MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by palata | 2025-12-11 08:56:29+00:00
I see it as a common vocabulary to talk about tools. It's simpler to say "I made a singleton" than to describe it.

Just like we have words for a nail, a screw, a hammer. If you had to say "I used a tool that I find works well with nails", that would be annoying and ambiguous.

Now of course, if you quickly screwed something with your swiss-army knife and a junior came and told you that this is wrong, because you should always use a proper screwdriver, and therefore you should rent a car and drive 30min to go buy it right now, you would kindly tell them to fuck off. Doesn't mean that there is no value in the concept of a screwdriver itself.
by Al-Khwarizmi | 2025-12-11 08:57:18+00:00
Ev Fedorenko is a highly recognized cognitive scientist that has been studying how humans parse language for years.

Of course this doesn't mean one shouldn't question what she says (that would be an obvious authority fallacy), but I do think it's fair to say that if you want to question it, the argument should be more elaborate that "this sounds like she has no idea of the topic".
by Xylakant | 2025-12-11 08:57:43+00:00
Let's take a simple example to illustrate how unsafe {} cuts down the review effort for many operations. Take a static mutable global variable (a global counter for example). Reading a static is safe, mutating it (increasing the counter) is not - it requires an unsafe {} block.

If you need to check which places mutate this global static you only need to check the unsafe parts of the code - you know that no other part of your code could mutate it, the compiler won't let you. If you have a bug that is related to mutating this static, then it might manifest anywhere in your code. But you know for certain that the root cause must be in one of your unsafe blocks - even if you don't know which one.

Good programming practice will cut down that effort even more by dictating that unsafe access should be grouped in modules. For example when binding to a C module (unsafe) you'd usally generate an unsafe wrapper with bindgen and then write a safe wrapper on top of that. Any access that tries to go around the safe wrapper would be frowned upon and likely fail review.

And again, the compiler will help you there: Any access that tries to bypass the safe api would need to be unsafe {} again and automatically receive extra scrutiny in a review, making it less likely to slip through.

Compare that to a C codebase where anything goes. A static might be mutated anywhere in your codebase, even through a pointer to it - meaning you can't even reliably grep for it. It may slip through review unnoticed because no attention is drawn to it and cause bugs that are hard to trace and reason about.

If you're writing embedded code, similar considerations apply - access to registers etc. require unsafe {}. But because access is unsafe {}, it's usually gated behind a safe api that is the boundary of the low-level code and the higher buisness logic. Unsurprisingly, these are critical parts of the code - hence they receive extra scrutiny and in our project, we allocate substantial review capacity on those. And the compiler will enforce that no safe code can circumvent the access layer.

The number you're tagging as unrealistic figure is the result of dedicated and careful design of language and compiler features to achieve exactly this outcome. It's not a random fluke, very clever people did sit down and thought about how to achieve this.
by re-thc | 2025-12-11 08:58:25+00:00
> I believe that the line in the sand over which platforms this applies to is the ones that

You know a law is broken when its definition is defined by random people "knowing" where and how it applies.

> This sort of ban is the same as existing laws banning the sale and consumption of alcohol or driving

No it's not. Is every social media platform banned? How is it defined? This is the equivalent of going into a supermarket with a "kids" alcohol section and 1 for everyone else hand-picked by whoever in charge.
by juvoly | 2025-12-11 08:58:48+00:00
That sounds cool, but this quickly gets complicated. Some aspects that need to be addressed:

- where does the automatically defined struct live? Data segment might work for static, but doesn't allow dynamic use. Stack will be garbage if closure outlives function context (ie. callback, future). Heap might work, but how do you prevent leaks without C++/Rust RAII?

