MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by VHRanger | 2025-11-19 18:11:07+00:00
Hi, author here!

One issue with private LLM tests (including gotcha questions) is that they take time to design and once public, they become irrelevant. So I'm wary of sharing too many in a public blog.

The surgeon dog was well known in May, the newest generation of models have all corrected against it.

Those gotcha questions are generally called "misguided attention" traps, they're useful for blogs because they're short and surprising. The ChatGPT example was done with ChatGPT 5.1 (latest version) and Claude Haiku 4.5 is also a recent model.

You can try other ones that Gemini 3 hasn't corrected for. For example:

``` Jean Paul and Pierre own three banks nearby together in Paris. Jean Paul owns a bank by the bridge What has two banks and money in Paris near the water? ```

This looks like the "what has two banks and no money" puzzle (answer: a river).

Either way they're largely used as a device to show how LLMs come up to a verbal response by a different process than humans in an entertaining manner.
by iLemming | 2025-11-19 18:11:20+00:00
> We shouldn't forget that there are trade-offs

Like @drob518 noted already - the only benefit of mutation is performance. That's all. That's the only, distinct, single, valid point for it. Everything else is nothing but problems. Mutable shared state is the root of many bugs, especially in concurrent programs.

"One of the most difficult elements of program design is reasoning about the possible states of complex objects. Reasoning about the state of immutable objects, on the other hand, is trivial." - Brian Goetz.

So, if immutable, persistent collections are so good, and the only problem is that they are slower, then we just need to make them faster, yes?

That's the only problem that needs to be solved in the runtime to gain countless benefits, almost for free, which you are acknowledging.

But, please, don't call it a "trade-off" - that implies that you're getting some positive benefits on both sides, which is inaccurate and misleading - you should be framing mutation as "safety price for necessary performance" - just like Rust describes unsafe blocks.
by satvikpendem | 2025-11-19 18:11:43+00:00
> In the 60s it was possible for a man to work an ordinary job, buy a house, settle down with a wife and support two or three children.

The book Capital in the 21st Century comes to the conclusion that this is a historical anomaly due to World War II (and really only in the US, and really only for white families in the US). Don't take the anomaly of the past and treat it as the normality of what people in history experienced.
by dudeinhawaii | 2025-11-19 18:11:45+00:00
Not to start a war but I've had 'fast' Claude write reams of slop code that I then have had to work with Codex to remove. Add this to the pile of "yeah but I saw the opposite with <insert model>" - but that's been my 2 cents.

Putting the latest Gemini CLI through some tough code tasks (C++) for my project, I found it to be slower than even Codex but good quality.

The problem I have is skepticism. Gemini 2.5 Pro was amazing on release, I couldn't stop talking about it. And then it went to being worthless in my workflows after a few months. I suspect Google (and other vendors) do this bait and switch with every release.

Let me see the benchmarks in 3 months.
by zbentley | 2025-11-19 18:11:47+00:00
Strongly agree. A language which has something like “wantarray” as a first-class feature is semantically…unique, at best, probably more like “flawed by design”. All the oddness with typing and sigls descends from that.

Same for autovivification. Insane feature. Useful for some problems but causes many more.

Which is a shame, because perl5 semantics had some nice features too! But there’s only so much you can do with a structure whose foundation is so wacky.
by unethical_ban | 2025-11-19 18:11:49+00:00
I don't get your argument. If an ec2 needs access to an s3 resource, doesn't it need that role? Or otherwise, couldn't there be some global s3 URL filter that automagically routes same-region traffic appropriately if it is permitted?

My point is that, architecturally, is there ever in the history of AWS an example where a customer wants to pay for the transit of same-region traffic when a check box exists to say "do this for free"? Authorization and transit/path are separate concepts.

There has to be a better experience.
by kidsil | 2025-11-19 18:12:05+00:00
Great write-up, thanks for sharing the numbers.

I get pulled into a fair number of "why did my AWS bill explode?" situations, and this exact pattern (NAT + S3 + "I thought same-region EC2→S3 was free") comes up more often than you’d expect.

