MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by bloaf | 2025-10-18 01:09:02+00:00
Certainly:

I can tell the rye devs like the idea of everything being a function. But in their very first "language basics" section, they introduce assignment not as a function call, but as some kind of magic that happens when you have colons in a name.

So when we get to the "looping" section, it is the first time we have seen a colon-having-name outside the context of assignment:

> loop 3 { ::i , prns i }

And it is explained that the above line of code is "injecting" values for the code block to "pick up".

But right away this begs a number of questions:

* Why the double-colon? I would assume each loop-body-evaluation happens in its own scope, and that we're not creating global variables, so a single colon (:i) should be sufficient, right?

* What are we doing, conceptually? Is the ::i meant to be "a function which when given a value modifies its enclosing scope to include the symbol i" or "an unassigned symbol which the loop function will use to do something akin to term-rewriting with?"

* Do we really need a symbol at all, or could we just have a the point-free loop "loop 3 {prns}"?

* If we can't have the point free thing, is it because somehow the injected value would end up "to the left" of prns, if so, why would we want that?

* If we're doing something more like term rewriting, why isn't the symbol given as a separate argument from the body?
by almostgotcaught | 2025-10-18 01:09:23+00:00
> Measuring oneself as an engineer by the title of the salary band you're in is a disservice.

It's really not that deep - people do this because both a title and salary are effectively money you can bank and that's the only thing that matters - we don't work grueling, stressful, tedious, jobs just the sake of "a hard day's work".

> Not when I was promoted from Senior Engineer to Staff Engineer, but rather the after-hours work I did with Dimtriy to expand our offering to include IPv6.

I wish people would introspect more deeply instead of perpetuating toxic relationships with corporations; you're basically saying your most gratifying experience at work (where you are given a small slice of the net on your labor) was when you did something completely abstract and not when you got more money, more status, more whatever? Ok that's like saying my most gratifying experience at school was not when I graduated but when I had to sit in detention. Note I could've said "when I discovered XYZ mathematical principle" but I didn't because they're both equally as arbitrary in the overall scheme (learn skills and move into the workforce).
by sarchertech | 2025-10-18 01:09:52+00:00
He has good relationships and is respected by experts in many fields. If he was dismissed as a crank he couldn’t have found 3 incredibly respected scientists to debate his theories in one of his books.

Plenty of people think his theories are wrong or unlikely. The only people “dismissing them as crank science” are people in that have unwavering faith in the idea that consciousness arises from computable processes.
by nwienert | 2025-10-18 01:10:36+00:00
True but the range isn’t really outside of the average range and luxury cars aren’t that uncommon. The deals were because they were high priced but don’t nearly account for the difference. 125k msrp now going for 55k with low miles is really something else, even if people got them for 105 or so which is what I heard, that’s still the 60% I mentioned.
by narrator | 2025-10-18 01:10:38+00:00
I read political books from the 70s and everything is the same. It's been the same since the mid-60s. That's when the western narrative shifted from technological progress to environmentalism and the lawyer took over from the engineer as the prime mover in society. That was 60 years ago. 60 years before that was 1900 and the world was vastly vastly different compared to our world of the 1960s. 60 years before that was 1840 and the world was vastly vastly different.

I'm thinking that AI,robots and the rise of China is going to change things radically. Human labor will not be an economic constraint, but that won't lead to unlimited abundance because the constraint will be externalities.

Most of the technologically unemployed will wake up and do whatever AI tells them to do on a daily basis. Their lives will improve because AI is better than they are naturally at everything. This will lead to some weird outcomes. Especially if AI is not acting in the interest of each individual, but in the interests of the collective. This will cause AI to have to solve trolley problems.
by Nevermark | 2025-10-18 01:10:50+00:00
That is breaking a law that protects patients' privacy. Nobody should distribute private information given to them under an agreement to maintain privacy.

Nobody is forced to abide by HIPPA, without their consent. Nobody is forced to sign a HIPAA agreement.

In fact, nobody is forced to work in the medical professions, or look at private medical data, in the US. And no law prohibits asking a patient or caregivers if they are ok with some harmless informal sharing, and explaining the urge to them...

