MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by verdverm | 2025-12-13 22:43:16+00:00
yup, I have recently started saying "building blocks over batteries included"

particularly as it comes to people trying to sell me on their Agent "framework", which amounts to little more than some well built tools and prompts, but pigeon holes me into how they think about solving certain issues in the agentic space, based on how things work today. If I go out 2 years, do I have to wait for the "framework" to realize their ideas are now out-of-touch and wait for them to course correct, or have I selected a framework that allows me to easily experiment, evaluate, and adjust any technique, with an ecosystem of building blocks for both the provider and user side of what I am building
by wowczarek | 2025-12-13 22:43:48+00:00
Well you're no fun, Sir...

While I'm morally tempted to do the same, many of the apps guilty of this are the major ones one uses, and as time goes by, I somehow find myself with less and less time on my hands, so I have to be selective with the things I want to do right and proper. Thus, by means of inaction, I indirectly contribute to the circle of enshittification, and there is no stopping it.
by btown | 2025-12-13 22:43:58+00:00
Some important context to this 2018 article is given here: https://www.twilio.com/en-us/blog/archive/2018/introducing-c...

TL;DR they have a highly partitioned job database, where a job is a delivery of a specific event to a specific destination, and each partition is acted upon by at-most-one worker at a time, so lock contention is only at the infrastructure level.

In that context, each worker can handle a similar balanced workload between destinations, with a fraction of production traffic, so a monorepo makes all the sense in the world.

IMO it speaks to the way in which microservices can be a way to enforce good boundaries between teams... but the drawbacks are significant, and a cross-team review process for API changes and extensions can be equally effective and enable simplified architectures that sidestep many distributed-system problems at scale.
by OptionOfT | 2025-12-13 22:44:11+00:00
I like to build my stuff inside of Docker because it is my moat against changes of the environment.

We have our base images, and in there we install dependencies by version. That package then is the base for our code build. (as apt seemingly doesn't have any lock file support?).

In the subsequent built EVERYTHING is versioned, which allows us to establish provenance all the way up to the base image.

And next to that when we promote images from PR -> main we don't even rebuild the code. It's the same image that gets retagged. All in the name of preserving provenance.
by nyrikki | 2025-12-13 22:44:40+00:00
This script does nothing to solve that and actually exasperates problem of people over specing.

It makes assumptions about pricing[0], when if you do need a peak of 8GB it would force you into launching and consuming that 8GB immediately, because it is just reading a current snapshot from /proc/$pid/status:VmSize [1] and says you are waisting memory if "request - actual usage (MiB)" [2]

What if once a week you need to reconcile and need that 8GB, what if you only need 8GB once every 10 seconds? There script won't see that; so to be defensive you can't release that memory, or you will be 'wasting' resource despite that peek need.

What if your program only uses 1GB, but you are working on a lot of parquet files, and with less ram you start to hit EBS IOPS limits or don't finish the nightly DW run because you have to hit disk vs working from the buffer with headroom etc..

This is how bad metrics wreck corporate cultures, the ones in this case encourage overspending. If I use all that ram I will never hit the "top_offender" list[3] even if I cause 100 extra nodes to be launched.

Without context, and far more complicated analytics "request - actual usage (MiB)" is meaningless, and trivial to game.

What incentive except making sure that your pods request ~= RES 24x7x356 ~= OOM_KILL limits/2, to avoid being in the "top_offender" does this metric accomplish?

Once your skip's-skip's-skip sees some consultant labeled you as a "top_offender" despite your transient memory needs etc... how do you work that through? How do you "prove" that against a team gaming the metric?

Also as a developer you don't have control over the clusters placement decisions, nor typically directly choosing the machine types. So blaming the platform user on the platform teams' inappropriate choice of instance types, while shutting down many chances of collaboration by blaming the platform user typically also isn't a very productive path.

Minimizing cloud spend is a very challenging problem, which typically depends on collaboration more than anything else.

The point is that these scripts are not providing a valid metric, and absolutely presenting that metric in a hostile way. It could be changed to help a discovery process, but absolutely will not in the current form.

[0] https://github.com/WozzHQ/wozz/blob/main/scripts/wozz-audit.... [1] https://github.com/google/cadvisor/blob/master/cmd/internal/... [2] https://github.com/WozzHQ/wozz/blob/main/scripts/wozz-audit.... [3] https://github.com/WozzHQ/wozz/blob/main/scripts/wozz-audit....
by zelphirkalt | 2025-12-13 22:45:14+00:00
I like Gleam, but I am somewhat annoyed by the fact, that I don't have the full functional freedom in calling recursive (inner) functions wherever I want. I don't know, why new functional languages do not get this right all the way, straight from some rnrs document or implementation. Another thing is the separate operators like .> and .< and so on. What I liked were of course pipes and pattern matching.