- while a function pointer may be copied or moved, the state area probably cannot. It may contain pointers to stack object or point into itself (think Rust's pinning)

- you already mention recursion, compilation

- ...
by TINJ | 2025-12-11 09:00:45+00:00
> For example, I've seen people write code which relies heavily on design patterns but then that same code uses an O(n^2) nested loop to find items that are common between two arrays. There is a simple 'pattern' you can use to store the items of the first array in a Set or HashMap and then finding common items is O(n) because Set and HashMap lookups are O(1)... Very useful pattern but I don't believe it has a name. I use it literally ALL the time. The idea of storing intermediate state in some kind of HashMap is a game-changer IMO but there's no name for that pattern of coding.

Isn't this called 'dynamic programming'? It's actually a habit people should pick up when grinding leetcode.
by UltraSane | 2025-12-11 09:01:12+00:00
"The northern settlements were largely evacuated and used by the IDF."

This is a complete and utter lie. Hezbollah's missile attacks throughout 2024 led to the evacuation of over 60,000 Israeli residents from northern Israel.

Try to imagine the US response to Mexico shooting that many missiles at a US city.

"Israel is an occupying power"

Israel isn't occupying Lebanon but Hezbollah is.

" making it permissible to fight back."

This is exactly what Israel did so brilliantly with the pager attack.
by AnonymousPlanet | 2025-12-11 09:01:23+00:00
Parts of Usenet actually mandated real names. The idea was to make discussions more civilised. It didn't. And on top of that people were now subject to stalking and doxxing. I remember a poster who had a link to a defamation site in his signature. The site was targeted at another frequent poster in that newsgroup, detailing his address and his alleged intellectual failings.
by somat | 2025-12-11 09:01:43+00:00
There is the vesa standards organization with a pretty good history of successful display connections standards vga(analog video) dvi(digital video) and displayport(packet video) and very little drama affecting the end user with how the connection is used.

Contrast this with the hdmi consortium which put together the hdmi standard. originally hdmi was just dvi with a built in audio channel. and while I will concede that the audio channel was a killer feature and resulted in the huge success of hdmi. They really did very little technical work and what work they did do was end user hostile (hdcp rights management)

It really is too bad that display-port is sort of relegated to computer monitors as it is better designed and less end user hostile than hdmi. but hdmi with it's built in audio channel won the market for digital video connections and by the time display port was out people were, understandably, reluctant to switch again. While display port is better, it is not enough better to be for the end user to care.
by alex-dozer | 2025-12-11 09:02:10+00:00
Hi, I'm looking for feedback to see if what I'm doing is intuitive. I'm building an integrated security platform (think telemetry/SIEM/sanitizer/SOAR wrapped into one) called Ben. Ben is built in Rust, and largely macro based. I've included a substack article about the macros I've made so far. Basically I wanted compile time guarantees for info. I have a plan to implement hot swaps on everything but BenSchema that gets versioned. My thought was that if all I had to do was build out structs and boom, it works, it'd help me with my use case. Ideally I'd like to market it, but I'm mostly building it for my own use case. If you have any feedback whether this is intuitive, whether or not I should add things or add to the macros, it'd be appreciated. Ben isn't built, and I'm not trying to shill something. I just sit at this weird intersection where its hard to get feedback on stuff and I've found my project to be rather niche.
by dust42 | 2025-12-11 09:02:12+00:00
The question is, can SV extract several trillion dollars out of the global economy over the next few years with the help of LLMs and GPUs? And the follow-up question: will LLMs help grow the global economy by this amount - because if not, then extracting the money will lead to problems in other parts of the world. And last not least, will LLMs -given enough money to train them on ever bigger data sets- magically turn into AGI?

IMHO for now LLMs are just clever text generators with excellent natural language comprehension. Certainly a change of many paradigms in SWE. Is it also a $10T extra for the valley?
by rvranjan | 2025-12-11 09:03:08+00:00
Thanks! Quick overview: Paths are deterministic, not LLM-generated. I use OpenAI text-embedding-3-large to build a word graph with K-nearest neighbors, then BFS finds the shortest path. No sampling involved. The explanations shown in-game are generated afterward by GPT-5 to explain the semantic jumps. Planning to write up the full architecture in a blog post - will share here when it's ready.
by 6P58r3MXJSLi | 2025-12-11 09:03:12+00:00
just the same as Jane Austen is one hell of a statement.

