MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by tyre | 2025-12-27 07:45:26+00:00
Not really a perverse incentive. The government isn’t making any money here. They’re paying someone from their own pocket only to take it away again?

At that point it really is just slavery, which they can already do as protected in the US Constitution.

(I’m not arguing for this. I agree with restitution and believe that sentences longer than a certain point are also pointless and a net negative to society.)
by garganzol | 2025-12-27 07:46:41+00:00
Running a command is the main idea of cron. In this case, the author runs composite commands like:

test && action

Where 'test' is another shell command that returns 0 or 1. This is not a special cron syntax, it's just the inherent capability of the Unix shell.

In any case, this whole approach is very clever and shows the beauty of The Unix Way.
by colechristensen | 2025-12-27 07:47:05+00:00
I've got REAMDE and maybe Cryptonomicon? finished though quite a few years ago. I've had a couple of false starts with Anathem though I think I've been told it just gets started slowly.

I liked but didn't love the Stephenson I've read. Unlike William Gibson novels I've read, Stephenson is a solid 7 or 8 out of ten for me (maybe I should have added another category in my list). Your suggestions will probably make it on to my list.
by crawshaw | 2025-12-27 07:47:33+00:00
[exe.dev co-founder here] Thank you! Not to give too many secrets away, but my hope is to follow a business model I have been part of before, and make it as cheap as possible for individuals so they encourage their employers to buy it for work. So I would very much love to get cheaper.

The two constraints are that, one, when small underlying resources are expensive (we hope to fix that soon by not being small!), and two, we do not want to make the resource allocation so small that the VM feels unpleasant to use. So there is a floor on how small we make them.

That said, I very very much want to drop prices. We started with conservative numbers.
by fuzzfactor | 2025-12-27 07:47:40+00:00
>For fun ?

Good question, but God, no.

Just to get more out of the electronics where others can't match what I had decades ago. Things have come a long way but icing on the cake is still needed for a more complete solution, and by now it's more clear than ever what to do.

Actually the first year after "retiring" from my long-term employer was spent on music servers as a hobbyist. Then right back to industrial chemical work since. It's been nice not to have any bosses or deadlines though.

>Or do you actually need the money.

Not really, actually waiting until 70 to collect Social Security so I will get the maximum available to me, and haven't even started drawing from my main retirement fund. I plan to start my second company funded entirely by the Social Security though.

>In my 20s I wanted to retire by 40. Now in my 30s I've accepted that's impossible.

This is one area where I am very very far from the mainstream. I grew up in a "retirement community" known as South Florida. Where most people have always been over 65. Nothing like the 50 states from Orlando on up. Already been there and done that when I was young and things were way more unspoiled. When I was still a teenager (Nixon Recession) we were some of the first in the USA where it was plain to see that natives like me would not be able to afford to live in our own hometown. Even though student life was about as easy as the majority of happy retirees. I knew I already had it good, and expected to always continue to run a business of some kind when I got to be a senior citizen, and never stop. There were really so many more examples of diverse old-timers than any other place I am aware of.

>I like programing and working on projects, I hate filing TPS reports all day and never ending meetings.

I actually do like programming too or I wouldn't have done it at all. I started early and have done some pioneering work, but never was in a software company. There was just not many people who could do the programming everywhere it was needed as computerization proliferated in petrochemicals. Now there's all kinds of commercial software and all I have to do is "just" tie up the loose ends if I want to. I mainly did much more complete things on my own, and the way I wanted to. Still only when needed, and not every year. In my business I earned money by using my own code, not selling it at all.

I know what you mean about never ending BS, big corporate industrial bureaucracy was challenging enough to survive around as a contractor, I don't think I could tolerate "lack of progress" reports or frequent pointless meetings for code on top of that, especially when I'm trying to keep my nose to the grindstone and really get something worthwhile accomplished :)
Nopin – I made iOS Screen Time limits harder to bypass
by wongerpi | 2025-12-27 07:48:46+00:00
nopin is a small web tool that works alongside iOS Screen Time / App Limits.

