MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by Nullence | 2025-09-08 10:39:09+00:00
While I like the layout and having a good UI for managing virtual machines this project lacks any security features at all.

Most notably, if you just set the auth cookie to "authenticated" you will have access to spin up as many VMs you like on any flint instance in the wild (08-09-2025).

As such this is an incredibly unsafe project to use. Probably because of the vibe coding :(
by adrian_b | 2025-09-08 10:40:18+00:00
While visiting Japan last year, I have witnessed a scene when one of my companions forgot his wallet, which also contained an expensive smartphone, in a train, when we have changed quickly the trains, and someone from the other train ran really, really fast, to catch us in the other train and give the forgotten wallet to its owner.

Than he ran equally fast to his train, which was ready to leave. Had he not run so fast while returning the wallet to its owner, he would have lost his train. Therefore, doing a good deed had required quite an effort for that Japanese, but this had not dissuaded him.
by lordhumphrey | 2025-09-08 10:40:19+00:00
Hmmm. GP listed three languages which are not esoteric, and you've patted them on the back and shared three more which are not esoteric. Oops.

Esoteric language =/= any non-mainstream language.

Here's the definition from the esoteric programming language wiki, which is a lovely resource for anyone interested https://esolangs.org/wiki/Esoteric_programming_language:

> An esoteric programming language is a computer programming language designed to experiment with weird ideas, to be hard to program in, or as a joke, rather than for practical use.
by ellis0n | 2025-09-08 10:40:30+00:00
Physically, demos and game development have advanced far beyond where they were at the beginning of the demoscene, but now people no longer come together. Game engines and devices have become accessible to everyone, and people are constantly inventing new things. For example, just look at the number of algorithms and new gameplay mechanics now compared to 10 years ago.

In 2012, I created a live coding platform and spent a lot of time thinking about why live coding didn’t become more popular than traditional coding. Live coding came about 10 years before React, which became reactive because you no longer had to press F5 every time you updated the HTML (I worked on the first version of React Webpack, which was doing server-side rendering).

Later, after going through a startup accelerator, the puzzle finally clicked for me. Companies and businesses began making serious money from video games, discovering lots of talent in the wild indie dev and demoscene space. The best talents were like raw gems and this eventually scaled into an industry.

Now, the best innovations are being patented and presented at SIGGRAPH and the game engine market is massive. Of course, amid all the flashiness and white-collar presence, it’s hard to spot the demosceners, but they’re behind every game. They’ve just been hired by corporations and their talent no longer expresses itself in the same way.

Unfortunately, companies provide very little support for the demoscene, which is why we don’t see the same explosive growth here as we do in games, graphics or AI.

I remember one case where a guy was hired to animate King Kong’s face for a movie and he spent two years hand-animating every single emotion. I wonder what kind of demos he might have created during that time if the corporation hadn’t hired him and forced him into repetitive work.

The market.
by cyphar | 2025-09-08 10:40:53+00:00
Code reviews (especially internal ones) generally assume that the person writing the original code has an idea of what they are doing and are designed to catch mistakes that humans might make. Just because they probably work to improve codebases with human submissions doesn't mean that they are good enough filter for LLM-generated code that the submitter doesn't sufficiently understand and has submitted without their own review. Same goes for CI and testing.

This reminds of some of the comments made by reviewers during the infamous Schön scientific fraud case. The scientific review process is designed to catch mistakes and honest flaws in research. It is not designed to catch fraud, and the evidence shows that it is bad at it.

Another applicable example would be the bad patches fiasco with the Linux kernel. (And there is going to be a session at the upcoming maintainers' summit about LLM-generated kernel patches.)
by ManlyBread | 2025-09-08 10:41:21+00:00
GPT-5 has convinced me that this is already the case. 5 is a major bump-up in terms of version name and yet it is impossible to tell what exactly has improved over the previous version by simply using the product.

