MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by pron | 2025-12-16 22:39:21+00:00
> it’s not hard to extrapolate and imagine that process becoming fully automated in the next few years. And when that happens, it will totally change the economics of formal verification.

There is a problem with this argument similar to one made about imagining the future possibilities of vibe coding [1]: once we imagine AI to do this task, i.e. automatically prove software correct, we can just as easily imagine it to not have to do it (for us) in the first place. If AI can do the hardest things, those it is currently not very good at doing, there's no reason to assume it won't be able to do easier things/things it currently does better. In particular, we won't need it to verify our software for us, because there's no reason to believe that it won't be able to come up with what software we need better than us in the first place. It will come up with the idea, implement it, and then decide to what extent to verify it. Formal verification, or programming for that matter, will not become mainstream (as a human activity) but go extinct.

Indeed, it is far easier for humans to design and implement a proof assistant than it is to use one to verify a substantial computer program. A machine that will be able to effectively use a proof checker, will surely be able to come up with a novel proof checker on its own.

I agree it's not hard to extrapolate technological capabilities, but such extrapolation has a name: science fiction. Without a clear understanding of what makes things easier or harder for AI (in the near future), any prediction is based on arbitrary guesses that AI will be able to do X yet not Y. We can imagine any conceivable capability or limitation we like. In science fiction we see technology that's both capable and limited in some rather arbitrary ways.

It's like trying to imagine what problems computers can and cannot efficiently solve before discovering the notion of compuational complexity classes.

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46207505
by neutronicus | 2025-12-16 22:39:33+00:00
Wait, can VS2026 Copilot make tool calls to bring only relevant type and function definitions into Context?

If yes, that would be great! I've been trying to bodge that together with clangd and emacs LSP, but the amount of yak shaving to get clangd actually working on our codebase (on which Visual Studio just works for the most part) is prohibitive for actually accomplishing anything.

Our codebase is millions of line of very non-standard C++ (some automatically translated from Pascal years ago), and single files can get up to 50,000 lines.

So a LLM really needs (just like us human developers!) the ability to skip around and only read the parts that matter.
by troupo | 2025-12-16 22:40:16+00:00
> I get the point you're making (that standards evolve, and Apple will drag its feet again if it sees a profit)

No, that's not my point.

My point is that there's no such thing as PWA. There's a lose collection of standards, and everyone choses a set that benefits their narrative when defining PWAs.

For a very long time Apple supported all APIs (except maybe notifications) that even Google defined as necessary for something to be a PWA. Didn't stop people from pretending that this is somehow not PWA.

> Most "apps" should just be websites, with a bookmark if you so choose.

As Android shows, even there no one wants that, and there are very few PWAs of note.
by albumen | 2025-12-16 22:40:17+00:00
This comprehensive response/rebuttal [1] buried in the article’s comments, by one of the authors of the World Happiness Report, is worth reading. One of the most interesting points is how subjective well-being indicators predict people’s voting behavior: “…in 2016 US presidential elections, subjective well-being indicators - especially Cantril Ladder now and expected Cantril Ladder in five years - measured on a county level predicted voting for Trump better than any county-level economic indicator.” The unhappier people were, the more likely they voted for Trump.

Also, it links to a report on why Nordic countries tend to perform so well on life evaluation indicators: “ the most prominent explanations include factors related to the quality of institutions, such as reliable and extensive welfare benefits, low corruption, and well-functioning democracy and state institutions. Furthermore, Nordic citizens experience a high sense of autonomy and freedom, as well as high levels of social trust towards each other, which play an important role in determining life satisfaction. On the other hand, we show that a few popular explanations for Nordic happiness such as the small population and homogeneity of the Nordic countries, and a few counterarguments against Nordic happiness such as the cold weather and the suicide rates, actually don’t seem to have much to do with Nordic happiness.”

[1] https://open.substack.com/pub/yaschamounk/p/the-world-happin...
by vlod | 2025-12-16 22:40:24+00:00
This thread is about people hacking on code that gives them pleasure and maybe some monetary reward. People enjoy discovering others work. Whether your project gets traction is sort of irrelevant.

