MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by CrackerNews | 2025-10-21 16:00:36+00:00
That leads to the cost of cleaning up after the customer to make sure they can buy what they need.

Before Amazon, there were the club warehouse retail models like Costco where the frontend experience was cut down and the backend infrastructure scaled up. This all led to cost savings passed onto the customer.

Amazon seems like the next step where the last mile delivery infrastructure was expanded and the retail frontend was replaced by a website. Instead of millions of frontend retail workers, it's software knowledge workers with an accompanying expansion of the backend retail workers.

Now, the software knowledge workers are eating backend retail.
by hurricanepootis | 2025-10-21 16:00:55+00:00
I use fractional scaling on the desktop (150%) and haven't noticed any performance degradation or unexpected slowness. Do you have any information on what someone should be looking for?

Overall, fractional scaling is the killer feature on KDE Wayland, especially with its XWayland integration. Whenever I use fractional scaling in GNOME, XWayland gets a resolution that is way higher than my actual display. I believe it is done so in a way (I could go be wrong) where XWayland gets a 2X resolution of whatever the fractional scaling resolution is, so it can be down sampled to the fractional scaling resolution simply. This results in me having to change the resolution in my games, which a lot of them don't support custom resolutions. Then, I have to use gamescope, which has shitty mouse input and increase performance degradation, especially on a laptop APU.
by falcor84 | 2025-10-21 16:01:23+00:00
> Writing production code is a completely different game than (vibe) coding a prototype. To get this right, you need profound knowledge of the programming language, of its ecosystem, of the dos and don’ts of good software design and development, of the additional bolts and screws needed to make the software production-ready, and much more.

Having spent some of my career as an SRE, I would argue that what distinguishes production code from it-worked-on-my-machine code has very little to do with the things at the start of that list and almost everything with the "bolts and screws needed to make the software production-ready", and particularly the 12 factors [0]. With my anecdata, I've had a much more productive time maintaining in production systems written by junior coders who only started using that particular language a few months ago, but are eager to take direction, than experienced developers with profound knowledge and strong opinions held tightly.

With this in mind, I've been quite productive doing "vibe engineering" [1], rigidly controlling the code from the outside as mostly a black box, with extensive precommit testing, focusing my code reviews on preventing weird "going off the rails" issues and adding new tests against them, while not worrying at all about code style.

[0] https://12factor.net/

[1] https://simonwillison.net/2025/Oct/7/vibe-engineering/
by wtallis | 2025-10-21 16:02:18+00:00
NAND flash memory chips these days are manufactured with low hundreds of layers of memory cells on each die, so they're probably some of the thickest individual dies. They are commonly packaged with up to 16 dies per package, usually in one or two stacks. Those packages are usually under 3mm thick.

The packaging usually has the stacked dies offset in a staircase pattern so that the contacts at the edge are exposed for every die. The alternative is through-silicon vias (TSVs), which theoretically would allow stacking until you have a mass of chips that is roughly a cube, but achieving that without having a defective connection somewhere in the stack is approximately impossible.
by JAlexoid | 2025-10-21 16:02:28+00:00
> H1-B meant for highly specialized people that cannot be found in the USA

No. H1b isn't for highly specialized people at all. EB is for that.

Not to mention, that H1b has explicit rules to pay the prevailing wage in the market.

The rest of your comment is so out of touch with reality it's painful to read.
by CaptainOfCoit | 2025-10-21 16:02:40+00:00
> And the only lever you have to pull is a lengthy model re-training or fine tuning/development cycle.

Is this really how professionals work on such a problem today?

The times I'd had a tune the responses, we'd gather bad/good examples, chuck it into a .csv/directory, then create an automated pipeline to give us a percentage of success rate for what we expect, then start tuning the prompt, parameters for inference and other things in an automated manner. As we discover more bad cases, add them to the testing pipeline.

