MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by imiric | 2025-11-15 10:20:32+00:00
> Like I said, what exactly would you be expecting to see with the capabilities that exist today ?

And like I said, "signs and hints" of superhuman intelligence. I don't know what that looks like since I'm merely human, but I sure know that I haven't seen it yet.

> There's nothing to buy or not buy. They simply aren't. They are unable to do a lot of the things these people do.

This claim is directly opposed to claims by Sam Altman and his cohort, which I'll repeat:

> we have recently built systems that are smarter than people in many ways, and are able to significantly amplify the output of people using them.

So which is it? If they're "smarter than people in many ways", where is the product of that superhuman intelligence? If they're able to "significantly amplify the output of people using them", then all of humanity should be empowered to produce incredible results that were previously only achievable by a limited number of people. In hands of the best and brightest humans, it should empower them to produce results previously unreachable by humanity.

Yet all positive applications of this technology show that it excels at finding and producing data patterns, and nothing more than that. Those experience reports by Terence Tao are prime examples of this. The system was fed a lot of contextual information, and after being coaxed by highly intelligent humans, was able to find and produce patterns that were difficult to see by humans. This is hardly a showcase of intelligence that you and others think it is. Including those highly intelligent humans, some of whom have a lot to gain from pushing this narrative.

We have seen similar reports by programmers as well[1]. Yet I'm continually amazed that these highly intelligent people are surprised that a pattern finding and producing system was able to successfully find and produce useful patterns, and then interpret that as a showcase of intelligence. So much so that I start to feel suspicious about the intentions and biases of those people.

To be clear: I'm not saying that these systems can't be very useful in the right hands, and potentially revolutionize many industries. Ultimately many real-world problems can be modeled as statistical problems where a pattern recognition system can excel. What I am saying is that there's a very large gap from the utility of such tools, and the extraordinary claims that they have intelligence, let alone superhuman and general intelligence. So far I have seen no evidence of the latter, despite of the overwhelming marketing euphoria we're going through.

> Well it's a good thing that's not true then

In the world outside of the "AI" tech bubble, that is very much the reality.

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45784179
by YeGoblynQueenne | 2025-11-15 10:21:48+00:00
I'm sorry you find my contribution to the discussion annoying, but how should I feel if you just "agree" with me as a way to get me to stop arguing?

But I think your annoyance may be caused by misunderstanding my argument. For example:

>> If "executing Prolog code" is reasoning, then what? I say it isn't useful to call it reasoning (in the context of this thread) because it's too broad to be a helpful definition, basically everything is reasoning, and almost nothing is not.

Everything is not reasoning, nor is executing any code reasoning, but "executing Prolog code" is, because executing Prolog code is a special case of executing code. The reason for that is that Prolog's interpreter is an automated theorem prover, therefore executing Prolog code is carrying out a proof; in an entirely literal and practical sense, and not in any theoretical or abstract sense. And it is very hard to see how carrying out a proof automatically is "not reasoning".

I made this point in my first comment under yours, here:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45909159

The same clearly does not apply to Python, because its interpreter is not an automated theorem prover; it doesn't apply to javascript because its interpreter is not an automated theorem prover; it doesn't apply to C because its compiler is not an automated theorem prover; and so on, and so forth. Executing code in any of those languages is not reasoning, except in the most abstract and, well, academic, sense, e.g. in the context of the Curry-Howard correspondence. But not in the practical, down-to-brass-tacks way it is in Prolog. Calling what Prolog does reasoning is not a definition of reasoning that's too broad to be useful, as you say. On the contrary, it's a very precise definition of reasoning that applies to Prolog but not to most other programming languages.

I think you misunderstand this argument and as a consequence fail to engage with it and then dismiss it as irrelevant because you misunderstand it. I think you should really try to understand it, because it's obvious you have some strong views on Prolog which are not correct, and you might have the chance to correct them.

