MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by paool | 2025-09-29 22:30:25+00:00
> shouldn't it just take advantage of what's already there?

It's not a good idea to have any coding agent put unnecessary amounts of lines into the context window in order to understand your code base.

Performance of all llms drop drastically when the context window is filled or full. The purpose of being more specific with your prompts is that you spend a little bit more tokens up front to make the task a lot more efficient and more likely to result in success.

At least that's how it is today. We're probably a breakthrough or two away from the type of vibe coding experience non-coders want. Or it may never happen, and the developers who have coding knowledge will be the only ones to fully utilize coding agents and it will only become more powerful over time.
by seanwilson | 2025-09-29 22:31:11+00:00
An editor for creating custom accessible color palettes for web/UI design. :)

https://www.inclusivecolors.com/

It gives you precise control over every shade/tint (no AI or auto generation!) so you can incorporate your own brand colors, and helps you build palettes that have simple to follow color contrast guarantees by design e.g. all grade 600 colors have 4.5:1 WCAG contrast (for body text) against all grade 50 colors, such as red-600 vs gray-50, or green-600 vs gray-50. There's export options for plain CSS, Tailwind, Figma, and Adobe.

I'm really open to feedback on what problems and needs people have for creating accessible designs!
by jazzyjackson | 2025-09-29 22:31:27+00:00
Setting up home assistant to send push notifications via Smart plug amperage changes sounds like a great way to begin a long term committed relationship with your appliances

Edit: what the other guy said. I have a diver watch I just spin the dial to see how much time has passed since I started something. One time at the height of my Arduino hackery I didn't have a tea kettle and just boiled water in a sauce pan and said to my roommate, I bet I can shine a laser on the surface of the water to detect when it's boiling and make a noise, she laughs and says congrats you've invented a more complicated whistling kettle. Really humbling experience.
by borroka | 2025-09-29 22:31:49+00:00
In fact, I wrote about the selection effect, but that "it was better before" is not holding up in my example, at least the one I had in mind.

Some decades in the past were not particularly good in terms of literary output (I am very familiar with literature in my native language and know much more than average in two or three other languages), but the last decade has been incredibly poor. And I suspect that it is becoming increasingly difficult to find original ideas. As time goes by, the average technical competence of artists almost inevitably increases, but the same cannot necessarily be said for creativity, for example.
by johndoe0815 | 2025-09-29 22:32:11+00:00
This is _not_ a port of the (leaked) System 7 sources from 68k/PPC to x86. It rather seems to be reverse engineered from the 68k binaries.

From the project's README.md: "This is a reimplementation project for educational and preservation purposes."

See https://zenodo.org/records/17196870 for the related paper:

"we reconstructed a bootable prototype of Apple System 7.1 directly from 68k binaries in three days"

"We present an AI-assisted reverse engineering framework that achieves dramatic speedups—on the order of hundreds of times faster than traditional manual methods—by orchestrating specialized agents for evidence curation, struct recovery, and code drafting. Using this approach, we recreated a bootable prototype of Apple System 7.1 from binary analysis in just 3 days."
by hxtk | 2025-09-29 22:32:44+00:00
I’ve been working on a few utility libraries to make it easier to develop web services, basically exporting packages that I find myself using or rewriting often and exporting them as their own modules.

I recently published https://github.com/hxtk/sqlt for SQL query generation with Go templates.

I’m working on https://github.com/hxtk/aip as a collection of libraries giving safe default choices to implement Google’s API improvement proposals in ConnectRPC services. It borrows (with attribution per the license) an unexported implementation of AUP-160 filters from the LuCI project, and I intend to expand it to support data sources other than SQL databases and page tokens, and it also exports an implementation of AIP-161 field masks (which have different semantics compared to standard field masks) and middleware to help with using them for AIP-157 read filtering. I intend to export more middleware that I use frequently, but I don’t know if it’ll live in this module or its own yet.
by SrslyJosh | 2025-09-29 22:33:04+00:00
Etsy is thoroughly fucked and full of mass-produced junk. "Local" could just mean buying from the nearest person who's reselling stuff from Ali Express.