It increases the friction of bypassing limits by turning a 4-digit PIN into a hard-to-memorize, reusable input sequence. You simply follow on-screen prompts to enter the PIN step by step. The sequence can be saved and replayed when needed.

I built this because I wanted something like Cold Turkey on desktop, but for iOS.

https://nopin.org
by bawolff | 2025-12-27 07:49:07+00:00
I'm not sure i agree that the Wikipedia article supports your position.

Certainly private property is involved in tragedy of the commons. In the classic shared cattle ranching example, the individual cattle are private property, only the field is held in common.

I generally think that tragedy of the commons requires the commons, to, well, be held in common. If someone owns the thing that is the commons, its not a commons but just a bad product. (With of course some nit picking about how things can be de jure private property while being defacto common property)

In the microsoft example, windows becoming shitty software is not a tragedy of the commons, its just MS making a business decision because windows is not a commons. On the other hand, computing in general becoming shitty, because each individual app does attention grabbing dark patterns, as it helps the induvidual apps bottom line while hurting the ecosystem as a whole, would be a tragedy of the commons, as user attention is something all apps hold in common and none of them own.
by drdaeman | 2025-12-27 07:50:06+00:00
If you don’t specify types explicitly they have to still exist somewhere: in someone’s head (in oral tradition of “Ah, yea, those IDs are UUIDs, but not those - those are integers”), or denoted through some customary syntax (be it something more formal like Hungarian notation, or less so - suggestive suffixes, comments, supplementary documents).

They still exist at runtime, and people who work on the codebase need to somehow know what to expect. Having a uniform syntax helps to formalize this knowledge and make it machine understandable so it can assist developers by providing quick hits and preventing mixups automatically (saving attention/time for other matters).

Types may be rarely important for local variables, but they matter for API contracts.
by f1shy | 2025-12-27 07:51:03+00:00
Why do you think a random person, who is VERY passionate about something, as to invest all the free hours in life to do something, is less skilled that one who just does it because is needed to survive?

Sorry. I would be much more inclined to have something made by somebody passionate about it, as done by some guy that received hopefully some kind of instruction on how to do things and was then left alone.

In this context (GA) we are not comparing Airbus/Boeing with a garage build. We are comparing some small company making 2 seaters with your hangar and maybe 10 certified aircraft mechanics that will help you a lot on the process.
by tavavex | 2025-12-27 07:52:52+00:00
The absolute worst-case scenario of messing this up as a company is that you get sued and they win, or you're forced to settle. You pay out some money, post a public apology, whatever. If things get really bad, the company goes under. But you're likely still far richer than the average person, and the blame is distributed enough that no one gets a criminal sentence - not that it was a realistic option to begin with.

The baseline worst-case scenario of messing this up on yourself is that you die.
by mrkeen | 2025-12-27 07:53:06+00:00
>> I sorely miss it in Python, JS and other languages. They keep me guessing whether a function will mutate the parent structure, or a local copy in those languages!

> Python at least is very clear about this ... everything, lists, class instances, dicts, tuples, strings, ints, floats ... are all passed by object reference. (Of course it's not relevant for tuples and scalars, which are immutable.)

Then let me just FTFY based on what you've said later:

Python will not be very clear about this ... everything, lists, class instances, dicts, tuples, strings, ints, floats, they all require the programmer to read and write documentation every time.
by pie_flavor | 2025-12-27 07:55:27+00:00
This is junk. Writing a type annotation takes basically zero time, then saves you time by preventing the runtime error because you forgot which variable was which, then saves you more time by autocompleting the correct list of valid methods when you hit dot.

Acting like Go is comparable to JS is ridiculous; Go's type system is the only kind of type system needed in Ruby. Rust is a staggering outlier in complexity. And the Turborepo port took a long time specifically because they tried to port one module at a time with C interop between the old and new codebases, which massively slows down development in any language, especially Go. This is just about the most dishonest 'example' you could have picked.

