MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by Ancapistani | 2025-10-19 18:14:19+00:00
In what context are they doing this?

I can see myself saying exactly that in a meeting where we’re trying to explore a problem space to plan or make decisions - in which case I’d want to make it clear that I’m coming at that part of it blind, and am seeking enough information to identify tradeoffs.

What I’m not doing is expecting someone else to do the work of learning so I don’t have to. It’s limited to the topic at hand, and if it’s something that I expect I’ll encounter again I’ll spend time afterward diving in and learning enough to answer those questions for others in the future.

I’m perceiving your comment as you considering their actions to be laziness or disinterest. Is that accurate? If so, then yeah, that’s a huge red flag that could mean that this person isn’t suited for their role and expectations. If not, then it might be fruitful to sit down with this person to understand why they’re asking those questions and what they’re trying to accomplish. It could be that they’re simply not communicating their intentions.
by lotsofpulp | 2025-10-19 18:14:50+00:00
How long is eventually, because in the Pacific Northwest, there are 100ft+ trees every which way and lots of houses built in between them. I have never heard of this lawn issue, nor any foundations ruined by the trees (not planted directly next to the house).

Lots of houses have decorative maples/plums/cherry/crabapples/fig in their front yard within 30ft of the foundation. I thought the rule of thumb was roots go as far as the circumference of the tree branches.
by atleastoptimal | 2025-10-19 18:14:59+00:00
A problem with anti-AI discourse is there are three seperate groups who rarely communicate, and if they do they just talk past each other

1. Rationalists/EA's who moderately-strongly believe AI scaling will lead to ASI in the near future and the end of all life (Yud, Scott Alexander)

2. Populist climate-alarmists who hate AI for a combination of water use, copyright infringement, and decimation of the human creative spirit

3. Tech "nothingburgerists" who are convinced that most if not all AI companies are big scams that will fail, LLM's are light-years from "true' intelligence and that it's all a big slop hype cycle that will crumble within months to years. (overrepresented on this site)

Each group has a collection of "truthiness-anchors" that they use to defend their position against all criticism. They are all partially valid, in a way, but take their positions to the extreme to the point they are often unwilling to accept any nuance. As a result, conversations often lead nowhere because people defend their position to a quasi-religious degree rather than as a viewpoint predicated on pieces of evidence that may shift or be disproven over time.

Regarding the satire in OP, many people will see it as just a funny, unlikely outcome of AI, others will see it as a sobering vision into a very likely future. Both sides may "get" the point, but will fail to agree at least in public, lest they risk losing a sort of status in their alignment with their sanity-preserving viewpoint.
by acuozzo | 2025-10-19 18:15:07+00:00
I'm not trying to shift blame to the operators here, but in the absence of flying fingers, nobody would have died. Many, many, people received the right treatment in the Therac-25 machine.

Also, the author of the buggy software had no idea it would be used to operate a machine without a hardware interlock as, AFAIR, it was not modified prior to being used with the Therac-25 model.
by jibal | 2025-10-19 18:15:14+00:00
Please please please mention that https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jon_Postel (aka "god of the Internet") was the RFC editor--he did a huge amount of work to make it a success.

Also:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARPANET

"The ARPANET was not started to create a Command and Control System that would survive a nuclear attack, as many now claim. To build such a system was, clearly, a major military need, but it was not ARPA's mission to do this; in fact, we would have been severely criticized had we tried. Rather, the ARPANET came out of our frustration that there were only a limited number of large, powerful research computers in the country, and that many research investigators, who should have access to them, were geographically separated from them."
by ternus | 2025-10-19 18:15:37+00:00
Also: if you find ice forming in your fridge, or uneven cooling inside, it may be due to a clogged drain tube. This was the root cause of my fridge breaking: tube in the back clogged -> condensation backed up around the evaporator coils -> froze solid -> blocked circulation fan -> incorrect thermal readings, warm/frozen spots in fridge.
by whoisthemachine | 2025-10-19 18:16:02+00:00
Yes, in whatever way congress directs, and as long as it doesn't violate the constitution (if you want to change the constitution, you have to amend it). The executive branch is merely supposed to execute the law as congress writes it. I would be surprised it the law stated "if the entity does not follow the same ideology as the current occupant of the executive branch, then funds may be withheld", and such a law may be challenged on grounds of constitutionaliry...
by araes | 2025-10-19 18:16:04+00:00
None of these stories seem to actually have the items stolen. Most keep implying it was the three diamonds: Regent, Sancy, and Hortensia.

