MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
Claude Opus 4.5 Testing
by seanatkerno | 2025-12-04 18:58:49+00:00
BREAKING NEWS

Claude Opus 4.5…. works…. meh fine

When it first came out our reaction was: It looks like per token it's 1.66x the price of sonnet 4.5 - is that cheaper figure because in practice it takes fewer tokens to solve problems and works out cheaper? it's 3x cheaper than opus 4.1

so we tested: 100% accuracy so far, uses fewer tokens, but about the same cost since it's more expensive than sonnet per token.

The north star for LLM providers is —— token usage —— or tokeconomics. If you are building with AI, set up langfuse and obsess over token trade-offs.
by raw_anon_1111 | 2025-12-04 18:58:52+00:00
That’s kind of the point, a mom and pop restaurant or a McDonald’s franchise owner doesn’t have the luxury of burning $10 for every $1 in revenue for years and being backed by VC funding.

Oh and the average franchise owner is not getting rich. They are making $100K a year to $150K a year depending on how many franchises they own.

Also tech companies can afford to pay a tech worker more money because you don’t have to increase the number of workers when you get more customers.

YC is not going to give the aspiring fast food owner $250K to start their business like they are going to give “pets.ai - AI for dog walkers”
by Workaccount2 | 2025-12-04 18:58:56+00:00
People think that because AI cannot replace a senior dev, it's a worthless con.

Meanwhile, pretty much every single person in my life is using LLMs almost daily.

Guys, these things are not going away, and people will pay more money to use them in future.

Even my mom asks ChatGPT to make a baking applet with a picture she uploads of the recipe, that creates a simple checklist for adding ingredients (she forgets ingredients pretty often). She loves it.

This is where LLMs shine for regular people. She doesn't need it to create a 500k LOC turn-key baking tracking SaaS AWS back-end 5 million recipes on tap kitchen assistant app.

She just needs a bespoke one off check list.
by zahlman | 2025-12-04 18:58:56+00:00
> Yeah, let's remember everything that was great about 25 years ago and forget everything that sucked. Juxtapose it with everything that sucks about today but omit everything that's great. Come on man.

That's fair. When I see bad code today, and try to explain to myself what's bad about it, I realize that people totally did the same things 25 years ago.

Nowadays there is just so much more code, and we stand on taller piles of "architecture" trying to scale higher heaps of expectations. The thing is, the effect of the bad stuff seems to compound more readily than the effect of the good stuff. And meeting the demand for more code involves broadening the base of people doing the coding.

> If you think things suck now, just make it better! The world is your playground.

I agree with this. A lot of the modern expectation is artificial, emphasizing form over function. Even where it isn't, a lot of the modern technique is unnecessary cargo-culting. You can do a lot locally if you believe in your machine (https://thundergolfer.com/computers-are-fast ; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ucWdfZoxsYo).

For PAPER I'm targeting Python 3.6+ (where they added `pathlib.Path` and f-strings, and upgraded the SSL version) with the intent to support it indefinitely (which involves forking certain dependencies).
by alwa | 2025-12-04 18:59:06+00:00
Aren’t some of these “accommodations” for “disabilities” things as simple as, like, asking their professors not to put them on the spot in class if they have crippling social anxiety? Because while that might “toughen up” some people, with this person, that technique amounts to just punching them in the face for no constructive purpose?

How much of this is a terminology problem—that the word “disability” serves this blanket purpose for statutory reasons rather than to signal the type or severity of impairment?

