MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by strickjb9 | 2025-10-09 12:35:37+00:00
Great analysis - though I can't help but notice that 2009 is right when smartphones really took off (iPhone in 2007, Android in 2008, then mass adoption). The data showing accidents getting more deadly rather than more frequent actually makes sense if you combine two factors: phones causing more distracted driving incidents, plus our bigger American vehicles turning what would be injuries elsewhere into deaths. That could explain why it's US-specific - other countries probably have the same phone distraction problem, but their smaller cars mean less fatal outcomes. The distraction data might be weak simply because people don't admit they were on their phone after killing someone, but sometimes the obvious answer deserves more weight than we give it.
by thunky | 2025-10-09 12:35:41+00:00
> I have already had to correct a LOT of crap similar to the above in refactoring-done-via-LLM over the last year

The person using the LLM should be reviewing their code before submitting it to you for review. If you can catch a copy paste error like this, then so should they.

The failure you're describing is that your coworkers are not doing their job.

And if you accept "the LLM did that, not me" as an excuse then the failure is on you and it will keep happening.
by banga | 2025-10-09 12:36:02+00:00
This morning while jogging in the US I came to an intersection. Green lights and walk on in my direction. A car approaching from my left had a red light, the driver glanced to his left and without stopping or looking in my direction, turned right across my path. I expected this of course, so avoided being run over. If I wasn't watching for this, it likely would be a different outcome.

So why do so many pedestrians get killed in the US? The two main reasons to me are: 1. Drivers don't look for pedestrians, and 2. pedestrians expect drivers to follow rules.

Another contributing factor is of course the huge vehicles that crush people with drivers barely noticing...
by alterom | 2025-10-09 12:36:15+00:00
One obvious direction not explored in the article: looking not just at the type on the vehicle involved in the deadly collision, but also the actual model and its geometry.

It's not just that SUVs are deadlier than sedans.

It's also that the sedans are becoming taller, wider, heavier — and deadlier.

The article says that blunt fronts are what makes a collision more likely to result in a death. Well compare a 2000 Camry to a 2025 one then on that metric.

To test this hypothesis, we need to look at all accidents where a pedestrian was hit — and see a breakdown on whether it resulted in a fatality, by vehicle and road type.

Another thing the article doesn't consider is that the speed limits have increased across the US, and where they haven't, the enforcement is not necessarily there (cough Bay Area cough).

Solutions like lane diet (or engineering cities for anything other than automobiles) never became popular.

The outcome is inevitable.

_____

TL;DR: bigger, fatter cars going faster kill more people.
by bell-cot | 2025-10-09 12:36:20+00:00
Might that be a business model for an enterprising Secretary of State? They carefully verify your real ID, the fake ID's trivially tie back to that if the cops ask (not so useful for committing crimes), there are upcharges for multiple fake ID's, or tweaked ages / weights / photos. More upcharges for "vanity" names...

"Really, your honor, it's hardly different from an author getting a DBA or LLC for his pen name."
by sumtechguy | 2025-10-09 12:36:22+00:00
Then to add to that I see every single day people walking doing silly things and walking into the roads where they should not be. One dude I saw just a few days ago was crossing an interstate (see that about 2-3 times a month in the same place). I see jwalking pretty much every day. I see people walking when the signal says to stay put. I see people darting out from between parked cars. I see this every day. Sure they have priority. But a car doing 55 does not care. Keep your head on a swivel. I make sure I cross at the places designated to do so and also make sure there are no cars coming at that moment because some fool decided that was the perfect time to play with their phone.
by al_borland | 2025-10-09 12:37:07+00:00
I don’t buy the distraction numbers. I see people on their phones constantly while driving, despite laws against it. It’s also impossible to really prove anything after the fact, as the article touches on. The graph shows a massive increase in “distraction not reported,” which to me just sounds like the driver didn’t choose to incriminate themself.