On top of that we're at what, year four of the AI "revolution"? And yet ChatGPT is still the only AI tool that is somewhat recognizable and used by the general public. Other AI-based tools are either serving a niche (Cursor, Windsurf), serve as toys (DALL-E, Veo) or are so small and insignificant that barely anyone is using them. If I go to any job board and browse the job offers no company seems to be naming any specific AI-powered tools that they want people to be proficient in. I don't think I've ever seen any company - big or small - either bragging that they've used generative AI as a significant driver in their project or claiming that thanks to implementing AI they've managed to cut x% costs or drive up their revenue by y%. Open source doesn't seem to have much going on either, I don't think there are examples of any projects that got a huge boost from generative AI.

Considering how much money was pumped into these solutions and how much buzz this topic has generated all over the internet in the past 4 years it seems at least bizarre that the actual adoption seems to be so insignificant. In many other areas of tech 4 years would be considered almost an eternity and yet this technology somehow gets a pass. This topic has puzzled me a for a while now but only in this year I've noticed other people pointing out these issues as well.
by lonelyasacloud | 2025-09-08 10:42:13+00:00
I have one of the Garmin varia radar lights and feel exactly the same about them.

> Where in the world do you live / where do you typically ride your bike? In what situations are you glad to have that radar?

UK; It's handy for knowing when on town or country roads without too much traffic; it can typically spot fast moving vehicles before you can hear or see them in mirrors (let alone if relying solely furtive glimpses over shoulder)

Tbh, nice as it is to be notified about approaching vehicles, what I really like is that the light flashes at proportionately faster rates in response to the speed of the approaching vehicles. The changing rate does a better job of attracting the attention of drivers than constant illumination, and is also a psychological hack that makes the driver think they are being watched [0] and consequently behave slightly better when they do pass.

Cumulatively the light/radar combination is a winner because it makes cycling more pleasant _and_ reduces the chances of getting hit by drivers.

[0] In some of the newer units they are being watched as well, as they have camera's in them - apparently unit is a bit chunky and video quality in low-light is ropey.
by temp0826 | 2025-09-08 10:43:38+00:00
It's kind of bizarre to think about all the audio struggles from the past and "good" (not actually) things like SB, and today with my truly fantastic, ~$25 usb dongle that blows it all out of the water with ease (32 bit, 448khz). Some of y'all maybe don't realize what a golden age it is (am I old?).
by DaiPlusPlus | 2025-09-08 10:44:41+00:00
> european and other ones will be on the side

There's almost a dozen different plug/socket types used in Europe though: https://www.plugsocketmuseum.nl/Overview.html

I will say, you definitely can tread on a German "Schuhko" plug (if it has a flat face) just like a UK one.
by mrweasel | 2025-09-08 10:44:53+00:00
That probably has more to do with who immigrates to Switzerland. I don't now the numbers, but people who immigrate to Switzerland is probably fairly well educated and generally pretty well of.

Denmark is still a fairly high-trust society, not to the level of Switzerland or Japan. We're seeing certain items in supermarkets being locked away or chipped to prevent theft. Now that's not just because of immigrants, Danes steal from the supermarket as well, because prices on many items are increasing rapidly.
by GuB-42 | 2025-09-08 10:45:25+00:00
People care about the performance. There are numerous studies about that, showing, for instance a direct correlation between how fast a page loads and conversion rate. Also, Chrome, initially, the pitch was almost all about performance, and it was. They only became complacent once they got their majority market share.

It makes sense to use a tech stack that lowers the cost on the developer side in the same way that it makes sense to make junk food. Why produce good, tasty food when there is more money do be made by just selling cheap stuff, it does the most important thing: give people calories without poisoning them (short term).
by Perz1val | 2025-09-08 10:45:52+00:00
One thing I absolutely despise is 2 space indentation. Instead of not creating stupid 5+ level deep nesting, people decided to decrease the indentation size. Then everyone uses tab colorizers or those stupid vertical margins in vscode, because you can't read it otherwise. And then those people put it everywhere with some opinionated formatters - looking at you Elixir. I don't even have vision problems and it's already shit to look at.
by defrost | 2025-09-08 10:46:01+00:00
Now.