The mental model that seems to stick is: S3 transfer pricing and "how you reach S3" pricing are two different things. You can be right that EC2→S3 is free and still pay a lot because all your traffic goes through a NAT Gateway.

The small checklist I give people:

1. If a private subnet talks a lot to S3 or DynamoDB, start by assuming you want a Gateway Endpoint, not the NAT, unless you have a strong security requirement that says otherwise.

2. Put NAT on its own Cost Explorer view / dashboard. If that line moves in a way you didn’t expect, treat it as a bug and go find the job or service that changed.

3. Before you turn on a new sync or batch job that moves a lot of data, sketch (I tend to do this with Mermaid) "from where to where, through what, and who charges me for each leg?" It takes a few minutes and usually catches this kind of trap.

Cost Anomaly Detection doing its job here is also the underrated part of the story. A $1k lesson is painful, but finding it at $20k is much worse.
by toast0 | 2025-11-19 18:12:39+00:00
Boot by committee (UEFI) doesn't seem much better than boot by fiat (BIOS). For everything nice it gives you, you lose something nice that BIOS gave you ... or you have something nice that you lose when you exit boot services. Or there's an extension for something nice that isn't usable on mainstream hardware.

UEFI gives you nicer video modes, but not a text mode after boot services.

UEFI has an extension for booting images from the network, but afaik, it's impossible to use, and there's no reasonable way to boot from a disk image; working UEFI network boot has to pull pieces out of the filesytem and present them seperately; as opposed to MEMDISK which makes the image available as a BIOS disk and the image is labeled so that one the OS is loaded, the image can be used without BIOS hooks. If this is possible on UEFI generally, it isn't widely distributed knowledge. Something that will work on any UEFI system that makes it to iPXE, subject to changes to the OS in the image (which is reasonable... MEMDISK needs changes too, unless the OS runs all disk I/O through BIOS APIs)
by skibbityboop | 2025-11-19 18:13:15+00:00
It's not like VMFS (not a cluster filesystem), for Proxmox+iSCSI you get a large LVM PV that gets sliced up into volumes for your VMs. All of your Proxmox nodes are connected to that same LVM PV and you can live migrate your VMs around all you wish, have HA policies so if a node dies its VMs start up right away on a surviving node, etc.

You lose snapshots (but can have your SAN doing snaps, of course) and a few other small things I can't recall right now, but overall it works great. Have had zero troubles.
by jdwithit | 2025-11-19 18:13:26+00:00
The "ancillary" materials like manuals and maps were crucial for old games. Even simple ones. The other day I was going through some of the old SNES games in the Switch online catalog. I found F-Zero, a racing game I played the heck out of as a kid. I started telling my son some info about the different cars and drivers and he was like how the heck do you know that? At no point is that info presented in game. You just pick a car and start driving. There's no tutorial or opening cinematic. If you want to know what's going on, RTFM as they say. Except you can't because it's 2025, nothing comes with paper manuals anymore.

Not saying one style is good or bad. But it's definitely changed since the 80s and 90s, when every game came with a printed 50 page manual full of crucial information. Which often doubled as copy protection. I remember firing up King's Quest 6 and having it challenge me to type the 15th word in the second paragraph on page 26 or whatever.
by lentil_soup | 2025-11-19 18:13:31+00:00
But that's part of it. There's a part to do with the nutrient quality, which can also be talked about, but also a part that has to do with how UPF are consumed. The act of processing the food a certain way makes you eat more of it without realising it. Same with fat and sugar, eating a stick of butter on its own is hard, same with pure sugar, mix them up and it's delicious and addictive which leads to health problems.
by ivraatiems | 2025-11-19 18:13:33+00:00
Not to pile on, but I think part of the issue is that the GP's argument has cause and effect reversed. He believes Bangladesh is poor and unpleasant in various ways because of their culture, while in fact it runs the other way. Culture is in many ways downstream of economics, not upstream.

