> In my experience with municipal utility districts, the reliability of the water supply is typically not much better than the local power grid.

Both of these services have been phenomenally reliable everywhere I’ve lived in the United States. The only exception was in a town where we’d get ice storms once a year that would bring trees down on top of power lines, but it was shocking how quickly a truck would show up and fix them all.

I can’t actually think of a time my water has stopped working anywhere except once when the road was torn up and pipes had to be replaced. I wasn’t home, we just got letters explaining when it would happen and how to flush the pipes when it was done.
by smokel | 2025-08-21 21:39:59+00:00
It seems highly unlikely that they did not use indices. Scanning all documents would be prohibitively slow. I think it is more likely that the indices were really large, and it would take hundreds to thousands of machines to store the indices in RAM. Having a parallel scan through those indices seems likely.

Wikipedia [1] links to "Jeff Dean's keynote at WSDM 2009" [2] which suggests that indices were most certainly used.

Then again, I am no expert in this field, so if you could share more details, I'd love to hear more about it.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_data_centers

[2] https://static.googleusercontent.com/media/research.google.c...
by strken | 2025-08-21 21:40:16+00:00
I question whether such a thing as superhuman charisma exists. Or if it exists, whether it can be used over chat without access to body language and human empathy, against someone who refuses to engage from the outset, and without side channels for gaining information about the human.

I get that not pressing the big red button might be a problem for people who think Roko's Basilisk is an actual threat and have a culture of considering seemingly absurd ideas, but I question whether it's a problem for everyone else.
by cabacon | 2025-08-21 21:40:23+00:00
I have a kid in high school who uses LLMs to get feedback on essays he has written. It will come back with responses like "you failed to give good evidence to support your point that [X]", or "most readers prefer you to include more elaboration on how you changed subject from [Y] to [Z]".

You (and another respondent) both cite the case where someone unthinkingly generates a large swath of text using the LLM, but that's not the only modality for incorporating LLMs into writing. I'm with you both on your examples, fwiw, I just think that only thinking about that way of using LLMs for writing is putting on blinders to the productive ways that they can be used.

It feels to me like people are reacting to the idea that we haven't figured out how to work it into our pedagogy, and that their existence hurts certain ways we've become accustomed to measuring people having learned what we intended them to learn. There's certainly a lot of societal adaptation that should put guardrails around their utility to us, but when I see "They will make us dumb!" it just sets of a contrarian reaction in me.
by alex-moon | 2025-08-21 21:40:25+00:00
One pedantic nitpick: the heat death of the universe is at least 10^100 years away, many many orders of magnitude longer than 200 billion (or 2x10^11) years. Overall though lovely stuff - I was already largely aware of all of this but it's nice to have a concise but detailed summary that's largely accurate (as far as I know).
by CuriouslyC | 2025-08-21 21:40:41+00:00
Would you groan if you had to take public transit while your car was broken down?

If you love to knit that's cool but don't get on me because I'd rather buy a factory sweater and get on with my day.

I love creating things, I love solving problems, I love designing elegant systems. I don't love mashing keys.
by butlike | 2025-08-21 21:40:48+00:00
Going through the same thing. The body knows what it wants, but you can't always be an unthinking autonomaton grabbing stuff willy-nilly off the store shelf. So just feel it out when you need to just sit on the curb and do whatever, or put yourself in a sandbox and say: "I'm going to go... ___to the boardwalk___, then whatever happens, happens."
by taeric | 2025-08-21 21:40:56+00:00
The campus I lived on had a transit stop not far off. I'm sure more people used it than my little anecdote made it sound.

I agree that places should be made as convenient as they can be for walking, as well. I just get annoyed with so much of the discourse assuming you can design the cities so that a car is not more convenient. It is almost always a massive convenience. Obnoxiously so.
by Zenbit_UX | 2025-08-21 21:41:02+00:00
Cave diver here, the article asserts how rare warm caves are but I think that is a very European mindset.

