MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by crazygringo | 2025-10-04 19:16:08+00:00
> Why do you need both?

Sure, you don't need unit tests if you don't need unit tests because a program really is that simple. But that's an exception for tiny programs/modules, not the rule.

> eventually you reach a place where more tests, even those recommended as best practice, don't actually deliver any more _real world_ value

I explicitly said unit tests are for algorithmic code that can have logic errors. Obviously, if you've written tests for all those, you don't need any more.

> and even make the code harder and slower to maintain.

But you can trust the code is correct. Obviously this is the tradeoff, and for anything serious it's the right tradeoff.

You seem to be arguing against tests generally except for the most superficial ones. That's a recipe for buggy and often hard-to-understand, underspecified code.
by locopati | 2025-10-04 19:16:18+00:00
i guess you're not part of a group that the current administration has decided is anti-American just because we exist?

this administration is already making proclamations that are not laws (Executive Orders and National Security Directives), which clearly violate 1st Amendment rights to free speech, and yet are being interpreted by states to go after specific groups (may i introduce you to Texas and Florida).

police already exist as an uncontrollable force within most cities who apply the law as they see fit.

do you think a combination of those two things isn't going to result in a tool like this being abused?

if you do think it will be abused and that isn't a red line, that says something about you.

if you don't think it will be abused despite the evidence that police abuse surveillance and the current administration has no respect for due process and that isn't a red line, that also says something about you.

circling back, i hope you never find yourself on the receiving end of the technology you want others to be on the receiving end of.
by zelphirkalt | 2025-10-04 19:17:07+00:00
I think the reason for JS devs having "a weird relationship with 'FP'" is, that JS itself, in its nature, is not a particularly well suited language for FP. It has essential elements, that by their nature are global mutable state. For example timers and their ids.

Also weak typing plays into this. Some operations not immediately raising an error when the wrong type of thing is provided, is a recipe for bad experience when having point free style or semi point free style. If given the choice, at least one thing would be good to have, strong typing or static typing.
by alkonaut | 2025-10-04 19:17:18+00:00
> Can you show me the federal code that includes number of customers?

I never mentioned ”number of customers”. The relevant law surrounding monopolies is the Clayton antitrust act of 1914

https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/15/18

What is and isn’t a monopoly is of course decided on a case by case basis - as it should. There is no law saying that 80% market share is necesssarily a monopoly or that 20% is so low it can’t be blocked.

> Do you think a small mom and pop store in a rural captured market couldn't price fix?

Not sure how it’s relevant but they can of course haves local monopoly - but afaik in the US such local monopolies aren’t subject to regulation.
by leakycap | 2025-10-04 19:17:21+00:00
I wonder if this would be well-known if it was free instead of a nominal cost of $5?

When I put this much work in, charging a tiny/nominal fee feels like a barrier without a clear reason.

Younger users without payment methods and those on a budget will not engage with what you built.

At $5, the income stream has to be miniscule, so why choose a $5 license instead of free with donations?

If you want to make money on this, all the thrilled users you currently have would have likely paid 2x or more the current price, so if making money from it is the reason for the cost, $5 is confusing. But $5 is also confusing as a cost of entry to something that could be widely enjoyed at no extra cost to you, and might bring you something good in return if it was free and not paid.

At $5 a pop I can't imagine you're getting much of anything, including attention or widespread usage.
by ProjectArcturis | 2025-10-04 19:17:45+00:00
>These finance types (family offices, small secret investment funds) eat clueless VCs throwing cash on the fire for lunch… and they’re salivating at what’s ahead. It’s a “Big Short” once in 20-30 years type opportunity.

No - it's very hard to successfully bet against anything in finance, and VCs and non-public investments are particularly hard. When you go long, you simply buy something and hold it until you decide to sell. If you short, you have to worry about borrowing shares, paying short fees, and having unlimited risk.

How would you even begin to bet against OpenAI specifically? The closest proxy I can think of is shorting NVDA.