This is similar to the voluntary civil jeopardy of signing an NDA before being informed of trade secrets. Penalties may vary.
by thelastgallon | 2025-10-18 01:11:46+00:00
> China’s cost advantage in turbine manufacturing had grown “huge” at about “40 per cent, at least” compared with western rivals. Greater turbine costs result in higher electricity prices as the cost of installation is passed on to consumers.

Good riddance, they are such an eyesore! We really need coal plants in city centers and suburbs. They are big and the smokestacks are so beautiful!
by gilfoy | 2025-10-18 01:13:03+00:00
I commented on a similar post earlier, but my entire neighborhood, hundreds of houses, came with them preinstalled. Can’t even leave my house without being surveilled.

Some people have the setting on where it starts announcing stuff any time it sees a person, which it does all the way to the sidewalk. So you go on a walk and get yelled at through a super shitty speaker several times.

And it’s about as dystopian as you can imagine with people posting recordings constantly on the neighborhood Facebook group and arguing.

I swapped to HomeKit secure video because of no additional subscription, included in the iCloud one I’m paying anyway. Allegedly end to end encrypted too.
by chris_armstrong | 2025-10-18 01:13:03+00:00
The ICFP/SPLASH papers are now starting to find their way to HN.

This was a HUGE combined programming conference with several competing tracks over 7 days. You can find the program here ^1 (you can often find a link to the abstract or full paper if you click on it)

Streams from the sessions will also show up here^2 (you’ll need to match the day and room and ff to the time it appeared)

^1: https://conf.researchr.org/program/icfp-splash-2025/program-...?

^2: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLyrlk8Xaylp5ihrTVeOSaylaB...
by airesearcher | 2025-10-18 01:14:21+00:00
Actually - on that particular topic - you might want to read the articles and the math before forming an opinion - start from information geometry and fisher information metrics of information processing - which is what that particular line of thought is all about...Everything on that particular line of exploration is built up from fisher information where "consciousness" is defined as a high complexity information processing geometry and so its measurable. Because its defined as a measurable physical process, not as a magical quality, it's a mathematical argument. But of course that would require reading, and sufficient knowledge to understand it.
by soraminazuki | 2025-10-18 01:14:27+00:00
That's the narrative from the new Ruby Central, which feels like a wild distortion of the actual situation.

You’re likely aware, though it’s worth mentioning, that the new owners ousted all existing maintainers without any explanation[1]. This follows a prior incident where access was revoked and later restored, with assurances that it was a mistake. This situation can only be viewed as a malicious attack, in which only the new owners had a full understanding of what transpired. Changing the password was a reasonable and appropriate response that any competent person in a similar position would've considered.

I’m shocked that we seem to be experiencing a Freenode 2.0 situation, but with some supporting the usurpers instead of the longstanding maintainers. It’s only been four years since the Freenode debacle, yet certain types of people seem to have grown bolder since then. A "win" for freedom of expression, huh?

[1]: https://pup-e.com/goodbye-rubygems.pdf
by tim333 | 2025-10-18 01:15:09+00:00
I'd bet the other way because I think Moore's law like advances in compute will make things much easier for researchers.

Like I was watching Hinton explain LLMs to Jon Stewart and they were saying they came up with the algorithm in 1986 but then it didn't really work for the decades until now because the hardware wasn't up to it (https://youtu.be/jrK3PsD3APk?t=1899)

If things were 1000x faster you could semi randomly try all sorts of arrangements of neural nets to see which think better.
Show HN: AI code generator with 93% validation success (Python)
by tekodu | 2025-10-18 01:15:44+00:00
I spent 3 months building and validating an AI engine that generates production-ready Python code. Just finished comprehensive testing: 14/15 diverse specs worked first try (93% success).

What it does: Generates working Python tools from plain English descriptions. Not toy code - actual production-grade with security, error handling, and logging.