The Mecca for cave diving is in the Yucatán and surrounding areas and the caves there are exceptionally warm. The surface water can be chilly, coming in around 21c at one of the many cenotes (sinkholes, which are the entry points into the system) as rainwater fills them, but the further into the cave you penetrate you will eventually cross the halocline, at which point deeper = warmer ocean water. It’s quite unintuitive but delightful to warm up after a 2+ hour dive. It’s common for divers to go deeper, pull their wetsuit open a little to fill it with warmer water (24c+) and then rise up back to the planned depth.

Cold cave diving is a very different experience and is usually found in Florida and Europe. Don’t recommend.
by moron4hire | 2025-08-21 21:41:57+00:00
I think this is an excellent example of how software is different from everything else that is copyright-able. If you look at how GenAI is being applied to "the arts" and how completely destructive it is to the visual mediums, it is clearly a completely different beast to code. "The artists" of visual art don't want AI trained on their work and competing with their work. I completely understand. The point of art is to be a personal interaction between artist and consumer. But, even though I'm quite skeptical of AI code gen on a practical standpoint, it really doesn't feel like the same existential threat.
by araes | 2025-08-21 21:42:00+00:00
Another source in the last half a decade or so is digital coin "mints."

Quick look on coin market puts the total market value at ~$3 trillion. Yet that money effectively was created from nothing. It's basically money printing.

With credit cards that accept digital coins as financial sources it's also started to affect the actual markets significantly.

From the charts shown, markets have also gotten quite a bit frothier, with larger swings and spike / drops in margin, since 2020 when coin valuations really took off.

Personal view, it probably also contributes since it's less "real" from a certain perspective. Just digital numbers to wager, that don't really mean the same as mortgaging your house. "Eh, just wager like 10 or 20 digi-coins on margin." Except that's like $1-2 million these days.
by whatevertrevor | 2025-08-21 21:42:39+00:00
You're right in a descriptive manner, but I also think the parent comment's point is about correctness and not determinism.

In other engineering fields correctness-related-guarantees can often be phrased in probabilistic ways, e.g. "This bridge will withstand a 10-year flood event but not a 100-year flood event", but underneath those guarantees are hard deterministic load estimates with appropriate error margins.

And I think that's where the core disagreement between you and the parent comment lies. I think they're trying to say AI generated code-pushers are often getting fuzzy on speccing out the behavior guarantees of their own software. In some ways the software industry has _always_ been bad at this, despite working with deterministic math, surprise software bugs are plentiful, but vibe-coding takes this to another level.

(This is my best-case charitable understanding of what they're saying, but also happens to be where I stand)
by BizarroLand | 2025-08-21 21:42:39+00:00
Dumb is more the inability to make expedient, salient, and useful decisions either from the lack of knowledge or the fundamental incapability to process the available knowledge.

Dumb is accidental or genetic.

AI won't affect how dumb we are.

I think they will decrease the utility of crystalline knowledge skills and increase our fluid knowledge skills. Smart people will still find ways to thrive in the environment.

Human intelligence will continue moving forward.
by DarkFuture | 2025-08-21 21:42:43+00:00
I've been running LLM models on my Radeon 7600 XT 16GB for past 2-3 months without issues (Windows 11). I've been using llama.cpp only. The only thing from AMD I installed (apart from latest Radeon drivers) is the "AMD HIP SDK" (very straight forward installer). After unzipping (the zip from GitHub releases page must contain hip-radeon in the name) all I do is this:

llama-server.exe -ngl 99 -m Qwen3-14B-Q6_K.gguf

And then connect to llamacpp via browser to localhost:8080 for the WebUI (its basic but does the job, screenshots can be found on Google). You can connect more advanced interfaces to it because llama.cpp actually has OpenAI-compatible API.
by PaulHoule | 2025-08-21 21:43:01+00:00
Mostly no. In physics the problem is not that we can’t make up theories, it’s that we need a 1000x or more bigger particle accelerator to settle them. In space travel I don’t see AI making some radical new engine that makes it easy to go to the moon or mars.

