MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by michaelgiba | 2025-12-21 21:56:19+00:00
> You surely aren't implying that the model is sentient or has any "desire" to give an answer, right?

The model is a probabilistic machine that was trained to generate completions and then fine tuned to generate chat style interactions. There is an output, given the prompt and weights, that is most likely under the model. That’s what one could call the model’s “desired” answer if you want to anthropomorphize. When you constrain which tokens can be sampled at a given timestep you by definition diverge from that
by mncharity | 2025-12-21 21:56:32+00:00
> I've had good conversations with strangers

Laptops sometimes have stickers. For a time, I instead had a transparent slip cover, to vary the sticker set, user-test alternatives, and throttle conversations. Science education topics (Boston/Cambridge subway). Anti-patriarchy stickers drew proto-MAGAs. Some backpacks now have low-res screens built into the back, suggesting new possibilities.

One Laptop Per Child, at its peak, generated fun continuous crowd conversations.

> a pair of glasses with a screen inside of them

I've no idea what current tech is like, but I use to proselytize aphysical UIs, where a small head motion results in larger screen motion, to reduce neck swiveling.[1]

> weirder

Laptop harness walking desks are a thing. And one can do hand and head tracking[2] (I had that setup at a meetup where the swag was little stick-on privacy shutters for laptop webcams :). Boston/Cambridge is perhaps culturally a best case for such games - I've not tried them in NYC... hmm.

> but something very complex, [...] instead sketch out a diagram on a piece of paper [...] keep a small notebook in my bag

Same. I've tried swapping in an iPad, but it hasn't stuck.

[1] silly old demo, 5k on a bus: https://x.com/mncharity/status/1225091755667853318 [2] https://imgur.com/a/keyboard-cam-Z1VipaL
by cycomanic | 2025-12-21 21:56:36+00:00
It's unlikely that the thing will burst and disperse all CO2 immediately. It's just slightly higher pressure than the outside (that's the whole principle). So you have a slow leak of CO2 to the outside. You don't have to run that fast (or run at all).

The way I understood the quote, the safety distance is when they have to do an emergency deflate (e.g. due to wind). The way they calculate the 70 m is probably based on the volume and how large of a area you cover until the height is low enough that you can still breath.

Generally, because it's leaking to the outside, where there is going to be wind it will not stick around for long time I suspect.
by _betty_ | 2025-12-21 21:57:01+00:00
Having only used the base price of each, I loved the ux of cursor and what it enabled me to do, but I hit my monthly cap in 2 days. Whereas Claude code (on pro) I do hit my session limit and even weekly limit once but never have I had to been tools down for 20+ days.

I hear codex is even more generous.

Admittedly all seem cheap enough, but there does seem to be a large diff in pricing
by etamponi | 2025-12-21 21:57:20+00:00
> Logs were designed for a different era. An era of monoliths, single servers, and problems you could reproduce locally. Today, a single user request might touch 15 services, 3 databases, 2 caches, and a message queue. Your logs are still acting like it's 2005.

Perhaps it's time to take back the good things from 2005.
by 0xbadcafebee | 2025-12-21 21:57:33+00:00
> Here's the mental model shift that changes everything: Instead of logging what your code is doing, log what happened to this request.

Yeah that doesn't magically fix everything. Logging is still an arbitrary, clunky, unintuitive process that requires intentional design and extra systems to be useful.

The "Wide Event log" example is 949 bytes, which isn't unmanageably large, but it is 3x larger than most log messages which are about 300 bytes. And in that blob of data might be key insights, but it is left up to an extra engineering process to discover what might be unusual in that blob. It lacks things like code line numbers, stack trace, and context given by the program about its particular functions (rather than assumptions based on a few pieces of metadata). And it's excessively verbose, as it has a trace and request ID and service name, but duplicates information already available to tracing systems based on those 3 metrics.

> Wide events are a philosophy: one comprehensive event per request, with all context attached.

That's simply impossible. You cannot have all context from viewing a single point in the network, regardless of how hard you try to record or pass on information. That's the whole point of tracing: you correlate the context of different network points, specifically because that's the only way to discover the missing details.

