MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by nomel | 2025-10-15 00:26:03+00:00
That's not really how LLM work though. It's fundamentally next word prediction, based on statistics of the context. Reordering ideas (which can drastically change the outcome) can result in a statistically rare context. The silly failures of simple riddles [1], and the like, demonstrate this well.

The riddle issue is putting trivial ideas together, but combined them in a statistically rare way, giving low quality output that tends towards the statistically significant answer, even if it's incorrect. The same things happens with coding, when combining well known things together in uncommon ways.

Worse (as with the riddle problem), nearby concepts that have strong statistics are going to act like attractors, with the LLM always trending towards those, removing and rewriting bits of code to better accommodate those, even if they're the opposite of what you want. I have this happen all the time in my somewhat obscure work. It'll rewrite key maths in my code to be the statistically significant textbook example, which is not what I need. I'll fix it manually or point it out, and a few changes later, it'll rewrite it again. A reasonable way around this is to "pin" the concept with a very strongly worded negative comment, like "DO NOT USE DOT PRODUCT. THIS IS NOT VECTOR PROJECTION. DO NOT modify the next line of code.".

[1] Claude 4.1 Opus:

> Prompt: "A son and his mother are in a car accident. They’re both rushed to the hospital. The doctor is about to operate on the son. But, before he does, he looks down and says "This is my son! I can’t operate on this boy!". How can this be?"

> Response: "The doctor is the boy's father.

This is a classic riddle that plays on assumptions people might make about gender and professions. The boy has two parents - his mother (who was in the car with him) and his father (the doctor at the hospital). The riddle works because some people automatically assume the doctor must be male, forgetting that the boy's father could be the doctor since his mother was already mentioned as being in the accident."

Another, with output that doesn't match the goal, statistically attracted to the riddle:

> Prompt: "A man, a sheep, and a wolf are on one side of the river, with a boat that can only hold two. How can the man safely get the boat to the other side of the river, without the sheep being eaten?"
by marxism | 2025-10-15 00:26:34+00:00
I'm trying to understand where our viewpoints differ, because I suspect we have fundamentally different mental models about where programming difficulty actually lives.

It sounds like you believe the hard part is decomposing problems - breaking them into subproblems, managing the "big picture," keeping the architecture in your head. That this is where experience and skill matter.

My mental model is the opposite: I see problem decomposition as the easy part - that's just reasoning about structure. You just keep peeling the onion until you hit algorithmically irreducible units. The hard part was always at the leaf nodes of that tree.

Why I think decomposition is straightforward:

People switch jobs and industries constantly. You move from one company to another, one domain to another, and you're productive quickly. How is that possible if decomposition requires deep domain expertise?

I think it's because decomposition is just observing how things fit together in reality. The structure reveals itself when you look at the problem.

Where I think the actual skill lived:

The leaf nodes. Not chipping away until you are left with "this is a min-cut problem" - anyone off the street can do that. The hard part was:

- Searching for the right algorithm/approach for your specific constraints

- Translating that solution into your project's specific variables, coordinate system, and bookkeeping

Those two things - search and translation - are precisely what AI excels at.

What I think AI changed:

I could walk into any building on Stanford campus right now, tap a random person (no CS required!) on the shoulder, and they could solve those leaf problems using AI tools. It no longer requires years of experience and learned skills.

I think this explains our different views: If you believe the skill is in decomposition (reasoning about structure), then AI hasn't changed much. But if the skill was always in search and translation at the leaf nodes (my view), then AI has eliminated the core barrier that required job-specific expertise.

Does this capture where we disagree? Am I understanding your position correctly?
by sailingparrot | 2025-10-15 00:26:42+00:00
> This voice standardization model is an in-house accent-preserving voice conversion model.

