MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by Tadpole9181 | 2025-12-17 18:00:53+00:00
> Firing your CEO for not being sufficiently aligned with the American Democratic Party

This is not what happened. He gave money to a cause with the explicit goal of using that money to prevent his coworkers and users from having equal civil rights based on an inalienable trait they were born with.

That's not an "American Democratic Party" alignment issue, and if you genuinely believe it is, your dog whistle may be broken. It's sounding an awful lot like a normal whistle.

He has a right to do that without fear of government retaliation. But Mozilla has a right to fire him for being a bad person because of it.
by bluGill | 2025-12-17 18:01:16+00:00
Just look at success for adults learning the things adults commonly take up: languages or musical instruments. There is some good results, but mostly you find people who can say "Hello, how are you" and no more; or they can play some simple songs but nothing major. It takes hours and hours of practice / study time to learn anything hard. You can find a lot of community ed classes that will bring you to about that level in many subjects, but it is hard to find anyone willing to put in the hours needed to learn something to more than a surface level.
by matheusmoreira | 2025-12-17 18:01:18+00:00
I developed and tested my personal site on Firefox. If I were a professional web developer, I'd work just like you do.

But let's not kid ourselves. We're an absolute minority. For every one of us, there are hundreds, thousands of developers who literally do not give a shit so long as their paychecks hit their accounts. Actually they're likely to write Firefox off as some irrelevant niche market the company can afford to lose because it's less work for them if they do.
by wyre | 2025-12-17 18:01:38+00:00
I think it's ability to consume information is one of the scarier aspects of AI. NSA, other government, and multi-national corporations have years of our individual browsing and consumption patterns. What happens when AI is analyzing all of that information exponentially faster than any human code and communicating with relevant parties for their own benefit, to predict or manipulate behavior, build psychological profiles, identify vulnerabilities, etc.

It's incredibly amusing to me reading some people's comments here critical of AI, that if you didn't know any better, might make you think that AI is a worthless technology.
by everdrive | 2025-12-17 18:01:39+00:00
I've seen people get caught for what it's worth. I think interviewees are treating them as ways to beat the leetcode interviews. And they determine that this is fine, since leetcode won't actually make up their day-to-day duties. That said, you're still misrepresenting yourself and your skill set in your interviews, and that could potentially get you in trouble.
by pron | 2025-12-17 18:01:52+00:00
I agree with everything you've said, and about refinements in particular. TLA+ newcomers often think of refinement as an advanced tool, but it's one of the most pragmatic and effective ways to specify.

But I'd like to add some nuance to this:

> And pure maths that can be exhaustively checked by the computer? It’s not as perfect as a proof but it’s great for a lot of practical applications.

1. A run of a model checker is exactly as perfect as a proof for the checked instance (which, indeed, is a weaker theorem than one that extends to an unbounded set of instances). In fact, it is a proof of the theorem when applied to the instance.

2. A proof is also not perfect for real software. A proof can perfectly convince us of a correctness of an algorithm, which is a mathematical construct, but a software system is not an algorithm; it's ultimately a physical system of silicone and metal elements that carry charge, and a physical system, unlike an algorithm, cannot be proven correct for the simple reason it's not a mathematical object. Virtually all correctness proofs assume that the hardware behaves correctly, but it only behaves correctly with high probability. My point is only that, unlike for algorithms or abstract theorems, there can be no perfect correctness in physical systems. Increasing the confidence in the algorithm beyond the confidence in the hardware (or human operators) may not actually increase the confidence in the system.
by ekjhgkejhgk | 2025-12-17 18:01:52+00:00
In the media business and in politics that's calling "putting out a feeler". You'd benefit from some media literacy study, then you wouldn't say I'm weird, you'd say "well spotted, I see what they're doing".

