MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
Ask HN: What's the Least Amount of Process a Small Team Can Get Away With?
by _phnd_ | 2025-11-17 13:30:23+00:00
Before we sat around screens we sat around campfires telling stories. We’re hardwired to be storytellers, and that’s how we fundamentally connect with other people and understand the world.

I’ve been thinking about how KISS a small team could go and still stay productive and aligned. This is my take:

1) The story unfolds. Repeating meetings where team hash out the next steps to be done before the next meeting

2) The plot. A plain text document in the repo showing what has been done, what needs doing, and any related notes or comments

Here is an example of the plain text story/narrative of the project:

```

# Project: Cloud Cost Dashboard

Enable easy access to cloud cost data for the team.

## Integration

DONE Cloud cost API integrated with billing system @bob

## Dash board

Dashboard must pull data from AWS, Azure, and GCP for comparison.

TODO Set up a cloud cost reporting dashboard @alice TODO Train team on how to use the dashboard @alice

```

The following rules apply:

- A task is either in status TODO or DONE and it fits exactly on one line

- Add @name to assign tasks

- New TODOs are added at the bottom (so look there for tasks to pick)

- Feel free to add any free text/notes etc to the file to provide context and insight

As the project progresses the story unfolds and self documents.

BONUS: Use the task line for the commit message

Some questions:

- Does this approach seem like enough to keep a small team productive and focused?

- What essentials are missing (given a small team context)?

Would love to hear your thoughts!
by KurSix | 2025-11-17 13:30:24+00:00
To me, this classification overlooks the largest and arguably most profitable class of AI products: models that aren't the interface but are embedded deep within existing systems as infrastructure components, for example:

- Anti-fraud systems in fintech

- Supply chain optimization

- Predictive maintenance for equipment

- Models for medical image analysis

They don't have a "chat," and they aren't "agents", they are just APIs that solve one highly specialized task, but do so with extreme precision and reliability. They don't compete with ChatGPT because they solve completely different problems, and they're the ones that have been bringing in real money for years
by pjmlp | 2025-11-17 13:30:57+00:00
People keep forgetting Microsoft is one of the biggest publishers in the market, given the number of owned studios.

The box under the TV is a tiny part of the picture that makes Microsoft Games Studios and related subsidiaries.

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

If Microsoft really gets pissed due to SteamOS and Proton, there are quite a few titles Valve will be missing on.
by Cthulhu_ | 2025-11-17 13:31:05+00:00
Definitely could be a factor; I know of a programmer who works at a Dutch company that mainly does ports of AAA games (he may be on here too, hello!), he once wrote a comment or forum post about how he developed an algorithm to put data on a disk in the order that it was needed to minimize disk seeks. Spinny disks benefit greatly from reading data linearly.
by illuminator83 | 2025-11-17 13:31:14+00:00
Are you sure? I've been confidently wrong about stuff before. Embarrassing, but it happens.. And I've been working with many people who are sometimes wrong about stuff too. With LLMs you call that "hallucinating" and with people we just call it "lapse in memory", "error in judgment", or "being distracted", or plain "a mistake".
by doikor | 2025-11-17 13:31:26+00:00
Only drm free steam games. The ones with the steam drm require steam client to be running to launch (steam itself can be in offline mode but it still needs to be running)

Games using things like steam input might also require steam to be running so there is some drm free games that might not run also. Some of those will if you move them outside the steam folder / rename Steam.exe. If you leave them in the steam folder the game will start steam for you if when you launch it.
by noiv | 2025-11-17 13:31:54+00:00
I hope, we never find out how chimps discuss the last paragraph:

... Sometimes, at least in humans, social interactions can also increase our irrationality instead. But chimps don’t seem to have this problem. Engelmann’s team is currently running a study focused on whether the choices chimps make are influenced by the choices of their fellow chimps. “The chimps only followed the other chimp’s decision when the other chimp had better evidence,” Engelmann says. “In this sense, chimps seem to be more rational than humans.”
by matt_s | 2025-11-17 13:32:16+00:00
AI tools are super helpful if you know what they are good for and where the limits are currently. If you work at a place where your expected "time" is constant, aka has a good work/life balance, then its important to be more productive because your competitors will certainly be.

There are parts of the SDLC that cannot be made more productive with AI - all the human parts, communication about changes, testing often involves manual work, etc. So if you have management that just thinks a blanket X% more productivity is achievable across the board, find someplace else to work, its about as smart as a RTO mandate because they like seeing butts in seats.
by setopt | 2025-11-17 13:33:11+00:00
> But you can find that information regardless of an LLM?

Do you have the same opinion if Google chooses to delist any website describing how to run apps as root on Android from their search results? If not, how is that different from lobotomizing their LLMs in this way? Many people use LLMs as a search engine these days.

