MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
Tell HN: I am afraid AI will take my job at some point
by funnyfoobar | 2025-12-27 04:03:15+00:00
I have been doing software for a living for the past 10 years or so.

I can call myself an average senior engineer. Cannot really pass the DSA rounds at Tier 1/Tier 2.

Somehow was able to keep the jobs I had so far via pure bruteforce and hard work.

These days I am pair programming with AI to write a lot of code. Probably checking in about 10 to 15k lines of code per month on average. I know it may not be a good metric, but if I compare myself to an earlier verision of me, that person would be checking in a 2 or 3 k lines of code at best per month.

I can get the work done, probably can do a bit of good judgement when AI writes sloppy code.

But, I am not sure till when these skills will be relevant

Like what if that judgement is not needed anymore, like 2-3 years down the line?

Is anyone else in the same boat? How are you dealing with this?
by bigyabai | 2025-12-27 04:03:18+00:00
>> "vile machines raping the planet" is obviously vitriol

> Mr. Pike is making a statement of fact.

He is embellishing his own perception and broadcasting it over the internet. If it was a widely-known fact then he wouldn't have to stand on his soapbox to shout it out.

I think the Occam's razor motive is that he needed catharsis for wading through AI shit. Many of us do, our attention spans have been abused by online advertisement for years, and AI makes it easier than ever to abuse that outreach. But you need to remember that people probably called the internet, radio, television and probably fiction novels a "vile machine" at some point, feeling relatively justified with the judgement. We have the benefit of hindsight now to call them utterly hysterical.
by ranger_danger | 2025-12-27 04:04:47+00:00
When CF continues to host 8chan and other groups that routinely trade monkey torture/zoosadism videos, but for some reason only KF goes too far... yea that doesn't make sense to me. I don't think they should be playing Internet police, and it's possible that (in the US at least) even doing so in the first place could nullify their Section 230 safe harbor protections, by attempting to moderate content that flows through them.

But also in KF's case I think it was not so much their content that got them "in trouble", but the people behind that crusade being so loud about it, like Liz Fong-Jones and Keffals, who relentlessly harassed every possible service provider even remotely related to any aspect of KF-related services at all, which included domain registrars, DDoS protection services, hosting/colo/DNS providers, IP space owners, upstream ISPs (and even Tier 1s), etc.

It was basically a master class in mentally-questionable retribution crusades for bringing their very ugly skeletons out of the closet and exposing all of their wrongdoings. LFJ was mad that their rape allegation was made public by KF, and Keffals was mad that their illegal bathtub-HRT scheme was made public.
by pfdietz | 2025-12-27 04:05:06+00:00
Yeah, that's nonsense. The radiation in low Earth orbit is only a bit less than above the magnetosphere, and most of that difference is from shadowing by the Earth itself. In contrast, there's a massive decrease in radiation from LEO to to sea level.

Radiation at ISS: 144 mSv per year

Radiation on a trip to Mars: ~340 mSv per year

Cosmic radiation at sea level: about 0.4 mSv per year

The atmosphere is doing the heavy lifting in shielding us from cosmic radiation, not the magnetosphere.
by rgoulter | 2025-12-27 04:05:08+00:00
Eh.

I think the cultural context has changed.

In "python paradox", 'knows python' is an indication that the developer is interested in something technically interesting but otherwise impractical. Hence, it's a 'paradox' that you end up practically better off by selecting for something impractical.

These days, Python is surely a practical choice, so doesn't really resemble the "interested in something technically interesting but impractical".
by wrycoder | 2025-12-27 04:05:57+00:00
By Antonio Gulli, Google

Forward by Marco Argenti, CIO, Goldman Sachs

...explore a diverse range of design patterns, from foundational concepts like structuring sequential operations (Prompt Chaining) and external interaction (Tool Use) to more advanced topics like collaborative work (Multi-Agent Collaboration) and self-improvement (Self-Correction).

https://x.com/DBVolkov/status/2004598132076937248
by aforwardslash | 2025-12-27 04:06:38+00:00
Were those 249 years produced in a vacuum? Or did they stand on 1500 years of mathematics and trial-and- error?
As a quick example, think of a high-end digital photographic camera; you can certainly highlight the major tech advancements that make it high end, but do you know how the screws were produced? Where the grease used on the gears cone from? How long did it take to get to the state-of-the-art optics? How can you even get composite materials to perform heavy-duty cycles?