However, Sky News has an actual list. [1]

[1] https://news.sky.com/story/louvre-museum-in-paris-closed-aft...

Stolen and not retrieved

• Tiara from the set of Queen Marie-Amelie and Queen Hortense (img in article)[1] • Necklace from the sapphire set of Queen Marie-Amelie and Queen Hortense (img in article)[1] • Earring, from the pair belonging to the sapphire set of Queen Marie-Amelie and Queen Hortense (img in article)[1] • Emerald necklace from the Empress Marie Louise set (img in article)[1] • Pair of emerald earrings from the Empress Marie Louise set (img in article)[1] • Brooch known as the "reliquary brooch" (img)[2] • Tiara of Empress Eugenie (also referred to as a "diadem") (img)[3] • Large corsage bow brooch of Empress Eugenie. (img in article)[1]

Stolen and found outside, broken

• Crown of Napoleon III's wife, Empress Eugenie (img)[4]

[2] https://thefrenchjewelrypost.com/content/uploads/2016/09/san...

[3] https://thefrenchjewelrypost.com/content/uploads/2016/09/san...

[4] https://thefrenchjewelrypost.com/content/uploads/2016/09/san...

EDIT: AP article appears to have been updated (at time of edit 8:25 PM GMT). Now lists items. Original comment was written ~7:00 PM GMT.
by maxerickson | 2025-10-19 18:16:04+00:00
I bought more or less the same dryer as the one from 1997 that it replaced. There's cost reductions in some of the parts, but the overall design is more or less the same (for example, the timer is a cheaper design, there's no little door on the lint catcher, the adjustable feet are plastic instead of metal). I expect many parts are directly interchangeable.

I guess I'm not sure what the 1997 price was, so can't really make a comparison.

Fun story with the plastic feet, the delivery drivers either didn't know that they screwed into the dryer or pretended not to know. They left them barely inserted into the bottom and then put a shim under one of them to level it. I was standing there and kind of mumbled "can't you screw the others in" but dropped it and did it myself after they left.
by dragonwriter | 2025-10-19 18:16:06+00:00
> I’m a rubyist, but how is message passing fundamentally different from method calling?

The difference is fairly subtle most of the time in practice, which is why dynamic OO languages like Ruby that use message passing can mostly look like OO languages that use method calling, though it is significant behind the scenes and opens up a lot of possibilities; one of the more obvious practical differences is that it is why Ruby can capture and handle unknown "method calls" via "method_missing", which works the way it does because the version of __send__ defined in BasicObject looks for an existing method matching its first argument in the object's inheritance chain, and if it finds that calls it, and if it doesn't find one does the same thing with the "method_missing" method.

There's a lot that can be built on top of this, either leveraging method_missing or more directly.

Though I think the more relevant issue upthread isn't message passing vs method calling but narrow vs broad conception of nouns/agents.
by aidos | 2025-10-19 18:16:22+00:00
Amen. I put my dishwasher in myself so I get to curse myself for that hacking.

Worst was sourcing the parts though. Getting the thing out, effectively getting it up on blocks to run it and see the issue was hard work. Getting the specific totally non-standard o-ring size out of the manufacturer was impossible. In the end I resorted to siliconing but I just cannot dump something like that over a 5c part.
by Flere-Imsaho | 2025-10-19 18:16:26+00:00
> I love SF, but somehow I don't find it very good foundation for predicting the future.

Nineteen Eighty-Four would like to have a word with you!

