MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by afthonos | 2025-09-28 17:40:52+00:00
The importance of having a human be responsible is about alignment. We have a fundamental belief that human beings are comprehensible and have goals that are not completely opaque. That is not true of any piece of software. In the case of deterministic software, you can’t argue with a bug. It doesn’t matter how many times you tell it that no, that’s not what either the company or the user intended, the result will be the same.

With an AI, the problem is more subtle. The AI may absolutely be able to understand what you’re saying, and may not care at all, because its goals are not your goals, and you can’t tell what its goals are. Having a human be responsible bypasses that. The point is not to punish the AI, the point is to have a hope to stop it from doing things that are harmful.
by danlitt | 2025-09-28 17:41:34+00:00
The key word is "unrelated"! Being able to count the number of words in a paragraph and being able to train an image classifier are so different as to be unrelated for all practical purposes. The assumption underlying this kind of a "benchmark" is that all tasks have a certain attribute called complexity which is a numerical value we can use to discriminate tasks, presumably so that if you can complete tasks up to a certain "complexity" then you can complete all other tasks of lower complexity. No such attribute exists! I am sure there are "4 hour" tasks an LLM can do and "5 second" tasks that no LLM can do.

The underlying frustration here is that there is so much latitude possible in choosing which tasks to test, which ones to present, and how to quantify "success" that the metrics given are completely meaningless, and do not help anyone to make a prediction. I would bet my entire life savings that by the time the hype bubble bursts, we will still have 10 brainless articles per day coming out saying AGI is round the corner.
by CharlesW | 2025-09-28 17:42:16+00:00
> The article makes several points about how the US medical establishment, including the US government, is doing better in this regard than NHS.

It claims that "US government agencies are taking tick-borne disease much more seriously", and that may be their words, but I challenge you to point to actions which support them. It also doesn't mention that Trump administration actions have decreased and destabilized overall federal support environments (NIH/CDC) that fund tick-related disease research.

I have a friend who's gone through a similar years-long journey with his daughter. In Silicon Valley, at least, the medical establishment spent years trying to gaslight the family about their daughter's symptoms.
by sevensor | 2025-09-28 17:42:43+00:00
I ended up just downloading the texlive image and letting it go slightly stale while I wrote. Latex plays poorly with OS package managers and I decided I preferred to be out of date.

I made each chapter a separate file and compiled each one to latex. I had a top level latex file that did an \include{} for each chapter, and a big old Makefile to tie everything together, including figure generation.

All this, and it was still easier than writing every latex command by hand.
by runjake | 2025-09-28 17:42:47+00:00
Context: Justin Searls is a “high profile” person in the Ruby and Rails community. He has a reputation for being a nice person and behaving in good faith.

From a personal standpoint, I can easily take his words at face value. I’m also curious about the views of Aaron “tenderlove” Patterson, who has a similar reputation.

Now that Justin has spoken out, maybe Aaron will take the opportunity to. Both tend to stay out of drama.
by _1tem | 2025-09-28 17:42:51+00:00
There is simply no good way to make the API public while maintaining the performance and quality expectations that Apple consumers have. If the third party device doesn’t work people will blame Apple even though it’s not their fault. Just like how consumers blamed Microsoft for BSODs even though it wasn’t their fault.

Edit: the evidence for my claim - just look at how realtime audio apps with tight latency requirements can’t work on Android
by SoftTalker | 2025-09-28 17:43:40+00:00
I don't disagree, but if you have admin access to the BMC you can access the console, reboot the machine into single-user mode or even into another OS entirely, and then implant any malware you want, wipe the storage, etc.

