MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by aw1621107 | 2025-12-26 18:43:06+00:00
Fair point. It's a relatively recent thing, though, and even with the reduced footprint I think it and the GC at least would still make its use difficult at best for some of C/C++'s remaining niches.

That being said, I wouldn't be surprised if it (and similar capabilities from Graal, etc.) grabbed yet more market share due to making those languages more viable where they historically had not been.
by afro88 | 2025-12-26 18:43:07+00:00
This thread had me a bit confused, then I realised the discrepancy. Your objective isn't to label the high school kid as privileged to remove respect for his work. It is to highlight the privilege to others that don't have the same privilege, who may see this as what success looks like, so the discouragement of not being able to do it (no access to GPUs) isn't attributed to a lack of their own ability or intelligence but something outside their control (privilege).
by 3eb7988a1663 | 2025-12-26 18:43:37+00:00
No doubt there is exquisite engineering and process control expertise required to operate an aluminum plant. However, I imagine there is extensive need for people to "man the bellows", move this X tons from here to there, etc that require only minimal training and a clean drug test. An army of labor vs a handful of nerds to swap failed hard drives.
by gregfjohnson | 2025-12-26 18:44:05+00:00
The original comment by Rob Pike and discussion here have implied or used the word "evil".

What is a workable definition of "evil"?

How about this:

Intentionally and knowingly destroying the lives of other people for no other purpose than furthering one's own goals, such as accumulating wealth, fame, power, or security.

There are people in the tech space, specifically in the current round of AI deployment and hype, who fit this definition unfortunately and disturbingly well.

Another much darker sort of of evil could arise from a combination of depression or severe mental illness and monstrously huge narcissism. A person who is suffering profoundly might conclude that life is not worth the pain and the best alternative is to end it. They might further reason that human existence as a whole is an unending source of misery, and the "kindest" thing to do would be to extinguish humanity as a whole.

Some advocates of AI as "the next phase of evolution" seem to come close to this view or advocate it outright.

To such people it must be said plainly and forcefully:

You have NO RIGHT to make these kinds of decisions for other human beings.

Evolution and culture have created and configured many kinds of human brains, and many different experiences of human consciousness.

It is the height (or depth) of arrogance to project your own tortured mental experience onto other human beings and arrogate to yourself the prerogative to decide on their behalf whether their lives are worth living.
by AaronFriel | 2025-12-26 18:44:21+00:00
OCI artifacts, using the same protocol as container registries. It's a protocol designed for versioning (tagging) content addressable blobs, associating metadata with them, and it's CDN friendly.

Homebrew uses OCI as its backend now, and I think every package manager should. It has the right primitives you expect from a registry to scale.
by hexer292 | 2025-12-26 18:44:32+00:00
As a discord user, it's the kind of platform that I would want to have running to receive notifications, sort of like the SMS of gaming.

A large part of my friend group use discord as the primary method of communication, even in an in person context (was at a festival a few months ago with a friend, and we would send texts over discord if we got split up) so maybe its not a common use case.
by the__alchemist | 2025-12-26 18:46:06+00:00
The Cargo example at the top is striking. Whenever I publish a crate, and it blocks me until I write `--allow-dirty`, I am reminded that there is a conflation between Cargo/crates.io and Git that should not exist. I will write `--allow-dirty` because I think these are two separate functionalities that should not be coupled. Crates.io should not know about or care about my project's Git usage or lack thereof.
by Rendello | 2025-12-26 18:47:35+00:00
I always wanted a reason to learn C, but couldn't figure out a good project for it. I ended up learning TempleOS' HolyC as my introduction to low-level programming, funnily enough.