Those 249 years of tech were based on the previous 249 years of tech, and so on and so on. That is how it works. Nothing you have "today" comes from a vacuum.
by usui | 2025-12-27 04:08:12+00:00
It's good you also mentioned "(and Japanese)" regarding the propaganda machine. I don't think it will crash any time soon, but considering how much the economy is driven by the automotive industry, it's scary to see how much the incumbent companies are doing all they can to stifle electric vehicle advances. They aren't just ignoring them, they're doing all they can to spread FUD. To think there was a good start with hybrids too. There's also the ongoing hydrogen fuel attempt which starts to look like a sunk cost fallacy. If nothing changes, the decline is going to be a gradual irreversible ugly one layered on top of the demographic problem.
by tstrimple | 2025-12-27 04:08:34+00:00
I think it's Sanderson's attempt at "epic fantasy" and it falls a bit flat for me as well compared to his tighter shorter novels. Of course we have to focus on the world building because it's literally Sanderson's only talent outside of just being a prolific writer. His characters are all very flat and similar. Especially the women. His character arcs are nothing to speak of. His relationship building is cringe worthy. But he always makes interesting worlds and explores the ramifications of culture and magic systems.
by dhosek | 2025-12-27 04:08:41+00:00
Although, one could make the argument that staff notation is itself a form of text, albeit one with a different notation than a single stream of Unicode symbols. Certainly, without musical notation, a lot of music is lost (although, one can argue that musical notation is not able to adequately preserve some aspects of musical performance which is part of why when European composers tried to adopt jazz idioms into their compositions in the early twentieth century working from sheet music, they missed the whole concept of swing which is essential to jazz).
by tombert | 2025-12-27 04:08:59+00:00
I got back into using e-readers so I read a lot more this year than usual.

- More than Human by Theodore Sturgeon

- Sum: Forty Tales from the Afterlives by David Eagleman

- Hogg by Samuel R. Delany

- The first dozen Discworld books (in publication order) by Terry Pratchet

- The Wall by Mary Roberts Reinhart

- Columbine by Dave Cullen

- Garth Marenghi's TerrorTome

- Stray Bullets: Killers by David Lapham

- Stray Bullets: Sunshine and Roses by David Lapham

I might be missing a few.
by thrw045 | 2025-12-27 04:09:01+00:00
But is the diversity really that staggering?
I mean most animals including possibly dinosaurs that have ever existed share a lot of internal organs, in the same place. They have eyes, brain (with a lot of the same brain areas, even birds have something like a prefrontal cortex but it's called something different).
They all have legs, torso, head.
I would say there is a lot more commonality than difference. The differences come from slight variations on a basic template that works, and then the body looks different and so on.

I'm not sure how to think about the diversity that evolution creates and how diverse it actually is. I would say there are _a lot_ of repeating patterns all across history, with variations on those repeating patterns always changing.
by jerkstate | 2025-12-27 04:10:15+00:00
I did it cheap - I just ran extension cables from my car (previously from a generator). I have a manual transfer switch at my furnace to safely switch between utility power and extension cable power, and just replugged appliances. I think everything drew on average about 800 watts, up to maybe 1500. I split it between 2 1.8 kW 110v outlets in the car.
by gsf_emergency_6 | 2025-12-27 04:10:42+00:00
Gemini offers

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Turkish_coup_attempt

as an example of a modern failed coup where exactly 5 soldiers were killed (on the gov side)

(Not sure if drones were included in the planning)

While at least one of the dead on the other side was a history teacher

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6khan_A%C3%A7%C4%B1kkoll...
by webstrand | 2025-12-27 04:11:28+00:00
I like to think of typescript, pycharm, and whatever consumes t-ruby as, effectively, type-directed linters. The types are advisory only at runtime, so the full power of the dynamic language can be used. But at compile time the type can be checked and verified (insofar as they correspond correctly to the types at runtime).