There's also nobody whose job it is to make big one-time shorts. Like you said, it's a once in 20-30 years opportunity, so no one builds a hedge fund dedicated to sitting around for decades waiting for that opportunity. There will certainly be exceptions, and maybe they'll make a Big Short 2 about the scrappy underdogs who saw the opening and timed it perfectly. But the vast majority of Wall Street desperately wants the party to continue.
by Terr_ | 2025-10-04 19:18:07+00:00
Right, it's the inverse of saying a "random dice roll" isn't happening because there isn't a random human throwing a random selection of polyhedra. Different aspects.

That said, even "random" has so many different interpretations that "random targets" it can still be a misleading shorthand. What happens is something closer to "unpredictably unjust and disproportionate"... but of course nobody wants to keep saying a mouthful like that.
by jason_plasmic | 2025-10-04 19:18:21+00:00
Most design tools like Figma come with some sort of dev handoff tool that produces pixel-perfect HTML/CSS (though you might need some tweaks for responsiveness). Have you tried feeding that to the LLM as a starting point?

I also work on Plasmic (https://plasmic.app) a no-code editor that aims to fix this problem by eliminating the dev handoff, though it does take some organizational buy-in to work.
by overfeed | 2025-10-04 19:18:26+00:00
> But isn't "multiple release versions of an app" just "one application, with multiple different configurations"?

That would be nice (and evergreen), but that's not always the case. It's common to have different versions of the app released simultaneously, with different features and bugfixes shipped.

Think of Microsoft simultaneously supporting Windows 10 and 11, while still releasing patches for XP: they are all individual OSes that share some common code, but can't be detangled at build times[1]

The customer will be reluctant to upgrade major versions due to licensing costs and risk if breakage (your code, or their integrations), but still expect bugfixes (and only bugfixes) on their deployed versions, which you're contracted to provide. Using the evergreen approach.

I'm not convinced using build flags to manage which code is shipped is superior to release branches, I fall on the side of release branches because using bisect is invaluable.

1. I suppose as long as the build system is turing complete, one could hypothetically build Windows XP, 7, 8, 10 and 11 off the same codebase using flags. I would not envy that person.
by watwut | 2025-10-04 19:18:44+00:00
I have seen men say nasty things they absolutely meant and bond by bullying other people. That dynamic is actually very common among men. You literally see it in male only social groups (such as army or prison) where bullying someone is how guys show in group membership.

You also see men say nice things they dont mean ... frequently to a women they then badmount or mock behind their backs.
by Symbiote | 2025-10-04 19:19:05+00:00
> Charitable donations because charities maximize every penny, and electronic contributions eat into that

Charities in Europe very much want an electronic donation, since the cost is far less than handling either cash or cheques. More importantly (I think), it also gives them much more opportunity to get a recurring donation.

Example UK prices (since cheques still exist there)

- Depositing cash, 70p per £100 deposited.

- Depositing cheque, 60p per cheque.

- Receiving one-off electronic payment, 10p.

- Receiving a recurring electronic payment, 4p.
by billfor | 2025-10-04 19:19:44+00:00
Assuming this is not hosted on your home system, since ISPs may block the ports and also most of the dynamic ips allocated are blacklisted, the issue with postfix is that its difficult to have a single set and forget config if you intend to use it on multiple internal machines, like for getting your root email on each system to one mailbox. Ideally you want a single main.cf for all your internal machines and for the outgoing/incoming mailhost to be determined solely by your mx or internal dns alias, but this is next to impossible with a single postfix config without getting mail loops on the system that is the mailhost. Exim and sendmail at least separate out the submit config from the rest of the configuration. Also you would be insane to try this without fail2ban or something similar. Postfix does a reasonable job of handling attackers but it does so quietly -- so you may not see the activity.
by vacuity | 2025-10-04 19:21:25+00:00
Threads as they are conventionally considered are inadequate. Operating systems should offer something along the lines of scheduler activations[0]: a low-level mechanism that represents individual cores being scheduled/allocated to programs. Async is responsive simply because it conforms to the (asynchronous) nature of hardware events. Similarly, threads are most performant if leveraged according to the usage of hardware cores. A program that spawns 100 threads on a system with 10 physical cores is just going to have threads interrupting each other for no reason; each core can only do so much work in a time frame, whether it's running 1 thread or 10. The most performant/efficient abstraction is a state machine[1] per core. However, for some loss of performance and (arguable) ease of development, threads can be used on top of scheduler activations[2]. Async on top of threads is just the worst of both worlds. Think in terms of the hardware resources and events (memory accesses too), and the abstractions write themselves.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scheduler_activations, https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/121132.121151 | Akin to thread-per-core