Personally I found this thread more interesting than the spew of AI or rust posts.

I assume there's a lot of people who might be interested in what you're coding even if it's taking on the incumbents of providing services to cats.

I encourage you to share.
by immibis | 2025-12-16 22:40:27+00:00
This is sadly a ubiquitous problem with FOSS phone software. Google's and Apple's notification systems are anti-FOSS. You can use your own on Google phones, but then your app will have to wake up periodically to check it, and the system will detect your app as a battery waster, tell the user your app is a battery waster, and automatically prevent your app waking up to prevent battery waste. And on Apple I believe you simply can't do that because they user has to open the app to wake it.
by exceptione | 2025-12-16 22:41:00+00:00
Lol, I want to know what happened here:

Eventually I blocked Brazil since I always block them via accept-language in nginx and haproxy anyway. For reasons I will never understand most people in Brazil can not and/or will not read or follow even the simplest instructions. This has been the case since BR was connected to the internet.

source: https://mirror.newsdump.org/_README.txt
by chiengineer | 2025-12-16 22:41:04+00:00
Is there an LLM out there that makes people actually read. The information is publicly available since basically forever

Couldn't even pay people to read this literally

I think there needs to be like a military style debate globally on education levels it's that bad like actually that bad yeah

Here in Chicago

I'm dealing with probably a solid 70% of adults who don't know how to read correctly try fitting that into the LLM experience I don't know
by barbazoo | 2025-12-16 22:41:10+00:00
> In an open-ended question, 69% of respondents identified the primary advantage of clean energy as some form of environmental protection, like mitigating climate change or improving air and water quality. Only 13% offered lower energy costs as a central benefit, and 22% said clean energy offers no clear advantage.

https://www.thirdway.org/memo/poll-shows-americans-want-affo...
by darth_avocado | 2025-12-16 22:41:30+00:00
I am yet to be convinced that 4000 data points are sufficient to extrapolate how happy 2.8B people are in the world. (India and China) Especially when it deals with a complex topic as happiness without taking any cultural differences into account.

People on HN tend to argue it’s sufficient data to be statistically significant, but I don’t see how.
by petesergeant | 2025-12-16 22:41:31+00:00
Oh there are plenty of standards, including an official one. The problem is nobody uses them. Thai writing is weird, and between the tones and the character classes and silent letters might as well just make some shit up. My birth certificate, drivers license, and work permit all had different spellings of my name on them.

IIRC, the road signs for “Henri Dunant Road” were spelled differently on either end, which was ironic, because at least that did have a canonical Latin form.
by 1718627440 | 2025-12-16 22:41:40+00:00
Which is really sad. This is the actual reason why I preferred C over Python[*] for that project, so I could use my own library for HTML generation, which does exactly that. It also ameliorates the `goto cleanup;` thing, since now you can just tell the library to throw subtrees away. And the best thing is, that you can MOVE, and COPY them, which means you can generate code once and then fill it with the data and still later modify it. This means you can also refer to earlier generated values to generate something else, without needing to store everything twice or reparse your own output.

[*] I mean yeah, I could have written a wrapper, but that would have taken far more time.
by compiler-guy | 2025-12-16 22:42:12+00:00
Note the word order here.

Googling “slip over midi” gives a lot of fashion blogging about mini dresses and slips that one wears under them, so I’m not quite sure what you mean.

But if you mean “midi over slip”, then that is the inverse case from what I am suggesting. Midi over slip (and slip could be any tcpip substrate, such as ethernet) has midi messages as the payload, carried via tcpip.

I’m talking about using midi messages to carry tcpip payloads. You can absolutely do it, but it isn’t really what the protocol is designed for.
by LeFantome | 2025-12-16 22:42:35+00:00
No argument that there is a lot of bad software.

I am not as much on the bandwagon for “there is no lack of supply for software”.

