MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by orwin | 2025-09-20 13:42:10+00:00
Like I said when they put workers in chains two weeks ago, shitting on foreign workers and all the cheerleaders here and probably on less liberal outlets are presenting an image of the US individualist culture that I now have to acknowledge.

Having to say to 'UPR' and other anti-atlantist militants 'you were absolutely right' was difficult I will admit.
by mooreds | 2025-09-20 13:43:33+00:00
I know Marty personally (he helps run the Boulder ruby meetup with me) and I am positive he acted in good faith, even if there were mistakes along the way. I also empathize with the volunteers who were unpleasantly surprised; never a good feeling. I'd encourage everyone to remember that there are people on both sides of the computer screen.

As mentioned in a sibling comment, there's a Q&A with him and other members of Ruby Central on Tue. Here's a link to the signup: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45302629
by WASDAai | 2025-09-20 13:43:48+00:00
TL;DR: A compact, chronological tour of subtle Rick and Morty easter eggs—inter-show cameos, foreshadowing, and background gags—visualized as a single narrative: Gravity Falls portal items, the “Time Travel Stuff” box, Jerry’s Doofus-Rick photo, flies unlocking Rick’s hidden lab, plus S4 nods (Disney-style talking cat, Batman-like acid vats, Zelda-rupee crystals, Moe’s Tavern facade) and a series-wide skin-tone clue about Rick’s state of mind.
by dotnet00 | 2025-09-20 13:44:08+00:00
You've got to be braver than that about your desires. Be upfront about it instead of dodging the question.

This isn't about prioritizing locals, locals aren't being priorizited by taking away the belongings of someone whose only crime was being a legal immigrant.

If it was solely about prioritizing locals, the rule would make a one-time exemption for H1B holders who happen to be outside the country, so they have the ability to figure things out with their employer, sort out their affairs, sell off vehicles etc, sort out their leases and pack up their belongings to bring with them.
Ask HN: Proud-Brag, Humble-Brag or No-Brag?
by stillworks | 2025-09-20 13:44:27+00:00
Was in a FAANG recently but quit due to

A) Likely burn out

B) Have been wanting to try something out on my own as well

This was the first time for me in a FAANG and noticed one new joiner young colleague had this personality trait of being overtly overly positive about everything they were involved in and they did and making it a point of making it known to all of the universe. Not saying they didn't deliver or were not smart, instead quite the opposite. But goes without saying, all the positivity being projected, personally for me was a bit tiresome.

In the manager's mind I think this created an expectation for similar behaviour from the not-so-young members in the team (a.k.a me) I suspect another team member switched team immediately due to this.

In mid-40s I have little hope that I will find another job (can still grind leetcode but...) and have been thinking about getting into another line of work altogether.

But coming back to the main topic. What do rest of the people around here think about this...

1) Has "The Brag" become a requirement in tech world these days? I wasn't expecting this in a FAANG and didn't experience it until the above described events but then that did definitely change things around for me and I guess for others too.

2) If it is a requirement then what strategy/tactic works best ? Being an introvert, how do I adapt.

(I will be speaking to a therapist as soon as I get employed again but since I am living off savings currently I am resorting to "free" sources of advise)
by krapp | 2025-09-20 13:44:28+00:00
>Many of the distinctions become irrelevant when you realise it's really workers against the power of massive capital.

If you're talking about the two parties, Democrats and Republicans, then sure. But that's mostly because the Democrats are only nominally "leftist." Both parties are pro police, pro military industrial complex, pro Zionism, and pro capital. Both support the American white supremacist imperialist order. It isn't left and right where American power structures are concerned, it's center-right and far-right.

But the distinction on the ground, with real people, is definitional and couldn't be more distinct in that the left recognizes class struggle and sides with the workers, while the right recognizes class struggle and sides with capital. The dissonance between the left and the Democrats versus the harmony between the right and Republicans is why the Democrats keep losing elections - between the two camps only Trump and the Republicans are actually giving their constituents what they voted for.
by jfengel | 2025-09-20 13:44:53+00:00
I've never been quite clear on this. We lionize the Pilgrims, but they were one specific bunch in one colony. As far as I can tell they didn't last long as a sect. Many people claim descent, but none are actually Puritans. (Though they may well be lower case puritans.)

