MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by grues-dinner | 2025-09-03 15:09:29+00:00
> Solar panels have no problem with being short circuited; the amount of heat they produce in that state is the same as any other black object in sunlight.

Internet akchually: a small amount of the heat will be dropped in the wiring that forms the short circuit rather than in the internal resistance. So the panel will be slightly cooler than you'd expect for an object of that colour even in short circuit. They're the same temperature in open circuit, though. When operating normally, they can be quite a lot cooler and in fact you can detect non-functional panels by looking for hot ones with thermal cameras.
by observationist | 2025-09-03 15:09:30+00:00
The point isn't to make it easy to register warranty for a product. The point isn't to make it easy to talk with customer service. The point isn't to make it easy to communicate with the company. The point isn't to make it easy to obtain service or replacement parts.

The point is to "technically", and therefore legally, offer those things and minimize the cost of offering those things.

All of these things are working precisely as intended. The company is not optimizing for customer experience or product quality, they're optimizing for profit.
by AtlasBarfed | 2025-09-03 15:09:42+00:00
I'm hoping we get some good competition for AWS that comes out of this. This is probably the largest data center build out push in a long time.

It would behoove a lot of these companies. There again say $13 billion series f to make an AWS competition stack.

I mean you have all the infrastructure to magically write the code for you right?
by r3trohack3r | 2025-09-03 15:09:57+00:00
In the people around me I’ve observed:

AI solves the 2-sigma problem when used correctly.

AI is extremely neurodegenerative when used incorrectly.

The people using it as a research assistant to discover quality sources they can dive into, and as a tutor while working through those resources, are getting smarter.

The people using it as an “oracle made from magic talking sand” are getting dumber.

To be fair, the same thing is true of the web in general, but not to the extreme I’ve been seeing with AI.

I’m predicting the bell curve of IQ is going to flatten quite a bit over the next decade, as people shift two sigma in both directions.
by kawfey | 2025-09-03 15:10:01+00:00
The "your brain on ChatGPT" is giving the same feel as DARE's "your brain on drugs" campagign, and we now see how that went. It immediately loses any credibility for me.

It wasn't immediately clear what they actually had the subjects do. It seems like they wrote an essay, which...duh? I would bet brain activity would be similar -- if not identical -- as an LLM user if the subjects were asked to have the other cohorts to write their essay.
by aw1621107 | 2025-09-03 15:10:30+00:00
> Great, here you go.

As I pointed out, your drop_new is broken for copyable types. For example, consider std::array:

auto w = std::array<int, 3>{0, 1, 2}; drop_new(std::move(w)); std::cerr << w[0] << ", " << w[1] << ", " << w[2] << '\n';

This prints "0, 1, 2". Rust's drop() doesn't suffer from this flaw.

> And yes, the compiler will not prevent you from using this value.

Yes, that is the point!

This bit:

std::vector<int> vec {1, 2, 3}; drop_new(std::move(vec)); std::cerr << vec.size() << " <- ?\n";

Simply does not compile in Rust [0]:

let vec = vec![1, 2, 3]; drop(vec); println!("{0} <- ?", vec.len()); // error[E0382]: borrow of moved value: `vec`

[0]: https://rust.godbolt.org/z/GjcMYnEzq

> But clang static analyzer will happily detect it.

One problem is that you're not guaranteed to catch it, similarly to why static analyzers aren't guaranteed to catch use-after-frees.
by sarchertech | 2025-09-03 15:10:40+00:00
Sure you need to read them yourself to know what conclusions to draw.

In my specific case I felt like I was maybe 30% faster on greenfield projects with AI (and maybe 10% on brownfield). Then I read the study showing a 40 percentage point overestimate on average.

