MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by Jtsummers | 2025-12-07 18:26:07+00:00
Perhaps the most prominent example of literate programming missed by the author: https://www.pbrt.org/ Physically Based Rendering by Pharr, Jakob, and Humphreys.

Responding directly to a couple things the author wrote:

> When programming, it’s not uncommon to write a function that’s “good enough for now”, and revise it later. This is impossible to adequately do in literate programming.

It's not impossible in literate programming. There's nothing about LP that impedes this, I do it all the time. I have a quick obvious implementation (perhaps a naive recursive solution) and throw it in to get things working. I revisit it later when I need to make that naive recursive one faster (memoization, DP, or just another algorithm all together). It's no harder than what I'd do with an ordinary approach to programming.

> Unit testing is not supported one bit in WEB, but you can cobble something together in CWEB.

WEB was designed for use with Pascal and CWEB for C and C++. At the time the tools were developed, "unit testing" as it means today was not really a widespread thing. Use other tools if you find that WEB is impeding your use of unit tests in your Pascal programs. With other tools (org-mode and org-babel are what I use), it's easy to do. Like with writing good enough functions, you just do it, and it's done. You write a unit test in a block of code and when it gets tangled you execute your unit tests. This can be more cumbersome in some languages than with others, but in Python it's as easy as:

#+BEGIN_SOURCE python :noweb yes :tangle test/test_foo.py from hypothesis import ... from pytest import ... <<name_of_specific_test>> <<name_of_other_test>> #+END_SOURCE #+NAME: name_of_specific_test #+BEGIN_SOURCE def test_frob(...): ... #+END_SOURCE

When I used LP regularly I had a little script I wrote that would tangle source from my org files, and because I had the names and paths specified everything would end up in the right place. This is followed by running `pytest` (or whatever test utility) as normal. I used this in makefiles and other scripts. This is only slightly harder than the normal approach, but not hard. I added a `tangle` step into my build and test process and it was good to go.

If your unit test system requires more ceremony then you'll need to include that as well, but you'd have to include that in your conventionally written code as well.
by micromacrofoot | 2025-12-07 18:26:08+00:00
I wouldn't call it entirely defeated, it got maybe 90% of the way there. Before LLMs you couldn't get 50% of the way there in an automated way.

> What he produces

I feel like personifying LLMs more than they currently are is a mistake people make (though humans always do this), they're not entities, they don't know anything. If you treat them too human you might eventually fool yourself a little too much.
by zer0tonin | 2025-12-07 18:27:34+00:00
When I was a teenager, tiny core saved me for a few months. My laptop had died and all I could use until I got a replacement was an old desktop computer we had around with 256MB of RAM. It was around the end of the windows 7 era, so even Xubuntu was struggling on such an old computer.

Tiny Core ran surprisingly well and I could actually use it to browse the web and use IRC.
by breve | 2025-12-07 18:29:00+00:00
No, the source material is stored losslessly. Many different effects will be applied to the source material to make the moving images look the way the director wants them to look.

The creation of the original video is separate from the distribution of the video. In distribution the video will be encoded to many formats and many bitrates to support playback on as many devices at as many network speeds as possible.

The distributed video will never exactly match the original. There simply isn't the bandwidth. The goal of video encoding is always just to make it look good enough.
by cluckindan | 2025-12-07 18:29:48+00:00
Who said that? The semantics are different.

The <i> HTML element represents a range of text that is set off from the normal text for some reason, such as idiomatic text, technical terms, taxonomical designations, among others. Historically, these have been presented using italicized type, which is the original source of the <i> naming of this element.

The <em> element is for words that have a stressed emphasis compared to surrounding text, which is often limited to a word or words of a sentence and affects the meaning of the sentence itself.

