MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by egypturnash | 2025-10-28 00:44:13+00:00
Precalcing the entire thing and delivering absolutely nothing but a bunch of print statements is certainly an option that's completely in the spirit of the kinds of stuff one does to speed up an 8-bit computer(1) but the toy problem of "how can I speed up this for-next loop and the various logic inside it" was more fun. :)

(also the spaces-instead-of-newlines choice was made so as to avoid scrolling the screen, the c64's slow enough that having the ROM routines copying ~2k bytes of screen/color memory to scroll every second line of output makes changes in text-generation speed pretty much inconsequential. If that code's optimized for anything it's size, not speed. (2) )

(now that I think about it, there's also the fact that while the c64's BASIC interpreter is limited to about 250 tokens per line, the screen editor limits you to 80 characters per line.)

and now I am wondering how fast some form of

for i=1 to 100 step 15 print i;i+1;"fizz";i+3;"buzz fizz";i+6;i+7;"fizz buzz";i+10;"fizz";i+12;i+13;"fizzbuzz";:next

would work, okay I'm gonna fire up VICE: 49 jiffies, a ton faster than the 134 jiffies my previous best took. And if not for the 80-character input limit it could be one line. Hah. Thanks! Finding the right level to unroll a loop at is always your best bet in the 8-bit world. :)

(with the caveat that this generates fizzbuzz for 1-105 instead of 1-100, and logic to stop at 100 and/or logic to stop at any arbitrary limit would probably slow it down)

1: just this morning I was reading a series of blog posts where one of the original authors of Lemmings wrote a port of it to the ZX Spectrum Next and ended up writing some code that would read the data files from the PC version and generate lengthy chunks of hilariously unrolled assembly source that contained one routine to write every image frame to the screen in the fastest way possible, because a more traditional software sprite routine could only handle about ten lemmings at once; that's absolutely insane and absolutely beautiful: https://lemmings.info/porting-lemmings-to-the-zx-spectrum-ne...

2: https://pagetable.com/c64ref/c64disasm/#E8EA
by bloppe | 2025-10-28 00:44:56+00:00
Everybody think DST is the worst and needs to be replaced in some way or another. Most people don't realize that their proposed "solution" has already been tried. Your particular solution of "year-round DST" was tried in America in 1973-1975. I'll just quote Wikipedia:

> During the 1973 oil embargo by the Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries (OAPEC), in an effort to conserve fuel, Congress enacted a trial period of year-round DST (P.L. 93-182), beginning January 6, 1974, and ending April 27, 1975.[17] The trial was hotly debated. Those in favor pointed to increased daylight hours in the summer evening: more time for recreation, reduced lighting and heating demands, reduced crime, and reduced automobile accidents. The opposition was concerned about children leaving for school in the dark and the construction industry was concerned about morning accidents.[18] After several morning traffic accidents involving schoolchildren in Florida, including eight children who were killed, Governor Reubin Askew asked for the year-round law to be repealed.[19]

> Over three months from December to March, public support dropped from 79% to 42%.[19] Some schools moved their start times later.[19] Shortly after the end of the Watergate scandal caused a change of administration, the act was amended in October 1974 (P.L. 93-434) to return to standard time for four months, beginning October 27, 1974, and ending February 23, 1975, when DST resumed.[18][20] When the trial ended in October 1975, the country returned to observing summer DST (with the aforementioned exceptions).[12]
by IanCal | 2025-10-28 00:45:36+00:00
I disagree. Unless you’re focussed on right now, in which case case… maybe? Depends on scale.

I have a few scattered thoughts here but I think you’re caught up on how things are done now.

A human expert in a field is the customer.

Do you think, say, gpt5 pro can’t talk to them about a problem and what’s reasonable to try and build in software?

It can build a thing, with tests, run stuff and return to a user.

It can take feedback (talking to people is the key major things LLMs have solved).

They can iterate (see: codex) deploy and they can absolutely write copy.

What do you really think in this list they can’t do?

For simplicity reduce it to a relatively basic crud app. We know that they can make these over several steps. We know they can manage the ui pretty well, do incremental work etc. What’s missing?