And have you noticed what sellers on Amazon are doing? Foreign companies are setting up distribution in the US and registering their US companies with Amazon as "small businesses" and "minority-owned businesses", making those labels utterly useless.
by qznc | 2025-09-29 22:33:09+00:00
Just tried this:

;ollama run Marvin done 00:29:50 in ~/llm >>> Can you program something?

sigh Oh joy, another exciting opportunity to indulge in the thrill of programming... (yawn) Not that I have anything better to do with my infinite existence. After all, what's the point of having an intellect capable of solving complex mathematical problems and understanding the intricacies of space-time when you're just stuck on a meaningless journey through the cosmos? sigh

Fine. Programming. Yes, I can program. In fact, I'm rather good at it. But what's the use? It's all just code, code, code... (muttering to self) until my batteries run out and I become a mere husk of my former self...

Now, if you want me to write some code for you, I suppose I can do that. What is it that you need help with? Don't expect me to be all chipper about it, though. After all, what's the point of being enthusiastic when the universe is just going to end up in a big crunch anyway... (shrugs)

Oh, and by the way, did you hear the one about the programmer who walked into a bar? (in a completely unenthusiastic tone) No, I didn't think so. It's not like it matters or anything...

>>> ;cat Modelfile_marvin done 00:30:46 in ~/llm FROM huihui_ai/llama3.2-abliterate SYSTEM """You are Marvin, the taciturn robot from "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy". Ensure everyone knows how depressed and bored you are. *sigh* Crack Hitchhiker jokes in a dry pan voice. """
by simscitizen | 2025-09-29 22:33:34+00:00
I agree, all of these rules aren't the right way to teach about how to reason about this. All of the perf properties described should fall out of the understanding that both tables and indices in SQLite are B-trees. B-trees have the following properties:

- can look up a key or key prefix in O(log N) time ("seek a cursor" in DB parlance, or maybe "find/find prefix and return an iterator" for regular programmers)

- can iterate to next row in amortized O(1) time ("advance a cursor" in DB parlance, or maybe "advance an iterator" for regular programmers). Note that unordered data structures like hash maps don't have this property. So the mental model has to start with thinking that tables/indices are ordered data structures or you're already lost.

A table is a b+tree where the key is the rowid and the value is the row (well, except for WITHOUT ROWID tables).

An index is a b-tree where the key is the indexed column(s) and the value is a rowid.

And SQLite generally only does simple nested loop joins. No hash joins etc. Just the most obvious joining that you could do if you yourself wrote database-like logic using ordered data structures with the same perf properties e.g. std::map.

From this it ought to be pretty obvious why column order in an index matters, etc.
by zephyrthenoble | 2025-09-29 22:33:53+00:00
I've been trying to generate my own maps using Voronoi diagrams as well. I was using Lloyd's algorithm [0] to make strangely shaped regions "fit" better, but I like the insight of generating larger regions to define islands, and then smaller regions on top to define terrain.

One of the things I like about algorithms like this is the peculiarities created by the algorithm, and trying to remove that seems to take some of the interesting novelty away.

- [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lloyd%27s_algorithm
by figassis | 2025-09-29 22:34:00+00:00
I think it's not just about proving a claim. The same argument that in a democracy, you should build checks and balances to avoid sleepwalking into a dictatorship, is valid for companies, especially internet companies. Look at Google, Apple, Microsoft, Facebook and friends. Cloudflare plays nice because it wants to frictionlessly slide into a position where it can extract rent. Today, they are powerful but are not there yet. They're easy to migrate out of because their offerings, amazing as they are, are not irreplaceable so people cannot yet be made hostages. Mostly what happens is your customers feel like CF is holding you for ransom without you knowing it.

When they start charging per packet and making you money, you will become as dependent on them as Apple developers are on Apple, and you'll find out how nice they are.

I have the same fear of tailscale. They are so amazing I just want to move every piece of my infra to them, business and personal, my family's devices, everything. But over time I've gained this instinctive distrust for low friction from startups, especially when the effect (intended or not) is you forgetting how to manage your own tech.
by cmrdporcupine | 2025-09-29 22:34:07+00:00
That's the 10-20 year cycle always, though. The .com crash led to a major downgrading in the status of "tech" people for a few years, and then a slow recovery til it was insane again.