Typically this element is displayed in italic type. However, it should not be used to apply italic styling; use the CSS font-style property for that purpose. Use the <cite> element to mark the title of a work (book, play, song, etc.). Use the <i> element to mark text that is in an alternate tone or mood, which covers many common situations for italics such as scientific names or words in other languages.
My experience learning AI from scratch and why it changed how I see coding
by ViktorKuz | 2025-12-07 18:30:00+00:00
I Learned AI from scratch - and discovered why current LLM hype misses the point. In this piece I walk through what building an AI memory system taught me about why coding skills remain essential, and what future programmers need instead of “AI replacing coding.

I tried to make this article as engaging as possible to share my journey, and I’d really appreciate your feedback: https://dev.to/vacarchitector/ai-wont-kill-coding-it-will-mint-a-new-generation-of-programmers-h0c
by sarchertech | 2025-12-07 18:30:34+00:00
> The immune response to diseases has to be developed over time

The human immune system has both innate and acquired components. The innate systems are functionally the same between you and I or a hunter gatherer.

A hunter gatherer may have acquired immunity to viruses and bacteria that you or I haven’t been exposed to, but in most cases they would have become sick in the first place before they got that immunity. The majority of diseases don’t produce long lasting immunity. There’s a reason you get tetanus vaccines every 5-10 years.

We are also exposed to more pathogens than hunter gatherers not fewer because of the way we live. Plus we have vaccines, so if anything we have a more robust acquired immune system.

> introduction of those drugs drastically accelerated the evolution of the bacteria, viruses, etc.

Antibiotics accelerated the evolution of bacteria towards antibiotic resistance. Not towards greater virulence. Antibiotic resistance generally has a fitness penalty as well, so if anything modern bacteria would tend to be slightly less dangerous.

>antibacterial soap

Antibacterial soap can result in resistant bacteria and it also alters your bodies microbiome. Theres some evidence that it can make you more prone to autoimmune diseases, but no good evidence of a strong impact on your bodies ability to fight off diseases.

Certainly not to a level noticeable by an individual.

>look at Covid

The reason influenza infections went up was because people weren’t exposed to influenza, not because of lack of exposure to generic germs.

There weren’t more overall infections, they were just concentrated in time. If Covid hadn’t happened, those extra people who got the flu would have just gotten the flu earlier.
by JumpCrisscross | 2025-12-07 18:30:51+00:00
> authors who have been caught publishing proven fabrications should be barred by those journals from ever publishing in them again

This is too harsh.

Instead, their papers should be required to disclose the transgression for a period of time, and their institution should have to disclose it publicly as well as to the government, students and donors whenever they ask them for money.
by internet2000 | 2025-12-07 18:30:53+00:00
1, 8 and 9 leaving is expected. They failed at their jobs.

3 and 4 literally don't matter.

5, 6 and 7 probably left / are going to leave because they got news they wouldn't get the CEO role once Cook retires.

2 is the big surprise that raises the most eyebrows.

Seems it's mostly succession drama with a side of failure @ AI.
by klibertp | 2025-12-07 18:31:10+00:00
Isn't it the other way around - people, especially when young, like to imagine themselves as someone special, so the media give them the perspective of the most special individuals they can find? Being a king, on its own, may not qualify - but the popular shows are rarely about "just" kings, it's mostly about ones who did something impressive (if evil; though I agree that last part tends to be edited out).

In fantasy literature, a hero is almost certainly either a prince or at least of royal blood; in sci-fi, he's at least a progeny of a war hero or great inventor. Even in romance slice-of-life, you'll get mysterious amnesiacs, rich CEOs children, shrewd nerds with underworld connections, etc. much more often than statistically possible - nobody wants to read about "normal people", not really (when we think we do, it's just the author writing so well that he convinced us his "normal people" are different!)

I can't rule out the possibility that this natural tendency is being exploited and manipulated in some cases, but the stories have always been about heroes, long before anyone thought of erasing anyone else's class consciousness.
by fusslo | 2025-12-07 18:31:11+00:00
Assuming the other commenter is correct and the mcu is a clone of an ST product, then it's possible that the protection are fuses that destroy the pathways to the memory. They're one-time writable and cannot be undone. At my work that is how we protect our firmware with a similar ST product.

