MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by MSFT_Edging | 2025-09-05 14:31:41+00:00
What's sad is engineering is very much an art. Great innovation comes from the artistic view of engineering and creation.

The thing is, there's no innovation in the "track everything that breaths and sell the data to advertisers and cops" market.

They might get better at the data collection and introspection, but we as a society have gotten nothing but streamlined spyware and mental illness from these markets.
by tristor | 2025-09-05 14:31:41+00:00
This, so much. As an engineer turned PM, I am usually sympathetic to the idea that doing more discovery up front leads to better outcomes, but the simple reality is that it's hard to try anything, make any bets, or even do sure wins when the average development lifecycle is 12-18 months to get something released in a large organization and they're allergic to automation, hiring higher quality engineers, and hiring more engineers to improve velocities. Development velocity basically trumps everything, after basic sanity checks on the cost/benefit tradeoffs, because you can just try things and if it doesn't work you try something else.

This is /especially/ true in software in 2025, because most products are SaaS or subscription based, so you have a consistent revenue stream that can cover ongoing development costs which gives you the necessary runway to iterate repeatedly. Development costs then become relatively stable for a given team size and the velocity of that team entirely determines how often you can iterate, which determines how quickly you find an optimal solution and derive more value.
by conartist6 | 2025-09-05 14:32:07+00:00
You go right back to the monetary analogy when you need to explain that focusing on debt created value.

The thing that I think the swimming analogy doesn't capture well is that the resistance of water is fixed. The walls of the pool will be there to push off of no matter what you do. These are the intuitions you're asking people to draw on and they don't map.
by alphazard | 2025-09-05 14:32:19+00:00
> storage can not be faster than memory

This is an oversimplification. It depends what you mean by memory. It may be true when using NVMe on modern architectures in a consumer use case, but it's not true about computer architecture in general.

External devices can have their memory mapped to virtual memory addresses. There are some network cards that do this for example. The CPU can load from these virtual addresses directly into registers, without needing to make a copy to the general purpose fast-but-volatile memory. In theory a storage device could also be implemented in this way.
by jajko | 2025-09-05 14:33:17+00:00
Artists generally? Translators? People at various bureaucratic positions doing more menial white collar work? And tons more.

That you specifically wish for them to not even exist is your own internal problem and actually pretty horrible thing to say all things considered.

People had/have decent livehoods from those, I know a few. If they could easily got better jobs they would go for them.

Egos here sometimes are quite a thing to see. Maybe its good that chops are coming also for this privileged groups, a bit of humility never hurts.
by akerl_ | 2025-09-05 14:33:22+00:00
I think a lot of this boils down to Procurement's good outcome generally being quite different than the good outcome for each team that wants a purchase.

To draw a parallel: imagine a large open source project with a large userbase. The users interact with the project and a bunch of them have ideas for how to make it better! So they each cut feature requests against the project. The maintainers look at them. Some of the feature requests they'll work on, some of them they'll take well-formed pull requests. But some they'll say "look, we get that this is helpful for you, but we don't think this aligns with the direction we want the project to go".

A good procurement team realizes that every time the business inks a purchase agreement with a vendor, the company's portfolio has become incrementally more costly. For massive deals, most of that cost is paid in dollars. For cheaper software, the sticker price is low but there's still the cost of having one more plate to juggle for renewals / negotiations / tracking / etc.

So they're incentivized to be polite but firm and push back on whether there's a way to get the outcome in another way.

(this isn't to suggest that all or even most procurement teams are good, but there is a kernel of sanity in the concept even though it's often painful for the person who wants to buy something)
by dylan604 | 2025-09-05 14:33:23+00:00
adventure to put it mildly. there's a lot of work for this mod including 3d printing parts. it is not for the faint of heart. i'm still confused on the point of it though. the NES was designed around using an interlaced monitor. do the VGA monitors display as interlaced? I assumed they'd have been progressive monitors. I guess I need to follow the links for more details on the board rather than just the blog on how to install it.
by ModernMech | 2025-09-05 14:33:44+00:00
> I think you’re willfully ignorant if you’re going to claim that Slack and Kubernetes haven’t created any value.