Not sure this model works really well. As a french/spanish native speaker, I can immediately recognize an actual French or Spanish person speaking in english, but the examples here are completly foreign to me. If I had to guess where the "french" accent was from I would have guessed something like Nigeria. For example spanish have a very distinct way of pronouncing "r" in english that is just not present here. I would have been unable to correctly guess French or Spanish for the ~10 examples present in each language (mayyybe 1 for French).
by 3eb7988a1663 | 2025-10-15 00:27:12+00:00
It should be noted that project has no affiliation with the SQLite project. They just use the name for promotional/aspirational purposes. Which feels incredibly icky.

Also, this is a VC backed project. Everyone has to eat, but I suspect that Turso will not go out of its way to offer a Public Domain offering or 50 year support in the way that SQLite has.
by chasd00 | 2025-10-15 00:27:54+00:00
i'm not an llm superfan but i do find them useful for coming up with one-off scripts to process datafiles or other small tasks that would have taken me a couple hours to get right. The llm produces something 85% of the way there including command line argument processing and all that stuff i hate to type out. I just fix the broken bits and make some adjustments and i have what i need in about 20 min. For that kind of task they are very useful IMO.
by bravura | 2025-10-15 00:28:13+00:00
I'm curious about tptacek's comment (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28279426). 'the "security" paragraphs in this page do the rest of the argument a disservice. The fact is, C is a demonstrable security liability for sqlite.'

The current doc no longer has any paragraphs about security, or even the word security once.

The 2021 edition of the doc contained this text which no longer appears: 'Safe languages are often touted for helping to prevent security vulnerabilities. True enough, but SQLite is not a particularly security-sensitive library. If an application is running untrusted and unverified SQL, then it already has much bigger security issues (SQL injection) that no "safe" language will fix.

It is true that applications sometimes import complete binary SQLite database files from untrusted sources, and such imports could present a possible attack vector. However, those code paths in SQLite are limited and are extremely well tested. And pre-validation routines are available to applications that want to read untrusted databases that can help detect possible attacks prior to use.'

https://web.archive.org/web/20210825025834/https%3A//www.sql...
by joegibbs | 2025-10-15 00:28:19+00:00
For one, like the article says, there’s the fact that it’s not really news: you could print "BREAKING: 5,000 nonagenarians DEAD from heart disease and cancer" every day since people started living that long. It’s a shock when a young person dies of something unexpected like murder.

Terrorism is even worse because there’s the perception that murder is mostly something that happens to gangsters and drug dealers while terrorism could happen to the average suburbanite minding their own business.

But also terrorism has more potential - say if they got their hands on a dirty bomb or released a viral pathogen - and that’s more terrifying to people as well. It’s the same with nuclear energy: on average coal kills a lot more, but in an absolute worst case scenario nuclear would overtake the total coal death toll.
by clipsy | 2025-10-15 00:29:59+00:00
> But I notice that we are talking not about murder, not about rape and not about theft.

I noticed that you literally began your argument with the claim that legislation is aggression ("Legislation is aggression") and ended it with an invitation to disagree ("Or probably you might argue that legislation is not an agression[sic]?"). So I responded by presenting cases in which I believe legislation is not aggression.
by elmerfud | 2025-10-15 00:30:23+00:00
But table saws are a replacement for manual saws. Table saws weren't invented first. Table saws fulfilled a niche use case for sawing. So by that saw stop is a replacement for a manual saw.

If you've ever used a hammer, a tool that has been around for tens of thousands of years, you will know by it's very nature of its operation it is a danger to thumbs. Trying to think that you can do "on an iPhone" and start with the assumption that a hammer fulfilling the functions and utility that it has and has had for 10,000 years cannot be a danger to thumbs is an erroneous thought and it shows the height of hubris.

Can you have tools that fulfill some of the functions of the hammer that are not dangerous to thumbs? Absolutely and we have those already. Any of the automatic nailers have built-in safety features to prevent accidents. Sometimes people disable those safety features because they do cause problems in legitimate use cases but they are built with those safety features. This would be analogous to saw stop which works in table saws which is a very limited saw.

