MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by andriamanitra | 2025-10-24 14:38:24+00:00
I think you're completely missing the point. The problem being solved is not that coreutils is bad and thus they should be rewritten, the problem is that coreutils is not specified well enough to make new implementations straight-forward. Thus a new implementation written from scratch is tremendously valuable for discovering bugs and poorly documented / unspecified behavior.

For a business it's often fine to stop at a local maximum, they can keep using old versions of coreutils however long they want, and they can still make lots of money there! However we are not talking about a business but a fundamental open source building block that will be around for a very long time. In this setting continuous long term improvement is much more valuable than short term stability. Obviously you don't want to knowingly break stability either, and in this regard I do think Ubuntu's timeline for actually replacing the default coreutils implementation is too ambitious, but that's beside the point—the rewrite itself is valuable regardless of what Ubuntu is doing!
by weakfish | 2025-10-24 14:39:06+00:00
I’m the same, but it can also be frustrating when I _try_ to retain that info, it constantly shifts.

I described it to my partner as one of those AI generated videos where the details are constantly morphing and shifting, even if the general idea remains the same - I simply can’t hold onto a single still visualization for more than a second.

So, to agree with you, I have also read all five SLA books, and I could imagine Kaladin right now, but in an amorphous, constantly shifting way, which is a bit unsettling - maybe like Pattern? :-)
Ask HN: ~25KLOC Indie project. Best practices for AI facilitated refactor?
by tconfrey | 2025-10-24 14:39:11+00:00
I've been working on my PKM/Browser extension app for several years, adding features, hand rolling everything in plain JS/HTML/CSS and evolving my style and conventions over time. It's becoming harder to make progress and the output I get from AI is often not great - causing side effects, propagating older conventions or just plain missing required interactions. I want to modularize, standardize, modernize, invert some dependencies, add some facades etc. The goal is improve my velocity and the reliability of AI output, and to subsequently transition to a more AI-first development model.

I have a $10/mo Copilot license and access to the models it provides, with associated opaque limits on context and queries. I transitioned to working in VSCode to get the ai integration and to join the cool kids, but historically I've lived in emacs as much as possible. I'm working on a design.org text file giving an overview of the general structure, data flows etc. and have an initial work breakdown that I intend to feed into the context. I've previously found unit tests too cumbersome to maintain and not worth the time on a one person project.

I'm looking for all and any tips and tricks. Whats the best current model to use for a project like this? How should I think about preserving context over time? What do I do when I'm shut out for some time cos I've reached a limit. Automated tests are tricky given the complications and limitations of an extension interacting with web pages, how should I think about testing? As I'm at it are there non obvious things I should keep in mind to make the codebase more aligned with an AI-first development model? Anything else to keep in mind?
by pfdietz | 2025-10-24 14:39:26+00:00
> let's hear how to change

One approach would be to reduce the size of the containment building by greatly reducing the volume of steam it must hold. This would be done by attaching Filtered Containment Venting Systems (FCVS) that strip most of the radioactive elements from the vented steam in case of a large accident.

The containment building is a significant cost driver, costing about as much as the nuclear island inside of it.

If such a system had been attached to the reactors that melted down at Fukushima exposure could have been reduced by maybe two orders of magnitude. And if the worst case exposure is that low, perhaps much more frequent meltdowns could be tolerated, allowing relaxation of paperwork requirements elsewhere.
Ask HN: Can verifiable honesty rebuild trust in AI systems?
by renshijian | 2025-10-24 14:39:46+00:00
We built a system that makes AI honesty measurable each response carries a determinacy score, deception probability, and ethical weight

Instead of “trust me,” the model says “check for yourself.”

I wonder — can this kind of transparency help rebuild trust in AI? Or does it just expose how uncertain intelligence really is?
by schoen | 2025-10-24 14:39:50+00:00
I understand the terminal-garbling issue and know that I should run "reset" in this case (and that it wasn't the shell's fault), but I bet a lot of users who aren't very familiar with this might feel that the shell is "in charge of" the terminal or "in charge of" the whole interaction, and so that it actually should be more proactive in making sure that the terminal is in a visible sensible, usable, understandable state as often as possible -- in this case probably whenever a program exits and a new prompt is displayed?
by nerdponx | 2025-10-24 14:39:54+00:00
The likelihood function returns a probability. Specifically it tells you, for some parametric model, how the joint probability of the data in your data set varies as a function of changing the parameters in the model.