Biotechnology could be a counterexample, if

https://alphafold.ebi.ac.uk/

keeps making progress that could be radical but it seems to be pattern matching proteins that occur in nature and won’t unlock access to a huge space of possible proteins that don’t occur in nature. Could it help in drug discovery, yeah, but it is not a god, you will still have to do clinical trials. I think the big problem in space travel is “How can a small number of Mars colonist make 100% of what they need to sustain themselves?” and that’s a huge systems engineering problem which that advanced biotech could take a big chunk out of —- maybe AI combining the LLM ideas with systematic search could take a chunk out of it

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AlphaZero

but you need to solve 100% and there will be a huge amount of “blue collar” work to manifest it. So maybe AI doubles the speed you can get things done, maybe it speeds up things 10%.
by gizmo686 | 2025-08-21 21:43:09+00:00
> I've had manually written, well thought through, well conceived, rough around the edges code get called "AI slop" by a colleague (who I very much respect and have a good relationship with) who admittedly hadn't had a chance to thoroughly understand the code yet.

This is the core problem with AI that makes so many people upset. In the old days, if you get a substantial submission, you know a substantial amount of effort went into it. You know that someone at some point had a mental model of what the submission was. Even if they didn't translate that perfectly, you can still try to figure out what they meant and we're thinking. You know the submitter put forth significant effort. That is a real signal that they are both willing and able to do so to address going forward to address issues you raise.

The existence of AI slop fundamentally breaks these assumptions. That is why we need enforced social norms around disclosure.
by antognini | 2025-08-21 21:43:50+00:00
As a counterbalance to the "renegade" character of these kinds of podcasts I do recommend Sean Carroll's Mindscape podcast. He does a good job representing the "establishment" position in physics, so to speak.

A good episode to start with is "The Crisis in Physics" in which he (unusually?) argues that there is no real crisis in physics.

https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2023/07/31/245-...
by chankstein38 | 2025-08-21 21:44:09+00:00
That makes sense! I frequently have it write python. I'll say though, working on Go for more than a decade and coding for more than a lot of people have been alive is likely proof you're not one of the people this article is talking about. I don't think I've been made stupider by LLMs either but, like someone else said, maybe a bit lazier about things. I am not the author so I should stop talking as if I know their thoughts but, at least in my opinion, this message is more important for the swathes of people who don't have 10-20 years of experience solving complex problems.
by PantheonOS | 2025-08-21 21:44:15+00:00
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Key Features 1. Multi-Agent Collaboration – Built-in paradigms for distributed, cross-machine cooperation among agents and toolsets. 2. Native Toolset Support – Python, R, Julia, LaTeX, and more—designed for real scientific workflows. 3. Modular & Extensible – Developer-friendly design with shallow wrappers, plus LLM-driven toolset generation. 4. Evolvable Agents – Capable of evolving large-scale code projects to achieve superhuman performance (e.g., evolving upon the original Harmony [I Korsunsky, 2019, Nature Biotechnology] and Scanorama [BL Hie, 2019, Nature Biotechnology] implementations), and even evolving the system itself to adapt to new fields.

Stepwise Release Strategy We’re releasing PantheonOS in stages: Pantheon-CLI (today!), followed by Pantheon-Lab, Pantheon-Notebook, Pantheon-Slack, and more. Pantheon-CLI Highlights - We're not just building another CLI tool. We're defining how scientists will interact with data in the AI era. - Open, Powerful, Python-First – The first fully open-source, endlessly extendable scientific “vibe analysis” framework. - Mixed Programming Magic – Combine Python, natural language, R, or Julia—seamlessly in the same environment. - PhD-Level Assistant – A command-line agent for complex real-world genomics and beyond, handling workflows at the PhD level. - Privacy by Design – Run entirely offline with local LLMs—your data never leaves your computer.