I absolutely have an interest in any claim that generating Prolog code with LLMs will fix LLMs' inability to reason. Prolog is a major part of my programming work and research.
by bloak | 2025-11-15 10:22:40+00:00
A "defend or lose it" rule would have bad consequences, I suspect, except for certain types of lawyer who might benefit enormously.

I think it might be better if the recipient of such vague threats were able to themselves initiate a court case to clarify the matter. The party making vague threats might be ordered by the court to either produce their evidence within six months or give up their claim by granting a public licence or whatever.

But it's hard to see all the consequences of rules like that and there are plenty of lobbyists able and willing to provide bad advice to legislators.
by bergfest | 2025-11-15 10:23:28+00:00
That's what I'm wondering too. I still hold out hope that the EU and the ECJ cannot override the fundamental rights guaranteed by the constitutions of the individual member states.

It is generally assumed that the ECJ has ultimate precedence over national constitutional courts, but I have my doubts. As a thought experiment, imagine it wasn't the EU, but the Chinese CCP with whom the treaties were concluded. It then quickly becomes clear why a national constitutional court fundamentally cannot accept the unconditional transfer of jurisdiction to a foreign entity.

The German Federal Constitutional Court (BVerfG) already stated in its judgment on the Public Sector Purchase Programme (PSPP) that it is prepared to intervene in the event of an exceeding of competences (ultra vires). Furthermore, the BVerfG has repeatedly defended the fundamental rights to privacy against the government in the past. I am relatively certain that the warrantless chat control would not succeed at the national level in Germany. The question is how the BVerfG will react if the ECJ gives the green light to chat control. As I said, I still have hope.
by znpy | 2025-11-15 10:23:58+00:00
> And PromQL is so opaque, it just never give you an error unless there is a syntax issue. We need tools like https://github.com/cloudflare/pint just to know if my alert description isn’t trying to render a label that’s just not gonna be there, etc

PromQL should be blamed on prometheus though, not on grafana.
by hellotheretoday | 2025-11-15 10:25:31+00:00
This is 100% the response. I work with kids in mental health and the “kick the can to the parents” response is so shortsighted

Apple and android controls aren’t that difficult to understand. Roblox parental controls aren’t that difficult to understand. Could it be simpler by unifying these things under one framework? Sure - I’ve worked with tons of parents who fall under the trap that Roblox is safe because they set iOS parental controls. I feel for them because they aren’t “tech” people and apple conditions them to expect a setting to be universal across the operating system, so it’s quite a shock when they find out their child has been texting with some groomer from Roblox chat.

The parents who are doing that will continue to do that. Improving those controls will help those parents and I agree efforts should be made for them. But for every one of those parents I encounter I get about 4-5 more who don’t bother to set any kind of parental control or filter on their children’s devices. When their 9 year old starts talking about pornhub and I give them resources on setting up parental controls it almost always falls on deaf ears. They simply don’t give a fuck. They can’t be bothered to spend 20 minutes figuring out how to set it up, even if I offer to walk them through it.

It is the new form of parental neglect, the modern version of a latchkey kid
by klardotsh | 2025-11-15 10:26:25+00:00
Teams is one of the only exceptions I can think of to my "blame the system, not the developer" rule with regards to corporate software.

No, in Teams' case, they somehow managed to take a trivial problem that was solved quite well 30-40-odd years ago (albeit in a slightly different skin - IRC) and completely botch it in every way imaginable, and then a few more ways not even the most creative of QA engineer could have possibly imagined a team messing up such a basic problem set.

It's finally a little bit less bad than it was 2-3 years ago, so the trend line is slightly angling upwards out of hell now, where the bar has been, but that's really not saying much.
by wiseowise | 2025-11-15 10:26:32+00:00
> I don't see the point of maintaining a spec for LLMs to use as context. They should be able to grep and understand the code itself.

