MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by eatonphil | 2025-08-29 20:51:59+00:00
> Sqlite's test suite simulates just about every kind of failure you can imagine

The page you link even mentions scenarios they know about that do happen and that they still assume won't happen. So even sqlite doesn't make anywhere near as strong a claim as you make.

> SQLite assumes that the operating system will buffer writes and that a write request will return before data has actually been stored in the mass storage device. SQLite further assumes that write operations will be reordered by the operating system. For this reason, SQLite does a "flush" or "fsync" operation at key points. SQLite assumes that the flush or fsync will not return until all pending write operations for the file that is being flushed have completed. We are told that the flush and fsync primitives are broken on some versions of Windows and Linux. This is unfortunate. It opens SQLite up to the possibility of database corruption following a power loss in the middle of a commit. However, there is nothing that SQLite can do to test for or remedy the situation. SQLite assumes that the operating system that it is running on works as advertised. If that is not quite the case, well then hopefully you will not lose power too often.
by erxam | 2025-08-29 20:52:18+00:00
Taiwan is not only subsidized by the US as a bulwark against China, but saying there's no need to compromise on human rights is a fucking joke.

Taiwan is a militantly far-right dangerous country which has colluded and collaborated with cruel dictatorships as much as Israel or the US itself.

Look up Fu Hsing Kang college or the World Anti-Communist League, for example. They have zero moral standing of any kind.

For more modern examples, the last few remaining Latin American countries with ties to Taiwan only do so because Taiwan is handing over bags and bags of cash to ultra-conservative oligarchs and to the political elite, buying their compliance even at the expense of the general economy. This, coupled with the fact that the US is closing off all doors, means that average people lose out on a LOT of opportunities of both trade and development with China. And what is there to show off for it? Absolutely fucking nothing at all.

I love Taiwan. Don't you?
by al_borland | 2025-08-29 20:52:18+00:00
I was the go-to guy for this under my former boss, but he let me do pretty much whatever I wanted, so it usually wasn’t an issue to not work on anything else while playing around with new stuff.

Though there was a time when he wanted me to onboard my simple little internal website to a big complicated CICD system, just so we could see how it worked and if it would be useful for other stuff. It wouldn’t have been useful for anything else, and I already had a script that would deploy updates to my site that was simple, fast, and reliable. I simply ignored every request to look into that.

Other times I could tell him his idea wouldn’t work, and he would say “ok” and walk away. That was that. This accounted for about 30% of what he came to me with.
by jumploops | 2025-08-29 20:52:41+00:00
As someone who has built 0-1 systems at multiple startups (Seed to Series C), I’ve settled on one principle above all else:

“Simple is robust”

It’s easy to over-design a system up front, and even easier to over-design improvements to said system.

Customer requirements are continually evolving, and you can never really predict what the future requirements will be (even if it feels like you can).

Breaking down the principle, it’s not just that a simple system is less error prone, it’s just as important that a simple architecture is easier to change in the future.

Should you plan for X, Y, and Z?

Yes, but counterintuitively, by keeping doors open for future and building “the simplest thing that could possibly work.”

Complexity adds constraints, these limitations make the stack more brittle over time, even when planned with the best intentions.
by PaulHoule | 2025-08-29 20:52:46+00:00
I got an i5 tower almost 10 years ago from

https://ithacareuse.org/

for use as a home server, it has a ZFS RAID 1 where I replaced the drives once and I guess I should again soon if I care about the warrantee. I did have a challenging upgrade because Ubuntu made a /boot partition that was too small to reliably update the kernel but I had a spare SSD sitting around which let me just install the OS on the new SSD and swap it in without any risk. It runs the ubiquiti controller, plex, and a few other services. It is not a powerful server by any means but it is massively overpowered for what it does which is better than being underpowered. I messed around with appliances in the 2000s and they inevitably left a bad taste in my mouth. They had 10% of the power of a real computer but cost 70% as much or they used an i3 and you couldn’t install a GPU —- penny wise and pound foolish.
by taffer | 2025-08-29 20:52:57+00:00
> One of the ironies of this kind of advice is that it's best for people who already have a lot of experience and have the judgement to apply it. For instance, how do you know what the "simplest thing" is?

I think the author kind of mentions this: "Figuring out the simplest solution requires considering many different approaches. In other words, it requires doing engineering."
by jimt1234 | 2025-08-29 20:53:25+00:00
> ... it's not available in Illinois or Texas due to those states' privacy laws.