The juice hasn't been worth the squeeze. You can look at all societal indicators except the stock market pointing downward to get to that conclusion. Nothing is actually better than it was in 2010 despite Uber, Airbnb, Kubernetes, Slack, and all the other SV tech "innovations". People are not happier or wealthier because of the tech coming from Silicon Valley. In general the end result of the last 15 years of tech is that it's made us more neurotic, disconnected, depressed, and angry.

We don't need "better deployment velocity and reliability for high-complexity application infrastructure deployments for large enterprises". Listen to yourself man, you sound like you've been hypnotized by the pointy-haired boss. The tech sector makes false promises about a utopia future, and then it just delivers wealth for shareholders, leaving everyone else worse off.

Grandma especially doesn't need deployment velocity, she's being evicted by her landlord because he wants to turn her flat into an Airbnb. She can't get to the grocery store because the town won't invest in public transport and Uber is the only option. She's been radicalized by Meta and Youtube and now she hates her own trans grandchild because her social media feed keeps her algorithmically outraged. Oh, and now she's getting scammed by AI asking her to invest her life savings in shitcoins and NFTs.

> The analogy is that you’re basically saying that zippers aren’t really better than buttons but then literally everyone is overwhelmingly wearing pants and coats with zippers and very strongly prefer zippers.

I don't agree that the ubiquity and utility are necessarily correlated, so I don't see the zippers and Kubernetes as analogous.

But the proliferation of zippers has more to do with the fact they are easier for manufacturers to integrate into products compared to buttons -- they come pre-measured and installing them is a straight stitch that can be done with a machine, whereas installing buttons is more time-consuming.

Zippers are worse for consumers in many ways, repairability chief among them. But really they are part of a general trend over my lifetime of steadily falling garment quality, as manufacturers race to the bottom.

> In any event, my web app example was just a poorly thought out example of a web app, I really just mean a website that has a little more utility than a static site.

You said it, not me. We had the technology to throw up a static site in 2010 and my grandmother could actually do that with dreamweaver and FTP, and it worked fine.
by brazzy | 2025-09-05 14:34:06+00:00
> IMHO Garbage collection is and always was an evolutionary dead end.

An evolutionary dead end that is used by probably upwards of 90% of all productively running code, and is the subject of lots of active research, as evidenced by TFA?

> No matter how nice you make it, it feels wrong to make a mess and have some else clean it up inefficiently at some point later.

> And because of that it always involves some sort of hidden runtime cost

Because of what? Your feelings?
by postflopclarity | 2025-09-05 14:34:17+00:00
improving, slowly. 5 steps forward 3 steps back.

1.9 and 1.10 made huge gains in package precompilation and native code caching. then attentions shifted and there were some regressions in compile times due to unrelated things in 1.11 and the upcoming 1.12. but at the same time, 1.12 will contain an experimental new feature `--trim` as well as some further standardization around entry points to run packages as programs, which is a big step towards generating self-contained small binaries. also nearly all efforts in improving tooling are focused on providing static analysis and helping developers make their program more easily compilable.

it's also important a bit to distinguish between a few similar but related needs. most of what I just described applies to generating binaries for arbitrary programs. but for the example you stated "time to first plot" of existing packages, this is already much improved in 1.10 and users (aka non-package-developers) should see sub-second TTFP, and TTFX for most packages they use that have been updated to use the precompilation goodies in recent versions
by azemetre | 2025-09-05 14:35:09+00:00
The book "Why We Fear AI" by Hagen Blix and Ingeborg Glimmer talks about this dynamic. Whether it will lead to a class awakening because previously if you were aligned with the company you were rewarded as well, but now if you align with the company you're advocating to destroy your livelihood.

What rational worker would want to take part in this?
by zingababba | 2025-09-05 14:35:14+00:00
The OpenAI blog post seems equal parts desperate and gross to me. A jobs platform and certifications? They want act as the certifying body attesting that 10 million Americans have achieved 'AI fluency' by 2030 as well as act as the intermediary in matching these individuals up with corporations apparently desperate for their fluency?

