MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by dingi | 2025-09-05 13:46:50+00:00
I use both Podman and Docker pretty regularly, and to be honest I don’t see a huge amount of differentiation or practical value in Podman for my day-to-day. It feels like another OCI runtime with some quirks compared to Docker.

One pain point for me is rootless mode: my Podman containers tend to stop randomly for no obvious reason. I tried the recommended “enable user lingering” fix and it didn’t help. I’ve never run into this with Docker.

I get the theoretical advantages, daemonless architecture, better systemd integration, rootless by default, podman generate kube, etc. But if you’re just using containers for development or straightforward deployments, Docker feels smoother and more reliable. Maybe if you’re in a security-sensitive environment or need tighter system integration Podman shines, but for my use cases I’m still not convinced.
by ActionHank | 2025-09-05 13:47:07+00:00
I think many of us question the ethics of lying to sell a product that cannot deliver what you are promising.

All the good devs that I know aren't worried about losing their jobs, they are happy there is a shortcut through boilerplate and documentation. They are also equally unhappy about having to talk management, who know very little about the world of dev, off the ledge as they are getting ready to jump off with their AI wings that will fail.

Finally, the original point was about censorship and controlling of information, not automating jobs.
by pflenker | 2025-09-05 13:47:09+00:00
Gemini keeps telling me "you've hit a common frustration/issue/topic/..." so often it is actively pushing me away from using it. It either makes me feel stupid because I ask it a stupid question and it pretends - probably to not hurt my feelings - that everyone has the same problem, or it makes me feel stupid because I felt smart about asking my super duper edge case question no one else has probably ever asked before and it tells me that everyone is wondering the same thing. Either way I feel stupid.
by cratermoon | 2025-09-05 13:47:20+00:00
> I was truly amazed to see ChatGPT understand my reasoning and even come up with its own ideas to help improve the research.

ChatGPT did nothing of the sort. The creators of ChatGPT happened to have in their corpus a sufficient amount of text from related research, forums and blogs discussing RNGs, and related math and programming topics to create a model that can generate plausible-sounding synthetic text.
Ask HN: Is plugin architecture + AI Coding agent a good idea?
by wonglok831 | 2025-09-05 13:47:49+00:00
Hi guys, i recently try to learn about coding ai agent, then i tried to build one and i made one for myself. Then, i was thinking about Wordpress and plugins kind of concept, i was thinking like what if i make a Wordpress kind of thingy with AI powered agent to write plugins for yourself, would this be actually useful for developers to earn more money / save time? what do you guys think?
by plopilop | 2025-09-05 13:48:28+00:00
Sooo... Should we ban Google too? It is also ordering the contents of its research results with algorithms. Similarly, HN and reddit order the contents of their front page with some algorithms, and in the case of Google and Reddit, the algorithm is personalized with the user's preferences.

Or do we only ban websites that design their algorithms to trigger strong emotional emotions? How do you define that? Even Musk doesn't go around saying that the algorithm is modified to promote alt right, instead he pretends it is all about "bringing balance back". Furthermore, I would argue that systems based on votes such as Reddit or HN are much more likely than other systems to push such content. We could issue a regulation to ban specific platforms or websites (TikTok, X...) by naming them individually, but that would probably go against many rules of free competition, and would be quite easily circumvented.

Not that I disagree on the effect of social medias on society, but regulating this is not as easy as "let's ban the algorithm".
by solarkraft | 2025-09-05 13:48:47+00:00
> The blockchain will be secured by an independent and diverse validator set, with a roadmap toward permissionless validators

This sounds like a „private blockchain“, which loses a lot of the advantages to me, but, if designed correctly, it may still produce a very solid and long living platform if there are many parties interested in keeping it running.

Do consider me skeptical that Stripe will actually cede enough control for this advantage to materialize since that’s just not what companies are incentivized to do.
by alentred | 2025-09-05 13:49:39+00:00
Oh wow, I never thought of that. In fact, this surfaces another consideration: pay-per-use LLM APIs are basically incentivized to be verbose, which may be well in conflict with the user's intentions. I wonder how this story will develop.