If you're familiar with web programming and data engineering, WebAssembly might be a good way to get into low-level programming. I've written a few web extensions in Rust, compiled down to WASM, and lots of low-level languages have WASM targets now.
by MontyCarloHall | 2025-12-26 18:48:26+00:00
My brother's electrical company needed hundreds of Schaltpläne (circuit diagrams).
Professional CAD work? Unbezahlbar (unaffordable).
Drawing each by hand = 5 hours per plan
100 drawings = 500 hours = 12 weeks

The Result: 99.5% time saved
100 drawings: 12 weeks → <1 hour

This is a general pattern of how automation (including the recent wave of gen-AI) reshapes the labor landscape. Automation rarely replaces jobs wholesale (i.e. very few people get fired because their position was "outsourced" to automation). Rather, automation lets people who are proficient in Domain A who need some work done in Domain B become proficient enough in Domain B with sufficient ease that it's cheaper for them to pick up the requisite Domain B skills themselves versus hiring a Domain B specialist.
Can an Auto-Generated Forensic Report Hold Up in Court?
by cd_mkdir | 2025-12-26 18:48:34+00:00
Came across this ExitProtocol’s autogenerated “forensic asset tracing report” (LIBR, full ledger replay, SHA-256 sealing, court-style citations).

https://exitprotocols.com/static/documents/Sterling_Forensic_Report_FINAL.pdf
by ladyanita22 | 2025-12-26 18:49:27+00:00
That's super cool! I have been wondering what could be done with ESP32 if it weren't for the lack of RAM.

As a fun of Rust, one thing that saddens me is knowing these things would be difficult to achieve with a Rust compiler, given the language seems to be vastly more complex.

Unless someone created a subset of Rust without (some?) safety checks, I guess.
by mkagenius | 2025-12-26 18:50:41+00:00
If you don't want to depend on cloud, have a mac, then you can run a sandbox locally on you mac. I have built an apple container (not docker) based sandbox to run arbitrary code - coderunner[1]. It is quite fast. And apple container provides one vm per container unlike docker on macos which shares the vm across all containers. Coderunner is good for processing sensitive docs locally in a secure sandbox.

1. coderunner - https://github.com/instavm/coderunner
by joquarky | 2025-12-26 18:50:52+00:00
Same here, I just limit my use of genAI to writing functions (and general brainstorming).

I only use the standard "chat" web interface, no agents.

I still glue everything else together myself. LLMs enhance my experience tremendously and I still know what's going on in the code.

I think the move to agents is where people are becoming disconnected from what they're creating and then that becomes the source of all this controversy.
by Tade0 | 2025-12-26 18:51:44+00:00
Guess my normal usage is more destructive than your trips. The main driver of wear in my case was always commuting with the device and thus also plugging/unplugging things several times a day.

Also if you hold a 2kg closed laptop with one hand - you're going to have pressure marks and I learned that the hard way.

Anyway, all around me people have always had hardware issues - also with Apple products. I recall replacing the battery in a late 2011 MBP because it was swollen as it failed from age alone.

Bottom line is that I believe you, I just think you're an outlier.
by DetectDefect | 2025-12-26 18:51:48+00:00
People will eventually stop eating meat because it is unsustainable, but unfortunately not without causing a great deal of suffering first, and your comment is an example of why this process is unnecessarily prolonged. It is clear you have not done much research on actual animal welfare based on your "pasture" argument alone. I am even willing to bet you think humans currently outnumber animals, when the reality is so much more troubling.
by mergesort | 2025-12-26 18:51:59+00:00
As the author of the post I think it was a nice quick post to share my perspective of a behavior I’ve been seeing across many (but not all) developers recently, but I’m always open to feedback for how to improve my writing!

And as I mentioned here (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46392900) I have no affiliation with any of the organizations, nor care to evangelize any of them. Nobody pays me to write, I’m just a guy on the internet sharing his thoughts, building software, and teaching people how to use AI better with any tool people want to use. :)
by Calavar | 2025-12-26 18:52:07+00:00
You're not the only one who feels that way, but IMHO it's not avalid complaint.

The C++ standard says implementation defined because the weeds get very thick here:

- Are paths formed with forward slash or backslash?

- Case sensitive?

- NT style drive letter or Posix style root dir?

- For relative paths, what is it relative to? When there all multiple matches, what is the algorithm to determine priority?

- What about symlinks and hard links?

