MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by burnermore | 2025-09-08 03:54:00+00:00
Very interesting read. As someone who inherited the ancestors house which is 90+ years old, its really a fascinating read.

I have often observed that my dad's sisters and himself don't care enough about a lot of things that are old in our house. Mostly because they grew up seeing it or grew up with their parents obsessing over it.

But I wonder, what would the author's younger generation think about it? Because we didn't grew up with it. Everything around us is disposable. Lifeless. Valueless. We dispose the plates that we eat and things we have like we watch a new movie in Netflix.

So maybe her younger generation sees it from a different light? Cos every other night, they eat from disposable plates. Her generation can't buy the finesse the old generation things has (for things that are heirloom worth ofcourse).

My dad reads his newspaper in a chair which was auctioned out by the British after world war 2 financial troubles. My great grandfather bought it. And I sleep in in my great grandfather's bed. Both not things to care or is valued by my mom and dad. But very surreal whenever I think about it. We don't always have to go new.

Maybe give another generation chance to connect. Tell the stories about it to them. They maybe fascinated cos it's new with history to them while it was a day to day thing for the author herself?

Interesting read! Thank you.
by daemonologist | 2025-09-08 03:55:16+00:00
It's half-height (fits in "slim" desktops, those media center PCs, and in a 2U server without having to turn it sideways/use a riser), and barely longer than the PCIe socket. Phoronix has a picture with a full-height bracket which maybe gives a better point of comparison: https://www.phoronix.com/review/intel-arc-pro-b50-linux

(A half-height single-slot card would be even smaller, but those are vanishingly rare these days. This is pretty much as small as GPUs get unless you're looking more for a "video adapter" than a GPU.)
by esperent | 2025-09-08 03:57:50+00:00
> If demosceners can do it, regular indie devs really have no excuse.

Demosceners and indie devs are working under different constraints. For demosceners, the file size (4kb, 40kb, etc.) is the goal. For devs, especially those making a tool that you download and install, extreme size constraints seem unnecessary (although avoiding bloat is always good).

Instead, it seems to me that primary constraints for indie devs should be things like being easy to maintain, well documented, easy to use, easy to fix bugs, easy for other people to work on and extend. Small size should be a secondary target rather than primary.

Of course, one of the advantages of being indie is that you can set whatever constraints and targets you like for yourself.
Ask HN: How do handle burnout as a founder
by kartik0204 | 2025-09-08 04:00:17+00:00
Always wanted to build a startup, finally got funded a 2 years ago. Made all the mistakes one can make, hired incompetent friends, spent time on random growth hacks, built random products to get traffic to main product but never built the main product, never took a salary and a bunch more. After all this, we are finally did $100K last month but now I don't want to do this anymore. Feels like that I have done my job and now this org can stay alive without me.
by JonChesterfield | 2025-09-08 04:02:16+00:00
The underlying problem here is real and legitimately difficult. Shunting data around a cluster (ideally as parts of it fall over) to minimise overall time, in an application independent fashion, is a definable dataflow problem and also a serious discrete optimisation challenge. The more compute you spend on trying to work out where to move the data around, the less you have left over for the application. Also tricky working out what the data access patterns seem to be. Very like choosing how much of the runtime budget to spend on a JIT compiler.

This _should_ breakdown as running optimised programs on their runtime makes things worse and running less-carefully-structured ones makes things better, where many programs out there turn out to be either quite naive or obsessively optimised for an architecture that hasn't existed for decades. I'd expect this runtime to be difficult to build but with high value on success. Interesting project, thanks for posting it.
by onetimeusename | 2025-09-08 04:03:24+00:00
What are some solutions to the complicated problems?

I don't mean to put words in your mouth but what you are describing is an anti-Fascist worldview. To be clear, that means you believe Hitler-esque figures and fascism leading to mass destruction are recurring patterns to be avoided. So would being anti-Fascist require a commitment to more immigration? Would you say criticism of immigration should be suppressed because it's being used by demagogues to gain power?
by tzury | 2025-09-08 04:04:51+00:00
one of the most precious resources on the internet about dimensions is here

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL3C690048E1531DC7

walks you through step by step, builds the intuition and provides some historical context in the background.

despite "outdated" animation (15 years ago), still a great resource.

also available in 7 other languages.
by quuxplusone | 2025-09-08 04:06:23+00:00
The wiki page for "5D Brainfuck with Multiverse Time Travel" claims that `(-^.[.]),[,]` is "cat, but faster." But it seems to me that the `.` would never print anything, because the lower universe contains no memory pointers at that point — the only one traveled to the upper universe as a result of the preceding `^` instruction (so now the upper universe contains two memory pointers). Am I missing something or does that example not really work as advertised?
by hackable_sand | 2025-09-08 04:07:35+00:00
Makes sense to me.