Some of the Supermicro boards don't even have a separate BMC NIC, the only choice is to bond it to one of the main NICs or sacrifice one of them to be BMC only. I try to pay attention to that now after being surprised by that once on some servers we bought.
by canadiantim | 2025-09-28 17:43:46+00:00
I got Lyme about 2 months ago. Initially just woke up and had a small bite on back of thigh, thought it was just a fly bite or something and no tick was attached. That night I was feverish and for the next couple nights with muscle soreness like when you sleep on ground or something, mind you I was sleeping in a very rustic cabin so I presumed that actually was the cause. I watched the bite tho and it never showed a bullseye. Instead it had pustules and eventually grew to be a giant red inflamed bite the size of a, well at its peak basically the size of a basketball which is of course wild and alarming. The wound itself got infected which is why the bite grew to that size. At the time I actually thought I had like rolled over on a spider or something and it bit me multiple times cause I had no idea a tick bite could cause this sort of reaction, but I guess my body very violently reacted to the Lyme. I went and got antibiotics for my bite tho the initial GP I saw didn’t test for Lyme even tho I had a mystery bite from being in the woods. Regardless I went on antibiotics just for the infected bite but not for Lyme. It was only 2 weeks later when I was doing yoga and ended up “overstretching” my liver area (the start of my weird Lyme symptoms) such that my right flank was spasming and my whole back chain had seized up leading to a week of intense pain and inability to sleep due to the pain. Ultimately I went to the ER, because well I’m Canadian and the ER is the only place you can get timely healthcare. Thankfully the ER doc there heard about the bite and tested me for Lyme, which ultimately came back positive. I likely would’ve foolishly missed it were it not for her. So I’m very grateful I got bit in 2025 when docs are atleast starting to be more Lyme aware. I went on doxycycline and symptoms resolved. I’m still throwing the kitchen sink at it tho with auxiliary treatments too like ozone IV’s and traditional Chinese medicine herbs from a doc who did their PhD on Lyme. Very much front loading an aggressive approach as early as possible.

What I’ve learned is a couple things: 1. A bullseye doesn’t always appear even if it’s certainly Lyme disease, 2. The bite reaction can be very significant and not what you would think from a normal tic bite, 3. Doxycycline is an incredible drug but also the peer reviewed literature shows the Lyme bacteria and coinfections can remain after even extensive courses of doxy so while it’s very effective it’s not completely effective and shouldn’t be the only tool used. 4. Test early. I’m so thankful the ER doc caught it early for me and I got treated. I actually feel even better than before as ironically the doxy also fixed me decade long digestive issues which is a great plus. But Lyme in its early phase is such a different thing than Lyme that’s been around for a year +. I highly recommend testing asap if anyone ever has any concerns or worries
by thw_9a83c | 2025-09-28 17:44:06+00:00
One of the main reasons the AIX workstation machines continued to be used even after the Windows NT workstation era began was the CAD software CATIA V4 from Dassault Systèmes.

CATIA V5 was the first version to support Windows NT. However, it was a complete rewrite, resulting in a very different UI and workflows. Even the file formats were largely incompatible with V4, so the automotive industry and their suppliers stayed with CATIA V4 for many years after the release of V5. And the only way to run CATIA V4 was on a UNIX workstation.
by add-sub-mul-div | 2025-09-28 17:45:06+00:00
Maintaining bad AI code is the new maintaining bad offshore code.

Quality aside, it's also going to be a pain in general if all of the code "I" write is foreign to me when I go to look at it again later because it's not as familiar to me as if I'd fully originated it from the 25-year evolution of my personal experience.
by jacquesm | 2025-09-28 17:45:41+00:00
This is not a problem in a properly dimensioned system at all.

It is still well within the 'engineering reserve'. Solar panels produce the most power in mid March, when they are cooled very well by the ambient air but the sun is already lining up nicely with the panels at mid-day. But those conditions are pretty rare, and most inverters will handle this gracefully by simply dumping some of the excess power as heat - or in the better ones, by simply chopping the input voltage at a high frequency. This allows for very fine control over the average power and will help to keep the voltage under the isolation break down voltage (which usually is a very large factor over the voltages that you see in practice).

