MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by timr | 2025-11-02 00:05:53+00:00
There’s really no functional difference. The VSC agent mode can do everything you want an agent to do, and you can use Claude if you like. If you want to use the CLI instead, you can use Claude Code (or the GitHub one, or Codex, or Aider, or…)

I suspect that a lot of the “try using Claude code” feedback is just another version of “you’re holding it wrong” by people who have never tried VSC (parent is not in this group however). If you’re bought into a particular model system, of course, it might make more sense to use their own tool.

Edit: I will say that if you’re the YOLO type who wants your bots to be working a bunch of different forks in parallel, VSC isn’t so great for that.
by samrolken | 2025-11-02 00:05:58+00:00
This was an unserious experiment meant to illustrate the gap and bottlenecks that are still there. I agree that there's a lot that could be done to optimize this kind of approach. But even if you did, I'm not sure the results would be viable and I'm pretty sure classic coding (with LLM assistance and all) would still outperform such a product.
by alyxya | 2025-11-02 00:07:09+00:00
Interviews are fundamentally really difficult to get right. On one side, you could try to create the best fairest standardized interview process based on certain metrics, but people will eventually optimize on how well they can do on the standardized interview, making it less effective. On the other side, you could create a customized ad hoc interview to try to learn as much about the candidate as possible, and have them do a work trial for a few days to ensure they're the right candidate, but this takes a ton of time and effort on both the company and the candidate.

I personally think the best interview format is the candidate doing a take home project and giving a presentation on it. It feels like the most comprehensive yet minimal way to assess a candidate on a variety of metrics, tests coding ability in the project, real system design rather than hypothetical, communication skills, and depth of understanding on the project when the interviewer asks follow-up questions. It would be difficult to cheat this with AI since you would need a solid understanding of the whole project for the presentation.
by alfalfasprout | 2025-11-02 00:07:15+00:00
It's a metric attribution problem. The real metric should be reduction in homeless, for example (though even that can be gamed through bussing them out, etc-- tactics that unfortunately other cities have adopted). But attributing that to a single NGO is tough.

Ditto for views, etc. Really what you care about as eg; youtube is conversions for the products that are advertised. Not impressions. But there's an attribution problem there.
by tzs | 2025-11-02 00:07:55+00:00
I see that a few of the people who have written solvers have posted in their repositories counts of the number of solutions for some of the puzzles, such as the infamous 2025-09-15 hard, which had 2 764 800 solutions.

That's how many my dumb brute force solver counted for that one too, so it looks like we are all counting solutions the same way.

This raises a question.

Here's one solution to that particular puzzle

6/5(15,16) 1/2(23,22) 4/5(0,4) 1/5(2,1) 5/3(5,6) 2/5(7,8) 4/4(9,3) 0/0(17,10) 4/2(19,18) 3/3(12,11) 3/4(21,20) 5/5(14,13)

where the notation P/Q(A,B) means the tile that has P pips on one half and Q pips on the other have is placed so the P half is on square A (counting the leftmost square on the first row as 0, and then going left to right, top to bottom) and the Q half is on square B. The order the halves of a tile are given is the order they are in the puzzle specification, and the order the tiles are listed is the order from the puzzle specification.

My solver considers two solutions different if they do not produce identical strings when the solution is written in the aforementioned format.

I'm reasonably sure that this counts some solutions as different that most humans would count as the same.

For example supposed there is a 2/3 tile this is entirely inside a region that has to sum to 10. Another solution that is identical except that tile is rotated 180 degrees would probably be counted as the same solution by a human but as different by my solver.

Similarly, if there is also a 1/1 tile entirely inside that region, the 1/1 tile and the 2/3 tile could be swapped and my solver would say that is a different solution, but I think most humans would not.

