MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by roomey | 2025-09-13 07:56:47+00:00
Fall, or Dodge in hell, by Neil Stephenson has a take on this.

The internet is flooded with slop and rage-bait on purpose. So filled as to be unusable, like a firehose of shit. So in there comes a role if "editor" whose job it is (you pay them) to only give you, well not even what's "true", rather what reflects your world view. So which editor you have becomes a factor in how you live, where your educated, your status.

It will be interesting to see if something as explicit as editors arise.

I will say this, if you stay off Facebook and some of the other big social sites for a while, it is like a madhouse when you glance back
by fsflover | 2025-09-13 07:57:13+00:00
> people who don't want a strong security model can use something else

You have a very special threat model, which you for some reason always call the best or the only one reasonable. In reality, depending on the user's threat model, your approach can fail miserably. For example, if my threat model includes that Google can utilize their control over the hardware to undermine my security, then your approach fails [0]. And this is a real-world example.

Don't get me wrong, I still agree that your approach is very secure, it should exist, and you're doing an amazing job for the Community. Just that you shouldn't behave as it's the only viable one.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45208925
by green7ea | 2025-09-13 07:57:16+00:00
Sure, I can chime in. I've been using emacs for about 18 years with meow for the last 4 or 5. I have the caps lock as control switch for about 10 years so it's not about that for me.

I still edit with chords in insert mode but meow enables me to take actions on a variety of subjects more easily (current string, until start of scope, until the next 2 -, next 5 words).

I had a few packages to do similar things before (expand-region) but none of them clicked like meow did.
by m_kos | 2025-09-13 07:57:39+00:00
The m8 and the recently, heavily promoted Woovebox 2 are the Emacs/Vim of grooveboxes. They hide a vast amount of functionality behind what initially seems like an impenetrable jungle of button presses and shortcuts; a system that ultimately proves* to be highly ergonomic.

*Based on what I read. Sadly, I don't own these devices.
by ggm | 2025-09-13 07:58:29+00:00
The election has to be held before late 2029.

He's got 4 more years. If he fails, labour has a massive majority and can select a new prime minister.

This isn't meant to invalidate criticism but there isn't a strong equivalent to the 1922 backbench committee and in any event, labour has an unassailable majority. So Starmer can basically continue to muddle through for a considerable period of time.
by roflcopter69 | 2025-09-13 08:00:07+00:00
I think the whole field of vector databases is mostly just one huge misunderstanding. Most of you are not Google or any other big tech company so so won't have billions of embeddings.

It's crazy how people add bloat and complexity to their stuff just because they want to do medium scale RAG with ca. 2 million embeddings.

Here comes the punchline, you do not need a fancy vector database in this case. I stumbled over https://github.com/sqliteai/sqlite-vector which is a SQLite extension and I wonder why no one else did this before, but it simply implements a highly optimized brute force search over the vectors, so you get sub 100ms queries over millions of vectors with perfect recall. It uses dynamic runtime dispatch that makes use of the available SIMD instructions your CPU has. Turns out this might be all you need. No need for memory a memory hungry search index (like HNSW) or writing a huge index to disk (like DiskANN).
by ViewTrick1002 | 2025-09-13 08:00:26+00:00
The point is that a very mundane setup with small storage is nearly enough to create a flat baseload of electricity.

We both know that neither supply nor demand is that flat.

In reality we can also trivially add wind power, existing hydro, gas turbines ran on carbon neutral fuel etc. to the mix.

How will you force this house that is self-sufficient 97% of the time to buy extremely expensive nuclear powered electricity to not crater the capacity factor of the nuclear plant?
by NitpickLawyer | 2025-09-13 08:00:28+00:00
Lots of ways. You could do binary thumbs up/down. You could do a feedback session. You could look at signals like "acceptance rate" (for a pr?) or "how many feedback messages did the user send in this session", and so on.