Only if it was something that was very wrong would you reach for model re-training or fine-tuning, or when you know up front the model wouldn't be up for the exact task you have in mind.
by 0123456789ABCDE | 2025-10-21 16:02:43+00:00
if you want to reuse the local setup for ci or pushing broken code is somehow undesirable, then run all the tests pre-push

i tend to run only the fast set of tests, or a subset of the environments matrix, on pre-push — CI can take care of the rest while, i move onto do something else

when working with other the CI status is what matters
by vvolhejn | 2025-10-21 16:02:47+00:00
Author here. Speech-to-text is more or less solved, it's easy to automatically get captions including precise timestamps. For training Moshi, Kyutai's audio LLM, my colleagues used whisper-timestamped to transcribe 7 million hours of audio.

See Section 4.2 in the Moshi paper: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2410.00037
by throwawayq3423 | 2025-10-21 16:03:08+00:00
The plan was, according to the special counsel who had researched it, to buy time for the Eastman memo's plan of sending fake electors to create a constitutional crisis, whereas then the House needs to vote on who is president.

The attack on the Capitol wasn't meant to overthrow the government itself. It was meant to stop the certification, which it did, so that the rest of the plan could take place.

Under no circumstances take my word for it all of this is freely available.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastman_memos
by rkozik1989 | 2025-10-21 16:03:09+00:00
A few years back I was working at a software company that provided on-site sensor sensor networks to hospitals, pharmacies, etc. Our product required them to physically install a server on-site, but we were starting to get disrupted by cloud-based solutions. Essentially what we did was alert medical staff when blood, organs, etc. refrigeration temperatures went out of range. If the right people involved did not get notifications on time for these issues people will die. Its not hyperbole, you have to wait years for liver transplant. Their aren't just new livers available for everyone if a handful of them spoil.

With that being said, the problem here isn't that it took 75 minutes to find the root cause, but rather that the fix took hours to propagate through the us-east-1 data center network. Which is completely unacceptable for industries like healthcare where even small disruptions are a matter of life and death.
by anonymars | 2025-10-21 16:03:23+00:00
Indeed, I (parent) have found the discussion interesting and helpful. (The observations about regional variations are also noteworthy in the context of renting/travel).

I'm glad to know that my mental model wasn't completely off-base, and happy to see that the situation is improving overall

And the parent response was a great case study in de-escalation. 5 stars, would ride again (assuming sufficient battery!)
by jasonpeacock | 2025-10-21 16:03:35+00:00
"If productivity can be measured by throughput then it shouldn't be done by humans."

I forget the author, or the exact quote, but basically this. Brainless jobs should be automated, nobody should be an automaton.

This doesn't mean we give up on craftsmanship, but mass production and busy work should be eliminated from human roles.
by ajkjk | 2025-10-21 16:03:49+00:00
Consider that when doing 3d modeling you usually do not work on the mesh data itself but on a visual representation of it. Sometimes you have to go under the hood of this representation to write e.g. shaders.. But you'd like to not do that at all for the daily work.

In particular, the syntax tree is also Just Another Representation of the functionality... But it's still way overspecified, compared to your intent, since it has lots of implementation details encoded in it. Actually it is the tests that get closer to an exact representation of what you intend (but still, not very close). (This is also why I love React and declarative programming: because it lets me code in a way which is closer to the model of what I intend that I hold in my head. Although still not that close).

So, programming seems similar to the mesh data for a model to me. The more you can get a representation which is faithful to the programming intent, the more powerful you are. LLMs demonstrate that natural language sorta does this.. But not really, or at least, not when the 'compiler' is a stochastic parrot. On the flip side it gets you part of the way and then you can iterate from there by other methods.
by GuestFAUniverse | 2025-10-21 16:04:08+00:00
That might be. TCL has/had? a niche there too.

What I meant was: where are the resources that teach how to tackle everyday chores? O'Reilly has a lot of "Real world <niche lang.>".

Not finished "practical" software -- albeit it's utterly cool to see that there are working projects in numbers / good showcases.