Validation results: • 15 diverse tests (data processing, APIs, business logic, file handling) • 14 passed completely (93%) • 1 failed: real-time streaming processor with 12+ requirements (distributed systems complexity) • Average: 1.5 iterations to production-ready

Example generations that worked: • Invoice matching system (18K chars, fuzzy matching, reconciliation) • JWT authentication API (Flask + SQLite + bcrypt) • Web scraper with ethical safeguards (robots.txt, rate limiting) • Multi-API integration (OpenWeather + Twilio)

What struggled: • Extremely complex specs (10+ independent requirements)

Try it: https://bauform-engine.fly.dev

Feedback form: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfH_4s_pheVTePcaIt0...

Looking for honest feedback from developers - what works, what breaks, what would make this useful for your workflow.

Beta stage. Python only (for now). Best for focused tools with clear requirements.
by Jach | 2025-10-18 01:16:13+00:00
I've wanted to see a version that segmented rappers by topic clusters of what they rap about, with fine enough details that you could take something like "drugs" and drill down or aggregate specific ones, and even have some sentiment data as well like pot good/X bad. It'd be fun to see who has the most unique general topics and topics only covered by one rapper. I can see how that might be biased in favor of total lifetime output, but perhaps not. My favorite dead rapper is Eyedea, his album output didn't exceed the 35k word minimum for the vocab list but his topic breadth was pretty wide. I've thought LLMs might be good enough to do that for a lot of songs now, if they don't have a panic attack over the language anyway, but I haven't experimented. Maybe someone else can be sniped into doing it~
by srcreigh | 2025-10-18 01:16:17+00:00
It’s not a DHCP server the way you’re thinking. Pxehost only replies with a couple fields for PXE boot, and only to clients that are declaring themselves as PXE boot client. It doesn’t interfere with the normal dhcp server - the PXE client will get 2 broadcast replies, one from pxehost and one from the dhcp server, and will combine the info
by supertrope | 2025-10-18 01:16:32+00:00
Cities could create bus and bike lanes literally overnight. Load up a truck with concrete parking curbs and cones and drop them. No one is going to bike until the infrastructure makes it safe and convenient. Like safe enough to let a kid or 65 year old woman bike.

We just choose to continue subsidizing a triangle of car dependency. The government finances toll-free roads, mandates parking minimums, and enforces restrictive zoning. Businesses and real estate consumers pick up the tab on the real cost of free parking (higher rents and mortgages, parking garage construction costs). Drivers pour money into car loans, insurance, maintenance, and fuel.
by m463 | 2025-10-18 01:17:07+00:00
> Many games that GOG sells and a very large share of the new releases are DRMed. The Galaxy client is often how the DRM gets applied.

Can you explain that assertion?

That's not in any way what gog says. Even california law says gog sells you games (while steam only licenses them)

https://www.gog.com/about_gog

I have a disconnected windows 11 vm, and install and play gog games in it all the time. Never an issue.
by MichaelNolan | 2025-10-18 01:17:09+00:00
The IEA (2024 WEO) has coal peaking in 2027, and all other fossil fuels peaking before 2030. Historically the IEA has vastly underestimated the growth in renewables. The 2025 report comes out soon, so we will see if anything changed in their prediction.

https://www.iea.org/reports/world-energy-outlook-2024
by tw04 | 2025-10-18 01:17:25+00:00
> Website hosted in US publishing truth about Ukraine war - even calling it a war is already a felony in Russia - is it legal or illegal?

Try hosting one of those sites and then fly to Russia and let us know. I think you’ll find it’s quite illegal and will be enforced to the fullest extent of the law the second you enter their jurisdiction.

It turns out it doesn’t actually matter whether you or I think the law in question is BS. We don’t run Russia or determine what laws they enact.
by raddan | 2025-10-18 01:17:59+00:00
I dunno, man. The first time I visited SF was in 2001. I was stunned back then by the homelessness problem. I vividly remember walking down the sidewalk near the Transamerica building during the morning commute and seeing folks in business attire casually stepping OVER a person sprawled out in the middle of the sidewalk. Nobody cared, even then, because it was normal. On subsequent visits, I’ve seen plenty more homelessness, had a bike seat stolen, etc. If you had a good experience a decade ago, awesome, but you also sort of got lucky if you didn’t see any of the other problems. Maybe it’s worse now, but from the standpoint of someone who grew up near Boston (which also has plenty of homeless folks and addicts), it never seemed “tourist excellent” to me. It’s a real American city with all the standard problems.
by dghlsakjg | 2025-10-18 01:18:41+00:00
A belt driven AC powered by a combustion engine is not at all the same thing as a DC electric heat pump system.