“I don’t see the point of maintaining a documentation for developers. They should be able to grep and understand the code itself”

“I don’t see the point of maintaining tests for developers. They should be able to grep and understand the code itself”

“I don’t see the point of compilers/linters for developers. They should be able to grep and find issues themselves”
by sunaookami | 2025-11-15 10:26:48+00:00
You are better off using Geizhals instead of Idealo which belongs to Axel Springer that owns the infamous tabloid Bild and is currently trying to make Adblocking illegal in Germany by claiming users are not allowed to alter the HTML because of copyright[1].

[1] https://www.heise.de/en/news/Copyright-Springer-vs-Adblock-P...
by tialaramex | 2025-11-15 10:28:25+00:00
This is basically the C++ treadmill for decades and I think people are starting to realise they were duped.

Bjarne's C++ promised that if you use this instead of C you won't have these problems. The problems persisted of course. Then it was well you need to use standard C++ 98 not that crap pre-standard C++ you've been doing, once you adopt C++ 98 the problems will subside. Then it's you need "modern" C++ 11, of course you've got problems, that's because you used C++ 98, use this "modern" C++ instead.

By around 2020 they started to say the "modern" C++ 11 wasn't up to it, you need to write "contemporary" C++ 20 or better.

What was it George W Bush told us? "Fool me once, shame on...shame on you. Fool me...you can't get fooled again".
by onion2k | 2025-11-15 10:29:00+00:00
Developers spend most of their time reading long Markdown files, hunting for basic mistakes hidden in overly verbose, expert-sounding prose. It’s exhausting.

Those requirements exist regardless of whether you write them down in Markdown files or not. Spec-driven Development is just making what needs to be built explicit rather than assuming the whole team know what the code should do.

Practically every company already uses 'spec-driven development', just with incredibly vague specs in the form of poorly written Jira tickets. Developers like it because it gives them freedom to be creative in how they interpret what needs to be done, plus they don't need to plan things and their estimates can be total nonsense if they want, and Product Owners and BAs like it because it means they can blame shift to the dev team if something is missed by saying "We thought that was obvious!"

Every team should be capturing requirements at a level of detail that means they know how the code should work. That doesn't need to be done up front. You can iterate. Requirements are a thing that grow with a project. All that spec-driven development is doing is pushing teams to actually write them down.
by foo42 | 2025-11-15 10:31:51+00:00
I was thinking about this subject just this week.

I think an ideal set up for me would be if I could boot my laptop to an different user on the same os where I only had 1 or 2 apps: Obsidian for notes, and possibly an e-reader for some use cases. Then somehow put a timed lock out on the main os/user. That way I could set a period of time where I was locked into that task, but I wouldn't need a dedicated device
by roryirvine | 2025-11-15 10:32:34+00:00
Be aware that Debian's xwayland depends on x11-common, so your number here will be the combined total of Xorg and Wayland.

You could try comparing xserver-xorg-core instead, but even then that'll only show you the number of submitters who have it installed, not the number that actually use it. The usual way to get a graphical desktop in Debian (task-desktop) pulls in both Wayland and Xorg, but uses the former by default.

The best estimate would be something like the number of xserver-xorg-core installs less the number of xwayland installs.

Using that method, it looks like there are roughly twice as many GNOME users as pure Xorg users.
by necovek | 2025-11-15 10:32:54+00:00
I thought it was due to Mac not being their native platform, and then I tried Windows, and it's as crappy there as it is on a Mac.

Microsoft does not do web-based and distributed end-user software well. All sorts of organizational dysfunction leaks in the implementation (it's obvious one team was in charge of "grouping", and another is in charge of "channels", and no connection to any of the Teams calls for a group which and god-forbid Outlook). They are in dire need of some "inverse Conway maneuvering", but with a behemoth like MS, it's probably a mindset shift that's impossible to get through for any of the projects they are building today.

If at least they were still focused on doing good desktop software, I'd give them a pass, but they are increasingly introducing the same problems in the desktop software they build too.

However, I wonder even more what's wrong with my organization to keep using such subpar tools for years now :(
by James_K | 2025-11-15 10:34:13+00:00
>Of course, what if I use an SSH tunnel instead

Are you a child? Probably not, so you are just accessing legally available content by alternate means. It's strange how many people think they are out-smarting a system when said system is explicitly designed to allow them access.

