MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by yieldcrv | 2025-12-21 18:06:26+00:00
Capital in the 21st Century, by Thomas Piketty

The book devolves into policy opinions that have been absolutely torn apart, but the parts about inequality and inheritance shattered some long standing assumptions.

For example, it points out how generational wealth being gone in 3 generations is not for the reasons people extrapolated, the common assumption being that the person that earned it had a lot of discipline, while the subsequent generations experienced complacency and excess, as that was just anecdotes with no data. It replaces them with data that highlights population growth alone influencing this outcome:

In periods of large population growth inheritances were simply diluted to the point of having little efficacy for heirs. In America the free population was 3,100,000 in 1790, while 308,000,000 in 2010. The last census before the book came out. In comparison, France in the old world had 30,000,000 in 1790 and 60,000,000 in 2010. Old world wealth has tended to stay in the same families for centuries. The US is experiencing the same thing amongst some families and as more families get better at estate structures that work for them, a lower birthrate and age of the country, but all of it challenges the common assumption and point of generational wealth.

There are more illuminations around the movement of capital in that book.
by throwaway613745 | 2025-12-21 18:06:26+00:00
> Worked examples are step-by-step illustrations of the process required to complete a task or solve a problem.

That’s not what having a bot generate your integration is and reading it post-facto is. The bot isn’t guiding you through the process so you can go do it yourself. At best you would use this as a reference to go do another integration yourself - but at this point why even bother when you can just get the bot to do it again?

The only thing people learn using AI is how to do things with AI.
by bhaak | 2025-12-21 18:06:38+00:00
There have been various improvements over 3.6.0 during the development of the 3.6 branch. If you haven't you should give the not yet released 3.7 version a try. It's on hardfought.org for online play if you don't want to compile it yourself.

But you can't be claiming that 3.6 is too difficult if you're comfortable playing EvilHack. EvilHack is clearly more difficult than vanilla. :D

But I get the breath of fresh air. I was always playing Valkyries or Wizards and when I first entered the Tourist quest, I was hooked on getting more different levels and that was one of my main focus when developing UnNetHack.
by laidoffamazon | 2025-12-21 18:06:53+00:00
For the record, I was never laid off from Amazon despite what my username says. I've always been employed, I just switched jobs. I work remote and make about 15% more than the average Google E5 SWE and maybe 85% of a FB E5 SWE according to levels.fyi. We'll see how long that lasts given Google's stock trajectory.

-----

The UIUC comparison feels a bit misleading given that CS at UIUC has a <10% or lower accept rate, no different than getting into Yale or Duke or whatever generally.

If CS Yalies aren't working at SpaceX or Broadcom or FANG I'm genuinely unsure of where they'd be working. I'm imagining most work at HRT, Jane Street, Anthropic, OpenAI, xAI getting $750k-$1.5m at 29. The "average" ones work at Google and Facebook. If you go to Yale's LinkedIn, Google is the 3rd highest employer of alumni, after Yale and Yale SOM. That is _not_ the case at my undergrad.

I know they aren't working at IBM or Amazon or GE or GM or other lower tier companies.
by demurgos | 2025-12-21 18:07:09+00:00
Yeah, it's hard to prevent a sufficiently motivated dev from shooting itself in the foot; but these still help.

> You conveniently left out where the Foo string is computed from something that actually need computation.

I left it out because the comment I was replying to was pointing that some logs don't have params.

For the approach using a `Template` class, the expectation would be that the doc would call out why this class exists in the first place as to enable lazy computation. Doing string concatenation inside a template constructor should raise a few eyebrows when writing or reviewing code.

I wrote `logger.log(new Template("foo"))` in my previous comment for brevity as it's merely an internet comment and not a real framework. In real code I would not even use stringy logs but structured data attached to a unique code. But since this thread discusses performance of stringy logs, I would expect log templates to be defined as statics/constants that don't contain any runtime value. You could also integrate them with metadata such as log levels, schemas, translations, codes, etc.

Regarding args themselves, you're right that they can also be expensive to compute in the first place. You may then design the args to be passed by a callback which would allow to defer the param computation.