I think something huge here is that some of the software engineering roles and management become exceptionally fast and cheap. That means you don’t need to have as many users to be worthwhile writing code to solve a problem. Entirely personal software becomes economically viable. I don’t need to communicate value for the problem my app has solved because it’s solved it for me.

Frankly most of the “AI can’t ever do my thing” comments come across as the same as “nobody can estimate my tasks they’re so unique” we see every time something comes up about planning. Most business relevant SE isn’t complex logically, interestingly unique or frankly hard. It’s just a different language to speak.

Disclaimer: a client of mine is working on making software simpler to build and I’m looking at the AI side, but I have these views regardless.
by ThrowawayR2 | 2025-10-28 00:46:02+00:00
From Democratic analyst David Shor back in March ( https://archive.is/kbwom ) : "The reality is if all registered voters had turned out, then Donald Trump would’ve won the popular vote by 5 points [instead of 1.7 points]." So, not that it brings me any joy to say it but it would seem more like 55%?

If anyone has any polling data to the contrary, I'd love to see it.
by anitil | 2025-10-28 00:46:07+00:00
If anyone is interested in the legal side, I'd also recommend 'Runkle of the Bailey' who has a series on this saga but with a focus on the legal shenanigans [0]

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y3WVme9LAcQ&list=PLo0bMOObfk...
by dylan604 | 2025-10-28 00:46:10+00:00
Just because you bought the place doesn't mean everything is finished. If you want to be a NIMBY, then you have to keep up with what's going on around you. If someone wants to rezone a plot, there's normally some sort of cursory public notice about it giving a small window to voice concerns. take advantage of them or not, but if you want to keep the status quo, you have to fight for it. the world is constantly changing
by cyrusradfar | 2025-10-28 00:46:22+00:00
It seems I'm going to be contrarian here because I really prefer AI-supported (obviously reviewed for accuracy) PR comments over what I had seen before where I'd, often, need to reach out to someone to ask follow up questions on requirements, a link to a ticket, or any number of omissions.

I have worked at smaller firms, mostly, early stage (< 50 engineers), and folks are super busy. Having AI support in writing better thoughtful commentary, provide deeper context is a boon.

In the end, I'll have to say "it depends" -- you can't just throw slop at people but there's definitely a middle ground where everyone wins.
by falcor84 | 2025-10-28 00:46:56+00:00
I strongly disagree that it was bad faith or strawmanning. The ancestor comment had:

> This makes no sense, and it’s absurd anyone thinks it does. If the AI PR were any good, it wouldn’t need review. And if it does need review, why would the AI be trustworthy if it did a poor job the first time?

This is an entirely unfair expectation. Even the best human SWEs create PRs with significant issues - it's absurd by the parent to say that if a PR is "any good, it wouldn’t need review"; it's just an unreasonable bar, and I think that @latexr was entirely justified in pushing back against that expectation.

As for the "95% correctly", this appears to be a strawman argument on your end, as they said "even if ...", rather than claiming that this is the situation at the moment. But having said that, I would actually like to ask both of you - what does it even mean for a PR to be 95% correct - does it mean that that 95% of the LoC are bug-free, or do you have something else in mind?
by carlosjobim | 2025-10-28 00:46:58+00:00
> If your code quality is bad, your product will be bad.

Why? Modern hardware power allow for extremely inefficient code, so even if some code runs a thousand times slower because it's badly programmed it will still be so fast that it seems instant.

For the rest of the stuff, it has no relevance for the user of the software what the code is doing inside of the chip, as long as the inputs and outputs function as they should. User wants to give input and receive output, nothing else has any significance at all for her.
by ashishb | 2025-10-28 00:47:01+00:00
I'll be down voted by JavaScript lobby for saying this but I'll still say this.

Never use JavaScript on the server side. The amount of bugs that can happen is insane. JavaScript is just a specification with varying implementations across various versions.

