MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by Spooky23 | 2025-11-23 18:17:26+00:00
It is a sad story. But I will say that events in my life have really made me regret questioning the decisions of others.

I did things “right” I met my wife right after college, and I loved her dearly. We lived a happy life and have a wonderful son. We lost her a couple of years ago to cancer, followed by my parents and my mother and father in law, all of whom i was incredibly close with.

Yet life carries on. I come from a very traditional ethnic-focused catholic background. I’m not going to be following the standard script. I’m in my 40s, any partner will likely be divorced with their own child(ren). I’m not having more children. Will that partner be compared to my wife? Will I judged if she is too old/young/in a higher/lower status profession?

Reality: everyone has been incredibly supportive of my family and I. But the anxiety is there.

I would just say in looking at the lives of others, try to walk in their shoes. By all accounts the father in the story was not a perfect man. Few of us are. But consider that he was facing certain and complete rejection by his entire world, and he most likely made the choice that he felt was the least bad.
by danenania | 2025-11-23 18:17:58+00:00
It’s because the LLM is a commodity.

What differentiates a product is not the commodity layer it’s built on (databases, programming languages, open source libraries, OS apis, hosting, etc) but how it all gets glued together into something useful and accessible.

It would be a bad strategy for most startups to do anything other than prompt engineering in their AI implementations for the same reason it would be a bad idea for most startups to write low-level database code instead of SQL queries. You need to spend your innovation tokens wisely.
by yawnxyz | 2025-11-23 18:18:18+00:00
it's wild, I work with some fortune 500 engineers who don't spend a lot of time prompting AI, and just a quick few prompts like "output your code in <code lang="whatever">...</code>" tags" — a trick that most people in the prompting world are very familiar with, but outside of the bubble virtually no one knows about — can improve AI code generation outputs to almost 100%.

It doesn't have to be this way and it won't be this way forever, but this is the world we live in right now, and it's unclear how many years (or weeks) it'll be until we don't have to do this anymore
by bayarearefugee | 2025-11-23 18:19:08+00:00
The money is easy to come by because wealthy investors, while they don't want to pay any more in taxes, are desperate to find possible returns in an economy that sucks outside of ballooning healthcare and the AI bubble... not because they need the money but because NUMBER MUST GO UP.

And more so than even most VC markets, raising for an "AI" company is more about who you know than what results you can show.

If anyone is actually showing significant results, where's the actual output of the AI-driven software boom (beyond just LLMs making coders more efficient by being a better google)? I don't see any real signs of it. All I see is people doing after market modifications on the shovels, I've yet to see any of the end users of these shovels coming down from the hills with sacks of real gold.
by epistasis | 2025-11-23 18:20:10+00:00
Whoa, that is pretty cool.

I've been using Secretive for years, and prefer it to all the physical key/card based systems I've tried to get going over the years. I know exactly when my SSH key is used for any operation, because I need to hit a button or do a fingerprint scan. I can keep ssh-agent tunnels to remote boxes so that I can sign git commits remotely without having to worry about a rogue system getting complete access to key ops without me knowing what's going on.

However the Tahoe version of secretive is buggy and frequently locks up on initial key op requests. I don't have the bandwidth to debug it and file a bug report, and honesty I'm not sure I want to relearn all that knowledge of SSH to figure it out.

I think the smart card SSH UX is worse than secretive's, IIRC my past pain, but if it is reliable, worth a shot.
by kgeist | 2025-11-23 18:20:20+00:00
I already had experience with RAG before so I had a head start. You're right that it's not rocket science, but it's not just "press F to implement the feature" either

P.S. No vibe coding was used. I only used LLM-as-a-judge to automate quality testing when tuning the parameters, before passing it to human QA
by slg | 2025-11-23 18:20:27+00:00
Amend Section 230 so that it does not apply to content that is served algorithmically. Social media companies can either allow us to select what content we want to see by giving us a chronological feed of the people/topics we follow or they can serve us content according to some algorithm designed to keep us on their platform longer. The former is neutral and deserves protection, but the latter is editorial. Once they take on that editorial role of deciding what content we see, they should become liable for the content they put in front of us.
by masfuerte | 2025-11-23 18:21:35+00:00
A quote from the government:

> The new digital ID will be the authoritative proof of who someone is

Obviously this will not just be stored on your phone. There will be a backend database of all issued IDs. Which will then serve as an authoritative identity system for unifying government databases.

