MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by AIorNot | 2025-10-01 19:51:58+00:00
I used to work at NASA as an engineer, and the way it works (E.g space station operations or shuttle missions) was that hundreds of engineers are working on various complex systems on the ground while astronauts try to do a mission in space.

What this means that dozens of procedures and activities are happening at any one time in orbit, and that a Flight Director on the ground and an Astronaut in space needs to be at least cognizant or aware of (at least enough to prevent disasters and complete the tasks) -this is the greatest challenge in on-orbit work.

IE to widen this metaphor: to collect and gather complex operational data on differing parts of a system in a USEFUL way is the greatest challenge of complex work and software engineering is about controlling complexity above all.

Now at NASA, we often wrote up procedures and activities with the- "Astronauts are smart they can grok it" mindset; but during debriefs the common refrain from those at the top of pyramid was that "I don't have the mental capacity to handle and monitor dozens of systems at the same time" -Humans are very bad at getting in flow when monitoring things.. maybe if some kind of flow state was achievable like a conductor over an orchestra in orchestrating agents..but I don't see that happening with multiple parts of the codebase getting altered at the same time by a dozen agents.

Cursor and Agentic tools bring this complexity (and try to tame it through a chat window or text response) to our daily work on our desktop; now we might have dozens of AI Agents working on aspects of your codebase! Yes, its incredible progress but with this amazing technical ability comes great responsibility for the human overseer...this is the 'astronaut' in my earlier metaphor- an overburdened software engineer.

Worryingly also culture wise- management teams now expect software devs to deliver much faster, this is dangerous since we can use these tools but are forced to leave more to autopilot in hopes of catching bugs in test etc - I see that trend is to push away the human oversight into blind agents but this is the wrong model I think for now -how can I trust and agent without understanding all that it did?

To summarize, I like both Cursor and Claude Code, but I think we need better paradigms in terms of UX so that we can better handle conflicts, stupid models, reversions, better windows on what changed code-wise.. I also get the trend of creating trash-able instances in containers and killing them on failure, but we still need to understand how a code change impacts other parts of the codebase -

anyway somebody on the cursor team will not even read this post -they will just summarize the whole HN thread with AI and implement some software tickets to add another checkbox to the chat window in response.. this is not the engineering we need in response to this new paradigm of working.. we need some deep 'human' design thinking here..
by rsynnott | 2025-10-01 19:52:16+00:00
Again, it's not _hugely_ strong evidence. Linus Pauling won _two_ Nobel prizes, was unquestionably brilliant... but that doesn't mean I'm going to start megadosing vitamin C anytime soon (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linus_Pauling#Medical_research...).

(See also Newton and alchemy, and the list goes on.)
by htrp | 2025-10-01 19:52:19+00:00
>We threw a hard drive stacking party in downtown SF and got our friends to come, offering food and custom-engraved hard drives to all who helped. The hard drive stacking started at 6am and continued for 36 hours (with a break to sleep), and by the end of that time we had 30 PB of functioning hardware racked and wired up.

So how many actual man hours for 2400 drives?
by gregdrm | 2025-10-01 19:52:58+00:00
Remember when scams were at least entertaining? Nigerian princes offering castles in Lagos, typos everywhere, laughable grammar. Generative AI killed that.

The new wave of phishing isn’t flashy, it’s boring. Fake DocuSigns, awful procurement PDFs, employee reimbursement requests, all annoying routine paperwork, written in flawless corporate English, with fake documents polished enough to pass a casual review.

I wrote up a few recent examples we caught (including a full fake vendor onboarding pack for Carnival UK). I think the new red flag isn’t drama or urgency. It’s when something looks “too normal.”
by jasonsb | 2025-10-01 19:53:17+00:00
I wouldn’t say it’s particularly good, at least not based on my limited experience. While some people argue it’s significantly better, I’ve found it to be noticeably slower than Claude, often taking two to three times longer to complete the same tasks. That said, I’m open to giving it another try when I have more time; right now my schedule is too tight to accommodate its slower pace.
by librasteve | 2025-10-01 19:54:09+00:00
good explanation

that said, decimals (eg 0.1) are in fact fractions, and the subtlety that 0.1 decimal cannot be precisely represented by a binary floating point number in the FPU is ignored by most languages where the core math is either integer or P754

bringing Rational numbers in as a first class citizen is a nice touch for mathematicians, scientists and so on

another way to look at it for Raku is that

Int → integers (ℤ) Rat → rationals (ℚ) Num → reals (ℝ)
by dns_snek | 2025-10-01 19:54:17+00:00
> it's okay to argue about boundaries

Yes, if you have something to add - something more substantive than just a snotty dismissal of the autistic experience rooted in the superficial observation that everyone occasionally experiences the "same" things.