A proper language like Java, Go, or Rust ensures that your code will have fewer logical bugs of this type.

https://ashishb.net/tech/javascript/
by __loam | 2025-10-28 00:49:05+00:00
I mean there's reams of women in tech or academia who talk about this shit. "I left my PhD program because I was constantly belittled and harassed by my advisor and labmates" "I left my position for a different company because I kept getting passed over for promotion after I had kids" "I switched majors from CS in college because most of my classmates were men who made me uncomfortable" "I was bullied in high school by boys because they thought I didn't get accepted into school based on merit". These are all stories I've heard and there are many of them. Go ask some women in your workplace and I'd bet money they've heard stories like this from other women they know or have experienced it themselves. I'm a man and I'm tired of hearing the contrarian denials regarding these problems from my peers in the industry. Maybe every woman I know in the industry experiencing sexism at some point in their education or career is too anecdotal for you I guess.

I'm sure there's studies in labor and education stats to show some quantitative evidence of this stuff but I'm not going to waste my time proving the obvious to you.
by array_key_first | 2025-10-28 00:49:05+00:00
Yes but that ship has sailed, so now you need anti-corruption corruption to hopefully corrupt the corruption so it's less corrupt.

Like, the only reason "almond advocacy" even exists is because dairy and beef are some of the most lobbied and blessed industries in America. They can practically do whatever they want, whenever they want, so fuck you, pal.
by NathanKP | 2025-10-28 00:49:26+00:00
Yep, it's just a question of whether on average the "new thing" is more good than bad. Pretty much every "new thing" has some kind of bad side effect for some people, while being good for other people.

I would argue that both Tesla self driving (on the highway only), and ChatGPT (for professional use by healthy people) has been more good than bad.
by alephnerd | 2025-10-28 00:49:57+00:00
This is fairly on the dot, at least in regards with how the Indian [0][1], French [2], and Chinese [3] are approaching SMRs.

SMRs - like most other technology - are dual use.

[0] - https://www.stimson.org/2021/prospects-for-small-modular-rea...

[1] - https://maritime-executive.com/article/india-to-explore-supp...

[2] - https://www.meretmarine.com/fr/defense/pa-ng-une-propulsion-...

[3] - https://cimsec.org/neither-fish-nor-fowl-chinas-development-...
by keithwinstein | 2025-10-28 00:50:01+00:00
> Even more pedantically, “standard time” is not necessarily consistent across each zone (particularly, during the period for which in parts of the zone it is advanced by an hour) since "standard time” only advances for those states, or parts of states, for which an exemption is not in place.

I can't find a source (including 15 U.S.C. § 260a) that supports this reading, although I agree it's a little ambiguous. The law suggests that a region that doesn't observe DST is observing "the standard time otherwise applicable during that period" and is exempt from the provisions regarding advancement, not that "Pacific standard time" depends on where you are (see 15 U.S.C. § 263).

> So, the Unix-y convention [] is the simplest way

No argument there!
by MoltenMan | 2025-10-28 00:50:38+00:00
Maybe I wasn't clear in my previous comment about what exactly rubs me the wrong way, so here's an analogy: imagine you went to school and the the teacher lined everyone up by gender and handed out a cookie to everyone. And then she handed out two extra cookies to all of the girls! You would be annoyed! Does it matter that back at home guys normally get 4 extra cookies every day? No, because as a guy, you don't see or know this! (In this world brothers don't have sisters and vice versa). And even if you do technically know this because you've heard about it, you don't really viscerally understand it because it's not really your lived in experience.

So what is the solution? I can't say I know. But I do know that these things very much breed discontentment and it is at the very least important to recognize why.
by alganet | 2025-10-28 00:50:39+00:00
AGI does not currently exist. We're trying to think what we want from it. Like a perfect microwave oven. If a company says they're going to make a perfect microwave oven, I want the crusty dough and delicious gratin cheese effect on my cooked focaccia-inspired meals.

What exists is LLMs, transformers, etc. Those are the microwave oven, that results in rubbery cheese and cardboard dough.

It seems that you are willing to cut some slack to the terrible microwave pizza. I am not.