Restrictions on how companies can use this are nice. I'm more concerned about what the government will do with it.
by tedggh | 2025-11-23 18:21:55+00:00
Isn’t this true for most start ups out there even before AI? Some sort of bundle/wrapper around existing technology? I worked auditing companies and we used a particular system that cost tens of thousands of dollars per user per year and we charged customers up to a million to generate reports with it. The platform didn’t have anything proprietary other than the UX, under the hood it was a few common tools some of them open source. We could have created our own product but our margins were so huge it didn’t make sense to setup a software development unit not even bother with outsourcing it.
by dgroshev | 2025-11-23 18:22:11+00:00
Another alternative is Rhino+Grasshopper with direct g-code generation, which allows for some wild tricks, including full colour printing: https://www.instagram.com/medium_things/

You can read more here:

https://controlmad.com/en/training/10h-grasshopper-g-code-fo...

https://interactivetextbooks.tudelft.nl/rhino-grasshopper/Gr...
by jasonjmcghee | 2025-11-23 18:24:26+00:00
Everything is a spectrum.

At what point can you claim that you did "it"?

Do you have to use an open source model instead of an API? Do you have to fine tune it? How much do you need to? Do you have to create synthetic data for training? Do you have to gather your own data? Do you need to train from scratch? Do you need to come up with a novel architecture?

10 years ago if you gathered some data and trained a linear model to determine the likelihood your client would default on their loan and used that to decide how much, if any, to loan them- you're absolutely doing "actual AI"

---

Any other software you could ask all the same questions but with using a high level language, frameworks, dependencies, hiring consultants / firm, using an LLM, no-code, etc.

At what point does outsourcing some portion of the end product become no longer doing the thing?
by attila-lendvai | 2025-11-23 18:25:14+00:00
that's an often repeated misconception about lisps.

lisps are pretty good at low-level programming, but then you'll need to make some compromises like abandoning the reliance on the GC and managing memory manually (which is still a lot easier than in other languages due to the metaprogramming capabilities).

there are lisps that can compile themselves to machine code in 2-4000 LoC altogether (i.e. compiler and assembler included; https://github.com/attila-lendvai/maru).

i'm not saying that there are lisp-based solutions that are ready for use in the industry. what i'm saying is that the lisp langauge is not at all an obstacle for memory-limited and/or real-time programs. it's just that few people use them, especially in those fields.

e.g. i'd easily prefer a lisp to put together a specialized byte-code interpreter to shrink firmware size for small embedded devices (e.g. for a radio https://github.com/armel/uv-k5-firmware-custom/discussions/4...).

and there are interesting experiments for direct compilation, too:

BIT: A Very Compact #Scheme System for #Microcontrollers (#lisp #embedded) http://www.iro.umontreal.ca/~feeley/papers/DubeFeeleyHOSC05.... "We demonstrate that with this system it is clearly possible to run realistic Scheme programs on a microcontroller with as little as 3 to 4 KB of RAM. Programs that access the whole Scheme library require only 13 KB of ROM." "Many of the techniques [...] are part of the Scheme and Lisp implementation folklore. [...] We cite relevant previous work for the less well known implementation techniques."

BIT inspired PICOBIT (last changed in 2015): https://github.com/stamourv/picobit racket (only a .so into an already running VM): http://download.racket-lang.org/docs/5.1.3/html/raco/ext.htm... scheme: gambit, chicken
by jimmySixDOF | 2025-11-23 18:25:40+00:00
I thought for a sec it was insigths.hn revised and back up again I like that you used the Amazon Strands agent framework $2/month is a nice price point I could also see a flat one time X$ + BYO keys approach I signed in through google to test the few threads I have summd look accurate the commenter standout insights check out. I wonder if the agent could setup HN user login and upvote comment etc. Good work pat those agents on the back !
by crazygringo | 2025-11-23 18:25:41+00:00
Obviously nothing prevents people from taking PNG screenshots of JPEGs. You can make a PNG out of an out-of-focus camera image too. But at least I know the format itself isn't adding any additional degradation over whatever the source was.

