MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by bogdanoff_2 | 2025-10-16 13:58:14+00:00
Asking here because it seems related: I'm trying to use cursor to work on a webapp. It gets frustrating because vanilla Cursor is "coding blind" and can't actually see the result of what it is doing, and whether or not it works.

I ask it to fix something. It claims to know what the problem is, changes the code, and then claims it's fixed. I open app, and it's still broken. I have to continuously and way to often repeatedly tell it what it broken.

Now, supposing I'm "vibe coding" and don't really care about the obvious fact that the AI doesn't actually know what it is doing, it's still frustrating that I have to be in the loop just to provide very basic information like that.

Are there any agentic coding setups that allow the agent to interact with the app it's working on to check if it actually works?
by close04 | 2025-10-16 13:58:17+00:00
> people struggle to deal with leaving the Blue Dot behind, esp. when they see footage from the earth, rainforests, etc.

5 generations on, the people on the ship didn't leave anything behind. They were born and will die on the ship, and that will be their baseline. Even in places where life is the hardest here on Earth, in the middle of scorching or freezing deserts, people don't get depressed en-masse seeing nice pictures from elsewhere.
by arnsholt | 2025-10-16 13:58:44+00:00
In discussions like this, I sometimes feel that the importance of related work like the increasing use of Rust in Android and MS land is under-appreciated. Those who think C is fine often (it seems to me) make arguments along the lines that C just needs to have a less UB-prone variant along the lines of John Regehr and colleagues' "Friendly C" proposal,[0] which unfortunately Regehr about a year and a half later concluded couldn't really be landed by a consensus approach.[1] But he does suggest a way forwards: "an influential group such as the Android team could create a friendly C dialect and use it to build the C code (or at least the security-sensitive C code) in their project", which is what I would argue is happening; it's just that rather than nailing down a better C, several important efforts are all deciding that Rust is the way forward.

The avalanche has already started. It is too late for the pebbles to vote.

0: https://blog.regehr.org/archives/1180 1: https://blog.regehr.org/archives/1287
by jeremymcanally | 2025-10-16 13:58:57+00:00
My mom spends easily that much with her tax preparer who is an independent person who tries to dissuade usage of software like TurboTax. My sister spends about $100 to file, and they have simple W-2 stuff. I know several folks at my church who spend $50-$75 on TurboTax or something similar every year.

I just spent like $200 to file mine with TurboTax only because I have a very simple 1099-K/Schedule C since my wife sells things on Etsy. I know Schedule C can range from my simple setup to absolutely ridiculous, so I don't totally grudge it. But at the same time, there are a lot of small business owners where that's a big chunk of change for them.
by BeetleB | 2025-10-16 13:59:04+00:00
Depends on the income tax you compare with.

My state is 9%, and it kicks in at under $20K. No state has a high enough sales tax to offset that income tax.

Concrete numbers: Say you and spouse collectively make $300K. That's a bit under $30K in state income tax. On top of that you'd pay property taxes (admittedly low).

Sorry Texas, but your property + sales tax isn't that high.
by vjerancrnjak | 2025-10-16 13:59:36+00:00
A recurring problem, somehow making it very easy to write code that deals with 1 thing from start. When time comes , somehow hard to write code that deals with N things.

I wonder how different the code would look if it was just written to deal with N things from the start.

I’m also not sure how far this code can go, if I have queries that depend on responses of preceding queries , how will my runAp_ give me this? It probably won’t.

always wondered where are http frameworks that just give me a batch of requests to deal with from the start.
by smaudet | 2025-10-16 13:59:37+00:00
> Meanwhile for the US, I need to fill in 2555, 1040, and other forms. These aren't "5 minutes", they're slow, and more importantly error-prone, as they get you to add up different numbers rather than just asking for the information needed.

For the many forms, yes of course it takes longer. However, from the W2 to the form, if you are familiar with both, it is many steps to be sure, but the process itself doesn't take long.

I don't mean to hold up the 1040 as some shining example of how to write a form.