The spike started in 2010, which is when 4G was rolling out, Instagram launched, Facebook was already big, and social media in your pocket was becoming an addictive reality. Before this, there wasn’t a lot to do on a smartphone while driving.
by deliriumchn | 2025-10-09 12:37:15+00:00
while jquery had a gajillion of exotic apis to do pretty much everything, react is, frankly, pure js with handful of apis: jsx (html with pure js), useState/useEffect/useMemo (rarely you need more), and initial hydration function. Rest is utility libraries, bundler, and all the wondeful things that brings you endless headache and depression because without them fulfilling yet another business req would take 10x more time
by somenameforme | 2025-10-09 12:37:41+00:00
I doubt, or at least hope, that no sort of managed fund for retirement (read: low risk) is going 15% on AI stuff. Regardless of what one thinks might happen, it has to be accepted at this is an obviously very high risk bet, because this all is screaming bubble even more than the era of 'zomg i flipped this house i financed on an insta-approved loan, installed granite counter tops, and walked away with $20k profit in 4 days.'
by rsynnott | 2025-10-09 12:37:46+00:00
> we're never getting the cyberpunk future where everything happens in VR, but we do get furries hanging out in digital Taco Bells

The interesting thing is that we kind of already knew this; 20 years ago, Second Life had a very similar "hype cycle->some niche groups kinda like this" story. I'm unsure why people thought that "like second life, but you have to strap this thing to your face" would necessarily be _more_ appealing.
by bombcar | 2025-10-09 12:37:52+00:00
I’d like someone to do a deep dive in the data; I suspect that almost all of the fatalities involve some variation of “not following the laws” simply because nobody does.

We need crosswalks enforced by spikes that pop up from the ground or something similarly draconian to get people to wake up.

The US mostly (but not completely) solved the school bus problem (people passing a bus dropping off children) by having exceptionally hard penalties and enforcing them significantly for the first few months.

A similar nation-wide campaign is needed around auto safety.
by Teever | 2025-10-09 12:38:34+00:00
This all may be well and good but the reality is that Reddit's rules against 'advocating for violence' don't really map out to any laws in the real world.

Like, on Reddit you're technically not allowed to say "Man, I'm so glad that Adolf Hitler guy is dead."

To my knowledge it is not illegal to say something like that (anywhere you want to live anyways)

I think that a world where people are free to talk about how they're glad horrible tyrants are dead is a better world than the one where they aren't free to express those ideas.

You wouldn't want to live in an America where it wasn't legal to condone the death of Osama Bin Laden, would you?
by IanCal | 2025-10-09 12:39:04+00:00
They easily check a bunch of those boxes.

> why don´t we stop pretending that we as users are stupid and don´t know how to use them

This is in response to someone who saw a bunch of URLs coming out of it and was surprised at a bunch of them being wrong. That's using the tool wrong. It's like being surprised that the top results in google/app store/play store aren't necessarily the best match for your query but actually adverts!
by matu3ba | 2025-10-09 12:39:09+00:00
Looks like a very reasonable guide for Python software debugging. Reversal computing/time reversal computing is missing, but probably Python programs are not that complex or long-running to use that.

Does Python without GIL have validator/sanitizers, scheduling and recording for non-determinism capabilities? If yes, then either Python is lacking or these methods are also missing.
by alwinaugustin | 2025-10-09 12:39:13+00:00
Location: Luxembourg

Remote: Yes

Willing to relocate: Yes

Technologies: Python, Node.js, PHP, JavaScript, TypeScript, Angular, Vue.js, React,Drupal.

Full-stack engineer with over 12 years of experience designing, building, and scaling large web platforms. Skilled in both backend and frontend development, modern architectures (DDD, event-driven systems, microservices), and cloud-native deployments. Experienced in refactoring legacy systems, improving performance, and delivering maintainable, production-grade software for high-traffic environments.

Résumé/CV: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1HKk_efhPqqb6oHhZtGmSg18gJGA...

https://www.linkedin.com/in/alwinaugustin/

Email: alwinaugustin <at> gmail.com
by Lerc | 2025-10-09 12:39:20+00:00
The LLM aspect of this, I think shows both a common weakness and an opportunity.

