MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by charcircuit | 2025-08-01 13:50:15+00:00
>Being bad at live coding doesn’t mean you’re a bad engineer. It means you’re human.

Except humans can do well at live coding. Especially for trivial cases like the start of the article (sum . filter even). Yes, companies are looking to hire humans as opposed to ChatGPT, but they are looking to hire a subset of humans. Just being human is not good enough. Failing this test might not provide a reliable signal, but passing it does. If you are getting stressed over simple question or existing stress is impairing your thinking enough to not answer simple questions that seems like an issue to me.
by matheusmoreira | 2025-08-01 13:50:30+00:00
So who wants to "affiliate" with people who are prone to ruining other people's lives on a whim based on unfounded accusations that not rarely turn out to be false?

Maybe there should be a public list of slanderers, defamers, mob justice participants and cancellers in general so we can all avoid them like the massive liabilities they are.
by jhanschoo | 2025-08-01 13:50:36+00:00
> Government funding is not an answer to long term problems.

Funding from private sources who are usually more short-sighted and less transparent can't be the alternative. An alternative I can think of are international entities that have some semblance of independence from constituent nations. I think that for a democratic government, public funding is alright, as long as the government is, well, healthy. In this light the issue with funding is simply a symptom of a government that does not serve its citizens well, which is the root cause that must be cured.
by mrpound | 2025-08-01 13:50:42+00:00
In general, an agent will make an API call to an MCP server to get a list of available tools or to execute a specific tool. For example, when you send a request to OpenAI's Responses API and include a tool call to one of their tools (e.g. web search), the actual execution always occurs on the remote server.

You can also make remote MCP calls over the OpenAI Responses API, which will basically proxy the request to the remote MCP server URL you pass in the request. The execution is always happening on the MCP server hosting the tool.

You can run your own MCP server and expose your own custom tools, rather than hitting someone else's remote service. You can also use function calling w/ OpenAI to let a model decide which custom code to execute without using MCP. With my agents I use a bit of both depending on use case. Sometimes it's easier to use a prompt that outputs a JSON object containing some arguments and a function name defined in your agent code, you call your function and then pass the result back to the model.

At the end of the day MCP is just a protocol, so it's up to you how much you want to implement yourself and what you want to offload to remote providers (just be mindful of whose tools you're calling and what context is being passed in your tool calls).
by rtp4me | 2025-08-01 13:51:20+00:00
>If you say “I didn’t tip because the service was what I expected”, you’re pretty much considered an asshole

Sorry, this is definitely not the case. Many times the worker is doing exactly what is needed and nothing more (eg: pour a beer in a glass, handing me a pizza). Why would I be considered an asshole if I didn't tip? That is ridiculous.

As other people have said, tipping in the US has really become obnoxious. I definitely tip while seated for a meal, but asking for a tip to hand me a cup of coffee, pour a beer, etc only makes the system worse.
by hcfman | 2025-08-01 13:51:21+00:00
I had a little ego for sure. I think under the circumstances that is not too much. Anyone who puts in really a lot of work to improve their knowledge has a little ego. Calling that "a bit much ego" in this context is harsh. I am indeed someone that doesn't like being treated like shit.

Sorry man, hats off to you if you are that humble. For myself, I don't want to be that guy though. I don't consider myself being a person with an oversized ego. But I did not appreciate someone deliberately refusing to hear anything about your past experiences because that would throw his baseline out as the entire choosing of candidates was on the basis on scoring on their tests. And I was not someone that was fresh out of school.
by reactordev | 2025-08-01 13:51:31+00:00
Because that’s Denver’s history. Founded by land speculators after beating Indians in the Colorado War of 1865, only to become a gold rush town, then go bust, become a gang haven, bust again, then boom again with Carnations, then bust again, then boom again with industrials and nuclear waste, to go bust again when nuclear power was divested, then to boom again in the 90s with more gangs, bust again, then boom again in the 2010s with the green rush.