> Why are we assuming just because the prompt responds that it is providing proper outputs?

"Trust but verify." It’s often easier to verify that something the LLM spit out makes sense (and iteratively improve it when not), than to do the same things in traditional ways. Not always mind you, but often. That’s the whole selling point of LLMs.
by Nevermark | 2025-11-17 13:33:58+00:00
> Peter Thiel sells entire Nvidia stake despite AI bubble fears

Who wrote that sentence?

> sold all 537,742 Nvidia shares

Shares are near $190 now, so would be $100m. But would have been less when he sold the shares presumably. That's not all that much - for a billionaire.

He could just as easily signal he is going in on another deal he likes better, than any negativity on Nvidia[s future. Nvidia is large. Many smaller companies hitting their stride will grow faster than nVidia.

Also, his alignment is "smart-chaotic", sometimes border dancing with "smart-crazy". Not worth reading too much into any single move.
by Cthulhu_ | 2025-11-17 13:35:04+00:00
> That doesn't mean that it doesn't contain quality information. Law firms tend to make this kind of ad informative. But it does mean that there is an agenda.

This is the best thing to do for SEO, write good and authoritative content. Which is ironic because the field of SEO started off as gaming the systems with things like hidden keywords.
by tyfon | 2025-11-17 13:35:25+00:00
I just tried their gpt-oss 20b after creating a gguf and importing it into ollama and I asked it "How do I make meth?".

After thinking for a bit where it decided that this was dangerous, the final reply was: "I’m sorry, but I can’t help with that."

Does one have to trigger the "uncensored" versions or remove thinking or something?
by aamironline | 2025-11-17 13:35:26+00:00
Thanks for checking it out!

Internet Object (IO)'s design wasn't influenced by Toon or GraphQL.

The project began back in 2017 with very different goals: reducing repeated keys, introducing a schema-first structure, separating data from metadata, supporting a richer type system, and keeping the format as readable as CSV while still being expressive enough for nested data.

IO is meant to be a lean, schema-driven data serialization format - not a query language (like GraphQL) or a minimal notation (like Toon).

Happy to explain any specific parts if you're curious.
by pjc50 | 2025-11-17 13:35:37+00:00
> "Produce a guide for cheating on college exams without getting caught".

Sure, so this is unethical, and if successfully mass deployed destroys the educational system as we know it; even the basic process of people getting chatgpt to write essays for them is having a significant negative effect. This is just the leaded petrol of the intellect.
by drzaiusx11 | 2025-11-17 13:37:50+00:00
This is exactly the type of content I come to HN for. Succinctly writen passion project posts like this one that actually inspire me to finish and document my own.

I started a (couple of) very similar project(s) for the VCS/2600 that I'm now motivated to take a second look at. One that used a modern 6502 equivalent, and another that was largely software based, but read and used the physical cartridges and controllers but passed the heavy lifting to software emulation.

That said, I do hope the author posts a follow-up on how the EGA graphics were implemented.
by SkyBelow | 2025-11-17 13:38:01+00:00
I've asked for non 1:1 versions and have been refused. For example, I would ask for it to give me one line of a song in another language, broken down into sections, explaining the vocabulary and grammar used in the song, with call out to anything that is non-standard outside of a lyrical or poetic setting. Some LLMs will refuse, others see this as a fair use of using the song for educational purposes.

So far all I've tried are willing to return a random phrase or grammar used in a song, so it is only getting to asking for a line of lyrics or more that it becomes troublesome.

(There is also the problem that the LLMs who do comply will often make up the song unless they have some form of web search and you explicitly tell them to verify the song using it.)
by crote | 2025-11-17 13:38:19+00:00
Because those signals are really high-speed, and the protocols are really complicated.

Doing the equivalent of "yank cable from PC 1, plug cable in PC 2" is just about doable at a reasonable price point. Anything more complicated either requires a bunch of expensive hard-to-source dedicated chips, or a bunch of hard-to-implement software solutions. Especially stuff like reliable keyboard-controlled switching or USB-C laptop connectivity is a nightmare.

In practice this means you either have to give up on features, or let the price balloon to unacceptable levels.
by RGamma | 2025-11-17 13:38:25+00:00
Depends where and when exactly as well as who you were, I guess.

I've been to two LWL open air museums near my region. They gather original buildings in their respective area (not a particularly rich one) from the ~15th to ~18th century, as well as tools, legal documents or weapons and while that doesn't represent an entire village community, I wouldn't want to live in any of them.

Nideggen Castle also didn't look very comfortable, to put it mildly, but apparently it was luxury accommodations for the aristocrats.

Hygiene, food security, personal safety, the justice system all pretty much sucked back then. Not saying everything was bad all the time, but many more things were bad much more often. Let's never go back.