I'm not sure how it works in-silicon. Would be interesting to know how... but it's sunday afternoon
by phendrenad2 | 2025-12-07 18:32:46+00:00
The problem is, laptop companies don't "make laptops". They are big machines that puts parts together in the right configuration and call them "laptops". No thought goes into it. They are indistinguishable from any other deep pipeline of manufacturing, such as one that makes bicycles or refrigerators. New year, generate a new product ID, upgrade the CPU and RAM using the reference schematic provided by AMD/Intel, throw it in the ERP, make a BOM, and start rolling them off the assembly line.

What we see is a deep disconnect between visionaries and the companies that operate these deep pipelines. Apple has tried to maintain a connection between design and manufacturing by having great designers at the top (and other companies poach them).

A few daywalkers like Bunnie Huang walk both sides of the world.
by SkyPuncher | 2025-12-07 18:33:06+00:00
IMO, the consumer grade mesh systems are basically commodities at this point.

Wire still wins - especially for backhauls between endpoint. However, it’s really nice being able to stick an AP anywhere you have an outlet to extend the range. I have a few outdoor devices (speakers, lights, TV) that daisy chain though APs while getting just good enough performance for what I need.
by PaulHoule | 2025-12-07 18:33:21+00:00
FPGA.

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hebbian_theory

The way I would put it is that all those different neurons with different kind of receptors on that are so "colored" that there are a set from one place to another so there is an overall gross wiring diagram in that a green bundle of wires go from the limbic system to the frontal lobe but the detailed wiring plan is not encoded in the DNA the way a CPU or an old school television set has a plan -- there is not enough data in the DNA to do that. Instead the brain self-organizes the detailed wiring by learning.
by fao_ | 2025-12-07 18:33:21+00:00
> I don’t see why this would be the case

But it is the case, and hallucinations are a fundamental part of LLMs.

Things are often true despite us not seeing why they are true. Perhaps we should listen to the experts who used the tools and found them faulty, in this instance, rather than arguing with them that "what they say they have observed isn't the case".

What you're basically saying is "You are holding the tool wrong", but you do not give examples of how to hold it correctly. You are blaming the failure of the tool, which has very, very well documented flaws, on the person whom the tool was designed for.

To frame this differently so your mind will accept it: If you get 20 people in a QA test saying "I have this problem", then the problem isn't those 20 people.
by notpushkin | 2025-12-07 18:33:55+00:00
As long as upstream is open source, forks can just keep syncing. At some point, the upstream will then usually switch to open core, or some sort of delayed open source, but often that leads to people leaving for the open forks, hopefully donating to them, too.

(Gentle reminder to subscribe to donate to a FOSS project or two that you use.)
by sc_muckraker | 2025-12-07 18:34:28+00:00
100%. I am getting right now a denial from other law enforcement agencies where they are arguing with me that it's not a public record at all because it's produced by a third party.

I've been an investigative reporter for years, and now 3 years in S.C. dealing a lot with FOIA. There's a lot of ways you can push, but one way they can stonewall you without a good way to pushback is this high cost.
by isthatafact | 2025-12-07 18:35:07+00:00
I am not able to travel to work or anywhere else without seeing ads, which manipulate my thoughts in unpleasant and often offensive ways. If samsung and similar companies achieve their goal, screens with ads will become more numerous and impossible to avoid, even at home.

These and other types of "unskippable ads" violate my personal freedoms and should rejected by society.

netflix and youtube are cute examples of paying to get fewer ads, but you do not get very far without finding product placements or other types of ads in their videos.
by sirspyr0 | 2025-12-07 18:35:32+00:00
Here’s a quick summary of what this is and why it matters:

Solves AI continuity across sessions without persistent memory Uses explicit documentation (SESSION_LOG.md, etc.) for safe, auditable handoff Proven on real projects (see Bible App case study in repo) Safety model: Discontinuity is a feature, not a bug MIT licensed, ready to use Happy to answer questions and get feedback!
by not2b | 2025-12-07 18:35:38+00:00
Agreed. I used to review lots of submissions for IEEE and similar conferences, and didn't consider it my job to verify every reference. No one did, unless the use of the reference triggered an "I can't believe it said that" reaction. Of course, back then, there wasn't a giant plagiarism machine known to fabricate references, so if tools can find fake references easily the tools should be used.
by wrs | 2025-12-07 18:35:47+00:00
“Common, even”? Citation needed. I’ve worked closely with hundreds of developers over the years and maybe two of them made a conscious, knowledgeable choice whether to use Lisp for something.