[1] Stackless coroutines and event-driven programming

[2] User-level virtual/green threads today, plus responsiveness to blocking I/O events
by wolvesechoes | 2025-10-04 19:21:38+00:00
Ada, or at least GNAT, also supports compile-time dimensional analysis (unit checking). I may be biased, because I mostly work with engineering applications, but I still do not understand why in other languages it is delegated to 3rd party libraries.

https://docs.adacore.com/gnat_ugn-docs/html/gnat_ugn/gnat_ug...
by nilslindemann | 2025-10-04 19:22:02+00:00
Honestly, I don't care for 2 to 3 or six (which, btw, has just 1k stars on GitHub, compare to e.g. 90k stars for FastAPI). Someone who bases their code on 2.7 in 2025 must expect to run into trouble.

If people do not run such upgrade scripts, it must be documented better.

Python is free. In order to also stay elegant, they should say to their users: "We expect from you to run an upgrade script on your code once per Python upgrade"
by Joel_Mckay | 2025-10-04 19:22:09+00:00
Many Chip VID:PID listed in

> lsusb

or

C:\> Get-PnpDevice -PresentOnly | Where-Object { $_.InstanceId -match '^USB' } | Format-List

are considered copyrighted IP in North America. Many of the paid device codes are often not like other Communication Device Class drivers or free generic HID devices listed in the USB standard.

Early next year Windows 11 will be locking out unsigned drivers from the OS. Good for keeping the kernel more consistent, but could be bad for hobby hardware drivers.

Personally, I think it is ludicrous, but for 83% of users they have no other option than pay $6.32 for a $$0.43 chip. =3
by magicalhippo | 2025-10-04 19:22:27+00:00
I've worked with Delphi where a recompile takes a few seconds, and I've worked with C++ where a similar recompile takes a long time, often 10 minutes or more.

I found I work very differently in the two cases. In Delphi I use the compiler as a spell checker. With the C++ code I spent much more time looking over the code before compiling.

Sometimes though you're forced to iterate over small changes. Might be some bug hunting where you add some debug code that allows you to narrow things a bit more, add some more code and so on. Or it might be some UI thing where you need to check to see how it looks in practice. In those cases the fast iteration really helps. I found those cases painful in C++.

For important code, where the details matter, then yeah, you're not going to iterate as fast. And sometimes forcing a slower pace might be beneficial, I found.
by HarHarVeryFunny | 2025-10-04 19:23:26+00:00
Intelligence evolved at least three times on earth - dinosaurs (leading to corvids, but a raptors already intelligent), mammals and cephalopods (e.g. octopus).

I suspect that any evolutionary environment will eventually create enough variety and instability that some generalists emerge, creating a reward for intelligence. The rise in intelligence from early water-bound life to later forms was likely all driven by more complex and diverse environments.
by FireBeyond | 2025-10-04 19:23:34+00:00
Not for nothing though, and not defending PE... or insurers (UHC denying air ambulance for serious MVA trauma due to "lack of pre-auth")... but most air ambulance companies have fairly cheap "membership":

Airlift NW has a $60/year membership for families that will bill your insurance, and consider what they get from insurance as payment-in-full (https://www.uwmedicine.org/airliftnw/membership). Many also have reciprocal programs in other areas.
by jlund-molfese | 2025-10-04 19:23:42+00:00
I don't disagree, but I'm not sure if you meant to reply to my comment? I didn't make any references to saving money; the point I'm making is that spending 10 hours this week in order to have 10 additional hours of capacity (ability to build out new features tied to revenue) every month is often a bargain that makes sense.