- Are http and ftp URI's supported (e.g. an online IDE like godbolt). If so, which versions of those protocols? TLS 1.3+ only? Are you going to accept SHA-1?

- Should the file read be transactional?

People already complain that the C++ standard is overly complicated by one or two orders of mangitude more than it should be. So instead of adding even more complexity by redefining the OS semantics of your build platform in a language spec, they use "implementation defined" as a shorthand for "your compiler will call fopen" plus some implementation wiggle room

What if steals my credit card data is a pointless strawman. If a malicious compiler dev wanted to steal your credit card data, they'd just inject the malicious code; not act like a genie, searching the C++ spec with a fine comb for a place where they could execute malicious code while still *technically* being stanards conformant. You know that, I know what, we all know that. So why are we wasting words discussing it?
by voidhorse | 2025-12-26 18:52:24+00:00
Two things:

1. Many tech workers viewed the software they worked on in the past as useful in some way for society, and thus worth the many costs you outline. Many of them don't feel that LLMs deliver the same amount of utility, and so they feel it isn't worth the cost. Not to mention, previous technologies usually didn't involve training a robot on all of humanity's work without consent.

2. I'm not sure the premise that it's just another tool of the trade for one to learn is shared by others. One can alternatively view LLMs as automated factory lines are viewed in relation to manual laborers, not as Excel sheets were to paper tables. This is a different kind of relationship, one that suggests wide replacement rather than augmentation (with relatively stable hiring counts).

In particular, I think (2) is actually the stronger of the reasons tech workers react negatively. Whether it will ultimately be justified or not, if you believe you are being asked to effectively replace yourself, you shouldn't be happy about it. Artisanal craftsmen weren't typically the ones also building the automated factory lines that would come to replace them (at least to my knowledge).

I agree that no one really has the right to act morally superior in this context, but we should also acknowledge that the material circumstances, consequences, and effects are in fact different in this case. Flattening everything into an equivalence is just as intellectually sloppy as pretending everything is completely novel.
by IshKebab | 2025-12-26 18:52:31+00:00
Absolutely. If Linus had said "Rust for Linux might go away" then you would have said "See! The creator and leader of Linux says Rust is going to go away!" but because he said it is here to stay you're saying "Pff, Linus isn't that important."

I won't quit my day job to become a detective because actual detective work isn't this trivial.
by Rendello | 2025-12-26 18:53:12+00:00
I swam a lot as a kid as my mother was a lifeguard and instructor. Despite that, I was never amazing at it, probably because I was lean and had no buoyancy, but I loved it a lot.

I swam for the first time in years a few months ago, and was surprised how exhausted I was after 30 minutes of treading water! I work out and go on frequent long runs, but I was totally spent from that. I too would love to get into it again, it's definitely a great exercise.
by function_seven | 2025-12-26 18:53:23+00:00
"Lemon" was never mentioned. That's extreme. I don't care what make and model of car you choose, I'll show you a list of TSBs associated with that model. There's never been a car produced that was perfectly engineered and had no after-sale issues common to that model and year. There's always something.

Yes, I would be thrilled to find a car that gave cheap and available replacement parts so I could remedy those issues later. That used to be the standard! The trend now is for automakers to keep juicing the proprietary software tools and one-off components, making repairability harder for the owner.

So, to rephrase your analogy: "[That's like] buying a new car then bragging to your friends ... that you're thrilled because you can repair it yourself (at cost)."
by nticompass | 2025-12-26 18:54:17+00:00
I work as a web developer, but my own personal web site could use some love. I've re-written it multiple times, every time I learn a new framework/library at work.

I love having my own website, but I need to have time at home to update it and work on it. Also, I'm not really a project manager, so I never quite know what I want for myself.
by MMAFRAZ | 2025-12-26 18:55:15+00:00
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You don't need more traffic. You need a bucket that doesn't leak.

Most SaaS founders and marketers are obsessed with "Top of Funnel" (ToF). They burn thousands of dollars on ads, SEO, and influencers to drive traffic to a landing page that converts at 0.5%.

This is financial suicide.