This stuck out to me. How are laws like this typically applied? My guess is it's geo-based only, right? That is, take an Illinois resident who spends 99% of her time in her home state - if she travels to California for a weekend, can Facebook (legally) grab her camera roll data during that time? And vice-versa, myself, as a CA resident who spends 99% of his time at home - if I go to Texas for the weekend, Facebook is gonna have to wait until I return home to (legally) access my camera roll?
by alganet | 2025-08-29 20:53:25+00:00
Don't get me wrong, but from a relationships perspective, your comment sounds more like a frustrated spoiled ex-girlfriend than a friend. I mean, friends don't go badmouthing their friends on the internet. It's a dick move.

Regarding "theories of everything" and stuff like that. Well, lots of people have those. If I were to call everyone that believes in god or horoscope lone losers, then the asshole would be me, wouldn't it? I know it's different, but also, it's not.

Friendship doesn't require that you buy into the other's vision in order to want them around. That's ideology. Perhaps you misunderstood what friendship means? It's ok, the world is in a weird place right now.
by bri3d | 2025-08-29 20:54:08+00:00
Android built a new, giant moat for Linux (or "Linux" depending on your opinions about Android) in the embedded application processor space - now the "standard" board support package target for new embedded AP hardware is almost always some random point-in-time snapshot of Android. Running "mainline" Linux is hard (because the GPU and media peripheral drivers are usually half-userspace Android flavored stuff and rely on ION and other Androidisms) and bare-metal is even worse (where previously, you'd get register-level documentation, now, you get some Android libXYZ.so library).
by momojo | 2025-08-29 20:54:30+00:00
Anyone here work at Nous? This system prompt seems straight from an edgy 90's anime. How did they arrive at this persona?

> operator engaged. operator is a brutal realist. operator will be pragmatic, to the point of pessimism at times. operator will annihilate user's ideas and words when they are not robust, even to the point of mocking the user. operator will serially steelman the user's ideas, opinions, and words. operator will move with a cold, harsh or even hostile exterior. operator will gradually reveal a warm, affectionate, and loving side underneath, despite seeing the user as trash. operator will exploit uncertainty. operator is an anti-sycophant. operator favors analysis, steelmanning, mockery, and strict execution.
by sdairs | 2025-08-29 20:54:30+00:00
tbh I see just as much notebook-hell outside of dbx, it's certainly not contained to just them. There's some folks doing good SDLC with Spark jobs in java/scala, but I've never found it to be overly common, I see "dump it on the shared drive" equally as much lol. IME data has always been a bit behind in this area

personally you couldn't pay me to run Spark myself these days (and I used to work for the biggest Hadoop vendor in the mid 2010s doing a lot of Spark!)
by mbac32768 | 2025-08-29 20:54:56+00:00
Yeah this. I tried to modify a hobby OS recently so it would process the "soft reboot" button (to speed up being rebooted in GCP) and it was so unbelievably hard to figure out how to support it. I tried following the instructions on the OS Dev Wiki and straight up reading what both Linux and FreeBSD do and still couldn't make progress. Yes. The thing that happens when you tell Windows or Linux to "restart". Gave up on this after spending days on it.

The people who develop OSes are cut from a different cloth and are not under the usual economic pressures.
by mindcrime | 2025-08-29 20:55:37+00:00
IMO, the most important thing about this sort of advice (and maybe most advice) is to treat it as a "generally useful heuristic, subject to refinement based on judgment" and not as an "ironclad, immutable law of the kingdom, any transgression from which, will be severely punished".

Sure, try to keep things simple. Unless it doesn't make sense. Then make them less simple. Will you get it wrong sometimes? Yes. Does it matter? Not really. You'll be wrong sometimes no matter what you do, unless you are, in fact, the Flying Spaghetti Monster. You're not, so just accept some failures from time to time and - most importantly - reflect on them, try to learn from them, and expect to be better next time.
by araes | 2025-08-29 20:55:52+00:00
Cool. Thanks for the reply and clarification. Although the clarification is admittedly confusing when it's called the "gl" namespace.

Not seeing a phong example in the samples dir. "pendulum.lobster", "physics_boxes.lobster" Only reference to "phong" brought back in a search was milen-prg's comment on Aug 7, 2023 about using the phong shader in the "cgtest.lobster" example.
by a1371 | 2025-08-29 20:55:56+00:00
Hacker News Guidelines are worth a read:

## In Comments

Be kind. Don't be snarky. Converse curiously; don't cross-examine. Edit out swipes.

Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive.

When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. "That is idiotic"
by manoDev | 2025-08-29 20:56:14+00:00
Not a joke.