Of course it's more complex than that in total, and it can go both ways, but that's my view.
by roger_ | 2025-11-19 18:13:36+00:00
I have Frigate and a Coral USB running happily in a VM on an N97. GPU pass through is slightly annoying (need to use a custom ROM from here: https://github.com/LongQT-sea/intel-igpu-passthru). I think SRIOV works but haven’t tried. And Coral only works in USB3 mode if you pass the whole PCIe controller.
by ceroxylon | 2025-11-19 18:13:38+00:00
I have had an issue using Claude for research; it will often cite certain sources, and when I ask why the data it is using is not in the source it will apologize, do some more processing, and then realize that the claim is in a different source (or doesn't exist at all).

Still useful, but hopefully this gets ironed out in the future so I don't have to spend so much time vetting every claim and its associated source.
by gwbas1c | 2025-11-19 18:14:15+00:00
I suggest reading this statement more carefully:

> These simply can't be forked without broad consensus around which fork to follow.

Thus:

> if those trying to assume control can't get together and sell the idea of a new fork to the userbase why would they be the best people to successfully run the original project?

That's exactly what I mean by "broad consensus."
by agentifysh | 2025-11-19 18:14:25+00:00
so this was arctic fox it seems, lot of us ended up downgrading to codex 5.0 because of the token burn was too much, i see codex max is a step up which is welcome but still unsure if they solved that github issue around tool use that impacts tokens

going to wait and see after being burned by 5.1 before i upgrade back to 0.58

gemini 3 has been a let down tbh to see agentic coding wasn't a top priority im sticking with codex for now and using gemini 3 for frontend
by matu3ba | 2025-11-19 18:14:35+00:00
> Call me grumpy and sleep deprived, but every year I look at this talk again, and every year I wonder... "now, what" ? What am I supposed to do, as a programmer, to change this sad state of things ?

That depends on your goals. If you are into building systems for selling them (or production), then you are bound by the business model (platform vs library) and use cases (to make money). Otherwise, you are more limited in time.

To think more realistically about reality you have to work with, take a look at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cum5uN2634o about types of (software) systems (decay), then decide what you would like to simplify and what you are willing to invest. If you want to properly fix stuff, unfortunately often you have to first properly (formally) specify the current system(s) (design space) to use it as (test,etc) reference for (partial) replacement/improvement/extension system(s).

What these type of lectures usually skip over (as the essentials) are the involved complexity, solution trade-offs and interoperability for meaningful use cases with current hw/sw/tools.
by taylodl | 2025-11-19 18:15:05+00:00
The argument for 28 MPH e-bikes makes sense - matching traffic speed improves safety by reducing differential speed, which is a major cause of accidents. But if we’re serious about integrating e-bikes into urban mobility, 40 MPH is a more practical threshold. Why? Because most urban and suburban roads are posted at 35 MPH and allowing e-bikes to travel at or slightly above that speed means riders can use the same routes as cars without being a rolling hazard.

At 28 MPH, you’re already in motorcycle territory for kinetic energy and stopping distance, which means proper safety gear should be mandatory. Raising the limit to 40 MPH just makes that reality more obvious and formalizes the need for licensing and training - similar to mopeds or light motorcycles. This approach would create a clear regulatory framework instead of the current gray zone, and it would make e-bikes a true alternative to cars for short urban trips.
by jasonthorsness | 2025-11-19 18:15:17+00:00
"Starting today, GPT‑5.1-Codex-Max will replace GPT‑5.1-Codex as the default model in Codex surfaces."

Wow, I spent last weekend using a tag-team of Claude and Codex and found Codex to more often get better results (TypeScript physics/graphics application). I probably only wrote a few hundred lines of code out of many thousands; it did a really good job.

Now I guess I'll ask the new Codex to review the work of the old!
by taurath | 2025-11-19 18:15:33+00:00
These 2 sentences right next to each other stood out to me:

> a new step towards becoming a reliable coding partner

> GPT‑5.1-Codex-Max is built for long-running, detailed work

Does this not sound contradictory? It’s been the shorter form work that has built what little confidence I have in these as a coding partner - a model that goes off and does work without supervision is not a partner to me.
by tstack | 2025-11-19 18:16:47+00:00
> There's also a new "https boot", which is supposed to be a PXE replacement, but TLS certs have time validity windows, and some clients may not have an RTC, or might have a dead CMOS battery, and those might not boot if the date is wrong.