In the context of full-time engineers, "saving time" actually means that time will be reinvested into product feature development, rather than resulting in less spending on engineering pay. Similarly, engineers spending less time on support, means they can spend more time on feature development.
by breadwinner | 2025-10-04 19:23:58+00:00
> Combined with React Hooks (which replaced stateful classes with functional composition), the ecosystem shifted decisively toward FP.

React is the farthest thing from functional, see here: https://mckoder.medium.com/why-react-is-not-functional-b1ed1...

Composition in React Hooks is closer to multiple inheritance in C++ (because it combines state and behavior from multiple components) than functional programming.
by LASR | 2025-10-04 19:24:02+00:00
This is an interesting approach.

My team has been prototyping something very similar with encoding business operations policies with LEAN. We have some internal knowledge bases (google docs / wiki pages) that we first convert to LEAN using LLMs.

Then we run the solver to verify consistency.

When a wiki page is changed, the process is run again and it's essentially a linter for process.

Can't say it moved beyond the prototyping stage though, since the LEAN conversion does require some engineers to look through it at least.

But a promising approach indeed, especially when you have a domain that requires tight legal / financial compliance.
by sigmoid10 | 2025-10-04 19:24:08+00:00
I always find it amazing how many people seem to fail to use current LLMs to the fullest, even though they apparently work with them in research settings. This benchmark pipeline simply calls the OpenAI API and then painstakingly tries to parse the raw text output into a structured json format, when in reality the OpenAI API has supported structured outputs for ages now. That already ensures your model generates schema compliant output without hallucinating keys at the inference level. Today all the major providers support this feature either directly or at least indirectly via function calling. And if you run open models, you can literally write arbitrary schema (i.e. not limited to json behind the scenes) adhering inference engines yourself with rather manageable effort. I'm constantly using this in my daily work and I'm always baffled when people tell me about their hallucination problems, because so many of them can be fixed trivially these days.
by foldr | 2025-10-04 19:24:31+00:00
>You need only look at the CCTV usage in the UK to see how you can have a reasonable society with strong surveillance.

It's not really 'surveillance' as the vast majority of those cameras are privately owned and on private property. The numbers that get thrown around are basically just guesses, given that there are no central records of privately owned CCTV cameras.
by jon-wood | 2025-10-04 19:24:55+00:00
Part of why CCTV in the UK is ubiquitous and yet hasn’t so far resulted in what many people describe as a surveillance state is that the cameras are all operated by different people. To hoover up data an agency needs to go ask the owner of every shop along a road for the video, while hoping they’ve not recorded over the tape yet.

That falls apart (and is falling apart) when the cameras are all operated by the same company. Now an agency can just go to that company and request video for an entire town in one go. There’s probably a self-service portal for this because the operator isn’t even based in that town, so has no skin in the game, no need to work out whether they agree this is something the video is needed for.
by hmng | 2025-10-04 19:25:06+00:00
My first email usage was at University, pre-WWW. After that I briefly used some ISP email service, but that was on a time of very limited storage and POP only accounts, so I started hosting my own email even before having an always-on internet connection, using a relay and dynamic DNS to receive email when online. Now a days, I use a small VPS to route and receive email, but final destination and storage is on my home server. Over the years, I had, like others here, to ask Outlook and other providers to unblock my IP or domain, but it has been rare.

I really don’t want to live in a world where only two or three companies run email for the entire world, and this is my little act of resistance.
by andrewaylett | 2025-10-04 19:25:46+00:00
I, as a private individual, can accept card payments for 1.69%. I have a physical chip and pin reader (that pairs with my phone), it cost me £25, but I can take contactless payments using just my phone. If I didn't want to use my phone, I'd need the £75 reader that comes with a 4G connection (at no extra transaction or subscription cost).

If I were charging £3k/month, I'd be just above the threshold where paying £19.99/month to get a transaction fee of 0.99% saves money overall.
by randycupertino | 2025-10-04 19:25:48+00:00
https://archive.ph/mgovQ

> Sanford Solny, the real estate investor accused of stealing dozens of homes from financially struggling homeowners across New York City, was jailed at a probation hearing this week.