I think more software is good and the more software there is, the more good software there will be. At least, big picture.

I am ok with there being a lot of bad software I do not use just like I am ok with companies building products with Open Source. I just want more software I can use. And, if I create Open Source myself, I just want it to get used.
by troupo | 2025-12-16 22:42:57+00:00
1. Users paid for it. So it's not entirely Apple's.

Also, Mac is also Apple's platform.

2. Why would Apple be entitled, for example, for any money that people pay to a service outside of Apple's platform?

3. Apple is a part of duopoly for devices which are integral part of life. No, they don't get to dictate everything that's happening on their platform

4. All EU said: behave, be more competitive. Apple behaves as we have seen: a cross between a bully and a petulant child
by guywithahat | 2025-12-16 22:43:07+00:00
My point is, and remains, that you can't use figures like the one that headlines the article if it includes unrelated data like foreign nationals. The reasoning is because it ends with the exact situation we have now. What we know for sure is the US has a free health care system (ACA) for those who actually need it, I know because I've used it. What we don't know is how many children are uninsured, because the data they're relying on is worthless. Using fake data and then claiming "it's probably not off by much" doesn't contribute much to the overall discussion.

I'd also like to point out HN isn't really for political discussion, it's for technical discussion. This is a methodology issue in the article, not my personal opinions on US health care.
by MerrimanInd | 2025-12-16 22:43:31+00:00
I think you're right but there's also an opportunity to sell picks when everyone is digging for gold. Like AI-driven VS Code forks, you have AI companies releasing their own browsers left and right. I wonder if Mozilla could offer a sort of white-labeling and contracting service where they offer the engine and some customization services to whatever AI companies want their own in-house browsers. But continue to offer Firefox itself as the "dumb" (from an AI perspective) reference version. I'm not sure exactly what they could offer over just forking Chromium/Firefox without support but it would be a great way to have their cake and eat it too.
by screye | 2025-12-16 22:43:41+00:00
There are no material conditions that would convince me to live in a cold, dark and culturally introverted place. Anecdotally, my tropical peers agree with this opinion. Seasonal affective disorder plays an outsized role in my ability to like a place. On the flip side, I've heard many people describe living in warm & humid weather as torture.

My point is, aggregating factors for happiness to find the best country is like aggregating people's favorite colors to find the best color. Each individual's needs and circumstances are unique, and what will make them happy will vary widely as those needs and circumstances vary.

Some interesting (suspect?) findings from the quoted 2023 paper: (2008 - 2017 data)

* Somaliland had the 4th least worries

* Russians were the 7th least angry

* Chinese were the 8th best rested

* Icelanders did great on every metric, but felt very tired (rank 190)

* Venezuelans smiled the 12th most (Panama, Paraguay, Costa Rica did even better)

* Laotians smile the 3rd most, but are also among the angriest (202) !!?
by thaumasiotes | 2025-12-16 22:44:59+00:00
> and the number of bits you need may indeed not be an integer.

That's true but not relevant; needing a non-integer number of bits makes it possible for some games to end one turn faster than other games, but it doesn't make it possible for a maximum-entropy strategy to have more variation than that one maybe-necessary-maybe-not turn. The scenario described by my parent comment still isn't possible.

> This game is constructed such that the questions you can ask are not arbitrary, so you cannot choose them to always produce one bit of entropy (you need to frame your questions as ten matchups in parallel, using all the contestants exactly once)

You're confusing two types of questions. The question where you're targeting one bit of information is "are Matt and Felicia a match?", just one pair.