Proven Applications (10 Demonstrations) Computational biology: 1. ATAC-seq: From raw reads to peak matrix 2. RNA-seq: From raw reads to expression matrix 3. Complex single-cell workflows (PhD-level) 4. Hybrid natural language + R for Seurat annotation 5. Learning from web tutorials + invoking single-cell foundation models 6. Cell segmentation on 10x Genomics HD Visium data

And beyond:

7. Mixed Python & R programming examples 8. Molecular docking & structural analysis 9. Exploratory factor analysis for behavioral survey data 10. Customer segmentation & finance analytics

Learn More & Get Started Website: http://pantheonOS.stanford.edu Pantheon-CLI Documentation: https://pantheon-cli-docs.netlify.app GitHub Repo: https://github.com/aristoteleo/pantheon-cli

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by wahern | 2025-08-21 21:44:59+00:00
Product and project managers can have similar issues of perspective as engineers, chasing trends in the industry or losing the forest for the trees (feature checklists, etc). But, yeah, having devs talk directly to customers can be problematic. If you give a customer a direct line to an engineer, sometimes they can monopolize the engineer's time (they feel they can leverage an "inside" contact) or skew their priorities. Having engineers work closely with tech support is a good middle ground, such as by fostering 1:1 relationships with support or even fielding tech support tickets themselves (tech support tickets have more finality than, e.g. sales support issues). That way they can get a broader perspective on pain points and potential new directions. It can really help refine a product beyond what can be achieved by lobbing feature and bug tickets over a fence or through formal group meetings (which often can be either too structured or too chaotic).
by anigbrowl | 2025-08-21 21:45:28+00:00
Historically this isn't exceptional, and is arguably a reversion ot hte mean following the disruption of a WW2 and its aftershocks.

https://www.migrationpolicy.org/programs/data-hub/charts/imm...

I thought 18M undocumented was a high %age!

Seems inflated. Reliable estimates run around 2/3 of that. Higher numbers always seem anchored only by handwavey 'there must be more because reasons', which is why you regularly see people claiming sums of 20m, 30m, 40m. The current president has a habit of picking arbitrary numbers based on his feelings, but that doesn't sem a very reliable system to me.

https://ohss.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/2024-06/2024_0418_o...
by codespin | 2025-08-21 21:46:10+00:00
Just as the engine replaced physical strength, artificial intelligence, through models like large language models, is now replacing cognitive labor and thought.

From the article "Muscles grow by lifting weights" yet we do that now as a hobby and not as a critical job. I'm not sure I want to live in a world where thinking is a gym like activity, however if you go back 200 years it would probably be difficult to explain the situation today to someone living in a world where most people are doing physical labor or using animals to do it.
by BizarroLand | 2025-08-21 21:46:25+00:00
Yep. I force memorized so many calculations because our teachers constantly told us that in the future we wouldn't always have a calculator with us.

It was helpful, I got pretty far along in collegiate math without tutors or assistance thanks to the hard calculation skills I drilled into my head.

But, counterpoint, if I leave my calculator/computer/all in one everything device at home on any given day it can ruin my entire day. I haven't gone 72 hours without a calculator in nearly a decade.
by omoikane | 2025-08-21 21:46:39+00:00
I think this is saying there is a habit of updating code without reading and updating the comments associated with the code. I would argue the fix is to have people get in the habit of maintaining comments, as opposed to not writing any comments at all.

If people already have the habit of ignoring comments that are right there in the code, I am not sure they would spend the extra effort to go after commit history. Also, some commits might have originated from private repositories where commit history is not accessible, and the most context we get out of "git blame" might be "code was imported on this date".
by chankstein38 | 2025-08-21 21:46:48+00:00
Fair! I'd definitely agree with that! I don't really know the author's intentions here but my read of this article is that it's for the people that ARE skipping thinking entirely using them. I agree completely, to me LLMs are effectively a slightly more useful (sometimes vastly more useful) search engine. They help me find out about features or mechanisms I didn't know existed and help demonstrate their value for me. I am still the one doing the thinking.