How far does this go? Would a human tend to think of all permutations and orientations of a set of tiles that are all contained in the same constraint region as identical solutions?
by bluGill | 2025-11-02 00:08:20+00:00
The results did filter out a few people who could not think.

i reciently interviewed someone who was a senior engineer on the space shuttle, but managed a call center after that. Can this person still write code is a question we couldn't figure out and so had to pass. (We can't prove it but think we ended up with someone who outsourced the work to elsewhere - but at least that person could code if needed as proved by the interview)
by dredmorbius | 2025-11-02 00:09:09+00:00
What distinguishes, say, a mobile OS from a more traditional desktop OS?

What would not be acceptable in a tuned/configured Linux / Windows OS on a smaller-form-factor touch- and voice-enabled device?

I'm excepting the obvious issue raised elsewhere of closed app stores and the tendency for ever more interactions (commercial, government, educational, institutional) to rely on these. That discussion has been had many times and is if I may suggest relevant, but stale.
by arprocter | 2025-11-02 00:09:47+00:00
They've got a solution to that too - page 185 https://www.commerce.gov/sites/default/files/2025-06/NOAA-FY...

"In coordination with the requested terminations for Weather Laboratories and Cooperative Institutes (see OAR-10) and Ocean Laboratories and Cooperative Institutes (see OAR-19), NOAA will close...Mauna Loa"
by pdpi | 2025-11-02 00:09:54+00:00
Some of the best hires I’ve ever made would’ve tanked that sort of interview question. Being able to efficiently work through those puzzles is probably decent positive signal, but failure tells me next to nothing, and a question that can fail to give me signal is a question that wastes valuable time — both mine and theirs.

A format I was fond of when I was interviewing more was asking candidates to pick a topic — any topic, from their favourite data structure to their favourite game or recipe — and explain it to me. I gave the absolute best programmer I ever interviewed a “don’t hire” recommendation, because I could barely keep up with her explanation of something I was actually familiar with, even though I repeatedly asked her to approach it as if explaining it to a layperson.
by manquer | 2025-11-02 00:10:41+00:00
I am not so sure. Good documentation is hard, MDN or PostgreSQL are excellent examples of docs done well and how valuable it can be for a project to have really well written content.

LLMs can generate content but not really write, out of the box they tend to be quote verbose and generate a lot of proforma content. Perhaps with the right kind of prompts, a lot of editing and reviews, you can get them to good, but at the point it is almost same as writing it yourself.

It is a hard choice between lower quality documentation (AI slop?) or it being lightly or fully undocumented. The uncanny valley of precision in documentation maybe acceptable in some contexts but it can be dangerous in others and it is harder to differentiate because depth of doc means nothing now.

Over time we find ourselves skipping LLM generated documentation just like any other AI slop. The value/emphasis placed on reading documentation erodes that finding good documentation becomes harder like other online content today and get devalued.
by floundy | 2025-11-02 00:10:48+00:00
So the process is now:

1. Embellish your resume with AI (or have it outright lie and create fictional work history) to get past the AI screening bots.

2. Have a voice-to-text AI running to cheat your way past the HR screen and first round interview.

3. Show up for in-person interview with all the other liars and unscrupulous cheats.

No matter who gets hired, chances are the company loses and honest people lose. Lame system.
by scruple | 2025-11-02 00:10:59+00:00
Fair enough, but I've always interpreted it differently. I don't view it as "punting" so much as acknowledging what the hard part is. But I agree that "you can't control others, you can only control your response to them" is certainly the rule.

I use the prayer as a framework when I have to take a mental break and find the discernment between a situation I truly can't change and one I can influence (or, like you pointed out, a response you can control).
by ssl-3 | 2025-11-02 00:11:19+00:00
It's nice to be able to do networked stuff with the network.

32GB isn't very big these days. In terms of cost, a decent cheeseburger costs more than a 32GB flash card does.

A few months ago I needed a friend to send me a 32GB file. This took over 8 hours to accomplish with his 10Mbps upstream. 8 hours! I felt like it was 1996 again and I was downloading Slackware disksets with a dialup modem.