> Modern columnar databases (ClickHouse, BigQuery, etc.) are specifically designed for high-cardinality, high-dimensionality data. The tooling has caught up. Your practices should too.

You should not depend on a space shuttle to get to the grocery store. Logging is intended to be an abstracted component which can be built on by other systems. Your app should work just as well running from Docker on your laptop as it does in the cloud.
by mvanbaak | 2025-12-21 21:57:44+00:00
I still dont get the idea about AI code reviews. A code review (at least in my opinion) is for your peers to check if the changes will have a positive or negative effect on the overall code + architecture. I have yet to see an LLM being good at this.

Sure, they will leave comments about common made errors (your editor should already warn about this before you even commit it) etc. But to notify about this weird thing that was done to make sure something a lot of customers wanted is made reality.

also, PR's are created to share knowledge. Questions and answers on them are to spread knowledge in the team. AI does not do that.

[edit] Added the part about knowledge sharing
by ktallett | 2025-12-21 21:58:05+00:00
As someone that works in quantum computing research both academic and private, no it isn't imminent in my understanding of the word, but it will happen. We are still at that point whereby we are comparable to 60's general computing development. Many different platforms and we have sort of decided on the best next step but we have many issues still to solve. A lot of the key issues have solutions, the problem is more getting everyone to focus in the right direction, which also will mean when funding starts to focus in the right direction. There are snake oil sellers right now and life will be imminently easier when they are removed.
by ajross | 2025-12-21 21:58:47+00:00
> So what is the overall chart giving me that I can use?

"If you write in C or an analog, your math will autovectorize nicely"

"If you use a runtime with a managed heap, you're likely to take a penalty even on math stuff that doesn't look heap limited"

"rust 1.92 is, surprisingly, well behind clang on autovectorizable code"

I mean, I think that stuff is interesting.

> If you want an arctangent (which is really what it's doing), you use the library function

If you just want to call library functions, you're 100% at the mercy of whatever platform you picked[1]. So sure, don't look at benchmarks, they can only prove you wrong.

[1] Picked without, I'll note, having looked carefully at cross-platform benchmarks before having made the choice! Because you inexplicably don't think they tell you anything useful.
by VerifiedReports | 2025-12-21 21:59:53+00:00
But that is squandered by piss-poor programming and stupid visual gimmicks.

I had to return to Windows as a daily work platform after a long time away (on Macs). I already knew that it had devolved into a grotesquely defective, regressive parade of UI blunders and deleted functionality... but its actual performance is TERRIBLE. I'm waiting for simple operations that I wouldn't have expected to wait for 20 years ago, even on bog-standard office desktop machines.
by namibj | 2025-12-21 21:59:59+00:00
2021 total world energy production of approximately 172 PWh would require 27.5 billion metric tons of lithium metal at typical 0.16g/Wh of a modern LFP cell; meanwhile, we have approximately 230 billion metric tons of lithium for taking (e.g. as part of desalination plants producing many other elements at the same time from the pre-consecrated brine) from the oceans.

Note that we require only a fraction of a year's worth of energy to be stored, I think less than 5% if we accept energy intensive industry in high latitude to take winter breaks, or even more with further tactics like higher overproduction or larger interconnected grid areas.

And that's all without even the sodium batteries that do seem to be viable already.
by dxdm | 2025-12-21 22:00:01+00:00
> All of this arises from your failure to question this basic assumption though, doesn't it?

Haha, no. "All of this" is a scenario I consider quite realistic in terms of what needs to happen. The question is, how should you split this up, if at all?

Mind that these concerns will be involved in other ways with other requests, serving customers and internal users. There are enough different concerns at different levels of abstraction that you might need different domain experts to develop and maintain them, maybe using different programming languages, depending on who you can get. There will definitely be multiple teams. It may be beneficial to deploy and scale some functions independently; they have different load and availability requirements.