Many of the vaunted Founding Fathers were deists, which is just this side of agnostic. They were probably also puritans but none were Puritans.

As far as I can tell we reinvented religion during various Revivals, and what we came up with has only the faintest connection to the version of Christianity that people came here with. They claim connection to that one particular sect, but without either genealogical, intellectual, or theological descent.

I don't fully understand the actual history. But much of what we claim about it is a myth.
by leakycap | 2025-09-20 13:45:37+00:00
The quotes selected from the WaPo article and featured on this page made me groan. I would immediately discount any educator who claimed they couldn't engage students without WiFi and interactive math videos from a vendor.

The comments at the bottom of the page pointing out how lame the educator's excuses are were the first sign that not everyone was taught by a Chromebook.
by 2OEH8eoCRo0 | 2025-09-20 13:46:52+00:00
> “This is not anything against SpaceX — they have done incredible things,” said Douglas Loverro, who served as the head of NASA’s human spaceflight division early in Mr. Trump’s first term. “But the further you move from known technology, the longer it takes to go ahead and get something done.”

> Landing such a tall rocket — Starship moon lander will be about 165 feet, compared with the Apollo Lunar lander that was 23 feet tall — means it can carry much more cargo, but it creates greater risk that Starship could topple once it arrives on the moon, Mr. Loverro said.
by Workaccount2 | 2025-09-20 13:46:52+00:00
Trump is a populist. He is doing tons of populist things.

This is another Bernie Sanders policy. Bernie is also a populist.

The differences between them are mostly "two-sides of the same coin"

https://www.sanders.senate.gov/op-eds/h1-b-visas-hurt-one-ty...
Show HN: Automating hidden-requirement checks for employee referral programs
by carsmith | 2025-09-20 13:47:22+00:00
Hi HN,

I built a SaaS for employees at tech companies that run referral bonus programs.

The problem In many companies, the public job description is incomplete. There are always “hidden” requirements that aren’t written down (e.g. frontend: must be strong with SvelteKit; ML: must know ONNX Runtime).

Today, if you’re an employee trying to refer someone, the workflow is painful:

Open the resume, read through it.

If it looks somewhat promising, copy their email.

Write a custom message asking about those unwritten requirements.

Wait hours or days for a reply.

Finally decide if you’ll forward the candidate to HR.

This is repetitive and slow.

Why I built it A few months ago, my department suddenly needed to hire 50 people in just six months. To encourage referrals, they offered a bonus after each hire stayed for three months.

Motivated by the chance to earn as many bonuses as possible, I started hustling: posting on every social media channel I had access to, reaching out to dozens of candidates daily. But soon the nightmare began—I had to spend 2 hours every workday sending the same set of repetitive questions to 50–100 candidates (e.g. details about their past tech stack).

You might ask: why not just update the official job description? Well, that wasn’t an option. The company’s HR team controlled a set of standardized templates used across the whole organization. Each business unit had its own specific needs, but HR, for system and compliance reasons, didn’t allow us to change the public job postings. So we were stuck.

After months of this grind, I snapped. I decided to build a web tool to automate the process. The idea was simple: combine AI, batch task tracking, and Gmail API into a workflow that takes the drudgery out of referrals. That prototype eventually evolved into the product I’m sharing today.

The solution With my tool, you first create a role and enter both the official job requirements and your company’s unspoken requirements. Then you can upload a batch of resumes:

Candidates who clearly don’t meet the basics are filtered out automatically.

For the rest, the system generates a short, personalized form covering those hidden requirements.

Candidates receive the form via your Gmail/Google Workspace Mail, and you can track their progress in one place.

At the end, you get a ranked shortlist that’s ready to send to HR.

Why try it Automates the tedious Q&A loop.

Makes referrals faster and more accurate.

Helps you maximize your chances of earning the referral bonus.

Product link: https://talentlumia.com

I’d love feedback, especially from people who have actually done referrals at their company. Does this workflow save you time?