So the reason to add types to python/ruby is that switching to a statically typed language you lose power and expressiveness. But if you use a type-directed linter, you can prevent many of the common errors writing in a dynamic language.
by simonw | 2025-12-27 04:11:35+00:00
Much as I love text for communication, it's worth knowing that "28% of US adults scored at or below Level 1, 29% at Level 2, and 44% at Level 3 or above" - Literacy in the United States: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literacy_in_the_United_States

Anything below 3 is considered "partially illiterate".

I've been thinking about this a lot recently, as someone who cares about technical communication and making technical topics accessible to more people.

Maybe wannabe educators like myself should spend more time making content for TikTok or YouTube!
by tstrimple | 2025-12-27 04:12:12+00:00
Curious about your view on The Count of Monte Cristo. It's one of my more disappointing reads of the year. I'm familiar with the story line from various film adaptations, but I wasn't prepared for the sheer amount of repetition and drawn out bullshit. That's when I learned it was originally published in a journal where Dumas was paid by the word over 18 parts. Then all the meandering bullshit and repetition made so much more sense.
by rramadass | 2025-12-27 04:13:12+00:00
Christopher Monroe, who co-founded quantum computer company IonQ, says people in the industry have noticed the identical bans and have been discussing their criteria, but he has no information on where they have come from.

“I have no idea who determined the logic behind these numbers,” he says, but it may have something to do with the threshold for simulating a quantum computer on an ordinary computer. This becomes exponentially harder as the number of qubits rises, so Monroe believes that the rationale behind the ban could be to restrict quantum computers that are now too advanced to be simulated, even though such devices have no practical applications.

“The fallacy there is that just because you cannot simulate what the quantum computer is doing doesn’t make it useful. And by severely limiting research to progress in this grey area, it will surely stifle innovation,” he says.

-- From https://www.newscientist.com/article/2436023-multiple-nation...
by ansgri | 2025-12-27 04:13:49+00:00
Didn’t really study this aspect, but it feels like thick AAC blocks would be better for seismic stability than those tuff stone blocks popular in Armenia. It’s lighter, glues to neighboring blocks better due to perfect shape, and has better heat insulation.

It would be amazing if AAC-like material could be produced on-site economically to create a lighter form of monolithic reinforced concrete construction, like filling a formwork with expanding foam.
by denimnerd42 | 2025-12-27 04:13:59+00:00
Luxury vehicles I've never understood, especially the non Lexus variety. so don't expect me to explain that.

Due to all the people in my fmaily I have 4 cars so I wouldn't go from 1 EV to 2. If the current EV gets destroyed I do think that used EVs are the right way to go and would buy a used one for sure.

They do still feel like throwaway cars. I'm not sure how you can argue they will have a longer lifetime. If the battery dies surely no one is replacing that at cost? It's more than the car is worth. At least with an ICE each part can be replaced in your driveway with a few hundred in tools and the part probably exists locally used or new.
by johnathon023 | 2025-12-27 04:15:07+00:00
Alloy powers https://typespec.io/, which Microsoft it seems is using to generate new OpenAPI sdks for Azure, among other things!

Looks like a great DSL, similar to https://smithy.io/, but more extensible, not tied to Java, and built with Typescript in mind.

Alloy itself seems like a delightful way to do codegen, and there have been talks mentioning Stripe uses a custom React render target just like this to generate their famously readable SDKs and code examples across all languages.
by vel0city | 2025-12-27 04:16:30+00:00
> Is a Lego Technics set a toy?

Expensive plastic, still a toy. Guess you're right it's not cheap. Definitely depends on the kid on this one. Legos can be OK toys, one of the few rare exceptions.

> Is a model plane that requires assembly a toy?

For the kind most people would just give as a gift? Absolutely just cheap plastic trash. It's definitely a hobby one can get into, but the quick gift stuff is pretty poor quality. And that model, once built, is probably fragile. Kids aren't often known for handling fragile things well.

> Is a drone a toy?