I started tracking things and it’s pretty clear I’m not actually saving anywhere near 30%, and I’d estimate that long term I might be in the negative productivity realm.
by NitpickLawyer | 2025-09-03 15:10:46+00:00
I tried listening to audiobooks generated with tts. It takes me out of it most of the time, and I lose focus. That podcast thing from google was the first time I felt like I could listen to an entire thing without feeling the uncanny valley thing. And I knew it was genAI. So I'm looking for that, but for my content. Grab a bunch of articles (long form, deeply researched) and "podcast" them but with natural voices, sans hype. Or books. Have them ready when I'm out and about.
by PaulHoule | 2025-09-03 15:10:53+00:00
I see generative remove as a killer app. All the time I have to remove dust spots or power lines or identifying information, for instance

https://mastodon.social/@UP8/115118299392929641

in that case it was pretty easy as the tag was a uniform shade of pink and I could just put a rectangle over the phone number but some cases are harder and the generative "fill" tools don't work that well.
by CamperBob2 | 2025-09-03 15:10:54+00:00
If languages stop being created, it will be because there won't be a need for them. That's not necessarily a bad thing.

Think of programming languages as you currently think of CPU ISAs. We only need so many of those. And at this point, machine-instruction architecture has diverged so far from traditional ISAs that it no longer gets called that. Instead of x86 and ARM and RISC-V we talk about PTX and SASS and RDNA. Or rather, hardly anyone talks about them, because the interesting stuff happens at a higher level of abstraction.
by Citizen8396 | 2025-09-03 15:10:54+00:00
sleep studies don't really have significant rates of false positives. it's not unreasonable to want to treat OSA due to it causing executive dysfunction as a side effect.

yeah, the DME market is weird which is why I just bought my equipment outright. but the point of repeating a study is to ensure you're being treated. if the government is paying for it, they aren't going to do an extremely expensive test for fun.

based on your description it sounds like you may have both ADHD and OSA, so I'm glad you're doing better

oral appliances aren't really a first line treatment and can cause issues with one's bite and TMJ. in the US, sleep board certified dentists can make a custom appliance that reduces these risks. $300 sounds like a budget for a toy by comparison...

more engineering than science? isn't engineering a science?

doctors aren't perfect but the alternatives are rarely better. if this person isn't a medical professional, they can't "diagnose" anyone
by null-a | 2025-09-03 15:10:56+00:00
SEEKING WORK | UK | REMOTE

I'm a programmer with more than 10 years experience, primarily working remotely on a freelance or contract basis. My recent work has fallen into two main areas:

Scientific / numeric computing: e.g. I've contributed to research projects on quantum error correction and probabilistic programming languages. Tech: Python, NumPy, JAX, PyTorch, Matplotlib, JavaScript.

Backend web dev: e.g. I worked at a tiny start-up where I built a web app for automatic meeting scheduling. Tech: Python, Flask, SQLAlchemy, PostgreSQL, Celery, OAuth, Google Calendar APIs, AWS.

Please feel free to get in touch if you have a project (of any kind!) you think I might be able to help with, I'd be happy to chat.

More info and contact details on my website: https://paulhorsfall.co.uk
by mdaniel | 2025-09-03 15:11:30+00:00
GitHub isn't picking up your license declaration because the actual file is 404 https://github.com/refetch-io/refetch/blob/main/LICENSE (and it doesn't currently scan readme text for the declaration)

I'd guess you'd set proper expectations with your target audience if you included "AI-powered content analysis" in your comment (or resubmit with an updated title)

It would also be my personal opinion not to put auto-updating junk in the readme of your project, but it's your project
by asats | 2025-09-03 15:11:39+00:00
Sure, if we are talking about the top end we can check the O-visas, the "extraordinary ability in the sciences, arts, education, business, or athletics" ones, both the applications and the issuance of those went up even more than the DV applications:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O_visa#Number_of_visas_issued_...
by johnmaguire | 2025-09-03 15:11:42+00:00
> I used to dread speaking in public but have come to enjoy it, and all of the above tips have made it easier over time.