If you suspect something is a commonly held misconception, frequently asking a LLM about it is close to useless, because the abundance of text repeating the misconception (it is common after all) just makes the model repeat the falsehood. Asking the model to apply a more balanced view quite often triggers an iconoclastic antagonism which will just give you the opposite of whatever the commonly held opinion. I have had some success in asking for the divergence between academia and public opinion on particular issues.

Models are still very bad at determining truth from opinion, but these are exactly the times when we need the models to work the best.

There may be an opportunity if there are enough known examples of instances like this story for a dataset to be made where a model can be taught to identify the difference between honest opinion and bad faith actors, or more critically identify confidently asserted statements from those supported by reasoning.

Unfortunately I can see models that can identify such falsehoods being poorly received. When a model can say you are wrong and everybody around you says you are right, what are the chances of people actually considering the possibility that the model is, in fact, correct?
by pornel | 2025-10-09 12:39:33+00:00
In prehistoric Rust, variance used to be named more explicitly. However, the terminology of covariant and contravariant subtyping of lifetimes is a language theory jargon. This is the right perspective for language design, but programmers using the language don't necessarily use these terms.

It's been replaced with a "by example" approach. It's much easier to teach it: just add a fake field that acts if you had this type in your struct. Rust then figures out all of the details it needs.
by Suzuran | 2025-10-09 12:39:43+00:00
Penetrations of this sort happen differently.

If I want the ID of a bunch of Discord users, I don't go after Discord directly, I find some bot that the targeted users have on their discord servers, or third party service that Discord uses themselves. Then I find some individual person with access to those things, and I harass and/or threaten that person until they give me what I want to make me go away. If I think they might be crooked, I might just offer them a cut of the take. I'm probably not paying them though, not unless I think I can leverage them against other targets and need to keep them around.

Either way, an individual person isn't going to be able to hold off a coordinated attack for very long, and law enforcement generally doesn't give a shit about internet randoms attacking individual people.
by twelvechairs | 2025-10-09 12:40:06+00:00
A huge part of poorly designed roads is wider lanes (and parking spaces) that allow/encourage huge cars. Its been proven that narrower lanes correlate strongly with lower crash and fatality rates (e.g. [0] below) yet lane widths are under pressure to increase with larger vehicles, and every time this happens the vehicles get larger again.

[0] https://publichealth.jhu.edu/2023/narrower-lanes-safer-stree...
by imcritic | 2025-10-09 12:40:15+00:00
I have never had experience of configuring cPanel, I only used it, so my perception might be skewed, but the way I understand, cPanel has some built-in integrations with some common (open, 3rd-party projects) things like it supports a quite specific set of databases, supports a specific set of runtime frameworks (like PHP) and so on.

In contrast, this app's description states that it is for deploying your own apps. So does it have any integrations (like cPanel does) with anything? Or is it more like a CI/CD tool (think gitlab-ci or Jenkins)?
by rsynnott | 2025-10-09 12:40:49+00:00
There are kind of two ways to look at VR. One is "no-one wants this because it is a bad idea". The other is "this is a good idea, but no-one wants it because the tech is grossly inadequate". _If_ option two is correct, then maybe eventually it sees adoption, as the hardware finally gets good enough. Personally I suspect that option one is correct, but I've been wrong about this sort of thing before and I wouldn't be _totally_ shocked if number two comes to pass.

(There's also number three: "this is magic and will change everything, and you'll do all your socialising and work via VR", but this is just bubble-pumping nonsense and I doubt anyone _actually_ believes it. And option four, which is like option two except that "good enough" is essentially technically impossible.)
by sgarland | 2025-10-09 12:40:53+00:00
I tried a bike once, and that was enough. My brother had an R6, and since we were both idiots, he encouraged me to give it a try.

It was on that day that I discovered that their brakes are thankfully equally potent as their engines. I finished the ride and realized that if I ever got a bike, I would either be jailed or dead in short order, so decided to not get one.

I know there are plenty of more reasonable bikes out there, but the problem is I would gain skills on those, and then talk myself into getting something faster.