Increasing your Conversion Rate (CVR) from 1% to 2% literally doubles your revenue without spending a single extra cent on acquisition. This guide outlines the "Friction Killer" protocol we use to diagnose and fix leaking funnels.

continue here:https://blog.vect.pro/fix-your-conversion-rate
by thorum | 2025-12-26 18:55:34+00:00
The problem isn’t the em dashes, it’s the overuse of em dashes. Same for all the other ChatGPT-isms - they’re fine when used occasionally for effect, but there’s no variety. It’s always the same punctuation, same grammatical structures, same rhetorical moves, same paragraph lengths... That’s not what writing is supposed to be like and it becomes very grating after a while.
by aw1621107 | 2025-12-26 18:55:57+00:00
I think this is starting to wander rather far afield from where this thread started...

But anyways, at least from a quick glance those would at the very least seem to run into codys' unintentional bug vs. intentional behavior distinction. The bugs you linked are... well... bugs that the Rust devs fully intend to fix regardless of whether any in-the-wild exploits ever arise. The Go data race issue, on the other hand, is an intentional implementation decision and the devs have not indicated any interest in fixing it so far.
by mindslight | 2025-12-26 18:55:57+00:00
Furthermore, the issues given for nixpkgs are actually demonstrating the success of using git as the database! Those 20k forks are all people maintaining their own version of nixpkgs on Github, right? If 83GB is "too big" then responsibility for that rests solely on the elective centralization created by Github.

I suspect if you could go and total up the cumulative storage used by the nixpkgs source tree distributed on computers spread throughout the world, it would be closer to 83 TB.
Ask HN: Is Dart a particularly optimised language for front-end development?
by theanonymousone | 2025-12-26 18:56:06+00:00
Hi. I remember when Dart was introduced, it was supposed to be a "JavaScript alternative" (?) for browsers.

It however "evolved" into being almost only used in Flutter, for developing mobile, web, and desktop front-end development.

It seems bizarre to me that a language is so special-purpose for front-end. Even Ruby has some fringe use cases beyond Rails.

Does Dart have any particular features that justify such a decision to bind Flutter to it? Or it has all been accidental?

Thanks
by cosmic_cheese | 2025-12-26 18:56:18+00:00
One space that I don't think I've seen explored is building a laptop around a tiny, ultra-low-power passively cooled SoC board that can easily fit beside the keyboard instead of under it in a 12"-16" chassis and saves space that'd otherwise need to be dedicated to cooling. That'd buy a substantial amount of Z-budget for a quality keyboard without blowing up chassis thickness.

Naturally this laptop wouldn't be suited for some types of work due to lack of horsepower, but there's always tradeoffs somewhere.
by drob518 | 2025-12-26 18:56:21+00:00
From the article:

> I was later surprised all the real world find implementations I examined use tree-walk interpreters instead.

I’m not sure why this would be surprising. The find utility is totally dominated by disk IOPS. The interpretation performance of find conditions is totally swamped by reading stuff from disk. So, keep it simple and just use a tree-walk interpreter.
by phil21 | 2025-12-26 18:56:30+00:00
It's taking away programmers jobs today. I know of multiple small companies where hires were not made or contractors not engaged with simply due to the additional productivity gained by using Gen AI. This is for mundane "trivial" work that is needed to glue stuff together for the fields those small companies operate within.

It's like how "burger flippers" didn't go extinct due to automation. The burger joint simply mechanised and automated the parts that made sense, and now a lunch shift is handled by 5 employees instead of 20.

They will not replace the calibre of folks like Rob Pike in quite some time, perhaps (and I'd bet on) never.

I will grant you that the hype does not live up to the reality. The vast majority of jobs being taken from US developers are simply being offshored with AI as an excuse - but it is an actual real phenomenon I've personally witnessed.
by isoprophlex | 2025-12-26 18:57:37+00:00
Incredible! A mushroom that bruises blue, but the visions are seemingly unlike traditional tryptamines, and there's no psilocybin found in the mushroom. Also no muscimol present, yet there's definitely a consistent syndrome of hallucinations if you eat it undercooked.