Either that or you are saying 'weakly typed' to mean type inference in `var := value`, in which case (a) Rust has that too and (b) that's not what the debate is about, nobody is against that
by nurettin | 2025-12-27 07:57:18+00:00
I want to agree, but in this current form, gp comes off as an emotional gatekeeper rather than someone with valid points. I think there are strong arguments for both sides. One off scripts with types is bs. Glue code with types, almost bs. Code close to the wire, typing those can be a pain with no gains. But business logic? Large code bases? You can pry* types from my cold dead hands.
by foxfired | 2025-12-27 07:57:29+00:00
If it makes you feel better, on reddit, I shared my very first blog post about deprecating mysql_* functions in php. As a result, someone said something mean about my mother. I figured the web was full of trolls.

But that wasn't enough. Someone else wrote that my article was useless and I write at a 7th grade level. I turned off the monitor, went for a walk. I decided that blogging wasn't for me. It was time to delete my blog. I was so embarrassed.

When I came back, there was a reply to that comment. It said something like "that's a good thing, 7th grade level writing means we can all understand it easily". And that was enough to keep me going. 13 years so far.
by wojciii | 2025-12-27 07:57:44+00:00
I could use a sane CI system.

I hate DevOps. I have to do multiple commits to implement something.

I would love to be able to have access to the same env as the CI so that I could prototype the script/job on my own machine before committing to git. Most things are using Docker anyway, so it should be possible.

I hate that I need to write commands in Yaml files, commit (or use the browser) and then look at the result.

Solve this and I would pay for it.
by Manheim | 2025-12-27 07:58:51+00:00
I find this article strange in its logic. If the use of AI generated content is problematic as a principle I can understand the conflict. Then no AI should be used to "transcribe and interpret a video" at all - period. But if the concern is accuracy in the AI "transcript" and not the support from AI as such, isn't it a good thing that the AI generated text is deleted after the officer has processed the text and finalized their report?

That said, I believe it is important to aknowlegde the fact that human memory, experience and interpretation of "what really happened" is flawed, isn't that why the body cameras are in use in the first place? If everyone believed police officers already where able to recall the absolute thruth of everything that happens in situations, why bother with the cameras?

Personally I do not think it is a good idea to use AI to write full police reports based on body camera recordings. However, as a support in the same way the video recordings are available, why not? If, in the future, AI will write accurate "body cam" based reports I would not have any problems with it as long as the video is still available to be checked. A full report should, in my opinion, always contain additional contextual info from the police involved and witnesses to add what the camera recordings not necessarily reflect or contain.
by tpoacher | 2025-12-27 07:59:08+00:00
There's nothing stopping you from writing code that is completely functional and devoid of nulls these days. It's just that java obviously still allows nulls if someone needs to use them (partly for interoperability with legacy code)

But if you're going to argue about the mere presence of null being problematic, you might as well complain about the ability to use "unsafe" code in Rust too.
by tstrimple | 2025-12-27 07:59:15+00:00
I thought I explained it, but I'll break it down into smaller words. Medical software doesn't just have to solve one particular users's problems. It has to be generalized to the majority of folk seeking treatment for a particular problem. If one particular CPAP user is able to tweak their settings to work better for their particular lifestyle, it is not generalizeable to every CPAP user. A corporation offering a general solution is put under *far* more scrutiny than a random github repo is. A corporation can be sued for releasing a product that kills people, but good luck convincing a court that your family deserves restitution for you installing a random script you found on the internet into your insulin pump. This has fuck all to do with how much corporations care about people. It has everything to do with liability laws and how victims can get restitution. It has everything to do with the actual risks of installing random internet scripts versus the corporations who have to jump through regulatory hoops. And it's not to say corporations get everything right. They fuck things up constantly. But they fuck things up constantly with oversight and regulation and you want me to believe random internet users will make a better product. It's nonsense.
by zarzavat | 2025-12-27 07:59:58+00:00
> One of those predictions is that it's possible to build a large-scale fault tolerant quantum computer.