And in my case I'm usually dealing with a known workflow. I know where the files originally come from, whether .raw or .ai or whatever. It's very useful to know that every .jpg file is meant for final distribution, whereas every .png file is part of an intermediate workflow where I know quality won't be lost. When they all have the same extension, it's easy to get confused about which stage a certain file belongs to, and accidentally mix up assets.
by wahnfrieden | 2025-11-23 18:26:32+00:00
I would like to understand the downvotes: is it from doubting these facts? If so, I will post the sources (which were recent mainstream news on the front page of HN). Or is it because of the negative sentiment about Meta? Or disagreement that Meta has any responsibility over moderating scams they promote?

These are verified facts that make up the substance of my message:

- Meta protects their biggest scammers, per internal policy from leadership

- Meta makes a huge profit from these scammers (10% of total revenue; or in other words, their scam revenue is approximately 5x larger than the total Oculus revenue)

- The scams that Meta promotes represent one-third of the total online scams in the US
by dahart | 2025-11-23 18:26:56+00:00
You’re asking a strange question that doesn’t get at why shaders exist. If you actually want to understand them, you must understand the bigger picture of how they fit into the pipeline, and what they are designed to do.

You can do line drawing on a CPU or GPU, and you don’t need to reach for shaders to do that. Shaders are not necessarily the right tool for that job, which is why comparing shaders to pen drawing makes it seems like someone is confused about what they want.

ShaderToy is fun and awesome, but it’s fundamentally a confusing abuse of what shaders were intended for. When you ask how to make a 10x10 pixel square, you’re asking how to make a procedural texture with a red square, you’re imposing a non-standard method of rendering on your question, and failing to talk about the way shaders work normally. To draw a red square the easy way, you render a quad (pair of triangles) and you assign a shader that returns red unconditionally. You tell the rasterizer the pixel coordinate corners of your square, and it figures out which pixels are in between the corners, before the shader is ever called.
by ameixaseca | 2025-11-23 18:27:07+00:00
The the link above does not survive 15 seconds of a Google search for its first statement:

https://www.stf.jus.br/arquivo/cms/noticiaNoticiaStf/anexo/D...

It names the FEDERAL PUBLIC PROSECUTOR'S OFFICE as the author, not the Supreme Court.

> And you make it out to be a conspiracy theory?

I did not say this and I was not trying to imply a conspiracy in what I said, only that this is a blatant attempt from the Congress to protect their own interests.

It is not a conspiracy when Congress members like Nikolas Ferreira say things like:

'' If any Member of Parliament commits a crime, they will go to jail. This House just needs to say "yes." ''

Which means the Congress now will be the final judge, overriding the Supreme Court (via secret voting, btw).

Source for his speech: https://www.camara.leg.br/internet/SitaqWeb/TextoHTML.asp?et... (in Portuguese)

> Judge straight up comes out to the public and brags about how they all personally defeated Bolsonaro? Same guy who's implicated in the USAID nonsense? And you make it out to be a conspiracy theory?

FYI, I was not taking about Bolsonaro.

Again, 30 seconds of Google and I can find not only what are you taking about USAID (Musk accusing USAID of interfering in the Brazilian election) but the fact that this is most likely false and has no basis whatsoever.

A claim requires evidence, and as far as the evidence goes it is pretty much all there is.

For the other claims, it is a matter of opinion. I don't see it that way.

> I'm tired, man.

I think, in a sense, everyone is.

The question you need to ask youself is: what are you fighting for?

I couldn't put it better than this article: https://www.ibanet.org/Bolsonaro-conviction-signals-Brazil%E...

My suggestion is for you to consider everything Bolsonaro says and stands for and ask youself: is he really standing for democracy? Are the judges in the way of someone that stands for democracy?