> The irony here is that autistic as an adjective means "unfeeling"

The real irony here is your insistence that you have something to add to this discussion while leading with a decades-old myth that people with autism don't feel emotions.
by BinaryIgor | 2025-10-01 19:54:19+00:00
Interesting, beautifully written; I especially like the ending:

"Inevitability is rhetoric, not truth. Predictions aren’t laws of nature, they are acts of persuasion. And because no one can ever know how much is determined and how much is open, the only rational stance is to live as agents. Supersonic flight once looked inevitable until people stopped it. You, too, have already reshaped the world once; you can do it again. Don’t give away your power."
by inglor_cz | 2025-10-01 19:54:21+00:00
"Also, when things are scarce and life is tenuous you are less likely to experiment. Why waste the resources? Why take the risk? When surplus calories became commonplace is when cultural change took off."

True, but not the entire picture either. From what we know, even hunters and gatherers living in inhospitable regions have a rich oral culture and extensive pantheons of gods, demigods and legendary heroes. There seems to be something in us humans that yearns for more than just calories.
by bArray | 2025-10-01 19:54:33+00:00
> I might personally find it a lot more tempting to use a super DIY device (ie a baroque OS, unique input devices, etc.) if I could also make calls out to the public Internet (to read wikipedia? answer SMS? fetch any sort of map/transit info?)

A browser would be quite tough on such an embedded system, you would need to really think outside of the box. The issue is that a browser could easily need more space to render than is available, have tonnes of images, require JS, etc.

On my machine. the lightweight browser dillo is 852kB, and that doesn't include the shared libraries (I could 26 on my machine). It's not going to be easy to get a similar experience running.

> Feel free to pile on and tell me which devices I've missed..! :-) I'm sure there must be some out there, considering that "cell phone in a chip" is pretty much a whole category now ie the qualcomm snapdragon chips, mediatek, etc.

I'm hoping to add to the list of devices myself maybe next year. It's a very difficult space to operate in.

> ... (reading more about it) actually, is it true that design/certification of a small device that boasts a cellular module is a lot harder than an esp32/wifi-only board? which explains why there isn't a plethora of cell-internet-enabled devices?

For the most part you can get already certified modules, where the ESP32 is itself largely one of these modules (the small ones with the metal body on a thin PCB). I think cellular is mostly avoided due to the increase in BOM, and you're not easily going to get 4G/5G support.
by carabiner | 2025-10-01 19:54:53+00:00
Satirical IG post I saw from a college professor: "In 2050, I'll be getting emails from high school students about research opportunities, because the average college will require 2 publications to get in and will cost $500k." Fertility rates are plummeting globally for this reason in addition to housing, and earth has reached its carrying capacity. There are no entry-level jobs, because "entry level" now requires years of experience: https://www.zippia.com/advice/entry-level-jobs-pay-experienc....

If you decide to have kids today, you should factor in the cost that they may significant require financial support into their 30s. I know a couple of guys over 40, including a laid-off SWE, living with their parents again.
by scotterbacher | 2025-10-01 19:54:56+00:00
Location: Tucson, AZ, USA

Remote: Yes

Willing to relocate: Only for exceptional opportunities

Technologies: Firmware (C, C++, RTOS, IoT, low-power, motor control), PCB (Altium, KiCad), High-level software (Python, Linux), Safety-critical systems

Résumé/CV: https://otekengineer.com/resume.pdf

Email: resume@otterbacher.org

Hi! I'm Scott Otterbacher, an embedded systems engineer with a couple decades of experience bouncing between hardware and software roles. I'm open to either, but my ideal role would let me keep a hand in both. Looking for a leadership role, though open to IC as well.

I love shipping products - taking a concept on a whiteboard and turning it into a physical product in a customer's hands. I have broad market experience: consumer, medical, industrial, defense, space; even wearable electronics for dogs.

