MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by moron4hire | 2025-09-10 12:04:49+00:00
In any given week I spend 50 - 60% of my time in meetings. Half of that time is listening to PMs madlib ideas for how AI is going to do everything for us and and the other half is spent listening to junior developers and analysts make excuses for why they haven't gotten anything done in the last week, despite using AI to try to get their jobs done. Across 5 projects employing 15 people, I am the only senior developer and have as much experience as everyone else combined.

I spend 20 - 30% of my week on administrative paperwork. Making sure people are taking their required trainings. Didn't we just do the cyber security ones? Yes, we did, but IT got hacked and lost all the records that we did, so we need to do it again.

I spend 10 - 20% of my week trying to write documentation that Security tells me is absolutely required but has never gotten me any answers from them on whether they are going to approve any of my applications for deployment. In the last 2 years, I've gotten ONE application deployed and I had to weaponize my org chart to get it to happen.

That leaves me about -10 - 20% of the week to get the vast majority of all of the programming done on our projects. Which I do. If you look at the git log, my name dominates.

I don't use AI to write code because I don't have time to dick around with bad results.

I don't use AI to write any of my documentation or memos. People generally praise my communication skills for being easy to read. I certainly don't have time to edit AI's shitty writing.

The only time I use AI is when someone from corporate asks me to "generate an AI-first strategy for blah blah blah". I think it's a garbage initiative so I give them garbage work. It seems to make them happy and then they go away and I go back to writing all the code by hand. Even then, I don't copy-paste the response, I type it out long while reading it, just in case anyone asks me any questions later. Despite everyone telling me "typing speed isn't important to a software developer," I type around 100WPM, so it doesn't take too long. Not blazing fast, but a lot faster than every other developer I know.

So, forgive me if I don't have a lot of sympathy for you. You sound like half the people in my company, claiming AI makes them more productive, yet I can't see anywhere in any hard artifacts where that productivity has occurred.
by snaky2929 | 2025-09-10 12:05:16+00:00
Here's what worked for me - after trying screen limits, nokia phones

1. Remove all social media apps from iPhone 2. Use Opal in deep focus mode to block apps and websites (I can't exit the deep focus mode - but I allow myself a 2 hour window when deepfocus isn't active) 3. Keep my phone inside my bag - out of sight out of mind 4. Remove "tap to wake up" in settings - you'll have to click the side button to see the screen 5. Deleted slack and email - was hesitant about missing important notifications, but decided to try for a week and realized it made no difference to my work
by Chris2048 | 2025-09-10 12:05:37+00:00
> By horrible coincidence this eliminates more cough lower performing children

If it's not scored it can't possibly eliminate low-performing children on that unconflated characteristic alone - a motivated underperformer will still get in.

It eliminates the unmotivated, which correlates obviously with underperforming. While it can be a vicious circle, I'd say no-motivation -> underperformance is of much greater relevance than underperformance -> no-motivation.

The obvious hint is how it tests the parents too. sure. maybe they are very motivated but just work so much they cannot volunteer or spare any time, but doesn't that also somewhat render their 'motivation' moot as well?
by consp | 2025-09-10 12:05:58+00:00
Watching any dubbed video is a big no for me. You lose ALL original expression, this was already the case with TV dubbing and it's far worse with anything auto generated. People with accents get translated poorly at best, resulting in garbadge.

The excuse is "most people want it so we force it", hooray for the dictatorship of the masses (by assumption, I've seen no research papers on the matter published by any platform).
by djoldman | 2025-09-10 12:06:02+00:00
See Figure 2.

The solver/challenger is the GAN discriminator/generator.

The challenger is trained to create difficult questions. The solver is trained to strengthen pathways that correctly solve the questions like so:

> To guide the Challenger toward producing challenging yet solvable questions, we first define an uncertainty score. For a generated question x, we query the current Solver... The most frequent response is treated as the pseudo-label y˜(x), and we compute the Solver’s empirical accuracy....The uncertainty reward is then defined.... This function incentivizes questions where the Solver is maximally uncertain (accuracy approaches 50%)

Identifying the best pseudo-label seems like it would be the limitation of the approach.
by nchmy | 2025-09-10 12:07:28+00:00
Came to say this as well. I was excited for a deep dive into a difficult problem, and only found an enormously superficial article that didnt even mention the title.

