MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by cc62cf4a4f20 | 2025-09-01 13:14:45+00:00
I've been coding professionally for almost 30 years. I use Claude Code heavily, even for larger features. To get that to work half-decent, you have to take on a PM/Tech-lead role, you're no longer a senior engineer.

For large pieces of work, I will iterate with CC to generate a feature spec. It's usually pretty good at getting you most of the way there first shot and then either have it tweak things or manually do so.

Implementation is having CC first generate a plan, and iterating with it on the plan - a bit like mentoring a junior, except CC won't remember anything after a little while. Once you get the plan in place, then CC is generally pretty good at getting through code and tests, etc. You'll still have to review it after for all the reasons others have mentioned, but in my experience, it'll get through it way faster than I would on my own.

To parallelize some of the work, I often have Visual Studio Code open to monitor what's happening while it's working so I can redirect early if necessary. It also allows me to get a head start on the code review.

I will admit that I spent a lot of time iterating on my way of working to get to where I am, and I don't feel at all done (CC has workflows and subagents to help with common tasks that I haven't fully explored yet). I think the big thing is that tools like CC allow us to work in new ways but we need to shift our mindset and invest time in learning how to use these tools.
by byme | 2025-09-01 13:15:06+00:00
When debugging with an LLM, a failed build sends ~200 tokens of mostly useless output. The actual error? Maybe 60 tokens. Multiply that by 20-30 commands per debugging session, and you're burning through tokens like crazy.

So, I created a CLI tool that acts as a smart filter between your commands and the LLM. It knows what errors look like across different tech stacks and only shows what matters.

Before:

``` bash > npm run build:graphql && react-router typegen && tsc && react-router build

> build:graphql > graphql-codegen

Parse Configuration Generate outputs app/features/tasks/services/atoms.ts:55:60 - error TS2339: Property 'taskId' does not exist on type '{ request: UpdateTaskRequest; }'.

55 const response = await apiClient.updateTask(params.taskId, params.request); ~~~~~~

Found 1 error in app/features/tasks/services/atoms.ts:55 ```

After:

```bash $ aex frontend-build app/features/tasks/services/atoms.ts(55,60): error TS2339: Property 'taskId' does not exist Done ```

That's it. When the build succeeds? Just "Done" - literally 1 token instead of 200.

Have a look! The full article is here: https://github.com/byme8/apparatus.exec/discussions/1
by bambax | 2025-09-01 13:15:37+00:00
> What is complexity in chess?

If there is only one possible move then arguably the complexity of the position is zero (not counting when there are no more possible moves, which means the game is over).

But complexity can't be measured only by the number of possible moves. If there is a mate in 1, but lots of possible moves, then complexity of the position is also very low for a player with any familiarity with the game, and potentially, moderately high for someone who has never played any game (but knows the rules).

Yet it should be possible to measure "absolute complexity", ie, complexity that doesn't depend on the experience of the player.

So, complexity is a factor of the size of the tree, and the minimal number of moves between the current position and winning. (Because chess is entirely deterministic, that distance always exists. We are (currently) unable to measure it in most cases, but we can be sure it does exist.)

It should be possible to estimate the size of the tree heuristically, even without enumerating all possible moves. But then I'm not sure where to go from there...
by pjerem | 2025-09-01 13:16:18+00:00
> Please don’t let me go back to the early days of the internet where my mother had 50 toolbars and malware installed

I removed hundreds of toolbars from my mother/grandmother/anyone computer.

I still prefer that to techno-fascism where it's ok for companies to brick my hardware remotely, to lock me out of all my hardware because I have a picture of my kid in a bath, to read all my messages for whatever reason, to extract value from my personal files, pictures, musical tastes, to not allow me to install an app I bought because it have been removed from the store, to not allow me to install an app my friend created, to not allow me to create an app and sell it myself, to not allow me to not do the action ever but just "Later this week", and so on and so on.

This toolbar thing is a wrong excuse. And it was 90% because Windows was shitty.

Most mothers would have easily downloaded and installed crapware embedded with whatever they downloaded, but most mothers aren't doing to go to "Settings > About > Tap 10 times on OS version > Bootloader > Disable Bootloader protection > "Are you sure because your phone will become insecure ?" > Yes > Fucking yes.

And if they still do it to purposefully install malware, I'm sorry to say they are just stupid and I cannot care less about the toolbars.
by vixen99 | 2025-09-01 13:16:59+00:00
Rather surprising then that we have the Commonwealth of 56 member states, most of which were former territories of the British Empire from which the Commonwealth developed. They are connected through their use of the English language and cultural and historical ties. Doubtless these countries have appalling memories of the evils perpetrated by the Brits. And yet they even accept Charles III as the head of the Commonwealth. Also amazing that in most colonies independence was achieved without a shot being fired.