If your answer is yes, then we have a fundamental disagreement and from this point on we can only agree to disagree.
by actinium226 | 2025-11-23 18:27:09+00:00
Generally that's what it means. And also when proofs are presented, a rigorous book will go through it fully, whereas a less rigorous one might just sketch out the main ideas of the proof and leave out some of the nitty gritty details (i.e. it's less rigorous to talk about "continuity" as "you can draw it without lifting the pen" as compared to the epsilon-delta definition, but epsilon-delta is pretty detailed and for intro calculus for non-mathematicians you don't really need it).
by LEDThereBeLight | 2025-11-23 18:27:34+00:00
What do they do when they turn 15, realize they, say, have no sex drive, but have been on anti depressants for years and cannot take a break from life in order to now learn the emotional regulation skills they should have developed from 7-15? Antidepressants often mask issues which later manifest in unexpected ways, even if you don’t notice any immediate side effects.
by ThrowawayR2 | 2025-11-23 18:27:47+00:00
> "I wonder why companies don’t do this anymore."

Because we're not in the gargantuan post-WW2 economic boom combined with the electronics-ization / mainframe computerization tech boom anymore. It's easy to treat employees generously when revenue growth just keeps happening almost on its own.

And STEM degrees or even possessing any undergraduate degree was much less common than they are today. The article says "Over 130 people signed up for the One Year On Campus program in 1970.", which is a pittance in a corporation with over a million employees at its peak. Unsurprisingly, people who specialties make them more difficult to replace get treated more favorably.
by nothrabannosir | 2025-11-23 18:28:27+00:00
Legacy. It’s how things used to be done. Just like Unix permissions, shared filesystem, drive letters in the file system root, prefixing urls with the protocol, including security designators in the protocol name…

Be careful to ascribe reason to established common practices; it can lead to tunnel vision. Computing is filled with standards which are nothing more than “whatever the first guy came up with”.

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

Just because metadata is useful doesn’t mean it needs to live in the filename.
by reilly3000 | 2025-11-23 18:28:38+00:00
IDK I started running Bazzite on my workstation after Win11 died on me a couple weeks ago, and if it is the premier experience for Linux desktop gaming then we aren’t there yet. It is great as far as distros go, don’t get me wrong. But WiFi dies after waking from sleep, and bluetooth worked once then died. I had to hack on it for a bit, then do it again with immutable OS patterns in mind. MS is certainly leaving an opportunity open for a new desktop OS. Would anyone dare offer a commercially supported consumer Linux OS?
by bitmasher9 | 2025-11-23 18:28:46+00:00
No, consumers are not tech debt to Microsoft.

Yes, Microsoft is shifting away from consumer technology.

The difference is Microsoft is squeezing every last drop of profit from consumers on their way out. That’s not debt, that’s an asset.

In 25 years Microsoft will be similar to Oracle. Maybe they’ll have investments in some consumer brands, but largely they will be selling to enterprises and governments.
by traceroute66 | 2025-11-23 18:29:06+00:00
> Secretive has been around for a while, I don't see why it's coming up now through this gist.

Because this is different !

Secretive required installation, which is both friction and security-sensitive tool written by a third party.

This is native, written by Apple, available out-of-the-box in Tahoe.
by actinium226 | 2025-11-23 18:29:06+00:00
> The books in the West in general kept getting less rigorous, with time.

I wonder if it's because more people are going to college who would have otherwise gone to a vocational or trade school? If the audience expands to include people who might not have studied calculus had they not chosen to go to college, I feel like textbooks have to change to accommodate that.
by alDuncanson | 2025-11-23 18:29:36+00:00
Over the past week or so I started building Handler, an A2A Protocol client TUI and CLI.

I use handler primarily for sending messages to A2A server agents at work. This was tedious to do with curl commands or running a local A2A inspector and port forwarding or hitting errors from protocol versions.

So I built this and thought I'd share it.

Let me know what you think! Or if there are any features you'd like to see implemented.

This is a very early version of the tool so expect bugs and missing features.
by crazygringo | 2025-11-23 18:29:41+00:00
> Number one is that Microsoft just does not feel like a consumer tech company at all anymore.

