MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by nurettin | 2025-12-27 05:40:04+00:00
> what is the point of the recent wave of types for python, Ruby, and similar languages?

Code that doesn't integrate directly with wires (controllers, active record, websocket, etc)

IMO This is for complex, well refactored, testable code that provides a business layer. Coding larger projects like depot management, shipment, order management, middle frequency trading, customs all benefit from types and IDE help. Types basically scale the language beyond just filling in the blanks in your framework. You can get pretty far doing that, but not far enough. That's why all ruby based companies push for type systems. They know the pain of not knowing what to pass, or refactoring code that allows a parameter to be multiple types.
by kukkeliskuu | 2025-12-27 05:40:06+00:00
> I realized the Claude version had a threading issue waiting to happen that was explicitly warned against in the docs of the api calls it was using.

I am reading between the lines here, trying genuinely to be helpful, so forgive me if I am not on the right track.

But based on what you write, it seems to me you might have not really gone through the disillusionment phase yet. You seem to be assuming the models "understand" more than they really are capable of understanding, which creates expectations and then disappointment. It seems to be you are expecting CC to work at a level of a senior professional on various roles, instead of a junior professional.

I would have probably approached that iOS app by first investigting various options how the app could be implemented (especially as I don't have deep understanding of the tech), and then explore each option to understand myself what is the best one.

Then I would have asked Claude to create a plan to implement the best one.

During either the approach selection or planning, the threading issue would either come up or not. It might come up explicitly, in which case I could learn it from the plans. It might be implicit, just included in the generated code. Or it might not be included in the plans or in the code, even if it is explicitly stated in the documentation. If the suggested plan would be based on that documentation, then I would probably read it myself too, and might have seen the suggestion.

When reviewing the plan, I can use my prior knowledge to ask whether that issue has been taken into account. If not, then Claude would modify the plan. Of course, if I did not know about the threading issue beforehand, and did not have the general experience about the tech to suspect such as a issue, nor read the documentation and see the recommendation, I could not find the issue myself either.

If the issue is not found in planning or progamming, the issue would arise at later stage, hopefully while unit/system testing the application, or pilot use. I have not written complex iOS apps personally so I might have not caught it either -- I am not senior enough to guide it. I would ask it to plan again how to comprehenively test such an app, to learn how it should be done.

What I meant by standard SWE practices is that there are various stages (requirements, specification, design, programming, testing, pilot use)where the solution is reviewed from multiple angles, so it becomes likely that this kind of issues are caught.

In my experience, CC cannot be expected to independently work as a senior professional on any role (architect, programmer, test manager, tester, pilot user, product manager, project manager). Junior might not take into account all instructions or guidance even if it is explicit. But it can act as a junior professional on any of these roles, so it can help senior professional to get the 10x productivity boost on any of these areas.
by rezonant | 2025-12-27 05:40:25+00:00
Yes, Crystal is not a superset of Ruby with all of its behaviors and semantics. And thus, it is great if you are starting fresh and don't mind foregoing the Ruby gem ecosystem and the popular frameworks like Rails proper.

But it's not a migration path for Ruby codebases to add types, like the new initiatives for type annotations are. It's just that the syntax used by the available options has been somewhere between bad and downright terrifying until now.
by maheshvaikri99 | 2025-12-27 05:40:38+00:00
Yes - I ran a 300 Questions benchmark comparing ISON vs JSON vs JSON-COMPACT etc on the same tasks.

ISON: 88.3% accuracy
JSON: lower (can share exact numbers if interested)

Tested across Claude, GPT-4, DeepSeek, and Llama 3.

The key finding: LLMs handle tabular formats natively because they've seen billions of markdown tables and CSVs in training.
No special prompting needed.

For associations, I tested with multi-table ISON docs like:

table.users
id name
1 Alice
2 Bob

table.orders
id user_id product
101 :1 Widget
102 :2 Gadget

Prompt: "What did Alice order?"

All models correctly resolved :1 → Alice → Widget without explicit instructions about the reference syntax.