Unbelievable eh? Maybe it's a case of Stockholm Syndrome.

On the other hand it could have been worse. We should remember that for almost every colonized people, the alternative to British Jurisdiction was not unmolested progress towards modernity but conquest by someone else, the French, the Germans,the Turks, the Russians,the Japanese and worst of all, the Belgians.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commonwealth_of_Nations
by rainsford | 2025-09-01 13:17:19+00:00
I suppose wanting to kill the commercial web is a valid position, although it feels more like grumpy old man yells at kids to get off his lawn than a considered analysis of relative value and impact, but even then I think you're underestimating the impact the AI problem will have on the non-commercial web as well.

Lots of people might be willing to run websites for fun or personal satisfaction or whatever, but how many people will continue to be willing to do so when they don't actually get to present the content to visitors and it's instead just regurgitated by AI? Half the fun of hosting your own website is personalizing it and choosing how to share the content. Even people blogging for fun put a lot of thought into their posts on how to phrase an argument or tell a story. But what's the point when nobody will ever see your actual post, just your thoughts rearranged and presented by AI? Maybe some people only care about the information being out there in any form, but I'd be willing to bet that's yet a smaller subset of even the people who would contribute in a return to geocities version of the web.
by raxxorraxor | 2025-09-01 13:19:18+00:00
It is the other way around. The security model of mobile devices seriously inhibits innovation and we end up with ever the same crappy apps we don't really need.

I also don't believe more people get scammed on PC compared to mobile platforms. Scammers go where the most naive people congregate.

A sensibly configured Linux system is very secure compared to your mobile device. No security model can really shield against user stupidity. The people would need completely different devices as they simply aren't fit to use a computer. My parents are the same, but I won't accept a bad compromise of an OS just because they essentially need other devices.

At some point a user will be asked to allow execution of code they got through some fishy mail. There is no defense against that other than for the user sticking to books.
by Terretta | 2025-09-01 13:20:22+00:00
> Apple has always made it painful to step too far off the path

Or, "Apple has always avoided spending dev cycles too far off the path, electing instead to make the path itself easier."

xCode with built-in live rebuild preview simulator plus xCode Cloud with Testflight which auto-builds on git push is a remarkable value for $8.33 a month.
by cb321 | 2025-09-01 13:21:39+00:00
With `nim cpp` the Nim compiler actually just generates C++ from the Nim source for the backend to compile. So, calling C++ code is just emitting the calls at a C++ source level and so is straightforward. The situation with Rust "sharing" LLVM is very different, as that is not a source-to-source compiler.

C++ code calling Nim code is also not usually as straightforward. So, "fantastic" here may apply only in one call direction.
by myquest-ai | 2025-09-01 13:21:47+00:00
Hi HN!

I built Quotura, a free Chrome extension that instantly turns plain text into clean, shareable quote images.

I created it because I was frustrated with spending too much time formatting quotes in Canva/Photoshop when all I wanted was something quick and distraction-free.

Key Features:

One-click quote generation – turn text into visuals instantly

Randomized clean backgrounds – keeps designs fresh without effort

Lightweight & free – no sign-ups, no clutter, just works

Demo video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LBBYoESYYzo

I’d love your feedback:

What features would make this more useful for you?

Would integrations (e.g., Twitter, LinkedIn) make sense?

Anything that feels confusing or missing?

It’s a small side project built with love and I’d be grateful for your thoughts!

Try it here: https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/quotura/mlkcccmkkcd...

Thanks in advance
by quickthrowman | 2025-09-01 13:22:48+00:00
It looks like there’s a district cooling project in Singapore, unsure of the progress: https://www.spgroup.com.sg/sustainable-energy-solutions/dist...

It makes a lot of sense to do district cooling in Singapore, surprised it didn’t happen earlier but laying all those pipes in an existing city can be challenging. Both of the major cities in my metro area have district cooling and heating, and so does the local land grant university.
Ask HN: Claude Code for non-coding tasks
by akhilnchauhan | 2025-09-01 13:24:10+00:00
Hi there - I've been getting deeper into the world of using Claude Code for non-coding tasks. For me, it's using for Marketing tasks that require some code, but also other tasks like writing, design, creating pretty PDFs etc.

I'm finding that a lot of the agentic capabilities (reading files, writing TODOs, writing files, etc.) transfer across many domains, not just coding.

I'm having a bunch of fun creating custom workflows using slash commands, output styles, to stitch together workflows (I'm not as big on subagents for my work, since many of my tasks require multiple turns).

As someone who's somewhat technical, it's been a huge accelerator. Though it does feel like I'm driving a Ferrari to pick up some groceries sometimes.

Anyway, would love to chat with others who are venturing out into these types of workflows. Also happy to share specifics on my workflow if anybody is interested.
by RHSeeger | 2025-09-01 13:24:22+00:00
> But if you needed some kind of custom sort function to serve features within a greater application, you are already going to know that your sort function works correctly by virtue of the greater application working correctly. Testing the sort function in isolation is ultimately pointless.