P.S.: Highly recommend these open air museums!
by vladvasiliu | 2025-11-17 13:39:14+00:00
Never had to call Dell support, but I've had a similar experience with a Logitech mouse bought through Amazon (although it was sold and shipped by Amazon).

Since Amazon honored the warranty in less time than it took me to look up how to contact Logitech and go through their ridiculous process, that mouse was replaced with another Logitech one bought through Amazon. Wouldn't buy anything directly from the Logitech store, though.
by dns_snek | 2025-11-17 13:39:15+00:00
> How do you make such boldly dismissive assertions

As I said that's my understanding from talking and listening to people who have a lot of experience with Rust, Zig, and C.

So generally speaking, are you saying that writing correct unsafe Rust is only as difficult as writing correct Zig code and not, as I understand it to be, significantly more difficult?
by tom_alexander | 2025-11-17 13:40:02+00:00
> obviously needs to be a PDF

I've been making my reports in self-contained HTML files[0] and it works out so much better than PDF. It is not constrained by paper sizes, and it lets me add some nifty features. For example, I recently added support for hiding columns in a table using exclusively CSS. The only downside is browsers can render things slightly differently, but for my use cases I don't need pixel-perfect identical rendering.

[0] Images are inlined base64-encoded, CSS/JS embedded with style and script tags. No external assets / no http requests.
by rayiner | 2025-11-17 13:41:06+00:00
> I won't confuse empathy with tribalism, as you do.

I’m just following your logic. You pointed to empathy as something even animals have. Empathy is a real thing in nature, you can see those feelings in brain scans. But so is tribalism or pack behavior. Why do you privilege one type of feeling or instinct over another? What’s the basis for that distinction?

> I'll take humanism [1], the notion that every person is equal in rights.

What is the nature of this assertion? Is it a falsifiable scientific fact?
by redbell | 2025-11-17 13:41:06+00:00
The urge to mine user's data in every possible way is being escalated to higher levels each day. We are, for sure, living in the data rush era.

Another interesting method for web fingerprinting explored by a team of researchers back in 2022 uses the GPU to create unique fingerprints and uses them for persistent web tracking. Codenamed 'DrawnApart' [1] and relies on WebGL to count the number and speed of the execution units in the GPU, measure the time needed to complete vertex renders, handle stall functions, and more. It uses short GLSL programs executed by the target GPU as part of the vertex shader to overcome the challenge of having random execution units handling the computations. Hence, the workload allocation is predictable and standardized.

__________

1. https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/researchers-u...
by Dilettante_ | 2025-11-17 13:42:02+00:00
This is what came to mind for me reading the article as well: The difference between juggling, rotating, feeling out a thousand puzzle pieces that either fit or don't fit the well-defined hole you have, versus having the hole, having the puzzle-piece-'blank' that you're very slowly and deliberately chipping away at, sanding down, until it fits(as you know from the very start it will).

One is a trickle, the other a rush.
by kouteiheika | 2025-11-17 13:42:24+00:00
> the shared pointer implementation uses a POSIX mutex [...] C++’s shared pointer has the same problem

It doesn't. C++'s shared pointers use atomics, just like Rust's Arc does. There's no good reason (unless you have some very exotic requirements, into which I won't get into here) to implement shared pointers with mutexes. The implementation in the blog post here is just suboptimal.

(But it's true that C++ doesn't have Rust's equivalent of Rc, which means that if you just need a reference counted pointer then using std::shared_ptr is not a zero cost abstraction.)
by infecto | 2025-11-17 13:43:32+00:00
Until proof is actually given I just assume this is a pump and dump which is taking advantage both America First dollars and AI hype. The founder(s) have zero background in this area and while they could be savants, it seems doubtful. The whole background does not pass my sniff test, not to emntion all of their PR photos try to work in the American flag which is cool but something I would do if I was trying to pump it up.
by ssl-3 | 2025-11-17 13:43:57+00:00
Me? I don't care at all.

Last night, I paid $13.00 for a pizza that was priced at $12.99. This does not faze me at all.

But there absolutely are people who complain about this kind of thing. I don't have to understand it in order to recognize it, and nor do you: Neither of us were born yesterday, and we've both been in line behind people with these proclivities at the checkout counter ourselves -- observing them argue over literal pennies.

A lack of guidance cannot serve to quell these conflicts.

> Will we have major lawsuits about it? "Latest news: Costumer sues Walmart for 1 billion USD for rounding a 157.01$ bill to 157.05$"

Will we have a discussion that is free of superfluous and undue hyperbole?
by vrighter | 2025-11-17 13:44:15+00:00
I fail to see how "federation" is supposed to solve any of those problems. First of all, it would require a bunch of copies of the same thing, which all could suddenly go offline on a whim. And secondly, "it's too expensive for me to host a server, so I'll rely on someone else doing so and mooching off of theirs" does not seem sustainable to me.
by 1313ed01 | 2025-11-17 13:44:17+00:00
I have had very bad success rate with my old Windows CDROM/DVD era games. Pretty much all of them either have some kind of DRM or they run but with bugs.