It's fine to have a collection for scheme (like the endless and sometimes helpful "awesome x" collections).

I'm missing the "Automate the boring stuff" and the like.

Maybe I'm more irritated about the lack of adoption (and grumpy about that -- not really the OP). E.g. I don't get it that Nix has more outreach than Guix, despite even Nix-users sometimes agree that the language isn't a strong selling point (I don't know about the idiosyncrasies of Guile, seemed preferable at first glance).
by lazide | 2025-10-21 16:04:26+00:00
Every good firefighter knows this feeling.

Nothing says ‘go ahead, destroy that shit’ like money going up in smoke if you don’t.

P.S. don’t park in front of fire hydrants, because they will have a shit eating grin on their face when they destroy your car- ahem - clear the obstacle - when they need to use it to stop a fire.
by everdrive | 2025-10-21 16:04:49+00:00
I was never excited for automation. Automation doesn't mean we do less. It means that we do as much work, and now also the work has a higher complexity ceiling; you need to understand the systems that are being automated, and need to maintain the automation. More things are possible, but everything is more complex, and of course, you still need to work 40 hours a week. Products don't get better either, but that's more of a "shareholder value" problem than it is a specific technology problem.

And yes, I only talked about automation, but the same high-level issues apply to LLMs, but with different downsides: you need to check the LLM output which becomes a bigger topic, and then potentially your own skills stagnate as you rely on LLMs more and more.
by infecto | 2025-10-21 16:05:09+00:00
Your comment is neither respectful or helpful but I come to expect it here especially around topics that people have struggles with. I never said I find it exhausting to drive on highways. I can drive just fine, even have my Iron Butt for 1k miles.

What I did say is that I find using the current state of FSD a joy on road trips. FSD works really well on highways. You are fatigued a lot slower than without. Anecdote of myself and anger other folks I know.
by saubeidl | 2025-10-21 16:05:28+00:00
I agree with your assessment of KDE lacking "taste". Imo, it looks like a system designed by engineers, not designers.

GNOME has the opposite problem imo. I feel like it has "taste", but it feels like a system fully designed by designers, with no engineers giving practical pushback. It's the same issue macOS has, but amplified: Designers have some grand idea about their vision being the one true way of using the system and made it hard to impossible to customize.

I currently use KDE, but am not happy with it for the reasons you described. I used to use GNOME, but wasn't happy with it for the reasons above.

I have high hopes for Cosmic [0]. It seems like that one might get the balance right.

[0] https://system76.com/cosmic
by palmotea | 2025-10-21 16:06:28+00:00
> It seems amazon itself is aware of this issue. The linked engadget article even mentions this:

>> "The rate at which Amazon has burned through the American working-age populace led to another piece of internal research, obtained this summer by Recode, which cautioned that the company might “deplete the available labor supply in the US” in certain metro regions within a few years."

This article? https://www.engadget.com/amazon-attrition-leadership-ctsmd-2...

It's from 2022, so it'd be interesting to see an update.
by mothballed | 2025-10-21 16:06:58+00:00
They are definitely getting fucked by not getting the documentation they are owed, no two ways around it.

However I don't see the binary extremes you see.

The undocumented people can pool together and start their own schools. They can start their own soccer league. They can hire a pooled doctor. They can put some amount of stored value into a crypto account, which might be better in some cases than hiding gold in a hole or something, because they aren't going to be able to access banking.

And yes, that situation sucks, and it's wrong, and it encourages apartheid-light, and is not an acceptable solution. But in the meanwhile, it would be better for them than nothing and it is something they might have the agency to do.
by EvanAnderson | 2025-10-21 16:07:09+00:00
Ahh, alternative futures...

If the FCC hadn't been so strict I think there's a good chance we'd be using computers with a lineage going back to Atari versus IBM today.