Having had decades of this in geophysical exploration, the time is now AND (where relevant) it's the current UTC Zulu time AND it's both local times.

Any data collected is logged against a UTC sync for start of recording (and continues with lapsed time AND logging raw GPS times .. which sorts out leap second issues).

Any discussion re: start of next data collection is relative to the local time at the field end, the planes et al are often bound by daylight - so field operation local dawn and sunset are relevant.

Any discussion re: software changes | hardware support is relevant to the local time at the home office end as that'll rest on when the office staff or aircraft mechanics come in or free up.

For ease of communication many such discussions are along the lines of "we'll ring back in four hours and ...". That's a NOW relative epoch.
by rs186 | 2025-09-08 10:46:13+00:00
That is true if a set of good linting rules are set up, those that help discover errors or other code smells which are valid issues in 99% of cases, or pure formatting rules when there is no "correct" thing to do. Linting becomes a problem when it is opinionated and has questionable rationale to begin with, and stands in your way instead of help you catch issues. Nobody should be fighting linting rules, but sadly that's what often happens.

See my other comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45166670
by eru | 2025-09-08 10:46:49+00:00
> Knowing how to trigger (im)partial thought is a skill in and of itself and something we need to be teaching in school asap.

You are very optimistic.

Look at all other skills we are trying to teach in school. 'Critical thinking' has been at the top of nearly every curriculum you can point a finger at for quite a while now. To minimal effect.

Or just look at how much math we are trying to teach the kids, and what they actually retain.
by throwup238 | 2025-09-08 10:46:54+00:00
The geological processes, which Mars lacks, are supposed to concentrate uranium, not strip it away. The actual geochemical explanation is complicated but long story short Mars is a geologically dead planet without much water that doesn’t like to form rock that can hold uranium ore.

Uranium concentrates in felsic (high silica) rock which forms under crustal recycling on Earth - the heat at the interface between the crust and mantle allows the Fe-Mg to strip away. Water dissolving uranium then injects into the felsic rock, the uranium precipitates out, and the rock later gets pushed up higher into the crust.

Mars has neither the active geology nor seemingly enough water to allow much felsic rock to form. Satellite surveys show the surface is covered with mostly basaltic rock (low silica, high Fe-Mg) with very small pockets of felsic. The processes that form these pockets are largely unlike those formed on Earth and don’t have the same geochemistry, especially without ample water.
by perching_aix | 2025-09-08 10:47:21+00:00
> And where did you intend to go?

Where I said I did. I explained it to you several times over. I can only do so much if you're not willing to listen or are unable to relate.

> (Many of them are here, your peers in these pages.) In front of them, going "I found out there are bright sides" would make them go "Duude...".

Cool - and if the same thing happened in Russia and I posted this to my Russian mates on Discord [1], as it happened before, they'd laugh their ass off first, and then we'd shift to discussing workarounds. According to what you explained so far of your world model though, things are either inappropriate or appropriate, and they are observer invariant and temporally static. I guess this would make my Russian mates wrong about what they themselves think or something?

Not very persuasive. I'm also not really sure why you think these peers on these pages need explaining why this situation is bad, or why they'd benefit from reading another endless charade, enumerating the same tired points, and making them spiral even further (since according to you, this was definitively coercive, so there's nothing they can do anyhow). Why there isn't and should not be a space for this specific angle, as it is inappropriate according to you, and even though it is not practically possible for you to have consulted those peers to get their opinion, you're just speaking in their name.

> Gross logical fault

There is a word for that, it's called a fallacy. I did not engage in any, which you must have also noticed, hence why you didn't say that instead.

I feel our "discussion" has run its course.

[1] Yes I did see Discord was blocked in Nepal. Please apply reasoning to fill the blanks.
by lordhumphrey | 2025-09-08 10:47:50+00:00
Malbolge and then https://github.com/iczelia/malbolge-lisp were mindblowing to me.