A possible example would be:

const OPERATION_TIMEOUT = new Template("the operation $operationId timed-out after $duration seconds", {level: "error", code: "E_TIMEOUT"}); // ... function handler(...) { // .. logger.emit(OPERATION_TIMEOUT, () => ({operationId: "foo", duration: someExpensiveOperationToRetrieveTheDuration()})) }

This is still not perfect as you may need to compute some data before the log "just in case" you need it for the log. For example you may want to record the current time, do the operation. If the operation times out, you use the time recorded before the op to compute for how long it ran. If you did not time out and don't log, then getting the current system time is "wasted".

All I'm saying is that `logger.log(str)` is not the only possible API; and that splitting the definition of the log from the actual "emit" is a good pattern.
by lsaferite | 2025-12-21 18:07:44+00:00
> OpenSCAD isn't really parametric CAD. It's a programming language; it's parametric for that reason. But it's not really CAD

Maybe this is pedantic, but why wouldn't OpenSCAD qualify as CAD exactly? It's still "Computer-Aided Design"? Sure, the UI/UX is different, but is there some qualifier to CAD around the UI/UX?.
by rickstanley | 2025-12-21 18:08:20+00:00
We've been using Mapperly (https://mapperly.riok.app/), after a migration from AutoMapper, in our production application. I'm having a good experience, and we kind of like the holistic of this library.

So far, there have been no surprises, and the library warns about potential issues very explicitly, I quite like it.

Of course, if it's just a handful of fields that need mapping, than write manually is the way to go, specially if said fields require a custom mapping, where the library would not facilitate.
by starkparker | 2025-12-21 18:08:47+00:00
This cuts to the bone of it tbqh. One large wing of the upset over gen AI is the _unconsenting, unlicensed, uncredited, and uncompensated_ use of assets to make "you can't steal a style" a newly false statement.

There are artists who would (and have) happily consented, licensed, and been compensated and credited for training. If that's what LLM trainers had led with when they went commercial, if anything a sector of the creative industry would've at least considered it. But companies led with mass training for profit without giving back until they were caught being sloppy (in the previous usage of "slop").
by snapplebobapple | 2025-12-21 18:09:37+00:00
It is basically this. People arguing for string theory have no concept of how to maximize return with uncertainty. The thing had 50 years of substantial funding and substantial mindshare and pushed us nowhere. Any rational person with basic risk understanding would know at this point its a fail and we are in the not knowing what to pursue phase so we should be supporting small investments in dicerse options &ntil something promising happens then we can concentrate funding there &ntil that times out or gices us the understanding to achieve something new and great. The lifecycle of increasingly aupporting string theory s=ould have turned 2 to 3 decades ago instead of just recently. We lost atleast 20 and more like 30 years of progress we didnt have because a bunch of very smart people captured the physics funding aparatus to enrich thselves.
by seinvak | 2025-12-21 18:10:20+00:00
> Would love to learn more about how this is built. I remember a similar project from 4 years ago[0] that used a classic BERT model for NER on HN comments

Yes, I saw that project pretty impressive! Hand-labeling 4000 books is definitely not an easy task, mad-respect to tracyhenry for the passion and hardwork that was required back then.

For my project, I just used the Gemini 2.5 Flash API (since I had free credits) with the following prompt:

"""You are an expert literary assistant parsing Hacker News comments. Rules: 1. Only extract CLEARLY identifiable books. 2. Ignore generic mentions. 3. Return JSON ARRAY only. 4. If no books found, return []. 5. A score from -10 to 10 where 10 is highly recommended, -10 is very poorly recommended and 0 is neutral. 6. If the author's name is in the comment, include it; otherwise, omit the key. JSON format: [ {{ "title": "book title", "sentiment": "score", "author" : "Name of author if mentioned" }} ] Text: {text}"""

It did the job quite well. It really shows how far AI has come in just 4 years.
by seanmcdirmid | 2025-12-21 18:10:23+00:00
> Waymo should lose their operating license based on this experience.