You’re even sort of making the same point. Specialized problems need specialized tools. How do you write those specialized tools? Start from scratch, or just make a Lisp package?
by intended | 2025-12-07 18:35:50+00:00
The issue with this argument, for anyone who comes after, is not when you give a gun to a SINGLE person, and then ask them "would you do a bad thing".

The issue is when you give EVERYONE guns, and then are surprised when enough people do bad things with them, to create externalities for everyone else.

There is some sort of trip up when personal responsibility, and society wide behaviors, intersect. Sure most people will be reasonable, but the issue is often the cost of the number of irresponsible or outright bad actors.
by Spivak | 2025-12-07 18:36:04+00:00
I really don't know what this means about the state of the corporate world but companies just don't care if it's bad. Higher ups demand the feature be added but then don't care at all if it's good or even if people actually use it. This isn't that uncommon but "integrate AI somewhere I don't care where" is such an obvious manifestation of this pattern.

We've put so many layers between the engineers and customers and diluted any accountability to demonstrate positive ROI—even if it's theoretical—that we do pointless work for nobody. I'm not going to complain too much personally because all those layers make it possible for me to just pull cards and collect a paycheck but I'm surprised nobody on the business side even somewhat cares if the work they're paying for is worthwhile.
by jijijijij | 2025-12-07 18:36:12+00:00
When people are getting in the trenches, military service policies won't matter anyway. Before you get mobilization, professional soldiers are called to arms. In the war scenario, literally nothing changed due to this policy.

> Did you notice that every "patriot" who says "we will defend our country" never goes on the front line ? The same with their children.

Germany hasn't had a purely professional army for the longest time. Most men in Germany already served in the military, got basic training, or did alternative service (e.g. worked in a hospital). Mandatory military service is constitutionally set up to draw across the population, regardless of social or economic status. Again, we're not talking about who has to die when Russia invades, but who has to get basic military training...
by zahlman | 2025-12-07 18:36:37+00:00
> To me it seems like overall the bottleneck is always thinking what code to write/edit

I feel the same way. But small advantages compound to at least some extent (see e.g. https://danluu.com/productivity-velocity/); and I find that noticing that it takes more time than I'd like to write/edit something, risks breaking my flow.
by jama211 | 2025-12-07 18:37:48+00:00
It’s not a disorder unless it’s causing problems in your life, definitionally. By that logic people are addicted to any medication they take long term that helps them manage any health condition. Hell, I must be addicted to eye drops because when I don’t use them I get dry eyes more often. Is that addiction/dependence?

We must be careful not to find ways to be judgemental whether intentionally or not, especially when something is non-harmful and helpful to their life. It’s not a good behavioural pattern.
by acituan | 2025-12-07 18:38:05+00:00
> AI is not the problem, laziness and negligence is.

As much as I agree with you that this is wrong, there is a danger in putting the onus just on the human. Whether due to competition or top down expectations, humans are and will be pressured to use AI tools alongside their work and produce more. Whereas the original idea was for AI to assist the human, as the expected velocity and consumption pressure increases humans are more and more turning into a mere accountability laundering scheme for machine output. When we blame just the human, we are doing exactly what this scheme wants us to do.

Therefore we must also criticize all the systemic factors that puts pressure on reversal of AI‘s assistance into AI’s domination of human activity.