> For over a decade, Mr. Solny built a real estate empire through deed theft, prosecutors said. He targeted homeowners who had fallen behind on their payments, presenting himself as a lawyer who could negotiate with banks to arrange a short sale. The pitch sounded like a win-win: The distressed homeowner would receive a modest payout and the debt would be erased.

> In reality, these homeowners did not sign off on relief from their loans, but on the title to their homes. The mortgage often remained in their names, even as Mr. Solny installed renters in the homes and began collecting rent.

> In 2018, he pleaded guilty in the State Supreme Court in Queens to possession of stolen property and a year later, he was sentenced to five years of probation. He violated that probation less than three months after it began in 2019 by stealing another home — this one in Brooklyn.
by mikert89 | 2025-10-04 19:26:04+00:00
ycombinator, the best very early stage investors of all time hold this opinion:

"If you are a technical founder, you do not need a non-technical cofounder."

https://x.com/snowmaker/status/1948160642399314188

Its really not up for debate, at this point it is a borderline scam to work for a CEO that isnt significantly better/bringing in capital. You are basically giving them free labor
by worldsayshi | 2025-10-04 19:26:06+00:00
Sure it's mostly about cost of living but also relatively good access to abandoned buildings (and perhaps other services) that could be used for non housing purposes. A lot of Berlin clubs and art venues started in buildings that were abandoned if I understand correctly.

I recall that there were interesting similarities after depopulation events like the black plague. Suddenly there's a surplus of built infrastructure.
by LeifCarrotson | 2025-10-04 19:26:30+00:00
That's "Dragon's Egg" by Robert L. Forward, a classic Sci-fi story:

https://annas-archive.org/md5/4c381ac344506d10037fc8e7747098...

The cheela lived on the surface of a neutron star, and they lived faster because the nuclear physics that powered their metabolism are far faster than the chemical and mechanical physics that power our own.
by tptacek | 2025-10-04 19:26:33+00:00
Yes. The people are supposed to do work. Believe me: ordinary people who strongly disagree with a lot of what's being said on this thread are doing the work, showing up and complaining about "defund the police" people being behind any limitations on ALPRs at all. I had to argue with them! You are responsible for engaging on this, because, contrary to the claim at the top of the thread, this simply is not a "red line".
by quotemstr | 2025-10-04 19:27:36+00:00
Excellent way to put it.

> expressivity without safety encourages programmers to create a minefield of exploitable bugs.

Also, psychologically, the combination creates a powerful and dangerously false sensation of mastery in practitioners, especially less experienced ones. Part of Zig's allure, like C's bizarre continued relevance, is the extreme-sport nature of the user experience. It's exhilarating to do something dangerous and get away with it.
by nemothekid | 2025-10-04 19:28:45+00:00
Irrespective of how you feel about this, its very strange to throw China under the bus here. If Chinese surveillance is so dystopian, don't you think China uses the same exact rhetoric for protecting their police state? After all China went from a bunch of farms to the second largest economy in 30 years.

Either you think mass surveillance is wrong or not.
by Aurornis | 2025-10-04 19:28:50+00:00
There are a lot of defunct startups in my city that were started by engineers and CTOs. Some of them had good ideas and a few even had great execution of the product.

They all failed at sales, scaling, retention, and generally running the business.

I did work for one very successful company that was founded by an engineer. However, he was focused almost exclusively on non-engineering business functions from the start.

If you want to be a CTO and do engineering things, don’t assume founding your own company is the best way to get there.
by NathanaelRea | 2025-10-04 19:29:01+00:00
Companies want GW data centers, which are a new thing that will last decades, even if GPUs are consumable and have high failure rates. Also, depending on how far it takes us, it could upgrade the electric grid, make electricity cheaper.

And there will also be software infrastructure which could be durable. There will be improvements to software tooling and the ecosystem. We will have enormous pre-trained foundation models. These model weight artifacts could be copied for free, distilled, or fine tuned for a fraction of the cost.