My point was more on tracking these signals over time. And using them to improve the client, not just the model (most model providers probably track this already).
by sixhobbits | 2025-09-13 08:00:48+00:00
I often see people making these sub agents modelled on roles like product manager, back end developer, etc.

I spent a few hours trying stuff like this and the results were pretty bad compared to just using CC with no agent specific instructions.

Maybe I needed to push through and find a combination that works but I don't find this article convincing as the author basically says "it works" without showing examples or comparing doing the same project with and without subagents.

Anyone got anything more convincing to suggest it's worth me putting more time into building out flows like this instead of just using a generic agent for everything?
by bob1029 | 2025-09-13 08:01:08+00:00
This doesn't look like it's actually composting anything. It seems to be more of a dehydrator and grinder.

> Mixing your Food Grounds with both green and brown materials? For example, grass clippings, green vegetation, and twigs or wood chips? Use 1 part Food Grounds to 14 parts green/brown material mixture.
by AndyPa32 | 2025-09-13 08:01:29+00:00
I disagree with cheapest. If you factor in twenty years build time and nuclear waste disposal, the whole thing is not economically viable.

Then there's a problem with nuclear fuel. The sources are mostly countries you don't want to depend on.

You are of course right with your assessment that nuclear is green, safe and eco-friendly. That's a hard one to swallow for a lot of eco activists.
by fivestones | 2025-09-13 08:02:02+00:00
This also makes me wonder what could be done to make discord (or something similar) a better venue for direct democracy. I know the circumstances in Nepal were exceptional, but I wonder if we will see other countries experiment with Discord for similar purposes. It seems like in Nepal they have essentially used it as a caucus, and I wonder if this could be shaped into a better way to elect leaders (or even legislate directly) than what most of the world is doing.

My wife and I were talking about this today and we thought it's possible that what has just happened in Nepal is at least in some sense the most democratic thing any country has ever done.
by asaddhamani | 2025-09-13 08:02:13+00:00
I think a few of the things you’ve mentioned in the ChatGPT article are hallucinations. There’s no user interaction metadata about topics, average message length etc., you asked the AI and it gave you a plausible sounding answer. Also the memories / snippets of past conversations aren’t based on like last 30 conversations or so and they aren’t provided to every message. They are doing some kind of RAG prompt injection and they remove the injected context in the next message to not flood the context window. The AI itself seems to have no control over what’s injected and when, it’s a separate subsystem doing that injection.
by peterfirefly | 2025-09-13 08:02:15+00:00
Do stupid things and stupid things will happen. There are plenty of similarly stupid accidents on stupidly run construction sites and chemical plants all the time. Also lots of accidents with trains, lots of accidents with temperamental chemicals.

Take this stupid accident, for example:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virgin_Galactic#2007_Scaled_Co...

> In July 2007, three Scaled Composites employees were killed and three critically injured at the Mojave spaceport while testing components of the rocket motor for SpaceShipTwo. An explosion occurred during a cold fire test, which involved nitrous oxide flowing through fuel injectors. The procedure had been expected to be safe.

N2O is very good oxidizer + it's a molecule that can fall apart (and turn into N2 and O2) in a very exothermic way if you look at it wrong.

Oops.

Back to SL-1. Nobody was killed by radiation. They were killed by things hitting them hard from the explosion.

> The effort to minimize the size of the core gave an abnormally-large reactivity worth to Rod 9, the center control rod.

> One of the required maintenance procedures called for Rod 9 to be manually withdrawn about four inches (10 cm) in order to attach it to the automated control mechanism from which it had been disconnected. Post-accident calculations, as well as examination of scratches on Rod 9, estimate that it had actually been withdrawn about twenty inches (51 cm), causing the reactor to go prompt critical and triggering the steam explosion.

and:

> At SL-1, control rods would sometimes get stuck in the control rod channel. Numerous procedures were conducted to evaluate control rods to ensure they were operating properly. There were rod drop tests and scram tests of each rod, in addition to periodic rod exercising and rod withdrawals for normal operation. From February 1959 to November 18, 1960, there were 40 cases of a stuck control rod for scram and rod drop tests and about a 2.5% failure rate. From November 18 to December 23, 1960, there was a dramatic increase in stuck rods, with 23 in that time period and a 13.0% failure rate. Besides these test failures, there were an additional 21 rod-sticking incidents from February 1959 to December 1960; four of these had occurred in the last month of operation during routine rod withdrawal. Rod 9 had the best operational performance record even though it was operated more frequently than any of the other rods.