In an optimistic sci-fi line of thinking, I would imagine APIs using old-school telegraph abbreviations and inventing their own shortened domain languages.

In practice I rarely see ChatGPT use an abbreviation, though.
by threetonesun | 2025-09-05 13:49:42+00:00
Ah, this reminds me of the one asshole on the old car forum I used to heavily participate in, who would tell new users how dumb all their ideas were for modifying their cars were. And yes, some would argue back, and then someone else would step in and point out all the threads from the cranky asshole where he'd already tried everything they were suggesting.
by j-pb | 2025-09-05 13:49:43+00:00
What these LLMs enable is fixing the foundations. If you considered writing a novel database, operating system, or other foundational piece of software two years ago, you had to be mad. Now you still do, but at least you got a chance.

I can highly recommend these talks to get your eyes slightly opened to how stuck we are in a local minima.

https://vimeo.com/71278954

https://www.destroyallsoftware.com/talks/a-whole-new-world
by jdiff | 2025-09-05 13:49:48+00:00
This isn't how it practically works though. You hit a saturation point where there's no more work to be done. There's only so much software to write, only so many ad campaigns to push, sometimes you just need to maintain, stabilize, and not iterate. If you have a problem that requires 10 engineers, 100 isn't going to speed it up. 9 women can't make a baby in 1 month and all that.
by ZaoLahma | 2025-09-05 13:50:34+00:00
I find the GPT-5 model having turned the friendliness way, way down. Topics that previously would have rendered long and (usefully) engaging conversations are now met with an "ok cool" kind of response.

I get it - we don't want LLMs to be reinforces of bad ideas, but sometimes you need a little positivity to get past a mental barrier and do something that you want to do, even if what you want to do logically doesn't make much sense.

An "ok cool" answer is PERFECT for me to decide not to code something stupid (and learn something useful), and instead go and play video games (and learn nothing).
by titzer | 2025-09-05 13:50:44+00:00
We did it for MaxineVM back in the day, having the thread-local-storage point to itself and the safepoint as a load back into the same register. The problem is that that introduces a chain of dependent loads for all safepoints and for all operations that use thread-local storage. That seems like it would hurt OOE and IPC as a result.

I am working on adding threads to Virgil (slowly, in the background, heh). I'll use the simple load+branch from the TLS for the simple reason that the GC code is also written in Virgil and it must be possible to turn off safepoints that have been inserted into the GC code itself, which is easy and robust to do if they are thread-local.
by nlitened | 2025-09-05 13:51:12+00:00
> Could you then say that this blockchain really provides nothing that a traditional centralized system wouldn't?

Blockchains (in general) enforce not only open code, but open data.

Technically, nothing prevents traditional banks to offer standardized easy-to-use and easy-to-onboard API access to their financial data, but in reality incentives are not there (quite the opposite).

Blockchains are a contrived way to enforce open code and open data. There are other technical ways to do that, but none of them has been found to actually work in reality.
by HumblyTossed | 2025-09-05 13:51:14+00:00
You have the unbelievably productive programmers - we all know their names, we use the code they wrote every day. Then you have the programmers who want to be there and will try everything they can to be there - except gain depth of knowledge. They tend to be shallow programmers. If you give them a task and spell it out, they can knock out code for it at a really good pace and wow upper management. But they will always lack the ability to take a task not spelled out and complete it. Vibe-coding is like sugar and crack mixed together for these people.
by soldtm | 2025-09-05 13:51:15+00:00
Not looking for hype, just offering a challenge. This is a formal proof sketch for the Yang–Mills mass gap. The result works. The math checks out. But here's the twist:

I’m not explaining how it was built not yet. What I am doing is asking: Can you figure out how the result was reached?

Full paper is here: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17042143

If you’re deep in the weeds of QFT, lattice gauge, or spectral gaps, you’ll know what to look for. If not, maybe the framework still sparks something.