If that sentence doesn't make sense, then it's helpful to just write out the likelihood function. You will notice that that it is in fact just the joint probability density of your model.

The only thing that makes it a "likelihood function" is that you fix the data and vary the parameters, whereas normally probability is a function of the data.
by fmoralesc | 2025-10-24 14:39:55+00:00
Some quick remarks:

1) I have been using typst to create slides with some success. Adding special features tends to be simpler than in beamer.

2) cetz (https://github.com/cetz-package/cetz) works quite well and is comparable to tikz in complexity and capability. of course, there is more support for tikz, but it is bound to improve over time.
by 1718627440 | 2025-10-24 14:40:16+00:00
I was talking about:

> backlog of temporary commits

So a list somewhere else, which commits are considered temporary. It's a todo list for commits. Does JJ have that?

> We've unified two things into one thing.

A stash in Git is also just two commits. So no you just removed a feature on top of that. That feature might not be to your taste, or even outright confusing, but you did remove it.
by jerf | 2025-10-24 14:40:21+00:00
"It's used all the time in logging."

Which I would consider one of the code smells in question, because logging should be structured anyhow.

I understand there are a lot of code bases in the world that already exist that lack structured logging. That may make it "all things considered the right engineering decision to not fix this architectural flaw today", but it doesn't make it not a code smell or an architectural flaw.
by jonbiggums22 | 2025-10-24 14:40:21+00:00
I have good luck with low nests just buying a can of wasp spray (the ones that foam and have a claimed 30ft range, although somewhat less in practice) and soaking down the nest at dust. I usually put on some extra clothing and make a run for it but I haven't been chased. The can only cost like $15.

What I don't have good luck with is the nests built high up since I'm afraid of heights
by renshijian | 2025-10-24 14:40:41+00:00
Thanks for reading — this project isn’t about “AI safety theater.” We’re experimenting with verifiable honesty: every model response carries its own determinacy, deception probability, and ethical weight

Instead of “trust me,” the system says, “check for yourself.”

We’re curious how the HN community sees this: Can trust in AI be engineered through transparency? Or does showing the uncertainty just make it harder to trust?
by agentcoops | 2025-10-24 14:41:50+00:00
Like many other aphantasics below, just my eyelids. It’s ironic because I’ve always had really good (better than 20:20) eyesight, but I can only remember words.

The dreaming question is really fascinating: it doesn’t seem to be impacted in its essence by all the incredibly diverse structures of inner experience. It’s clearly a function of the brain much older than conscious experience [1] and I’ve also read research supporting its necessary role in learning (roughly equivalent to reinforcement learning on synthetic data). There are very rare periods in my life when I’ve remembered my dreams often—-which definitely suggests it’s a skill I could refine—-but generally I recall one or two a year.

One of the interesting questions is which properties of inner experience are genetic, which early developmental, and which skills one can refine at any point in life. Before I knew I was aphantasic, I had a phase studying chess and I tried so hard to “get better” at visualizing games—-one of the most frustrating experiences of my life! Knowing one’s limitations, you can then refine appropriate techniques like algebraic representations etc.

[1] GPT found some terrific papers on this question. In fact, dreaming (measured by two-phase REM sleep cycles) goes back to vertebrates — and seems to have been convergently evolved in insects and cephalopods. Jellyfish appear as the limit with only a single sleep phase. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-023-06203-4 is fascinating.
by seanwilson | 2025-10-24 14:42:05+00:00
> To make sure you got everything right, you can enable the new PDF/UA-1 export. PDF/UA is an international standard that helps to create universally accessible PDF files. When it is enabled, Typst will run additional checks against your document to find accessibility issues and optimize for accessibility rather than compatibility. It will find issues such as missing document titles, wrong heading hierarchies, and missing alternative descriptions.