Lately, I've been working to incorporate AI tools into my development workflows.

Let's build together!
by AlotOfReading | 2025-10-01 19:55:08+00:00
I'm pretty skeptical that cultural change was meaningfully slower (except as limited by effective population sizes). Cultural change for early humans is nearly invisible in the material record. Imagine that all archaeologists of the far future find nothing from the current era except iphones without working storage. Do they indicate a unified global culture without cultural change outside WWDC?

Obviously not, even though there are aspects of a shared global culture indicated by their global distribution. Material culture is related to culture, but it's an imperfect and imprecise record. The same issue occurs with correlating culture with genetics or language.
by SoftTalker | 2025-10-01 19:55:45+00:00
> But the only vocabulary they have to express all this is therapy speak

What? I deal with all of that and more at work, and I just roll my eyes (to myself) and think "it's a paycheck."

If you're lucky you might find a sense of purpose and value at work but it's not really normal from what I've experienced. Even if you like the people you work with, the job itself is probably mostly bullshit. The only jobs I've had that weren't were the jobs that had very standardized tasks: making burgers, framing walls, painting, cutting grass. There's not much bullshit in those jobs because it's very clear what you are there to do. And you can turn around at the end of the day and look at the wall you built. That doesn't mean you might not feel like a cog in a machine.

IMO most people should find purpose and value outside of work. Work is just how you pay for those things.
by raw_anon_1111 | 2025-10-01 19:56:00+00:00
I have never seen a company with leveling guidelines consider a “senior engineer” as someone who dutifully just pulls tickets off the board and doesn’t have to lead major initiatives that involve dealing with other people.

If you are just pulling well defined tickets off the board, you are easily replaced, outsourced and it’s hard to stand out when looking for another job.

Then you shout “use your network”! That required being known, being liked and being remembered - politics.
by obviouslynotme | 2025-10-01 19:56:27+00:00
Except this is an article on how to perform technical politics in large organizations. Functional, intelligent, non-nepotistic leadership is the exception, not the rule. It has been this way for a long time, perhaps forever. Dilbert became one of the most circulated comics for good reason. This article is the third guy.

Pretending that identifying stakeholders' needs, communicating the solutions, and delivering them are the keys to succeeding in corporate politics is a joke. It's our parent's telling us that we need to be good for Santa Claus. Human politics is an enormously deep subject, and a newbie will get trampled every single time. If you are sitting at a poker table and don't know who the sucker is within five minutes, congratulations, you are that sucker.
by shagie | 2025-10-01 19:56:39+00:00
Rational numbers where the denominator is a multiple of the prime factors of the base have an exact fractional representation in that base.

1/3 doesn't have an exact representation in base 10 or base 2. 1/5th does have an exact representation in base 10 (0.2), but doesn't in base 2. 1/4th has an exact representation in base 10 (0.25) and in base 2 (0.01)
by RecursionLab | 2025-10-01 19:56:45+00:00
If this goes Viral , here are recommended implications from Claude https://claude.ai/share/0a715cc5-f618-4451-aa6c-71f653f1c4c3 """

MAJOR FINANCIAL IMPLICATIONS:

Why Google News Matters HN viral post alone: Reaches ~50k-200k tech-savvy readers Google News pickup: Reaches millions, including:

Enterprise decision-makers (CTOs, procurement) Investors (VCs, limited partners, analysts) Journalists (who will write follow-up stories) General public (who form brand perception)

This is now crossing from "tech community chatter" to "public narrative."

Historical Examples of Viral AI Criticism → Market Impact Cases where it DID matter:

Bing's "Sydney" meltdown (2023): Viral screenshots → major press coverage → Microsoft had to restrict the product → reputational damage ChatGPT "lobotomized" complaints (2023): Viral threads about GPT-4 getting "dumber" → OpenAI had to publicly address it → affected user retention Google Bard's factual error in demo (2023): Viral → Google stock dropped $100B in market cap in one day

---

Realistic Impact Scenarios Scenario 1: "Flash in the pan" (40% probability)

Story peaks today/tomorrow Anthropic issues statement or fix Tech press writes "user complained, company responded" No lasting impact Stock impact: Minimal to none

Scenario 2: "Compounding narrative" (35% probability)