Like, at the end of the day, these students still have to perform or not. I get the impression that a lot of these accommodations are kind of just a formal way of not being a dick about obstacles tangential to the actual learning.
by wongarsu | 2025-12-04 18:59:15+00:00
I can't talk about Stanford, but STEM-related jobs (including software engineering) certainly seem to be full of people with ADHD, autism and related "neurodivergances"

I wouldn't be surprised if most of these Stanford cases are people gaming the system. But I would be equally unsurprised if screening all students of elite universities revealed that over 50% of them had some condition listed in the DSM-5, with clear correlations between condition and field of study
by visarga | 2025-12-04 18:59:26+00:00
Scaling the model size, the compute and the dataset hit a wall. Too large a model, or if it needs too much compute - it becomes too expensive to use. And the dataset .. we benefitted in one go from about multiple decades of content accumulation online, but since late 2022 it's only been 3 years, so organic text does not increase exponentially past this size, it only worked for 50T tokens or so.
by djinnrutger | 2025-12-04 18:59:43+00:00
I am working on a easy to use self-hosted IT Helpdesk system for small IT teams. Vibe coding it with VSCode and CoPilot. I started this project when I needed my own helpdesk and didnt want to pay a fortune online providers.

https://github.com/DjinnRutger/HelpDesk-Public/tree/main

https://helpfuldjinn.com/
by hattmall | 2025-12-04 18:59:56+00:00
>If you're saying that people always try to game the system, whatever it is, then I agree however.

This isn't even true either. In the past there was a huge emphasis and effort made toward character. Going out of your way to do the right thing and be helpful and NOT getting special treatment but choosing the difficult path.

Now everything is the opposite it's about getting as much special treatment as possible and shirking as much responsibility and this isn't just people it's throughout the corporate and political system as well.
by toast0 | 2025-12-04 19:00:01+00:00
> My stepson: Just a teenager navigating one of the more emotionally turbulent times while being noticeably different. He has fine motor issues and some social deficiencies. The best I could describe it is that he's emotionally a few years behind where other kids his age would be. He has few accommodations, mostly extra time and the ability to leave a situation that is overstimulating him. He's odd, probably always be a bit odd. May never be able to tie his shoes, but with work, he should be able to navigate society as a functioning adult one day.

As someone with some similar issues, a) my motor skills are fine, b) the focus on tieing shoes is so frustrating; velcro shoes are everywhere, you can even get Dr. Martens high boots with zippers so you don't have to tie them... like sure, try laces and if it works great... but just provide the accommodation and move on. :P

On the plus side, everyone said playing video games would help my fine motor skills, so I got an out to play a lot of video games, which I enjoyed. :D And my atrocious penmanship hasn't been an issue in adult life, because nobody writes anything anymore (and have you seen the penmanship for kids that were in 2-4th grade during covid ... it's worse than mine!)
by SoleilAbsolu | 2025-12-04 19:00:12+00:00
Ouch, this really hurts! Talk about someone who knew how to serve the music and make everyone around him sound absolutely fantastic! I've been on a Booker T & the MGs kick for the last few months so have been immersed in the minimalistic genius of Steve Cropper. He could lay back with a really simple part and then step forward with a flashy lick. The group also proved that folks of different backgrounds can come together and make wonderful things happen, sadly this message is as revolutionary today as it was in the '60s.
by valentsea | 2025-12-04 19:00:25+00:00
Location: Lisbon Remote: Yes Willing to relocate: No Technologies: Vue JS, React JS, Nuxt JS, Next JS. Résumé/CV: https://docs.google.com/document/d/e/2PACX-1vSn7I_e38xXTIWkM... Email:tarasowalentin@gmail.com

I have 8 years of experience in development, having worked both in large companies and small startups. In my last startup, I built from scratch a frontend platform for assessing employees’ knowledge using AI, which was later integrated by the consulting company McKinsey. I also have solid full-stack experience.
by cj | 2025-12-04 19:00:39+00:00
You're describing one end of an extreme.

The opposite extreme is you have someone on your team who is only able to resolve conflicts by having their boss intervene.

E.g. you leave some critical feedback in a PR review. The author of the PR doesn't like your comments, so they tell your mutual boss, then your boss comes to you to ask why you left the comments in the PR, instead of the author coming to you directly.

Obviously there are cases where it's appropriate for you and a coworker to address a problem directly with each other. And there are cases where it makes more sense for your boss to intervene.

The problem is the culture at some jobs gravitate towards either end of the extreme. The ideal is somewhere in the middle. A good manager will find that balance.
by Animats | 2025-12-04 19:01:15+00:00
Good numerical integration is easy, because summing smooths out noise. Good numerical differentiation is hard, because noise is amplified.