Out of all SF, I would probably want to live in The Culture (Iain M. Banks). In these books, people basically focus on their interests as all their needs are met by The Minds. The Minds (basically AIs) find humans infinity fascinating - I assume because they were designed that way.
by prmoustache | 2025-10-19 18:16:32+00:00
The dramatic things with refrigerators is that in most countries people will install them in the kitchen for obvious practicality reasons, which is often also the hottest room of the house/appartment due to ovens, stoves and spending a significant amount of time there. If you think of it, it is bonkers that we put a device meant to keep stuff cold in what is a heated place in northern countries. Some hold houses and building used to have non heated dedicated rooms meant to keep food at a lower temperature naturally in winter but this has pretty much disappeared.

OTOH I live in a coastal city in south of Spain and every time I read a label that said food shouldn't be in a fridge but kept in a fresh and dry storage I ask myself where the eff should I store it there is no place like that unless I am running aircon 24/7 which I certainly won't do.
by hakunin | 2025-10-19 18:17:02+00:00
Thanks for writing this (just a generally interesting window into a rare industry). As you point out, you can't only ever add. If there was a study suggesting that static types don't add enough safety to justify tradeoffs, you might consider phasing them out. In your industry, they are currently acceptable, there's consensus on their value. You probably have to prioritize procedure over individual developers' clarity of perception (because people differ too much and stakes are too high). That's fair, but also a rare requirement. Stakes are usually lower.
by noefingway | 2025-10-19 18:17:54+00:00
I'm 73, had tinnitus all my life, I am used to it. Some days it seems louder than others. When I was 17-18 I worked as a stock boy at a JC Penney store. I used to hear this high pitched squeal near the front entrance. I mentioned it to my compatriots who responded "What squeal?" I always found a way to avoid the front entrance on my rounds. So yeah, I get the alarms
by copacopab | 2025-10-19 18:19:00+00:00
Yeah, I actually think PT is sincere in his take that prestige actually does matter and so does school as a measure of IQ and ambition, even if you disagree with him -- but I think his larger posse has translated that message to "you shouldn't go to college and build a B2B SaaS instead. Like Patrick Collison!" Which is harmful and dumb.

Re CEOs: performative claptrap.
by mindslight | 2025-10-19 18:19:43+00:00
Blue favored groupthink was (and still is) a problem, but red flavored groupthink is even worse as it invariable devolves into fundamentalism. The fascist movement isn't one of reform, rather it's merely using valid criticisms of our society uncritically, to boost support for their regressive agenda - as if we should have never tried to progress in the first place. If you're really serious about "reform" as you're claiming to be, try dropping the axe you have to grind and instead standing up for our country and the hard-earned freedoms we do currently have - as imperfect as they are. As a libertarian who has long sang criticisms of our society and our government, I've certainly had to. I'd rather eat some humble pie and be on the right side of history than support all the issues I care about being perverted into some movement fundamentally aimed at societal suicide.
by atleastoptimal | 2025-10-19 18:20:03+00:00
Which is true. People are scammed by very low-quality schemes (like that French woman who sent 1 million to the scammers who claimed to be Brad Pitt who for some reason needed money for medical procedures).

Humans have generally a natural wariness/mental immune system response to these things however, and for 99% of people the attention economy is far from being able to completely upend their life or send all their money in an agreement made in bad faith by the other party. I don't see why, if some AI were to possess persuasion powers to a superhuman degree, would be able to cause 100x the damage when directed at the right marks.
by srkdaniel | 2025-10-19 18:20:20+00:00
I’ve been working on something called Brandiseer, and along the way, I stumbled on what I started calling vibe-designing.

Instead of generating random visuals or using templates, it learns your brand’s vibe — your logo, colors, fonts, tone, even the emotion behind your visuals — and then designs new things that feel like they were made by your in-house team.

You can just type “make a new product announcement post” or “create merch for our next launch,” and it generates it fully on-brand. It’s not prompt-heavy or template-based — it’s more like a design copilot that actually understands your brand DNA.

It’s early (about 50 users so far), but the results have been wild. Some founders say it’s the first time AI-generated visuals actually look like their brand.

I’m curious — what do you think about this direction? Would “vibe-designing” become a thing, or do most teams still prefer strict design systems and manual control?
by justinator | 2025-10-19 18:20:38+00:00
>16 year olds might be naive, but they are also not small children and usually capable of saying no. (Body language no, is also a no). So do those horror stories involve ignoring a "no" from Ginsberg towards a minor?