Very disappointing. Like Reddit

edit: I now see that its not a personal blog, but actually just a fluff piece for a company blog. If they had actually gone into detail about the problem, and how the service they offer solves it easily, it would have been fine
by BozeWolf | 2025-09-10 12:07:28+00:00
I have an XS and wanted to upgrade. But I still don't see a super appealing reason. Battery still decent at 72%. Photos still good enough. browsing fast, apps fast...

It is the best iPhone I owned (3, 6s).

But yeah, spotlight is slow and the phone constantly runs out of storage, so apps need to be deleted before installing updates and least used apps are constantly removed. Additionally the screens are way better now and you do see the difference with photos made on an iPhone 16. I guess I'll upgrade late this year when I am sure the 17 (pro?) is a reliable piece of hardware, like my iPhone XS is.
by ethbr1 | 2025-09-10 12:08:01+00:00
The irony is that TikTok et al. could also be the very solution GP wants, depending on algorithm.

Imagine kids glued to an app that shows them engaging and intellectually-positive content. (Which at that scale could actually be inferred)

Fast social isn't intrinsically evil: recommendation algorithms that maximize engagement at the expense of other social goods are. (Or even that operate blind to them)
by buu700 | 2025-09-10 12:08:02+00:00
That's a good point. Personally, I'm not in favor of unfettered personal device access in schools. Back in my day, you used school computers on the (filtered) school network and cellphones remained off and out of sight during school hours. It was a pretty good system that moderated distractions and goofing off reasonably well. I'm not sure when or why that changed, but I don't think it was a positive change.

To your point, I would expect any sanctioned in-school student-facing AI usage to be through a school-provided platform on locked down school-owned hardware, in line with how computer/internet access already works (or how it worked 15 years ago). School-issued mobile devices with AI access could be a nice addition if they were locked down enough to sufficiently minimize distractions, but maybe sticking to laptops and desktops would work better in practice.
by palata | 2025-09-10 12:08:46+00:00
> As far as I can tell, Apple doesn't rely on Google for anything. Yet there's nothing illegal about Apple blocking ads and trackers by default.

Pissing off Google is probably a risk for Apple. If it doesn't bring Apple anything, I don't see why it would be worth it. Let's be honest: almost nobody cares about privacy, and for the few who do, Apple is already better than many alternatives.

No need to make a good product, you just have to be slightly better than the other. And the bar is not very high.

> Hell, I'm surprised the EU hasn't mandated it yet.

Because whenever the EU tries to regulate TooBigTech, they get bullied.
by natmaka | 2025-09-10 12:08:58+00:00
> You can also put my SMR onto one location with one control room.

I fail to understand which of the challenges I described it may relieve.

> The answer to generic defect is not to have a bunch of incompatible stuff with no commonality.

Having all brands of SMRs build interoperable parts is AFAIK beyond the most wild utopia. The very first step (convincing them to adopt the same architecture) is out of reach.

Yes, the NIMBY effect can kill literally anything, however it IMHO is way more powerful against nuclear than against solar and even wind energy, and as those last expand more and more people will understand that they don't have, in order to obtain electricity, to accept any nuclear-induced risk.

> The PWR is the problem

Which architecture seems more appropriate?

> the US, has unusable regulation, and Europe has wildly all over the place regulation, the needed money is just almost impossible to happen.

This is indeed a real challenge, however it mainly is because of past nuclear incidents and accidents.

> Alvin M. Weinberg was even more right

About the "Faustian bargain"?

> An France did maybe the smart decision in their history when they embraced that philosophy. Sadly they only did so for 1-2 decades and then the next generation came in, was convinced that all those old people were idiots and now that the problem was solved for them they no longer had to pay attention to energy policy.