These laws are primarily intended to stop children browsing the internet from being exposed to porn and gore when they're simply browsing the web. A child who has gained sufficient independence to purchase their own VPN subscription or operate an SSH server to look at pictures of boobies without their parents knowing has also likely reached the point in life where doing so is not harmful to them.
by sigmoid10 | 2025-11-15 10:35:43+00:00
Except that this other package also only came out last year and has contributed zero to Nvidia's current status. If AMD ever wants to be taken seriously in this market, they will need to start making their own software good instead of relying on "open source" in the mistaken belief that someone else will fix their bad code for free. Nvidia spent more than a decade hiring top talent and getting their proprietary software environment right before they really took off. And some of the older ML researchers here will certainly remember it wasn't pain-free either. But they didn't just turn the ship around, they turned it into a nuclear aircraft carrier that dominates the entire world.
by eloeffler | 2025-11-15 10:35:58+00:00
Just leaving some links here because I had been researching this intensively before a planned shoulder surgery:

(Definitely adding this to my list)

Frogpad: German language one handed keyboard. Unfortunately discontinued http://frogpad.com/

Mirrorboard (my favorite): Intruiging mirror solution that builds upon the assumption that it is easier to access muscle memory from the other hand when you've learned it before https://blog.xkcd.com/2007/08/14/mirrorboard-a-one-handed-ke...

Mistel Barocco fully split Keyboard: Can (and unfortunately must) be programmed without software. Right half is the main keyboard. Left side connects to it, works also in standalone mode but is not programmable then. https://mistelkeyboard.com/products/bd20945a731491407807e80d...
by rsynnott | 2025-11-15 10:36:49+00:00
You... might be onto something.

https://www.politico.com/news/2025/11/10/trumps-50-year-mort...

> White House officials are furious with Bill Pulte, the Federal Housing Finance Agency director, who talked the president into suggesting a 50-year mortgage plan.

[..]

> On Saturday evening, Pulte arrived at President Donald Trump’s Palm Beach Golf Club with a roughly 3-by-5 posterboard in hand. A graphic of former President Franklin Roosevelt appeared below “30-year mortgage” and one of Trump below “50-year mortgage.” The headline was “Great American Presidents.”

You may remember Bill Pulte as a major figure in the Bed Bath and Beyond stock conspiracy theory. Quite how he ended up being given a real job is unclear.
by zamadatix | 2025-11-15 10:37:59+00:00
It varies by region, but a lot of areas have a difficult shortage which results in really long routes or troubles when a bus breaks down/several drivers are out. Different states/areas also have different laws on when that means bus service just isn't available. There is, of course, a floor for the requirements of a driver, which drives these to get worse when salary (and therefore job interest) is lower.

Half a lifetime ago now, my bus route in high school took 1.5-2 hours to get me ~4 miles from the school after some route consolidations (I got stuck on the end of the combined route where they were about to return to the bus depot - depending on the year that meant either getting up really early or getting home really late). If the weather was good I could just bike it, but that certainly wasn't always the case in Michigan.
by Kirth | 2025-11-15 10:38:11+00:00
Likewise, I tested this with a project we're using at work (https://deepwiki.com/openstack/kayobe-config) and at first it seems rather impressive until you realize the diagrams don't actually give any useful understanding of the system. Then, asking it questions, it gave useful seeming answers but which I knew were wholly incorrect. Worse than useless: disorienting and time-wasting.
by lelanthran | 2025-11-15 10:38:58+00:00
> In tabulating the “errors” I saw the most astounding result I have ever seen from an LLM, one that made the hair stand up on the back of my neck. Reading through the text, I saw that Gemini had transcribed a line as “To 1 loff Sugar 14 lb 5 oz @ 1/4 0 19 1”. If you look at the actual document, you’ll see that what is actually written on that line is the following: “To 1 loff Sugar 145 @ 1/4 0 19 1”. For those unaware, in the 18th century sugar was sold in a hardened, conical form and Mr. Slitt was a storekeeper buying sugar in bulk to sell. At first glance, this appears to be a hallucinatory error: the model was told to transcribe the text exactly as written but it inserted 14 lb 5 oz which is not in the document.

