MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by coolfox | 2025-09-30 05:41:17+00:00
> A lack of determinism comes from many places, but primarily: 1) The models change 2) The models are not deterministic...

models themselves are deterministic, this is a huge pet peeve of mine, so excuse the tangent, but the appearance of nondeterminism comes from a few sources, but imho can be largely attributed to the probabilistic methods used to get appropriate context and enable timely responses. here's an example of what I mean, a 52-card deck. The deck order is fixed once you shuffle it. Drawing "at random" is a probabilistic procedure on top of that fixed state. We do not call the deck probabilistic. We call the draw probabilistic. Another exmaple, a pot of water heating on a stove. Its temperature follows deterministic physics. A cheap thermometer adds noisy, random error to each reading. We do not call the water probabilistic. We call the measurement probabilistic.

Theoretical physicists run into such problems, albeit far more complicated, and the concept for how they deal with them is called ergodicity. The models at the root of LLM's do exhibit ergodic behavior; the time average and the ensemble average of an observable are identical, i.e. the average response of a single model over a long duration and the average of many similar models at a fixed moment are equivalent.
by thatloststudent | 2025-09-30 05:41:24+00:00
> A nano banana photo-editing app where I don’t have to write a prompt. Just give me hundreds of templates from trying out different haircuts to seeing what you and your partner’s kid would look like to making me look like The Rock. A photo editing super-app.

Quite a few of these "ideas" make me think that the human behind it wants to maximize laziness. Glazing over what Hemingway kinda sorta would have thought about something fits into this pretty well.
by tombert | 2025-09-30 05:42:34+00:00
I have noticed that every distributed app I build, as it gets more concurrent, I end up reinventing a lot of operating system work. I end up rebuilding scheduling, different caching techniques, heuristics to try and preemptively add things to cache, etc.

I really should learn more about kernel design. I would probably still be a better distributed systems engineer if I lift more concepts from OS design.
by 827a | 2025-09-30 05:43:09+00:00
Yeah, tbh I used to be a bit agentic coding tool-pilled, but over the past four months I've come to realize that if this industry evolves in a direction where I don't actually get to write code anymore, I'm just going to quit.

Code is the only good thing about the tech industry. Everything else is capitalist hellscape shareholder dystopia. Thinking on it, its hilarious that any self-respecting coder is excited about these tools, because what you're excited for is a world where, now, at best, your entire job is managing unpredictable AI agents while sitting in meetings all day to figure out what to tell your AI agents to build. You don't get to build the product you want. You don't get to build it how you want. You'll be a middle manager that gets to orchestrate the arguments between the middle manager you already had and the inflexible computer.

You don't have to participate in a future you aren't interested in. The other day my boss asked me if I could throw Cursor at some task we've had backlogged for a while. I said "for sure my dude" then I just did it myself. It took me like four hours, and my boss was very impressed with how fast Cursor was able to do it, and how high quality the code was. He loves the Cursor metrics dashboard for "lines accepted" or whatever, every time he screenshares he has that tab open, so sometimes I task it on complicated nonsense tasks then just throw away the results. Seeing the numbers go up makes him happy, which makes my life easier, so its a win-win. Our CTO is really proud of "what percentage of our code is AI written" but I'm fairly certain that even the engineers who use it in earnest actually commit, like, 5% of what Cursor generates (and many do not use it in earnest).

The sentiment shift I've observed among friends and coworkers has been insane over the past two months. Literally no one cares about it anymore. The usage is still there, but its a lot more either my situation or just a "spray and pray" situation that creates a ton of disillusioned water cooler conversations.
by EtudusMax | 2025-09-30 05:43:52+00:00
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by JohnBooty | 2025-09-30 05:44:08+00:00
I've also seen less and less passion for the career as the years go by (ie. less computer nerds).

I have such strong but mixed feelings about this.

There were major downsides to the days when programmers were all computer nerds. Specifically, it made the career very off-putting to anybody who didn't fit that stereotype. Any time you do that, you miss out on a lot of potential talent.