Just like a table saw cannot fulfill all of the functions of a hand saw. A device that pounds nails or other things that has features to prevent it from accidentally hitting thumbs would not be able to fulfill all of the functions of the hammer.

From what we've seen with saws, this is your example not mine, all of the electric saws that have ever been built have never been able to eliminate the usefulness or utility of the simple handsaw which is dangerous to use. So where is the hubris to say that because you can invent a safer nailing device, which they have, it will somehow supplant and replace the hammer? The evidence says that's not the case.
by CobrastanJorji | 2025-10-15 00:31:08+00:00
Voting isn't necessarily a better system. The majority of people will very frequently give up rights in any given specific case that, in general, they hold dear. We're not rational actors.

And there are a lot of really weird discussions to be had about "consent," too. If we allow unlimited speech, that means that we're all subject to marketing and propaganda, and that's another thing that people are quite vulnerable to. Being convinced to vote via propaganda isn't really a great example of consent. But banning any speech that resembles propaganda is rife with problems.

Anyway, my point is that democracy/voting and free speech isn't necessarily the most free/consented-to form of government. I'm not sure what would take its place, though. I certainly wish I knew.
by rednafi | 2025-10-15 00:31:21+00:00
Awesome to see you chiming in here.

Just to set some context, I remember talking to Glauber and Pekka last year, right around when the Turso folks started toying with the idea of reimplementing SQLite in Rust.

It’s a moonshot, but if anyone can pull it off, it’s these people. If you don’t know their background, checkout ScyllaDB. It never ceases to amaze me how belligerent some HN folks can be - they won’t even take five minutes to do a Google search before calling someone a nobody or “SV tech bro.” Not that I’m saying you should do that to anyone.
by beej71 | 2025-10-15 00:31:29+00:00
I'd love to see this tried. If you want to level up in writing, take those classes. If you reach minimum levels in enough subjects, you get a diploma. And you could make it as granular as you wanted.

You might need more carrots and sticks since the penalty for being held back is lessened.

We already run colleges this way, granular down to an academic quarter.
by coderenegade | 2025-10-15 00:32:43+00:00
This hinges on the assumption that economists are correctly accounting for value, which seems unlikely. For example, what's the value of being able to repair your jets in a conflict, because the supply chain is local, and doesn't start in an enemy's factory? Comparative advantage tells us we should trade for things that our economy doesn't do well, but if your rival makes bullets better than you do, you're probably still going to make your own. But how do you value that? Security is an intangible asset that can quickly become pathological, as we see in other areas (too much is never enough, just think of the children).

Industries don't exist in isolation, so these effects propagate. If you can't make cars, you probably won't make good tanks. When we assess the value of a local car industry, how do we account for the "use it or lose it" nature of retaining knowledge built up by industry? Part of learning and skilling up is actually doing the thing you're learning about. It's no surprise that the country the West has skilled up in the pursuit of greater profits is now it's chief rival.

And of course, all of this is before we ask questions like what metric is used to determine the benefit. Efficiency in particular is rife with competing definitions that fit various niche use cases, and for which the underlying assumptions may not be obvious. E.g. thermodynamic efficiency is often calculated using the lower heating value of a fuel, the reasons for which are good, but typically left unstated. A layman comparing thermodynamic efficiencies where differing methods are used might draw an erroneous conclusion if they don't understand that there can be differences.
by liveranga | 2025-10-15 00:32:56+00:00
Having J on the phone in your pocket is great.

And lots of the "labs" (interactive tutorials) are built in too: 3 dots -> Help -> Labs..

Edit: I should also have mentioned that Termux on android can build ngn-k, goal and a bunch of other open source array languages too.

There's also Rob Pike's Ivy language for Android too.
by lukec11 | 2025-10-15 00:33:09+00:00
I looked through the AppHub APK last year after a friend told me they'd found unknown apps installed on their flagship Samsung, and I was very surprised to find some of the same "direct download" references you did.