I read the whole reasoning of the blog author after that, but I still gotta know - how can we tell that this was not a hallucination and/or error? There's a 1/3 chance of an error being correct (either 1 lb 45, 14 lb 5 or 145 lb), so why is the author so sure that this was deliberate?

I feel a good way to test this would be to create an almost identical ledger entry, but in a way so that the correct answer after reasoning (the way the author thinks the model reasoned) has completely different digits.

This way there'd be more confidence that the model itself reasoned and did not make an error.
by nolok | 2025-11-15 10:40:30+00:00
Like many I use a variety on those chat programs, Zulip for my companies, Slack for some customers, good old IRC for some open source things, Discord for gaming, ... They all have some strenght and some weakness.

But then Teams keeps showing up because "everyone knows it", "you already have it through office", ... And somehow I can't name a single strenght for it. It's just plain bad.

It reminds me of the galaxy of "prime" service from Amazon beside delivery, that don't need to compete on their own merit but benefit from the main product they're attached to: on its own, it should have died a dishonorable death a long time ago.
by Zababa | 2025-11-15 10:40:31+00:00
Go has iterators, had them for a while now. To delete an element from a slice you can use `slices.Delete`.

>3) To make matters worse, at work we have a linter that forbids merging a branch if you a) don't do if err != nil for every case b) have >20 for & if/else clauses. This makes you split functions in many pieces, turning your code into enterprise Java.

That is not a problem with Go.
by sgt101 | 2025-11-15 10:41:15+00:00
I just feel that the community has learned nothing.

Opinions about "what works" being pushed as fact. No evidence, no attempt to create evidence (because it's hard). Enless commentary and opinion pieces, naive people being coached by believers into doing things that seem to work on specific examples.

If you have an example that worked for you it doesn't mean that it's a useful way to work for everyone else in every other situation.
by politelemon | 2025-11-15 10:41:34+00:00
Principle 4 doesn't seem to make much sense to be included, their section immediately shows that it isn't working in many organisations (to which I can also attest). Perhaps it's better replaced by keeping smaller footprints within the application itself. You know change is coming, you can try to minimise the impact later. Of course just like loosely coupled, that's easier said than done and probably comes with its own caveats.
by jitl | 2025-11-15 10:45:00+00:00
For regression testing I struggle to see how a new SQL only test runner improves over a project’s existing testing systems. I think any project using a database should have integration tests that combine testing application logic with their database access queries. Your system does some explain checking but to me it feels tenuous if it’s worth the complexity required to dump all the queries my app may perform to text / YAML and adding yet another test runner in CI.

I think one interesting angle would be to integrate your assertions directly into Postgres as a plugin. That way, you can spy on every query issued in any test framework, dump the text automatically, and prove additional assertions about the query plan index use perf etc, regardless of the user’s primary language. That would also get you out of needing to build 1000 different integrations for all the programming language / ORM combos in the universe. If you don’t want to do a Postgres plugin you could also do this as a Postgres wire protocol proxy.
by skydhash | 2025-11-15 10:46:11+00:00
Just picking on the example:

The plan step is overly focused on the accidental complexity of the project. While the `Specify` part is doing a good job of defining the scope, the `Plan` part is just complicating it. Why? The choice of technology is usually the first step in introducing accidental complexity in a project. Which is why it's often recommended to go with boring technology (so the cost of this technical debt is known). Otherwise go with something that is already used by the company (if it's a side project, do whatever). If you choose to go that route, there's a good chance you're already have good knowledge of those tools and have code samples (and libraries) lying around.

The whole point of code is to be reliable and to help do something that we'd rather not do. Not to exist on its own. Every decision (even little) needs to be connected to a specific need that is tied to the project and the team. It should not be just a receptacle for wishes.