My own system is 50 panels, 1000V maximum on panels that nominally produce up to 100V, so I never have more than 8 of them in series. That leaves 200V to play with and I've never seen it get close to that 1000V. The inverters are easily capable of dealing with this and if the strings were to ever exceed 1000V then the inverters would simply disconnect those strings with their internal disconnect relays.

So, in closing: don't run your system 'on the limit' or rare conditions will push it over the limit. But even if you do: inverters are fairly bullet proof nowadays and if you over-volt the input the vast majority of the ones that you can normally buy are going to just switch off and move to an error state that will require you to power them down before they will be usable again.
by missinglugnut | 2025-09-28 17:45:51+00:00
My dad got bit by a tick, came down with a high fever, but tested negative for Lyme so the doctor wouldn't prescribe antibiotics after two appointments with worsening symptoms.

He was hospitalized when he was too sick to walk and then an infectious disease specialist put him on antibiotics, and he got better in a few days, minus some permanent nerve damage in his face.

It's amazing how confident some doctors can be when they haven't got a fucking clue. The more I read about high false positive rates and non-lyme tick-borne bacteria the more mad I get about what happened.
by fluxusars | 2025-09-28 17:45:52+00:00
Framing matters a lot. If you can afford to, take 6 or 12 months to widen your points of view. That might mean taking up a job in a sector you're not familiar with, or maybe changing locations (a new country perhaps?). I think by framing your situation as "my goal is now to X", when accomplishing that goal is at least partially dependent on things you don't control, is setting yourself up for failure. Instead, treat this time as a good opportunity to learn more about yourself and what possibilities are open to you that you normally wouldn't consider.
by the__alchemist | 2025-09-28 17:46:08+00:00
I like your point! I think the advantage in its light is this: People often use Python because it's convention in the domain, the project already uses it, or it's the language the rest of the team uses. So, you are perhaps violating the spirit, but that's OK. You are making the most of tools available. It's not the Platonic (Pythonic??) ideal, but good enough.
by t-3 | 2025-09-28 17:46:16+00:00
Renaming things to make them queue correctly (I usually couldn't care less about visual sorting, I use a terminal) is by far my #1 task by LoC and frequency of occurence, and by far the most annoying. Metadata can be very helpful to obviate this issue, but it usually just leads to another problem where you now need metadata editors and readers in addition to the "user-visible" name metadata. It's frustrating.
by zwnow | 2025-09-28 17:46:27+00:00
Yes. But here we are, people ignoring all the theft that has happened. People generating images on stolen art and call themselves artists. People using it to program and call themselves programmers. Also, it seems to me that so many people just absolutely ignore all the security related issues coming with coding agents. Its truly a dystopia. But we are on hackernews so obviously people will glaze about "AI" on here.
by bearjaws | 2025-09-28 17:46:32+00:00
Yeah we offered resoldering for a while but after Apple started replacing them there was no point.

The settlement was in the US, so that is probably why it didn't apply in the EU. Kind of surprising really.

I don't blame you for being upset, the fact that neither party could come to an agreement and left consumers to pound sand was terrible. Apple should have just replaced them while the lawsuit was pending.
by kens | 2025-09-28 17:46:33+00:00
Sorting so "foo9" is before "foo10" is called natural sort. I found out about natural sort a week ago and I am thrilled that my programs now print their output in a sensible order. Give natural sort a try and see if it improves your life too :-)

I found the magic two lines of Python to do a natural sort here, by the way: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/11150239/natural-sorting...
by Y-bar | 2025-09-28 17:46:38+00:00
> There is simply no good way to make the API public while maintaining the performance and quality expectations that Apple consumers have.

You have no evidence for any of these two claims. From my professional experience it is 100% possible. Making a API public seldom, if ever, requires changes to called code behaviour. Not punishing competitors who tried to use your API is also not requiring any code changes, it is a policy decision.
by xpointer | 2025-09-28 17:46:39+00:00
Hi, I'm the author. Esoteric.codes is my blog on esolangs in general; the book is a collection of my esolangs in particular.