This isn’t bait. It’s a real, working answer. But the starting point that’s the part you get to reconstruct.
Show HN: KnowViz – Turn any concept into visuals (exploring "Nano Banana")
by renedloh | 2025-09-05 13:51:16+00:00
I built KnowViz: type any concept → get a structured explanation + a teaching‑style infographic in minutes.

Why: I'm a grad student. While experimenting with Google’s Nano Banana, I found it might help learning—not just flashy demos.

What’s different

- Teaching-first output: the goal isn’t just “pretty images” — it’s “learnable visuals.” The structure is designed to be teachable and scannable.

- Nano Banana for learning: popular and cool, yes — but here it’s explored for pedagogy. Early results are promising; I’d love your feedback.

How it works - First text, then visuals: first generate a structured explanation (definition, key points, short example, related concepts), and then produce a clear, education-oriented visual.

- Models: I route text to GPT‑5 and visuals through Nano Banana.

- Stack: Deployed on Vercel with Next.js (my first time — genuinely smooth).

Would love blunt feedback:

- Does this actually help you learn/remember?

- Which export formats matter (Image / PDF / Video)?

- Which subjects should I prioritize?

Link: https://knowviz.app/en
by pizlonator | 2025-09-05 13:51:31+00:00
> How does it compare to something like RLBox?

I don’t know and it doesn’t matter because RLBox doesn’t make your C code memory safe. It only containerizes it.

Like, if you put a database in RLBox then a hacker could still use a memory safety bug to corrupt or exfiltrate sensitive data.

If you put a browser engine in RLBox then a hacker could still pwn your whole machine:

- If your engine has no other sandbox other than RLBox then they’d probably own your kernel by corrupting a buffer in memory that is being passed to a GPU driver (or something along those lines). RLBox will allow that corruption because the buffer is indeed in the program’s memory.

- If the engine has some other sandbox on top of RLbox then the bad guys will corrupt a buffer used for sending messages to brokers, so they can then pop those brokers. Just as they would without RLbox.

Fil-C prevents all of that because it uses a pointer capability model and enforces it rigorously.

So, RLbox could be infinity faster than Fil-C and I still wouldn’t care
by giamma | 2025-09-05 13:53:07+00:00
I am still on an x86 Mac.

When Docker Desktop changed licensing I tried to switch to Podman and it was a disaster, Podman was brand new and despite many blog posts that claimed it was the perfect replacement it did not work for me, and I have very simple requirements. So I ended up using Rancher Desktop instead, which was also very unstable but better.

Fast forward 1 year, Rancher was pretty good and Podman still did not work reliably on my mac.

Fast forward another year or so and I switched to colima.

I tried podman last time about one year ago and I still had issues on my old mac. So far colima has been good enough for my needs although at least two times a brew update broke colima and I had to reinstall from scratch.
by ktosobcy | 2025-09-05 13:53:12+00:00
ERM, FB itself admited they made a research regarding emotional response to the content they show.

FB/X modus operandi is keep as much people for as long possible glued to the screen. The most triggering content will awaken all those "keyboard wariors" to fight.

So instead of seeing your friends and people you follow on there you would mostly see something that would affect you one way or another (hence proliferation of more and more extreme stuff).

Google is going downhill but for different reasons - they also care only about investors bottomline but being the biggest ad-provider they don't care all that much if people spend time on google.com page or not.
by pitah1 | 2025-09-05 13:53:16+00:00
I have a tool[1] that solely worked with docker before and was putting off supporting podman for a while because I thought it would take some time. But it turned out to work straight out of the box without tweaking. Essentially frictionless.

[1] Tool for reference: https://github.com/data-catering/insta-infra
by ACCount37 | 2025-09-05 13:53:18+00:00
Very unlikely to be an explicit tactic. Likely to be a result of RLHF or other types of optimization pressure for multi-turn instruction following.

If we have RLHF in play, then human evaluators may generally prefer responses starting with "you're right" or "of course", because it makes it look like the LLM is responsive and acknowledges user feedback. Even if the LLM itself was perfectly capable of being responsive and acknowledging user feedback without emitting an explicit cue. The training will then wire that human preference into the AI, and an explicit "yes I'm paying attention to user feedback" cue will be emitted by the LLM more often.