It is entirely possible for a sort function to be just one component of the functionality of the larger code base. Sort in specific is something I've written unit tests for.

> As before, there may be some benefit in writing code to run that sort function in isolation during development to help pinpoint what edge cases need to be considered, but there isn't any real value in keeping that around after development is done.

Those edge cases (and normal cases) continue to exist after the code is written. And if you find a new edge case later and need to change the code, then having the previous unit tests in place gives a certain amount of confidence that your changes (for the new case) aren't breaking anything. Generally, the only time I _remove_ unit tests is if I'm changing to a new implementation; when the method being tested no longer exists.
by wizzwizz4 | 2025-09-01 13:24:44+00:00
They're negatively affected by a lack of openness. Some proprietary XML nonsense that's well-documented makes interoperability a week's work, maximum. Meanwhile, Microsoft's incomprehensible "open standard OOXML", supported by every document editor I care to name, is a huge impediment to interoperability. Limiting myself to even the well-designed ODF format means there are features I can't implement in my software: standardisation comes at the expense of innovation.

In software, the problem is closedness, protectionism, and undocumentedness, not proprietary wheel reinvention.
by sokoloff | 2025-09-01 13:24:53+00:00
> I called their support line for a lost card, and had to go through to second level support because I didn't have the app.

What’s the alternative? The bank sending out a debit card to anyone who calls up and says “I’m @kristov, trust me…”

You were not able to served by the standard path, because you couldn’t authenticate yourself via the standard mechanism. You still got service by an alternate path. No different from opting out of the airport scanner; it takes longer and is a little less convenient, but you still get service.
by egorfine | 2025-09-01 13:25:06+00:00
It was truly great for Windows, no doubt about that.

Now, is it great for Linux? Absolutely not. These tools existed to vaguely resemble the capabilities we have had on *nix for decades and I'm not sure what kind of value could they bring back to Linux... like, really, what? A different, Microsoft-style optics to look at processes?
by nunez | 2025-09-01 13:25:09+00:00
I wish it were easier to contribute more to my 401k during specific pay periods.

Part of my income is commission-based. I could max out my 401k when I receive my commission. It would be easier for me to budget this way. Unfortunately, contribution is all-or-nothing, and changing one's contribution percentage takes a few pay periods to go into effect.

Another tip not mentioned re 401k: change your default elections! Brokerages will usually put 401k funds into expensive "target date" managed funds that usually don't perform better than much cheaper index funds. Many 401k plans will allow contributors to choose index funds.
by amy214 | 2025-09-01 13:26:37+00:00
dude is saying it's even worse than laissez faire

it's laissez faire towards monopolies, let them be

but not laissez faire when a company is about to collapse, then the government rescues them. laissez faire would be less sympathetic. i.e. bank bailouts of 2008, automaker bailouts of 2020, current intel bailouts

thus not only is the government allowing monoplies/duopolies, but in fact pumping money into them to continue their survival
by interloxia | 2025-09-01 13:26:49+00:00
I did a little reading about Hemianopsia and came up with a very simple test about 15 years ago. It was a simple winforms app. One could write it/vibe code it very quickly in just about anything.

The test was run seated at a desk with a 24'' monitor. I drew a small square in the center of the screen on a back background and created a regular grid of dots which could be subdivided. Each small dot at random was briefly shown and I recorded the time it took him to hit a key. The defaults were .5 to .8 seconds and an off time from .75 to 2.5 seconds on a 7x5 grid with subdivisions for the areas he had trouble, but it's long enough ago that I don't remember what settings he preferred. The sample file I have to hand has 140 dots.

I set it up so that he could customise the number of columns and rows and the number of subdivisions to target his vision loss without having to spend too much time where it didn't matter. The outputs were a grayscale image of the reaction times and the reaction time values. It was helpful to preview all the dots before starting the test.

The main issue with the test was to keep it relatively short. If it took too long he found it boring and caused a bit of eye strain.

If I were to write it again I would to move the center square occasionally throughout the test, and then offset the test grid from that location. Unfortunately he didn't have much time and it eventually became a bit stressful to know the rate of progression of his disease so he/we let it go and I never tried to ease the eye strain issue.

> "walk to the right" on sidewalks and such, I prefer to stay as left as I can on a path." Visit Australia for a mostly keep left experience (at least in the past) :)
by knuckleheads | 2025-09-01 13:27:09+00:00
That video has become an instant classic to me when it came out, very well made and explained. Very much influencing my thoughts as of late. Related to the article, I've also spent a few months before working on chess line/complexity visualization and explanation as a side project. The main outcome of this was https://www.schachzeit.com/en/openings/sicilian-defense. I haven't touched it beyond keeping it barely running for most of 2025, so a strong breeze would surely knock it over, but the experience of making it did teach me a lot about chess and computerized chess.