Merely, the steps look involved, but usually boil down to several of the same number in multiple boxes, and a couple additions/subtractions. If you do it purely by hand, there is a high chance for clerical error, yes, with automation as simple as a calculator, it's much simpler.

You usually get the 1040 as part of the "preview" of the tax prep software. When you compare the actual steps involved in the 1040 vs the overly long, overcomplicated process in the tax software, it's obvious that there is a large amount of fluff involved.

Sure, there are some credits it might remember that you might not, but that's about the only reason I would think tax prep software is better here... however this could be accomplished by something as simple as a checklist provided by the govt...and if you are paranoid you could employ a lawyer to double check that every option has been explored (how do you know the tax prep software know every credit from this current year? You don't, so, what exactly are you paying for?)
by Theodores | 2025-10-16 13:59:53+00:00
> Taxes are crazy, anyhow...

Outside the Overton Window, why are individuals taxed rather than businesses?

There was a time when the government had no business knowing the financial affairs of the citizens, but then some kings got the idea that they could tax everyone to pay for their wars. Nowadays we assume tax paying is good and socially responsible, with only tax-dodging scum not wanting to pay their taxes.

Due to tax havens and whatnot, for a company to compete and be successful, some tax avoidance is needed. So we have every corporation opting out of paying taxes. Consequently, taxation is for the citizens, not the corporations.

Companies have accountants and bookkeepers. Individuals don't unless they are seriously wealthy. As I see it, it would make much more sense to just tax companies and not individuals. Think of the amount of time that would be saved, particularly if VAT is a tax, which it isn't in America.

I have to say that the American tax system sounds like hell, compared to what we have in the UK.
by angiolillo | 2025-10-16 14:00:44+00:00
Perhaps "the mission" is a set of resources and guidelines. To be successful, each generation will need to be able to make meaningful decisions about how to structure themselves, make decisions, manage resources, allocate work, collaborate, and direct the ship(s).

A single generation ship might leave for Alpha Centauri and arrive six thousand years later as a cloud of ships comprising a new nomadic civilization.
by raw_anon_1111 | 2025-10-16 14:01:11+00:00
Running on EC2 is hardly ever the correct answer. I’ve had to deploy to EC2 over the years and every method is a pain.

Just use Docker, there are plenty of services where deployment is simply - “hand your container to us and we run it”.

Even the most complicated popular ways to deploy Docker are simpler than deploying to a VM and a lot less error prone.
by saghm | 2025-10-16 14:01:15+00:00
It's hard to view the relatively small scope of existing Rust code in the kernel at the present time as an indictment of the utility of Rust being used in the kernel when there are major kernel maintainers who have publicly stated that they have been doing everything in their power to block any amount of Rust code from getting merged into any part of the codebase.
by xpe | 2025-10-16 14:01:28+00:00
The opening line from the video [1] impressed me:

> We built an agent builder with true two-way sync between code and a drag-and-drop visual editor.

Wow, what a clear pitch. I like it.

At the same time, I think about design space between Visual/DAG editors (here, a directed graph of agent workflows) versus, say, a high level textual configuration format (a la Dockerfiles).

- I think back ... how many visual tools have I been excited by [2] [3] [4] [5] [6], only to find that I usually prefer the textual editing most of the time? There are certainly cases where the visual editors really catch on. But on the other hand, when it comes to the programming world, it seems like the configuration format approach works more often.

- What do customers want here? (I don't have any particular expertise here) In my footnoted examples, my guess is that visual tools catch on the best when the target audience has a deep physical, even tactile, connection to the domain rather than a preference for textual representations.

Personally, I really like both. I like being able to quickly edit and share text files and also switch to a visualization. But it can be hard to make the visualization capture the necessary details without too much clutter.

All in all, delivering on two-way sync between code and visual editors might be hard. Hard is not necessarily bad. Delighting customers on both fronts could be a competitive advantage, for sure. [7]

--

I know this comment could be better organized, sorry about that. This is a "thinking out loud comment"... I haven't even touched on the "no code" and "low code" angle to it. I'd be happy to hear from others on their experiences.