To me it felt less elegant than Scheme (GNU Guile) which I usually use (with nice parallelism if I want to, pipelines, and also pattern matching), and, aside from syntax, conceptually perhaps less elegant than Erlang. On the other hand it has static typing.

I also tried OCaml this year, but there are issues in the ecosystem making a truly reproducible environment/setup, because opam doesn't produce proper lock files (only version numbers) and it seemed silly to not be able to even include another file, without reaching for dune, or having to specify every single file/module on command line for the OCaml compiler. So I was left unsatisfied, even though the language is elegant and I like its ML-ness. I wish there was a large ecosystem around SML, but oh well ...

Might be I should take another look at Erlang soon, or just finally get started with Haskell. Erlang using rebar3 should have proper lock files, has pattern matching, and if I remember correctly no such limitations for calling functions recursively. No longer sure how or whether Erlang did inner functions though.
by dehrmann | 2025-12-13 22:46:18+00:00
When Citizens United was a big deal, I was torn over the premise of the concern for election integrity. Ideally, voters would make rational, informed decisions. They'd see ads, but know they all have an agenda, so they'd do their own research and come to a conclusion. Worrying about biased or inaccurate noise influencing elections means you think people can't be trusted to vote. Which might be true, and if it is, it's a bigger problem than corporate speech and fake accounts.
by cogman10 | 2025-12-13 22:47:13+00:00
Yeah, it's basically tradeoffs all around.

The benefit of this approach is it's a lot easier to make sure dependencies end up on the build node so you aren't redownloading and caching the same dependency for multiple artifacts. But then you don't get to take advantage of docker build caching to speed up things when something doesn't change.

That's the part about docker I don't love. I get why it's this way, but I wish there was a better way to have it reuse files between images. The best you can do is a cache mount. But that can run into size issues as time goes on which is annoying.
by rstuart4133 | 2025-12-13 22:48:10+00:00
Fair enough. Sort of. You can get the same assurances OTP gives you using secure boot + open source + reproducible builds.

Regardless the rest us who don't want to go through the extra work OTP creates still of use want to put our credit cards, fido2 keys, government licences, concert tickets and whatever else in one general purpose computing device so we don't have to carry lots of little auth devices. To do pull that off securely this device must have firmware I can not change.

The OP wants to make it illegal to sell a device with firmware I can not change.

In asking for that, they've demonstrated they don't have a clue how secure and opening computing works. If they somehow got it implemented it would be a security disaster for them and everybody else.
by sejje | 2025-12-13 22:48:15+00:00
One summer I got a ridiculous number of flat tires in my 300,000 mile jeep.

One of those happened in a heavy rainstorm. The ground was soft, and I don't know why exactly, but I couldn't get the jack to lift the jeep high enough to lift the tire.

I was on a country highway near my home, with no cell service and maybe one car every ten minutes. I tried a few spots, even just halfway in the lane--I was afraid, though, because the rain limited visibility for other drivers.

A man pulled up behind me in a Subaru. He wasn't local; he had come from Tennessee to paint a local scenic spot. He not only lent me his jack, but he got out in the pouring rain and helped until it was done. We both had raincoats, at least.

He said that just the day before, he had a flat of his own, and someone stopped and helped him solve some problem he couldn't get around, too.

I doubt that's the nicest thing a stranger ever did for me, but I sure appreciated it. Stopping and helping may be a small kindness, but it can feel like a miracle to the recipient.
by 0xCE0 | 2025-12-13 22:48:16+00:00
These kinds of cases just triggers all the rage for me, be they true or not and whatever is the actual case.

I have fresh experience of setting up Azure/M365 and AppleDev for my startup. Those things are scary as f*uck, in many perspectives:

(1) Dark patterns everywhere (click this checkbox and we'll buy you a license, oops +xxxxx €/$ per year just came; get one-month trial for O365 to get bizaccount, select 1 license, see that there is 25 licenses (~ 4k €/$) to be renewed if I don't cancel).

(2) Microtransactions everywhere (e.g. Azure VM SSD I/O: every read/write operations costs), DDOS and 10/100 k€ bill coming. Everything "scales", especially bills. And no billing caps, of course.