I think the lack of entropy right after boot can also be a problem for the RNG. But, maybe that has been solved in more modern hardware.
by gus_massa | 2025-11-19 18:16:56+00:00
I agree.

@GP: Do you have a more technical post, with less hype? It may get better there.

Also, a lot of the data is ass covering. In the sample, the normal report has the temperature and the new AI report doesn't have it. Is temperature mandatory? Does the health insurance pay the doctor a few extra buck to measure the temperature? If the patient dies two days later (in a car accident) can the family sue you for no checking the temperature?
by simianwords | 2025-11-19 18:17:13+00:00
> Compaction enables GPT‑5.1-Codex-Max to complete tasks that would have previously failed due to context-window limits, such as complex refactors and long-running agent loops by pruning its history while preserving the most important context over long horizons. In Codex applications, GPT‑5.1-Codex-Max automatically compacts its session when it approaches its context window limit, giving it a fresh context window. It repeats this process until the task is completed.

Wouldn't the model automatically do that using attention techniques? Why do you need to do it at the token layer and not leave it to the model to automatically decide which tokens are worth paying attention to?
by burkaman | 2025-11-19 18:17:36+00:00
He also famously gave a speech declaring that one of the reasons women were underrepresented in science and engineering faculty positions was "issues of intrinsic aptitude". - https://www.pbs.org/newshour/science/science-jan-june05-summ...

It was 20 years ago but he has not changed his views, in one of his emails to Epstein (in 2017) he "observed that half the IQ in world was possessed by women without mentioning they are more than 51 percent of population..."
by BeetleB | 2025-11-19 18:17:36+00:00
Yes, the answer is Python, Python, Python.

There's a reason the Zen of Python includes this:

"There should be one-- and preferably only one --obvious way to do it."

It also came with batteries included, which really lowered the learning curve.

Perl was well known for being a pain to read months after you wrote it. Most Python code in those days was readable by people who did not even know Python.

When I started my job in 2010, I took a class at work on Perl. I had done some Perl years before and had grown sick of it, but I thought I was just doing it "wrong" so I thought the course would tell me how to code in Perl "properly".

Nope - I'd been doing it "right" all along. I just hated the language. At the end of the course, I told the instructor (a graybeard) that he should just use Python, and that one day I'd teach the Python course and he should attend. He scoffed at the notion: "Languages will come and go, but Perl will always prevail!"

I never did teach that course, but I bumped into him about 7 years later. He had completely (and willingly) abandoned Perl for Python, and was a big Python advocate.
by AnthonyMouse | 2025-11-19 18:17:41+00:00
> Parler was also kicked off of AWS…

Which reminds us of the difference between AWS and Apple -- Amazon Web Services is the web and the web is an open platform. If AWS denies you, you go sign up at any of their competitors or buy your own servers and plug them into the internet. If Apple denies you, iPhone users can't get your app, and if you go sign up at a competitor or buy your own servers, they still can't get your app.

> As far as X being banned, if you haven’t heard Tim and every other tech CEO bends a knee anytime Trump and conservatives asks him to.

That's because they currently control the government. Now think ahead by more than two days and consider the possibility that the other party might win an election again someday. What should you do right now when you're in control of the government to prevent yourself from getting screwed the next time that happens?
by roryirvine | 2025-11-19 18:18:01+00:00
And the whole culture around CPAN, too, with the likes of Module::Build and Test::Harness and the strong expectations around POD documents. Nothing like that existed for the other scripting languages of the time.

There was a well-trodden path from writing a hacky one-off script to deal with a specific task, to realising "hey! this might be useful for others too!" and trying to make it a bit more generic, to checking in with your local Perl Mongers for advice, to turning it into a well-tested, well-documented CPAN module.