"no no I'm not going to do this thing that likely nobody wants and nobody is asking about but would be really profitable for my pocket in the short term!" -> observe how much pushback he gets -> "guys guys I said I would NOT do it, god some people are weird".
by godelski | 2025-12-17 18:02:14+00:00
> It felt like everyone overreacted

I think it is trendy to hate of Mozilla. I'm not sure why, but it is. I mean you get tons of people who will even say they haven't tried it since before the qantum days. Or people that tried it once and just gave up.

I seriously don't get it and I understand why there's conspiracies about disinformation campaigns. But on all places I don't understand how HN users are just happily giving the keys to the internet to a singular company, let along Google.

> Firefox still checks off the most boxes of what I want in a browser.

Honestly, what doesn't it do? Everyone says chrome is better but other than a few niche things I have been entirely unconvinced.

Why are browsers even "sticky"? There's no social network. Bookmarks are trivial to migrate. It's like the easiest thing to switch out there...
by epidemian | 2025-12-17 18:02:19+00:00
Five years ago, we could've read this same comment but with "LLMs" replaced with "blockchain" or "crypto".

Yes, it might totally be the case that in 5 years this comment reads as correctly predicting the future that is to come. But it's also possible that it doesn't.

It's not at all clear to me which things will persist in time at the moment they are getting popular. There are lots of technologies that look promising in the beginning and up fizzling out.

Browsers are useful now, and they have been useful for a while. It seems to me like a safer bet to invest on them still doing what they are useful at, in the case that the web keeps being a thing for a while still :)
by bazhand | 2025-12-17 18:02:33+00:00
How does the memory scale (or not!) over time. If using Letta in a single agent mode, similar to just using claude - how does memory blocks stay relevant and contextual?

I guess what I'm asking is, if there is a memory block limit, is that an issue for self learning over time. Claude as you know just straight up ignores CLAUDE.md and doesnt self-improve it.
by prmph | 2025-12-17 18:02:42+00:00
Indeed, Mozilla has a particular bad habit of not listening to customers.

It shows even in the UI design. Features like tab pinning and tab groups work in ways that are sub-optimal to how users want to use them. A pinned tab should not be tied to a specific URL. If you go their forums you see a lot complaints, and weird thing is all the nonsensical arguments that their reps advance as to how these features should work the way they currently are. I as a longtime Firefox user can immediately see what is wrong with these features as implemented, but the devs won't listen. I wonder if they use FF themselves.

Firefox is also the only app on my MacBook that consistently brings the system to a crawl. Almost every single time my machines slows down, the solution is to kill Firefox. It's got to the point I don't even need to use Activity Monitor, I just kill Firefox and and system recovers.

It's gotten to the point I'm seriously looking at alternatives, trying out Orion and Helium browsers.
by glenstein | 2025-12-17 18:02:42+00:00
That just seems like an ordinary case of purity test syndrome. What they said is they don't want to do it, but they're being convicted of a hypothetical belief in wanting to hypothetically do it maybe, maybe which is the last refuge of scoundrels who have no stronger sourcing for more well-grounded accusations. But in internet comment sections there's no need for accountability or charitable interpretation, and so you can accuse someone of practically anything and it's their job to bend over backwards against the most skeptical interpretations to pass the purity test. So there's a metagame not just of indicating your values but of extrapolating as to all the possible permutations of uncharitable interpretation that could lead to accusations so that you have to artfully construct your phrasing to get out ahead of that. It's never on the internet trolls making the accusation to be accountable to ordinary norms of charitable interpretation.
by benrutter | 2025-12-17 18:02:45+00:00
Source here for anyone interested[0]. From memory, Ruff was its own thing, (I think named after the bird?) since then they've tried to give projects short letter combinations for consistency and ease of typing (uv, ty, pyx)

[0] https://talkpython.fm/episodes/download/520/pyx-the-other-si...
by BizarroLand | 2025-12-17 18:03:09+00:00
I would rather firefox release a paid browser with no AI, or at least everything Opt-In, and more user control than to see them stuff unwanted features on users.

I used firefox faithfully for a long time, but it's time for someone to take it out back and put it down.