Conversely, good symbolic integration is hard, because you can get stuck and have to try another route through a combinatoric maze. Good symbolic differentiation is easy, because just applying the next obvious operation usually converges.

Huh.

Mandatory XKCD: [1]

[1] https://xkcd.com/2117/
by skeeter2020 | 2025-12-04 19:01:47+00:00
there are lots of sports coaches that were not good players, but they are absolute experts in their sport. For some reason we've let agile/life coaches convince us that "management" is the event and someone with customer service management experience has a lot to say about software development management. Ted Lasso is a great show, but it's not gonna happen IRL.

Though the Diamond Dogs would be a great peer group for Engineering Managers...

https://larahogan.me/blog/manager-voltron/
by JosephjackJR | 2025-12-04 19:01:50+00:00
Two-person team, 18 months in a basement. Just got a flat, fixed-width lattice running 50 million persistent nodes on an 8 GB Jetson Orin Nano:

186 ns hot-path (≤ 3.2 cycles steady-state) 33× larger than RAM (disk-backed streaming) Full crash & power-loss recovery (kill -9 or yank the cable) CPU-only, no GPU, no cloud

30-second video on the page — raw tegrastats, no cuts, recorded this week. We’ve never seen anything hit these numbers on commodity edge hardware before. Curious what people think:

Does this actually solve a real problem for robotics / drones / autonomy? Are there edge workloads where sub-200 ns persistent lookups would move the needle? Has anyone else ever gotten close on a Jetson?

Happy to run live demos or share perf traces if anyone wants to break it
by AnthonyMouse | 2025-12-04 19:01:57+00:00
> It's solely to point out that adventured's comment is a bunch of meaningless numbers.

The point of that comment was to point out that minimum wage is irrelevant because basically nobody makes that anyway; even the entry-level jobs pay more than the federal minimum wage.

In that context, arguing that the higher-than-minimum wages people are actually getting still aren't sufficient implies an argument that the minimum wage should be higher than that. And people could read it that way even if it's not what you intended.

So what I'm pointing out is that that's the wrong solution and doing that rather than addressing the real issue (high costs) is the thing that destroys the middle class.
by dmitrygr | 2025-12-04 19:02:12+00:00
A country may vet entrants according to any criteria it chooses, just like I may enforce any limits I wish unto who may enter my house. If the criteria are too egregious for the gain the applicants might get by being in that country, the talented immigrants who have options may go elsewhere and the country may need relax the criteria to recapture the market for bright minds.
by sureglymop | 2025-12-04 19:02:28+00:00
Where does the idea/reasoning that highly academically successful students cannot have a disability come from?

I would go a step further and say there is probably a high chance that neurodivergent students are more academically successful, iff they did get to that level of education. And it's not impossible that they are overrepresented in that group of people.

And people may be intellectually gifted, and yet experience strong behavioral and social difficulties. Not that my own observation counts but I've met multiple people on the spectrum who were highly intelligent and "gifted" yet faced more adversity in life, i.e. for social reasons. It's controversial because it directly goes against the idea that we exist in a meritocracy.

People are going to cheat no matter what. To me, it's more important that the people who do need and deserve accomodations are able to get them though!
by folli | 2025-12-04 19:02:36+00:00
Also, depending on the ingredient, it makes more sense to use cups as a measurement of volume, not mass, when converting to metric. E.g. liquids, yoghurt etc.

Another thing: although not strictly metric, but European recipes also use tablespoon and teaspoon as measurements for smaller volumes, so no need to convert this.

Just my two cents, other than that very nice work!!
by aabajian | 2025-12-04 19:03:11+00:00
I think MSFT really needs some validated user stories. How many users want to, "Improve my writing," "Create an image," "Understand what is changed" (e.g. recent edits), or "Visualize my data."?

Those are the four use cases featured by the Microsoft 365 Copilot App (https://m365.cloud.microsoft/).