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4FuEnAEPqwU

[2] Tools like SAS Enterprise Miner (https://www.sas.com/en_us/software/enterprise-miner.html) or Orange Data Mining: Visual Programming: (https://orangedatamining.com/home/visual-programming/)

[3]: Max for Live (integrated with Ableton for sound design)

[4]: LabVIEW (used for electrical engineering)

[5]: Various visual SQL Schema editors

[6]: Graphical views of document linkages: e.g. Obsidian, The Brain (going way back)

[7]: It may be difficult in achieve parity between the different capabilities of each. It seems to me many applications recognize that full parity isn't practical and instead let each "view" do what it does best. Traditionally, the visual approaches help with the top-level view and the code versions get into the details.
by dralley | 2025-10-16 14:01:45+00:00
> from what i can tell even the android binder rust rewrite is vestigial.

This is incorrect. The android binder rust rewrite is planned to wholly replace the current C implementation.

https://www.phoronix.com/news/Rust-Binder-For-Linux-6.18

And most of the big drivers written for Apple M-series hardware are written in Rust, those are not simple rewrites or proof of concepts.
by lovelearning | 2025-10-16 14:02:09+00:00
Hetzner has VPS servers. Has a web-based admin dashboard. Its API can create and teardown servers, virtual networks, block stores, load balancers, firewalls, DNS zones. It's similar to OVHCloud and Linode in my experience. If all these features are not sufficiently characteristic of clouds and abstractions, then I probably don't understand those two terms themselves.
by lelanthran | 2025-10-16 14:02:17+00:00
> I sometimes use it, but I've found just adding to my claude.md something like "if you ever refactor code, try search around the codebase to see if their is an existing function you can use or extend"

Wouldn't that consume a ton of tokens, though? After all, if you don't want it to recreate function `foo(int bar)`, it will need to find it, which means either running grep (takes time on large codebases) or actually loading all your code into context.

Maybe it would be better to create an index of your code and let it run some shell command that greps your ctags file, so it can quickly jump to the possible functions that it is considering recreating.
by Noaidi | 2025-10-16 14:02:21+00:00
I don’t use it a lot and I keep it plugged in some majority of the time. It only charges to 80%. I also occasionally, probably every month, drain the battery to zero.

Also, the majority of time it’s been in my van, which is pretty chilly most of the time.

From my understanding, battery health is based on use and environment.
by louthy | 2025-10-16 14:02:22+00:00
That is just nonsense, sorry. San Francisco is a modern layout (grid) and London is an ancient city with road networks based on thoroughfares that are 500+ years old.

It may be true that all major cities have their own quirks, but London has significantly more complexity than San Francisco or any US grid based city with super wide roads.

Also, the US bought into the ‘Car is King’ idea whereas that’s never really been the case in the UK outside of a few places like Birmingham. It’s generally harder to be a driver in the UK.

Whether that causes significant problems for Waymo, who knows? But I am also of the opinion that if it works in London then that’s a pretty powerful tell that they’ve got it right. We’ll, at least for places where drivers generally stick to the rules.
by jacquesm | 2025-10-16 14:02:31+00:00
> Comments like these ruin the comments sections.

Unlike yours, which are off topic and do not contribute at all.

> I with there was an "original thought" button that just showed root comments.

I think you meant 'wish', there is a little - mark at the beginning of each comment thread, if you click that the comments will collapse, there is also a 'start with collapsed comments' setting that only appears above 200K karma.
by vel0city | 2025-10-16 14:02:39+00:00
This sounds the same as the US then. If you have more than one income source or you're planning on taking something other than the standard deduction you need to tell your income sources to change withholdings. If they take too much, you get it back when you file taxes.

What's the big difference? You don't need a tax preparer to do your taxes in the US, and if all you have is a normal W-2 income and a bit of bank interest its a pretty simple couple of forms to file.
by omnicognate | 2025-10-16 14:02:48+00:00
In what way is it unsound?