Thanks!
by oytis | 2025-09-20 13:47:58+00:00
It doesn't have to be as dramatic as companies loudly announcing they are moving abroad - US is in a different political era indeed. But it sure will affect the decisions on where companies grow their headcount and where they shrink it or keep the same.

Longer term it will affect where companies establish their headquarters too. US used to be the place for entrepreneurs with global ambitions, but if it rejects globalism they will have to look elsewhere
by mooreds | 2025-09-20 13:48:33+00:00
I was talking to our chief architect about a blog post about our zero dependency home grown HTTP server[0]; the project just hit 1.2 and uses virtual threads. I'm generally a fan of "don't reinvent the wheel"[1], but I think there are some cases where that control is worth the cost.

Defending against security vulnerabilities is definitely one of them, as long as you make the proper investments to harden what you write.

Joel Spolsky write about some other reasons too[2].

0: https://github.com/FusionAuth/java-http

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reinventing_the_wheel

2: https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2001/10/14/in-defense-of-not-...
by leakycap | 2025-09-20 13:48:48+00:00
> Do you not know how to pour concrete, plumb, pull cable, roof, cut sheet metal, etc?

I was discussing the article on this thread. Do you think Nurse Joan was able to pour concrete, install plumbing to code, pull cables, install a roof which implies climbing with heavy items (again, we're discussing an elderly person)... I'll stop before we get to cutting sheet metal as this is getting silly.
by alephnerd | 2025-09-20 13:49:22+00:00
Tl;dr -

1. Mass employment via light and low skilled manufacturing will not help provide mass prosperity in 2025. Automation is the name of the game (can confirm in Vietnamese and Indian high value manufacturing as well as Chinese)

2. Work to build a social safety net that complements gig work. An export driven economy is increasingly tenuous in the current climate. Expanding a domestic consumer market by ensuring prosperity reaches the bottom half is what will allow you to build a resilient economy.

----------

I've ranted about this for over a decade now. Concentrating only on export and industry development while ignoring the need to expand a domestic consumer market either by leveraging higher incomes (highly unlikely) OR a stronger social safety net is the solution to over-production in most cases.

It's an increasingly mainstream view in Chinese economic academia as well, but the Xi admin remains petulantly opposed to what it derisively terms as "Welfarism" ("福利主义典范国家，中产塌陷、贫富分化、社会撕裂、民粹喧嚣，这不乏警示— 防止落入“福利主义”养懒汉陷阱"*) [0].

Li Keqiang was a major proponent of expanding the social safety net due to his early experiences in childhood, but he sadly passed away.

Countries like Vietnam are following a similar approach, and it is not going to end well.

[0] - http://theory.people.com.cn/n1/2021/1116/c40531-32283350.htm...

* - "In a welfare state, the middle class is collapsing, the rich and the poor are polarized, society is torn apart, and populism is clamoring. This is a warning to avoid falling into the trap of "welfarism" that breeds laziness."
by omarqureshi | 2025-09-20 13:49:58+00:00
This isn't a big deal for the larger tech companies other than a short term pain in the ass.

This is a large net negative for 3 sectors that I can currently think of:

- American (software) tech workers - Healthcare - Research / Postgrad

Medicine and Research are fairly self explanatory, however, why the American software tech worker?

Let's say you're Microsoft, you have large offices all over the world - instead of hiring in the US and making those departments in US offices bigger, you're going to instead hire in probably the following places:

- UK - Australia - South Asia

It means less focus in the US which eventually will just become sales and marketing only with perhaps some smaller department sized tech jobs.

Another great Trump strategy that appears to be helping the poor whites but actually shafts them.
by mariusor | 2025-09-20 13:52:34+00:00
Been unemployed a little over one year. Backend engineer/SRE with 20+ years of experience somewhere in Western Europe.

I didn't scatter shot submit my CV to everything under the sun - tried to keep it in my current area of residence, with the technology stack that I actually want to pursue.

I applied for around 4-5 jobs a month (which included tuning CV and cover letters for each of them). I got around 10 interviews during all this time, so far being rejected across the board, mostly with pretty risible reasons. This number includes both rejections after first screening call, or after technical interviews. (As an example, one company - to which I reached from one of the HN jobs threads - rejected me for doing a manual Pythagoras calculation for computing some coordinates instead of using a library.)