So AI (not as a technology but as a product when shoved down the throats) is the problem.
by flohofwoe | 2025-12-07 18:38:51+00:00
> But how did they get there? didn't the people from the former German Democratic Republic

It's not that complicated really, the eastern parts of Germany are on average poorer, older and less educated than the western parts, well paid jobs are rare, unemployment is higher (although tbf I'm unfair here towards the old generation, since those are not the typical AfD voters - it's rather the young people who tend to vote on the extreme ends of the political spectrum). Most of the smart young people move to where the grass is greener, those who stay are often bitter and disillusioned.

Carve out a similar demographic slice in western Germany, and you'll get similar high support for the AfD.

...basically the same reason why MAGA is bigger in the rural areas of the US than in the big cities.
by sevensor | 2025-12-07 18:39:06+00:00
I disagree. Code review has a social purpose as well as a technical one. It reinforces a shared understanding of the code and requires one person to assure another that the code is ready for review. It develops consensus about design decisions and agreement about what the code is for. With only one person, this is impossible. “Code goes brrr” is a neutral property. It can just as easily take you to the wrong destination as the right one.
Show HN: Zafiro – a painterly 3D island in the browser (Three.js)
by bartoszu_ | 2025-12-07 18:39:43+00:00
Zafiro is a browser-based 3D island you can walk around and edit. The focus is on painterly lighting and atmosphere rather than realism.

Tech: three.js + a small custom engine layer for input, character movement, environment management, shaders and a day–night cycle. Everything runs client-side; scenes are stored locally in IndexedDB for now.

What you can do: – move around the island in third person – change time of day presets – place trees, rocks and other props – save and reload your island later

It currently works best on desktop Chrome; performance and UX on mobile/Safari are still rough.

Technical write-up: https://medium.com/@bartoszu/painting-with-light-building-a-...
by jval43 | 2025-12-07 18:40:08+00:00
If a scientist just completely "made up" their references 10 years ago, that's a fraudster. Not just dishonesty but outright academic fraud.

If a scientist does it now, they just blame it on AI. But the consequences should remain the same. This is not an honest mistake.

People that do this - even once - should be banned for life. They put their name on the thing. But just like with plagiarism, falsifying data and academic cheating, somehow a large subset of people thinks it's okay to cheat and lie, and another subset gives them chance after chance to misbehave like they're some kind of children. But these are adults and anyone doing this simply lacks morals and will never improve.

And yes, I've published in academia and I've never cheated or plagiarized in my life. That should not be a drawback.
by ZeroConcerns | 2025-12-07 18:40:14+00:00
> [spokesdrone] acknowledged that the artificial intelligence firm “fell short” in its execution of the recent promotional message

While simultaneously admitting that promotional messages are fully on the roadmap, and they're in the "A-B testing the acceptable format" phase.

Can't say I'm surprised -- if the "corner the compute resources market" gambit doesn't work out, "unseat Google as the world's leading ad shoveler" is pretty much the only remaining viable business model, right?
by _bernd | 2025-12-07 18:40:35+00:00
In case you missed the details.

The current law from Friday states:

- every young adult get information material about the Musterung

- everyone is free to go there and free to go to do the basic training

- just in case we will have to few volunteers then the state can at first force everyone to go to the evaluation as it was before - if we will have to few recruits then next step is a loot box system

- then and only then the state can force you. But this has also limits as we are still in Germany

Yes it was a shitty move by Merz to not involve the actual effected generation but I would have expected a far much worst law then this.
by jldugger | 2025-12-07 18:41:28+00:00
My go-to analysis for these sorts of places is net income per employee. Back in the day, IBM was hovering around $5,000. Today, Kyndryl is still around $5,000 (2025). But the parent company seems to be now at $22,000 (2024). For comparison: Meta is at $800,000, Apple is at $675,000, and Alphabet is at $525,000. And Wal-Mart, the nation's largest private employer, is around $9,250.

Now, probably part of that is just that those other companies hire contractors so their employment figure is lower than reality. But even if you cut the numbers in half, neither side of that spin off is looking amazing.