The first few months were rough. Mostly because I am neurodivergent, but also because the work does suck.

It worked though. I kept my head down, got promoted, made friends.

I went into software engineering out of high school, so this was definitely a new experience, but I agree. I think everyone should give this kind of work a shot. You learn a lot about people.
by spderosso | 2025-09-08 04:07:57+00:00
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by roskoe | 2025-09-08 04:09:43+00:00
In all fairness, the conditions that saw the demo scene rising are so remote to be almost incomprehensible to the new generation.

"You see, when a cracking crew beat the protection of a new game, they would upload their hacked version to an elite BBS and repackaged it with a little intro and a trainer. They had to be very creative and skilled, often working directly in assembler, in order to achieve impressive imagery and chip music while still fitting on the same 1.4MB floppy."

blank stare
by pmarreck | 2025-09-08 04:11:41+00:00
> That someone can cite a passage from a book to justify robbing you doesn't mean that his robbing you is inspired by the book.

I'm sorry, what? I literally don't follow. If someone robs my home because of what it says to do in an unquestionable book that they've been raised on, how is that not literally inspired by the book? This is nonsense. People do things all the time (good and bad) because of what they believe is true in books. Would you not fault those books if they state something wrong that causes people to commit harm? I mean... Trepanation? Bloodletting? Countless other things that were believed to be true, were acted on because of that, but were actually wrong?

Have you actually read the relevant passages?

(I more or less agree with your other statements.)
by efortis | 2025-09-08 04:11:42+00:00
Projectional Editing can be done with text sources.

Here’s an old video of JetBrains MPS rendering a table from code https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XolJx4GfMmg&t=63s

I’m hoping for an IDE able to render dictionaries as tables -- my wishlist doesn’t stop there.

Currently, we have a glimpse of those features, such as code folding, inlay hints, or docstrings rendered as HTML:

https://x.com/efortis/status/1922427544470438381
by JonChesterfield | 2025-09-08 04:11:57+00:00
Chris and Nick originally, a few more of us these days. Spectral compute. We might have a nicer world if people had backed opencl instead of cuda but whatever. Likewise rust has a serious edge over c++. But to the compiler hacker, this is all obfuscated SSA form anyway, it's hard to get too emotional about the variations.
by petesergeant | 2025-09-08 04:12:01+00:00
> I need a C class that has a constructor for a tuple

| I'll create a simple C++ class with a constructor that takes a tuple. Here's an example...

> nah C

| C doesn't have classes or constructors - those are C++ features. In C, you would use a struct and create an initialization function. Here's how you'd handle a tuple-like structure:
by ivewonyoung | 2025-09-08 04:12:48+00:00
> It's not that Hyundai needs to build a factory in the middle of nowhere in Georgia.

Then why is it doing so? I'm lost.

Are you implying that it's an act of charity towards the US with zero expectation of or potential for profit? Then why doesn't Hyundai just save the management trouble and donate to a charity?
by arunbahl | 2025-09-08 04:13:13+00:00
From the article:

“We’ll be using reinforcement learning to effectively come up with the optimal toolpaths to see a 3D model, and based on the curvature and the geometric forms, to choose what are the right tools, or what are the right angles of attack,” Springut says. “And when we do that, that’s what’s going to bring the cost of fabricating stone down by 80% to 90%.”
by dwood_dev | 2025-09-08 04:14:55+00:00
Apple has been iterating IPC as well as increasing core count.

The Ultra is a pair of Max chips. While the core counts didn't increase from M3 to M4 Max, overall performance is in the neighborhood of 5-25% better. Which still puts the M3 Ultra as Apple's top end chip, and the M5 Max might not dethrone it either.

The uplift in IPC and core counts means that my M1 Max MBP has a similar amount of CPU performance as my M3 iPad Air.
by mandarwagh | 2025-09-08 04:15:01+00:00
Good point, and you are right that a lot of futurism reads like sci-fi. That said, this piece is not just imaginative storytelling, it is mechanism-based forecasting. The timeline links observable trends—rapid LLM capability gains, falling inference costs, cloud APIs that make deployment trivial, and huge economic incentives to replace repeatable knowledge work—with plausible policy and social responses, like UBI and regulatory lag. History shows these transitions can compress once the cost/benefit threshold is crossed, think smartphones, cloud services, or the sudden shift to remote work during COVID. So yes, the dates are aggressive, but the logic is empirical: if the technical and economic levers align, adoption can be much faster than we intuitively expect. If you want a stronger case, I can add a clear assumptions list and evidence anchors for each step.
by froh | 2025-09-08 04:15:25+00:00
yes, contemporary editors and tools like treesitter have decided this debate in favor of plain text file representation, exactly for the reasons you give: universal accessibility by general purpose tools.

xslt was a Diana like pre-parsed representation of dsssl. oh how I miss dsssl (a scheme based sgml transformation language) but no. dsssl was a lisp! with hygienic macros! "ikes" they went and invented XSLT.