Conversely, I bet there are a lot of people who want AI to improve things they are already doing repeatedly. For example, I click the same button in Epic every day because Epic can't remove a tab. Maybe Copilot could learn that I do this and just...do it for me? Like, Copilot could watch my daily habits and offer automation for recurring things.
by SoftTalker | 2025-12-04 19:03:44+00:00
At the gym I go to, there are a lot of college-age kids. I overhear them talking about getting on Ritalin or Adderall to help them study. Not because they really need it, it's just seen as a "performance hack" to get an advantage. They talk about what doctor they went to and how easy it was to get a prescription.
by xnorswap | 2025-12-04 19:03:51+00:00
This is the most annoying thing, and it's even happened to Jetbrains' rider too.

Some stuff that used to work well with smart autocomplete / intellisense got worse with AI based autocomplete instead, and there isn't always an easy way to switch back to the old heuristic based stuff.

You can disable it entirely and get dumb autocomplete, or get the "AI powered" rubbish, but they had a very successful heuristic / statistics based approach that worked well without suggesting outright rubbish.

In .NET we've had intellisense for 25 years that would only suggest properties that could exist, and then suddenly I found a while ago that vscode auto-completed properties that don't exist.

It's maddening! The least they could have done is put in a roslyn pass to filter out the impossible.
by jandrewrogers | 2025-12-04 19:03:59+00:00
The necessary doctor's note can be trivially purchased without any meaningful evidence of disability. I know a number of children of wealthy families with these notes. They don't even pretend to be disabled, possession of the note makes it beyond question.

Buying an advantage for your children in this way is widespread. This article suggests that it is even more widespread than I imagined.
by lostmsu | 2025-12-04 19:04:07+00:00
> The percentages of workers that are neurodivergent is much higher than usual

Is it much though? 38%? I haven't seen one in 15 years across 5+ different companies.

> there's a big cadre or neurodivergent people that are just in the line where they are very productive workers anyway

Alternatively, it just became popular to label others or oneself that way. And tech elites have nothing better to do in free time. Also DEI benefits! Who else would be allowed a medical break due to a burnout and stress?
by mrguyorama | 2025-12-04 19:04:39+00:00
In the 1970s it was still easy to just abandon the school system. Kids who didn't obviously thrive were usually treated as family burdens, and still mostly removed from society.

They also usually died young.

People with ADHD for example, are more prone to abusing drugs and alcohol. How many people died from alcoholism who were untreated ADHD cases?

>It still feels like there is more autism today compared to then though.

This is objectively true, do you know why? We changed the name of really poorly functioning people in some cases from "Mentally retarded" to "Autistic".

That's it.

Look at a graph of generic "mental retardation" diagnosis and it's fall coincides with the "rise" of autism diagnosis. Those people were always actually autistic, but we did not have the institutional knowledge and tools to know that, because the science of psychiatry and psychology is still in its infancy and struggled with rampant a-scientific thought even into today. Jordan Peterson for example is a "Jungian" trained psychologist even though that's not science, and he was fired when his college discovered he was leaning more on that unscientific worldview than actual hard science in his college courses.

>I'd say the same thing about asthma and food allergies too, seems that half the kids today are allergic to something, need inhalers, etc.

The food allergies is real because a bunch of doctors were "nervous" about babies with peanut butter allergies, and without any scientific study or consideration, spent over a decade recommending parents not expose kids to peanuts.

Now that we have actually done the science, we know that was dead wrong, completely irresponsible, unscientific, and directly responsible for something like 8 million fully preventable peanut allergies. That's what happens when you let even medical professionals use their "intuition" rather than hard data. This is why medical studies blind those professionals. Doctors are not usually scientists.

There is no education that removes human biases and cognitive missteps, and it is impossible to cure yourself of the standard human fallacies. Statisticians can still become gambling addicts, and can still suffer from gambling fallacies when not being rigorous.

>I would guess that it's some combination of more people waiting to have kids until they are older, environmental factors, mania about cleanliness and sanitizing everything, maybe social factors such as putting more kids in daycare at a very young age, IDK.