Also just to note that e.c had been on hold while I focused on the book, but I'm working on new posts, so please send anything new esolang-related my way!
by glenstein | 2025-09-28 17:46:46+00:00
>Personalized ads are more effective than non-personalized ads, to try to argue that personalized ads are ineffective is incorrect

I basically agree with this. I think because people don't like personalized ads, there's a temptation to argue they don't work.

But I think it's motivated reasoning in this case. And I actually think the argument against them is stronger when you acknowledge that they are more effective. The privacy issue goes hand in hand with the effect that ads collectively have to socialize people into consumer behaviors.
by bloomca | 2025-09-28 17:47:03+00:00
Code is the final artifact after everything is shipped. But while the development is active, it is more than that (at least for now), as you need to know implementation details even if you are really proficient at the domain knowledge.

Although I do agree that there is a possibility that we'll build a relatively reliable abstraction using LLMs at some point, so this issue will go away. There probably be some restrictions, but I think it is possible.
by altmind | 2025-09-28 17:47:08+00:00
| GraalVM for JDK 24 was the final GraalVM release licensed and supported as part of Oracle Java SE Products. Customers requiring further updates to legacy GraalVM versions should download them via Oracle Support.

Huh, that sounded to me that there won't be any new free graalvm versions? Sounds like a death record for a project.
by chamomeal | 2025-09-28 17:47:22+00:00
Idk I feel like even without using LLMs the job is 90% thinking and planning. And it’s nice to go the last 10% on your own to have a chance to reflect and challenge your earlier assumptions.

I actually end up using LLMs in the planning phase more often than the writing phase. Cursor is super good at finding relevant bits of code in unfamiliar projects, showing me what kind of conventions and libraries are being used, etc.
by tim333 | 2025-09-28 17:48:00+00:00
There is no particular reason why AI has to stick to language models though. Indeed if you want human like thinking you pretty much have to go beyond language as we do other stuff too if you see what I mean. A recent example: "Google DeepMind unveils its first “thinking” robotics AI" https://arstechnica.com/google/2025/09/google-deepmind-unvei...
by overfeed | 2025-09-28 17:48:13+00:00
> AI allows you to spend nearly all of your time there if you wish, from concept through troubleshooting

It does not! If you're using interactive IDE AI, you spend your time keeping the AI on the rails, and reminding it what the original task is. If you're using agents, then you're delegating all the the mid-level/tactical thinking, and perhaps even the planning, and you're left with the task of writing requirements granular enough for an intern to tackle, but this hews closer to "Business Analyst" than "Software Engineer"
by crimsoneer | 2025-09-28 17:48:34+00:00
But the Swiss already have a unique digital identifier for everyone living and working in Switzerland (your AVS number I think?) so it's really not optional, and is the primary purpose of the new UK id. The actual application itself is much of a muchness.

Also, the UK gov has already said there will be solutions for old people/time travellers/the Amish etc without phones. Nobody is going to force anybody to buy a phone.
by 999900000999 | 2025-09-28 17:48:52+00:00
But if you take my cookies, add sprinkles then resell them, I can expect a modest donation to keep the bakery running.

Otherwise I'm going to run out of flour and no one gets cookies.

This is the original sin of FOSS. Large mega corps end up taking up a disproportionate amount of bandwidth while only contributing when they feel like it.

At least with . net core Microsoft ultimately pays the bills. No one knows how other independent FOSS projects are supposed to be funded.
by binoct | 2025-09-28 17:48:53+00:00
So there’s another force at work here that to me answers the question in a different way. Agents also massively decrease the difficulty of coming into someone else’s messy code base and being productive.

Want to make a quick change or fix? The agent will likely figure out a way to do it in minutes rather the than hours it would take me to do so.

Want to get a good understanding of the architecture and code layout? Working with an agent for search and summary cuts my time down by an order of magnitude.