I left because I was sick of having to weather the storm of boom and busts, saw $250,000 homes become $950,000 homes (no change to the home itself) and prey upon the young people moving there to ensure they are financially burdened with Boulder Boomer retirement plans.
by hackyhacky | 2025-08-01 13:51:46+00:00
> I know. Only thing valued here is Orange Man d3str0yed Am3rica, Israel is a terrorist state, and Tax the Rich > Losers

If you have a substantive argument to make, you are welcome to state it and you will be treated with respect. What is not welcome here is juvenile insults, baseless accusations, cynical snark, self-pitying claims of bias, and unfair characterization of people with different opinions, all of which you have done in the space of four comments.
by LargeWu | 2025-08-01 13:51:54+00:00
This is a bad-faith description of the abundance movement.

The central thesis of the abundance movement is this: Every time we make a regulation, we are making a tradeoff. In the case of housing, an example would be "zoning only for single family housing". It's trading off affordability for quieter neighborhoods. Another might be "public housing contracts must favor minority-owned contractors". It trades off affordability for the development of a disadvantaged constituency.

Over time, many of these such regulations accumulate. Environmental reviews. Impact studies. Public comment periods. And while every individual regulation might be well meaning, the totality of them creates market distortions that disincentivize or even utterly prevent the very thing we're trying to accomplish.

So, the abundance movement looks at these and says we need to think about these in terms of tradeoffs, and pare back the regulations that have bad tradeoffs. This is often derided by critics as deregulation which makes developers more profitable. While that might be a side effect, it's not the main reason. It's deregulation to remove market distortions that, in the case of housing, constrain supply and therefore drive up housing costs.
by mpeg | 2025-08-01 13:52:04+00:00
If you had read the article you would see:

1/ they need to collect ground truth data for their algorithm to work, it doesn't magically work everywhere. 2/ the ground truth data was collected mostly by their clients, it is not their data to give away for free

I honestly don't see a problem with this technology, and I am a huge privacy advocate. First off, it uses the wifi signal strength + a model based on ground truth data to accurately position you in a map. This means that it's entirely opt-in, they can't accurately track you if you aren't using their app / connected to their wifi (yes I know some data does go out to wifi access points even if not connected, but I doubt it would be enough for this kind of tracking, and it can be disabled by the user)

Yes, they mention promotions, but again the promotions would be opt-in – if I use their app to find a product I'm looking for, they might suggest other products along the way that I might also find useful, or they might take me in a route that passes right by them. This is no different to the way retailers stock up their shelves already, placing products next to others you might want, and moving necessity items around when they want to direct you to another part of the store.

I don't know, I think it's a bit harsh to criticise this when the technology has so many applications outside of retail. I would love this in a museum or library, and even in retail I absolutely hate those interactive map displays that modern shopping malls have, where only one person can use them at a time and you have to navigate through 200 store names for the one you actually want to visit
by asaddhamani | 2025-08-01 13:52:13+00:00
I find it interesting, how OpenAI came out with a $200 plan, Anthropic did $100 and $200, then Gemini ups it to $250, and now Grok is at $300.

OpenAI is the only one that says "practically unlimited" and I have never hit any limit on my ChatGPT Pro plan. I hit limits on Claude Max (both plans) several times.

Why are these companies not upfront about what the limits are?
by maeln | 2025-08-01 13:52:22+00:00
> > I have no idea who is telling the truth in this situation, and unless you are the person who has been accused or those who are the alleged victims, neither do you

> Almost sounds like there'd be a long established fair-as-possible process for dealing with these situations, doesn't it?

A fair-as-possible process that is only fair if you have enough money to afford a lawyer, the time to fight for your case, are not part of a community that has been systematically discriminated against by the people enforcing the process, that the laws are in your favor, that you are not victim of a difficult to prove crime, ...