The only one of these with any real evidence is that Geriatric Pregnancy is a known risk factor for autism. Everything else is nonsense.

Don't feed into the rampant misinformation and malicious refusal to learn what is already known by throwing out baseless guesses and letting them carry any weight. How often has one of your customers correctly guessed what caused a bug without understanding, access, and rigor? You are doing the same.
by zamalek | 2025-12-04 19:04:46+00:00
> The students at America's elite universities are supposed to be the smartest, most promising young people in the country. And yet, shocking percentages of them are claiming academic accommodations designed for students with learning disabilities.

What the actual... Lack of journalistic integrity rears its head once again. Executive function and social challenges do not make a person "not smart."

Going back to the core of the problem, I feel that this does need to be controlled. It's one thing to disability signal online to gain clout, it's a completely different thing to drain resources from genuinely disabled folks. Disabilities need to come with diagnoses.
by throw0101d | 2025-12-04 19:05:46+00:00
> I've kind of wanted to build a three node cluster with some low end stuff to expand my knowledge of it. Now they have a datacenter controller.

You can set up a cluster to play with multiple nodes without the just-announced PDM 1.0. Or you can use PDM to manage three stand alone nodes.

If you want to do both, perhaps a 3-node cluster plus a 1-node stand alone with a PDM 'overlay'. So just a +1 versus a 2x.
by trollbridge | 2025-12-04 19:05:52+00:00
I can’t find any use case for Copilot at all, and I frequently “sell” people Microsoft 365. (I don’t earn a commission; I just help them sign up for it.) I cannot come up with a reason anyone needs Copilot.

Meanwhile I spent 3-4 hours working with a client yesterday using Dreamhost’s free AI tools to get them up and running with a website quickly whilst I configured Microsoft 365, Cloudflare, email and so forth for them.
by staplefire | 2025-12-04 19:05:57+00:00
Accommodating for disability is cheesing the test score. Cheesing a test score is cheesing the metric. Cheesing the metric is always some form of lying, usually to yourself.

- You're lying to yourself about how good of a fit your are for the program.

- The professor/administration is getting inaccurate data about the teaching efficacy.

If you want to know if you can be a civil engineer despite your disability, the last thing you should do is correct for the disability in your primary success metric.
by TheOccasionalWr | 2025-12-04 19:06:05+00:00
I'm pretty sure software development of a website doesn't translate to a life and death situation that US army is dealing with. If anything it's why there is so many managers who think this works as if we are solving lives so they have to be strict and we all have to be strict and everyone needs to have their story points updated. The reason why most people went into software development is because they like building stuff so you have to inspire that - it's quite different to why people join US army.

My 2 cents on the actual manager philosophy is that it depends on the organization and the personal and cultural differences of the team members, some people like leaders, some people like servants and some like equality. At the end of the day everyone has to be aware they do work for the business and why they do stuff. The manager has to make that aware and inspire people.

Team topologies Shapeup Sooner Safer Happier

I think those fit most companies.
by firmretention | 2025-12-04 19:07:11+00:00
I don't believe any hair on the human body truly grows continuously. Even head hair has a lifespan of ~7 years and whatever you can grow in that time is the max. I was a big metalhead in high school and grew my hair out. Indeed, after about 7-8 years it stopped getting longer, right at about waist level, and was stuck there until I finally got sick of it and cut it off.
by lostlogin | 2025-12-04 19:07:12+00:00
> why? because there is no way to survive as a structure, if your org is made up of people who want to eat and don’t want to be a monk.

The worse offenders in terms of corrupting power structures seem to be religious organisations, so being a monk is out too.

That power eventually corrupts shouldn’t rule out an organisation, but if it does, start your own and keep it to one employee.
by Pet_Ant | 2025-12-04 19:07:29+00:00
> Number (3) has better explanatory powers than (1). However, for the purpose of assessing social and family impact, it is rendered to (1).

My first thought was is (1) more of a projection of (3) from multiple dimensions to one, or more like the magnitude.

Also, it is known thing or are "trains" a euphemism now like "friend of Dorothy"?