Gundam actual influences are well known, Tomino himself talked about it, more than one time. Gundam was inspired by WWII stories, but the direct source of inspiration is Gerard O’Neill’s “The High Frontier”, in which there is depicted the O'Neil Cylinder, whose design has been literally copied verbatim for Gundam's space stations/colonies.
by cess11 | 2025-12-11 09:03:16+00:00
Well, if that stops your thinking, maybe ponder the illegality of the israeli occupation of palestinian territory then.

The israelis must withdraw their people from palestinian territories occupied in -67 and ought to pay reparations for both the occupation and destruction of property, as well as allow refugees to either return to their homes or pay reparations to them.

Unless they do this immediately the international community ought to assemble an international military force and invade the region and put an end to the US-Israeli atrocities. Which is unlikely since they're both expected to use nuclear weapons in response to justice.
by spicyjpeg | 2025-12-11 09:04:08+00:00
It's not just a multiplication instruction. The CPU is equipped with a fixed-point coprocessor to accelerate the most common computations in 3D games, the geometry transformation engine [1], capable of carrying them out much faster than the CPU alone could. For instance, the GTE can apply a transformation matrix to three vertices and project them in 23 cycles, while the CPU's own multiplier takes up to 13 cycles for a single multiplication and 36 (!) for a division. Combined with a few other "tricks" such as a DMA unit capable of parsing linked lists (which lets the CPU bucket sort polygons on the fly rather than having to emit them back-to-front in the first place), it allowed games to push a decent number of polygons (typically around 1-3k per frame) despite the somewhat subpar performance of the cache-less MIPS R3000 derivative Sony chose.

If you have some basic familiarity with C, you can see both the GTE and the Z bucket sorting of GPU commands in action in the cube example I linked in the parent comment.

[1]: https://psx-spx.consoledev.net/geometrytransformationengineg...
by logifail | 2025-12-11 09:05:42+00:00
> What you actually want to compare [..]

The (ex-)scientist in me is looking for a controlled study, ideally published in a peer reviewed journal, looking at - how can I put this - actual data.

60s of Googling gave me this

The effect of a specialized dyslexia font, OpenDyslexic, on reading rate and accuracy https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5629233/

"A single-subject alternating treatment design was used to investigate the extent to which a specialized dyslexia font, OpenDyslexic, impacted reading rate or accuracy compared to two commonly used fonts when used with elementary students identified as having dyslexia. OpenDyslexic was compared to Arial and Times New Roman in three reading tasks: (a) letter naming, (b) word reading, and (c) nonsense word reading. Data were analyzed through visual analysis and improvement rate difference, a nonparametric measure of nonoverlap for comparing treatments. Results from this alternating treatment experiment show no improvement in reading rate or accuracy for individual students with dyslexia, as well as the group as a whole. While some students commented that the font was “new” or “different”, none of the participants reported preferring to read material presented in that font. These results indicate there may be no benefit for translating print materials to this font."

Advocacy for people with disabilities is important, but actual data may be even more important.
by GuestFAUniverse | 2025-12-11 09:05:43+00:00
Oh, another Google API rant.

I knew I never want to use another Google service as soon as I got rclone running with my Google Drive: https://rclone.org/drive/

I rather not waste my time with such abominations. And I don't mean rclone. I don't care about the "history" of that API, or any API. It's like strangers telling you their live's story at the first meeting. Awkward.
by lm28469 | 2025-12-11 09:06:29+00:00
> younger generation is earning more in the workforce than past generations

Inflation adjusted wages and purchasing power is flat for, at least, the past 50 years... and even if it wasn't it wouldn't mean anything regarding new workers capabilities/attention span/&c.

https://i0.wp.com/economicsfromthetopdown.com/wp-content/upl...

https://assets.weforum.org/editor/Xkzpnpz_lnI-0WbTH1LJVUdu3J...