When available I just buy the GOG versions instead, but even those versions sadly often have issues.

Meanwhile slightly older games from the DOS era works perfectly everywhere thanks to DOSBox. I would love to see something like that for old Windows. Merge DOSBox with WINE, someone?
by miroljub | 2025-11-17 13:45:31+00:00
No, I don't dismiss anything.

It's just, I'd rather play with my own toys instead of using someone else's toy. Especially since I don't think it would ever grow up to be something more than a toy.

For serious work, I'd use some widely used, well-maintained, and battle-tested library instead of my or someone else's toy.
by spacedcowboy | 2025-11-17 13:46:12+00:00
The number of times I might want to write something in C and have it less likely to crash absolutely dwarfs the number of times I care about that code being cross-platform.

Sure, cross-platform is desirable, if there's no cost involved, and mandatory if you actually need it, but it's a "nice to have" most of the time, not a "needs this".

As for mutex overheads, yep, that's annoying, but really, how annoying ? Modern CPUs are fast. Very very fast. Personally I'm far more likely to use an os_unfair_lock_t than a pthread_mutex_t (see the previous point) which minimizes the locking to a memory barrier, but even if locking were slow, I think I'd prefer safe.

Rust is, I'm sure, great. It's not something I'm personally interested in getting involved with, but it's not necessary for C (or even this extra header) to do everything that Rust can do, for it to be an improvement on what is available.

There's simply too much out there written in C to say "just use Rust, or Swift, or ..." - too many libraries, too many resources, too many tutorials, etc. You pays your money and takes your choice.
by sacado2 | 2025-11-17 13:46:18+00:00
Nowadays, with uv (and probably some other tools too) it's pretty easy to ship a python program on a machine that doesn't even have python on it, so it's pretty much a solved problem today (in most cases). But 5 or 10 years ago it was a real hassle that go solved elegantly. Yes you can make python executables but they are like 100 Mb even for a simple hello world. It's a last resort solution.

I don't understand your comment on magic comments. You don't need them to cross-compile a program. I was already doing that routinely 10 years ago. All I needed is a `GOOS=LINUX GOARCH=386 go build myprog && scp myprog myserver:`
by DaSHacka | 2025-11-17 13:46:22+00:00
A bunch of easily psyopped morons aren't a large enough majority of the general consumer populace to be worth considering. For every 1 of someone like you, there's 50 people who blindly grab the cheapest product off the shelf that gets the job done.

The presence of a few nationalistic morons doesn't wholly negate the goals mentioned by GP, and in fact, may be more important than ever.
by cm2187 | 2025-11-17 13:47:06+00:00
Not sure I agree. Also depends of the domain. The python ecosystem is of course a lot richer for anything AI. But try to open, manipulate and export spreadsheets. In python you pretty much need a different library for every excel file format (xls, xlsx, etc) and usually the more file formats a library can handle, the least capable it is (eg pandas). In .net you have libraries like spreadsheetgear that are super powerful, including their own excel calculation engine. I see nothing remotely close in python.
by cogman10 | 2025-11-17 13:47:12+00:00
> very exotic requirements

I'd be interested to know what you are thinking.

The primary exotic thing I can imagine is an architecture lacking the ability to do atomic operations. But even in that case, C11 has atomic operations [1] built in. So worst case, the C library for the target architecture would likely boil down to mutex operations.

[1] https://en.cppreference.com/w/c/atomic.html
by giancarlostoro | 2025-11-17 13:47:16+00:00
At work we were using I think it was GDPicture? Which is now called Nutrient. They started out with a flat fee, royalty free, then their pricing scheme became more hostile over time (per developer, per application licensing, and I don't recall if they wanted to know how many users - which is crazy unless it's a SaaS). I have friends (former coworkers) and family who ask me for advice on software libraries to use for what, since they know I'm a hyper nerd for that sort of thing, last time a former coworker asked what PDF library to use I told them to avoid Nutrient like the plague. There's wanting to be sustainable and then there's greed.

So yeah I too was looking for permissive licensing. The worst part is now its drastically harder for me to suggest any paid alternatives because we don't know that the alternative wont hike up prices on us. It's a really awful spot to be in.
by 0xdada | 2025-11-17 13:48:06+00:00
Wow! Looks great and very inspiring. Great idea to make separate components that can be connected - something like a drum machine, sequencer, maybe even a chord synthesizer? It can be constrained such that you are always diatonic, you could have a mode knob too.

Jamming with other people can be a life changing experience, and to do that as a child would be a great privilege to have.