If we have RL on harder targets, where multiturn instruction following is evaluated not by humans that are sensitive to wording changes, but by a hard eval system that is only sensitive to outcomes? The LLM may still adopt a "yes I'm paying attention to user feedback" cue because it allows it to steer its future behavior better (persona self-consistency drive). Same mechanism as what causes "double check your prior reasoning" cues such as "Wait, " to be adopted by RL'd reasoning models.
by the_af | 2025-09-05 13:53:21+00:00
> It's a dark pattern

No, a dark pattern is intentionally deceptive design meant to trick users into doing something (or prevent them from doing something else) they otherwise wouldn't. Examples: being misleading about confirmation/cancel buttons, hiding options to make them less pickable, being misleading about wording/options to make users buy something they otherwise wouldn't, being misleading about privacy, intentionally making opt in/out options confusing, etc.

None of it is the case here.
by crazygringo | 2025-09-05 13:53:29+00:00
No, they genuinely mean it's unreliable.

Obviously popular articles are great -- they have so many eyeballs and editors that they're not just quite accurate, but often more comprehensive than other sources (in terms of describing competing schools of thought, for example).

But when you really drill down into more niche articles, there's a tremendous amount of information that is uncited or not found in the citation, has glaring omissions, and/or is just plain wrong. These are the kinds of articles that get 1 edit every six months.

It's those latter articles that are the reason Wikipedia is too unreliable to cite.

(Also, Wikipedia is a tertiary source, as it is meant to only cite secondary sources, not primary sources.)
by mcdonje | 2025-09-05 13:53:29+00:00
Well for one thing, he's using a bunch of correlated subqueries, which is a bad idea. He even links to an article about why it's a bad idea and then does it anyway. Generally easily avoidable.

For another, postgres has more JSON functions than just jsonb_agg.

https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/functions-json.html

I don't have time to write something out right now, but there are definitely options.
by wgrover | 2025-09-05 13:53:30+00:00
A parenting tip for those with geeky kids:

You can get some of these (like the smaller TOMY robots) for pretty cheap on eBay. They're usually broken, but the innards of these robots are so interesting, just taking them apart is a learning experience. TOMY was brilliant at making seemingly sophisticated toys that were actually run by a single DC motor; all the movements, sounds, sensing etc. were implemented using gears and cam shafts and other mechanisms. A great way to learn about simple machines, and a bonus if you (or your kid) can repair them and bring a 40-year-old robot back to life.
by MSFT_Edging | 2025-09-05 13:53:34+00:00
It's oppressive and nightmarish because we are at the mercy of large conglomerates tracking every move we make and kicking our livelyhoods out from under ourselves, while also censoring AI to make it more amenable to pro-corporate speech.

Imagine if ChatGPT gave "do a luigi" as a solution to walmart tracking your face, gait, device fingerprints, location, and payment details, then offering that data to local police forces for the grand panopticon to use for parallel reconstruction.

It would be unimaginable. That's because the only way for someone to be in the position to determine what is censored in the chat window, would be for them to be completely on the side of the data panopticon.

There is no world where technology can empower the average user more than those who came in with means.
by torginus | 2025-09-05 13:54:16+00:00
I have a friend who used to do book translations. Due to some craftsman union rules, the minimum rate for translations has been set (and of course that's what everybody pays). Machine translation didn't decrease these rates, but they haven't been increased in 15 years, which made inflation completely eat it up.

Initially machine translation was way worse (by professional standards) than people assumed, essentially useless, you had to rewrite everything.

As time went on, and translation got better, the workflow shifted from doing it yourself to doing a machine pass, and rewriting it to be good enough. (Machine translation today is still just 'okay', not professional quality)

On the initially set rates 15 years ago you could eke out a decent-ish salary (good even if you worked lots of hours and were fast). Today if you tried to do the work by hand, you'd starve to death.
by pizlonator | 2025-09-05 13:54:26+00:00
> While there are certainly other reasons C/C++ get used in new projects, I think 99% not being performance or footprint sensitive is way overstating it.