Bruh you're justifying statutory rape due to a highly unjust power imbalance.

Also have you met a 16-year-old in real life? They are children.
by brandensilva | 2025-10-19 18:21:31+00:00
I would hope that people realize that money in itself is merely digits on a computer and that the real power of this stuff belongs to the people since the AI inherited and learned from us.

I know that's a simplification but we uphold this contract that controls us. The people get to decide how this plays out and as much as I'm hopeful we excel into a world that is more like star trek, that skips over the ugly transition that could succeed or fail to get us there.

But we aren't that far off of a replicator if our AI models become so advanced in an atomic compute world they can rearrange atoms into new forms. It seemed fiction before but within reach of humanity should we not destroy ourselves.
by mactavish88 | 2025-10-19 18:21:43+00:00
Yeah I've gone through bouts of "anything but tech" several times in my career, and each time ended up stuck in software development because it pays the bills.

I'm possibly somewhat burnt out - not entirely sure - but the reason I say so is that it's hard to tell what actually calls to me right now, whereas 5-10 years ago I felt I had a much clearer picture. Nowadays I'm skeptical of the idea that following any passions of mine would result in a better overall quality of life.

It's tough to find something that's both fulfilling _and_ pays the bills. I'm nowhere near "rich", but I'm fairly certain being poor will decrease my quality of life substantially - regardless of how fulfilling my work is. Right now I'm stuck leaning more in the direction of the thing that pays the bills.

In your experience/journey, what tech-adjacent careers have you become aware of? I'd imagine it's easier to pivot into something "tech-adjacent" than something completely different when one is in their 40s/50s.
by andai | 2025-10-19 18:21:49+00:00
This reminds me of not too long ago when you could hear the sound of the spinny disk in action, and you'd know if there was an issue (e.g. low on RAM and swapping a lot, or the dreaded Windows search indexer).

You get many of the same problems these days, but they're a bit harder to diagnose. You have to go looking at system monitors to see what's going on. Whereas, if the computer just communicated to you what it was doing, in an ambient way, this stuff would be immediately obvious.

I've heard stories like this where people worked on older computers that were loud, and then you could actually hear what it was doing. If it got stuck in an infinite loop, you'd literally hear it.

That seems like very much a feature to me.
by hakunin | 2025-10-19 18:22:54+00:00
I don't disagree, dynamic languages require better writing skills, so for example, in case of bilingual teams, metadata helps bridge the language barrier. However, if your team is good at expressing how/what/why[1] in your dynamic language, you will not have much issue answering what things are. Again, there are costs with either choice.

[1]: https://max.engineer/maintainable-code
by softwaredoug | 2025-10-19 18:22:56+00:00
I’m not sure what the “biggest” problem is, but I do think diversity is vastly underappreciated compared to relevance.

You can have maximally relevant search results that are horrible. Because most users (and LLMs) want to understand the range of options, not just one type of relevant option.

Search for “shoes” and only see athletic shoes is a bad experience. You’ll sell more shoes, and keep the user engaged, if you show a diverse range of shoes.
by Nevermark | 2025-10-19 18:22:59+00:00
Collecting and understanding many alternate views is helpful in any context.

In polarizing discussions it is even more important.

Understanding many viewpoints doesn’t mean full agreement. Just that one has taken the time to move past “I can’t understand how or why some one can believe that”.

Until you can understand why someone has their view, it’s risky to draw judgements and conclusions. Literally from one’s own lack of understanding.

Holding many simplified models in mind, despite each of their gaps with reality, is as helpful in engineering, physics and navigating life, as it is in politics.
by ben_w | 2025-10-19 18:23:02+00:00
There were about 20 million horses in March 1915 in the United States.

Then you stopped needing them, a USDA census in 1959 showed the horse population had dropped to 4.5 million.

Now they're mostly used for riding, and in 2023, there were about 6.65 million horses.

(Citation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horses_in_the_United_States#St...)