"Jobs will look different, companies will have to adapt, and all of us—from shift workers to CEOs—will have to learn how to work in new ways." - Thank god for OpenAI.

This whole thing looks like someone wrote it up, pasted it in an AI, asked "How's this look?" and got back something like "Looks absolutely perfect!" and hit publish.
by madamelic | 2025-09-05 14:35:16+00:00
Either I am mistaken that Walmart was offering store associate type jobs or the author doesn't realize Walmart has software engineering teams. Quite a few non-tech companies have very hip, modern, and high-power tech teams behind them.

https://github.com/walmartlabs

Walmart has been doing this level of work since at least 2013/2014 to my knowledge so it's not something new.

Getting a job on the Walmart engineering team doesn't seem like such an awful thing. Other notable call-out: Domino's. A few years back (... like a decade ago ._.) I had done a re-write of a node.js wrapper for the Domino's API and the team seemed very supportive and proud of what people did with it. The REST API was actually quite good and didn't try to throw up roadblocks.
by DrewADesign | 2025-09-05 14:36:43+00:00
> All the good devs that I know aren't worried about losing their jobs

While many of them are mistaken, the much bigger problem is for all the early career developers, many of whom will never work in the field. These people were assured by everyone from professors to industry leaders to tech writers that the bounty of problems available for humanity to solve would outpace the rate at which automation would reduce the demand for developers. I thought it was pretty obviously a fairy tale that people who believed in infinite growth created to soothe themselves and other industry denizens suspecting the tech industry hadn’t unlocked the secret to infinite free lunch, but in reality are closer to the business end of an ouroboro than they realize.

Just as the manufacturing sector let its Tool and Die knowledge atrophy, perhaps irreversibly, the software business will do the same with development. Off-shoring meant the sector had a glut of tool and die knowledge so there was no immediate financial incentive to hire apprentices. There’s a bunch of near-retirees with all of that knowledge and nobody to take over for them, and now that advanced manufacturing is picking up steam in the US again, many have no choice but to outsource that to China, too.

Dispensing with the pretenses of being computer scientists or engineers, software development is a trade, not an academic discipline, and education can’t instill professional competence. After a decade or two of never having to hire a junior because the existing pool of developers can serve all of the industry’s needs, suddenly we’ll have run out of people to replace the retirees with and that’s that for the incredible US software industry.
by tristor | 2025-09-05 14:36:50+00:00
> Rather, the phenomenon is more like a diffuse productivity gain across a large team or organization that results in a smaller headcount need over time as its final net effect. In practice, this materializes as backfills not approved as natural attrition occurs, hiring pipelines thinned out with existing team member workloads increased, management layers pruned, teams merged (then streamlined), etc.

My observation so far has been that executive leadership believes things that are not true about AI and starts doing the cost-cutting measures now, without any of the productivity gains expected/promised, which is actually leading to a net productivity loss from AI expectations based on hype rather than AI realities. When you lose out on team size, can't hire people for necessary roles (some exec teams now won't hire unless the role is AI related), and don't backfill attrition, you end up with an organization that can't get things done as quickly, and productivity suffers, because the miracle of AI has yet to manifest meaningfully anywhere.
by mrcwinn | 2025-09-05 14:37:23+00:00
Not to the same degree, but I'd argue HN has the same tendencies. Cynical, skeptical, assuming the worst intentions, a bogeyman tech giant hoping to destroy its own customers. Skepticism is, of course, healthy, but the default behavior in this community completely misses the reality that had we frozen progress, say, right near the Apple II launch, we never get HackerNews itself. :)

And if you accept my premise, it's probably not the websites, but rather the humans themselves.
by e2le | 2025-09-05 14:37:28+00:00
Seems sensible. Only 2.6% of users (with telemetry enabled) are using 32-bit Windows while 6.4% are using 32-bit Firefox on 64-bit Windows[0]. 32-bit Linux might see more use however isn't included in the stats, only 5.3% of users are running Linux[1] and I doubt many enable telemetry.