Also, I switched to Waterfox about a year ago and I have no complaints. The very worst thing about it is that when it updates its very in your face about it, and that is such a small annoyance that its easily negligible.

Throw on an extension like Chrome Mask for those few websites that "require chrome" (as if that is an actual thing), a few privacy extensions, ecosia search, uBlacklist (to permablock certain sites from search results), and Content Farm Terminator to get rid of those mass produced slop sites that weasel their way into search results and you're going to have a much better experience than almost any other setup.
by bdangubic | 2025-12-17 18:03:42+00:00
what is a larger issue? lacking domain knowledge? or lacking deeper understanding of years of shit in the codebase that seniors may have better understanding? where I work, there is no issue that it "too large" for a junior to take on, it is the only way that "junior" becomes "non-junior" - by doing, not by delegating to so-called seniors (I am one of them)
by tekacs | 2025-12-17 18:04:15+00:00
To pre-empt the folks who'll come in here and laugh about how Rust should be preventing memory corruption... I'll just directly quote from the mailing list:

Rust Binder contains the following unsafe operation: // SAFETY: A `NodeDeath` is never inserted into the death list // of any node other than its owner, so it is either in this // death list or in no death list. unsafe { node_inner.death_list.remove(self) }; This operation is unsafe because when touching the prev/next pointers of a list element, we have to ensure that no other thread is also touching them in parallel. If the node is present in the list that `remove` is called on, then that is fine because we have exclusive access to that list. If the node is not in any list, then it's also ok. But if it's present in a different list that may be accessed in parallel, then that may be a data race on the prev/next pointers. And unfortunately that is exactly what is happening here. In Node::release, we: 1. Take the lock. 2. Move all items to a local list on the stack. 3. Drop the lock. 4. Iterate the local list on the stack. Combined with threads using the unsafe remove method on the original list, this leads to memory corruption of the prev/next pointers. This leads to crashes like this one:
by jameshilliard | 2025-12-17 18:04:33+00:00
> That's actually a pattern for colonialist occupation projects, its kind of a two-birds-with-one-stone thing for the colonial power. The colonization of Liberia also was very much this (as was the colonization of parts of what later became the USA.)

There's a number of differences that make this comparison problematic. Israel's current Jewish population immigrated from many different countries, largely due to fleeing anti-semitism in those countries. The reason for them fleeing(anti-semitism) also very much exists to this day, especially when it comes to those Muslim majority countries many fled from after Israel gained independence, so any prospect of them returning is not remotely realistic.

> And the (British, of course, this is very much a recurrent Anglo pattern) project for the colonization of Israel started long before the the refugee crisis that helped realize it occurred.

While the UK may have held the mandate for Palestine for a period of time the majority of Jewish immigration to Palestine prior to the end of the mandate(and after) did not actually come from the UK or even other Anglo countries. This seems to be a rather important distinction as the immigration was arguably much more multi-source than the typical Anglo pattern colonialism.

In any case it seems to be quite clear that the extreme UN bias against Israel largely comes not from the colonial aspects of Israel's creation but rather from the various degrees of anti-semitism that is pervasive in many countries to this day.
by GeneralMaximus | 2025-12-17 18:04:46+00:00
I've been analyzing my Obsidian vault using local LLMs that I run via Apple's mlx_lm. I'm on an M4 MacBook Pro with 48GB RAM.

The results are ... okay. The biggest problem is that I can't run some of the largest models on my hardware. The ones I'm running (mostly Qwen 3 at different numbers of parameters and quantization levels) often produce hallucinations. Overall, I can't say this is a practical or useful setup, but I'm just playing around so I don't mind.

That said, I doubt SOTA models would be that much better at this task. IMO LLM generated summaries and insights are never very good or useful. They're fine for assessing whether a particular text is worth reading, but they often extract the wrong information, or miss some critical information, or over-focus on one specific part of the text.
by isnthatveird | 2025-12-17 18:04:57+00:00
Solid state batteries solve for EV trucks.

The Chevy Silverado EV truck wins at towing but not being towed, FWIU.