As a French I doubt so. Details: https://sites.google.com/view/electricitedefrance/messmer-pl...
by b3kart | 2025-09-10 12:10:21+00:00
> solution is have a shorter commute and live closer to the office

With a short commute, a private office, and environment conducive to both focused work and collaboration as required, I imagine a lot more folks would be happy to RTO. However, this is not the reality for most who are asked to waste hours commuting (or uproot families to move closer) to sit surrounded by noise and distraction.

I suspect “I miss when everyone was at the office 5 days a week” is behind many of these RTO mandates, and I am not sure the sacrifice made by people (like you) who don’t get to see colleagues quite as often is balanced against the sacrifice made by folks who have to uproot their whole lives or waste hours per day commuting.
by numpad0 | 2025-09-10 12:10:51+00:00
What you've said is correct, but it also means Unicode strings containing CJKV characters become mildly corrupt if decoded without a "--interpret-as=<language>" option to change binary-glyph correspondence. That's just not what Unicode should stand for.

You should not need to keep or infer the language hint. I know it was always the officially sanctioned way and what developer engaged in i18n work has to live with. My point is NOT that you are wrong but that part of Unicode spec is wrong.
by ta1243 | 2025-09-10 12:11:07+00:00
The argument would be that after 30 years of 2.3%/yr inflation, the 300k house would be worth 600k in future dollars, and the 100k house would be worth 200k.

However as 15% interest rates implies an inflation rate far higher than 2.3% that argument breaks. With 7% inflation on a 100k house it's worth 760k after 30 years, more than the 600k in the 300k range.

Of course what that means in terms of big macs you can buy is different.

Not only that but if your salary keeps up with inflation, and you overpay the mortgage, you'll have cleared the 100k/7% inflation mortgage in 10 years but it will take 18 years to clear the 300k mortgage.

Sure, having your wage not decrease in real terms is a different challenge, but if that does happen then you're far better off with the 15% interest rate situation.
by Propelloni | 2025-09-10 12:11:13+00:00
> Depends. What is a country? The land borders? The people? The government? The leader? If you take out all the Germans out of Germany and replace them with other people is it still Germany?

Theseus' ship? Isn't that "Umvolkung" nonsense again? Philosophy, political sciences, and law have have rummaged about these questions for the last few centuries and have developed some pretty good answers. Of course, they are mostly not simple and all too long and intricate for this forum, but I guess you can pick up any modern book on theory of the state to get your answers.

But I get the distinct notion that you have a certain idea what a country, state, or nation is, considering the conflation with culture, and it is not very embracing of pluralism. I'd wager you'd like Schmidt, maybe Zippelius, but not Böckenförde.
by m4rtink | 2025-09-10 12:11:40+00:00
Both Airbus and Arianespace are quite distributed across the EU. While this seems to have worked fine for Airbus, it does not seem to work that well for space launchers under the Ariannespace umbrella - though some bits of the Ariane 6 & Vega C are built here in the Czech republic for example. So you can see some new programs that support small orbital launcher companies regardless of geographic distribution, just based on results.
by tw04 | 2025-09-10 12:11:44+00:00
In my community, it’s both. The referendum to continue funding the teachers who supported the advanced math and reading classes didn’t pass.

The referendum didn’t pass because a large swath of the community saw no value in having advanced math and reading classes. I have no doubt there was a lot of “I didn’t go to advanced classes and I turned out just fine, that’s a waste of money” thought process.
by yepitwas | 2025-09-10 12:12:20+00:00
Screw presentability, having a camera pointed at you and on all the time is creepy and awful. It’s not the same as being in a room with actual people, it’s way worse.