(3) Codesign with Microsoft: I have option to wait weeks for freight ship to ship USB cert token (if it ever survives past toll/postal service after that), or use AzureKeyVault, but that is officially only for companies that has taxes/accounting for 3 years of operation. So no startup can use that by this requirement to codesign?!

(4) AppleDev (and kind of Azure/MS too) requires DUNS number, which takes 6 weeks to get in normal case. Apple's 5 bizday route doesn't exist anymore (at least not for non-US-based companies). Or just use D&B magic link from Grok and get it immediately in 5 mins.

(5) If you base your business on Azure/M365 and AppleDev and be obidient and compliant (as I am doing/being, because I'm building real legit and long-term company, not some hussle project), it still doesn't matter, because they can just can decide by human/ML to shut your business operations and means of living. And getting answers like in the title's article's screenshots with those emojis are just the most non-human interaction that there can be done for affecting so devastatingly to someone's life/business.

These are the most disgusting things that I know of.
by buescher | 2025-12-13 22:49:52+00:00
"Yes, Socrates, he said, and if you were providing for a city of pigs, how else would you feed the beasts?

But what would you have, Glaucon? I replied.

Why, he said, you should give them the ordinary conveniences of life. People who are to be comfortable are accustomed to lie on sofas, and dine off tables, and they should have sauces and sweets in the modern style."
by rzerowan | 2025-12-13 22:50:29+00:00
Mostly i believe its that the writers envisioned and were able to wrldbuildinsucha way that the tech was not a subject but was rather a part of the scenery/background with the main object being the people and their relationships. Additionally in some cases where alien tech was interfaced with the characters inthe storysome UI/code rewites were written in, for example in DS9 where the Cardassian interfaces/AI are frustrating to Chief O'Brien and his efforts to remedy/upgrade such gets a recurring role in the story.

Conversly recent versions have taken the view of foregrounding tech aidied with flashy CGI to handwave through a lot.Basically using it as a plot device when the writing is weak.
by verdverm | 2025-12-13 22:51:03+00:00
It looks like just another search engine trening towards Ai UX. Do they have an API?

I'm now looking for APIs to integrate with my custom / personal agent setup. I'm done outsourcing my UX to Big Ai/Tech. I don't think we should repeat the same mistakes of outsource a core human/digital UX to Big Ai/Tech. We (HNers) complain so much about all the bad stuff the prior iterations (social media, saas out the wazoo), are we going to repeat it again by defaulting to whatever they give us, misaligned incentives and all?
by lossolo | 2025-12-13 22:51:04+00:00
Then you've had a very different experience than I have. If you don't mind me asking, where exactly were you in mainland China, and for how long?

Hong Kong isn't representative of China. I've been there and honestly, it felt like a post colonial UK dump. Going directly from Shenzhen to Hong Kong felt like going from a first world country to a third world one, but I digress.

I also talked with Hong Kongers (this year), and they told me a different story, one that isn't so black and white as the worldview you're projecting onto others.

> or getting a tour of Beijing from a friend who worked as a photojournalist and found himself followed by the security services and had to leave and seek asylum with his family.

That's another interesting anecdote. I actually know a photo blogger and a local journalist from China, neither of them is being followed by the security services, and neither has sought asylum anywhere. What was so unique about your friend?

> But the Chinese people love freedom like the rest of us - you don't need to go far to disprove your entire narrative, Taiwan and Singapore are right there.

You know Singapore isn't exactly a "free" country either, right? And Singaporeans are generally fine with that and accept the trade off. So who's disproving whose narrative here?

Different cultures have different systems and trade offs, different value systems and philosophies of life. But some people seem not to understand that and view everything through the lens of their own values, convincing themselves there's only one "right" way to live and that everything else is evil. The Holy Crusades had similar vibes.
by williamcotton | 2025-12-13 22:51:16+00:00
I've been writing an experimental pipeline-based web app DSL with Claude Code for the last little while in my spare time. Sort of bash-like with middleware for lua, jq, graphql, handlebars, postgres, etc.

Here's an already out of date and unfinished blog post about it: https://williamcotton.com/articles/introducing-web-pipe

Here's a simple todo app: https://github.com/williamcotton/webpipe/blob/webpipe-2.0/to...

Check out the BDD tests in there, I'm quite proud of the grammar.

Here's my blog: https://github.com/williamcotton/williamcotton.com/blob/mast...

It's got an LSP as well with various validators, jump to definitions, code lens and of course syntax highlighting.