They could have won with a bad EV platform to have just used the existing F-150 part streams.

Did GM intentionally or accidentally squander EVs with the EV1?

How could firms encourage EV conversions of trucks in order to get this solved?
by mrmansano | 2025-12-17 18:06:29+00:00
> it's pretty obvious that Claude Opus 4.5 level agents replace developers.

Is it though? I really don't see it. Replacing developers requires way more than writing the right code. I can agree it can replace junior to mid level engineers at some tasks, specifically in greenfield projects and popular stacks. And, don't get me wrong, it's very helpful even for senior engineers. But to "replace" those it will require some new iterations of "Opus 4.5".
by guywithahat | 2025-12-17 18:07:06+00:00
In our case if we're spending a lot of time on something that doesn't improve the product, it just takes away from the product. Like if we put 800 engineering hours into sensor fusion and lidar when the end product doesn't become materially better, we could have placed those 800 hours towards something else which makes the end product better.

It's not that we ran into problems, it's that the tech didn't deliver what we hoped when we could have used the time to build something better.
by collinmanderson | 2025-12-17 18:07:09+00:00
Thanks.

I really need better generics support before ty becomes useful. Currently decorators just make all return types unknown. I need something this to work:

_F = TypeVar("_F", bound=Callable[..., Any]) def my_decorator(*args: str) -> Callable[[_F], _F]: ...

Also, I use a lot of TypedDicts and there's not much support yet.
by hdgvhicv | 2025-12-17 18:07:18+00:00
Archive.org tells me I was using SSI in Jan 1997. I didn’t really understand what I was doing, but including the footer and a visitor counter via an exec one which I presumably copied from somewhere else. At the time I was still on windows and had no real concept of a program being executed as a cgi or ssi, it was all “copy this from Matt’s script archive to your cgi-bin directory”

My shared hosting from claranet supported ssi via a .htaccess configuration.

Technically php was around at that point, but I don’t think it became popular until php3 - certainly my hosting provider didn’t support it until then.
by glenstein | 2025-12-17 18:07:28+00:00
Right, I was ready for the headline to be this like deep dive into the history of letting go of several engineers, or assessing the costs of purchasing pocket, or a deep dive into source code changes related to dabbling in ad tech or something.

You know, actual reporting sourcing something new. But in truth, it was just extrapolating a bunch of sweet nothings from the freezing of a quote already published in The Verge. It reminds me of Boston media market sports reporting. You're a sports writer, you have a deadline, and you have to take Curt Schilling's press conference and try and turn it into a story. So take something he said and squeeze it dry, trying to extract some implication of clubhouse drama, to drive the next new cycle and survive to your next paycheck as a reporter. That's the grift, that's the grind.
by ravenstine | 2025-12-17 18:07:29+00:00
Modern society totally devalues anything considered even slightly old. I used to notice it as a real lack of intergenerational knowledge transfer, but it's gotten so bad that it seems like more and more people react with "how do you know so much?" and "why would you do that?" over very basic knowledge that isn't even that old. For all the reading the average person claims to do, they sure don't seem to know very much outside of a 10-year window unless they happen to have studied history in college or whatever.

But I don't necessarily blame said people, at least in the proximal sense. The technological industrial complex continuously refines its understanding of the desire for novelty that's always been there and seeks to exploit it; and they've gotten unreasonably good at that. It doesn't matter if your intellectual property is just as relevant as ever, perhaps more so, if there's some hip new alternative. Udemy and of course social media sites know this, and I think there's a feedback loop that goes beyond mere exploitation of the human psyche, but in the actual training of the human psyche to have blindness towards the past.

The only answer right now, besides hosting your own courses (with hookers and blackjack), might be to periodically recreate your online presence from scratch in order to exploit the algorithm back. If your courses on Udemy aren't seeing the traffic they deserve, close your account, and create a new one... assuming that's feasible and they don't check too hard. With the current state of AI, this may just be a cat and mouse game that can't be sustained.
by JumpCrisscross | 2025-12-17 18:07:52+00:00
> Something we already somewhat have in the US with the National Laboratories

Our national labs fund aren’t typically replicating commercial findings.