The way the table at the bottom of these pages works is by running stockfish on not only the current position, but on the position after every possible legal move the first player could make. This increases the amount of computation needed by one or two orders of magnitude, as stockfish often does not explore every possible legal move so deeply. I was only doing it for lichess' openings lines, and it cost maybe $200 worth of computer processing time (can't recall the exact numbers).

As far as I know (and I'm only someone who has spent a couple dozen hours with stockfish, a stockfish dev would know more) stockfish does not allow you easy access to the hash table that contains all the evaluations. I could not figure out how to get it to print out it's hash tables at all in order to get at the values deeper down in the complexity.

I've considered forking stockfish and trying to get those values to be accessible somehow, in order to try and make visualizations like that video, and maybe someday I will. For now though, I think that's the technical piece missing, because otherwise one is forced to recompute every single node of the graph at the desired depth rather than running it once and getting back the values that have already been computed. Maybe someday, when I have more time, I'll take a shot at it, but not anytime soon I don't think.
by FpUser | 2025-09-01 13:27:55+00:00
My programming background - started from machine codes. Did everything - business desktop, high performance game like apps, firmware for microcontrollers, web front ends, high performance enterprise grade backends, distributed etc. etc. Multiple languages. So lots of experience. Now I use AI quite extensively to generate snippets / classes of code with small and well defined functionality. Most of the time it works just fine and due to my extensive experience I could quickly spot wrong approach, inefficiency, potential issues etc. After telling AI to fix whatever if any problems I've found I usually satisfied with the solution. So overall AI has become a very valuable tool for me, saves gobbles of time. How much exactly - do not really know / care.
by hollerith | 2025-09-01 13:28:13+00:00
>A sensibly configured [desktop, i.e., not just a headless server] Linux system is very secure compared to your mobile device.

That is not true. It is understandable that you believe it because it gets repeated a lot, but those repeaters are doing what you are, namely repeating what they heard (and sometimes what they want to be true) without sufficient actual knowledge of what they are talking about.
Show HN: Sarpro – Get Sentinel‑1 GRD from NASA into → GeoTIFF/JPEG Fast (Rust)
by danielVi | 2025-09-01 13:28:20+00:00
SARPRO is a fast Rust toolset for turning Sentinel‑1 GRD products into GeoTIFFs and high‑quality synthetic‑RGB JPEGs, with CLI, GUI, and a typed Rust API. The latest release focuses on cloud‑friendly remote I/O with proper authentication and robust batching.

What’s new in 0.3.2:

Authenticated CDSE/ASF downloads (CLI) to fetch GRD .SAFE.zip over OAuth2 (CDSE) or Earthdata cookies/netrc (ASF) and process directly.

Stream or materialize: Reads via GDAL VSICURL/VSIZIP for streaming, or materialize into a cache with progress bars and ASF resume support.

Non‑auth remote SAFE: Process unpacked SAFE over HTTP(S) behind a Range‑capable server (e.g., nginx, Python RangeHTTPServer)

Quality & speed: Auto‑CRS (--target-crs auto), CLAHE autoscale, synRGB modes; 400–500MP → 2048px typically completes in ~1–2s on a modern laptop; native full‑res warps remain tens of seconds.

Links: - Repo: (https://github.com/bogwi/sarpro) - Docs: (https://docs.rs/sarpro) - Previous HN: [Sarpro – Ultrafast Sentinel‑1 GRD → GeoTIFF/JPEG, SynRGB, Clahe, Auto‑CRS (Rust)](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44961747)
by kylecazar | 2025-09-01 13:28:29+00:00
Well, the line is drawn by the fact that hardware and software have intrinsic differences. It sounds like we're on the same page about hardware -- with the software, should we not be bound by licenses in client/server services (phones, consoles)? You are using someone else's service with others, for some collective benefit like playing a game, and being bound to constraints on that software doesn't seem that offensive. Modified clients can piss in the pool for others using the services and affect the network's quality.

Again, if you want to run purely OSS software with permissive licenses, that should be your prerogative. But you might miss out on the Play store. If you want to mess with Valve anti-cheat, you can't connect to Steam games online. Etc. I think these companies do have a right to dictate software requirements for client code accessing their servers.

But, you should be able to wipe those clients if you don't care about them and play tux racer on Arch.
by nunez | 2025-09-01 13:28:41+00:00
One more: /r/CreditCards on Reddit is an awesome resource for finding excellent credit card deals. Banks offer amazing sign-ups deals in the hopes that you'll carry a big balance in perpetuity. Taking the bait and paying off your card every month is basically free money!

Don't get sucked into churning, though. It's high risk for very low reward.