the "logic" escapes me to this day.

no. plain text it is. human readable. and grep/sed/diff able.
by mandarwagh | 2025-09-08 04:16:06+00:00
True, AGI is not here yet, but displacement does not require AGI, only AI that is "good enough" for repetitive cognitive tasks. We are already seeing this in coding, design, legal review, and customer support. As for UBI, history shows that when disruptive tech collapses existing structures, new redistribution mechanisms eventually emerge, whether through taxation, social programs, or crashes that reset ownership. The cycle you describe is possible, but it reinforces the core point: once AI becomes cheaper than human labor, waves of disruption are inevitable, whether cushioned by UBI or followed by crashes and redistribution.
by AnthonyMouse | 2025-09-08 04:16:12+00:00
> they destroy x86 lineage chips on performance per watt.

This isn't really true. On the same process node the difference is negligible. It's just that Intel's process in particular has efficiency problems and Apple buys out the early capacity for TSMC's new process nodes. Then when you compare e.g. the first chips to use 3nm to existing chips which are still using 4 or 5nm, the newer process has somewhat better efficiency. But even then the difference isn't very large.

And the processors made on the same node often make for inconvenient comparisons, e.g. the M4 uses TSMC N3E but the only x86 processor currently using that is Epyc. And then you're obviously not comparing like with like, but as a ballpark estimate, the M4 Pro has a TDP of ~3.2W/core whereas Epyc 9845 is ~2.4W/core. The M4 can mitigate this by having somewhat better performance per core but this is nothing like an unambiguous victory for Apple; it's basically a tie.

> I have an M1 Max, a few revisions old, and the only thing I can do to spin up the fans is run local LLMs or play Minecraft with the kids on a giant ultra wide monitor at full frame rate. Giant Rust builds and similar will barely turn on the fan. Normal stuff like browsing and using apps doesn’t even get it warm.

One of the reasons for this is that Apple has always been willing to run components right up to their temperature spec before turning on the fan. And then even though that's technically in spec, it's right on the line, which is bad for longevity.

In consumer devices it usually doesn't matter because most people rarely put any real load on their machines anyway, but it's something to be aware of if you actually intend to, e.g. there used to be a Mac Mini Server product and then people would put significant load on them and then they would eat the internal hard drives because the fan controller was tuned for acoustics over operating temperature.
by ivewonyoung | 2025-09-08 04:16:30+00:00
It gets a little confusing because ESTA(which South Koreans are eligible for) is valid for both tourist and business use, and is a visa waiver.

As this comment[1] states with an official source:

> A B-1 visa may be granted to specialized workers going to the United States to install, service, or repair commercial or industrial equipment or machinery purchased from a company outside of the United States, or to train U.S. workers to perform such services.

Maybe the business use of ESTA also covers the above use cases?

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45164008
by daft_pink | 2025-09-08 04:17:06+00:00
I’m not an expert at this, but is it true that the US is very unique in requiring interviews for all tourist visas and for almost every visa?

I’m American and every visa I’ve had to apply for did not require my physical presence at the embassy and I used a third-party processing service to get everything done.

Therefore, while I would need to apply to these countries from their US embassy because my physical presence was not required, I would generally not need to return to the United States to obtain their visa?

And this aspect of a US visa does make it significantly harder even though the application policy is similar to other countries?
by mandarwagh | 2025-09-08 04:17:56+00:00
Fair point, but “displacement” does not always mean one-to-one replacement, it means fewer humans are hired because AI covers part of the workload. There is credible evidence: IBM froze hiring for 7,800 roles citing AI, Duolingo laid off contractors due to AI translation, and Klarna reported its AI assistant now does the work of 700 support agents. These are early signals of substitution, not just assistance.
by OfflineSergio | 2025-09-08 04:18:36+00:00
When it comes to Information Retrieval, you can get anything between links to existing documents or generated content based on those processed information. I agree that the second one is really powerfuly and just amazing and seemilngly useful. But the fact that it can also be wrong in more cases and I won't know keep being reminded to my using it for things I'm not good at and they just don't work s they should.

I just wish the business models could justify a confidence level being attached to the response.
by mandarwagh | 2025-09-08 04:18:36+00:00
Skepticism makes sense, but unlike ebooks or PDAs, AI directly changes the economics of labor. IBM, Klarna, and Duolingo have already cut roles citing AI. Agriculture and hardware will feel it too once robots integrate with AI for planning, optimization, and automation. This is not just hype, it is cost-driven adoption, and cost curves rarely cool down.
by zer00eyz | 2025-09-08 04:19:22+00:00
> This is the glaring fallacy!

It feels like toil because it's not the interesting or engaging part of the work.

If you're going to build a piece of furniture. The cutting, nailing, gluing are the "boiler plate" that you have to do around the act of creation.

