MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by iandanforth | 2025-09-28 00:08:12+00:00
I hate typing in Python. I spend a good chunk of my day fighting the type checker and adding meaningless assertions, casts, and new types all to satisfy what feels like an obsessive compulsive nitpicker. "Type partially unknown" haunts my dreams.

Duck typing is one of the best things about Python. It provides a developer experience second to none. Need to iterate over a collection of things? Great! Just do it! As long as it is an iterable (defined by methods, not by type) you can use it anywhere you want to. Want to create a data object that maps any hashable type to just about anything else? Dict has you covered! Put anything you want in there and don't worry about it.

If we ended up with a largely bug free production system then it might be worth it, but, just like other truly strongly typed languages, that doesn't happen, so I've sacrificed my developer experience for an unfulfilled promise.

If I wanted to use a strongly typed language I would, I don't, and the creeping infection of type enforcement into production codebases makes it hard to use the language I love professionally.
by _heimdall | 2025-09-28 00:08:14+00:00
The term "LLM observability" seems overloaded here.

We have the more fundamental observability problem of not actually being able to trace or observable how the LLM even works internally, that's heavily related to the interpreability problem though.

Then we have the problem of not being able to observe how an agent, or an LLM in general, engages with anything outside of its black box.

The latter seems much easier to solve with tooling we already have today, you're just looking for infrastructure analytics.

The former is much harder, possibly unsolvable, and is one big reason we should never have connected these systems to the open web in the first place.
by Arch-TK | 2025-09-28 00:09:01+00:00
SSH is slow, but in my experience the primary cause of slowdown is session setup.

Be it PAM, or whatever OpenBSD is doing, the session setup kills performance, whether you're re-using the SSH connection or not, every time you start something within that connection.

Now obviously for long running stuff, that doesn't matter as much as the total overhead. But if you're doing long running ssh you're probably using SSH for its remote terminal purposes and you don't care if it takes 0.5 seconds or 1 second before you can do anything. And if you want file transfer, we already had a HTTP/3 version of that - it's called HTTP/3.

Ansible, for example, performs really poorly in my experience precisely because of this overhead.

Which is why I ended up writing my own mini-ansible which instead runs a remote command executor which can be used to run commands remotely without the session cost.
by weikju | 2025-09-28 00:09:11+00:00
> I could not have created this without AI, cannot make progress without AI. When I use up my Pro account limits, I'm done for the day - I'm too slow without it for continuing to make sense.

And this is why untold billions are sunk into AI. Creates a dependency on their services and removes agency from end users.

Edit: yes I’m aware it adds agency in the sense that some people can do things they couldn’t do before… as long as that’s permitted/surveilles, which is where the agency is lost.
by zb3 | 2025-09-28 00:09:16+00:00
Are you sure they would focus on technical matters if I did too? In a given community I can stick to technical matters, then on "my blog" I can write about my political positions.

There's one side that doesn't practically care about that, and then there's the other side that would want me not only removed from that community, cancelled, but even physically assaulted because apparently that's ok because I hold the "wrong" views so laws and human rights no longer apply.
by commandersaki | 2025-09-28 00:10:28+00:00
or a worst CPU

So a market already exists for those that want full control over hardware and embrace hacker culture and don't subject you to corporate bootlicking, yet this is still not enough? I actually meant what I said when I say Apple is not for you, because this is a segment of the market they're not interested in.

If it matters to you, put your money where your mouth is, and support the markets and initiatives that embodies your values; you never know, you could contribute to efforts in creating a CPU that surpasses Apple or whoever is the incumbent.
by forrestthewoods | 2025-09-28 00:10:47+00:00
Maybe. Ask 10 devs "what is Nix" and you'll get 15 to 25 responses. Maybe more. Nix is a million different things.

There are certainly things within Nix that I like. But on the whole I think it's approximately two orders of magnitude more complicated than is necessary to efficiently build and deploy software.
by ffsm8 | 2025-09-28 00:12:00+00:00
It is?

To my understanding, the only time CO2 emissions were down was during covid.

While there are a few localized success stories, I'm not aware we've actually meaningfully impacted our trajectory.

To be abundantly clear: it's true that eg. Trump's administration will have limited effect, mainly because it's a global thing ... But global emissions have been rising, too.

People have predicted peak CO2 multiple times, but it hasn't actually crystalized beyond the shutdown year to my knowledge.
by paulorlando | 2025-09-28 00:12:35+00:00
This being a snapshot in time, how would the claim change if we looked at the past? Do the explanations fade if you look back in history at empires in hot parts of the world, like the Egyptian, Mauryan, Persian, Akkadian, Mesopotamian, Carthaginian, Songhain, Incan, Aztec, Mayan...
by darth_avocado | 2025-09-28 00:12:44+00:00
> historically speaking, social, religious, legal frameworks that evolved in northern climes over a few thousand years may play important roles in economic success.