There's no law of nature that says "there's always a place for more horses", and anyone who suggested there might be would get laughed at. Well, there's also no law of nature that says "there's always a place for more humans", to butcher a like from CGP Grey a little over a decade ago.
by Ancapistani | 2025-10-19 18:23:39+00:00
Also, your role and the situation.

I’ve been in meetings as a Sr. Staff SWE where the expectation was that I could provide guidance and direction for projects using tools, architectures, or stacks that I’ve not used extensively… or at all. In those cases, I try to make it clear where I’m not confident in my knowledge and ask questions designed to uncover what I need to know to do my job.

I’ve learned to do that even in areas where I’m almost completely inexperienced. For example - I’ve never worked with Java and Spring Boot, but I’ve worked with the JVM and many application frameworks in other contexts, so I’d ask questions to help me understand the strengths and weaknesses of those tools, with a focus on areas where I’ve found friction in other projects with similar architectures.

I’m also always worried that I’m “taking over the meeting”, and every couple of rounds of questions I pause and explicitly ask if I should continue to investigate or take it offline and come back with findings.
by rcarmo | 2025-10-19 18:23:56+00:00
I'm seeing a bit of everything: renegotiating (which Broadcom doesn't really do), optimizing and consolidating hosts (to lower costs), public cloud migration (which is why I see the most given my line of work, but may not represent everything), forays into other hypervisors, etc.

Proxmox may come to many an HN visitor's mind (and I use it myself extensively, all my home services run on it), but it actually doesn't have a lot of enterprise features and isn't a drop-in replacement.
by pinkmuffinere | 2025-10-19 18:24:30+00:00
Sure, it does suck. But things change, and this is one of those things. The present solution has the Louvre closing without warning because they are short staffed, and that will only become a more frequent problem if they can't find some solution. Would you rather live in a world where you have to plan your visit to the Louvre, or where the Louvre will be randomly closed 5% of the time?
by copacopab | 2025-10-19 18:24:55+00:00
Trump extremely clearly got in as a nepo kid, so I'd discard him in this argument.

Personally, I find PT's argument sincere that good colleges do measure something important -- even if you disagree with his takes and arguments. I agree with you that his point lost cohesiveness when Bari asked him. He prevaricated -- to a random point on Democrats -- when asked because he didn't want to spell out "Yes, actually, prestige does matter a lot." Something that most, including the hosts of this great blog, agree on tacitly.
by acuozzo | 2025-10-19 18:25:20+00:00
Unless it's a contracting or union position, what you get is something resembling a contract, but your agreement to it comes with the mutual understanding between you and your employer that no effective enforcement body exists to uphold your interests.

If it says "you work 40 hours per week and have 4 weeks of paid vacation" and your employer, EVEN IN WRITING, compels you to work 60 hour weeks and not take any vacation at a later date, then your only real option is to find work elsewhere. The Department of Labor won't have your back and you likely won't have enough money to afford a lawyer to fight on your behalf longer than the corporate lawyers your company has on staff.

Many programmers don't get treated this way because of the market, but abusive treatment of employees runs rampant in blue collar professions.

Need proof? Look at how few UNPAID weeks of maternity leave new mothers are entitled to under the law. This should tell you everything you need to know.

I have personally seen women return to work LESS THAN A WEEK after delivering a baby because they couldn't afford to not do so.
by YZF | 2025-10-19 18:25:27+00:00
We've replaced human jobs in the past not just made them more efficient. Horses (and all the jobs to do with them) were completely displaced by cars. Those jobs aren't more efficient, they're gone. Similar with many other jobs during the industrial revolution.

This is not a zero sum game. For an economy to exist we need consumers. For consumers to exist we need people to have jobs and be paid. So the equilibrium is that there will be some new jobs somewhere, not done by robots, that will pay people enough to consume the (better and cheaper) goods made by those robots. Or we'll just have a lot of leisure time and get paid by the government. Or (like some other discussion thread) we'll all be wiped out or slaves in the salt mines if the elites can just sustain/improve without us and are able to enforce it. Either way, it's not the scenario where we're out of jobs sitting at home.