That is insane.
by a2800276 | 2025-09-13 08:02:21+00:00
I get the impression that someone doesn't like Java and used chat gpt to create a one-to-one typescript port.

I dislike Java as much as the next guy, but I believe the true value of tools (and this tool in particular) is in the embedded wisdom and experience of their creators/Terrence Parr. Just generating a functionally equivalent port doesn't add much value.

That said, that's just a first impression, I have no idea what motivated this fork
by tdeck | 2025-09-13 08:03:46+00:00
> I'll assume they want Python or Java or C++ or Rust, not Bash or ALGOL 68.

I've solved interview questions with one line of Bash before and gotten an offer. The question was something like "count all the files in this folder with a name ending in X". The interviewer was happy I had a quick solution and they could move on to talking about something more interesting.
by zjaffee | 2025-09-13 08:04:14+00:00
Except this isn't about H1B this is about the PERM process for EB2/EB3 greencards.

The truth is we should be much more open to temporary work permits, and much less open to this sort of thing for granting permanent residency. Tons of people getting employment based green cards hold jobs that could easily be filled by an American.
by cjfd | 2025-09-13 08:04:19+00:00
One can argue whether 20 times more is too much or too little but I would say that it is correct that a doctor gets paid quite a bit more than unskilled labor. Some people who become doctors might still go through with it if it were not but most (sane) people would not go through the lengthy and very demanding path that is medical school and residency if it was not a better paid than a job that very many people could do. I can tell you here and now that I don't think I personally would have had the stamina to become a medical doctor.
by jrflowers | 2025-09-13 08:05:37+00:00
>It's funny because, in a pinch, ChatGPT will answer essentially every Jeopardy! clue correctly every single time now

“Answering Jeopardy questions” is one of those tasks where being close to correct is not good enough. A system that hallucinates plausible-sounding answers would be a kind of awful approach to creating software that’s meant to 100% a game like Jeopardy
by cadamsdotcom | 2025-09-13 08:06:01+00:00
We were advised by our counsel that as part of applying for the H-1B on this person’s behalf, the ads were needed.

Since the advice was given in a clear way and was very procedural, I treated it as necessary, did as told, and moved on to work that has actual impact as fast as possible.. I had actually forgotten about this until now. Hence banal.
by m101 | 2025-09-13 08:06:19+00:00
When I referenced long lasting I mean that some nuclear power stations are no forecast to keep going for 120 years.

CO2 in the atmosphere is also long lasting, do you have a problem with that type of storage?

Spent nuclear fuel is dangerous to stand near for 500 years (without centimetres of concrete), and then dangerous to consume for an further many thousand. It is within our technology to look after the quantities we are talking about indefinitely.

Also, with current plants we could reduce the size of the waste by 30x if we recycled it. Other plant types would burn all the fuel and leave us with very low volumes of radioactive elements.