I will never advocate for vigilante justice, but let's not kid ourselves, the justice system has many, many flaws and bias, and acting as if it should be the only source of truth, and that no personal judgment should be made without, is very naïve.
by vel0city | 2025-08-01 13:52:30+00:00
I've had similar experiences in all-inclusive resorts in Mexico and the Carribean where they stock your fridge. Leave a few bucks in the door of the fridge, it'll be overflowing. If you don't tip, you get the minimum. Tip the bell man well at the beginning of the trip, and every time you call the front desk things show up at your room real quick.
by appease7727 | 2025-08-01 13:52:37+00:00
I give coding tests on real(ish) problems adjacent to the job. It's one half showing me what you can do, and one half seeing how you deal with a real work environment, collaborating with others, unknown requirements.

It's not a puzzle, it's not a trick question. It's simply a matter of 1) can you do the job and 2) do you get along with the team.

The last interview I did, we had the candidate build a game of marbles in Unity. None of us knew the rules, so it turned into a collaborative process between the candidate and our engineers. We learned that the candidate can think on his feet and fluently adapt his program to requirements as they manifest. Plus it was just a lot of fun. He was one of our best hires, too.
by lenkite | 2025-08-01 13:52:39+00:00
Well, with an established competitor like Sketch, you can laugh your way to the bank. SO many users pleaded their first born children to Sketch if they could have cross platform support, web-view support, real time collab, commenting system, cloud support, buit-in Developer handoff, nested components, auto-layouts - even just one of the above.

Sketch were nice and comfy and said NO to everything.

When you are coming into an established space, it must feel real good to have a competitor like that who gives away the full market to you kindly!
by ricree | 2025-08-01 13:52:40+00:00
>My sense is actually that the reason he talks that way is to make sure that people who consider themselves "on the left" don't mistake him for being someone "on the right"

If so he has sorely missed the mark. I pretty heavily associate the phrasing "the $X left" with disengenuous right wing pundits. Knowing nothing else about the author, seeing that pop up repeatedly doesn't merely suggest that he's on the "right", but that he's writing the piece with a politically motivated axe to grind.
by carefulfungi | 2025-08-01 13:53:03+00:00
Where I live, housing cost is directly proportional to school district quality - and local school funding (vs. state-level funding) is a significant cause of inequality.

Rapid growth of cheaper housing in a town is a financial challenge for the town because it creates a larger student base without creating a meaningfully larger tax base. In towns with a commercial tax base, the costs increase more than the tax base; in towns without a commercial tax base, taxes typically increase on the oldest / most established residents - which drives fixed-income people from the homes and towns they supported for decades.

In my suburban area, there are two main arguments to anti-growth zoning: (1) people don't want the density increase; they built lives in a less-dense area by choice and want to see that choice preserved. (2) There are legitimate school funding issues and tax base issues that encourage controlling the rate of growth.

I'm dubious of _any_ argument that finds a singular cause for housing prices. It's an extremely tangled and complex issue that touches on taxation, local control vs. state control, education, property rights, politics, a cyclical capital-intensive industry, immigration and labor supply, interest rates...

Personally, I vote for denser housing and more liberal residential zoning. But I also understand and respect the opinions of my neighbors who disagree. Looser zoning gives control of land-use to capital and takes that control away from the people who built and sustained the town for, sometimes, generations.
Ask HN: This is not the place for political discourse..so where is?
by asim | 2025-08-01 13:53:14+00:00
I've been on HN since 2008. As an engineer is a goto resource for me but I've also come to respect the fact that we are focused on certain topics and that's what makes it great. I guess my question is, where does one go to discuss political and world issues with similar respect and tolerance? I do not think X or other platforms promote that in the right way. It's more like shouting and slander as opposed to respect and understanding. Thoughts?
by geysersam | 2025-08-01 13:53:19+00:00
It's not as easy as some people make it out to be to create a believable story about abusive behavior.