We needed to set up a resumable way to get his computer to send that file to my computer, and be semi-formal about it because 8 hours presents a lot of time for stuff to break.

But if we had gigabit speeds, instead? We could have moved that file in less than 5 minutes. That'd have been no big deal, with no need to be formal at all: If a 5-minute file transfer dies for some reason, then it's simple enough to just start it over again.
by ethmarks | 2025-11-02 00:11:22+00:00
No, but the average user is capable of describing what they want to something trained in interpreting what users want. The average person is incapable of articulating the exact steps necessary to change a car's oil, but they have no issue with saying "change my car's oil" to a mechanic. The implicit assumption with LLM-based backends is that the LLM would be capable of correctly interpreting vague user requests. Otherwise it wouldn't be very useful.
by adastra22 | 2025-11-02 00:12:42+00:00
So you feed the output into another LLM call to re-evaluate and assess, until the number of actual reports is small enough to be manageable. Will this result in false negatives? Almost certainly. But what does come out the end of it has a higher prior for being relevant, and you just review what you can.

Again, worst case all you wasted was your time, and now you've bounded that.
by Fileformat | 2025-11-02 00:13:33+00:00
This is exactly my point: everyone here is tech-savvy and knows what to do with an RSS/Atom link. So we don't see a need for XSLT.

But someone who hasn't seen/used an RSS reader will see a wall of plain-text gibberish (or a prompt to download the wall of gibberish).

XSLT is currently the only way to make feeds into something that can still be viewed.

I think RSS/Atom are key technologies for the open web, and discovery is extremely important. Cancelling XSLT is going in the wrong direction (IMHO).

I've done a bunch of things to try to get people to use XSLT in their feeds: https://www.rss.style/

You can see it in action on an RSS feed here (served as real XML, not HTML): https://www.fileformat.info/news/rss.xml
by cmrdporcupine | 2025-11-02 00:16:08+00:00
I have, but the problem is in part the tool itself and the way it works. It's just not written with an interactive prompting style in mind. CC is like "Accept/Ask For Changes/Reject" for often big giant diffs, and it's like... no, the UI should be: here's an editor let's work on this together, oh I see what you did there, etc...
by bsder | 2025-11-02 00:16:43+00:00
> I'm not following: Rust excels at C interop

Zig is an example of excelling at C interop--not Rust.

And Cargo is an impediment in the embedded ecosystem rather than a bonus.

Part of why we're getting Rewrite-it-in-Rust everywhere is precisely because the C interop is sufficiently weak that you can't do things easily in a piecemeal fashion.

And lets not talk about Rust compile times and looking at Rust code in a debugger and just how bad Rust code is in debug mode ...
by ewoodrich | 2025-11-02 00:17:00+00:00
The weak points raised by the parent comment are specifically examples where the problem exists outside the model's "peripheral vision" from its context window and speaking from personal experience, aren't as simple as as adding a line to the CLAUDE.md saying "do this / don't do this".

I agree that the popular "one shot at all costs / end the chat at the first whiff of a mistake" advice is much too reductive but unlike a colleague, after putting in all that effort into developing a shared mental model of the desired outcome you reach the max context and then all that nuanced understanding instantly evaporates. You then have to hope the lossy compression into text instructions will actually steer it where you want next time but from experience that unfortunately is far from certain.
by bigyabai | 2025-11-02 00:17:08+00:00
> EUV was literally invented in America

Modern, high-yield EULV was not. The CRADA efforts did not produce high-yield dies, nor did it get beyond theorizing modern nodes.

> These have nothing to do with each other

Maybe that's how you wish things were. But we have two admins back-to-back scraping Intel's corpse off the pavement.
by tavavex | 2025-11-02 00:17:09+00:00
I feel like the stereotype about this question is different from your approach, though: supposedly, it started with quirky, new tech-minded businesses using it rationally to see people who could solve open-ended problems, and evolved to everyone using it because it was the popular thing. If someone still uses it today, I would totally expect the interviewer to have a number up on their screen, and answers that are too far off would lead to a rejection.