Maybe they could also drop support for older x86_64 CPU's, releasing more optimised builds. Most Linux distributions are increasing their baseline to x84-64-v2 or higher, most Firefox users (>90%)[0] seem to meet at least x84-64-v2 requirements.

[0]: https://firefoxgraphics.github.io/telemetry/#view=system

[1]: https://firefoxgraphics.github.io/telemetry/#view=general
by bragr | 2025-09-05 14:37:51+00:00
>not sure why you're immediately jumping to kidnapping, rather than "So a person can be put in front of a court".

Because Nepal is not known for a robust rule of law or an effective legal system. They have a particular problem with torture.

https://www.hrw.org/news/2023/03/29/new-nepal-police-chief-h...

https://kathmandupost.com/national/2025/06/26/nepal-fails-to...

https://amnestynepal.org/press_release/en-nepals-systemic-fa...

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torture_of_Hom_Bahadur_Bagal...
by wkat4242 | 2025-09-05 14:38:26+00:00
This is not true. The EU isn't asking for immigrants to "pursue diversity". It's just about sharing the load of legitimate asylum seekers as currently the load is too heavily borne by the border countries.

And we had crime before we had immigrants. It's a feature of social economic status not ethnicity. Before we had the Moroccan gangs in Amsterdam we had the local Mafia which was just as bad.

I do think immigrants without a permit should be evicted but the problem is that many countries like Morocco refuse to take them back.

And yes I live in a major EU city. The drug problem isn't as bad as you describe. And it's more a result of police budget cutting than immigration.
by janfromaztec | 2025-09-05 14:39:06+00:00
This is not really correct.

When a stablecoin is issued on a public chain then the issuer cannot secretly censor transactions and the activity of the issuer in general is auditable.

You also get access to all the magical DeFi stuff.

Other than this you, as a person, don't need to be aligned with the current political regime you live in to open a stablecoin "bank account". This on its own is a huge breakthrough.
by diggan | 2025-09-05 14:39:11+00:00
> I think while ISPs in Nepal are technically complying with the law by blocking these services, they're doing it in a way that’s intentionally easy to bypass

If you reframe the issue from "Nepal wants to punish the users" to "Nepal wants to punish the companies", implementing an easy DNS block makes a lot more sense. As long as most users are unable to access the platforms, the companies will get hurt by it, I think the idea is at least.
by nicce | 2025-09-05 14:39:27+00:00
It is very very risky.

You are trusting the model to never recommend something that you definitely should not do, or that does not serve the interests of the service provider, when you are not capable of noticing it by yourself. A different problem is whether you have provided enough information for the model to actually make that decision, or if the model will ask for more information before it begins to act.
by WalterBright | 2025-09-05 14:39:47+00:00
It already happened to all kinds of jobs.

I recall the mine water pump had a boy run up and down a ladder opening and closing steam valves to make the piston go up and down. The boy eventually rigged up a stick to use the motion of the piston to automatically open and close the valves. Then he went to sleep while the stick did his job.

Hence the invention of the steam engine.
by bccdee | 2025-09-05 14:40:15+00:00
My favourite way of doing this is

with movieIds as (select id from Movie where title = $1), actorIds as (select Actor.id from Actor join ActorMovie on [...] where ActorMovie.Movie in movieId), alsoActedIn as (select id from ActorMovie where actor in actorId), movieResults as (select * from Movie where id in movieIds), actorResults as (select * from Actor where id in actorIds), alsoActedInResults as (select * from Movie join ActorMovie on [...] where ActorMovie.id in alsoActedIn) select * from movieResults full outer join actorResults on false full outer join alsoActedInResults on false;

Not every database supports "full outer join on false," and sometimes you have to add "as not materialized" to the "with" subqueries in order for it to be performant, but it works in Postgres, and you end up with a results table that looks something like this:

MovieId,MovieTitle,ActorId,ActorName,MovieId,MovieTitle,ActorMovie.actor 0,"Indiana Jones",null,null,null,null,null null,null,0,"Harrison Ford",null,null,null null,null,null,null,0,"Indiana Jones",0 null,null,null,null,1,"Star Wars",0 null,null,null,null,2,"The Fugitive",0

With a bit of client-side logic, it's easy to transform that into this:

[{ id: 0, title: "Indiana Jones", actors: [{ id: 0, name: "Harrison Ford", alsoActedIn: [ {id: 1, title: "Star Wars"}, {id: 2, title: "The Fugitive"}, ] }] }]

without the need to use json as a middleman.