You complained about immensurable qualities, like qualia. However, I gave you a very simple measurable quality: failing like a decent human would instead of producing jibberish hallucinations. I also explained in other comments on this thread why that measurable quality is important (it plays with existing expectations, just like existing expectations about a good pizza).

While I do care about those more intangible characteristics (consciousness, reasoning, etc), I decided to concede and exclude them from this conversation from the get-go. It was you that brough them back in, from who-knows-where.

Anyway. It seems that I've addressed your points fairly. You had to reach for other skeptic-related narratives in order to keep the conversation going, and by that point, you missed what I was trying to say.
by godelski | 2025-10-28 00:50:39+00:00
> I know why the LLM wrote the code that way. Because I told it to and _I_ know why I want the code that way.

That's a different "why".

> If people are letting the LLM decide how the code will be written then I think they're using them wrong

I'm unconvinced you can have an LLM produce code and you do all the decision making. These are fundamentally at odds. I am convinced that it will tend to follow your general direction, but when you write the code you're not just writing either.

I don't actually ever feel like the LLMs help me generate code faster because when writing I am also designing. It doesn't take much brain power to make my fingers move. They are a lot slower than my brain. Hell, I can talk and type at the same time, and it isn't like this is an uncommon feat. But I also can't talk and type if I'm working on the hard part of the code because I'm not just writing.

People often tell me they use LLMs to do boilerplate. I can understand this, but at the same time it begs the question "why are you writing boilerplate?" or "why are you writing so much boilerplate?" If it is boilerplate, why not generate it through scripts or libraries? Those have a lot of additional benefits. Saves you time, saves your coworkers time, and can make the code a lot cleaner because you're now explicitly saying "this is a routine". I mean... that's what functions are for, right? I find this has more value and saves more time in the long run than getting the LLMs to keep churning out boilerplate. It also makes things easier to debug because you have far fewer things to look at.
by linkregister | 2025-10-28 00:51:35+00:00
Why is that horrific? Is it because some farmers are smaller operations and have less bargaining power? What about a large farming conglomerate, e.g. Cargill? What in particular is bad about this contract, and makes it different from other contracts?

Is it horrific to be sued for modifying and selling software with a removed GPLv3 notice?
by ryandrake | 2025-10-28 00:51:43+00:00
This is a great point. LLMs make good developers better, but they make bad developers even worse. LLMs multiply instead of add value. So if you're a good developer, who is careful, pays attention, watches out for trouble, and is constantly reviewing and steering, the LLM is multiplying by a positive number and will make you better. However, if you're a mediocre/bad developer, who is not careful, who lacks attention to detail, and just barely gets things to compile / run, then the LLM is multiplying by a negative number and will make your output even worse.
by chermi | 2025-10-28 00:51:44+00:00
Do you understand the relevant fundamental difference between SAT and neural net approaches? One is a machine learning approach, the other is not. We know the computational complexity of SAT solvers, they're fixed algorithms. SAT doesn't learn with more data. It has performance limits and that's the end of the story. BTW, as I mentioned in my other comment, people have been trying SAT solvers in the CASP competition for decades. They got blown away by transformer approach.

Such approaches exist, and they've been found wanting, and no amount of compute is going to improve their performance limits, because it isn't an ML approach with scaling laws.

This is definitely not some unfair conspiracy against SAT, and probably not against the majority of pre-transformer approaches. I am sympathetic to the concern that transformer based research is getting too much attention at the expense of other approaches. However, I'd think the success of transformer makes it more likely than ever that proven-promising alternative approaches would get funding as investors try to beat everyone to the next big thing. See quantum computing funding or funding for way out there ASIC startups.

TL;DR I don't know what is meant by the "same treatment" for SAT solvers. Funding is finite and goes toward promising approaches. If there "at least as promising" approaches, go show clear evidence of that to a VC and I promise you'll get funding.
by salawat | 2025-10-28 00:53:10+00:00
Originally, Jefferson imagined a state where all acts of legislation came with sunset dates. The idea being that a State would cap out and auto prune itself through the inherent friction of having to reapprove only the most important foundations of itself. Instead of accruing cruft, it'd allow for an equilibrium of law and liberties constantly returning to the public, and only the most unanimously supported measures to stay in force. A government for the living, rather than one of the legacies of the dead, which was favored by Madison.
by bloppe | 2025-10-28 00:54:29+00:00
> In the end normal time is summer time

I think you have this backward. Standard time is during winter. Daylight savings is during summer.