Besides, it's too vague of a question. If I were asked it, I would ask so many clarifying questions that I would not ever be considered for the position. Does "fill" mean just the human/passenger spaces, or all voids in the plane? (Cargo holds, equipment bays, fuel and other tanks, etc). Do I have access to any external documentation about the plane, or can I only derive the answer using experimentation? Can my proposed method give a number that's close to the real answer (if someone were to go and physically fill the plane), or does it have to be exactly spot on with no compromises?
by mcswell | 2025-11-02 00:18:20+00:00
Steam turbine generators (this was back in the 1970s, the ship was decommissioned in 2003). No motor to start turning the turbines, just apply steam. The main engines were also steam turbines, and likewise started just by opening the throttle valves--one for forward, another for backing. We did have a jacking gear powered by an electric motor, but it was only used to prevent warping as the engine cooled down when we went cold iron. And of course the boilers ran on fuel oil, not coal--coal went out on naval ships in the early 20th century.

As for how the generators' fields were started, now that you mention it I'm not sure. We did have emergency diesel generators (and of course shore power when we were pier-side), so maybe those supplied electricity to jump-start the generators. But they were 750 kw generators (upgraded in 1974 from 500 kw generators), so I don't imagine batteries would have sufficed.
by burnt-resistor | 2025-11-02 00:18:44+00:00
The issue right now is that DHS are federal police not subject to any vehicle for redress of wrongs unless they break state law and are identified for criminal offenses that lose QI, but there is no 42 USC § 1983-like law for bringing civil rights violations claims against them. Civilly, they're effectively "samurai" who can do whatever they want because the courts, legislature, and executive branches are all on their side.
by XenophileJKO | 2025-11-02 00:19:26+00:00
I mean I "understand" your point. However, this isn't any different than being a technical lead in a system of any significant complexity.. you will constantly be reviewing work that you are not always an expert on, it is a very similar practice.

I'm constantly reviewing things that I am not a domain expert on. I have to identify what is risky, what I don't know, etc. Throwing to the AI first is no different than throwing to someone else first. I have the same requirements. Now I can choose how much I "trust" the person or LLM. I have had coworkers I trust less than LLMs.. I'll put it that way.

So just like with reviewing a co-worker.. pay attention to areas you are not sure what the right method is and maybe double-check it. This just isn't a "new" thing.
by Brian_K_White | 2025-11-02 00:20:22+00:00
Not just old stuff like that either. At least also all the SCO Xenix & Unix'es up to the technically current OSR5, OSR6 and Unixware. I don't know about other (commercial) unixes as much as SCO but given where they all come from I assume Solaris and most of the other commercial unix that still technically exist today have something at least somewhat similar.

The sys admin scripts would even relink just to merely change the ip address of the nic! (I no longer remember the details, but I think I eventually dug under the hood and figured out how you could edit a couple files and merely reboot without actually relinking a new kernel. But if you only followed the normal directions in the manual, you would use scoadmin and it would relink and reboot.) And this is not because SCO sux. Sure they did, but that was actually more or less normal and not part of why they sucked.

Change anything about which drives are connected to which scsi hosts on which scsi ids? fuggeddabouddit. Not only relink and reboot, but also pray and have a bootable floppy and a cheat sheet of boot: parameters ready.
by Klathmon | 2025-11-02 00:20:35+00:00
> For code modifications in a large codebase the problem with multi-shot is that it doesn't take too many iterations before I've spent more time on it.

I've found voice input to completely change the balance there.

For stuff that isn't urgent, I can just fire off a hosted codex job by saying what I want done out loud. It's not super often that it completely nails it, but it almost always helps give me some info on where the relevant files might be and a first pass on the change.