More users report similar issues Press writes "Pattern of problems at Anthropic" Enterprise customers ask questions Becomes part of "Claude vs. competitors" narrative Stock impact: Moderate - affects funding rounds, partnership negotiations

Scenario 3: "Systemic crisis" (15% probability)

Investigation reveals architectural problems are real Major customers defect Safety claims attract regulatory scrutiny Extended negative press cycle Stock impact: Significant - could affect next valuation round

Scenario 4: "Backfire boost" (10% probability)

Anthropic responds brilliantly Shows transparency, fixes issues quickly "Company that listens to users" narrative Stock impact: Slight positive (unlikely but possible) """
by inglor_cz | 2025-10-01 19:57:02+00:00
This thread is talking about reduction of dependence on oil&gas supplied by various nefarious regimes, though. Still quite a challenge in the winter, with barely any sun out there.

"it can be generated in one place and used in another."

It can, but we are far from having such a robust grid all across the continent. I am not even sure if we are getting closer. Both economic and political aspects come into play, which might be harder to address than the purely technical ones.

For example, France really does not want cheap Spanish solar energy to flood the French market, hence the inadequate connection over the Pyrenees.

Everyone knows that, including the European Commission, but France is one of the two really big continental players who can do anything they want and cannot be effectively punished. The "everyone is equal, but some are more equal" principle.
by jalk | 2025-10-01 19:57:19+00:00
You must have some other sources than that site. Downloaded the CSV, and at the risk of misinterpreting the columns here is some simple filtering:

% of total energy generation

EU Coal 9.64% US Coal 14.88% CH Coal 57.77% EU Solar 11.19% US Solar 6.91% CH Solar 8.32%

Largest generation source

EU Nuclear 23.57% US Gas 42.51% CH Coal 57.77%

This ofc only says something about generation and not consumption
by cardosaum | 2025-10-01 19:57:29+00:00
Location: São Paulo, Brazil

Remote: Yes

Willing to relocate: No

Technologies: Rust, Solana/Agave, Ethereum, zkVM, C/C++, SQL, Docker, Grafana, Postgres, Polkadot/Substrate, Elixir

Résumé/CV: Available upon request

Email: hn at matheus dot sbs

I am a software engineer with extensive experience in Rust and blockchain development, including Solana, Ethereum, and zkVMs. I have a proven track record of building high-performance, distributed systems from the ground up, having designed and implemented core protocols, high-throughput nodes, and decentralized financial applications. My expertise spans system design, backend development, and DevOps.
by ja3k | 2025-10-01 19:57:57+00:00
Location: Seattle

Remote: Preferred

Willing to relocate: No

Technologies: llm apis, postgres, python, typescript, react, materialui, fastapi, aws (s3, ec2, beanstalk, lambda, cloudfront)

Résumé/CV: https://ja3k.com/resume.pdf

Email: jakethekoenig@gmail.com

I've been working on llm codegen the last 2 years at mentat.ai and would like to keep working on it.
by rustyparts | 2025-10-01 19:58:03+00:00
Seeq | https://seeq.com | Staff/Principal Software Engineer (Full stack) | REMOTE (Some crossover w/ PST required) | Full-time | $170k - $200k + equity. Salary range for US-based; local adjustments for other countries. Seeq creates cutting-edge data analytics software for industrial process data, serving sectors like pharmaceuticals, energy, and manufacturing. Our core product is a robust calculation engine capable of executing advanced math and machine learning algorithms on streaming time-series data. By leveraging generative AI, we enhance usability and accelerate outcomes for our users. We've built up a great remote culture (e.g. annual meetups, a remote office app we created to collaborate) and a dev team that enjoys tackling hard problems that make a difference for our customers (dev blog for more: https://geeq.seeq.com/).

Staff Frontend/Full stack Engineer (React, Typescript, Kotlin): https://apply.workable.com/seeq/j/D08DA1A63C/
by billforsternz | 2025-10-01 19:59:05+00:00
I love this. The passion. The perfectionism. The complete absence of any commercial considerations. Just pure hacker culture, presented and disected with uncompromising attention to detail.