Still, though. There were upsides. The passion level seemed higher. The climbing salaries attracted people solely attracted to... the climbing salaries.

I'm tired of being treated like a fucking Martian because I understand basic data structures and why sometimes you might want to use a tree or some other computer science 101 shit.

When I hire juniors, I try to give them problems that I know they likely won't be able to solve in the interview because I want to see how they think about things.

Are you explicit about this when you pose the problems?

I can see an upside to not telling them. If they try to bullshit their way through an answer because they think a definitive answer is expected, I guess that could be a useful data point. But it feels mean and unethical.

When I've done this as interviewer I've been pretty explicit. Like, "Hey, this is something we've been working our way through for months and we don't expect you to figure it out in ten minutes. But how might you approach this?"

I have fairly limited experience as an interviewer so I'm curious how others have approached this.
by massung | 2025-09-30 05:45:30+00:00
> Any app that ever claimed to tell you what "Hemingway would say about this blog post" would evidently be lying — it'd be giving you what that specific AI model generates in response to such a prompt.

First, 100% agreed.

That said, I found myself pondering Star Trek: TNG episodes with the holodeck, and recreations of individuals (e.g. Einstein, Freud). In those episodes - as a viewer - it really never occurred to me (at 15 years old) that this was just a computer's random guess as to how those personages from history would act and what they would say.

But then there was the episode where Geordi had to the computer recreate someone real from their personal logs to help solve a problem (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0708682/). In a later episode you find out just how very wrong the computer/AI's representation of that person really was, because it was playing off Geordi, just like an LLM's "you're absolutely right!" etc. (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0708720/).

This is a long-winded way of saying...

1. It's crazy to me how prescient those episodes were.

2. At the same time, the representation of the historical figures never bothered me in those contexts. And I wonder if it should bother me in this (LLM) context either? Maybe it's because I knew - and I believed the characters knew - it was 100% fake? Maybe some other reason?

Anyway, your comment made me think of this. ;-)
by aaronbrethorst | 2025-09-30 05:45:39+00:00
This is probably what the kids would call 'cringe,' but I asked Claude to Summarize Plato's "Apology" into a brief rap that sounds like it could have come from "Hamilton"

The Trial of Socrates (An Athenian Rap)

[Verse 1]

My name is Socrates, corrupting the youth?

That's what they claim but I'm just seeking truth

Oracle said I'm the wisest alive—

I said "that's impossible," had to investigate why

Turns out everybody's fronting, they don't know what they say

Politicians, poets, craftsmen—all pretending every day

I expose their ignorance, make 'em look like fools

Now they're charging me with breaking all of Athens' rules

[Chorus]

I'm not throwing away my shot

At the examined life, whether they like it or not

Wisdom is knowing what you don't know

And I'd rather die than let philosophy go

[Verse 2]

Meletus, you're stepping to me? Son, you're confused

You say I'm atheist but blame me for introducing gods that are new?

Your story doesn't track, your logic's full of cracks

I've got a divine sign that keeps me on the righteous path

They want me silent, want me exiled, want me gone

But I'm Athens' gadfly, stinging till the break of dawn

Death? That's just a journey to another place

Either dreamless sleep or meeting heroes face to face

[Outro]

So sentence me to death, I'll drink the hemlock down

'Cause an unexamined life ain't worth living in this town

History will vindicate the questions that I ask—

The pursuit of truth and virtue is my only task!
by jjav | 2025-09-30 05:48:29+00:00
> If you're wondering - hey, that sounds terrible, why doesn't the FAA do anything about it? Answer, because it practically can't without maybe a 10x or more budget boost that's practically impossible.

You're correct in that the FAA can't (or at least, it would be wildly impractical) have a staff of in-house experts that equal or exceed the experience of the manufacturer engineers on every possible topic.