Quantum theory doesn't predict that it's possible to build a large scale quantum computer. It merely says that a large scale quantum computer is consistent with theory.

Dyson spheres and space elevators are also consistent with quantum theory, but that doesn't mean that it's possible to build one.

Physical theories are
subtractive, something that is consistent with the lowest levels of theory can still be ruled out by higher levels.
by hnhn34 | 2025-12-27 08:00:37+00:00
> But since if you're so lazy/undisciplined to disregard skilling up (Leetcode, Coursera, Udemy, Pluralsight, etc)

What's with the hostility in these comments? OP straight up said he just doesn't like the damn job. Grinding leetcode is not gonna change that. Is everyone just choosing to ignore this?
by EvanAnderson | 2025-12-27 08:00:51+00:00
I suspect "Interface" will be up your alley. It isn't anywhere near as literary as Gibson. It has become wildly more plausible as it has aged.

Anathem is definitely a slow start. If anything once it gets going it moves too fast. I'd argue it doesn't spent enough time exploring the world the reader suddenly finds themselves in.

If you haven't, check out Bruce Sterling. His "Heavy Weather"[0] might well be up your alley, too.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heavy_Weather_(Sterling_novel)
by hypfer | 2025-12-27 08:01:22+00:00
I suppose we're going to just gloss over the fact that the primary party benefitting from people publishing their work like this is someone else.

Someone else being usually some corp that is happy to pay with exposure instead of money.

This is of course a rather cynical read, but the first instance of luck being "Having your OSS library take off" kinda paints this picture for me.

Which does make sense I guess, given that it's a piece of writing by the great free labor extraction machine GitHub, which was bought by Microsoft not because they had suddenly gotten altruistic at heart.

Which isn't to say that it's all bad, but there obviously is a clear conflict of interest here that doesn't get explored at all.

There is a point to be made for not publishing your work in ways that makes it trivial for others to benefit from it. A more balanced piece of writing would've warned about this instead of purely providing encouragement.
by jauntywundrkind | 2025-12-27 08:02:24+00:00
I still think of Capsela a lot. That's my weird pick. Weird spheres that had gears and motors and things. It wasn't fancy, I didn't do that many incredible things with it (vs my LEGOs) but wow, still hits as a very special kind of toy, just because it was the only one that actually did things.
by f1shy | 2025-12-27 08:03:13+00:00
It shocks me how much comments, here in HACKER news, are something like:

"Why do you want the source code?! leave it alone! Don't touch it, is unsafe! Big Pharma companies know much better than you what they do!"

REALLY?! REALLY?!

I'm not saying, go changing the SW like crazy. Is clear it can kill you. But this "anybody who is not a mega pharma company is absolutely unable to do anything right, you will absolutely kill yourself if you look at the code" that is just... idk... so low.

It may be named hacker news, but boy, many people here are not remotely near what I would call a hacker...
by computerdork | 2025-12-27 08:03:14+00:00
Ah yes, and actually, Agreed (as mentioned, formal verification is only possible for "those answers that lend themselves to it").

Interesting that you mentioned Knowledge Graphs, haven't heard about these in a long time. Just looked up "Commonsense knowledge" page on wikipedia and seems like they're still being added to. Would you happen to know if they're useful yet and can do any real work? or are good enough to integrate with LLM's?
by Revisional_Sin | 2025-12-27 08:03:54+00:00
> Ignoring requires-python upper bounds. When a package says it requires python<4.0, uv ignores the upper bound and only checks the lower. This reduces resolver backtracking dramatically since upper bounds are almost always wrong. Packages declare python<4.0 because they haven’t tested on Python 4, not because they’ll actually break. The constraint is defensive, not predictive.

Erm, isn't this a bit bad?
by constantinum | 2025-12-27 08:03:55+00:00
- Permutation City — Greg Egan

- She Said — Jodi Kantor & Megan Twohey

- Conclave — Robert Harris

- First You Write a Sentence — Joe Moran

- Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine — Gail Honeyman

- The Master and Margarita — Mikhail Bulgakov

More books here -> https://pastebin.com/XVeacpHM
by nrclark | 2025-12-27 08:03:56+00:00
This was a really interesting read. I'd highly recommend it for anybody who's setting up (or currently maintains) a pre-commit workflow for their developers.