That was the route I followed as an early-career sysadmin in the dying days of the dotcom boom - it helped me take on much more of an "engineering" mindset, and was an important foundation for my later career.

I can't have written more than a few dozen lines of Perl in the last 15 years, but do I owe that community and culture a lot.
by shkkmo | 2025-11-19 18:18:06+00:00
> I don't think my interpretation is a stretch.

It isn't charitable and I don't think it adds to the discussion.

> Also, from a comment by the article author: "I feel that part of the problem with WordPress and Rails is that that there is no model for replacing poor governance."

He is explicitly calling out the lack of a governance replacement model, not calling out the failure to choose to step down by those leaders.

> Was there a Mastodon succession plan before Rochko unexpectedly stepped down?

No, but there should have been. What if he had been hit by a bus?

Not having governance and plans for sucession means that the only option for change is "non-peaceful" which means that when people think a change is required there will be problems. I would argue that many of these problems in these projects is caused more by this than by the particlar bad leaders.
by robot-wrangler | 2025-11-19 18:18:13+00:00
Nice, I do like the direction. A prolog dialect does seem like a natural choice if we must pick only one kind of intermediate representation, but ideally there could be multiple. For example, I saw your "legal reasoning" example.. did you know about https://catala-lang.org/ ? I think I'd like to see an LLM experiment that only outputs formal specifications, but still supports multiple targets (say prolog, z3, storm, prism, alloy and what have you). After you can output these things you can use them in chain-of-code.

Anyway the basic point being.. it is no wonder LLM reasoning abilities suck when we have no decent intermediate representation for "thinking" in terms of set/probability primitives. And it is no wonder LLMs suck at larger code-gen tasks when we have no decent intermediate representation for "thinking" in terms of abstract specifications. The obsession with natural-language inputs/intermediates has been a surprise to me. LLMs are compilers, and we need to walk with various spec -> spec compilers first so that we can run with spec -> code compilers
by glenstein | 2025-11-19 18:18:18+00:00
I've provided three direct quotes where I explicitly acknowledged social dynamics. You keep claiming I didn't. Now you claim you were 'just adding' and that I 'started with the insults' yet the thread shows you introduced personal criticism first with 'defensive self-regard' while my initial comments were substantive.

Most tellingly: you dismiss my direct, repeated acknowledgments as 'not counting' while claiming credit for 'adding' a point you never actually verbalized until this moment. Your standard for what constitutes 'acknowledgment' shifts based entirely on whether you're demanding it or taking credit for it.

And the Bell Curve example directly illustrates holding proponents responsible for social entanglements, the exact thing you claim I never addressed.
by agentifysh | 2025-11-19 18:18:48+00:00
The only prediction that I think is robust is: Those who use AI as tool today will replace those that aren't tomorrow.

Same situation with internet, we saw a bubble but ultimately those that changed their business around it monopolized various industries where they were slow to react.

Some jobs will be replaced outright but most will use AI tools and we might see reduced wages/positions available for a very long time coupled with economic downturn.
by pklausler | 2025-11-19 18:18:52+00:00
LLMs are so very good at emitting plausible, authoritative-sounding, and clearly stated summaries of their training data. And if you ask them even fundamental questions about a subject of which you yourself have knowledge, they are too often astonishingly and utterly incorrect. It's important to remember this (avoiding "Gell-Mann amnesia"!) when looking at "AI" search results for things that you don't know -- and that's probably most of what you search for, when you think about it. I.e., if you indignantly flung Bill Bryson's book on the English language across the room, maybe you shouldn't take his book on general science too seriously later.

"AI" search results would perhaps be better for all of us if, instead of having perfect spelling and usage, and an overall well-informed tone, they were cast as transcriptions of what some rando at a bar might say if you asked them about something. "Hell, man, I dunno."
by SebastianKra | 2025-11-19 18:18:53+00:00
...and then WhatsApp starts to send ads in push-notifications that you can't turn off. And you either have to live with it, or be a massive black hole in your friends communities.

I don't know if RCS is the way, but monopolistic messaging apps definitely aren't.

https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/474179/how-do-i-di...