The cheap ones? Absolutely.
by fragmede | 2025-12-27 04:16:38+00:00
But how different? Compilers do, in fact, spit out different binaries with each run. There are timestamps and other subtle details embedded in them (esp compiler version and linking) that make the same source result in a different binary. "That's different"; "that's not the same thing!" I see you thinking. As long as the AI prompt "make me a login screen" results in a login screen appropriate for the rest of the code, and not "rm -rf ~/", does it matter if the indeterminism produces a login page with a Google login page before the email login button or after?
by oakpond | 2025-12-27 04:17:47+00:00
> There's a new programmable layer of abstraction to master (in addition to the usual layers below) involving agents, subagents, their prompts, contexts, memory, modes, permissions, tools, plugins, skills, hooks, MCP, LSP, slash commands, workflows, IDE integrations, and a need to build an all-encompassing mental model for strengths and pitfalls of fundamentally stochastic, fallible, unintelligible and changing entities suddenly intermingled with what used to be good old fashioned engineering.

Slop-oriented programming
by awesomeusername | 2025-12-27 04:18:02+00:00
I had to 'contact sales' to request an enterprise license to cover the period where we transition away from mattermost.

Great product, but trust is everything when it comes to such a core part of a company. They fucked up, real bad.

I'll use this while we transition away, unless there is a community fork which is sustainable and is firewalled from the morons at mattermost org who fouled this all up
by why-o-why | 2025-12-27 04:18:41+00:00
Precisely!!!!

The kid in the article had a big brain to begin with, and there were ample buffs at his disposal, so he got to speed run his interest because he was lucky enough to be born in the right zip code. It doesn't diminish his work at all. (And it is also true that there are plenty of rich failsons and faildaughters who get slotted into birthright CEO positions without ever knowing adversity.)

I like Finland's approach: they have no private schools [1], which means rich kids go to the same public schools as poor kids (or their parents fly their kids out of the country). This means there is a much greater likelihood of advanced resources for smarter kids. But Finland also doesn't have the radical wealth disparity that we have in the US.

[1] https://inews.co.uk/news/world/finland-no-fee-paying-schools...
by burnt-resistor | 2025-12-27 04:18:42+00:00
I saw this days ago. The problem is validating strength and integrity over time. That sort of long-term follow-up and scientific, repeatable destructive testing doesn't fit into a short video. Evangelizing unproven construction methods and materials is reckless without context and nuance.

When an office building was built in any earthquake-prone area that housed a nuclear engineering consultancy I worked in for several years, multiple test specimens of concrete were poured and kept for later testing and evaluation, and extra ones were kept should there ever be a question about the concrete's quality in the future.
Show HN: Jobswithgpt.com Semantic Job Search
by jobswithgptcom | 2025-12-27 04:19:08+00:00
I started jobswithgpt as a side project few months back to experiment with LLMs, RAG and am hoping it will be useful for the community looking to change jobs in the new year. The search focusses primarily on direct listings - aka no job boards. There is an MCP server and chatgpt plugin for more advanced use cases. Feedback appreciated!
by tjr | 2025-12-27 04:19:12+00:00
Nondeterminism indeed does not imply non-correctness.

All ten outputs might be valid. All ten will almost certainly be different -- though even that is not guaranteed.

The OP referred to the notion of there being no manual; we have to figure out how to use the tool ourselves.

A traditional programming tool manual would explain that you can provide input X and expect output Y. Do this, and that will happen. It is not so clear-cut with AI tools, because they are -- by default, in popular configurations -- nondeterministic.
by aforwardslash | 2025-12-27 04:19:13+00:00
I struggle to find this argument compelling, as it sounds more of a straw man argument than a legitimate complain.

If I write a hash table implementation in C, am I plagiarizing? I did not come up with the algortithm nor the language used for implementation; I "borrowed" ideas from existing knowledge.

Lets say I implemented it after learning the algorithm from GPL code; is ky implementation a new one, or is it derivative?

What if it is from a book?

What about the asm upcodes generated? In some architectures, they are copyrighted, or at least the documentation is considered " intellectual property"; is my C compiler stealing?

Is a hammer or a mallot an obvious creation, or is it stealing from someone else? What about a wheel?
by lofaszvanitt | 2025-12-27 04:21:04+00:00
I say that 99.5% of the UI/UX blog posts I've read in the last 10 years were all hogwash. Gloating about spacing, gaps, unnecessary I know this better mantra that leads to nowhere.