And then there's the legendary https://github.com/hundredrabbits/Orca

"Orca is an esoteric programming language designed to quickly create procedural sequencers, in which every letter of the alphabet is an operation, where lowercase letters operate on bang, uppercase letters operate each frame."
by StopDisinfo910 | 2025-09-08 10:48:15+00:00
PB is not a bad imitation of 1984 ASN.1. ASN.1 is choke full of useless representations clearly there to serve what a committee thought the need of the telco industry should be.

I find it funny you are making it looks like a good and pleasant to use IDL. It’s a perfect example of design by committee at its worst.

PB is significantly more space efficient than DER by the way.
by metalman | 2025-09-08 10:48:24+00:00
cooling can be done with radiators pointed north, into the permanently black sky,with essentialy no convective heat gain or loss, build for noon in mid summer, and forget about it lots of things work on mars that dont work here, Thin film prevoskerite solar ,which is sensitive to water and oxygen and therefor difficult here, can be sprayed on whatever is handy on mars(oversimplification, but), and the same goes for a smelter that is electric, where one of the byproducts is oxygen driven off, hand that, and that high quality metal and castings will be possible as the lack of atmospheric oxygen and low pressure will de gass metals, also metals wont corode after bieng made. given the very low night time temperatures, it should be quite easy to liquify martian "air" and use it for day time cooling where needed and also the exraction of trace gasses other than CO², which is the bulk.

none of that maters without a good supply of water to crack for fuel and air and general living, and as there is a whole world to work with, it is likely that there are a few areas that will have a fortuitous convergence of ALL the things possible, in one spot, kind of like early settlers finding a stand of trees, felled by beavers, bark stripped and pre notched for assembly into a cabin, next to a pond with fish and medows all around

to put things in perspective

pure gold would be good for use as sheet metal, as it's ductility and ease of refinement would make it the cheapest alternative

it's doable, but only just, and only if we get our shit together and decide that an impossible, ultra long term project to become an interplanitary species is a better way to use our excess capacity than whatever the fuck it is we are doing now
by vidarh | 2025-09-08 10:48:38+00:00
You're on multiple cameras for most of the self-checkouts in the UK, with at least some both capturing your face and an overhead view that will trigger a "are you sure you scanned this" complete with replay of what looked to the system of you potentially failing to scan an item before putting it on the scales on the other end if it looks like you move something past the scanner without the scanner triggering.

The system will also typically signal for an attendant if you after a short amount of time ensures the weight on the receiving end matches the expected weight of the items scanned so far.

There's not all that much trust involved in it, and I think just being aware of the cameras will make most people who might be tempted think twice.

Of course it's possible to steal still, but it doesn't need to be perfect, it just needs the shrinkage to add up to a lower cost than having more people at the tills.
by krapp | 2025-09-08 10:48:43+00:00
Maybe?

I remember it having photos and not drawings. It might have been this one[0] with a different cover, but for the life of me I can't find the specific cover. I think the title had an orange font but it's been so long I might be misremembering things. Thanks for the effort though.

[0]https://archive.org/details/robots00barr
by seventhtiger | 2025-09-08 10:48:44+00:00
For example in the UK the police did a sting simply by wearing expensive watches, and caught 31 robbers in a 12 month period.

https://www.bbc.com/news/av/uk-68003783

I agree that all the random factors you mentioned exist, and the proportion to random vs targeted theft would be an interesting debate, but there's solid evidence for significant targeted theft. The fencers tell the thieves what to look for.
by jillesvangurp | 2025-09-08 10:49:12+00:00
I think this is illustrative of the kind of productive things you can do with an LLM if you know what you are doing. Is it perfect, no. Can they do useful things if you prompt correctly, absolutely. It helps knowing what you are doing and having enough skill to make good judgment calls yourself.

There are currently multiple posts per day on HN that escalate into debates on LLMs being useful or not. I think this is a clear example that it can be. And results count. Porting and modernizing some ancient driver is not that easy. There's all sorts of stuff that gets dropped from the kernel because it's just too old to bother maintaining it and when nobody does, deleting code becomes the only option. This is a good example. I imagine, there are enough crusty corners in the kernel that could benefit from a similar treatment.