But, that's not necessary to enforce a process of quality. It can be done by enforcing that the company must establish and document the processes to ensure quality, including which experts need to sign off on what. Then the FAA needs to hold the engineers who sign off professionally responsible and their managment legally liable if any circumvention is discovered down the line.
by sph | 2025-09-30 05:49:08+00:00
AAA gaming has looked bleak for the past 15 years, I still do not know why is it such a guiding star for the video gaming world. It is the artistic equivalent of Henry Ford’s assembly line where risk is low, marketing budget is high, and the result is mediocre and bland slop.

AAA gaming is blockbuster cinema. It’s for people that don’t really care about the artistic medium. It’s mass entertainment at the industrial level.
by palmotea | 2025-09-30 05:49:29+00:00
> There is no degree that guarantees success, no job that lasts forever, and no guru with the secret to happiness. You've just got to be clever and adaptable and stay on your toes.

Only because we've allowed society to make it so, to treat people as things to be used and consumed for money's benefit.

Society doesn't have to be this way, though the current system has apologists skilled (and not so skilled) at making it seem so.
by omkar8888 | 2025-09-30 05:49:45+00:00
Thinking about vibe coding a Behaviour Change App as opposed to a simple habit tracking app. I have personally used the habit tracking apps, and they are absolutely useless. My app will help the users learn how to actually change their behaviour, teaching them micro skills like value alignment, self-compassion, etc. These micro skills will help them in all aspects of their life and mainly to change bad habits.
by deanCommie | 2025-09-30 05:49:58+00:00
You said it. Such mixed feelings.

The reality is there was a sweet spot - when the industry got less toxic and started attracting visible minorities, and you started getting some diversity of thought AND passion.

Then the money got too good and it started attracting the personalities that 10 years earlier would've become finance bros and caused the 2008 crash. And they fucked it all up.
by tsv_ | 2025-09-30 05:51:05+00:00
I'm working on Vedro, a Python testing framework as a pytest alternative without the magic and with clear output.

The main idea is that tests should just be Python: plain `assert` statements instead of custom matchers, no fixture magic, and when tests fail you get readable diffs that actually show what went wrong. Tests can be simple functions or structured with steps that self-document in the output.

https://vedro.io

I would be very happy to receive any feedback!
by chaosharmonic | 2025-09-30 05:51:30+00:00
Tech side project: crawlers that doomscroll job boards for me, and a Tinder clone that swipes through them. I recently broke out the actual automation logic into something more recyclable for scaling out to new targets (and broke out the HTML parsing for possible use outside my browser automation flow). Still figuring out how I want to handle datasources as both an API and a plugin architecture, but the goal is to eventually be able to configure searches through the API, to manually trigger and/or setup scheduled runs.

github: [username]/escape-rope, /escape-rope-ui | UI demo: escape-rope.bhmt.dev

Personal side project: extensive cleanup of my family's place. I'm just now approaching a decent first pass at the outside, and have to tear apart a basement next. It's taken most of this year. It's not the specific reason I've farmed collecting search results off to a bot

For-fun thing: CTF puzzles. I'm not very good at them, but they're useful for other things. I fell down the scraping rabbit hole this way, and I'm currently using a series of them to finally get some exposure to Python. I also have a writeup half-written about this exact process
by bryanhogan | 2025-09-30 05:51:48+00:00
2. is already possible with Claude Code + context files + the Playwright MCP, or?

7. also seems possible with any markdown editor, e.g. Obsidian, plus an AI running through the local files such as Claude Code.

13. I would love this as well! We will probably see this soon, especially on more open platforms such as BlueSky, as its seems to be a better fit for customizable browser extensions and customizable feed experiences.

14. How is this different from what AI can already do? Especially with iterative sub-agents that that can store context in files it's quite capable already. But of course, quality can always be better, but is that the only thing?