Commodore ate Atari's lunch with the C64 and pricing, but Atari could have launched the 400/800 at lower price points with more lax emission standards. They would have had lower peripheral price points, too, since the SIO bus and "smart peripheral" design was also an emissions strategy.

On the home computer front the Atari 8-bits beat the pants off of the PET for graphics and sound capabilities. More success in the late 70s might have enabled Atari to build down to a price point that would have prevented the C64 from even happening.

On the business side Atari R&D had interesting stuff going on (a Unix workstation, Transputer machines). Alan Kay even worked there! They were thinking about business computing. If the 8-bits had had more success I think more interesting future products could have been brought to market on the revenue they generated.
by zerosizedweasle | 2025-10-21 16:07:31+00:00
"Whether Sora lasts or not, however, is somewhat beside the point. What catches my attention most is that OpenAI released this app in the first place.

It wasn’t that long ago that Sam Altman was still comparing the release of GPT-5 to the testing of the first atomic bomb , and many commentators took Dario Amodei at his word when he proclaimed 50% of white collar jobs might soon be automated by LLM-based tools."

That's the thing, this has all been predicated on the notion that AGI is next. That's what the money is chasing, why it's sucked in astronomical investments. It's cool, but that's not why Nvidia is a multi trillion dollar company. It's that value because it was promised to be the brainpower behind AGI.
by aaronSong | 2025-10-21 16:08:26+00:00
Ah, Vercel is what we use in the open source Claudable version! For Clink, we currently deploy static/frontend to Cloudflare Pages and full stack apps to Railway, both work great for different use cases. We're definitely interested in adding more deployment targets. What hosting platforms would you prefer to see? we can prioritize based on what the community needs most
by ben_w | 2025-10-21 16:08:30+00:00
> But he's "allowed" to be worth a lot because if he were doing what he's doing elsewhere, he'd facilitate a multi-trillion dollar wealth transfer from America to that place.

I think this is the critical point. It's kinda the foundation of why all extremely rich people are "allowed" to get so rich.

For the rest, not so much. Partly:

Much as I was impressed with him successfully turning the disaster that was Eberhard and Tarpenning's era into a viable business, I would not describe "noticing and fixing Eberhard and Tarpenning's mistakes" as "single-handedly" launching anything. The booster version is the opposite side of the same wrong coin as those who insist Musk was worthless because Eberhard and Tarpenning came first.

SpaceX similarly, for all I'm impressed by how he's used his charisma and vision and drive to get people organised, he's definitely not "single handed" on this.

But also, my understanding is that for valuations such as Tesla's share price, the "what it should be" is usually based on what they're likely to return in the next 20 years or so. Tesla's stock price is obviously disconnected from the business returns, at best speculation based on what Musk might be able to organise people to do eventually, and given he has been, as you say, "a fuckup for the last few years", the expected return for the Musk group should be lower, not higher.
by epistasis | 2025-10-21 16:09:04+00:00
The creation of stateless people during WW2, those without passports or birth certificates or citizenship, was a clear path towards the Holocaust. And the same tactic is used to this day to perpetrate genocide around the world.

Mass deportations, elimination of legal status, all these things tend towards one very very scary direction throughout history. And you know what they say about people who do not know the history...

(Just going to ignore the DEI comment because I don't know how that relates to anything here...)
by Aurornis | 2025-10-21 16:09:07+00:00
Automation is a broad topic. At home I save time because my dishwasher automates washing my dishes. The clothes washer and dryer are a lot easier than doing it by hand. The fruit and vegetable at the grocery store are a lot cheaper than they would be without automation.

I think individuals who get comfortable in their jobs don’t like automation arriving at their station because it upends the order of things just as they were feeling comfortable and stable. Being adaptable now is more important than ever.

> Products don't get better either, but that's more of a "shareholder value" problem than it is a specific technology problem.

This is broadly false. Your laptop is unquestionably better because it was constructed with the help of automated CNC machines and PCB assembly as opposed to workers manually populating PCBs.