Yes they both use compressors and refrigerant, but essentially none of the expensive and hard to engineer parts are interchangeable.

If that was true you could just replace your broken fridge with a car AC system, or for that matter just use a fridge to heat your house. After all they all use the same “not magical” technology.

As it turns out the underlying concept/technology is pretty simple, but adapting it to be fit for purpose is where the complexity lies.

If it was that easy the car companies would have done it instead of designing a novel resistive heating system that can only be used in their lowest volume cars.
by didibus | 2025-10-18 01:19:21+00:00
I'm not sure I totally see the disdain for MCP.

These skills also rely on tools, having a standard way to add tools to an agent is good, otherwise each agent has its own siloed tools.

But also, I remember MCP having support for resources no? These skills are just context (though I guess it can include executable scripts to help, but the article said most skills are just an instruction markdown).

So you could already have an MCP expose skills as resources, and you could already have the model automatically decide to include a resource based on the resource description.

Now I understand to add user created resources is pretty annoying, and maybe it's not great for people to easily exchange themselves resources. But you assume that Slack would make the best context to generate Slack gifs, and then expose that as a resource from their MCP along with a prompt template and some tools to help or to add the gif to your slack as emojis or what not.

You could even add Skills specifically to MCP, to that you can expose a combination of context resources and scripts or something.

That said, I agree that the overabundance for tools as MCP is not that good, some tools are so powerful, they can cover 90% of all other tool use cases. Bash tool can do so many things. A generic web browsing tool as well. That's been the problem with MCP as tools.

Skills appear to be a good technique as a user, and I actually already did similar things. I like formalizing it, and it's nice that Claude Code now automatically scans and includes their description header for the model to know it can load the rest. That's the exciting part.

But I do feel for the more general public, MCP resources + prompts + tools are a better avenue.
by blakey_vibes | 2025-10-18 01:19:42+00:00
I agree with the other answers here, but not everyone wants to be a founder.

sounds like you've got the skills - might need to put your marketing hat on for a bit and focus on the outcomes those skills translate to. in biz, there's two main outcomes everyone wants... either increased revenue, or decreased costs/improved productivity.

what impact would you make?
by rramadass | 2025-10-18 01:20:04+00:00
This was the most scariest quote for me;

One thing these other scientists brought up that was extremely surprising to her was that “mirror cells would likely be completely invisible to the human immune system,” Adamala added. “I used to think the immune system will find a way to detect any invading biomolecules. I didn’t know how chiral the immune system was.”

Saving grace and we need more scientists like her;

Adamala, along with her colleagues, chose not to renew her research grant, ending her lab’s work on mirror cells. She is focusing instead on discussions around how to regulate mirror life research.

Note: Stanford's detailed 300-page Technical Report on Mirror Bacteria: Feasibility and Risks linked to in the above article - https://purl.stanford.edu/cv716pj4036
by tptacek | 2025-10-18 01:20:53+00:00
Why should people need to understand the markup and JS for a generated static brochure page? That's the premise of this page.

I do, for my pages. But when I write a Word document, I have absolutely no fucking clue what any of the underlying formatting code means. I feel like people forget that for ordinary desktop publishing, HTML/JS is a gigantic step backwards. Getting us back to the status quo of the 1990s, whether it's LLMs or Weebly, would be a very good thing.
by raddan | 2025-10-18 01:21:36+00:00
Since we’re on a roll, we might as well deploy the military everywhere else we’ve tried things that don’t work. Clearly we can’t stop school shootings. Let’s put the military in schools. We can’t stop people without insurance from using the ER instead of regular doctor’s visits. Military! Prices are too high at the grocery store. Armed guards now!