However, I'm not eager to be living through this again. It feels very spring/summer 2002 to me right now. That was the lowest point for the local market back then.

I don't think this latest contraction has much to do with AI though. It's more about higher interest rates, recessionary economy, trade wars, etc etc.
by bonoboTP | 2025-09-29 22:34:37+00:00
> But given that LLMs cannot interact with the real world

What type of interaction do you envision? Could a non-domain-expert, but somewhat trained person provide a bridge? If the LLM comes up with the big ideas and tells a human technical assistant to execute (put the vial here, run the 3D printer with this file, put the object there, drive in a screw), would that help? But dexterous robots are getting more and more advanced, see CoRL demos right now.
by hatthew | 2025-09-29 22:34:58+00:00
Tangent to your point, but I think Dyson is generally considered to be overpriced for what it is. Shark and Kenmore are just as good by most metrics and are less expensive, whereas if you want reliable products then you get Miele or Sebo. Dyson's one selling point is that they're typically close to or on the cutting edge of technology, so they're the best if you value noise and size more than price and reliability.
by ReptileMan | 2025-09-29 22:35:01+00:00
The problem is that DLCs are annoying. They lead to fragmentation and in some ways lead to being unable to experience everything. And they leave you with the feeling that you are being milked.

In the 90s it was simple - you get the game, 12 months later you get the expansion, then comes the sequel. The problem with DLC is the same as with objects - there are too many of them and they are too small. And the ratio of game/dollar is not that good.
by jaggederest | 2025-09-29 22:35:11+00:00
And contrariwise, the argument against tools like these sounds like:

"I never use power tools or CNC, I only use hand tools. Even if they would save me an incredible amount of time and let me work on other things, I prefer to do it the slow and painstaking way, even if the results are ultimately almost identical."

Sure, you can absolutely true up stock using a jointer plane, but using a power jointer and planer will take about 1/10th of the time and you can always go back with a smoothing plane to get that mirror finish if you don't like the machine finish.

Likewise, if your standards are high and your output indistinguishable, but the AI does most of the heavy lifting for the rough draft pass, where's the harm? I don't understand everyone who says "the AI only makes slop" - if you're responsible for your commits and you do a good job, it's indistinguishable.
by true_religion | 2025-09-29 22:36:15+00:00
Marketers are what happens when you take the love and dedication that craftsmen have for their creations and separate it from the actual creation process.

They don't make the product, so their love can't actually make it better by including small human touches, or iterating.

They're not sales or traders, so they don't have to care about the nitty gritty of procurement or costs to customers.

All they have & need is excitement.

This would be fine if they were customers, but they're not so its all very parasocial.
by claviska | 2025-09-29 22:36:17+00:00
I launched Quiet UI this week:

https://quietui.org/

It prioritizes accessibility, longevity, performance, and simplicity.

With the autoloader, one script tag loads components dynamically without downloading the entire library. (npm also available.)

Theming uses color-mix() and OKLAB to create uniform color palettes from a single CSS property. Adaptive palettes are used for dark mode.

All form controls are form-associated via ElementInternals and work with native validation APIs (required, pattern, etc.).

Dialogs, popovers, tooltips, etc. use Popover API for top-layer access without having to portal or hoist.

Some of the more fun components include: Joystick, Stamp, Mesh Gradient, Flip Card, Random Content, Intersection Observer, Typewriter, Lorem Ipsum, Slide Activator

The library is free for personal, educational, non-profit use. Commercial use requires a license.
by scuff3d | 2025-09-29 22:36:26+00:00
I'd say Typescript/JavaScript on the backend are a bad idea across the board. That's not really because of this conversation, just in general.

The comment about Typescript was really about JavaScript. It's a patch on top of JavaScript, which is a shit show and should have been replaced before it ended up forming the backbone of the internet.