Then everyone should lose their licenses as well by your draconian reasoning. Because…

> There's a whole set of law driver's are supposed to follow for handling failed traffic lights.

And they don’t, it’s chaos.

> Why have lower expectations of an anonymous car than a human?

You obviously have higher expectations for autonomous cars than humans, it is not the other way around for those of us who disagree with you. The only difference is that Waymo can get better with experience and humans generally don’t.
by afro88 | 2025-12-21 18:10:51+00:00
I was a heavy user, but stopped using it mid 2024. It was essentially providing codebase context and editing and writing code as you instructed - a decent step up from copy/paste to ChatGPT but not working in an agentic loop. There was logic to attempt code edits again if they failed to apply too.

Edit: I stand corrected though. Did a bit of research and aider is considered an agentic tool by late 2023 with auto lint/test steps that feedback to the LLM. My apologies.
by alentodorov | 2025-12-21 18:11:17+00:00
my use case is a loyalty barcode for a major retailer here. they provided a digital version but you had to download their app or take a picture. apple wallet is convenient, u just double tap and the Wallet loads on screen with full brightness to make it easy to scan. i dont have to keep anymore.

but on apple wallet u can't create your own a pass from a simple scan. creatign the ".pkpass" need a signature from a apple developer account.
by wartywhoa23 | 2025-12-21 18:11:28+00:00
> They’re definitely not doing this for AI companies.

So it's just yet another instance of enormous luck / annuit coeptis for the wealthy and powerful, then.

Such lucky bastards. Whatever happens, does so to their benefit, and all inconvenient questions about the nature of their luck automatically recede into the conspiracy theory domain.

And let's not forget that Anna's Archive is also the host to the world's largest pirate library of books and articles.
by anal_reactor | 2025-12-21 18:11:30+00:00
I'm from Poland. Throughout most of its history, my country was being invaded - by the Germans, by the Austrians, by the Russians, by the Swedish. We had literally nothing to do with colonialism. When Napoleon sent Polish people to Haiti to fight off slave rebellion, Polish people joined the Haitian side.

My country lost its independence in 1795. It regained independence after WW1, but then Germans and Russians attacked us, starting WW2. After WW2 we became a puppet country of USSR, which lasted until 36 years ago.

The only nation that felt invaded by us were Lithuanians, long long time ago. We had nothing to do with colonialism, we did not import slaves from Africa. We never murdered local population. The past 300 years of my country's history was being invaded and then miraculously coming back to existence. Our capital city was completely destroyed by Hitler just to set an example.

> But you have the same amount of melatonin in your skin as the British, therefore you're guilty of everything that the British did

This, sir, is pure fucking racism
Ask HN: How many email accounts do you have?
by asim | 2025-12-21 18:11:38+00:00
I was thinking about this recently as a I work on a new mail client/server. I have one personal email that has a custom domain. 1 that's a plain gmail address and then a variety of random accounts I can't even remember but I guess were legacy or tests for new providers like protonmail. Then there's email address for whatever company you work for at the time. I realise I don't really want to hand out my personal email in a public setting and my company address is mostly for internal stuff. So where's public email?

Are we missing public email accounts? One's that you can just hand out anywhere?
by jama211 | 2025-12-21 18:13:31+00:00
Not who you were just speaking with, but I’ve never agreed with the emotional side of a comment so much whilst disagreeing with the actionable choices side so much.

In reality, the truth probably lies somewhere in the middle. I would draw the line before outsourcing my own job, but I’ve definitely sandbagged my own productivity after being poorly treated by a company in the past and still have no regrets about it.

If you’re looking for common ground with who you’re speaking with rather than trying to make your point so firmly, I think you’d also agree there is a level of meeting in the middle that is totally reasonable in how hard you should push such things, depending on who you work for and how they treat you.
by throwaway290 | 2025-12-21 18:13:42+00:00
> thinking that the fascists' arguments are being made in good faith.

> If you respond to these right-wing "conservative" (aka fascist, actual conservatives were called RINOs and kicked out of the Party), you get back a flood of more half-baked arguments and you're off to the races, right?