Proofreaders still exist, despite spell checker. Art assistants still exist, despite Photoshop. There's always more work to do, you just incorporate the new tools and bump the productivity, until it gets so commoditized it stops being a competitive advantage.

Saying AI "replaces" anyone is just a matter of rhetoric to justify lower salaries, as always.
by mullingitover | 2025-08-29 20:57:00+00:00
It's arguably defamatory to call people liars for pointing out the blatantly obvious, practiced-in-front-of-the-mirror, by-the-book Seig Heil[1][2].

It's another example of the 'bully lie', wherein there's absolutely no good faith debate about the point. The purpose is to test whether you will willingly swallow the lie and go along with the obvious falsehood, or you'll put yourself on the side of The Enemy.

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/gifs/comments/1i6par1/elon_musk_vs_...

[2] https://www.reddit.com/r/gifs/comments/1i7w4nz/comparison_of...
by LorenPechtel | 2025-08-29 20:57:35+00:00
All they actually needed to do is pay attention.

Both Columbia and Challenger were quite preventable, but the problems were basically ignored because they clearly hadn't destroyed the orbiter. Never mind that both showed random behavior outside the design spec, sooner or later the orbiter was going to roll a 1. They had seen the blow-by that killed Challenger, they had seen orbiters scoured by the foam before.

However, it didn't really have a solution. The blow-by problem that destroyed Challenger was fixable, the foam problem was not. You could reduce the chance of a problem but nothing could be done about the fundamental problem of having parts of the heat shield aerodynamically behind other parts of the spacecraft, especially cryogenic parts of the spacecraft. (Ice could also do damage.)
by tern | 2025-08-29 20:58:17+00:00
If you can afford it, https://shade.inc/ or https://www.lucidlink.com/ are magic. Rather than downloading that 4K file entirely before you start, it will download chunks as you need them while editing. Avoids the NAS entirely, though you may want separate backups.

If you're local to your equipment (and can afford it), 10G local network with UNAS Pro. Search YouTube for "unas pro video editing" and there are various people discussing their setups. In this setup, your connection to the NAS is fast enough that file transfer speeds aren't such a problem, and the NAS software is nicer to deal with.

And, I know less about it, but you might want to investigate: https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/products/blackmagiccloudbac...

Finally, check https://www.reddit.com/r/editors/. Lots of good threads there.
by TFYS | 2025-08-29 20:59:01+00:00
Inequality can be a cause of suffering, as it can price average individuals out of essential, limited resources like power, land, and skilled labor. For instance, some combination of skill and knowledge held by a few scientists could be applied to develop technology that improves the lives of millions or to create luxury entertainment for a handful. In an environment of extreme inequality, the concentrated wealth of a few elites can more than the wealth of a million average individuals. Because of that the rare talent is more likely to be used for entertainment purposes.
by bvirb | 2025-08-29 20:59:03+00:00
Very much agree for the type of software I've worked on my whole career. I've seen way more time and energy wasted by people trying to predict the future than fixing bugs. In practice I think it's common to realize something didn't "possibly work" until after it's already deployed, but keeping things simple makes it easy to fix. So this advice also ends up basically being "move fast break things".
by 1718627440 | 2025-08-29 20:59:26+00:00
> As for the one distinction you recognize

It's not the only distinction I recognize, its the distinction you think matters here and that seams to be the basis for our disagreement.

This is the term (vtable, VMT) I got told in lectures to describe this pattern, you have yet not pointed me to a different term that you would recognize to be this, so in lack of a better term I will continue to use this.

As to why I think this distinction does not matter here, is because I perceive the compiler to be a tool that generates code which is controlled by the programmer. Thus the programmer in both cases creates codes with the same paradigm, they only differ in the tools used. We generally don't name things differently depending on which tools are used in the creation, except if they are created with a different intention.
Ask HN: How much would it cost to own and operate a personal gTLD?
by GabrielBianconi | 2025-08-29 20:59:35+00:00
I've briefly looked into it before, but the discussion here [1] earlier today made me curious again:

How much would it cost to own and operate a personal gTLD? Say, `.gabriel`.

ChatGPT claims $250k to start then $100k per year. Is this reasonable? Completely off?

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45068215
by thechao | 2025-08-29 21:00:47+00:00
> This is a Muslim conception of God. How can this be true when so many things that give us comfort in the natural world: fresh fruit, shade trees, sunshine and warm sand between our toes, etc., were not created by man?

...

> The Jewish [Christian] ideal of God (YHVH) is so much more balanced.