Of course you can slice things differently. Which assumptions have you questioned recently? I think you've been given some material. No need to be rude.
by lr4444lr | 2025-12-21 22:00:07+00:00
As someone with asthma, let me tell you that they _do_ need to get into better shape to breathe better. Part of that is a medically proven practice called pulmonary rehabilitation, but also, regular cardiovascular exercise at different intensities and direct training of the abdominal muscles has a marked improvement both on pulmonary function (to a limit, but even more important as you age) and oxygen utilization from the reduced pulmonary function. Finally, both acid and laryngeal reflux are silent contributors to asthma by introducing acid and pepin into the airways, and weight loss can improve the symptoms of those.
by iwanttocomment | 2025-12-21 22:00:09+00:00
The article is simply incorrect when it says that Youtube Music doesn't allow streaming of one's own personal library. It does - up to 100,000 songs.

This functionality has been available since 2020, around the time when Google Play Music (which always had the ability to play from a personal library) got absorbed into Youtube Music.

https://support.google.com/youtubemusic/answer/9716522?hl=en
by flufluflufluffy | 2025-12-21 22:00:23+00:00
The whole “simulation hypothesis” thing has always irked me. To me, the question of whether our universe was [“intentionally” “created” by some other “being(s)”] vs [“naturally” happened] is meaningless. Whatever it was on the other side is way too insanely unfathomable to be classified into those 2 human-created ideas. Ugh the whole thing is so self-centered.
by idle_zealot | 2025-12-21 22:00:33+00:00
That is how it's supposed to work. Civic engagement and average level of education make this unlikely though. Representatives as disconnected from their constituency as those in the US are a serious threat to democracy, and there's no silver bullet fix, just a lot of obvious reforms that are really hard to pass. (Campaign finance, ranked choice voting, education funding, punishing politicians who break the law...)
by araes | 2025-12-21 22:01:03+00:00
Cigarette companies (no surprise) are known to do a similar type of price fixing, although in their case it's targeting high-income shoppers for lack of discounts.

Noticed it a while locally, and national data agrees. If you want to shop for cigarettes, shop in low income, minority areas. [1] Cigarette companies specifically target stores with regular, habitual, high-income smokers for high prices and lack of discounts, while offering significant bargains in stores less than a mile away. [2]

[1] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6689253/

[2] https://truthinitiative.org/research-resources/tobacco-indus...
by some-guy | 2025-12-21 22:01:31+00:00
My boomer mother in law could handle Linux whether it be GNOME or KDE. What she cannot handle is not being able to put in a DVD of Turbo Tax 20xx and double click the install button. Nor can she handle not having the native Outlook client, or Microsoft Word.

Yes there are alternatives, and possibly even good enough web versions of these tools, but most of the world isn’t like you and me.
by ThrowawayB7 | 2025-12-21 22:02:17+00:00
> "Do you think Windows OS is a profit center...?"

The consumer editions are not all there is to Windows. Nearly every seat of Windows 11 Enterprise used in corporations is a paid license and there are a lot of corporations. Nearly every instance of Windows Server is a very expensive paid license and is required to run Active Directory, MS Exchange, SQL Server, etc.
by bullen | 2025-12-21 22:02:32+00:00
You need to look at the cost of improvements, and they overshadow all progress.

I'm going linux with TWM (desktop with design look from the 70s) on ARM because M$ is clearly not thinking about the long perspective.

We need a stable platform to build quality software.

And that's saying alot seen how linux is deprecating libc after very short time and the legacy joystick API is not being compiled into modern kernels anymore.

Stability is way more important than bells and whistles.
by stackghost | 2025-12-21 22:02:53+00:00
I wrote some VBA to try to reduce the size of the workbooks (dozens of MB) but originally it was just massive nested lookups and conditionals written by the people who had been there before me.

The problem with VBA or PS is that you'll be posted out in 2-3 years and your successor might not even know what VBA is or how to access it much less how to write it.

I ended up writing a lot of documentation based on my XLSX archaeology.
Show HN: Nrawg – Not Really A Word Game
by toastar | 2025-12-21 22:03:49+00:00
NRAWG (Not Really A Word Game) is a browser game I built last year that is a combination of a Rubik’s Cube and a word search. I was interested in the idea of a creating a word game that didn’t necessarily require a strong vocabulary or even familiarity with a language but was instead closer to a traditional puzzle game.