At least in terms of Windows/Office, Microsoft has never been a consumer tech company. They've always been focused on corporate sales.

There have always been consumer-focused side areas, from Bob to Encarta to MSN to Xbox.

But Microsoft's bread and butter has always been corporations. I don't understand how the author thinks it was different at any time in the past.
by craftkiller | 2025-11-23 18:30:09+00:00
> It should be illegal to run a “support” department where most agents don’t understand the bare minimum of basics about how the internet works.

Recently when Optimum in NYC broke their IPv6, only 1 out of the 5 tech support people I talked to knew what IPv6 is. None of them fixed the problem. The problem resolved after a couple of days, so I assume someone finally noticed their infrastructure was broken. Incredibly frustrating to deal with an impenetrable wall of incompetence.
by ChrisMarshallNY | 2025-11-23 18:30:32+00:00
Just FYI. For a very long time, strong alcohol ads were banned on TV, and the same with tobacco.

I don't watch regular TV, anymore, so I don't know if it still is in place.

Mentioning "banning advertising" on HN is bound to draw downvotes. A significant number of HN members make money directly, or indirectly, from digital advertising.

It's like walking into a mosque, and demanding they allow drinking.

Won't end well.
by nightshift1 | 2025-11-23 18:30:45+00:00
the Postscript at the end says:

While not every student is expected to read the book sequen- tially cover to cover, it is important to have the details in one place. Calculus is not a subject that can be learned in one pass. Indeed, this book nearly assumes readers have already had a year of calculus, as had the students of MAT 157Y. I hope this book will grow with its readers, remaining both readable and informative over multiple traversals, and that it provides a useful bridge between current calculus texts and more advanced real analysis texts.
by tyleo | 2025-11-23 18:31:19+00:00
Another point not mentioned in this article is that Windows desktops are incredibly slow these days.

I did some compilation tests on a 2025 Windows desktop with an i9 vs some MacBooks and a new top-of-the-line Windows machine can’t even keep up with a bottom-tier M1 MacBook Pro.

https://www.tyleo.com/blog/compiler-performance-on-2025-devi...
by rconti | 2025-11-23 18:31:26+00:00
The web/webapps/mobile helped lead to this era of "desktop PCs" (to include laptops) where the browser mattered more than the OS. It allowed Apple to become resurgent in the desktop market because OS compatibility mattered less than ever.

It's not weird that it led to Apple regaining _some_ market share because clearly there was demand for the Apple/MacOS/OS X experience that may have been tempered by incompatibility in the pre-webapp days.

What _is_ weird, and nonintuitive, is that the (by all accounts) higher-cost vendor would be seen as ascendent in this market. All the more weird for two reasons:

1. The Apple experience, at least on the OS side, matters less and less in the webapp world.

2. Apple isn't trying, either! They're seemingly doing their best to abandon and alienate their desktop OS users. A decade or more of stagnation or regression in features and usability, capped off by Tahoe this year.

It feels like Apple and Microsoft are just waiting for the desktop OS to die, waiting for mobile to take it over; so we can all just shut up and stop asking for filesystems and terminals so they can sell us iPads and Surfaces, and they can finally be free of this ancient burden of selling desktop computer OSes.

And the consumers keep buying the stupid things, demanding product in a market that the vendors don't want any part of.
by prism56 | 2025-11-23 18:31:37+00:00
My rclone for proton stopped working this week and I just cannot get it working. It's looking likely the support will be dropped as the dev is no longer working on it and it's not finished.

Hopefully proton will hurry up with their SDK. Through the rclone GUI I can access and mount the folders and files but I cannot get any auto rclone commands to actually transfer any files.
by traceroute66 | 2025-11-23 18:32:11+00:00
> It's a total pain in the ass to try to have password encrypted gpg or ssh keys in mac.

Who uses password encrypted keys anyway ? No exfiltration protection, and a sitting duck for unlimited automated password guessing attempts.

Pre-Tahoe people used Yubikeys or Secretive. But now this native tool is a better option than Secretive, even if Yubikeys still have their uses for the power-users.