The military cannot solve any of the domestic problems they’re being deployed to solve.
by 1970-01-01 | 2025-10-18 01:21:39+00:00
I think this is the first time I disagree with everything said. A properly motivated man can be whatever they want. Astronaut is absolutely within reach, along with anything else, with the exception of POTUS if you weren't born on US soil. Do not conflate your lack of 110% motivation to a cause/goal/solution as lies.
by Fade_Dance | 2025-10-18 01:22:06+00:00
In my experience (portfolio manager who has been at this for a while) the broad brush reasons and explanations are mostly backwards-looking and don't accurately explain short term price moves. For example, if in another timeline BTC held up during the risk-off, you would be reading headlines along the lines of "Traders no longer fear seized crypto sales, proving the deeper liquidity of the crypto market as institutional adoption grows."

Not that creative narrative thinking doesn't have a place, but that's best left to the global macro space. In reality, there just aren't that many discretionary traders reading about a 20B BTC seizure in Cambodia and hitting the bid because of it. The underlying forces are waves of speculation that smash through smaller narratives, and systematic flows like robot trading, hedging, spread trading, you name it. Same thing happens in the stock market. There are vanishingly small amounts of discretionary news based traders outside of small caps. Most of the assigned reasons for moves don't have much to do with price moves in reality.

If I had to name a "reason" though, I think you are under-playing the recent carnage a bit. The speculative names are getting taken out to the woodshed in many sectors. Earlier today I covered a few quantum shorts that were down nearly 20%... from earlier mid-week, and these have been some of the leading thematics of the shorter term cycle. Volatility is getting fairly hot. The systematic vol trader who manages that stuff in my book went flat after a long while of shorting vol, and another 35 year pro who manages the active short vol stuff refused to even touch today and parked it until Monday. I was personally forced into selling BTC yesterday in order to hedge options positions as well, anecdotally. Remember, this was opex, so hedging flows dominated the market this week across all asset classes (liquidity is increasingly interwoven).

In the pure crypto space, crypto saw est 10 billion in forced liquidations. Leverage was too high in spec names across the board, including robot positioning (prime broker reports model systematic positioning, and they are pretty full of risk, with implied selling in most timelines, even in slightly down tapes). Silver also dropped 5% and is finally seeing some serious downside volatility. Across all asset classes, speculative narratives are getting hit hard, and crypto generally has correlation with that if it's stretched to the upside.

I think it's a bit late to the game to be pulling out the "gold is a better crypto" card as well. That's been going for months. I'm starting to get texts about how much money x person has made from gold miners, etc. Probably about time for that to unwind... Many areas in crypto were on that sort of bandwagon. Ex: Ethereum treasury had a typical speculative mania going on until the recent unwind. Occam's razor probably says just stick to that when it comes to explaining price. Or better yet, just be agnostic on shorter time-frames.
by acdha | 2025-10-18 01:22:29+00:00
We take the bus all of the time here in DC. I’ve literally never once encountered someone like that.

I’ve been panhandled a couple of times (in as many decades) and there’ve been a few people yelling at each other, but they left everyone alone.

On the driving front, though, I’ve had a bunch of people with anger management issues threaten to kill me and the only times in my adult life that I’ve credibly been threatened with a fistfight were by people driving who resented being expected to stop for pedestrians in the crosswalk. The bus crowd is a lot more chill.
by topspin | 2025-10-18 01:23:41+00:00
> Unless something dramatic changes

Dramatic things happen with regularity. Wars, viruses, economic calamities... there is no predicting any of it. For all you or I know 4 years from now the (D)s will own everything. Maybe then Ofcom gets a hearing. Maybe Ofcom doesn't exist any longer. This misses the point.

The point is that the hubris exhibited here, in this forum, and also by this lawyer, behaving as though there is some perpetual immunity in effect, is naïve. It is entirely plausible that some foreign regulator with intentions that happen to align well with the prerogatives of prevailing office holders right now or at any point in the future could have have powerful leverage in the US.