And it shows. Show me a platform where you have proper user experience and not some overgeneralized ui, that reeks of bad design. Also, defaults used everywhere.
by rjh29 | 2025-12-27 04:22:11+00:00
Some people like to over-optimise everything. Window manager, vim config, unix tool choice, split keyboard, DVORAK layout, mechanical keyboards, coffee brewing, Obsidian note-taking/Zettelkasten, mice (the rabbit hole for mice goes as deep as keyboards)

This is often more about enjoying the process of optimising than wanting to be productive overall. Some may spend a lot of time reading Hacker News to "keep up with new tools" and clipping their productivity bonsai tree at the deteriment of actually getting work done. They may be the type to spend weeks optimising a command that is run once a year. They may obsess over pointless details that don't matter.
by ryandv | 2025-12-27 04:23:06+00:00
The inverse of this is the wisdom that pearls should not be cast before swine. If you want to increase literacy rates, it's unclear to me how engaging people on an illiterate medium will improve things.

Technical topics demand a technical treatment, not 30-second junk food bites of video infotainment that then imbue the ignorant audiences with the semblance or false feeling of understanding, when they actually possess none. This is why we have so many fucking idiots dilating everywhere on topics they haven't a clue on - they probably saw a fucking YouTube video and now consider themselves in possession of a graduate degree in the subject.

Rather than try to widely distribute and disseminate knowledge, it would be far more prescient to capitalize on what will soon be a massive information asymmetry and widening intellectual inequality between the can-reads and the can't-reads, accelerated by the production of machine generated, misinformative slop at scale.
by tgma | 2025-12-27 04:23:08+00:00
Your last sentence is not mutually exclusive with my statement. Both could be simultaneously true. The sheer number of big company employees compared to hot startup makes it hard for everyone good to get into the startup, especially considering they usually have more specific needs. That said it could also be the case that the hot startup cannot easily get good employees from big company.

My point was more that the high end ones they do get are usually in the front piece of the airplane in the acquisition split. Also, the really hot startups are actually paying quite a bit of cash upfront so the original premise of employee sacrifice isn’t as true.
by iwontberude | 2025-12-27 04:23:16+00:00
Not just China but almost all of the world. We have parity in most countries right now. The whole point of the WTO was to do technology transfer and allow the US to double down on high margin, finance parts of business since the manufacturing game had the low fruit all picked and wasn’t valuable property anymore. The exception for the west would be to specialize on optics and silicon, two places China is still far behind.
by RickJWagner | 2025-12-27 04:23:22+00:00
Not long ago, Tesla dealerships were being firebombed and random Teslas vandalized. The perps were lefties, intent upon trying to harm Elon Musk. There were a great many appreciative onlookers in left leaning subreddits and similar places.

Politically, it seems the people slowing EV adaption can be on both sides of the aisle.
by snvzz | 2025-12-27 04:23:26+00:00
Yup. Their best builders run JH7110 (based on the in-order SiFive U74 cpu, RVA20 + partial B) and these are slow, somewhere between rpi3 and rpi4.

This will improve in 2026, with the first chips integrating RVA23 microarchitectures, such as the Tenstorrent Atlantis SoC and development board, with Ascalon, announced for 2026Q2.
by silexia | 2025-12-27 04:23:33+00:00
I am not a billionaire, but I left California largely for tax reasons too. I am in Washington state which has no income tax. If Washington state adds an income tax, I will move to another state. It is easy for wealthy people to move. And they will absolutely move not just in name. I can have just as much fun in Florida or Texas or Mexico city or St. Martin or Aspen or Spain as I can have in California. It costs a few thousand dollars to move, a rounding error for a wealthy person.

These tax laws that are so hostile to entrepreneurs will result in vast long term losses to the states that turn to socialism.
by metaphor | 2025-12-27 04:23:37+00:00
> I binged the entirety of the Dungeon Crawler Carl series. The cover, & the fact that it was on Kindle Unlimited, made me think it was probably cheap crap, but I was impressed with how well-written it was, and how much I empathized with the characters.

Almost did the same this year, but deliberately stopped after book 4 so I'll have something exceptionally fun for next year. Also thought it would be hot garbage, but gave it a chance based on sheer volume of high ratings. Easily the biggest introspective surprise of the year.

> Dishonorable mention: Service Model.

Ditto.