LLM's are just nail guns.
by mandarwagh | 2025-09-08 04:20:15+00:00
ChatGPT was released publicly in Nov 2022, so yes, that is just under 3 years ago. On displacement: IBM announced a freeze on 7,800 roles due to AI, Klarna reported its AI assistant handles the work of 700 agents, and Duolingo cut contractors because of AI translation.

These are real workforce impacts, not hypotheticals. As for “replacement,” full substitution is rare at first, but businesses cut hiring the moment a tool can do the same task faster and cheaper. That is exactly how displacement begins.

And while I may be early in my career, the evidence is not about opinion, it is about adoption curves and cost pressures already playing out.
by joe_the_user | 2025-09-08 04:21:15+00:00
CUDA does involve a massive investment for Nvidia. It's not that it's impossible to replicate the functionality. But once a company has replicated that functionality, that company basically is going to be selling at competitive prices, which isn't a formula for high profits.

Notably, AMD funded a CUDA clone, ZLUDA, and then quashed it[1]. Comments at the time here involved a lot of "they would always be playing catch up".

I think the mentality of chip makers generally is that they'd rather control a small slice of a market than fight competitively for a large slice. It makes sense in that they invest years in advance and expect those investments to pay high profits.

[1] https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/gpus/amd-asks-dev...
by mandarwagh | 2025-09-08 04:21:31+00:00
LLMs are the visible tip, but underneath we have multimodal models, agent frameworks, robotics integration, and rapidly falling compute costs. Frontier tech rarely looks plausible at first—flight, the internet, even smartphones did not.

The point is not that LLMs themselves take us to 2125, but that they are the spark in a chain of exponential advances that will.
by merlyn | 2025-09-08 04:21:59+00:00
Note, the CIDR RFC didn't come out until Sep 1993. Thus even brand new network equipment in the mid 1990's were still very classful. And even then, knowledge of how to properly use /etc/netmasks in SunOS v4.x (or the equivalent if some other network stack even had one) was very scarce.

In the mid 90's, SMBs connecting to the Internet would have very typically obtained a /24 from their ISP, and had direct connection online, no firewalls, barely any proxy servers (although that was popular for some mid sized customers that would have needed multiple /24s or even a /16 to get all their workstations online).

It wasn't until the company Network Translation, with the PIX came about that anybody even considered doing private IP address in general as a firewall strategy with NAT translation using private IPs. And then it took years and years to become popular. Long bought by Cisco at that point.

I don't think Cisco IOS even had NAT until something like 10.2, when it was a premium license package.
by NotAnOtter | 2025-09-08 04:23:17+00:00
I feel Quora gave up years ago though.

When you load a random content page, the top 50% of the page is a question, the bottom 50% is an ad that is designed to look like a comment, and the entire right panel is ads. Quora is more ads than content, you have to scroll and decipher what is or isn't an ad based on their greyed 2px font ad disclaimer.
by zdragnar | 2025-09-08 04:25:10+00:00
This is missing the point entirely. Esoteric languages are those designed to intentionally be novel in some manner, and frequently allow impractical design choices to support the art, joke or boundary-pushing novelty. They're not intended to be used for day to day professional work.

Consider for example the Olympus language highlighted in the article. It is impractically verbose but is all the more amusing for it.

Other examples include languages made entirely from whitespace, one that I can't remember the name of that is designed to read like poetry in either German or English, and LOLCODE which is to be written in the style of lol cats memes.
by Martin_Silenus | 2025-09-08 04:25:19+00:00
That's something about low-level feminism that has been making me furious for the past 10 years. Because these people didn't even live through that era, when most women only started taking an interest in personal computers once these machines became a vehicle for social interaction (they were born after Internet became a thing, so they don't take into account the fact that these machines weren't connected, that it was a solo activity... and that, to me, explains everything about most women's lack of interest at that time).

When I was young, I would have sold my soul to hook up with a hardcore female coder who ate 68000 for breakfast. Met on February 32 at a code party, perhaps. It would have been love at first sight. We would have started a family, had kids, ethical hacker seeds, in binary underpants, learning to code before they could even walk. The Addams Family of hacking. The Tarantino-esque Killers of dev. Throwing around scroll texts writhing in all directions, nauseating rotozooms, while breaking borders in HBL sync, chasing cathode rays to spew psychedelic plasma effects in 4096 colors... damn it!
by k310 | 2025-09-08 04:25:38+00:00
It has run out of data, feeding increasingly on its own output (with help from bots that tarnish and bias it)

The first big settlement for using stolen data has come (Anthropic). How you extricate the books archive and claimamants' works is unknown.

I believe that LLM's in verticals are being fed expert/cleaned data, but wasn't that always the case, i.e. knowledge bases? Much less data and power needed (less than ∞) Oh, and much less investment, IMO.