Could this mean we're on the brink of discovering an entirely new class of hallucinogens?
by sho_hn | 2025-12-26 18:58:12+00:00
I keep being surprised this is such a big deal on HN, and I have begun to wonder whether this is just a uniquely American conversation.

I grew up among European and other international English speakers and writers, and no one blinks an eye at a semicolon or an em-dash. I'm not saying they use them frequently or overuse them, they simply know how to use them correctly and use them well. Writing without either is like ... cooking without garlic. You can, but it certainly makes affairs a lot more boring.

Now I understand that America has gone through 1-2 generations of English language teachers drilling their students to simplify, simplify, simplify and emulate the ideal of Hemingway. Is that where this all comes from, do you think?
by mergesort | 2025-12-26 18:59:09+00:00
Heya, I’m the author of the post! To be clear I have AI write probably 95% of my code these days, but I review every line of code that AI writes to make sure it meets my high standards. The same rules I’ve always had still apply — to quote @simonw “your job is to deliver code you have proven to work”.

So while I’m enthusiastic about AI writing my code in the literal sense, it’s still my code to understand and maintain. If I can’t do that then I work with AI to understand what was written — and if I can’t then I’ll often give it another go with another approach altogether so I can generate something I can understand. (Most of the time working together to understand the code works better, because I love to learn and am always open to pushing my boundaries to grow — and this process can tuned well to self-directed learning.)

And to quote a recent audit: “this is probably one of the cleanest codebases I’ve ever audited.” I say that emphasize the fact that I care a lot about the code that goes into my codebase, and I’m not interested in building layers of unchecked AI slop for code that goes into my apps.
by preommr | 2025-12-26 18:59:36+00:00
At the risk of being pedantic, it's not AI that requires massive resources, chatgpt 3.x was trained on a few million dollars. The jump to trillions being table stakes happened because everyone started using free services and there was just too much money in the hands of these tech companies. Among other things.

There are so many chickens that are coming home to roost where LLMs was just the catalyst.
by holowoodman | 2025-12-26 19:00:05+00:00
There is quite a difference between "speech" and what ZfpS does. Their actions are often criminal, and not in the sense of "political crimes" but actually criminal acts that have nothing to do with speech or opinions. They have doxed people and called for violence against them, they have exhumed dead children and paraded around their corpses, stolen things, stuff like that.
by dxdm | 2025-12-26 19:00:22+00:00
> The problem is, I don't recognise it has ever been a big thing.

This is not a problem. Or rather, it is not a problem on the way you make it sound.

Em dashes do not need to be a big thing to be useful, which they are; they also do not need anyone's personal recognition to do their jobs.

The problem may, in fact, be that they used to be more of a niche punctuation mark that people were not very familiar with. Now that LLMs have fallen in love with them and throw them around like candy, if people have hardly ever seen them used in well-written text before, they might treat them alone as a much stronger signal for LLM generation than they should — which is precisely what is bringing em-dashes under fire these days, and hence TFA.

So, yes, indeed, in some ways the problem is, that you don't recognise it has ever been a big thing.
by blauditore | 2025-12-26 19:00:55+00:00
I agree, but reality is often different, even for cars. Sometimes because of incompetence, sometimes because of dark patterns. Many newer cars do have space for putting your phone somewhere on the middle console, but it's arranged in ways to make it impossible to place your phone in a way that would make it usable for navigation. Why? Because they desparately want you to use their own navigation setup (which probably costs extra too).
by abdullahkhalids | 2025-12-26 19:01:21+00:00
> Trusting LaTeX to automatically distribute tables and figures produces not-very-readable documents with tables and figures interrupting content (e.g. page 12).

The positioning of the table on page 12 is completely inline with how tables/figures are placed in books and academic figures. The rule is that all displayed tables/figures should either be placed at the top or bottom of a page. Ideally, they should be placed on the same page as they are first mentioned in the text, but if this is not possible, it is acceptable to push them to subsequent pages.

Interestingly, the author did manually specify `[ht!]` options for the table, and not for some other tables further in the chapter.