> then it is well worth it for men to consider that mentoring women

You don't need to worry unless you're having sex with your mentees. If you do, then yeah maybe you need to think twice about that, and maybe that's not such a bad thing?
by radiofreeeuropa | 2025-08-01 13:53:38+00:00
> I do well in interviews, but I detest having people look over my shoulder while I code, and it absolutely tanks my performance.

Yeah, I basically forget how to use all the basic tools I use all the time and my mistake rate shoots up 10x when I'm just screen sharing in a chill context. I'm (told I'm) quite good at all the social side of the job, at keeping my cool in rough situations (social or technical), and all that, but specifically being watched while I work turns me into a sort of foolish klutz.

Which makes these kinds of interviews absolute hell, because that's their entire deal.
by dv_dt | 2025-08-01 13:53:45+00:00
The people the article quoted as "left" like Stoller are really not left, and the whole anti-left felt more like a unnecessary strawman label and definite turn off for me reading it. I would characterize Stoller as an independent anti-monopolist - not really on the right or left spectrum at all politically. Unless the right is now pro-monopoly.
by throwaway290 | 2025-08-01 13:54:10+00:00
Nice strawman. So how about the actual question which is hostile environment for students? I was downvoted for asking a question and this did not answer it.

Edit to reply: what I remember reading was not about saying "end genocide", it was about saying "you are a jew so go die" kind of stuff. It seemed pretty crazy but I didn't save any sources
by xp84 | 2025-08-01 13:54:11+00:00
It's not worse than tipping, but we've already normalized the obnoxious idea that every transaction needs to earn five stars. You know the places. The ones where they warn you "You're going to get a survey, if there is any reason why you don't feel like you can give us a 5 please tell me" (unsaid: Please sir -- they flog us for 4 star ratings). I can't imagine anyone I know not rating an Uber 5 stars, unless they were say, called a slur or the driver caused an accident.

So, I'm not sure how to best construct a system not open to "guilt gaming" in this way, but I would like to see one.
by ben7799 | 2025-08-01 13:55:18+00:00
Technically I did my first programming in the 80s as a kid. I went to college in the 1990s. I definitely learned Perl and used it.

However I would say an awful lot of the professionals I was around already thought Perl had a bad smell even in the 1990s. It was definitely looked down up on in academia by then. Maybe not in an IT department or Math department but in the CS department it was. It was used by IT guys, and QA guys, and somebody gluing some tools together. An awful lot of people thought it was unacceptable for it to be in serious production code or anything that had to be long term maintainable or be worked on by a team of people larger than size = 1. Your perception of it definitely came from where you were at the time and how you encountered it. If you were on a team producing software for sale that involved a bunch of people and you had version control and QA and everything Perl was already not your thing.
by throwaway290 | 2025-08-01 13:55:31+00:00
This is a strawman. Of course there is free speech. It doesn't mean it's okay to talk on the phone in a cinema or recite the Bible aloud during a math lecture. It doesn't mean it's fair play to shout obscenities on the train and spit on people. Idk about US but there is a thing called "verbal abuse" and police is 100% callable for that. That out of the way so how about hostile environment for students again? I was downvoted for asking a question and this did not answer it.
by pc86 | 2025-08-01 13:55:37+00:00
Even among the incredibly predictable "omg USA so backward tipping lol" comments here, there are a lot admitting that tipping still exists for exceptional service in certain industries.

You won't find a single non-barista in the US who thinks it's reasonable for Starbucks to solicit 20% for someone pouring your coffee into a cup. But restaurants have tried the "don't tip our waiters" thing in the US and it doesn't work.
by justcuriousab | 2025-08-01 13:55:46+00:00
But standardization also matters for avoiding vendor lock-in, right?

Like, Python and Javascript both have many "implementations", and those are some of the most popular languages. Python does not have an ISO specification. But Javascript does have an Ecma standard, ECMAScript.