Curious what y’all think! :)
by ktallett | 2025-12-21 22:03:53+00:00
It is more, many companies can't do what they claim to do, or they have done it once at best and had no more consistency. I sense most companies in the quantum computing space right now are of this ilk. As someone that works in academic and private quantum computing research, repeatability and methodology are severely lacking, which always rings alarm bells. Some companies are funded off the back of one very poor quality research paper, reviewed by people who are not experts, that then leads to a company that looks professional but behind the scenes I would imagine are saying Oh shit, now we actually have to do this thing we said we could do.
by mothballed | 2025-12-21 22:03:53+00:00
This is why I don't hire them. I have nothing against their business model, but I'd expect I'd be the guy who gets unlucky and an illegal "gets hurt" (on purpose) then the court actually awards them a gazillion dollars when they claim I'm the evil unregulated employer smashing down the poor man with my lack of liability insurance and whatever long list of other things you need to hand someone else a dollar for a job.
by pwg | 2025-12-21 22:04:16+00:00
> Why would anyone want to buy a new computer now unless the old one is worn out? There is no price/performance improvement.

Which is exactly why MS is pivoting to begging you to buy a new computer by harassing you with an apparently undismissable "upgrade" dialog.

They have to keep the upgrade treadmill running, and lacking "better performance" as the bait, they have resorted to outright harassment.
by mvanbaak | 2025-12-21 22:04:42+00:00
those AI checks, if you insist in getting them, should be part of your pre-commit, not part of your PR review flow. they are at best (if they even reach this level) as good as a local run of a linter or static type checker If you are running them as a PR check, the PR is out there. So people will spend time on that PR. no matter if you are fixing the AI comments or not. Best to fix those things BEFORE you provide your code to the team.

[edit] Added part about wasting your teams time
by incanus77 | 2025-12-21 22:04:55+00:00
About 20 years ago, I landed my first real, high-impact job at an upstart consulting agency in Washington DC that came from the ashes of the Howard Dean campaign. Unfortunately, I had also just signed a lease on an apartment in the town I lived in, a two hour drive from downtown DC.

I spent the first year at that job commuting into DC 2-3 days/week, which involved about an hour drive, then an hour regional commuter train, then some Metro transfer and walking — then back again in the evening. I spent that train time offline (as it was 2004) learning the Apple Cocoa frameworks, as in another twist of fate, the company was entirely Apple laptop-based, which was fairly rare for 2004, and I built tools for the team and myself. The focus possible because I was offline, with comprehensive docs, was pretty intense and was a huge part of many aspects of my career to follow.
by some-guy | 2025-12-21 22:06:04+00:00
The private trackers are just as much about the community as they are about the content they host. Of course there are trade offs because communities can be very insular.

I’ve noticed in the past 10 years or so private trackers have become less strict because the economics of ratios only works if either a) everyone is equally uploading new material and b) there are more and more signups. So now there is value in the amount of time you seed your content which lowers your “required” ratio.
by KaiserPro | 2025-12-21 22:06:16+00:00
I agree that logging suck bollocks, especially when most of the time you really want metrics.

Opentel is great, but sadly A lot of the stuff that I am using doesn't support it.

The thing that made it much more bearable, even easy is loki and a decent log parser.

I know a lot of kids like using SQL to interact with things, loki's explore interface beats the living shit out of SQL (In my opinion) its really simple to just isolate and slice logs interactivly. You can build your query really simply.

It beats splunk/sumo/scuba(facebook's log system) hands down in terms of searchability.
by zaitsev1393 | 2025-12-21 22:06:40+00:00
I can understand the aspiration to have the system that can be run from the lowest level out of box tools, but then, I am doing frontend for almost a decade and this is porbably the first time I'm seeing such attention to this specific 'no js' use case, as in this thread.