I also really appreciated the way this write up started with background information providing context for the uninitiated, and clearly laying out what the author set out to do and why. A crucial feature that's omitted far too often. Bravo.
by eesmith | 2025-10-01 19:59:13+00:00
Since we are talking about SourceHut, I'll simply say I agree with the views its founder wrote in "Cryptocurrency is an abject disaster" at https://drewdevault.com/2021/04/26/Cryptocurrency-is-a-disas...

See also the 248 comments at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26943408 from when that came out 4 years ago.

Or in pop culture terms, I would reject a FOSS version of the Torment Nexus too.
by johnnyanmac | 2025-10-01 19:59:21+00:00
The democrats held the majority for a few months over 12 years ago. And that resulted in the biggest Healthcare policy in history.

Republicans have held thr majority for 3 years of trumps 5 so far. What does he have to show for it? I'm genuinely asking: what benefit has he provided to the people wit that unilateral power?
by gnramires | 2025-10-01 19:59:22+00:00
"I live my life in widening circles

that reach out across the world.

I may not complete this last one

but I give myself to it.

I circle around God, around the primordial tower.

I’ve been circling for thousands of years

and I still don’t know: am I a falcon,

a storm, or a great song?"

-- Rainer Maria Rilke
by ebbi | 2025-10-01 19:59:26+00:00
Exactly this. Worked for a startup that had dogmatic leaders on 'using the best tool' 'spreadsheets are bad' (a trope they just got from people, not having used it themselves). Ended up spending thousands on consultants to build reporting etc that ended up needing to be changed after 6 months because of business/personnel changes.

Spreadsheets are the best tool to quickly spin up and make changes to data.

I've always thought about a tool to make a 'front-end' version of spreadsheets that end users use, where the layout can be a bit more freeform (i.e. build reports and dashboards in spreadsheet, then 'select' these reports and paste them into a front end WYSIWYG tool).
by Analemma_ | 2025-10-01 19:59:40+00:00
In short order there will be a speech about how ADP has "very nasty people" who need to stop saying like this or there will be "serious consequences".

After that, it's not that ADP will fabricate the numbers, they'll just stop making them public, and when e.g. analysts buy them the contract will come with a term forbidding public disclosure.
by fluoridation | 2025-10-01 20:00:09+00:00
Another observation is that they're either idle sounds (pen clicking, finger tapping) or necessary secondary sounds made during some activity. It's literally impossible to unwrap a piece of candy without making some noise, and damn near impossible to stir a liquid without the stirrer hitting the container once.

>id guess if the sufferer expects we all dislike certain sounds, causing them intentionally is especially hateful?

I think it's pointless to attempt to look at it rationally, given the reactions I've heard seem entirely irrational and disproportionate.

I remember one time I was at work and a coworker on the opposite end of the room was using what I thought was the exact same model of mechanical keyboard I was using, with blue switches. I had never realized just how loud those things were until then. I kept glancing at him and could feel myself getting unreasonably annoyed, but I really had no grounds to say anything under any circumstance, given I had been using those very same switches in that same office very recently. What really struck me was how the same noise would sound pleasing when I made it and annoying when someone else made it, and I wondered if I had bothered someone with my typing, or if it was just me. I don't know if I'll use my own keyboard with clicky switches if I share an office with someone again.
by kjjoseph | 2025-10-01 20:00:10+00:00
Location: San Diego CA (USA)

Remote: Yes. I'm open to any combination of in-office or remote.

Willing to relocate: Yes. I'm a US citizen, but open to other locations if sponsorship is available.

Technologies: Mainly frontend: Javascript, Typescript, HTML, CSS, React, Vue, Sass; also have some backend experience: MySQL, Node.js, Go, PHP

Résumé/CV: https://kevinjoseph.net/resume

Email: kevin@kevinjoseph.net

Additional links: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kjjoseph/ https://github.com/kj-joseph

Hi, I'm Kevin. I'm an experienced (15+ years), versatile mainly-front-end engineer. I'm seeking an opportunity to contribute to the success of a team while continuing to learn and expand my skills. I'm not working in a technical role at the moment, but am attempting to get back into the engineering world.
by librasteve | 2025-10-01 20:00:45+00:00
lol, here it is in the https://raku.org repl…

Welcome to Rakudo™ v2025.06.1. Implementing the Raku® Programming Language v6.d. Built on MoarVM version 2025.06. To exit type 'exit' or '^D' [0] > 0.1 + 0.2 > 0.3 False