Just meetings with 100% camera-on, even, are awkward and draining in ways that meeting in person or just having a call are not. Having a camera on you is like having a person making hard eye contact without blinking or looking somewhere else, ever. It’s bizarre and it sucks.
by giancarlostoro | 2025-09-10 12:12:47+00:00
Sometime in 2009 or 2008 I realized we were screwed and wanted to support alternatives and stop using it same with Chrome. Something told me Google was going to swallow the internet. Sadly I still wish we would have propped up serious competitors. Where does one go when YouTube or any part of Google bans you? I have a friend or two who get banned any time he makes a Google account. Years of his personal data completely forfeited.

I have been moving off Google for a while, and will continue doing so.
by logifail | 2025-09-10 12:12:54+00:00
> teams are often made up of people from different locations anyway

My wife works at a multinational which has also decided to push RTO. Her closest team member works in an office 200 miles away from her office (in a different country), the vast majority of the rest of team are located between 3000 and 6000 miles away, on a different continent.

A friend of mine at AMZN has the same issue, his team is literally scattered around the globe.
by 916c0553e164269 | 2025-09-10 12:13:27+00:00
Apache 2.0 has a better patent clause - against hostile IP claims, so tax dispute is not terminate the OrioleDB license:

"If You institute patent litigation against any entity (including a cross-claim or counterclaim in a lawsuit) alleging that the Work or a Contribution incorporated within the Work constitutes direct or contributory patent infringement, then any patent licenses granted to You under this License for that Work shall terminate as of the date such litigation is filed."

https://opensource.org/license/apache-2-0
by probably_wrong | 2025-09-10 12:14:52+00:00
A similar case: for those who haven't seen it, Jimmy Kimmel's "Unnecessary Censorship" videos are regular videos with added bleeps to make it sound as if the person is talking about something censorship-worthy.

YouTube auto-translates these videos, with the end result being a random toss between the original uncensored speech, the modified speech with some sex term added in there (and unbleeped!), and random nonsense - all of it read in a robotic monotone voice.

The end result is completely unwatchable, except perhaps as a dadaist experiment. I can't understand how someone hasn't noticed it yet.
by stephen_g | 2025-09-10 12:15:30+00:00
I think the thing that really struck a chord with me about car-centric development, as someone who lives in a city with fairly poor public transport (by certain standards, it would actually be quite good if it were in the US) and where driving is the norm for getting around -

Prioritising cars actually makes things worse for drivers. We spend many tens of billions of dollars a year on roads in my state and traffic in the cities (and the highways between the biggest population centres in the south east corner where most of the people live) just keeps getting worse. When you give people real alternatives (convenient, frequent public transport, more cycling infrastructure, better planned cities so you can walk and cycle to things you need nearby) that actually gets people off the road and that is the one thing that can reduce traffic (apart from somewhere having a dwindling population).

Focusing all out infrastructure spend and making cars the primary mode continues to make car driving worse, but people get angry when too much money is spent on public and active transport, because “not enough” is being spent on road infrastructure. So politicians spruik their “congestion busting” road spending, and it keeps getting worse. It’s wild.

As someone for whom driving was just the default, I came around full circle.
by oh_fiddlesticks | 2025-09-10 12:15:37+00:00
The source code of life is recorded and transmitted using physical matter.

Physics very much matters to matter.

For development of any information storage systems made of molecules, there must be a supportive development environment.

To even start the process of doing anything like what we see happening in a cell, homeostasis must be achieved first, and not inelegantly, its not good enough to have a complete cell wall if it has no ports for entry and exit of nutrients and waste product, thats also known as a coffin.

Both the walls and the gates and the information / physical systems to reliably exploit those features must be present at the same time to enable abiogenesis.
by Sinosteelpipe | 2025-09-10 12:16:24+00:00
Data from the General Administration of Customs on September 8, 2025 showed that China exported 5791.8 tons of rare earths in August 2025; the cumulative exports from January to August were 44,355.4 tons, an increase of 14.5% year-on-year.

In August, China imported 5,020.8 tons of rare earths; from January to August, a total of 72,034.2 tons were imported, a year-on-year decrease of 21.4%.
by thrance | 2025-09-10 12:16:37+00:00
> There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.