Maybe I'm not reading enough webdev forums. I agree though that things that don't required js should be written in no js way.
by bunnybomb2 | 2025-12-21 22:07:26+00:00
These self-centered, philosophy reading, "whats the point" cynical mother-fuckers are my worst enemy. If you were born 300 years ago, you would've been a slave. Maybe even my slave. You are the luckiest human alive.

Get off hacker news, go to mcdonalds, get a root beer, a ice cream cone, mix the two and realize how lucky you are to have 2 eyes to see the blue sky with, a functioning brain dumb enough to ever post this and STFU. Respectfully.
by bdbdbdb | 2025-12-21 22:07:36+00:00
I'm like this but four kids. The kids are my life, but in another way the two hours when they're in bed are my life. I try and get household shit done in tiny increments throughout the day - cleaning the kitchen in the morning before I start work, doing laundry at lunch, cleaning away dinner stuff while they brush teeth, so that I squeeze a little more self time in the evenings. In those hours, I have side projects I work on. And I do WAY too many. People would look at my life and say I need to focus on one thing to finish it, but I've learned (for me at least) that happiness comes from having lots of options when you have that free time. I forgive myself for not making major progress on things, not being productive outside of work, and I try to just enjoy my time whether it's writing fiction, building board games, hobby coding, messing with unity, reading, building models, casual gaming etc. lately I've been doing needle felting because I picked up a cheap Halloween decoration of a needle felt cute vampire. Halloween is long over but I'm not beating myself up about it. All my hobbies follow a pattern of things that I can pick up where I left off with minimum fuss. I don't do anything that takes an age to set up or has a minimum time commitment.

I would say hang in there, and once in a while give yourself permission to prioritise the "care for myself" over the "maintain a household".

Do things in little increments and don't torture yourself about not being full of energy all the time
by dmix | 2025-12-21 22:07:56+00:00
That may be the rules for humans, particuarly people who are always in a rush and won't stay still anyway. With a major intersection turned four-way stop you have lots of humans making very complex decisions and taking a lot of personal risk. If multiple self driving cars make the choice at the wrong time you could jam up an intersection and create a worse traffic issue, or kill a passenger.

It's all a careful risk calculation, those self driving cars need to determine if it's safe to continue through an intersection without the traffic lights their computers spent millions of hours to train on (likewise with humans). That's a tough choice for a highly regulated/insured company running thousands of cars.

If anything, their programming should only take such a risk to move out of the way for a fire truck/ambulance.
by AtlasBarfed | 2025-12-21 22:08:00+00:00
Wasnt there a Google cross app logging framework and request tracking project 15 years ago?

Did grafana die when I wasn't looking? Does datadog still make money?

What's weird about this article is that it's the same thing being said 20 years ago. Is this a sign of people not learning from the better parts of Java deployment stacks?
by VerifiedReports | 2025-12-21 22:08:04+00:00
Nothing tops Apple's infantile refusal to put a (real) Delete key on their laptops. Instead, they have a Backspace key mislabeled "delete."

When the Eject key became obsolete, Apple had a perfect opportunity to fix this omission with essentially no effort. NOPE. Meanwhile, everybody else managed to have a proper Delete key on their laptops.
by bahmboo | 2025-12-21 22:08:17+00:00
I don't think he is saying that. As I said in my other comment here I think he is just drawing a potential parallel to other historic work that was done in a private(secret) domain. The larger point is we simply don't know so it's best to act in a way that even if it hasn't been done already it certainly seems like it will be broken. Hence the move to Post-Quantum Cryptography is probably a good idea!
by Workaccount2 | 2025-12-21 22:09:02+00:00
I'm curious what the mental calculus was that a $5k laptop would competitively benchmark against SOTA models for the next 5 years was.

Somewhat comically, the author seems to have made it about 2 days. Out of 1,825. I think the real story is the folly of fixating your eyes on shiny new hardware and searching for justifications. I'm too ashamed to admit how many times I've done that dance...

Local models are purely for fun, hobby, and extreme privacy paranoia. If you really want privacy beyond a ToS guarantee, just lease a server (I know they can still be spying on that, but it's a threshold.)