Wrt Ukraine you choose to focus on the potential for release around Zaporozhzhia Vs the actual destruction occuring from the circumstances of war in the rest of the country?
by angelgonzales | 2025-09-13 08:08:06+00:00
I understand your position, it is terrible that adults and children die by the hands of others. Genocides have happened all over the world and have led to tens of millions of people dying. These events aren’t hypothetical they’re historical but happen in big chunks rather than uniformly distributed and frequent but comparatively small events. I would suggest the statistics indicate that a person is likelier to die from a genocide than from a mass shooting by a factor of >100 and that small arms ownership and competence is more helpful rather than harmful since these tools can enable individuals to defend themselves against state actors or violent groups, or by their existence prevent groups with malicious intent from acting out on their genocidal or authoritarian desires. Something I agree with is the FBI’s assessment that people don’t commit crimes if they thinks it’s likely that they’ll be caught. I think that the collective individuals in our government (these United States of America) wouldn’t want to mandate concentration camps or a genocide because of the concentration of citizens with diverse mindsets who would provide feedback through resistance. There are of course other factors like recency bias that come into play.
by devjab | 2025-09-13 08:08:54+00:00
I'm not sure how a programming language can win other than having a thriving ecosystem and seeing use, as you point out. The current USA government removed the “Back to the Building Blocks: A Path Toward Secure and Measurable Software.” report and fired the people responsible though. So for all we know the current White House might be betting on PHP.

As professional developers, however, I think there is also the job market to consider. It obviously depends on where you live in the world, but in my area there have been 0 Rust jobs for 5 years. There are plenty of C++ jobs, there are even a few Zig jobs once in a while. Go on the other hand has seen an explosive growth, though probably as a replacement for C# and Java rather than for C++.
by R4m4n_ | 2025-09-13 08:08:55+00:00
Kryypto is a lightweight, fully keyboard-supported Python text editor with deep customization and GitHub integration.

Features:

• Lightweight – minimal overhead

• Full Keyboard Support – no need for the mouse, every feature is accessible via hotkeys

• Discord presence

• Live Markdown Preview

• Session Restore

•Custom Styling • config\configuration.cfg for editor settings • CSS for theme and style customization

Editing Tools • Find text in file • Jump to line • Adjustable cursor (color & width) • Configurable animations (types & duration)

Git & GitHub Integration • View total commits • See last commit message & date • Track file changes directly inside the editor

Productivity Features • Autocompleter • Builtin Terminal • Docstring panel (hover to see function/class docstring) • Tab-based file switching • Bookmarking lines • Custom title bar

Syntax Highlighting for: Python, CSS, JSON, Config files, Markdown

As of now, it’s not meant to replace IDEs (yet).

Please give it a try and post your feedback, what features to add, and maybe give it a star to support the project :)
by lastdong | 2025-09-13 08:09:10+00:00
The modern UK leasehold system is, in many ways, rooted in the feudal landholding arrangements. In the UK, when buying a house, the buyer sometimes leases the land rather than owning it outright, and must pay ground rent to the landlord. A lease is usually bought for 80 years or more, but occasionally properties are sold with only a few years remaining. If the lease is not renewed, the homeowner risks losing the property to the landlord. The right to renew is not a given and comes with premium costs. Over the years, there have been numerous attempts to restrict or abolish this system but it continues to persist.
by Jensson | 2025-09-13 08:09:38+00:00
It isn't impressive to spend a lot of time on a hiring problem, you shouldn't do that. If you can't do it in a few hours then just move on and apply for another job, you aren't the person they are looking for.

Doing it slowly over many days is only taking your time and probably wont get you the job anyway since the solution will be a hard to read mess compared to someone who solves it quickly since they are familiar with the domain.
by ViewTrick1002 | 2025-09-13 08:10:48+00:00
All around Europe nuclear plants are forced off the markets because the electricity prices are for weeks lower than their wear and tear and fuel costs.

Why should someone with rooftop solar and a battery buy extremely expensive nuclear powered electricity from the grid when they can make their own?

”Baseload” is a title earned by having the lowest marginal costs. There is nothing fundamental about it.

Today renewables have the cheapest marginal cost at 0. They are the new ”baseload”.
by lurk2 | 2025-09-13 08:11:40+00:00
The basic mechanism you’re describing is essentially accurate, however:

> As soon as you allow any level of inequality to exist, the power differentials caused by it will be used to increase the power differential and inequality even more, and over a long period of time you'll end up with a dictatorship.