To be clear, any claim that we have mathematical proof that something beyond algorithms is required is unsound, because the argument is not mathematical. It rests on assumptions about human perception of mathematical truth that may or may not be correct. So if that's the point you're making I don't dispute it, although to say an internally consistent alternative viewpoint should be "thrown out into the garbage" on that basis is unwarranted. The objection is just that it doesn't have the status of a mathematical theorem, not that it is necessarily wrong.

If, on the other hand you think that it is impossible for anything more than algorithms to be required, that the idea that the human mind must be equivalent to an algorithm is itself mathematically proven, then you are simply wrong. Any claim that the human mind has to be an algorithm rests on exactly the same kind of validly challengable, philosophical assumptions (specifically the physical Church-Turing thesis) that Penrose' argument does.

Given two competing, internally consistent world-views that have not yet been conclusively separated by evidence, the debate about which is more likely to be true is not one where either "side" can claim absolute victory in the way that so many people seem to want to on this issue, and talk of tossing things in the garbage isn't going to persuade anybody that's leaning in a different direction.
by marycikka | 2025-10-16 14:03:22+00:00
We added Vicky, an AI concierge, to our timeshare marketplace to make it easier for travelers to discover resort rentals through natural language or voice. Vicky uses Google's Gemini models to map a user's free-form query (like "ski-in ski-out resorts in Colorado next February") into the structured parameters supported by our search APIs.
by FabHK | 2025-10-16 14:03:35+00:00
> * Finder - this is my most hated piece of software. It doesn't display the full file path and no easy way to copy it

View -> Show Path Bar to display the full path of a file.

When a file is selected, press Option-Cmd-C to copy the full file path. Or just drag the file anywhere that expects a string (like the Terminal, or here). That strikes me as quite easy.

Cmd-X, -C, -V work as expected, what exactly is the problem? (Note that macOS, unlike Windows, doesn't allow to cut & paste files to avoid loss of the file in case the operation isn't completed. However, you can copy (Cmd-C), then use Option-Cmd-V to paste & move.)

Now, that might not be completely easy to discover (though, when you press Option the items in the Edit menu change to reveal both "tricks" described above, and contain the keyboard shortcut).

At any rate: when switching OS, is it too much to ask to spend a few minutes online to find out how common operations are achieved on the new OS?
by JumpCrisscross | 2025-10-16 14:04:22+00:00
> The notion that a citizen of a war-crime committing nation can only have justice if they also demand that other war-crime committing nations face justice, is a dire fallacy

I agree!

I’m not saying we need to commit war crimes. I’m not saying they should go unpunished. I’m saying we have to deal with this within our own laws. Unilaterally punting to the ICC doesn’t make sense if it has limited global authority and thus questionable legitimacy.

> Given the enormous magnitude of the war crimes, crimes against humanity, and violations of human rights at massive scales that the 5-eyes nations have committed THIS CENTURY, there is no higher priority

I think it’s a priority. Far from the priority. (If American goes right-wing imperial authoritarian, our past war crimes become something of a joke.)

> justify your own states' war crimes without having the moral authority to go after any other states war crimes

Nobody is justifying anything. But post-War international law was first based on a bipolar world, with one set of rules for America and the USSR, and another for everyone else, and then on a unipolar world, where America volunteered to subject itself to international rules and institutions. (We didn’t. But powerful elements within us tried.)

Now that world has fallen. We’re in a multipolar world. Not only is international law falling back into spheres of influence, with every global and regional hegemon regularly committing war crimes, it’s an open question whether anyone with power actually wants to enforce those rules.

(As for the ICC, has any ICC-member state has executed an arrest warrant against a third party’s leader? I return to my thesis that the ICC is a rent-a-Court for post-regime change reconciliation. Not a venue for trying cases and controversies.)