Also a few ideas seem to be close to what I'm building ( https://dailyselftrack.com/ ). Idea is to have a customizable tool so you can track what you want, and then you can feed that data into AIs if you choose to do so to get feedback.
by rkomorn | 2025-09-30 05:53:18+00:00
Not OP but I think there are a lot of people (maybe mostly vegans) who would be interested. I have no thought on whether it would be financially viable.

I'd be interested just because I'd rather use non-animal alternatives if available.

I hope lab-made milk becomes a viable thing even though I'm not vegan or vegetarian. Lab-made eggs would be good too.
by yongyongyong | 2025-09-30 05:55:24+00:00
This Chrome extension does 13. Semantic filters for Twitter/X/YouTube. I want to be able to write open-ended filters like “hide any tweet that will likely make me angry” and never have my feed show me rage-bait again. By shaping our feeds we shape ourselves.

https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/takeback-content-fi...

Uses localLLM to hide posts based on your prompt. "Block rage bait" is one excellent use. The quality, however, depends on the model you are using, and in turn depends what GPU you have
by mrbald | 2025-09-30 05:55:30+00:00
Reading makes your writing better, listening makes your accent smoother. Nothing wrong with using ChatGPT for automating what you understand is a pain, just don’t automate what you do not understand yet, same as with any outsourcing. Not using it on a weekday would make me overspend time on searching in an inefficient way arguably making me dumber, because AI works better when you give a precise question and explain the precise context — that helps with human interaction in chats as well.
by yongyongyong | 2025-09-30 05:56:14+00:00
This chrome extension does: 13. Semantic filters for Twitter/X/YouTube. I want to be able to write open-ended filters like “hide any tweet that will likely make me angry” and never have my feed show me rage-bait again. By shaping our feeds we shape ourselves.

https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/takeback-content-fi...

It hides content on X/ Reddit (more sites coming soon) based on your instructions. Speed and quality depends on the model you are using however, since it currently only supports local LLMs
by zippyman55 | 2025-09-30 05:57:07+00:00
25 yrs after my college education I was able to attend graduate classes thru a work program. I was taking the graduate physics classes for fun, as I could get out of work for a few hrs a week. Lucky for me, I had used the skills during much of my previous work time and had zero trouble keeping up, even with the long break. So, the muscle memory was solid, at least for the classes that aligned to what areas I previously worked. But, using something like chatGPT, I can spit out something pretty good, but don’t remember much and fear I lack a platform to advance an effort further as I soon lack the ability to correct the eventual errors that chatGPT returns and I have little muscle memory to build on.
by sophiabits | 2025-09-30 05:57:13+00:00
Comments are often the best tool for explaining why a bit of code is formulated how it is, or explaining why a more obvious alternate implementation is a dead end.

An example of this: assume you live in a world where the formula for the circumference of a circle has not been derived. You end up deriving the formula yourself and write a function which returns 2piradius. This is as simple as it gets, not hacky at all, and you would /definitely/ want to include a comment explaining how you arrived at your weird and arbitrary-looking "3.1415" constant.
by benrutter | 2025-09-30 05:57:46+00:00
I think even that still misses that it can only offer a pastiche.

As an example, I put the first paragraph of Hemingway's "A clean, Well Lightened Place" into Le Chat and asked it for notes to make it sound like Hemingway. It gave me plenty!

For example:

Tweak: The second sentence is a bit long. Consider breaking it up for more impact:

“In the day the street was dusty. At night, the dew settled the dust.” -> “The old man liked to sit late. He was deaf, and at night it was quiet. He felt the difference.”
by neilv | 2025-09-30 05:57:56+00:00
> "[...] it’ll take juniors too long to ramp up"

I think unsaid about a version of that belief is "... and, after expensive ramp-up including mentoring, they'll probably job-hop for a better salary, or better company, before the company sees payoff."

It's not just latency on payoff, but risk of any payoff at all.

> “...interns bring [...]"

"...a relatively low-cost way to evaluate a candidate hire, and then, if they show promise, you have their attention to make them an offer for a real job."