I'm just going to drop a quick tip that might be helpful to people with severe anxiety around public speaking: beta blockers (specifically propranolol.) Even when prepared and knowledgeable, and in a small group setting, I often found my leg shaking uncontrollably, and my throat locking up on me, leading to stammering, etc. Beta blockers effectively managed these involuntary symptoms, which also improved my confidence, and vastly improved my presentations, without sedating effects.
by nathan_douglas | 2025-09-03 15:12:08+00:00
Super cool. I really admire the diligence it takes to commit to a reverse-engineering project on obscure hardware like this, and see it through. It's tough enough just reverse-engineering software, but hardware with the constant threat of failing capacitors, a bad connection nuking a chip, etc, even aside from the technical challenges of just figuring out how to read information... bravo.
by everforward | 2025-09-03 15:12:34+00:00
> In any case, for me... >= 65% CPU load for >= 30m/day means it's at 100% effective utilization, and needs expansion relatively soon.

I think this depends on workload still because IO heavy apps hyperthread well and can push up to 100%. I think most of the apps I've worked on end up being IO bound because "waiting on SQL results" or the more generic "waiting on downstream results" is 90% of their runtime. They might spend more time reading those responses off the wire than they do actually processing anything.

There are definitely things that isn't true of though, and your metrics read about right to me.
by imgabe | 2025-09-03 15:12:37+00:00
The sticker will get lost, peel off, get scratched until it's unreadable and then the user has no way to get that information. Maybe if they are really on top of things they will take a picture of the sticker when they first get the machine and save it somewhere that they will remember 5 years later when they need it, but most people will not do that. And if you aren't the first owner of the machine, well then, you're just sol.
by jazzypants | 2025-09-03 15:12:49+00:00
It should not be the default. This is almost certainly Lit's biggest flaw.

I am currently working on a web components framework, and I scrapped everything halfway through after I realized that you very rarely want that much encapsulation. Now, you can turn it on if you really need it, and I even made a way where you can pass references to DOM elements and stylesheets and such into each component so you can pierce the shadow veil easily. I have one demo to show it off, but I'm really having trouble imagining when someone would actually want to use it. The only time I can imagine it being useful would be building component libraries inside of large organizations.

I'm not ready to show off my framework yet, but I'm very certain that this leads to a better DX.
by theptip | 2025-09-03 15:13:50+00:00
> and it never will be

The only thing I’m certain of is that you’re highly overconfident.

I’m sure plenty of assembly gurus said the same of the first compilers.

> because it's not an abstraction

This just seems like a category error. A human is not an abstraction, yet they write code and produce value.

An IDE is a tool not an abstraction, yet they make humans more productive.

When I talk about moving up the levels of abstraction I mean: taking on more abstract/less-concrete tasks.

Instead of “please wire up login for our new prototype” it might be “please make the prototype fully production-ready, figure out what is needed” or even “please ship a new product to meet customer X’s need”.
by metalman | 2025-09-03 15:14:31+00:00
there is nothing to fear from China, over here, cause there over there, and we have lots of bombs and guns and stuff, as to the Uyghurs and the Thibetans, and the Mongols, and a whole bunch of tribes and ethinic/language groups over there, in China, they definitly are faceing a rough time, but no where near as rough as the Palestinians in GAZA, who are facing the heaviest and most high tech assult in human history bar none, this is relevant to western credibility in critisising China and it's actions, as it is constantly in the feed here.
by retr0reg | 2025-09-03 15:14:38+00:00
This high dimensional vector space does allows them to theoretically embed a interpretable "deeper understanding", reference https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wjZofJX0v4M&t=624s. It's the pre-train process that determines whether or not they demonstrate this "deeper understanding".

This "deeper understanding" refers to the understanding to the word, can be contextual, pragmatic, or semantic.
by daemin | 2025-09-03 15:14:44+00:00
I would agree with the statement that you don't need to know or write in assembly to build programs, but what you end up with is usually slow and inefficient.

Having curiosity to examine the platform that your software is running on and taking a look into what the compilers generate is a skill worth having. Even if you never write raw assembly yourself, being able to see what the compiler generated and how data is laid out does matter. This then helps you make better decisions about what patterns of code to use in your higher level language.
by gandalfgeek | 2025-09-03 15:15:21+00:00
The coverage of this has been so bad that the authors have had to put up an FAQ[1] on their website, where the first question is the following:

Is it safe to say that LLMs are, in essence, making us "dumber"? No! Please do not use the words like “stupid”, “dumb”, “brain rot”, "harm", "damage", "brain damage", "passivity", "trimming" , "collapse" and so on. It does a huge disservice to this work, as we did not use this vocabulary in the paper, especially if you are a journalist reporting on it.