Those frameworks have evolved elsewhere in the world independently as well in a similar fashion. What you’re looking at is a specific time in history where due to a variety of reasons, some places are doing well relative to others. If you look at history across 2000 years, you’ll find that different parts of the world were doing better at different times.
by JustExAWS | 2025-09-28 00:13:29+00:00
Okay you can already use a Bluetooth keyboard and mouse on an iPhone and the USB powered portable monitor I have can be used with my USB C iPhone. Because of power constraints, it can only drive the display up to 50% brightness. But you can plug power up to the other USB C port on my monitor to power the display at full brightness and charge the phone.

This is my iPhone 16 Pro Max with my external portable monitor. The phone is connected with a standard USB C cord and the Anker battery is plugged in with another USB C cord into the monitor.

https://imgur.com/a/1Fv6Zc6

I had my Apple Bluetooth keyboard and mouse with me. There is no reason I couldn’t pair them to my phone.
by FridayoLeary | 2025-09-28 00:14:20+00:00
what i was told in school iirc was a combination of climate plus europe being far more populated and dynamic. The environment and competition forced them to innovate much more and there was much more cultural exchange going on. The next obvious step was expanding the search for resources etc etc.

It's obvious that the roman empire contributed a huge amount towards the process of European progress. Come to think of it Europe has kind of been dominant over the middle east since Alexander the great.
by dredmorbius | 2025-09-28 00:15:11+00:00
Further: business and management are exceptionally fad-driven, for numerous information-theoretic reasons.

Performance is difficult to measure and slow to materialise. At the same time, everyone, especially senior leadership and managers, is desperately competitive, even where that competition is on the perception rather than reality of performance. There's a very strong follow-the-herd / follow-the-leader(s) mentality, often itself driven by core investors and creditors.

A consequence is a tremendous amount of cargo-culting, in the sense of aping the manifest symbols of successful (or at least investor-favoured) firms and organisations, even where those policies and strategies end up incurring long-term harms.

Then there's the apparent winner-take-all aspect of AI, which if true would result in tremendous economic power, if not necessarily financial gains, to a very small number of incumbents. Look at the earlier fallout of the railroad, oil, automobile, and electronics industries for similar cases.

(I've found over the years various lists of companies which were either acquired or went belly-up in earlier booms, they're instructive.)

NB: you'll find fad-prone fields anywhere a similar information-theoretic environment exists: fashion, arts, academics, government, fine food, wine collecting, off the top of my head. Oh, and for some reason: software development.
by lumost | 2025-09-28 00:15:25+00:00
The real question would be the debt on the GPUs. If a hyper scalar puts 100B from profits into data centers, and borrows 400B against the datacenters (or their suppliers do!). Then the buildout could be quite problematic.

If it’s just profits getting invested + some VC exuberance… I don’t actually know if it matters. If zuck simply shut off the money spigot and never spoke on ai again… would anything actually happen?
by xyzzy123 | 2025-09-28 00:15:50+00:00
I find the debate really interesting because I have 2 sons who were early readers and they taught themselves by more or less guess / check. I watched them bootstrap by recognising whole words and memorising them. They start noticing "EXIT" signs and words in environment, asking what words on the juice box say, see common words in books etc. Once they've seen enough of them (it seems to require a LOT) they seem to naturally figure out how to decode. I have seen the neuroimaging studies that claim ALL word recognition is phonetic "decoding" but I just don't believe they mean what phonics proponents claim. Some kids will recognise whole words before they've learned the alphabet. How are they "decoding" the sounds?? I mean, the whole existence of logographic writing systems contradicts these ideas. Chinese readers could not exist if what they say is true.

My daughter's brain does not work in this way and she absolutely benefited from explicit and careful phonics instruction in school. Whole word recognition does not come naturally to her.

All of them were read to for on average an hour a day up to age 5, so thousands of hours, nothing happens "magically".

I think I can understand why phonics would be the better method of instruction for schools. It's slower, but has less variance. The "old way" of teaching was more or less telling all kids to try to copy what kids who learn to read easily do. I've seen first-hand that this doesn't work well for everyone.

One thing I do wonder about is changes in culture and home environment, alongside demographic shifts. If children are not having as many books read to them or there are fewer kids with the exposure required to bootstrap "whole word" reading, then the old "YOLO methods" (do $whatever reading activities that mainly serve to focus attention on the topic) would appear to steadily decline in effectiveness.