- Isaac Asimov

The cult of ignorance now rules the country, simple as that. To half the nation, teachers are now all insane satanists out to trans their kids. As a result, they're paid dirt poor and the state, controlled by that anti-science reactionary wave, is making their work harder and less rewarding everyday.

Vaccine mandates are ended on religious grounds, public research is destroyed to save pennies in tax cuts to the wealthy, and foreign researchers are arrested at the borders for no reason but to assert American dominance over them and satisfy the racist folk fueling the machine.

This is what it looks like, witnessing the end of an Empire from the inside.
by mtlynch | 2025-09-10 12:16:58+00:00
>Even if assuming unique username+url pairings, clipboard history can store multiple items including emails or usernames which could be linked to any data breach and service (or just shotgunned towards the most popular services). It's not really a "no other information" scenario and you drastically reduce the effort required for an attacker regardless.

Webpages can't read clipboard history, so this wouldn't apply.

I was responding to your guidance to clear your clipboard history after copying a password.

>The app does not have to be overtly malicious, AccuWeather (among others) was caught exfiltrating users' clipboard data for over 4 years to an analytics company who may or may not have gotten compromised.

But clearing your clipboard after pasting passwords wouldn't protect you from this attack. That was the recommendation I disagreed with.

The same reasoning can be used for pretty much anything really, why protect anything locally since they could just keylog you or intercept requests you make.

Yes, I agree. But that's why I think people should focus their energy on defending along trust boundaries.[0] There's no trust boundaries between applications running in the same user context on the same system. There is a trust boundary between a web app and local apps, so I think it makes sense to consider what a malicious web app can do (e.g., read the most recent clipboard contents), but we shouldn't lump web apps in with local desktop apps.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trust_boundary
by jleyank | 2025-09-10 12:17:06+00:00
Perhaps. But cost, the lack of a national charger network, the sheer size of the us and politics is hindering EV adoption. Throw in a questionable ability to handle the power load and the inherent conservatism of us-Ian’s…

Canadians also. “Burning stuff is manly” and all that. What makes the prairies tick. Which is frustrating given the sources of electricity that are there and the concentrated population centres.
by pavlov | 2025-09-10 12:17:22+00:00
I’m not sure if the gender of teachers is so much a factor as class identity.

Young French author Édouard Louis has written about his experience growing up in an extremely anti-intellectual working class milieu in France. It’s a country where school teachers are traditionally men, and discipline is stricter than in America or the Northern European countries. But that seems to go together with a class separation where the working class boys don’t see the male teachers as role models but more as representatives of the distant authority.
by psychoslave | 2025-09-10 12:17:24+00:00
That's juridiction dependent. Europe didn't allow such a thing last time I checked. But lobbying to do so as been recurrent on this topic, just like putting governmental backdoor everywhere. They will try until it passes. There should be legal penality for such a stubborn will to destroy civil liberty. At least in this case they can't play the card "think of the children, nazi pedophiles use this".
by pbronez | 2025-09-10 12:17:47+00:00
OrioleDB is new to me.

According to the docs, it “uses Postgres Table Access Method (TAM) to provide a pluggable storage engine for PostgreSQL. […] Pluggable Storage gives developers the ability to use different storage engines for different tables within the same database. Developers will be able to choose a storage method that is optimized for their specific needs: some tables could be configured for high transactional loads, others for analytics workloads, and still others for archiving.”

https://www.orioledb.com/docs
by jajko | 2025-09-10 12:17:57+00:00
Why would they share that... come on lets not be naive here. Do they always justify every bigger decision to whole world? It just creates friction surface for various people to catch on. C suite is there to set directions, not to explain themselves to their employees.

Its like getting refused during interview process. Sharing actually why makes no sense for hiring people, no gain and potentially a lot to lose.

I don't like the situation overall or RTO at all since it markedly increases quality of my personal life (which makes me a happier employee too but nobody really cares about that) but we need to be realistic with various people's motivations.