This pattern has saved me from some truly awful query logic.
by illegalsmile | 2025-09-05 14:40:17+00:00
I have a 2025 2nd gen on lease because the deals in Colorado were insane and the previous cost of my gas basically pays for the lease + insurance + electricity. That said, unless they give me a killer deal with a major discount at the end of the lease it's going back to the dealer. I love the car and it's been perfect for around town and the region but with 70% of the lease left they want $18000 for buy out. For that price you're well within a nice used EV with active thermal management, modern charge connectors not requiring an expensive adapter, etc...

There's probably going to be a surplus of off-lease Leafs coming up over the next one to three years which might make a great deal for people who can charge at home.
by ZeroGravitas | 2025-09-05 14:40:33+00:00
The P3 Charging Index attempts to quantify this, and also documents progress over the years as they've been publishing it for 6 years now:

Porsche Kia Hyundai are currently top of the list

https://www.electrive.com/2024/12/20/p3-charging-index-2024-...
by marginalia_nu | 2025-09-05 14:40:49+00:00
I would reconcile the seeming paradox that AI-assisted coding produces more code faster, yet doesn't seem to produce products or features much faster by considering that AI code generation and in particular CoPilot-style code suggestions means the programmer is constantly invalidating and re-building their mental model of the code, which is not only slow but exhausting (and a tired programmer makes more errors in judgement).

It's basically the wetware equivalent of page thrashing.

My experience is that I write better code faster by turning off the AI assistants and trying to configure the IDE to as best possible produce deterministic and fast suggestions, that way they become a rapid shorthand. This makes for a fast way of writing code that doesn't lead to mental model thrashing, since the model can be updated incrementally as I go.

The exception is using LLMs to straight up generate a prototype that can be refined. That also works pretty well, and largely avoids the expensive exchanges of information back and forth between human and machine.
by bediger4000 | 2025-09-05 14:41:22+00:00
I'm not sure I'd read that particular clause in the way you say, but constitutional law is rarefied, and words in the Constitution often don't mean what they would if plain, honest folk used them in convesation

I suppose we're also in need of a Department of the Navy as well, based on your excerpt, but again, Constitutional words don't often have the semantics one might think.

But beyond all that, it's great that we've President Trump to make these hard decisions for us. No president in my lifetime (first voted in 1980 presidential election) would have made the right decision here, not even President Reagan. There would have been hearings, tense meetings with authority figure like the Speaker of the House and various billionaires, and the press would not have let go of it. It would have dominated news cycles for weeks. Can you imagine the punditry if G.W. Bush had done this? But Trump makes the right decision, billionaires are happy, pundits are happy, we just see non-biased, factual reporting. I hope that Trump's successor is equally correct in all these decisions. I don't want to return to the squabbling of the past.
by zozbot234 | 2025-09-05 14:41:22+00:00
I don't think WebAssembly has been applied across a whole system just yet. Inferno/Limbo (the successor to Plan9, using the Dis virtual machine) may be substantially closer to the mark, along with AOSP (based on Dalvik/ART) and a variety of JavaScript-based "web" OS's. One may also argue that "image"-based systems like Smalltalk, Oberon etc. are in the same class, and that the lineage ultimately originates from Lisp machines.
by kaffekaka | 2025-09-05 14:41:40+00:00
Are you really asking in good faith? It seems obvious to me that a tool such as ChatGPT can and will influence peoples behavior. We are only too keen on anthropomorphizing things around us, of course many or most people will interact with LLMs as of they were living beings.

This effect of LLMs on humans should be obvious, regardless of how much an individual technically knows that yes, it is only a text generating machine.