Plus it has the nice side effect of being a todo list of quick stuff that I didn't want to get distracted by while working on something else, and often helps me gather my thoughts on a topic.

It's turned out to be a shockingly good workflow for me
by kaycebasques | 2025-11-02 00:20:56+00:00
From the linked article:

> The widely known example only works because the implementation of the algorithm will exclude the original vector from the possible results!

I saw this issue in the "same topic, different domain" experiment when using EmbeddingGemma with the default task types. But when using custom task types, the vector arithmetic worked as expected. I didn't have to remove the original vector from the results or control for that in any way. So while the criticism is valid for word2vec I'm skeptical that modern embedding models still have this issue.

Very curious to learn whether modern models are still better at some analogies (e.g. male/female) and worse at others, though. Is there any more recent research on that topic? The linked article is from 2019.
by ycui1986 | 2025-11-02 00:20:57+00:00
If anything, the most complicated problem in lithography is not EUV at all. The hardest problem is the overlay mismatch. ASML had spent decades minimizing overlay mismatch. A new player in semiconductor may claim to master EUV, or X-Ray or contact printing, but everyone must solve the overlay mismatch problem. That is no more easier than the EUV part.
by estimator7292 | 2025-11-02 00:21:05+00:00
"The government" did not implement, build, install, nor do they control or understand, these systems.

These systems are built and controlled entirely by third party private corporations who are only technically held to any kind of standards on privacy or security. In the absolute worst possible case, they receive a symbolic fine for breaking any privacy or data security laws.

Whether or not you trust "the government" is almost irrelevant. Do you trust whatever corporate entitiy has exclusive control over these systems? Do you even know who that is?
Poll: Opinion on AI Generated Music
by andrecarini | 2025-11-02 00:21:15+00:00
What are your opinions on AI generated music?

Suno and other similar tools have been discussed on HN a few times and they make it very easy to get started. If you go to YouTube and search for "music to listen to while X" you're very likely to hit AI generated music. What do you think about it? Do you use these tools to make music for yourself only or do you publish them? Do you one-shot tracks or use them alongside more traditional tools?

Cast your vote on the poll below and share your opinions on the thread.
by dcre | 2025-11-02 00:21:28+00:00
I think you have it backwards in two ways:

1. While Helix dev is on the slow side, I think what you’re describing as specific to Helix is in fact the typical case in open source

2. In this case the author did a bunch of work up front and the maintainers said no almost immediately after the PR was posted

I agree they could be faster to say no, but I think part of it is that the maintainers would have to agree themselves and as far as I know they are not getting together to come to consensus about random Helix PRs every day.
by teddyh | 2025-11-02 00:21:30+00:00
> I must bind caps-lock to control, and […] no operating system does this in a way that really works besides OSX.

What? This has worked for me in X11 for at least two years now:

setxkbmap -model pc104 us -option ctrl:nocaps

(If you still need a Caps Lock key, there’s -option ctrl:swapcaps)
by tavavex | 2025-11-02 00:21:35+00:00
I'm not sure if that's legal, but even if they did it, it's a lot more opaque. If they started doing it, many people would assume it to be a technical fault by the provider or the phone manufacturer, and the ensuing support calls and drama would probably cost way too much for this to be worth it in the first place. However, with eSIM, they get to redefine all the rules, since the customer has to learn how to use them from scratch anyway. And they also get access to nice, digital, software-driven workflows that can make the need to pay up apparent, as opposed to just randomly cutting service to the user.
by Timwi | 2025-11-02 00:23:07+00:00
The article focuses on games that were never released or never even completed. It could be argued that those (unlike Pac-Man) did not contribute to cultural heritage. This is obviously not to say that their preservation is unimportant; I just think it should be compared more to unfinished/unpublished works of art, not the statue of David. It's more like The Salmon of Doubt than it is The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.