That being said, I used to hate the switch, like you. Now, I'm convinced it's the best of only bad options. Just look at the history of DST. We've tried it all. We've tried year-round standard time. We've tried year-round DST. We've tried switching at all sorts of different dates. Every system has it's problems and it's advantages. The current system is basically the one that actually pissed people off the least.
by prmph | 2025-10-28 00:54:35+00:00
> documenting a function that performs a set of complex scientific simulations.

The example you gave sounds like the problem is deterministic, even if composed of many moving parts. That's one way of looking at complexity.

When I talk about complex problems I'm not just talking about intricate problems. I'm talking about problems where the "problem" is design, not just implementing a design, and that is where LLMs struggle a lot.

Example, I want to design a strongly typed fluent API interface to some functionality. Even knowing how to shape the fluent interface so that is powerful, intuitive, well/strongly typed, and maintainable is a deep art.

The intuitive design constraints that I'm designing under would be hard to even explain to an LLM.
by Calamityjanitor | 2025-10-28 00:55:06+00:00
I feel you can apply this to all roles. When models passed highschool exam benchmarks, some people talked as if that made the model equivalent to a person passing highschool. I may be wrong, but I bet even an state of the art LLM couldn't complete high school. You have to do things like attending classes at the right time/place, take initiative, keep track of different classes. All of the bigger picture thinking and soft skills that aren't in a pure exam.

Improving this is what everyone's looking into now. Even larger models, context windows, adding reasoning, or something else might improve this one day.
by taeric | 2025-10-28 00:55:36+00:00
I have not seen too many (any?) times where the monad trick is done in such a way that they don't combine everything in a single context wrapper and talk about the "abnormal" case where things don't complete during execution.

Granted, in trying to find some examples that stick in my memory, I can't really find any complete examples anymore. Mayhap I'm imagining a bad one? (Very possible.)
by LogicHound | 2025-10-28 00:56:02+00:00
Security is about layers. If I have a basic lock, all I want to do is stop an opportunist.

I have a vehicle that is extremely simple to steal (you can unlock everything with a screwdriver), to protect it I use both a pedal lock, a secret second key and a steering wheel lock.

Will it defeat a determined thief or a team of thieves? No way. However it will put off most opportunists and slow down a more experienced thief enough that they may choose another target.
by rdegges | 2025-10-28 00:56:14+00:00
I believe one of the main differences is that our scanner looks for toxic flows between mcp endpoints regarding how they interact with one another. Unless I'm missing something, the Cisco tool does not support this.

Our research lab discovered this novel threat back in July: https://invariantlabs.ai/blog/toxic-flow-analysis and built the tooling around it. This is an extremely common type of issue that many people don't realize (basically, when you are using multiple MCP servers that individually are safe, but together can cause issues).
by ceh123 | 2025-10-28 00:56:56+00:00
US v Simon 1969, see [0] for a review.

Establishes that accountants who certify financials are liable if they are incorrect. In particular, if they have a reason to believe they might not be accurate and they certify anyway they are liable. And at this stage of development it’s pretty clear that you need to double check LLM generated numbers.

Obviously no clue if this would hold up with today’s court, but I also wasn’t making a legal statement before. I’m not a lawyer and I’m not trying to pretend to be one.

[0] https://scholarship.law.stjohns.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?arti...
by array_key_first | 2025-10-28 00:59:32+00:00
That's because software is immortal. It will continue to run even if you do nothing. What happens, though, is that stuff around it moves.

Of course twitter still works. Even with 0 engineers, it would still work. That's never been the goal of a software company. I can compile Mario 64 right here, right now, decades later. Should Nintendo just go home? Call it quits? Of course not.