[1]: https://www.media.mit.edu/projects/your-brain-on-chatgpt/ove...
by Jensson | 2025-09-03 15:15:34+00:00
> Just beware the “real programmers hand-write assembly” fallacy

All previous programming abstractions kept correctness, a python program produce no less reliable results than a C program running the same algorithm, it just took more time.

LLM doesn't keep correctness, I can write a correct prompt and get incorrect results. Then you are no longer programming, you are a manager over a senior programmer suffering from extreme dementia so they forget what they were doing a few minutes ago and you try to convince him to write what you want before he forgets about that as well and restart the argument.
by aw1621107 | 2025-09-03 15:15:42+00:00
> I'm not sure how well this would work for non-instantiated templates

I don't know either, but I was thinking about module systems in general rather than C++'s module system specifically, since the original comment I was responding to seemed to be speaking in generalities as well for that particular topic.

> Any header precompilation dependency chain is a dependency chain and may end up worse than fully parallel TU compilation if the time to parse said headers is faster than the time to compile them in a serial way.

Right, but it comes down to whether it's literally impossible to structure super large projects in a practical manner. Sure, maybe you eat some slowdown, maybe you get some speedup, but I'm a bit skeptical that modules must result in slowdowns of such a magnitude that super large projects are infeasible.
by Gareth321 | 2025-09-03 15:16:07+00:00
This is why I am not so concerned. I am old enough to remember when teachers thought that outsourcing calculations to calculators would atrophy my brain. They said the same about computers. Then the internet and Wikipedia. On one hand, yes, I am slower at calculating things by hand. On the other, it doesn't matter anymore. I am much faster at getting things accomplished. AI might just be the latest way in which humans are exploring transhumanism. Perhaps we are irreversible altering our brains. I'm just not convinced that's a terrible thing.
by sudosteph | 2025-09-03 15:16:22+00:00
I just process text information better. Videos are kind of overstimulating and often have unrelated content, and I hate having to rewind back to a part I need while I'm in the middle of something. With LLMs I can get a broad overview of what I'm doing, tell it what materials I already have on hand and get specific ideas for how to practice. Soldering is probably one of the harder ones to learn by text, but the description of the techniques to use were actually really understandable (use flux, be sure the tip is tinned, touch the pad with the tip to warm it up a little, touch again with the iron on one side of the pad and insert the solder in on the other side and it gets drawn in, pull away (timing was trial and error). And then I'd upload a picture of what I did for review and it would point out the ones that had issues and what likely went wrong to cause it (ex: solder sticking to the top of the iron and not the pad), and I would keep practicing and test that it worked and looked like what was described. It may not be the ideal technique or outcome, but it unblocked me relatively quick so I could continue my project.

Being able to ask it stupid questions and edge cases is also something I like with LLMs, like I would propose a design for something (ex: a usb battery pack w/ lifepo4 batts that could charge my phone and be charged by solar at the same time), it would say what it didn't like about my design, counter with its own, then I would try to change aspects of their design to see "what would happen if .." and it would explain why it chose a particular component or design choice and what my change would do and the trade-offs, risks, etc other paths to building it with that, etc. Those types of interactions are probably the best for me actually understanding things, helps me understand limitations and test my assumptions interactively.
by graemep | 2025-09-03 15:16:46+00:00
Lots of bad things in the west, certainly, but there is a huge difference between a suspended sentence and getting murdered: https://www.reuters.com/article/economy/sri-lanka-failing-to...

Picking on not the worst country in the world, but one I know (and was living in at the time this was at its worst). Things have changed there since, thankfully.
by imiric | 2025-09-03 15:16:55+00:00
> 7. To generate or disseminate verifiably false information and/or content with the purpose of harming others or influencing elections;

> 8. To generate or facilitate false online engagement, including fake reviews and other means of fake online engagement;

"Do as I say, not as I do."