The 30-70% token savings come from removing JSON's structural overhead (braces, quotes, colons, commas) while keeping the same semantic density.

Haven't published formal benchmarks on this yet - that's good feedback. I should.
by jmyeet | 2025-12-27 05:42:09+00:00
Meanwhile, we have the former governor of Florida and now Seantor from Florida Rick Scott, who was CEO of the company successfully prosecuted for the largest Medicare fraud in history ($1.7 billion) [1].

Here's what to watch: how long it takes for a donation to show up to the Trump library and how soon after that the sentence is commutted. This has erased roughly $1 billion in penalties so far since January 20. Hell, it might only take $1 million.

[1]: https://www.justice.gov/archive/opa/pr/2003/June/03_civ_386....
by blandflakes | 2025-12-27 05:42:28+00:00
This is patronizing. I'm a professional and am constantly hiring and being hired. The JVM has far more jobs and engineers willing to do those jobs, _and_ in terms of your own employment, a better salary market, and this is not only self-evident, but reinforced by even a cursory investigation into the trends. In fact, your claim is so outrageous (that I'm wrong and that somehow Elixir has more to offer on either side of the hiring bar) that I think the onus is on you to somehow prove it.
by array_key_first | 2025-12-27 05:43:47+00:00
Amazing shit that is currently making negative money, but might someday not.

That's the thing - taking a risky investment isn't free. If you choose wrong, then you're worse than if you did nothing at all. Think about that. Depending on what it is, there's lazy people sitting with their thumb up their ass who will outpace you.

Now, I'm not saying that AI is worthless and everyone building their business on AI is stupid. But I am saying it's a speculative investment, so treat it like that. Diversify, lower the blast radius. You don't want to be one of those suckers who bet it all on red.
by Quessy | 2025-12-27 05:44:32+00:00
Glad to see QNX still progressing. I worked there as an intern twice in Ottawa and they're pretty damn good. Great place to work imo. I met some of the kernel devs there. Had the priviledge of working with one and he taught and demoed some of the kernel features to me. They gave us interns a full summer course on kernels, C programming, OS and some hardware. Fun times.
by zahlman | 2025-12-27 05:44:44+00:00
Sorry, but that is simply incorrect, on many levels.

Virtual environments are the fundamental way of setting up a Python project, whether or not you use uv, which creates and manages them for you. And these virtual environments can freely either use or not use the system environment, whether or not you use uv to create them. It's literally a single-line difference in the `pyvenv.cfg` file, which is a standard required part of the environment (see https://peps.python.org/pep-0405/), created whether or not you use uv.

Most of the time you don't need a different Python version from the system one. When you do, uv can install one for you, but it doesn't change what your dependency chain actually is.

Python-native tools like Poetry, Hatch etc. also work by managing standards-defined virtual environments (which can be created using the standard library, and you don't even have to bootstrap pip into them if you don't want to) in fundamentally the same way that uv does. Some of them can even grab Python builds for you the same way that uv does (of course, uv doesn't need a "system Python" to exist first). "system Python -> virtualenv Python -> poetry Python -> project" is complete nonsense. The "virtualenv Python" is the system Python — either a symlink or a stub executable that launches that Python — and the project will be installed into that virtual environment. A tool like Poetry might use the system Python directly, or it might install into its own separate virtual environment; but either way it doesn't cause any actual complication.

Anyone who "ends up installing their project dependencies globally" has simply not read and understood Contemporary Python Development 101. In fact, anyone doing this on a reasonably new Linux has gone far out of the way to avoid learning that, by forcefully bypassing multiple warnings (such as described in https://peps.python.org/pep-0668/).

No matter what your tooling, the only sensible "stack" to end up with, for almost any project, is: base Python (usually the system Python but may be a separately installed Python) -> virtual environment (into which both the project and its dependencies are installed). The base Python provides the standard library; often there will be no third-party libraries, and even if there are they will usually be cut off intentionally. (If your Linux comes with pre-installed third-party libraries, they exist primarily to service tools that are part of your Linux distribution; you may be able to use them for some useful local hacking, but they are not appropriate for serious, publishable development.)