This sounds great! Are accessible PDFs possible with LaTeX? Last time I looked, it wasn't a standard feature and there didn't seem to be any easy workaround which is a real problem when there's a requirement to produce accessible PDFs.
Show HN: I tried to build the first AI radio station
by louisjoejordan | 2025-10-24 14:42:34+00:00
Hey HN,

I grew up in Luxembourg & spent years near the old radio tower that blasted pirate radio across borders (unlicensed DIY broadcasts). I’ve always been into radio & wanted to hear what a 24/7 AI-generated “station” might sound like. It’s powered by ElevenLabs. GPT-5 gives each artist a little personality & generates music in their style.

I built a simple algorithm that tracks upvotes/downvotes so good songs stick around & bad ones get dropped.

Would love to keep working on this! I’m adding a host next & making the music generator better.

Tech stack: * ElevenLabs * Inngest * Next.JS * Railway (a small HLS server)
by chuckadams | 2025-10-24 14:42:54+00:00
From https://people.csail.mit.edu/gregs/ll1-discuss-archive-html/... (the koan below is a bit worn out but the email thread is also enlightening)

The venerable master Qc Na was walking with his student, Anton. Hoping to prompt the master into a discussion, Anton said "Master, I have heard that objects are a very good thing - is this true?" Qc Na looked pityingly at his student and replied, "Foolish pupil - objects are merely a poor man's closures."

Chastised, Anton took his leave from his master and returned to his cell, intent on studying closures. He carefully read the entire "Lambda: The Ultimate..." series of papers and its cousins, and implemented a small Scheme interpreter with a closure-based object system. He learned much, and looked forward to informing his master of his progress.

On his next walk with Qc Na, Anton attempted to impress his master by saying "Master, I have diligently studied the matter, and now understand that objects are truly a poor man's closures." Qc Na responded by hitting Anton with his stick, saying "When will you learn? Closures are a poor man's object." At that moment, Anton became enlightened.
by decatur | 2025-10-24 14:43:11+00:00
We used GitHub/Azure markdown plus Mermaid plus MathJax for financial model documentation. Beyond a certain complexity this really hurts.

Now we use typst, both playground (which does not call home, so no document exfiltration) or the compiler. The compiler is super easy to install, as we already have the Rust build chain installed. Compared to Tex, the 40 odd years newer design of typst makes all the difference.
by jasoneckert | 2025-10-24 14:43:26+00:00
I was an early adopter of Asahi Linux on my M1 Mac Mini (and later M1 Mac Studio). As a result, I benefited from the most amount of support for the platform at the beginning of the project (laptop-specific hardware support was provided after desktops) and have been using Asahi ever since (now Fedora Asahi Remix).

It's nice to see that M3 and later is coming, but as a Linux person, it's not necessarily a bad thing to be a bit behind the latest hardware. After all, many of us still use ancient Thinkpads running Linux, and prefer to buy used hardware for a better cost (M1/M2 hardware can be had much cheaper now).
by sehansen | 2025-10-24 14:43:37+00:00
EVs are probably not going to depreciate as much in the future. The depreciation mostly happened because new electric cars have become cheaper.

As an example, let's say a 2 year old car is only worth 80% of an identical brand new car. The old car was bought for $50k at new, leading to a expected depreciated value of $40k. But since manufacturing has become more efficient a brand new car of the same model can be had for the same $40k. Nobody would be willing to buy the 2 year old car at the same price. You'd probably have to charge only $32k [0]. But then it looks to you as if it has depreciated 36%.

The question is how much new electric cars will fall in price in the future. And if they continue to fall, at some point the dollar value of the depreciation will be too small to care about.[1]

0: $32k = 0.8 * $40k

1: E.g. if a new car is $10k, $3600 in depreciation over two years is annoying, but not a big deal.
by dimal | 2025-10-24 14:44:06+00:00
I dislike all gambling except poker. Anything that is purely chance and not within my control at all (roulette, sports betting) is dull and stressful. The odds are always against you. Poker has a big element of chance of course, but it’s really a game of skill. It hits a sweet spot of mathematics and social engineering that lights up a lot of neurons in a very engaging way.