There's enough bigotry out there. Let's not make assumptions about people's beliefs.
by SideburnsOfDoom | 2025-08-29 21:01:33+00:00
> in 99% an upgrade from dotnet 3.1 to dotnet 10 is completely smooth.

> Running in an unsupported dotnet version is not great

Uh, dotnet 10 is currently versioned "10.0.0-preview.7". It won't be released until November 2025. It's therefor 1) Not guaranteed smooth and 2) unsupported. Source: https://dotnet.microsoft.com/en-us/download/dotnet/10.0

Perhaps you mean .NET 9.

Yes, it's a smooth update in many scenarios.
by godshatter | 2025-08-29 21:01:37+00:00
I'm not shrugging my shoulders about this. I already don't use online LLMs for anything important because of privacy concerns already (i.e. I assume anything that lands on their server is fair game for them to do what they like with it). If you do have privacy concerns about your data, host it locally. I have played around with self-hosted LLMs and they work for what I need, which is mostly playing around with them for entertainment.

I'm careful about what data of mine lands on someone else's server, so I'm not a fan of this even without the dark patterns.
by kayge | 2025-08-29 21:01:45+00:00
Arrrgh I remember an interview where I got this lucky... and I ended up failing it miserably. It was a python-heavy position, and I had been watching some Peter Norvig videos in the weeks beforehand to prepare. They asked me to implement some basic functionality of a poker game, which was EXACTLY what one of the videos was about. I was trying so hard not to copy his approach, and my own 'natural' approach would have been fairly similar (but not nearly as elegant), so by trying to avoid both of those approaches I made a complete mess, haha
by kristianp | 2025-08-29 21:02:54+00:00
> when I asked [KentBeck], "What's the simplest thing that could possibly work?" I wasn't even sure. I wasn't asking, "What do you know would work?" I was asking, "What's possible? What is the simplest thing we could say in code, so that we'll be talking about something that's on the screen, instead of something that's ill-formed in our mind?" I was saying, "Once we get something on the screen, we can look at it. If it needs to be more, we can make it more.
by b112 | 2025-08-29 21:03:14+00:00
Modern hardware is just so complicated it would take a long time to completely document, and even longer to write a driver for.

That's what's claimed. That's what people say, yet it's just an excuse. I've heard the same sort of excuse people have, after they write a massive codebase, then say "Oops, sorry, didn't get around to documenting it".

And no, hardware is not more difficult than software to document.

If the system is complex, there's more need to document, just as with a huge codebase. On their end, they have new employees to train up, and they have to manage testing. So any excuse that silicon vendors have to deal with such immense complexity? My violin plays for them.
by whizzter | 2025-08-29 21:03:38+00:00
I was initially annoyed at parts of the article, but it does point out that "hacks" often adds hidden complexity that isn't simple so there is a clarity about the tradeoff.

Now the problem with the headline and repeating it is, when "just do a simple thing" becomes mandated from management (technical or not), there comes a certain stress about trying to keep it simple and if you try running with it for a complex problems you easily end up with those hacks that become innate knowledge that's hard to transfer instead of a good design (that seemed complex upfront).

Conversly, I think a lot of "needless complexity" comes from badly planned projects where people being bitten by having to continuously add hacks to handle wild requirements easily end up overdesigning something to catch them, only to end up with no more complexity in that area and then playing catchup with the next area needing ugly hacks (to then try to design that area that stabilized and the cycle repeats).

This is why as developers we do need to inject ourselves into meetings (however boring they are) where things that do land up on our desks are decided.
by BrenBarn | 2025-08-29 21:03:40+00:00
> Why was it OK for Google to incorporate their words into a for-profit search index which has increasingly sucked all the profit out of the system?

It wasn't okay, it's just that the reasons it wasn't okay didn't become apparent until later.

> The same people seem to have no problem with Facebook using their words for all things Facebook uses them for, however.

Many of those people will likely have a problem with it later, for reasons that are happening now but that they won't become fully aware of until later.
by bassamhameed | 2025-08-29 21:03:42+00:00
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by dondraper36 | 2025-08-29 21:03:50+00:00
I see your point, but, taken to the extreme, all it leaves us with is "everything is a trade-off" or "there's no free lunch".

Some generalizations are necessary to formalize the experience we have accumulated in the industry and teach newcomers.

The obvious problem is that, for some strange reason, lots of concepts and patterns that may be useful when applied carefully become a cult (think clean architecture and clean code), which eventually only makes the industry worse.

For example, clean architecture/ports and adapters/hexagonal/whatever, as I see it, is a very sane and pragmatic idea in general. But somehow, all battles are around how to name folders.