I don’t have a problem with fast/fun cars; I’ve had a Datsun 280Z with an LS1 swap (waaaay too much power for the tires and aero - if you launched hard, it would start to hook up in 3rd, and by 110-120 MPH it started getting floaty), and used to daily a Honda S2000 (favorite car I’ve ever owned - they’re like big go-karts). But bikes are on another level. The only thing I’ve experienced like that was an acquaintance’s MKIV Supra, where every upshift feels like the hand of god shoving you back, there’s a cacophony of intake shriek, blow-off puff, and exhaust roar, and you’re doing your best to keep focus.

Man, I love engines. EVs are definitely the future for a variety of reasons, but I’m still sad about it. The sheer number of mechanical pieces all working together in perfect symphony is mind-boggling and beautiful.
by micromacrofoot | 2025-10-09 12:41:03+00:00
in other countries at an intersection with a stoplight... is it normal for the light to turn green (allowing for a right turn) while a crosswalk also simultaneously activates to cross that path?

this always feels strange to me in some US cities... why would you give a car a green light to turn into an active crosswalk? I've been honked at by drivers like I'm doing something wrong while having a cross signal
by tdeck | 2025-10-09 12:41:25+00:00
In Japan many neighborhood roads (even in cities) are narrow and have no sidewalk to speak of. But I feel safe walking down them because drivers expect to go slow and look out for pedestrians and cyclists.

If you want to blow through an area fast, there are other roads for that with lighted crossings and sidewalks, and often slower mixed-use parallel roads for pulling in and out of businesses.
by cheema33 | 2025-10-09 12:41:35+00:00
> I strongly dislike and disagree with Prettier.

Have you ever worked in a large team where everybody has their own idea on how code should be formatted? If not, then I can understand your position.

Do you get to review PRs where formatting changes make majority of the changes? Because some people don't use code formatters, others do but use different rules from each other. You may call this freedom, others may call it hell.
by FridayoLeary | 2025-10-09 12:41:47+00:00
Thanks for that. I've been through the guidelines a dozen times. Following them is really the best possible way to have genuinely interesting and constructive dialogue. My last account got banned so i've been trying to do better. It's amazing how much some good faith conversation can get you, i feel in the time i've been here it's helped me develop better patterns of thought and argument techniques, i would say the most important lesson i've learned is to debate in good faith as much as possible and being honest with yourself about what you know and don't know. Most of the users on this thread are just looking to shut michael down, and expressing their opinion that he's an awful person... It's really very tiresome and boring. I have enough confidence in people here that they can hear what he has to say and make their own judgement.
by harimau777 | 2025-10-09 12:41:48+00:00
The difficulty that I've run into is that one person's nit is another person's essential change. My experience has led me believe that there are several different ways that developers approach reading code; resulting in developers placing different value on different style rules.

For example, when I am skimming code I primarily look at the code's "shape" and "flow". Where is there iteration? What code blocks are mutually exclusive? How does the code bail if there's an error? Etc. Therefore, things like indentation style and function decomposition are important to me because I need to be able to quickly see the overall layout of the code.

As far as I can tell, other developers read code using more of a "depth first" style where the overall layout isn't as important. As a result, they tend not to care much about things like indentation style or decomposition.
by Frieren | 2025-10-09 12:41:58+00:00
Road and street design is the main difference with Europe. A lot of work has been put to make streets safer for everybody.

That fact alone acts as a multiplier for everything else. The cars are bigger in the USA? The bad streets make it way worse. People are distracted at the phone? The bad street design makes it more deathly.

Fix USA's streets and towns and all kinds of deaths will be decreased. It is the most important factor.
by pixl97 | 2025-10-09 12:42:07+00:00
A lot of this is parked cars right beside a 55mph highway. Or stretches of stroad that are a mile long with no pedestrian crossings. In the US we love to zone that 'business over here' and 'residentials over there' which means you have to cross high traffic areas to do anything. And if you're without car you're rightly screwed.
by IanCal | 2025-10-09 12:42:08+00:00
It's pretty clearly worded to me, they don't use LLMs enough to know how to use them successfully. If you use them regularly you wouldn't see a set of urls without thinking "Unless these are extremely obvious links to major sites, I will assume each is definitely wrong".