Nuclear fusion isn’t something you can download for free. Browsers are. It looks wasteful to everyone but the technically inclined, and even we would be undercut by those who never trust the government.

Non-profit that competes for government grants and contracts seems the way to go.
by BizarroLand | 2025-12-17 18:08:05+00:00
My take is that I'm ok with anything a company wants to do with their product EXCEPT when they make it opt out or non-opt-outable.

Firefox could have an entire section dedicated to torturing digital puppies built into the platform and... Ok, well, that's too far, but they could have a costco warehouse full of AI crap and I wouldn't mind at all as long as it was off by default and preferably not even downloaded to the system unless I went in and chose to download it.

I know respecting user preference doesn't line their pockets but neither does chasing users down and shoving services they never asked for and explicitly do not want into their faces.
by simonw | 2025-12-17 18:08:25+00:00
"after the AI hype led to people entering university avoiding computer science or those already in changing their major"

That's such a terrible trend.

Reminds me of my peers back in ~2001 who opted not to take a computer science degree even though they loved programming because they thought all the software engineering jobs would be outsourced to countries like India and there wouldn't be any career opportunities for them. A very expensive mistake!
by godelski | 2025-12-17 18:08:58+00:00
What a crazy misread

> At some point, though, Enzor-DeMeo will have to tend to Mozilla’s own business. “I do think we need revenue diversification away from Google,” he says, “but I don’t necessarily believe we need revenue diversification away from the browser.” It seems he thinks a combination of subscription revenue, advertising, and maybe a few search and AI placement deals can get that done. He’s also bullish that things like built-in VPN and a privacy service called Monitor can get more people to pay for their browser. He says he could begin to block ad blockers in Firefox and estimates that’d bring in another $150 million, but he doesn’t want to do that. It feels off-mission.[0]

Read:

If we were just profit motivated we could block ad blockers, but we're not

The article has a lot about how they're struggling for money. Which is a constant issue for Mozilla. Which a big reason for that is the low browser share. Which a big reason for that is crazy comments like this and people feeling better about using a browser that steals their data...

[0] https://www.theverge.com/tech/845216/mozilla-ceo-anthony-enz...
by DiscourseFan | 2025-12-17 18:09:05+00:00
Nah, models can be fine tuned and trained on anything. Common consumer products like ChatGPT and Gemini have particular styles, very polite and helpful, but there are models trained to be combatative, models trained to write in the style of shakespeare, all sorts of things. Someone could train a model to reply to posts in the style of HN comments and you’d probably never know.
by LocalH | 2025-12-17 18:09:19+00:00
That's essentially what the Sega Channel adapter was. The service didn't rely on something like you'd expect from a modern cable modem. The games were broadcast in a round-robin fashion (presumably broken up into blocks, as I remember the time to initiate a download was never super long, but the whole process to play a game did take a small amount of time). The adapter thus needed hardware and software in order to decode with the one-way signal to download the menu and game data.
by dang | 2025-12-17 18:09:25+00:00
Yes, sorry! We're investigating, but my current theory is we got overloaded because I relaxed some of our anti-crawler protections a few days ago.

(The reason I did that is that the anti-crawler protections also unfortunately hit some legit users, and we don't want to block legit users. However, it seems that I turned the knobs down too far.)

In this case, though, we had a secondary failure: PagerDuty woke me up at 5:24am, I checked HN and it seemed fine, so I told PagerDuty the problem was resolved. But the problem wasn't resolved - at that point I was just sleeping through it.

I'll add more as we find out more, but it probably won't be till later this afternoon PST.

Edit: later than I expected, but for those still following, the main things I've learned are (1) pkill wasn't able to kill SBCL this time - we have a script that does that when HN stops responding, but it didn't work, so we'll revise the script; and (2) how to get PagerDuty not to let you go back to sleep if your site is actually still down.