When it comes to lying, in the real world I tend to be hypermoral and honest to a fault. It’s fun to have a game structure where dishonesty and aggression are acceptable.
by Ajedi32 | 2025-10-24 14:44:50+00:00
> Say I send a copy of a free-as-in-freedom game that I may or may not have modified in some way to a friend or on a forum, should I pay its author(s) for this?

Your friend would have to buy a copy of the original game from the author (or a reseller) before using your modified version of the game. You could even sell your mod to others, but they would also have to own a copy of the original software in order to use it since what you'd be selling is the modification, not the original software it depends on.

This is technically already legal, except most apps don't have the source code available for you to modify in the first place, and some companies try to abuse license terms to prevent it.

> How could I, for instance, commission someone to modify software if I want to change it when I don't have the skills to do so myself, in your definition of free software?

You'd just... do that? Same way you commission a mechanic to rotate the tires on your car. You'd have the source code and build tools. What's the problem exactly?

> Restricting how software is redistributed holds a great deal of power

I agree. I don't think authors of my version of Free Software should have control over how software is distributed except that new licenses have to be purchased from them. Once a license is sold, I don't think the author should have control over how that license is used or who it gets transferred to (except perhaps a modest limit on how frequently it can be transferred, to prevent shenanigans like third party floating license pools).

> developers can be paid not per copy, but per patch

I don't think this is very practical with Stallman's version of Free Software, because once you sell one copy of a patch that person can just turn around and sell it to others, undercutting you. So you'd have to price your patches at an absurdly high rate to recoup your costs. Effectively you'd be selling a personalized support contract, not actually selling software. This model sort of works in commercial contexts (hi Red Hat), but it's clearly not competitive with the proprietary software model. (Compare the market cap to giants like Microsoft, IBM, Oracle, etc.)
by patrickmay | 2025-10-24 14:44:56+00:00
Great idea. I had a chemistry lab in college where I was given a vial of a white powder on the first day of class and the course was complete when I identified what it was.

A similar course in CS would give each student a legacy codebase with a few dozen bugs and performance / scaling problems. When the code passes all unit and integration tests, the course is complete.
by anon291 | 2025-10-24 14:44:57+00:00
As a a hobbyist mathematician / type theorist, chatgpt et al are great at 'looking up' theorems that you want to exist but that you may not have read about yet. It's also good at connecting disparate areas of math. I don't think lean subsumes AI. Rather, lean allows you to check the AI proof. ChatGPT genuinely does have a knack for certain lines of thought.
by ge96 | 2025-10-24 14:45:17+00:00
I briefly looked into this, there was a freelance job of making proxy bots to scrape the steam page for prices, the number mentioned here is even crazier than what I saw eg. $12K for something vs. $2K for a Karambit knife skin.

I didn't get far with the project, was harder than I thought as the proxys you can rent were blocked at least the few I tried at the time.

The problem was the rate of checking it was I can't remember hundreds of times a second to provide a "real time" ticker.
by Forgeties79 | 2025-10-24 14:45:19+00:00
Honestly I imagine a lot of this just became chasing yet another thrill that net you maybe tens of thousands of dollars. I could totally see why someone would be in to that. Most hobbies drain your bank account after all lol

Same reason there are people out there who shoplift even though they don’t need what they’re grabbing. The thrill of the act.
by Someone | 2025-10-24 14:45:23+00:00
> is if entirely vibe-coded projects are difficult to maintain

Vibe coding is too “Hail Mary” to me, but if you’re into it, I would think the best way to do that is by giving a LLM the git history of the project with each commit contain the prompt that created it and, if a human tweaked things, requiring that human to provide a good commit comment.

Then, you could give a LLM the git repo, instructions on what change you want to see, and have it create the next commit.
by imiric | 2025-10-24 14:45:28+00:00
This is a great example of the open core model done right. Have a fully-featured F/LOSS product, and build value-add commercial products and services on top of it.