In the past month or so I've finally started getting more invitations back instead of being ghosted or getting generic "we're moving on with more suitable candidates", so things are looking more promising.

Overall I'm not worried, I have a good support network, and I keep preoccupied with open source stuff.

The only problem is that the latest rejections kinda dented my self esteem a little, but I hope that's temporary. :)
by non_aligned | 2025-09-20 13:53:11+00:00
Well, if you define leaders as people who do the things outlined in the article, then sure, it tautologically describes the traits of leaders. But then, it means that Steve Jobs wasn't a leader, Bill Gates wasn't a leader, Jeff Bezos isn't a leader - basically, none of the most successful business-builders qualify. Apparently, they were all just managers.

So then, who is the article about? And more to the point, if it's not a recipe for success, why should I follow its advice?
by Findeton | 2025-09-20 13:53:41+00:00
Whenever there's a transaction, that means that both parties give a different value to whatever is exchanged. For example, when you buy a home, the buyer prefers the house to the money and the seller prefers the money to the house. If this wasn't the case, the transaction just wouldn't take place.

So transactions are the opposite of a zero-sum game, they are a win-win game, where both parties end up winning. Because value is subjective.
by ViewTrick1002 | 2025-09-20 13:54:01+00:00
Carbon is annoying (expensive) to collect from the atmosphere.

To work with a circular system you would need carbon collection on all combustion engines. Try fitting one on a plane.

And now we’re down the path of fossil industry talking points where they will ”soon” implement carbon capture and storage.

Another option is ammonia. The maritime industry is particularly interested in that one due to hydrogen taking up too much space if you want to go across oceans.
by cjbgkagh | 2025-09-20 13:56:03+00:00
That they can afford it does not mean they should afford it, given the degradation of their flagship monopoly product I’m not sure if the H-1Bs are really helping all that much. My time there was absolutely dominated by bureaucracy, so much so that we spent 12 weeks planning a feature I knew I could do in 30 minutes, so I called a meeting and did it in front of them during the meeting, apparently that wasn’t respecting the process so I was punished for it.
by ericmay | 2025-09-20 13:56:17+00:00
I agree with you with respect to timing, but I don't think it's too much of one thing or another, and just chalk it up to typical Trump Administration "move fast and make things dumb" approach to various policies. I guess it's possible they chose this weekend to enact the highest shakedown possible on H1B visa holders outside the United States, but I'm reluctant to give them that much credit. I think they just said here is the policy, go now and the inconveniences be damned.
by Bender | 2025-09-20 13:56:25+00:00
For fun there are other variants of base64 in a similar spirit [1][2] full unicode. [3] see other links in that repo... Not a stream cipher, just encoding but could be used in conjunction with a stream cipher to add compression. It could go turtles all the way down.

[1] - https://github.com/qntm/base2048

[2] - https://github.com/qntm/base32768

[3] - https://github.com/qntm/base65536
by mrbombastic | 2025-09-20 13:56:29+00:00
Fwiw and you probably know but being almost legally blind puts you in a protected class, most employers would make exceptions to allow you to do your job. And it would be entirely reasonable to say that you need speech to text tools to work and don’t want to bother other coworkers.

Edit: was speaking from a US perspective before realizing you were in the UK, but would be surprised if you didn’t have even better protections

Extra edit: this hit the front page a while back about a blind developers dev setup: https://www.vincit.com/blog/software-development-450-words-p... it may be outdated at this point but maybe worth reaching out for best practices these days?
by rainsford | 2025-09-20 13:56:42+00:00
I'm sure I'm overlooking something, but what's the real use-case for true random number generation at that fast of a rate? Even a few Kb/s of random numbers is enough to continually reseed a cryptographic pseudo-random number generator that will generate as much output as you want that's indistinguishable from true randomness. I suppose you aren't reliant on the security of the underlying cryptographic primitives then, but you're still reliant on the particular hardware RNG chip being implemented in a way that's free of bias even if the underlying physics principle is sound.
by geodel | 2025-09-20 13:58:11+00:00
It is useless statistics. In 2024 out of all H1B approved only 2% are for FAANG(~7K out of 400K). The whole debate is about remaining ~95% (adding another 3% for truly hi-tech work). Thats where H1B abuse happening.