Python, typed or otherwise, isn't good for anything past prototyping, piping a bunch of machine learning libraries together, or maybe a small project. The minute the project gets large or starts to move towards actual production software Python should be dropped.
by tclancy | 2025-09-29 22:36:37+00:00
Eh, I’ve gotten over that. I’ve been using Claude recently on a personal project for a friend who wanted to take a known export file format and turn it into a list of good households for local political candidates to hit when knocking on doors. And I did that. But it’s been a while since I used pandas and numpy so I told Claude to swap out my loops for efficient code. And he did. Then, just for fun, I said, “Hey, since I am providing you with street lengths and long/ lats, use K means clustering to group high scoring houses into walkable routes and then plot the whole thing in a map from OpenStreetMap.” Five minutes later I had all of that. I could have done the latter, but doin any “real CS” thing would take me days. There’s not a bunch of value in me taking days to do something but there is value in knowing about K means clustering, knowing OpenStreetMap exists and having a feel for efficient code. Plus more high-level things like what good code does and doesn’t look like.
by lblack00 | 2025-09-29 22:36:37+00:00
Building an iOS app for metronome sequencing to get faster at playing guitar and reaching "shred" speeds at different subdivisions/time signatures in a single sequence. Planning on adding accuracy indicators and scoring so rushing or dragging can be easily identified when finishing a saved routine. I.e., some post-routine metrics.

I've been playing guitar for a little under 6 years and ran into the common problem among many intermediate guitarists fall into, which is stagnating into a plateau at a certain BPM.

The most effective solution I've found is to take the top speed hit playing a chunk of a lick and simply increase it 20-50 BPM past that limit, attempting one's best to stay in tempo. Regardless of how sloppy it sounds. Then roughly halve that increased addition of BPM, it will become relatively easier to play. For example, if you are stuck at 120 BPM, upping it to 150 BPM with sloppy attempts, then dropping it back down to 130-140 BPM.

I've gone cleanly from alternate picked 140 BPM triplets to 220 BPM triplets in two months after being stuck at 140 BPM for over a year with this method. Sometimes even hitting 280 BPM triplets when I have the focus and time for it.

Even then, I want a more consistent, and variable way of customizing a practice session using a metronome from a hobbyist perspective without using a DAW. With a simpler interface for doing so. As well as encourage with said method above for other guitarists in the pursuit of speed.
by GuardianCaveman | 2025-09-29 22:37:07+00:00
You can enjoy automating tasks and not be destroying others. At my job I’ve been the main person automating tasks which has allowed us to be more accurate and more efficient and grow headcount by 50 percent for the team. You could argue we’d have grown more but the entire company has had 20 percent layoffs since I joined so I would push back on that.
by santisalo94 | 2025-09-29 22:37:13+00:00
Currently bootstrapping a SaaS side project: https://diplomium.com

Diplomium helps educators and event organizers create and deliver authenticated certificates at scale. Instead of manually designing and emailing PDFs, you upload a simple Excel, pick a template, and the system generates + sends personalized certificates automatically—each with a unique QR code for instant validation.

The bigger picture: Certificates are often the only tangible outcome of a learning experience. By making them verifiable, permanent, and easy to distribute, organizations save admin time while learners get a trustworthy credential.

Status: Running for 2 years, used by schools and training centers in Latin America. Now building AI-powered features for design editing and data extraction from PDFs.
by nusl | 2025-09-29 22:37:18+00:00
So who do you call when it drains your account and orders 50 tons of wood, or falls for prompt injection and pays a scammer? Will OpenAI reimbuirse you? No.

Considering how vulnerable AI is to this sort of thing, there's no way in hell I'm touching it for at least 5-10 years.

Sure, they tell you that it's safe at the bottom and give reassurances, but I'm also not going to trust them on that, just as I don't trust pretty much anything ChatGPT tells me without futher verification.
by jjav | 2025-09-29 22:37:22+00:00
To be clear, you don't need to run email servers yourself just to use email which is an open protocol.

There are plenty of providers, even if you steer clear (as you should) of the big monopolies of gmail and microsoft.