I argue about it with people I know who are center right. they sometimes make some good points and as non american it's hard to defeat them. maybe their arguments are stupid to you but not so stupid to me.

So this is informative to me to know the counter arguments.

also, it seems that there is a majority of people who voted right in US, if you believe the last election. just calling then fascists doesn't help convince them. but facts can
by Aurornis | 2025-12-21 18:13:45+00:00
> Oh no, someone dared to lie to a business, the horror! Only the reverse is acceptable.

I never said businesses lying to employees is acceptable. You seem to be arguing something else that I haven’t written: General class war content where everything is viewed through the lens of business versus employees, and since businesses are bad then anything employees do is fair game.

The reason I know so much about Tim Ferriss’ remote work garbage isn’t because I was on the business side of your simplified view. I was a coworker of someone trying to practice these techniques.

The fatal flaw in your line of logic is that it can only view interactions as 1:1 between employee and the business. What you’re missing is that these workplace games punish the team members most of all. When you’re on a team of 3-4 people and 1 of them is gallivanting around the world, responding to messages once a day if you’re lucky, and submitting PRs produced by the cheapest overseas “assistant” they can find (modern version being ChatGPT, obviously) then you start to realize the problem: When the team has an assignment and one person is playing games instead of doing work, the rest of the team has to do more work.

It’s outsourcing your work to your teammates, basically.

The obvious rebuttal is that managers need to stop this, and they do. It takes time, though. At some companies it takes 6-12 months to build a case to fire someone. The Tim Ferriss book also has defensive advice about working extra hard to impress your boss and taking steps to avoid having your lack of work discovered by your boss. Notably absent is content about being respectful of your coworkers.

So before you jump in and defend everything any employee might do to be selfish, remember that it’s not just the company they’re extracting from. It’s their coworkers. And being on the receiving end of this behavior as a coworker sucks.
by Sophira | 2025-12-21 18:15:10+00:00
Tom Scott did a video in 2020 on the exact same subject and premise[0], and it's super interesting. I'd recommend it to anybody who enjoyed this article, honestly.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V5u9JSnAAU4 - Tom Scott, 'I Asked 64,182 People About “Jingle Bells, Batman Smells”. Here's What I Found Out.'
by mishaevtikhiev | 2025-12-21 18:15:34+00:00
Not exactly, I'd put it as follows: 1. In phenomenology (the science that looks into extending Standard Model) we'd definitely benefit from more data (with most viable data sources, in my opinion, being not the colliders but the detectors of extraterrestrial particles such as PandaX or Fermi-LAT). However, this doesn't stop us from getting new results, narrowing the window of possibilities for the properties of the Standard Model extensions. This "sorting a haystack in search of a needle" approach may not sound too cool, but this is exactly how we discovered the Higgs boson, for which we looked for more than twenty years. 2. In hep-th we currently lack either enough data (which we can't really collect now), or an ideological breakthrough in solving one of the hard problems. Unfortunately, the problems are indeed very hard, so that one of them (Yang-Mills existence) is a Millenium Prize problem. This caused the de-facto shift of hep-th into applied math, so now hep-th is not constrained by the data problem, and is developing as actively as an area of applied math can.
by yonikeshagun | 2025-12-21 18:15:57+00:00
Like many of you, I've been through the job search grind. At one point I had 40+ applications floating around - some on LinkedIn, some on Indeed, some direct applications - all "tracked" in a messy Google Sheet.

The problems started piling up: - Forgot to follow up after a phone screen (ghosted myself basically) - Couldn't remember what I discussed in round 1 when prepping for round 2 - Applied to the same company twice for different roles and looked like an idiot - Had no idea which stage each application was actually at

I looked for a solution but everything was either too complicated, too expensive, or required me to manually sync data from 10 different places.