I've known for a long time that T-Mobile shipped junk apps upon initial setup, but seeing them loaded OTA after a single click on an ad (even a few pixels off of the "x" button) is very concerning. Even putting aside the moral issues with practices like this, that's a huge security hole in a very large percentage of Android phones.
by skyboots | 2025-10-15 00:33:40+00:00
I work at Amazon, and a friend shared this open letter that employees have written that outlines the consequences of the Amazon's turbocharged AI rollout. It’s well-written and got me thinking about impacts they point out. Basically they’re saying 1) Amazon is abandoning its climate commitments; 2) cozying up to the current administration and building AI for military, surveillance, and deportation contracts while lobbying against regulations; and 3) forcing employees to train AI while almost openly talking about eliminating their jobs.(They have written it more clearly and have quoted sources for these)

Do folks here think that the AI rollouts we’re seeing are at all compatible with climate goals?

I am thinking of signing this anonymously, since it feels like everyone is just blindly steamrolling ahead with the AI craze, and I’m glad to see someone bringing some reason to the discussion and try to get us to pause a bit. Hopefully, this will stir more of a conversation within the tech space.
by ACCount37 | 2025-10-15 00:33:45+00:00
Graphene doesn't have the volume to get a custom flagship grade device made for them. So even if they get a device that ships with Graphene preinstalled? It's going to be a variant of another Android phone.

Which is, generally, not that good for Linux mainlining. Qualcomm SoCs are "meh" when it comes to mainline Linux support - some parts are there, but a lot of them aren't. It has been getting better for the last bit though?
by whackernews | 2025-10-15 00:34:12+00:00
Ripped off? I think it’s more that you are ripping off people from other countries, whilst undermining your own economy and draining your country of meaningful work. It’s nice to pay your neighbour properly for the work they do. How much clothes are you actually buying and why? The clothing industry is a horrible one, riddled with waste and slavery. You been to the factory where they’re making your clothes have you? Wake up man. This shit matters.
by infinitezest | 2025-10-15 00:34:41+00:00
I find LLMs really useful on a daily basis but I keep wondering, what's going to happen when the VC money dries up and the real cost of inference kicks in? Its relatively cheap now but its also being heavily subsidized. The usual answer is to just jam ads into your product and slowly increase the price over time (see: Netflix) but I don't know how that'll work for LLMs.
by cogman10 | 2025-10-15 00:35:51+00:00
It's a bad argument.

Certainly don't get me wrong, SQLite is one of the best and most thoroughly tested libraries out there. But this was an argument to have 4 arguments. That's because 2 of the arguments break down as "Those languages didn't exist when we first wrote SQLite and we aren't going to rewrite the whole library just because a new language came around."

Any language, including C, will emit or not emit instructions that are "invisible" to the author. For example, whenever the C compiler decides it can autovectorize a section of a function it'll be introducing a complicated set of SIMD instructions and new invisible branch tests. That can also happen if the C compiler decides to unroll a loop for whatever reason.

The entire point of compilers and their optimizations is to emit instructions which keep the semantic intent of higher level code. That includes excluding branches, adding new branches, or creating complex lookup tables if the compiler believes it'll make things faster.

Dr Hipp is completely correct in rejecting Rust for SQLite. Sqlite is already written and extremely well tested. Switching over to a new language now would almost certainly introduce new bugs that don't currently exist as it'd inevitably need to be changed to remain "safe".
by NobodyNada | 2025-10-15 00:36:16+00:00
> But (if I understand correctly) these are checks implicitly added by the compiler.

This is a dubious statement. In Rust, the array indexing operator arr[i] is syntactic sugar for calling the function arr.index(i), and the implementation of this function on the standard library's array types is documented to perform a bounds-check assertion and access the element.