I want to add one other note: in any large organization, some developers will use tools in ways nobody can predict. This includes Git. Don't try to force any particular workflow, including mandatory or automatically-enabled hooks.

Instead, put what you want in an optional pre-push hook and also put it into an early CI/CD step for your pull request checker. You'll get the same end result but your fussiest developers will be happier.
by smj-edison | 2025-12-27 08:04:53+00:00
But they are multiple different "views" into data, and I would posit that a textual view of data is no different than a graphical view, no? If you import data from a parquet file, you go straight from numbers to graphs, so I disagree that it comes from text. Both graphs and text come from information. Circles on surveys, Arduino temperature readings, counter clickers when doing surveys. Those are not just text.
by Retr0id | 2025-12-27 08:05:35+00:00
Nobody who was writing code before LLMs existed "needs" an LLM, but they can still be handy. Procfs parsing trivialities are the kind of thing LLMs are good at, although apparently it still takes a human to say "why not using an existing library that solves this, like https://pkg.go.dev/github.com/prometheus/procfs"
by strogonoff | 2025-12-27 08:07:57+00:00
When we become ghost content producers for LLMs, you are not supposed to hear something in reply to your post, book, or other work. Most of the time, your work will be ingested by a handful of companies as training data; the readers benefitting from your work will pay these companies, and in return these companies will thoroughly shield and insulate you from being thanked by the people you helped. These companies will do their best to ensure you are motivated to continue producing honest content that can keep their LLMs from choking on their own output.

The exceptions to this are closed (or semi-closed) communities and forums where you directly interact with humans, either by inertia due to a large established human user base or (for newer, smaller communities) via personal vetting of participants.
by otabdeveloper4 | 2025-12-27 08:08:04+00:00
> Procfs parsing trivialities are the kind of thing LLMs are good at

Have you tried it? Procfs trivialities is exactly the kind of thing where an LLM will hallucinate something plausible-looking.

Fixing LLM hallucinations takes more work and time than just reading manpages and writing code yourself.
by tomhow | 2025-12-27 08:08:44+00:00
Sorry for the confusion on this. There's a weird thing that happens when a post is put in the second chance pool (https://news.ycombinator.com/pool, explained here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26998308) then get lobbed onto the front page nearly 7 days after it was submitted. It can be getting lots of upvotes and a good discussion, then suddenly it "expires" and loses its ranking and disappears, which means the discussion ends prematurely and people who may have found it interesting may not see it. So I've tried to rescue it by creating a fresh copy of the post, and moving the comments to it. I've now restored the karma score to it too to make it less confusing. There's no way to do this that avoids some form of confusion to some people but at least this way the post gets its deserved amount of time on the front page and full opportunity for the discussion to play out.
by qouteall | 2025-12-27 08:09:09+00:00
One limitation of Rust macro is that it can only access code token, not actual type information.

When macro sees a type `X` macro can never be sure whether it's `&str` as Rust allows type alias. If `X` is not `&str` it may also be a struct that contains `&str`, still macro cannot know.

Wasm-bindgen workarounds this issue by generating "fake functions" then read and remove them in CLI:

https://wasm-bindgen.github.io/wasm-bindgen/contributing/des...

Zig comptime allows getting full type information. This is one advantage of Zig.
by thesumofall | 2025-12-27 08:09:59+00:00
My best reads this year:

Non-fiction:

- The Power Broker by Robert Caro

Fantasy:

- The Raven Scholar by Antonia Hodgson

Sci-fi:

- Sun Eater series by Christopher Ruocchio

- A Canticle For Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller Jr

- Ra by qntm

- Jean le Flambeur series by Hannu Rajaniemi

- Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer (didn’t like the subsequent books of the series so much)

Other novels:

- Woodcutters by Thomas Bernhard