My observation has been that phonics as a method of instruction doesn't do much for kids who learn to read by themselves or at home. BUT - those kids don't need any help to hit educational targets. So in a "phonics only" setting the method "gets the credit" for their success despite it being tons of classroom hours that don't teach them anything except that instructional content "doesn't apply to them".

It's an interesting tradeoff because you could extend this to all areas. You could target ALL educational content towards kids who are going to naturally struggle, using "remedial" methods. I think there are strong equity arguments for this. You could argue that the purpose of school is to help everybody meet minimum standards.

An unfortunate side-effect is that schools run on this philosophy become basically daycare from the perspective of children who don't need this. They are left to do ad-hoc activities (because there is no formal content targeted to their needs) or goof off, while teachers focus all attention on kids who are struggling. I don't think this is "wrong" but I do think it's a tradeoff.
by Ray20 | 2025-09-28 00:16:00+00:00
> as some sort of defense of the (otherwise) indefensible

Trying to dispute this fact reveals your inexperience and out-of-touch worldviews. And frankly, I'm not entirely understand what you think this fact is defending.

> The fundamental needs of humanity aren't infinite: a safe home, nutritious food, healthcare, and education are the sum total of human needs

You are literally listing needs that are insatiable.

Let me repeat, there are hundreds of millions of people in the world working for 10-20 cents an hour. Try talking to them and ask them what salary a person needs to get "safe home, nutritious food, healthcare, and education". You'll almost certainly hear a figure around a couple of dollars per hour, maybe even less.

And no, it's not about the cost of living, it's about the fact that in their opinion, anyone with access to the American labor market (even as an illegal worker) makes several times more money than they need to get "safe home, nutritious food, healthcare, and education". Because these human needs are exactly as infinite as other "superfluous to survival" needs.

> Capitalism incentivizes the misuse of these surplus resources to create value for existing stakeholders

Or, in the opinion of people earning 10-20 cents an hour, the enormous salaries of American workers earning the American Minimum Wage. American workers EVERY year earn more money than American billionaires have accumulated over generations. What a enormous source for distribution and building a fair post-capitalist society!

But alas, if the builders of a post-capitalist society cannot convince even the most needy workers to show class solidarity and give up $6 of their $8 minimum wage in the name of avoiding "the misuse of these surplus resources" and "safe home, nutritious food, healthcare, and education" for every human on the planet, what can we expect from capital, which is in a much more advantageous negotiating position?
by ctoth | 2025-09-28 00:16:00+00:00
Did this change since Uber was created? Did Uber previously, back when people were making their "Uber is Doomed" comments pay to maintain drivers' cars? If not why bring it up?

This is a pattern where people have their pre-loaded criticisms of companies/systems and just dump them into any tangentially related discussion rather than engaging with the specific question at hand. It makes it impossible to have focused analytical discussions. Cached selves, but for everything.
by metadat | 2025-09-28 00:16:26+00:00
I've never heard of this definition of reverse engineering -- when one has the unobfuscated actual source code I'd usually call it: reading the code, or something like summarization.

Not trying to be uncharitable, I found your article informative. Reverse engineering has historically been reserved for cases where there is an adversial aspect, as in binaries or server APIs. Anyhow, Cheers and thank you, sincerely.
by crmd | 2025-09-28 00:16:57+00:00
Uber proposed $43.00 yesterday for a 23 minute drive from park slope to brooklyn heights in New York City, versus $2.90 for a 35 minute R train ride.

I am humbled by how myopic I was in 2010 cheering for a taxi-hailing smartphone app to create consumer surplus by ordering taxis by calling taxi companies.
by hagbard_c | 2025-09-28 00:16:58+00:00
Mac and (to a lesser extent) Windows users pay for software while Linux users as a rule want free (as in 'beer' as well as 'freedom') software. This is a product, not a project, the intention seems to be to start charging for the product when it reaches 'version 2.0'.

If you want to do something resembling 'WYSIWYG´ LaTeX editing on Linux there's LyX [1] which I've been using for decades starting with the Xforms version. LyX is not really 'WYSIWYG' as that is not really what LaTeX is meant for. Here's an excerpt from the project site which describes the difference:

LyX presents the user with the familiar face of a WYSIWYG word processor. However, users familiar with Microsoft Word or WordPerfect may be perplexed by certain basic LyX behaviour. For example, repeatedly hitting the space bar has no effect! This is by design: LyX puts in the proper spacing for you, intelligently.

Think of LyX as the first WYSIWYM word processor: What You See Is What You Mean. All the common formatting intelligence of LaTeX is presented to the user through visual controls, like a table-of-contents window acting as an outline browser, "live" reference links (to figure and table captions, sections, pages and literature citations), automatic multilevel section and list numbering, and more. You tell LyX how to treat particular words and lines in your document: e.g., this is standard text, this is a Section title, this is a footnote, this is a caption beneath an inserted graphic. As you click your selections, the WYSIWYM interface gives you clean, straightforward "visual clues" (actually, very WYSIWYG-like).