> Ours are the worst-offending states. Other states cannot even come close to matching the magnitude of OUR states' crimes

The facts are not with you on this one. To the point that you undermine your entire argument with the bias. I won’t argue America is better than Russia or China. But if you’re saying we’re in a different league from the USSR or China, you’re an unreliable narrator.

And you can’t vest the ICC with legitimacy while ignoring that it actually issued an arrest warrant for Putin.
by jraph | 2025-10-16 14:05:10+00:00
>> the users won't enjoy software freedom with that result

> That's the part I was talking about.

> So I don't know why you started your post with "No."

You are mixing two different users. FreeBSD user A enjoys software freedom. macOS user B doesn't. A and B are different people. And notably, the release of macOS didn't make FreeBSD disappear, so A still fully enjoys their freedom even though B doesn't with the downstream software (but could with the upstream software as well).

If you are mixing user A and user B, your mental model of this stuff is not clear and reasoning with it is going to be difficult and frustrating. And it makes you reach incorrect conclusions such as "permissive licenses are less free for the users than copyleft licenses".

> So we're agreeing that being fine with a restriction doesn't necessarily mean anyone has "lost the direction" of free software?

Laws are supposed to protect individual and collective freedom and interests. They do this by putting limits on what you could do that would prevent others from enjoying their own freedom.

(of course, I know we are far from this ideal; also laws aren't perfect and issues should be fought against - it's actually, in practice, a constant fight because different (groups of) people have different interests and priorities - but that's another concern and mixing concerns makes things hard to reason about)

License restrictions that compromise on software freedom are simply not comparable to whatever it takes to make a society work. They are not making a tradeoff for your own good as a user. They are benefiting the software provider at the cost of the user's freedom.
by steve_adams_86 | 2025-10-16 14:05:32+00:00
I'm 39 and did the same. I found myself annoyed by the repetition and humour that brought me back to being 9 years old, but also curious about where it would progress and what the underlying story might be revealed to be, if anything. Without the grating components stemming from being an old person, I'd probably like it or see the appeal better.

The humour is practically the raw embodiment of how little kids joke and play. If you're around little kids (especially boys often), you see skibidi toilet antics erupt from time to time whether they've seen it or not. Goofy facial expression, nonsensical voices and singing, over-exaggersted comical violence, constantly escalating battles, etc.
by CaptainOfCoit | 2025-10-16 14:05:48+00:00
Yes, they are infrastructure but not Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS). IaaS is typically referring to the sort of services you don't really care about the underlying hardware at all, nor the OS.

So while you can build your own IaaS by using dokku, Kubernetes or whatever on top of dedicated servers, dedicated servers (or VPS) by themselves aren't part of IaaS.
by diego_moita | 2025-10-16 14:06:10+00:00
When Steve Job died all major newspapers, magazines and television news shows dedicated major space and time to report his death.

One week after someone far more important died: the co-creator of the most influential computer program in history (Unix) and the most influential programming language in history (C). Very few news media outlet reported the death of Dennis M. Ritchie.

I argue that Ritchie's legacy runs deeper and wider than Jobs'. Almost all CPUs and microprocessors existing today run code that was implemented using technologies created by Ritchie, from ABS breaks to satellites. But, even in this forum, many people don't know about him.
by artpar | 2025-10-16 14:06:29+00:00
Yes I can imagine PI somehow being stored in the workflow. I frequently see llms hardcoding tests just to make user happy and this can also happen in the browser version where if something is too hard to scrape but agent is able to infer from screenshot so it might end up making a workflow that seems correct but is just hardcoded with data. We are thinking of multiple guards/blocks to not let user create such a workflow, but the risks that come with an open ended agent are still going to be present.
by rcthompson | 2025-10-16 14:06:41+00:00
If hard drives increase in capacity while maintaining the same MTBF, does this count as an improvement? If you previously stored your data on 10 drives and now you can store the same data on 5 drives, that reduces the probability of failure of the system as a whole, right? Is there some kind of "failure rate per byte" measure that normalizes for this?