> 15. In a manner that violates or disrespects the social ethics and moral standards of other countries or regions;

This, and other clauses, effectively prohibit the use of this system within any jurisdiction.

What a ridiculous policy.
by GeekyBear | 2025-09-03 15:17:03+00:00
> Because of Apple's behavior, it's seen as totally acceptable for corporations to dictate what I do with my own stuff

Microsoft's Xbox walled garden predates the iPhone by over half a decade.

Apple didn't invent walled gardens, and consumers are not forced to buy into walled gardens.

Microsoft attempted to create Windows Phone and Windows RT on the original Surface tablet as walled garden platforms and consumers rejected both.
by noboostforyou | 2025-09-03 15:17:28+00:00
Just because you never heard it doesn't mean it didn't happen. For example, Irish people were heavily discriminated against in the US and were considered at one point to not be "white"

https://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2008/10/06/negative-st...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Irish_sentiment
by planetmcd | 2025-09-03 15:17:30+00:00
This article was probably written by AI, because anyone with half a brain could not read the study and come to the same conclusions.

Basically, participants spent less than half an hour, 4 times, over 4 months, writing some bullcrap SAT type essay. Some participants used AI.

So to accept the premise of the article, using an AI tool once a month for 20 minutes caused noticeable brain rot. It is silly on its face.

What the study actually showed, people don't have an investment or strong memory to output they didn't produce. Again, this is a BS essay written (mostly by undergrads) in 20 minutes, so not likely to be deep in any capacity. So to extrapolate, if you have a task that requires you to understand the output, you are less likely to have a grasp of it if you didn't help produce the output. This would also be true of work some other person did.
by ToucanLoucan | 2025-09-03 15:17:33+00:00
> It's still early stages, that is why.

I have been hearing (reading?) this for a solid two years now, and LLMs were not invented two years ago: they are ostensibly the same tech as they were back in 2017, with larger training pools and some optimizations along the way. How many more hundreds of billions of dollars is reasonable to throw at a technology that has never once exceeded the lofty heights of "fine"?

At this point this genuinely feels like silicon valley's fever dream. Just lighting dumptrucks full of money on fire in the hope that it does something better than it did the previous like 7 or 8 times you did it.

And normally I wouldn't give a shit, money is made up and even then it ain't MY money, burn it on whatever you want. But we're also offsetting any gains towards green energy standing up these stupid datacenters everywhere to power this shit, not to mention the water requirements.
by taeric | 2025-09-03 15:17:40+00:00
I think a good argument can be made that the standards somewhat move a bit too slowly to add things? (Or, conversely, can be too eager to add some features.) Probably a bit of a struggle between de jure and de facto.

It can be frustrating, as many of the more important standards out there were de facto. We try and pass them off as otherwise, but "div/span/XmlHttpRequest" and plenty of others were in practice before they were part of the standard.

None of which is to excuse players from not at least accurately advertising what standard they support. There should be consumer protections involved on that. And I think a decent argument can be made that stricter compliance can be expected from the big players.
by safety1st | 2025-09-03 15:17:40+00:00
> Google is going to appeal, because it wants to have the original monopolization finding overturned. But AAG Gail Slater and Colorado State AG Phil Weiser both are making mild noises about a possible cross-appeal of the weak remedy, saying publicly they wonder whether Mehta’s solution “goes far enough.” Since there are many errors of law in Mehta’s decision, such a cross-appeal might work.

For making such a bizarre and error-riddled decision (finding Google guilty of illegal monopoly, then refusing to apply effective remedies because they might compromise Google's monopoly), Amit Mehta should be investigated for conflicts of interest, and perhaps disbarred.
by nookeshkarri7 | 2025-09-03 15:19:13+00:00
I built QRCard – it's a simple tool that lets you create a single, smart profile page (your "QRCard") that you can update anytime. You get a clean link and a QR code to share. No more throwing away a box of 500 cards because you got a new phone number.

It's completely free to use right now, and I'm really looking for some honest feedback from the first batch of users.

Is the sign-up process smooth?

Do you find it genuinely useful?

What features are missing that would make you actually use it?

Any bugs or weird layout issues on your device?