I'd argue we're using them "right" though.
by nikisweeting | 2025-08-21 21:47:27+00:00
native messaging is a huge headache to set up reliably across all the OSs and (often headless) chrome setups in our experience, that's why we've avoided it.

Just using some remote endpoint message bus service is an easier solution, or something like ElectricSQL/RxDB/Replicache/etc.

We also can't really use in-page JS for much because it's easily detected by bot-blockers, though isolated worlds help in CDP.
by eschaton | 2025-08-21 21:47:29+00:00
You’re completely incorrect. People care a lot about where code came from. They need to be able to trust that code you’re contributing was not copied from a project under AGPLv3, if the project you’re contributing to is under a different license.

Stop trying to equate LLM-generated code with indexing-based autocomplete. They’re not the same thing at all: LLM-generated code is equivalent to code copied off Stack Overflow, which is also something you’d better not be attempting to fraudulently pass off as your own work.
by nikisweeting | 2025-08-21 21:48:07+00:00
Of course we already have it automated in pre-commit checks, I'm just mildly annoyed that it's two different commands in the first place (though I'm sure there is some good historical reason). The distinction/ordering between them isn't really clear as a user, I just want "find and fix everything you can, error if you cant autofix" every time.
by PaulHoule | 2025-08-21 21:48:21+00:00
Also... I dunno about India (I think of it as a dysfunctional democracy) but China and Russia are notorious authoritarian economies that people want to take money out of and that's a big part of the global money laundering problem. You might have a problem that your money is in Bitcoin but turn it into Rubles or Yuan and now you have another problem.
by CoderJoshDK | 2025-08-21 21:48:45+00:00
internally, they are working on ty and some of its logic is going to have to call out to uv. I imagine that things like this is being built to experiment with some of the connections and interfaces between tools.

The astral team is pretty responsive to questions and feedback. If this type of change concerns you (as an actual user of the tool) please reach out to them. My big thing right now is integrations with workspaces. And if special case commands is the answer,,, well not ideal but I’ll take it.
by hermitcrab | 2025-08-21 21:49:01+00:00
“But the fact that some geniuses were laughed at does not imply that all who are laughed at are geniuses. They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown.” ― Carl Sagan, Broca's Brain: Reflections on the Romance of Science
by stetrain | 2025-08-21 21:49:01+00:00
But those cities do exist. Just mostly not in the US.

They also don’t need to make non-car options more convenient for all people, or even most people. The larger the share of non-car trips the better things get even for those who still drive, even if that share is going from 10% to 20%. Less congestion and pollution. Fewer traffic accidents. More density of housing in places that have high demand, reducing housing costs.
by nomel | 2025-08-21 21:49:07+00:00
No, it's 22 miles to/from work, one way [1]! My commute distance is only a few miles more, and my commute time is almost exactly the average time listed there.

For most, the purpose of living further from work is reduced total cost of living, especially if you're near a big city [2], where it's not usually an option. I save thousands a month by commuting a little, for the same number of bedrooms (which has a legal minimum where I am). If I wanted the same square footage, I'm saving > $10k/month, compared to being 1/3 the distance from work.

[1] https://www.census.gov/topics/employment/commuting/guidance/...

[2] https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/02723638.2022.2...
by epage | 2025-08-21 21:49:20+00:00
As the person designing and implementing cargo script integration into cargo (there have been many third-party implementations in the past), I was both glad to see it in the wild and surprised and glad to see it called out like this!

Docs are at https://doc.rust-lang.org/nightly/cargo/reference/unstable.h...

Yes, there has been a long road to this in defining what this should look like, how it should interact with the language, what is the right scope for the initial release, and so on.

At this point, I'm doing what I hope is the wrap up work, including updating the style guide and the Rust reference. The big remaining work is in details I'm working out still for rustfmt and rust-analyzer. Other than those, I need to get to a bug fix in rustc and improve error reporting in Cargo.

For myself, I use cargo script nearly daily as I write a script whenever I'm creating a reproduction case for an Issue I'm interacting with.