Promoters of H1B keep talking about highly talented H1Bs while ignoring a mass hired at very low end of tech jobs.
by skrebbel | 2025-09-20 13:58:19+00:00
I know little about China, but every so often I meet someone who's rather fond of it (usually a passionate hardcore leftie¹), and says stuff like "in China nobody is unemployed, in China nobody is homeless" because apparently somehow the state provides (bad, but existing) work and housing for everyone. This seems to directly oppose your comment that China has no welfare state. Who is right?

¹) for context, here in NL "America good China bad" is a bit less clear-cut than in the US, where I assume most people read this comment from. That said at least the "China bad" part is still the majority opinion by far.
by elcapitan | 2025-09-20 13:59:33+00:00
I went from Evernote to Joplin to Obsidian and really like the model of md files with some logic added on top. Initially I used a lot of plugins mostly out of curiosity, but now it's mostly RemotelySave for syncing and some small convenience plugins, so I hope my exposure isn't too high.

The app doesn't have the bloaty feel of other Electron apps, but if there was a good more native alternative that fits my bill (md files editable in a graphical mode with good wikilink-syntax support and similar search etc), then I would actually consider switching.
by jfengel | 2025-09-20 13:59:38+00:00
I believe (without a whole lot of support) that Europeans mostly got over the fetishization of violence during the interminable wars up through the 19th century. They had one last massive burst in the first half of the 20th, but it was already clear that the new order was about trade rather than conquest.

America was largely isolated from that. We had plenty of wars but the biggest was just against ourselves, and we turned it into a story of great heroism (rather than admit that the losers fought a bad war for bad reasons). We came to be proud of our violent adventures as we colonized westward.

If this (absurd) chain of reasoning holds, we still love the excitement of violence while Europeans are largely over it.

And this (dubious) theory also explains the fear of nudity. European wars were often nominally religious. (In fact religion was mostly just an excuse for the same old wars of greed, but it makes a better cover story.) Being proudly religious is kind of embarrassing now.

Americans didn't keep killing each other over minor doctrinal differences, at least not on a mass scale. Instead we showed off just how devoted we were, topping each other to be more and more against what everyone else was against. Literally, holier than thou.

Not everyone is into that, but for a variety of history reasons the ones who are have outsized power, and they hammer anyone who crosses them. Most people wouldn't care, but the ones who care, care a lot.

This is, as I've made clear, just a barely-informed guess. But I do think it has some elements of truth to it.
by jmpman | 2025-09-20 14:00:20+00:00
Every dime paid by the H1B tax is a dime the US taxpayers don’t need to pay. The administration should go further and layer an additional tax on H1B’s income. That would reduce the amount the H1Bs take home. Excess pay in the tech industry is driving up real estate prices in the bay and Seattle. The excess pay is either spent on rent or remitted to the home country. Neither is beneficial to a US worker in the technology hubs.
by flas9sd | 2025-09-20 14:01:15+00:00
I tend to use quite old hardware that is powered-off when not in use for its intended purpose and I coined "capability is its own quality".

For dedicated build boxes that crunch through lots of sources (whole distributions, AOSP) but do run seldomly, getting your hands on lots of Cores and RAM very cheaply can still trump buying newer CPUs with better perf/watt but higher cost.
by Herring | 2025-09-20 14:01:36+00:00
China has course-corrected many times before. They’ll do it again.

I think the US should be more worried. Their govt makes it incredibly hard to course-correct (filibuster, gerrymandering, fptp, electoral college, supreme court etc)

https://data.worldhappiness.report/chart

Trends look better for China. Life expectancy already caught up.
by decimalenough | 2025-09-20 14:03:55+00:00
Remember, Australia is a hellhole full of things that will kill you. Ignore all rumors about a great climate, laid back lifestyle, plenty of jobs, solid work life balance, low crime, a good social safety net, and that you're never actually going to see a crocodile/scorpion/drop bear/inland taipan in any major city. (The one about insane house prices is, alas, true.)