Your tooling sits parallel to, and isolated from, that as long as it is literally anything other than pip — and even with pip you can have that isolation (it's flawed but it works for common cases; see for example https://zahlman.github.io/posts/2025/02/28/python-packaging-... for how I set it up using a vendored copy of pip provided by Pipx), and have been able to for three years now.
by dang | 2025-12-27 05:45:22+00:00
Please don't comment about downvotes. This is in the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.

If the downvotes were inappropriate, other users will usually correct them. In this case the comment ended up being heavily upvoted.

Unfortunately, complaints like the one you added don't get garbage-collected when that happens, so they linger on, adding noise to the thread.
by Dylan16807 | 2025-12-27 05:47:12+00:00
I care that it's within the ballpark I spent considerable detail explaining. I don't care where inside the ballpark it is.

You gave an exaggerated upper limit, so extreme there's no ambiguity, of "entire repo".

I gave my own exaggerated upper limit, so extreme there's no ambiguity. And mine has examples of it actually happening. Incidents so extreme they're clear violations.

Maybe an analogy will help: The point at which a collection of sand grains becomes a heap is ambiguous. But when we have documented incidents involving a kilogram or more of sand in a conical shape, we can skip refining the threshold and simply declare that yes heaps are real. Incidents of major LLMs copying code, in a way that is full-on memorization and not just recreating things via chance and general code knowledge, are real.

You're the only person I've seen ever imply that true copying incidents are a statistical illusion, akin to a random die. Normally the debate is over how often and impactful they are, who is going to be held responsible, and what to do about them.
by theragra | 2025-12-27 05:49:07+00:00
I don't see how TikTok readies you for more TikTok. You can safely combine it with YouTube longs and movies/documentaries.

I set a limit to avoid too much TikTok. And also TikTok often shows me 3-10 minute educational content, which I consider pretty well made. Dan McClellan talks about bible, form example. Or Jason Pargin on different topics. Brittney Hartley on nihilism and atheism.
by throwaway_7274 | 2025-12-27 05:50:10+00:00
Sorry, I'm not sure I follow what the disagreement is? I don't claim that moving fast necessitates that something is a scam.

In any case (and I don't think this bears on your point, it's just something I'd like to add), building a quantum computer is very unlike building a nuclear fission device. Echoing my other comments here, it's almost misleading to call it "building a quantum computer," as that puts people in mind of 'unlocking' some single discrete technology in a strategy game tech tree. It's not that at all; it's a huge umbrella of (in many cases) extremely sophisticated technologies. The Manhattan project, as complex and astonishing a feat as it was, was a little closer to the strategy-game vision of research in that way. There's a reason it was possible in 3-4 years in the 1940s!
by xvilka | 2025-12-27 05:50:12+00:00
There is also a FWWM[1] "skin" that doesn't require long time abandoned C code - NsCDE[2]. It still requires X server (just like CDE itself) which becomes rarity these days. They need to port it to Wayland eventually.

[1] https://github.com/fvwmorg/fvwm3

[2] https://github.com/NsCDE/NsCDE
by array_key_first | 2025-12-27 05:51:09+00:00
Well you ignored my entire argument, so me implying you're stupid worked out, didn't it?

To reiterate my argument, which you have reinforced: the question is NOT are these things happening, because they just are. So we won't debate it.

The question is what are the lasting effects. Which you actually alluded to right here:

"And when, in a few years, everything is fine, the sky hasn’t fallen, and in fact we’re doing better — you’ll just be shrieking"

See, so you DO understand that these things are happening. Where we disagree is the lasting effects, the implications.

You believe our president fucking the American people up the ass doesn't matter, or is secretly a good thing. As I've said, apathy, or naivity - the sight of a goal with no understanding of its cost or even it's gain.