So while agree there’s a lot more “what the heck is this ugly pile of if else statements doing?” And “why are there three modules handling transforms?”, there is a corresponding drop in cost to adding features and paying down tech debt. Finding the right balance is a bit different in the agentic coding world, but it’s a different mindset and set of practices to develop.
by parineum | 2025-09-28 17:49:10+00:00
> The problem is imposing it on the user with no warning or option to turn it off.

You can say that about every single design decision made about every product.

The gripe about this particular feature seems misplaced because almost all users will want the sort that's offered and the actual alphabetical sort is likely the desire of a more advanced user who, in fact, is offered a choice through registry editing and/or using a more advanced cli option for the occasion they might need an alternative sort.

This is a sensible default.
by xpointer | 2025-09-28 17:49:20+00:00
The FOC podcast is super fun and they end up discussing a few esolangs from the Forty-Four Esolangs book (Entropy, FatFinger). I'm also on a podcast about the book with Sam Arbseman (author of Magic of Code): https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/daniel-temkin-on-esote...
by dirtybirdnj | 2025-09-28 17:49:27+00:00
The guy in the cave having the midlife crisis and his wife sending him clothes had me in tears. The lost kid in the woods who can hear his dad. The lack of any meaningful gratitude... he just seemed so checked out. I felt so jealous of his wife who still cared. Who kept saying tulips take time.

Not even a complicated storyline but very poignant.
by kens | 2025-09-28 17:49:35+00:00
Raymond Chen explained why a registry file is called a “hive”:

Because one of the original developers of Windows NT hated bees. So the developer who was responsible for the registry snuck in as many bee references as he could. A registry file is called a “hive”, and registry data are stored in “cells”, which is what honeycombs are made of.

https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20030808-00/?p=42...
by pheggs | 2025-09-28 17:49:51+00:00
Define optional? There will be new checks introduced online where you can only enter if you have an E-ID.

Companies do have to accept a physical card as well, but only if you appear physically at the companies doors. Otherwise, that statement was kind of deceptive in my opinion because there will be a lot of pressure to get one. They also decided to make it free, which shows they probably want to achieve a high adoption.
by sdeframond | 2025-09-28 17:49:53+00:00
> The syntax is definitely harder to grasp

Yes it is. I believe the reason is that this is all valid python while typescript is not valid javascript. Also, python's type annotations are available at runtime (eg. for introspection) while typescript types aren't.

That said, typescript static type system is clearly both more ergonomic and more powerful than Python's.
by mtlmtlmtlmtl | 2025-09-28 17:50:05+00:00
I think it's imprecise to say that opening knowledge is unnecessary. What is unnecessary is opening theory, or more specifically, rote memorisation of opening lines.

This is different from opening understanding. Understanding the importance of tempo, development, controlling the centre, the different pawn structures, middle games and endgames that result from different openings, the plans and motifs typical in various opening complexes. Any late beginner to intermediate player needs to pick and study an opening. The problem is that instead of studying the opening, players try to memorise lines without improving their understanding of the resulting middlegames, and the plans they should be playing for. Then, when their opponent diverges from the main lines(which in my experience happens in 99% of games between players below 2000, because it's very rare that both players have memorised the same long line), they don't know what to do.

I'm a 1900 FIDE player, I have an opening repertoire of sorts. For instance I play the modern benoni with black. An extremely theoretical opening, and yet I have only a small handful of longer lines actually memorised, because they're simply too complex for me to figure out over the board(e.g the b5 lines against Bd3 h3 Nf3 setups). But what I have studied extensively is the strategic landscape of the benoni, games by strong players in the opening, etc. And I have years of experience playing the opening. I know what kind of exchanges typically favour me, or my opponent, what pawn breaks each player should be trying for. And all of that knowledge is crucial for me to get anything out of the opening. I have beaten players tactically much stronger than me in this opening simply because my understanding of this specific opening was better than theirs.

Tactical ability is obviously important, but it's definitely not everything.