Here’s my source. I’m porting Linux From Scratch to Fil-C

There is load bearing stuff in there that I’d never think of off the top of my head that I can assure you works just as well even with the Fil-C tax. Like I can’t tell the difference and don’t care that it is technically using more CPU and memory.

So then you’ve got to wonder, why aren’t those things written in JavaScript, or Python, or Java, or Haskell? And if you look inside you just see really complex syscall usage. Not for perf but for correctness. It code that would be zero fun to try to write in anything other than C or C++
by trjordan | 2025-09-05 13:54:30+00:00
OK, so I love this, because we all recognize it.

It's not fully just a tic of language, though. Responses that start off with "You're right!" are alignment mechanisms. The LLM, with its single-token prediction approach, follows up with a suggestion that much more closely follows the user's desires, instead of latching onto it's own previous approach.

The other tic I love is "Actually, that's not right." That happens because once agents finish their tool-calling, they'll do a self-reflection step. That generates the "here's what I did response" or, if it sees an error, the "Actually, ..." change in approach. And again, that message contains a stub of how the approach should change, which allows the subsequent tool calls to actually pull that thread instead of stubbornly sticking to its guns.

The people behind the agents are fighting with the LLM just as much as we are, I'm pretty sure!
by BiteCode_dev | 2025-09-05 13:54:44+00:00
At first stable coins were to avoid taxes when selling and buying again by skipping the round trip to fiat.

But now, the use case Stripe is talking about is basically the equivalent of creating WoW Gold for companies, and bypassing state money entirely, but IRL.

This is a dangerous idea.

Big corps have become immensly powerful, but they are still kept in check by the state for 3 reasons: the monopoly on law, violence, and minting money.

Lobbying is taking care of the law.

And now they are coming for the money.

Crypto currencies were supposed to taken the power of currency from big actors and back to the people. It's going to take it from the state to companies.

Soon, they will effectively have more power than the state, and citizens will be screwed.
by muldvarp | 2025-09-05 13:55:44+00:00
I don't see how thinking about some source code is an innately more human activity than welding. Both can be done by humans, both couldn't be done by anything but humans until automation came along and now both can be done by humans and automated systems.

I also fail to see how LLMs can turn humans into "biorobots". You can still do all the things you could do before LLMs came along. The economic value of those things just decreased enourmously.
by tombert | 2025-09-05 13:55:46+00:00
I used to think he was reasonably smart but after a certain point I realized that his knowledge of basically anything he talked about was extremely surface level, and doesn’t appear to know much after that.

I disliked him before he went super conservative, but now his YouTube channel boils down to “OMG GUYS LOOK AT HOW WOKE EVERYTHING IS WOKE WOKE WOKE WOKE WOKE PEOPLE ARE HATERS ON ME BECAUSE I SAID SOMETHING THEY DONT LIKE WOKE WOKE!”

It’s typical low effort grifter stuff.
by makeitdouble | 2025-09-05 13:55:48+00:00
I beg to differ. Jira can be used in a sensible way, but that absolutely not how the tool is pitched nor how it guides user and companies. I'd compare it to giving users a 30 tools swiss army knife when all they should be using is the + driver and the scissors.

The issue being that teams that have that maturity don't need to kitchen sink in the first place and will be combining their own selected tools. That's how so many teams can get by with Notion and Gitlab only.

I spent more than a decade in JIRA and the Atlassian suite and can't think of any synergy that I miss TBH. Confluence in particular was fine for the time but does it stand the current competition ?
by the_af | 2025-09-05 13:56:20+00:00
I think it's simply an engagement tactic.

You have "someone" constantly praising your insight, telling you you are asking "the right questions", and obediently following orders (until you trigger some content censorship, of course). And who wouldn't want to come back? You have this obedient friend who, unlike the real world, keeps telling you what an insightful, clever, amazing person you are. It even apologizes when it has to contradict you on something. None of my friends do!