A full proposed matchup of n pairs has n+1 possible answers and so your goal is to produce log₂ (n+1) bits. (Better conceptualized as one base-n+1 "bit".) I agree that it's not obvious how to do this or to what extent it's possible.
by ortusdux | 2025-12-16 22:45:03+00:00
From ABC -

"Authorities have investigated whether his death could be connected to this weekend's Brown University shooting and, at this point, a senior law enforcement official briefed on both cases told ABC News there is nothing to suggest they’re connected."

https://abcnews.go.com/US/mit-professor-shot-killed-home-bos...
by DoctorOetker | 2025-12-16 22:45:17+00:00
we are not discussing a schoolbook exercise, we are not calculating passive heat conduction of a pyramid heated to a base, since it's not a schoolbook exercise we can decide on the condition, we could put in heat pipes etc.

its CPU/GPU clusters, so we don't have 0 control on where to locate what heat generators, but even if we had 0 control over it, the shape and height of the pyramid does not preclude heat pipes (not solid bars of metal, but having a hot side where latent heat of a gas condensing to a liquid on the cold side and then evaporating on the hot side).

heat pipes have enormous thermal conductivities
by MerrimanInd | 2025-12-16 22:46:28+00:00
IMO Zen Browser fixed a lot of the Firefox UI painpoints while keeping what I like about it. It would be a smart move to make the Zen UI the canonical version of Firefox. Especially since features like vertical tabs, folders, pins, split screen, and new tab previews are more in the power user use case and Chrome has entirely dominated the casual user demographic.
by spwa4 | 2025-12-16 22:46:28+00:00
Waitlists do mean this is not as comparable as you make it out to be. With a 1-year waitlist for heart surgery ... you effectively do not have heart surgery cover, because you'll be dead before it happens.

Now of course, mostly people just lose a few years of life and have a number of very painful months due to delays, that it is the direct cause of death is fortunately rare.

Oh and before you say it, most of the difference in life expectancy is due to the the difference in overweight people, not medical care.

But of course people have voted everyone has care and can claim everything's great and they've done everything needed. That it doesn't translate into reality ... "is not their fault". Meanwhile you read there is such a doctor shortage in for example Southern Italy that seeing a doctor in under and hour is outright impossible ... because there isn't a doctor less than an hour's drive away from some villages, even without waitlists. And the doctor shortage is getting worse, not better.
by tigranbs | 2025-12-16 22:46:31+00:00
In my experience, "memory" is really not that helpful in most cases. For all of my projects, I keep the documentation files and feature specs up to date, so that LLMs are always aware of where to find what and which coding style guides the project is based on.

Maintaining the memory is a considerable burden, and make sure that simple "fix this linting" doesn't end up in the memory, as we always fix that type of issue in that particular way. That's also the major problem I have with ChatGPT's memory: it starts to respond from the perspective of "this is correct for this person".

I am curious who sees the benefits of the memory in coding? Is it like "learns how to code better" or it learns "how the project is structured". Either way, to me, this sounds like an easy project setup thing.
by mrguyorama | 2025-12-16 22:46:33+00:00
Weed is legal where I live. They don't fund drug dealers. They fund local business.

Though that local business currently funds some sketchy Chinese crime ring so.....

I just don't care. I'm not trying to "save" them, I'm throwing a little expendable resources at a human being and hoping it somehow makes their miserable life a little less miserable and sometimes drugs and alcohol are exactly that.

I've had half a mind to just hand out joints before, but I actually think they DON'T want that.

When I want to help "rescue" homeless people like that, I give money and resources to local institutions that know how to do it.

I really don't think panhandling has ever really fixed a homeless situation. It's not exactly a job you can put on your rental application. What do I care whether the dude who spends every day on the same street corner at 0 degrees smokes some weed or not? Why should literally anyone care? I haven't seen him in a while, so he might just be dead now.

Meanwhile the people who are "temporarily homeless" rarely get to take the good panhandling spots.

I know all too well how close I have come to that exact life, and how much people like you would sneer "Oh he's just an addict, not worth compassion"

Addiction is rarely fixed by homelessness and suffering for starters.
by smileybarry | 2025-12-16 22:46:34+00:00
And of course: casual reminder that Vizio does extensive ACR and ad targeting, and even bought a company doing it to facilitate that:

> In August 2015, Vizio acquired Cognitive Media Networks, Inc, a provider of automatic content recognition (ACR). Cognitive Media Networks was subsequently renamed Inscape Data. Inscape functioned as an independent entity until the end of 2020, when it was combined with Vizio Ads and SmartCast; the three divisions combining to operate as a single unit.[1]

But I'm sure Texans are fully aware and consented to this, right?