This doesn’t logically follow. The existence of a power differential doesn’t necessitate the differential being exploited to increase the differential. If we assume individuals are maximally selfish, this might hold, but that isn’t the case; people do altruistic things all the time, and there’s good reason to think most people are hardwired for it. The problem of liberal democracy is how you design a system to address those who are hardwired towards malicious selfishness; it isn’t clear that you truly can.
by tdeck | 2025-09-13 08:12:17+00:00
This kind of tradeoff discussion is good to explicitly call out in an interview. I often say things like "if this were my own project I'd use X, but on a team I would probably try to find a library in a language the team already uses".

Bringing the team up on Prolog and integrating it into your CI/CD system and finding some way to connect it with other services is often going to be a poor choice, even if in isolation it's the very best tool for the job. And that's the best case solution - more likely the tests will be limited and not automated, the code review will be rubber stamp because only the author knows the language, and the code and deploy process will be a black box that everyone is afraid to touch once the author moves on.

Obviously in an interview none of the code should make it into production, but being openly pragmatic is still a good idea. And if you use an obscure language, you'd better have better than usual communication skills to concisely explain how the code works for someone who hasn't used that language before. I've seen it done well but it's difficult.
by GeneralMaximus | 2025-09-13 08:12:58+00:00
When dealing with organizations that hold a disproportionate amount of power over your life, it's essential to view them in a somewhat cynical light.

This is true for governments, corporations, unions, and even non-profits. Large organizations, even well-intentioned ones, are "slow AI"[1]. They don't care about you as an individual, and if you don't treat everything they do and say with a healthy amount of skepticism and mistrust, they will trample all over you.

It's not that being openly hostile towards OpenAI on a message board will change their behavior. Only Slow AI can defeat other Slow AI. But it's our collective duty to at least voice our disapproval when a company behaves unethically or builds problematic technology.

I personally enjoy using LLMs. I'm a pretty heavy user of both ChatGPT and Claude, especially for augmenting web search and writing code. But I also believe building these tools was an act of enclosure of the commons at an unprecedented scale, for which LLM vendors must be punished. I believe LLMs are a risk to people who are not properly trained in how to make the best use of them.

It's possible to hold both these ideas in your head at the same time: LLMs are useful, but the organizations building them must be reined in before they cause irreparable damage to society.

[1]: https://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2018/01/dude-yo...
by srean | 2025-09-13 08:13:00+00:00
Checkout

Scimemi, Draw of a regular heptagon by folding. Proceedings of the 1st International Meeting of Origami Science and Technology. 1989

Simultaneous folding is mathematically a strictly more powerful primitive.

Are you familiar with Lill's method of finding real roots of polynomials of any degree ? Simultaneous folds are a realization of the same idea

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lill%27s_method#Finding_root...
by m_kos | 2025-09-13 08:13:29+00:00
What I don't quite get is why manufacturers of midi controllers (Arturia, Novation, NI, etc.), with the exception of, possibly only Korg, don't release any of their digital instruments as mobile apps. After sitting the whole day in front of my computer, the last thing I want to do is to swap VS Code for Ableton or Kontakt and spend a few more hours in the glow of my monitors.

(I do get that if you are very serious about making music you need a proper computer set up. I am just a mere amateur hobbyist.)
by jbm | 2025-09-13 08:13:35+00:00
Everyone refers to FB and IG as the representatives of social media. FB is a ghost town, and IG is a major advertising online. (I also have said nice things about using FB while in Japan, all of which stand for the time in which I said them; I don't let my children use either.)

What I really find annoying is that Reddit never comes up in these discussions. Just because people tend to agree with the bias doesn't change the fact that it has no doubt left people radicalised. I was watching an Ezra Klein interview with some pollsters after the election, and it even shocked me the level of difference between what polling showed as of importance to most Americans, and what Reddit portrayed as being the common American opinion.

It's a cancer, just like Twitter, but no one ever mentions it. Not even Trump, who you would think would want to squash this safe space.

(I am indulging a bit in conspiracies, but the Elgins Air Force Base conspiracy seems more and more likely given how this site goes unnamed in the US, despite being so busy and so weird)