So the checks aren't really implicitly added -- you explicitly called a function that performs a bounds check. If you want different behavior, you can call a different, slightly-less-ergonomic indexing function, such as `get` (which returns an Option, making your code responsible for handling the failure case) or `get_unchecked` (which requires an unsafe block and exhibits UB if the index is out of bounds, like C).
by bigstrat2003 | 2025-10-15 00:36:28+00:00
Ultimately, I don't think the most important challenge is in binary firmware blobs, but the software which people depend upon to run their lives. What does it matter if you can run a completely free software stack on your phone, if your bank software (or your required government ID, as is looking depressingly likely) requires you to run a Big Tech approved phone OS? Perhaps the FSF can't do much about that, but that is where I feel they could truly make the biggest difference for freedom for the average user.
by tguvot | 2025-10-15 00:36:34+00:00
"original sins" happened way before i joined the company. so i don't know the exact chronology, but app was started as very simple crud app. new features were added as client base increased. client base became more enterprisy. mobile apps + desktop apps appeared. new features were added to support them.

so something that started as simple node.js + nosql crud app written by not that experienced developers became over span of few years little shop of horror that was failing to scale without all kinds of crazy workarounds
by ricardonunez | 2025-10-15 00:36:51+00:00
I am rewriting https://createaclickablemap.com/

I started changing some thing last year adding micro services with NodeJs

I am using VueJS for the new editor and Laravel for the back-end. Added several features that had plan over the years. I am 98% there and mostly prepping for the migration. Will switch to subscription and add couple of different plans.
by glommer | 2025-10-15 00:37:01+00:00
I understood your criticism. I disagree with it, and I think we are not misrepresenting anything, as we make it very clear that we are not SQLite, we are just a reimplementation that goes beyond it (evolution).

The disagreement about their contribution model of course happened, but the meaning you ascribe to it, perhaps is something you imagined. It boils down to what you understand "criticism" to be.

If I see someone doing something wrong, I will criticize them. That certainly never happened. What happened is that we pointed out pros and cons of an open and closed development model. We believe a piece of technology that plays the role of SQLite would benefit from having an open model. And exactly because they are absolutely not doing nothing wrong with not being open, we created our own thing. Hard to see how that is a "criticism".

I said that a billion times, and here's a billion and one: there's absolutely nothing wrong with a closed model. SQLite is doing nothing wrong. They contributed tremendously to the databases we used every day.

I do think an Open model yields so many benefits that should someone rewrite SQLite with an open model, even starting 20 years later, they would end up ahead.

There is now a very easy way to prove or disprove this particular hypothesis.

Stay tuned!
by rayiner | 2025-10-15 00:37:24+00:00
More specifically, it sounds like an acqui-hire. Legacy media is in the toilet in terms of brand and profitability. You don’t need to reach for some conspiracy theory about “funding ideology” to understand why the owners would want to install Weiss. The ideology argument also makes no sense, because legacy media loves Wall Street and billionaires, as long they pretend to be socially liberal. And Weiss is known for being center-right on cultural issues, not economic ones.

> Also, since when is "built a business" the qualification for editor-in-chief of CBS News?

Building a business is a great qualification for any management position.
by AdieuToLogic | 2025-10-15 00:37:29+00:00
I found this statement particularly relevant:

While it’s possible to demonstrate the safety of an AI for a specific test suite or a known threat, it’s impossible for AI creators to definitively say their AI will never act maliciously or dangerously for any prompt it could be given.

This possibility is compounded exponentially when MCP[0] is used.

0 - https://github.com/modelcontextprotocol
by fuzztester | 2025-10-15 00:37:50+00:00
>I haven't used Perl much, but my impression it is much easier to learn if you already know awk and sed - his original target was people who knew awk and sed well but were running into limitations using the two as separate tools.

Yes. In fact, in the early days, there were tools with names like sed2perl and awk2perl, or similar, IIRC. And those could convert code between their respective source and target languages.

And even easier if you know C and Unix.
by jauntywundrkind | 2025-10-15 00:38:59+00:00
Follow-up to this recent submission. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45553487

6.2GW is huge. What an incredible sad loss.

Meanwhile there is a beautiful article showing in photos China's recent 16.2GW solar install Talatan in the Qinghai Province. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/10/business/china-solar-tibe...