Given how hard tech companies find vetting candidates (e.g., many still cling to Leetcode and what school someone went to), and the demands of post-ZIRP on effectiveness, interns (and expecting to spend more on mentoring than the interns produce in value) are one solution for finding good future junior hires.
by whacked_new | 2025-09-30 05:58:04+00:00
Oh right, I do this too!

At the same time it often feels like a veneer of control, like you can control exactly where to place the door, but what's in the messy room (like emacs profiles if you do that) might be hidden behind the very nice and solid door.

It's like in python projects I lock python3 and uv, and beyond that it's wild west. Still beats everything else, still feels a bit incomplete, and still feels somewhat unresolvable.
by hyperadvanced | 2025-09-30 05:58:09+00:00
Some of these yes, some of these no. In general being a clicker is a completely fine way to weed people out. If you don’t code like time is on the line without being asked to, I will not take the risk of needing to ask you.

I’m less passionate about windows and have met some absolute wizards who use it, but in general it’s a negative indicator.
by jalk | 2025-09-30 05:58:21+00:00
I was thinking about basic tool use. I expect a junior engineer candidate to wield a computer way better than my mom. They are applying for a junior engineer position not and apprenticeship starting with close to zero training. I have no problem with candidates who stumble and make awkward choices during the interview, as juniors by definition lack experience and the interview process is a stressed situation.
by pbhjpbhj | 2025-09-30 05:58:28+00:00
As do your ISP and DNS provider (at the domain level).

As do ad networks, in part (although the browser fingerprint might not be correlated with your actual identity).

As do Five Eyes, depending where you live (again, domain level, plus some metadata; page size can peak through https to some extent).

As do CloudFlare in part.

Or, potentially as does your VPN provider ... or anyone capable of correlating traffic across TOR (NSA?).
Research Tooling Experiences
by hodltothestars | 2025-09-30 05:58:57+00:00
I’ve been using wandb quite a bit and looked into neptune ai and some open source alternatives, but I’ve always felt that collaboration and version control (e.g. associating code snapshots with training runs etc) is clunky. I was also thinking it’d be nice to have some kind of monitoring on my longer runs to alert me on certain criteria, or even be able to stop or restart a run with hyperparam modifications remotely (take potentially agentic actions), like from my phone.

I was curious what all of your experiences have been with these (and similar) AI developer platforms / observability layers and what you’ve found lacking or gripes you have with the existing solutions (if anything). I've found the research process extremely painful and was wondering if this was just me.
by khafra | 2025-09-30 05:59:49+00:00
If you tell DeepSeek you're going to jump off a cliff, DeepSeek will tell you to go for it*; but I don't think it's going to beat Anthropic or OpenAI.

* https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/iGF7YcnQkEbwvYLPA/ai-induced...
by hinkley | 2025-09-30 06:00:05+00:00
Looking at bibliographies, it seems like a lot of the research for decellularization was 2011, 2013, and a handful after. So they were still working on getting a clean substrate while working on how to fill it back in.

It’s a big problem, but still seems like they’re swinging for the fences when they could save people in the short term while working on organs.
by Joel_Mckay | 2025-09-30 06:00:42+00:00
It takes 1 to 3 years to train new generic skilled grads on average.

A company initially typically loses $35k to $140k in resources to train a Junior to be minimally useful. Thus, most ponder if a hire is going to have a career long enough on a team to offset that liability.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect

In general, entry level gigs have a narrow scope of skills for many reasons, as managers know people plan to jump ship sooner or later. Staffing agencies have a feed queue for these roles in a large firm, and simply maintain the churn.

Good luck, =3
by yaur | 2025-09-30 06:01:20+00:00
The thing is its much harder to higher a good junior dev. With a senior dev i can ask about the [hardest/most interesting/thing you would like to talk about] bug and talk through how they solved it to understand how their brain works.

With a Jr you basically need to spend an hour pair programming to sus out the great ones and no one has yet put in the time to filter out the bottom X0%.