I've also only used the CLI tool, and didn't miss any features from it. The commercial product was never pushed or promoted to me. I personally have no need for it, and I'm only vaguely aware that it exists. But I'm sure that people who do need the friendlier UI/UX and more advanced features would be willing to pay for it, so I'm glad that the team has a stable source of income that enables them to continue maintaining the project in the long-term.

Looking at the pricing page now... Wow, the plans are quite generous and affordable. Way to go!
by benoau | 2025-10-24 14:45:39+00:00
Because the 30% is "opt-in" not automatic, the $1m threshold applies to all your apps and associated accounts apps combined, and $1m is just not a big target anymore considering 8400 people on $10/month subscriptions will get you over that line.

And of course, when they announced this big discount it was reported to apply to about 5% of actual IAP spending, which would make the average commission fee being paid around 29%.

tldr; it's a weaselly discount.
by Kiboneu | 2025-10-24 14:46:34+00:00
I am still really (really really) into photography! Nothing has changed that, the pictures are just as beautiful as they always were. My friends are touched when they see pictures of themselves spending time together. There is still plenty of things to see and take pictures of, and not enough time to worry about whether someone will appreciate my "work".

You can definitely get back into it. Just have fun, don't do it for anyone (that goes with any art).
by nodesocket | 2025-10-24 14:46:50+00:00
> Each GizmoEdge worker pod was provisioned with 3.8 vCPUs (3800 m) and 30 GiB RAM, allowing roughly 16 workers per node—meaning the test required about 63 nodes in total.

How was this node setup chosen? Specially 3.8 vCPU and 30 GiB RAM per? Why not just run 16 workers total using the entire 64 vCPU and 504 GiB of memory each?
by agentcoops | 2025-10-24 14:47:03+00:00
I used LaTeX for decades and had convinced myself nothing could ever replace it. Just this month, however, I converted to Typst for a large project. Absolutely no regrets: undying respect to the great Knuth, but the experience with Typst is already simply better on almost every axis. I use TinyMist with vscode and the development experience is terrific. I was modifying templates within a day of picking it up, which—-skill issue undoubtedly—-always gave me nightmares in LaTeX.
by jordanmnunez | 2025-10-24 14:47:05+00:00
I wasn't happy with bloated static AGENTS.md files in a monorepo, so I built cAGENTS to compile instructions dynamically.

cAGENTS composes context-aware instruction files (AGENTS.md, CLAUDE.md, .cursorrules) from small templates with simple conditions. It can detect which tools or files exist, tailor rules per environment, and even drop in guidance for matching file types (like *.ts).

npm i -D cagents npx cagents init npx cagents build

Built in Rust, shipped via npm. MIT-licensed. Repo: github.com/centralinc/cAGENTS
by jm4 | 2025-10-24 14:47:11+00:00
Poker is a great game. There are so many aspects to it where you can go down a rabbit hole of strategy to improve your game - there's math, making decisions with incomplete information, deduction, reading people, all kinds of non-verbal communication, etc. Although there's chance involved, it is undoubtedly a skill game. The gambling is one of the unfortunate aspects, but it just doesn't play the same without some money involved. You can get around that a little bit with house games where everyone throws in $20 or small buy-in sit and go games at a casino.

Another game that's worth checking out if some of this sounds interesting but you really don't like gambling is "Blood on the Clocktower". It's a social logic and deduction party game. There's chance, bluffing, incomplete information, trying to figure out what other players have, etc. It's completely different, but it can scratch some of the same itches and it's a blast to play. My friends and I play it with our kids.
by wincy | 2025-10-24 14:47:37+00:00
I got really into Lorcana last year, spent $40 on a particular rare card I needed for a deck. Out of curiosity I bought some cards for $3 each from Aliexpress, and got myself a jewelers loupe.

The cards were literally indistinguishable even with the loupe. I quit buying cards after that. It’s a suckers game if I can’t tell the difference between a $50 and a $3 card even when I know one is fake. Sure enough, a few months later the prices have absolutely cratered for the cards.

The only ones they couldn’t copy exactly seemed to be the “enchanted” cards, which sell for hundreds or thousands of dollars.