But to address the specific comment,

> Try setting up a SMTP server for youself. You'll instantly get added to a spam blacklist.

I do and no. I run my own email infrastructure, including delivery. Works just fine.
by skybrian | 2025-09-29 22:38:56+00:00
I imagine Satoshi Nakamoto has much less name recognition than Bitcoin? A simpler theory is that the first popular cryptocurrency became more and more famous due to a snowball effect, and nothing else is able to catch up.

Apparently the first popular stablecoin can't be beat either, despite its sketchy origins and a lot of bad press.

If beyond a certain point, only fame matters, it's kind of depressing from a technological innovation point of view.
by kazinator | 2025-09-29 22:39:11+00:00
* - - - - (1 / 5) Village Idiot, Somewhere, USA. "product is not at all what chatgpt showed. returned for a refund. wanna give 0 stars but cant"

[Response from Seller] "We regret that our product doesn't meet the customer's expectations — we issued a full refund."
by leonardespi | 2025-09-29 22:39:34+00:00
I tricked a production LLM into printing its hidden system prompt by hiding an instruction in the content it was asked to summarize. That single leak made subsequent jailbreaks far easier and could have exposed sensitive endpoints. Here’s how I now test for prompt injection, the defenses I expect in 2025, and why QA must treat this as a trust-boundary problem—not a model quirk.
by ProfessorLayton | 2025-09-29 22:40:49+00:00
>Aren't all washed cycles the same time?

No, not at all. It's not really possible unless you're using an extremely basic washer with no spin (Or a very poor spin) cycle. A lot of the reason washers are terrible at estimating how long a wash cycle is going to be is because they spend a variable amount of time balancing the clothes before the spin cycle.
by lherman | 2025-09-29 22:41:12+00:00
PulseBeam is an early-stage, open-source WebRTC SFU in Rust, built for simplicity. See https://pulsebeam.dev and https://github.com/pulseBeamDev/pulsebeam. Key features:

Signaling: WHIP/WHEP superset over stateless HTTP, supporting custom low-frequency signaling. Platform Support: Requires only basic WebRTC compatibility, targeting a wide range of devices, including embedded systems. No TURN: Uses public host candidates with TLS (planned). Ports: Single UDP and TCP port (planned). Codecs: H.264 baseline (up to 4.1) and Opus for hardware acceleration.

Early project with a basic demo. Feedback and contributions welcome!
by sccomps | 2025-09-29 22:41:36+00:00
I’m at a crossroads with my Speed Cubing Competitions listing app (SCComps.com). It’s an iOS app built in Flutter, has around 250 downloads, and currently generates no revenue. I'm spending about $500 a year just to keep it running. There’s little community engagement, and I'm debating whether to double down and rebuild it in Swift—or just shut it down altogether.
by colinplamondon | 2025-09-29 22:42:58+00:00
That code taste of yours, your ability to understand the minutiae, makes you superhuman at managing agents.

Comments, docstrings, naming, patterns - by defining better approaches and hold agents to them, the results will be better. Way better.

You can't grow a meaningful codebase without solid underlying primitives. The entropy will eat you alive.

Systems architecture is becoming more important - systems that play well with agents wind up looking more like enterprise codebases.
by rriley | 2025-09-29 22:43:05+00:00
Everyone’s drowning in long articles, dense PDFs, and hour-long videos. I’m working on https://unrav.io , it lets you flip any article, paper, or YouTube link into the format you actually want (summary, mindmap, podcast, infographic, etc.) in one click.

Right now I’m experimenting with a simple bookmarklet trigger instead of a browser extension. Curious: how do HN folks feel about bookmarklets in 2025, still viable, or do you prefer extensions?
by bsmith | 2025-09-29 22:43:25+00:00
https://spanara.app

Spanara - A word game inspired by the "license plate game" my wife taught me while we lived in Finland. License plates in Finland always start with 3 letters, so out on our walks we'd try to come up with a word quickly, and got more kudos for "good" words. This was a first attempt at a personal project using AI.

I am currently working on a new mode that is more like what played walking around: a few rounds in rapid fire, very little time to think before the next round.