> I'm sick of hearing "you're doing it wrong"

That's not what they said. They didn't say to use LLMs more for this problem. The only people that should take the wrong meaning from this are ones who didn't read past the first sentence.

> when the real answer is "this tool can't do that."

That is what they said.
by rendall | 2025-10-09 12:42:10+00:00
Everyone take a moment to read and absorb Novati's rebuttal: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45524707

Novati makes two relevant points:

1) Article author did not reach out to Novati for comment.

2) Codesmith ran a misguided marketing campaign that ran afoul of Reddit auto-mods.

These seem like reasonable responses to me. Are they true? I don't know, but I would like reasonable discussion about it.

I really get the impulse to vent when reading about something so outrageous, and in a way this kerfuffle represents the arbitrary unfairness of power leveraged from the shadows, but is that happening here?
by oeirugjoiwejo | 2025-10-09 12:42:19+00:00
Some times you can state facts and still be wrong in other ways.

Example:

If one side says "Hamas dresses as civilians" to excuse killing civilians, they're factually correct and criminal.

If someone then goes online and drops "Hamas dresses as civilians" they're factually correct and reinforcing a criminal's defense.

Anyway, the morality of IDF behavior is apparant to an impartial behavior by just considering the thought experiment that IDF doesn't killing Israeli civilians "just in case" they're Hamas in disguise. They only kill Palestinian civilians "just in case" they're Hamas.
by __MatrixMan__ | 2025-10-09 12:42:29+00:00
I have a project that I've leaned heavily on LLM help for which I consider to embody good quality control practices. I had to get pretty creative to pull it off: spent a lot of time working on this sync system so that I can import sanitized production data into the project for every table it touches (there are maybe 500 of these) and then there's a bunch of hackery related to ensuring I can still get good test coverage even when some of these flows are partially specified (since adding new ones proceeds in several separate steps).

If it was a project written by humans I'd say they were crazy for going so hard on testing.

The quality control practices you need for safely letting an LLM run amok aren't just good. They're extreme.
by ceejayoz | 2025-10-09 12:42:35+00:00
But most of these issues are highlighting road/driver issues, not pedestrian ones.

People jaywalk because the lights are timed more for the convenience of the drivers. People dart out between parked cars because the nearest crosswalk is a long way away. People cross the interstate because otherwise their 5 minute walk becomes an hour. Drivers shouldn't be going 55 in spots where someone can be obscured by a row of parked cars. etc.
by astonex | 2025-10-09 12:43:08+00:00
Anecdotally, on my few visits to the US (NY and Colorado), the driving I saw was absolutely atrocious compared to Europe. People were swerving and failing to stay in their lanes on Interstates, everyone was speeding well above the limit (everyone speeds on Motorways, but it seems it's taken to another level in the US). Then you have turn right on red meaning drivers just don't care and turn regardless. Then you have everyone driving massive fucking trucks where you can't see anything from inside.

It seemed every morning I got up and turned on the hotel TV, there was another news about some crash on the Interstate that morning
by throw-10-8 | 2025-10-09 12:43:12+00:00
so instead of learning a useful transferrable skill they talked to their magic mirror and got an output that approaches correctness without the necessary knowledge to verify it or maintain it going forward without their magic mirror.

To quote the author:

"The insane part is I didn't write a single line of this code. All of this was created through conversations with the Cursor AI agent. I don't even know how we got here with AI."

This is about as interesting as your average TODO MVC tutorial.
by potato3732842 | 2025-10-09 12:44:13+00:00
>Suburbans are on truck chassis and are SUVs. HRVs are on car chassis and are crossovers. The bucket is called "trucks and SUVs" to make this less ambiguous.

TFA does not use data broken down in that way.

TFA cites "sales by body type" which puts a 'Burb (functionally a pickup for this discussion) into the same category as a 2002 Forester (which is an SUV on paper, but obviously a car).