I've had similar mixed results with agentic coding sometimes impressing me and other times disappointing me. But if you can adapt to some of these limitations it's alright. And this seems to be a bit of a moving goalpost thing as well. Things that were hard a few months ago are now more doable.
by StopDisinfo910 | 2025-09-08 10:49:47+00:00
> Strange that at the same time (2001) people were busy implementing everyting in Java and XML, not ASN.1

Yes. Meanwhile Google was designing an IDL with a default binary serialisation format. And this is not 2025 typical big corp, over staffed, fake HR levels heavy Google we are talking about. That’s Google in its heyday. I think you have answered your own comment.
by maratc | 2025-09-08 10:50:25+00:00
Agree.

There's a python linter named `black` and it converts my code:

important_numbers = { "x": 3, "y": 42, # Answer to the Ultimate Question! "z": 2 }

into this:

important_numbers = {"x": 3, "y": 42, "z": 2} # Answer to the Ultimate Question!

This `black` is non-configurable (because it's "opinionated") and yet, out of some strange cargo cult, people swear by it and try to impose it on everybody.
by Fnoord | 2025-09-08 10:51:32+00:00
I think the timeline is roughly: SGI (90s), Nvidia gaming (with ATi and then AMD) eating that cake. Then cryptocurrency took off at the end '00s / start '10s, but if we are honest things like hashcat were also already happening. After that AI (LLMs) took off during the pandemic.

During the cryptocurrency hype, GPUs were already going for insane prices and together with low energy prices or surplus (which solar can cause, but nuclear should too) allows even governments to make cheap money (and for hashcat cracking, too). If I was North Korea I'd know my target. Turns out, they did, but in a different way. That was around 2014. Add on top of this Stadia and GeForce Now as examples of renting GPU for gaming (there are more, and Stadia flopped).

I didn't mention LLMs since that has been the most recent development.

All in all, it turns out GPUs are more valuable than what they were sold for if your goal isn't personal computer gaming. Hence the price gone up.

Now, if you want to thoroughly investigate this market you need to figure what large foreign forces (governments, businesses, and criminal enterprises) use these GPUs for. US government is aware for long time of above; hence export restrictions on GPUs. Which are meant as slowing opponent down to catch up. The opponent is the non-free world (China, North Korea, Russia, Iran, ...), though current administration is acting insane.
by lordhumphrey | 2025-09-08 10:52:04+00:00
Your musings at the end reminded me vaguely of https://www.greenarraychips.com/ a Chuck Moore designed computer chip.

"With 144 independent computers, it enables parallel or pipelined programming on an unprecedented scale. Map a data flow diagram or an analog block diagram onto its array of computers for continuous processes without interrupts or context switching."
by fruitworks | 2025-09-08 10:52:17+00:00
Do we need code generated from a stochastic model of previous code? I think we need actual people who are familiar with the kernel and hardware and are capable of reasoning about it.

We are constantly reminded that LLMs are the future despite the real world evidence to the contrary. Look at what happens when LLMs are trained on the output of other LLMs, such as the low quality code flooding the internet. It is all a self-solving problem set in motion.
by bob1029 | 2025-09-08 10:52:26+00:00
The concern isn't the average rated TDP. It's the high Di/dt (change in current over time) transients of certain workload profiles cascading through the various layers of switch mode power supplies. Every layer of power delivery has some reactivity to it. I'd agree this would be no problem if all our power supplies were purely linear (and massively inefficient).
by actionfromafar | 2025-09-08 10:53:07+00:00
Everyone is, and what survives, survives.

But what governments often can do, is break local optimums clustering around the quarter economy and take moonshot chances and find paths otherwise never taken. Hopefully one of these paths are great.

The difficult thing becomes deciding when to pull the plug. Is ITER a good thing or not? (Results wise, it is, but for the money? Who can tell really.)