The propaganda is so good people who have it worse than their parents and grand parents think they're living in the greatest times ever.
by mtrofficus | 2025-12-11 09:06:41+00:00
Hey!

I'm excited to share an open-source course I've created that walks you through building an Agentic Call Center from the ground up.

The course is divided into five lessons covering core architecture, FastRTC for WebRTC and WebSocket connections, plus integrations with Twilio, Superlinked, Qdrant, and more.

Hope you find it useful!
by dzaima | 2025-12-11 09:07:11+00:00
> you just need to make sure that the system keeps a big enough buffer of contiguous-enough space somewhere. Similar to how many filesystems allow you to reserve space for root

Said file system reserving can fill up (I've experienced that :) ). Could perhaps engineer some super-equation for a global reserved memory size that can actually guarantee being sufficient; but, unless you mark allocations as needing reserved space vs not and compute based on that (which is back to overhead), that'll necessarily waste a good amount of memory.

And such a global equation of course can result in global failure if just one subsystem miscalculates its required reserved amount, or the calculations improperly account for worst-case non-contiguousness or interleaved different-size-linked-list-alloc-requests or whatever. (never mind that you now need to alloc when adding elements to linked lists, an action that would otherwise be 1-4 inlined stores)

Probably (?) possible to handle, but way way way more easy to break or get wrong (with very-difficult-to-debug consequences) than just some pointer fields.

Oh and also of course, if you store list data in a separate allocation from the main object, you lose the ability to do O(1) (and extremely-cheap at that) "remove self from linked list just given my own pointer", which is probably quite common (and you can't even O(1) with an arraylist instead of a linkedlist).
by chenglemon | 2025-12-11 09:07:47+00:00
Okay, bruno-simon.com is probably the coolest portfolio I've ever seen. You get to DRIVE A LITTLE TRUCK around a 3D world to see his projects! It's fun, intuitive, and technically impressive. The attention to detail is insane. Don't visit if you have a deadline—you'll get stuck there! #webdev #threejs #creativecoding
by kokau | 2025-12-11 09:08:43+00:00
Hi HN,

Over the past few months I’ve been building something I needed myself: an AI that can create a complete brand identity from scratch — not just a logo, but an entire visual + strategic system.

It’s called Brandolia.io.

Instead of hiring a designer + strategist + copywriter, the tool generates:

a full logo (vector-style or realistic)

color palette

typography suggestions

slogan & value proposition

a brand story

social media content

and a downloadable brand identity document

All in ~30 seconds, from a single prompt.

Why I built it: I noticed many entrepreneurs (especially early-stage founders, freelancers, students, micro-brands) don’t have the budget or the time to hire an agency, but still need a clean, coherent identity to look credible.

A few technical notes for the curious:

Logos are generated via a custom pipeline using GPT-image models

Copy (slogan, tone, story, tagline, etc.) is built through layered GPT-4 prompts

The brand book is compiled on the fly and exported as HTML/PDF

There is rate-limiting, token accounting, and Supabase functions to keep costs predictable

The goal is to feel like a “mini branding agency” running fully on AI

You can test it here: https://www.brandolia.io

I’d love feedback from HN — UX, technical architecture, what to improve, what’s missing, what feels unnecessary, etc.

Also curious: Would you use something like this for early prototypes, pitch decks, school projects, or real businesses?

Happy to answer any technical questions.
by gikkman | 2025-12-11 09:08:48+00:00
I recently got an email saying a project I got is at the risk of being disabled because my payment information is invalid. But the card I got registered for it is the same I've had the last two years, and it's still valid cause I used it yesterday. Also, there is no amount due as far as I can tell. I haven't done anything with the project for 6 month, it's just sitting there. No API usage, nothing.

So I got no idea what to do to address it. I feel my best option is wait for it to get disabled and try to address it afterwards.
by thayne | 2025-12-11 09:09:09+00:00
Innocence until proven guilty should mean the burden of proof is on the prosecutor to prove you actually looked at it right? Although that isn't necessarily how it works in the real world. IANAL.