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vizio
by cnewey | 2025-12-16 22:46:35+00:00
Hah, no my house was built in the 1750s or something like that - single glazing on the front and with fairly minimal insulation, plus it has no cavity wall (a mixture of wattle and daub and brick). It is a mid-terrace though so I benefit from neighbours being either side.

There have been a few cold snaps here where the weather has been down to -2 some days, but it’s been fine. I had a couple of minor installation issues (eg 3 way valve set incorrectly) but once those were fixed my house hasn’t dropped below 19C.
by cryptonector | 2025-12-16 22:46:57+00:00
In British English there is a different approach to making up new words. Words like 'carpark' make me wince -- sure, it's more efficient than parking lot (though in Minnesota it's 'ramp', which is even more efficient). Not a fan.

> Then I went to an Engineering College, and it teaches us to distill everything into it's simpler fundamental components. I like it, and I now want people to be as direct as possible.

I've not quite yet gotten to the "and now I want people to be as direct as possible stage", but occasionally I've had to deal with exceedingly elliptical writing (and speech!) and then -yes- I feel exactly that.

English is my third language, and my first two are Romance languages. Over in Europe and parts of LatAm florid language is prized, as you know. I had to unlearn that stuff.
by Bender | 2025-12-16 22:47:41+00:00
If I can get you or someone on your team to run a script meaning I was phishing and someone on your email alias ran it to "help me debug my new script" then I can drop a tiny obfuscated shell script that will execute when you log in. No sudo, no root. Your machine will ssh out to a node I control using gateway ports. I then ssh into your node using a key I dropped plus an sshd running as you and then piggy-back on your multiplexed connection to your development or production data-center making use of a connection that you already authenticated to and already used MFA/2FA. In most cases there will be no logs to gather and the security team will see my connection as you. No hacking tools required, no detection from most security daemons.

It's only a risk if someone on your team runs the script and your local network allows outbound connections to the internet. None of this is theory though management teams will never want to see a demo much less let others in the company see it. A former coworker came up with the design. Shout out to The Godfather.
by lern_too_spel | 2025-12-16 22:47:53+00:00
> I wonder why meta chose not do the whole localhost thing on iOS

Presumably, they have a simpler way to tie the same ids together on iOS.

> The defaults aren’t really relevant because they don’t come up

If you ask your phone to navigate for you, you cannot use another app with better privacy. You have to use whatever Apple forces on you. The same with hotword-triggered assistants.

But yes, these are minor compared to the fact that you cannot get your GPS location at all in any app without telling Apple or the fact that you cannot install an app at all without telling Apple. These are egregious privacy violations done simply because Apple can.
by phatskat | 2025-12-16 22:48:04+00:00
I wonder how much empathy plays into it? I’ve trended towards teach lead roles and not that I feel my code is necessarily special, I think it’s clean enough and concise at times - occasionally some ASCII art slips in of course…

But what I have noticed across multiple companies is that I offer feedback for reviews that is thorough when it counts - I may pick apart a huge PR with lots of notes and suggestions, and that’s because the change has the potential to impact large systems. I also explain why, and I ask questions of the engineer to make sure I know why they did a thing because maybe I missed something.

I also talk to managers, product, and design, and do a lot of listening. Often times people are working towards a goal, or working against some barrier to getting their goals met, and being able to listen and understand them lends to a lot of credibility. And when you do a lot of that listening, you inherently gain a good amount of understanding of the systems - both technical and human.

When the time comes for someone to say “we should have a new lead on X”, the people that listen and engage tend to rise to that position naturally.

I think accountability and empathy go hand in hand to some degree - by owning something, you’re also saying “I understand how my work might impact other things, other people, and I want to reassure you that I have your back”.