I can become the richest person on Earth by killing everyone else. But what value did I create? None, I only destroyed value. That's the separation between a goal and it's cost and it's path.

You're probably thinking "well I know that, even a child understands that", but evidently you don't, or the cognitive dissonance is so strong you're willing to override everything you've ever known in pursuit of correctness.

Even if you're right, at what cost does it come? What will the world be worth when law no longer matters, when we have a monarch? Even if you like the monarch, will serfdom make you happy?

This is not me being melodramatic. As we've both already established, laws are being broken, and due process is being thrown out. A few broken eggs, no?

But it's not about the broken eggs and it never has been. Those are a canary. The broken eggs get useful idiots like yourself to advocate against your own best interests. To advocate that it's okay to break the rules, so long as you win. But what you're really saying when you say that is that you plan on winning forever. Very bold, no? Very naive, no?
by zahlman | 2025-12-27 05:51:34+00:00
> the selling point with the most traction is that you don't already need a working python install to get UV. And once you have UV, you can just go!

I still genuinely do not understand why this is a serious selling point. Linux systems commonly already provide (and heavily depend upon) a Python distribution which is perfectly suitable for creating virtual environments, and Python on Windows is provided by a traditional installer following the usual idioms for Windows end users. (To install uv on Windows I would be expected to use the PowerShell equivalent of a curl | sh trick; many people trying to learn to use Python on Windows have to be taught what cmd.exe is, never mind PowerShell.) If anything, new Python-on-Windows users are getting tripped up by the moving target of attempts to make it even easier (in part because of things Microsoft messed up when trying to coordinate with the CPython team; see for example https://stackoverflow.com/questions/58754860/cmd-opens-windo... when it originally happened in Python 3.7).

> If I had a dollar for every time I've helped somebody untangle the mess of python environment libraries created by an undocumented mix of python delivered through the distributions package management versus native pip versus manually installed...

Sure, but that has everything to do with not understanding (or caring about) virtual environments (which are fundamental, and used by uv under the hood because there is really no viable alternative), and nothing to do with getting Python in the first place. I also don't know what you mean about "native pip" here; it seems like you're conflating the Python installation process with the package installation process.
by crawshaw | 2025-12-27 05:55:33+00:00
I went for a walk to think about your position. I do not think you are wrong. If you refused to name a person in a situation like this, I would never try to convince you otherwise. That is why it is hard for me to make a case to you here, because I do not hold the opposing position. But I also find your argument that I should have not done so unconvincing. Both seem like reasonable choices to me.

I have two tests for this. First: what harm does my comment here cause? Perhaps some mild embarrassment? It could not realistically do more.

Second: if it were me, would I mind it being done to me? No. It is not a big deal. It is public feedback about an insulting computer program, no one was injured, no safety-critical system compromised. I have been called out for mistakes before, in classes, on mailing lists, on forums, I learn and try to do better. The only times I have resented it are when I think the complaint is wrong. (And with age, I would say the only correct thing to do then is, after taking the time to consider it carefully, clearly respond to feedback you disagree with.)

The only thing I can draw from thinking through this is, because the authors of the program probably didn’t see my comment, it was not effective, and so I would have been better emailing them. But that is a statement about effectiveness not rightness. I would be more than happy doing it in a group in person at a party or a classroom. Mistakes do not have to be handled privately.

I am sorry we disagree about this. If you think I am missing anything I am open to thinking about it more.
by Defletter | 2025-12-27 05:55:40+00:00
I think OP is directing their ire towards projects with multiple maintainers, thus is more likely to be hamstrung by consensus building and is thus less productive. It does seem like we've been swamped with drama posts about large open-source projects and their governance, notably with Rust itself, linux incorporating Rust, Pebble, etc. It's not hard to imagine this firehose of dev-drama (that's not even about actual code) overshadowing the fact that the overwhelming majority of code ever written has a benevolent dictator model.
by colechristensen | 2025-12-27 05:55:45+00:00
>Everything is easier in hindsight isn't it? Especially with such a complex problem.