Rust is getting another implementation in the form of gccrs. And there is work on a specification for Rust https://rustfoundation.org/media/ferrous-systems-donates-fer... . Arguably not a standard, but still helpful.
by jhanschoo | 2025-08-01 13:56:04+00:00
Give me a MSM source that claims that student protesters on a UC campus targeted American Jews on campus with their "rage". For this, I do not regard instances where American Jews feel unsafe or threatened to fall under this where they felt that way due to having conflated anti-Israel sentiment with antisemitism, or because of having their own identity enmeshed with modern Israel. (I do not consider identifying with modern Israel part of being an American Jew.)
by Barrin92 | 2025-08-01 13:56:15+00:00
> I care that when I want to leave, I can pay quickly. In Europe, it's incredibly slow

Maybe when you come to Europe adjust to the culture. In Europe you don't eat with the clock in your hand so you can run off too the next meeting while you're still chewing. This isn't bad service, it's part of eating out that you don't storm off and take your time.

An ordinary European restaurant doesn't work with the tempo of a McDonalds, that's a feature and not a bug.
by beezlebroxxxxxx | 2025-08-01 13:56:49+00:00
You can use 'circumvent' here, but the meaning is a little odd. That's more like heading from Mars to the Sun and finding a way around the Earth to continue to your destination. Usually, people use 'circumnavigate' instead, which is used to describe vehicles (boats, planes, bicycles, etc.) making their way all the way around Earth.
by rtp4me | 2025-08-01 13:56:51+00:00
Same here. We have really cut down on the amount of "out for lunch/dinner" activities we plan. One reason is the tip situation; the other is because we can cook as well at home than out of the house. In the past (80s), going out to dinner was considered a real treat. In the 2000s, it was commonplace. Now, I think we are back to the 80s mentality (cost, tipping, food quality, etc)
by gs17 | 2025-08-01 13:57:05+00:00
You can't look at gerrymandering at that scale. It exists on the scale of individual states. I'm in Tennessee, and Republicans gerrymandered the districts so that Nashville is divided across three, leading to the state only having one blue district instead of the two or three it should have (by votes, it should have two with a third competitive district). They were forced to keep Memphis' district around only as the minority-majority one (a federal court even ruled that it was a clear political gerrymander, but not a racial one, so it was upheld).
Show HN: WhiteLightning – ultra-lightweight ONNX text classifiers trained w LLMs
by v_kyba | 2025-08-01 13:57:07+00:00
Hey HN,

We’re Volodymyr and Volodymyr—two developers from Ukraine building WhiteLightning. It’s a tool that turns large LLMs (Claude 4, Grok 4, GPT-4o via OpenRouter) into tiny ONNX text classifiers that run anywhere—even on drones at the edge.

Why we built this: Many developers want custom models (spam filters, sentiment analysis, PII detection, moderation tools), but don’t want to deal with constant API calls or deploy heavy models in production.

How it works: WhiteLightning uses LLMs to generate training data and distills it into KB-sized ONNX models you can run on any device and in any language. Just describe your task in a sentence, grab the ONNX model, and run it locally—Python, JS, Rust, Java, Swift, C++, you name it.

Try it instantly in your browser: https://whitelightning.ai/playground.html

Code & docs: https://github.com/Inoxoft/whitelightning

Community model library: https://github.com/Inoxoft/whitelightning-model-library

We’d love your feedback—what works, what doesn’t, and what to improve.
by garphunkle | 2025-08-01 13:57:39+00:00
I thrive in high-stress situations (for short periods of time). Examples include hardware validation before a large production run, putting out literal fires in manufacturing sites, and working in foreign countries to troubleshoot/rework bad hardware. I do fine in live coding interviews, they don't feel much different than being alone at an editor for me.

I was interested by the author's statement: "Working memory is the most reliable proxy (I know of) for fluid intelligence, your ability to reason, solve novel problems, and think abstractly." and the linked study (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21037165/). My working memory is not so great, but it degrades less under stress.

Question worth considering for hiring managers: do you prefer stress-capable employees, or greater working-memory employees? Is my model a false dichotomy?