So I built(https://trackmyjobs.fyi) a simple, free job application tracker

What it does: - One dashboard to see all your applications at a glance - Track interview stages (Applied → Phone Screen → Interview → Offer) - Create your own custom stages - Jot down the benefits offered by the Company - Add notes after each interview round (lifesaver for prep) - Set reminders so you don't forget to follow up - See where you're actually spending time vs getting results
Show HN: Matle – Chess guessing puzzle. Would love your feedback
by matle_io | 2025-12-21 18:16:10+00:00
I built Matle, a daily chess guessing puzzle, inspired by Wordle.

Each day there’s a real checkmate position, but some squares on the board are hidden. You guess which squares are missing to reconstruct the position and find the mate.

One puzzle per day, same for everyone.

I’d really appreciate feedback on the idea, difficulty, and UX.

https://matle.io
by Theresa_i_a | 2025-12-21 18:16:37+00:00
Hey everyone!

I recently updated my social impact job website RemotelyGood.us again-- I updated the font site-wide, enhanced the UI on mobile, and am prototyping some agentic features for perfecting your job applications. I need your help and feedback!

In exchange for signing up for premium and premium plus-- then filling out this feedback survey: https://form.jotform.com/251538756931062 -- I am giving out Amazon gift cards.

I'm extending my offer to anyone who signs up for a premium subscription between now and December 24th 12pm EST to get $5 in Amazon gift cards for Standard Premium, $15 for Premium Plus.

Thanks in advance for your help on this!

P.S. I am also recruiting a CTO! Please apply here: https://wellfound.com/jobs/3668322-chief-technical-officer-c...
by Schmerika | 2025-12-21 18:17:02+00:00
Base classism isn't really a hot take on this forum.

> I moved into a poor neighborhood of a rich country and...

And what?

> no matter how you organize the society, a certain percentage will always either be incapable of participating in it, or flat-out refuse to do so.

And what percentage of "the poor" that you're maligning are you claiming this to be?
by rafaelmn | 2025-12-21 18:17:14+00:00
>so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn't stop to think if they should

This describes more than half of .net community packages and patterns. So much stuff driven by chasing "oh that's clever" high - forgetting that clever code is miserable to support in prod/maintain. Even when it's your code, but when it's third party libs - it's just asking for weekend debugging sessions and all nighters 2 months past initial delivery date. At some point you just get too old for that shit.
by hn_throwaway_99 | 2025-12-21 18:17:15+00:00
Wow, I feel uneasy about your comment and then the host of comments piling on that are basically "Yeah, Tim Ferris is actually a shitty guy!!"

Mainly, I can accept literally everything you say is true (and to be clear I don't know, but they all seem quite to be reasonable assertions), but more importantly, I think they're pretty irrelevant to the point of this blog post. Yes, Tim Ferris craved fame (he literally says that in his post), and I'm sure he tried to "hack" his way get it, but I still think his experiences and lessons about the pitfalls of fame are informative and interesting. I also don't agree with your statement "His experience with uncomfortable fan obsessions is therefore probably on the next level, but not exactly typical fame." His post goes in detail about a number of colleagues, especially women, who were stalked, one of whom had her house broken into by an intruder who tried to murder her husband before he was killed in a shootout with police. So yeah, I think his warnings about fame can apply to a broad swath of people who aren't self-help gurus.

If your comment was in response to a "4-hour work week"-y type post, and you just wanted to point out it was BS by highlighting specific problems with its advice, I'd agree. In response to this post, though, it just feels unnecessarily and deliberately schadenfreude-y.
by cadr | 2025-12-21 18:17:20+00:00
I used an Akai LPK25 with my iPhone (using the Camera Connection Kit and a combined usb hub/dac) and an app called Simply Piano. They make a wireless version of that now that would simplify the setup a great deal. It is a mini keyboard and the keys are quite small, but in my experience it was fine for the beginner stuff (and the keyboard is useful in general later). As I said before, I stuck with this until the app started using keys outside the range I had.

Now, as for "did I proceed with more serious learning" - I alternate though a ton of hobbies. So I moved on after that, though still go back to it from time to time. But I also have other musical interests and it was helpful to those as well.

Also did a lot of music on the commute on my iPhone with Korg Gadget (and Caustic before that). Sometimes with a keyboard, sometimes without.