But I also don't understand how they would enforce that you can't use a leaked spec. If there are patents involved that would hinder an open source implementation regardless of if it was clean room or not. I don't think copyright would apply, because the implementation is not the same as the spec. And trademark would only apply if you used hdmi branding materials (so just say something like "this driver provides compatibility with an interface that has been hostile to open source that starts with h and ends with i"), and if you use a leaked spec, you didn't sign any contracts saying you can't implement it.
by bobdvb | 2025-12-11 09:11:09+00:00
One of my projects won one of these.

It was for standardising widescreen switching signals, in the early 2000s that was a big issue because each company had a different interpretation of what the flags meant. Thus when you were watching TV you would often get the wrong behaviour and distorted pictures. A small group of us sat down and agreed what the proper behaviour should be. Then every other TV standards body in the world adopted it.

I never did get a statue.
by lm28469 | 2025-12-11 09:11:42+00:00
Sure, but then again that's not how most people use youtube in real life. You can trick it into temporarily not being a slop provider but it's a constant battle, and not one a 10-15 years old will engage in, which is to be expected, kids are kids and can't fight multi billion dollar companies hiring the top behavioural scientist of our era to create the most addictive ad delivery mechanism possible
by beloch | 2025-12-11 09:13:13+00:00
"We see both sides – genuine infrastructure expansion alongside financing gymnastics that recall the 2000 telecom bust. The boom may yet prove productive, but only if revenue catches up before credit tightens. When does healthy strain become systemic risk?"

---------------

This was quoted in the article and it says something really important very succinctly. Was the internet transformative? Absolutely. A lot of companies had solid ideas, spent big, and went tits up waiting for the money to roll in.

AI can be both "real deal" and "bubble" simultaneously.
by miki123211 | 2025-12-11 09:13:31+00:00
I don't think you can change user behavior like this.

You can give them a "venting sink" though. Instead of having a downvote button that just downvotes, have it pop up a little menu asking for a downvote reason, with "spam" and "disagree" as options. You could then weigh downvotes by which option was selected, along with an algorithm to discover "user honesty" based on whether their downvotes correlate with others or just with the people on their end of the political spectrum, a la Birdwatch.
by samdoesnothing | 2025-12-11 09:13:50+00:00
> Capitalism mixed with strong safeguards ensuring that there is a return for productivity for everyone feels like the best attempt we've made at a system that works for everyone until all the safeguards began being dismantled in the 70s.

You mean when the US left the gold standard and began a 50 year period of inflationary money printing?

That same inflation is a direct transfer of wealth to the asset class, and a hidden tax on the working class.

> Can we return to that system

Not directly. There is zero chance that the US can return to the gold standard, but they could lose their position as the world currency and be replaced by something that is resistant to inflation.
Show HN: Monetising an API by simply emailing public keys
by sim04ful | 2025-12-11 09:14:06+00:00
Keeping aside the actual service being rendered, what I want to draw attention to is the monetisation model. It’s almost unusually simple in its execution, which is exactly why I think it deserves some discussion.

The idea is straightforward: I maintain a public-key whitelist. Consumers generate a key pair and send me their public key by email. That’s it.

Of course, this approach does place limits on the kinds of interactions or access patterns I can support, but in principle it works.

Still, the simplicity makes me cautious. When a solution feels this low-hanging, it tends to be one of two things: either it’s so straightforward that no one bothers to talk about it, or the pitfalls are significant enough that nobody uses it.
by wk_end | 2025-12-11 09:14:09+00:00
Browser performance tips from 2014 mean very little twelve years on. Not only have machines gotten faster and networks gotten faster, rendering engines gotten faster. And I'm doubtful it nested flexboxes would've been all that much of a problem in most cases even then.

The most important thing is to use the right tool for the job. If grid lets you express what you want in the most straightforward way, use it; if flexbox does - even if it needs nesting - then use it instead. Don't shoehorn one into a situation where the other makes more sense. And sometimes either will work for a particular situation and that's fine too; use whatever you find most ergonomic. They're both very good in their own way.