Some companies can try to use automation to stay in place with lower headcount, but they’ll be left behind by competition that uses automation to move forward. Once that leap happens it becomes accepted as the new normal, so it never feels like automation is making changes.
by sgerenser | 2025-10-21 16:09:19+00:00
That’s weird, both times that I interviewed for Amazon (admittedly pre-pandemic) they paid for flights, hotels, and all meals, including lunch. The lunch was basically either before or after your interview (depending on whether you had an afternoon or morning interview schedule) and you just grabbed whatever you want on your own. But it was expected to be expensed just like all other interview expenses.
by cadamsdotcom | 2025-10-21 16:09:31+00:00
Neat! LLM-as-judge use cases could benefit from this too.

Normally you’d ask the judge LLM to “rate this output out of 5” or whatever the best practice is this week.

Vectorizing the output you’re trying to judge, then judging on semantic similarity to a desired output - instead of asking a judge “how good was this output” - avoids so many challenges. Instead of a “rating out of 5” you get more precise semantic similarity and you get it faster.

No doubt obvious to folks in the space, but seemed like a huge insight to me.
by rodolphoarruda | 2025-10-21 16:09:37+00:00
Site is down to me, but I agree with the argument. I speak for myself: I think AI has removed a lot of small barriers that would naturally slow my work down, increasing dissatisfaction and stress with it. Without barriers, productivity increases and with it, work satisfaction. It's just nice to get things done(tm) faster and at a lower effort due to the quality of the virtual assistant.
by ModernMech | 2025-10-21 16:09:47+00:00
It's not a coincidence the people loudest in pushing AI are the same people who build high walls around their San Francisco homes. They plan to do the same thing around larger chunks of society. There is no plan for people who are unemployed and unable to afford anything. The expectation is the walls will be built high enough that their suffering can be hidden.

Someone recently said there will be "sustainable abundance" but this is magical thinking. There will be abundance for people in one class and death and poverty for people in the other class. But the abundance will not be "sustained" -- it will be fueled by the suffering of the under class.
by mad_tortoise | 2025-10-21 16:09:55+00:00
Fascinating you say "a country that is in steady decline" when all the data of the past 29 years since the start of democracy seems to go against that statement. I hate the ANC for their corruption and other stances, but I don't let party political hate get in the way of the real basis of what is going on in the country. I'm guessing you haven't spent much time there? Whereas I have spent the past 25 years and travelled and lived extensively in South Africa.

What is your indication of decline? Some facts and figures:

- Less than 30% of the population having access to water has increased to near 100%.

- Electricity had less than 30% access and now sits around 90%

- Access to education (The matric pass rate more than doubled from 53.4 in 1995 to 82.9 in 2023) to taking that to near 100% in 29 years is pretty incredible.

- Taking 8 million people out of poverty and lower class into the middle class in that time is pretty great.

- Access to free healthcare for the entire country.

- The freedom of not being discriminated towards due to skin colour.

Yes the ANC has had an opportunity to do much greater good, but if you take in the bigger picture and understand that the white population still holds over 70% of the wealth while being 10% of the population - this is an enforced inequality that needs to be righted.

If you look at the freedoms of South Africa, it has possibly the best constitution in the world. Sure, the enforcement of the laws are not as good as the laws themselves - but the rate of improvement in my lifetime has been staggering. Even despite the setback of the Zuma years.

Even now, we have gone from an ANC dominated political landscape to a Government of National Unity, which forces different political factions to work together. Another huge milestone in the burgeoning democracy of a young country.

It is so far from perfect but if you really have spent any significant time in SA and still think it is a country in decline, then I am more inclined to think you're one of the types of expats who love to shit on something that you have no bond to, and not because your arguments are bound by facts. We must interrogate the long standing consequences of white monopoly capitals violent subjugation of South Africans in both the past and the present to paint a fair picture of the country.

Your quote " a country that is in steady decline." certainly does not paint a fair picture.