[1] https://www.lyx.org/WhatIsLyX
by neuronic | 2025-09-28 00:17:56+00:00
How are you getting these results? Even with grounding in sources, careful context engineering and whatever technique comes to your mind we are just getting sloppy junk out of all models we have tried.

The sketchy part is that LLMs are super good at faking confidence and expertise all while randomly injected subtle but critical hallucinations. This ruins basically all significant output. Double-checking and babysitting the results is a huge time and energy sink. Human post-processing negates nearly all benefits.

Its not like there is zero benefit to it, but I am genuinely curious how you get consistently correct output for a "complicated subject matter like insurance".
by CamperBob2 | 2025-09-28 00:18:34+00:00
I wonder if ultrasound techniques might provide an alternative. If it takes 10+ hours to do a CT inspection, as someone pointed out elsewhere (if I understood correctly), then that's a lot of DSP time.

For that matter, jeez, how long does it take to just whip out a Dremel tool and take the battery apart for inspection? I must have misunderstood that comment.
by kayodelycaon | 2025-09-28 00:18:50+00:00
It's an HTTP 422 code. Some web frameworks use for validation errors, like fields containing prohibited values.

Depending on the application, the incorrect content type on a file would be considered a validation error, instead of a bad upload.

Fun bit of trivia: 422 was originally a WebDAV code, but frameworks like Ruby on Rails started using it for validation errors in forms.
by bee_rider | 2025-09-28 00:20:38+00:00
> Plan for a future where you can buy GPUs for ten cents on the dollar, where there's a buyer's market for hiring skilled applied statisticians, and where there's a ton of extremely promising open source models that have barely been optimized and have vast potential for improvement.

This actually sounds like a kinda cool outcome as long as you aren’t an applied statistician.
by zahlman | 2025-09-28 00:22:24+00:00
> For reference, to my knowledge these words are pretty much interchangeable with "folks" being less formal I guess.

"folks" is indeed less formal, but there are other words in this category, such as "guys". The preference for "folks" is common among people who hold that "guys" is inherently sexist, and thus eventually becomes a signal of a particular perception of what kinds of sexism exist in the world and how sexism works. There are also those who believe that certain uses of "people" have become in some way or another problematic

In print contexts, some even further use this to signal especial interest in issues related to trans rights, by spelling it "folx". That requires the additional explanation that the "x" comes from analogy with other neologisms such as "latinx" that are intended not only to affirm gender neutrality but a non-binary view of gender. Because the reader is expected to recognize this, it functions as a sort of shibboleth.

Possibly useful references: https://old.reddit.com/r/socialjustice101/comments/agozlt ; https://old.reddit.com/r/socialjustice101/comments/itiisx ; https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/523419/ ; https://www.huffpost.com/entry/gendered-language-hey-guys_l_...

As little as ten years ago, "folks" might have been judged as quaint or outdated language, used primarily by older people (https://hinative.com/questions/51383). It was largely repurposed for this social justice signaling.

Also notably, you will find people with similar beliefs using expressions like "y'all" and other Southern US regionalisms, even if they're white Northerners. From my observations this seems to be intended as an act of solidarity. "Folks" arguably also belongs in this category.
by rhetocj23 | 2025-09-28 00:22:40+00:00
Revenues mean nothing without positive equity earnings, especially so without a viable path to get there. Without a clear path, how do you justify the valuation? Lol.

Uber and Amazon had a very logical path to get there.

The reinvestment is so high that once you tack that onto the earnings youre in a fat negative. What does that mean? You will eat into the cash balance and eventually have to go raise more.
by ianburrell | 2025-09-28 00:23:44+00:00
I think people tried out the Raspberry Pi 4 because it was just powerful enough to run desktop and there weren't cheap desktop options. Now there are plenty of cheap desktop options and while Pi 5 is more usable, it can't compare.

But the Pi was popular before that for fun things. It still compares well for fun things unless trying to do AI. For me, the Pi 5 isn't that interesting because I don't need the performance, and Pi 4 or Pi 3 will get the job done without the power hassle.
by worik | 2025-09-28 00:23:49+00:00
> You can't trust 3rd-party provided code implicitly.

But that is what (almost) all of us do.

There is debate about this the rust world, where there are mitigations that very few even aware of

Mostly rusticans block their ears, close their eyes, and pretend everything will be just peachy

Until some ordinary developer develops a crypto wallet in Rust, honestly, that steals money for a third party this will not be addressed. Even then...

This is a big problem and we need to make everybody aware that they can protect themselves, and make them Liable for not taking those steps, before that happens