I wrote the following July 2020:

>And with all of this money being injected into the economy, we are absolutely going to get an enormous amount of inflation... eventually. You could see it as already happening with the valuation of the stock market.

And in January 2022:

>It’s time to admit defeat and plan for what that looks like and stop pretending like anything at this point is going to make this virus go away. It’s here, it’s going to kill about one person in a thousand of those left, and if you choose to not get vaccinated that’s your choice and if you’re not young you’re taking a significantly higher risk of death.

Not so much hindsight as "what I've been saying all along".

>We sit here watching what is effectively a shadow puppet show but are left clueless to what is really going on because if we did know we can't be trusted with the secrets, or wouldn't be able to understand the data, or would object to a course of action as an emotional response, even if what is presented is truthful and the most optimal solution to a problem.

This is a bunch of nonsense. What was happening was quite transparent. The science was out in the open in papers and government statistics for anyone with scientific training to read. Politicians were caving to polarized public opinions on both sides to take advantage of and encourage their chosen pole.

Those of us talking about moderation and common sense reactions were demonize by one side or usually both depending on the venue. Nobody in leadership had the balls to lead and try to make people understand a middle path based on reason.

People STILL fall into their previously chosen polar opinion and refuse to accept that moderation was the correct and untaken path.
by kristianp | 2025-12-27 05:56:11+00:00
I've been reading "Terminal Alliance", a light, humorous s.f. novel. After reading tfa I've slowed down and after all it's Christmas holidays, what's the rush? Even reading this inconsequential novel more slowly has allowed me to enjoy the details more. The metric in online discussions is always how many books you read, but this is a reminder that that's not the point.

The title, about "default settings" being "too high" makes me want an example from a technical domain, though.
by zahlman | 2025-12-27 05:56:34+00:00
If I want to install Python on Windows and start using pip, I grab an installer from python.org and follow a wizard. On Linux, I almost certainly already have it anyway.

If I want to bootstrap from uv on Windows, the simplest option offered involves Powershell.

Either way, I can write quite a bit with just the standard library before I have to understand what uv really is (or what pip is). At that point, yes, the pip UX is quite a bit messier. But I already have Python, and pip itself was also trivially installable (e.g. via the standard library `ensurepip`, or from a Linux system package manager — yes, still using the command line, but this hypothetical is conditioned on being a Linux user).
by beeflet | 2025-12-27 05:57:26+00:00
I've been here longer than you have, this is my 100th alt account. The rules are for tools.

All of this meta-discussion of debating when/how we should debate or complaining how "rude" or "boorish" we are is more off-topic, boring and distracting than any flamewar.

The whole point of this site is to coerce public-facing people (like VC founders) into interacting with anonymous users and debating the ideas themselves. A sort of middle ground between reddit and 4chan. That's what all the "civility" and "kindness" talk is for.
by array_key_first | 2025-12-27 05:57:36+00:00
The goals were obvious, it was a money grab and an attempt to dodge accountability. Because that's 99% of what musk does and that's literally all doge did. It didn't save us any money.

Any other interpretation is just willfully stupid, unfortunately. We have a lot of track record to work with. Ignoring track record isn't being unbiased. It's exactly the opposite, actually.
by UniverseHacker | 2025-12-27 05:57:42+00:00
You can build a car interior that pretty much lasts forever, but it’s not cheap. There’s plenty of 60s and 70s Mercedes around with MBtex and zebra wood interiors that still look pretty much new after 6 decades of regular use. It’s eerie how good those old Mercedes interiors are, I’ve seen cars in the junkyard that were almost completely crumbled to rust powder, but the interior still was flawless. A good upholstery shop can also rebuild a car interior.
by cloverich | 2025-12-27 06:04:07+00:00
Did I read incorrectly?

> which is around 3.8kwh, costs $2400 USD. To store 10kwh would cost $7200 USD (which gets us more than 10kwh).

84kwh / 3.8 kwh is about 22. 22 * 2400 is ~53k.