I've yet to take screenshots, make animated GIFs of the LSP in action or update the docs, sorry about that!

A good portion of the code has racked up some tech debt, but hey, it's an experiment. I just wanted to write my own DSL for my own blog.
by yardstick | 2025-12-13 22:51:30+00:00
Who knew I’d need to do this? I’d never needed to do this either my emails in the decades prior.

You’ve also got no idea what was in those emails. Could be some valuable knowledge or logs about some crazy rare bug or scenario, and would be useful to review today.

We just turned on S/MIME by default, to “be secure”, whatever that means. There was no warning in the email client about losing access to the email if you lost your keys.

Citing BOFH is all well and good inside certain circles. In the real world, people don’t like spending time or effort on poorly thought out and implemented solutions.
by UncleEntity | 2025-12-13 22:52:12+00:00
> But generally people let their agent make whatever change it makes and then wonder why trains are flying off the tracks.

IMO, this is the biggest issue. Well, along with just straight up ignoring what you tell it and doing whatever it thinks should be done.

But, to answer the actual thread question: Make it work (all the tests pass) then make it right is the way I'm getting quality work out of the robots. As long as you watch them to make sure they don't either change the tests to pass on buggy code or change the code to pass on buggy tests (yes, Claude is quite proficient and eager to do both) then the code gets better and better as new stuff is added and the 'flow of computation' is worked out.

Oh, and have an actual plan to follow so they don't get distracted at the first issue and say they're finished because they fixed some random unrelated bug. I've also found it helpful to have them draft up such a plan while they're knee deep in that section of the code for related work so they don't have to figure it all out again from scratch and try to add a few extra levels of abstraction just because.
by NetOpWibby | 2025-12-13 22:52:40+00:00
Fantastic talk, I found myself nodding in agreement a lot. In my research on next-generation desktop interfaces, I was referred to Ink & Switch as well and man, I sure wish they were hiring. I missed out on the Xerox and Bell Labs eras. I'm also reading this book, "Inventing the Future" by John Buck that details early Apple (there's no reason the Jonathan Computer wouldn't sell like hotcakes today, IMHO).

In my downtime I'm working on my future computing concept[1]. The direction I'm going for the UI is context awareness and the desktop being more of an endless canvas. I need to flesh out my ideas into code one of these days.

P.S. Just learned we're on the same Mastodon server, that's dope.

---

[1]: https://systemsoft.works
by donmcronald | 2025-12-13 22:53:18+00:00
I considered this a month or two ago when Google safe browsing was erroneously putting domains self hosting Immich on the block list. My family domain got put on the block list and it took me a few hours to figure out that I needed to sign up for Google Search Console just to figure out what sub-domain got flagged.

I thought about filing a claim for enough to cover my time in small claims court, but decided not to. I didn't track my time super well because initially I though it was my fault, but, by far, the huge deterrent is the "what if".

What happens if I take Google to small claims court for damages to a domain I've been using for 20 years? I have that domain tied to a legacy Google Workspace account which was a huge mistake. It's been tied to my email for at least 15 years and, even worse, I've never owned an Android phone that hasn't been tied to that Workspace account.

I don't depend on cloud services for much, but if I want to prepare for retaliation I'd have to migrate my email somewhere else and be ready to deal with family members that have their phones connected to the Workspace account. Who's been duped into photo "backup"? Who's been duped into using Google Docs? How many Play purchases do they have? And, the big one, who's been duped into using sign-in with Google?

Google, Apple, Microsoft all make choosing what's best for the consumer very high friction compared to choices that trap users and give all the power to big tech. Even though I constantly help my family members try to understand why the don't want to get locked into those services they always get deceived into using them. The number of family members unwittingly duped into uploading all their data to OneDrive is in the range of 100%.

Apple, Google, and Microsoft need to be broken into 10 or 20 companies each. Excel should be it's own company. Phone OSes and app stores should be different companies. OneDrive should be it's own company and to compete with Dropbox with zero Windows integration. The web browsers should be separate companies. The AI divisions should be separate companies. Split them up with a wood chipper IMO.

The safe browsing scam is the biggest fraud ever because providers can't opt out of it when it "accidentally" detriments independent or self-hosted solutions.
by algo_trader | 2025-12-13 22:53:31+00:00
The original report by Ember [1] is decent but clearly biased.

They assume each battery cycles entirely EVERY day - even in winter. They also assume PV is never curtailed - not even in summer. They of course ignore multi-day weather anomalies. Like wise for weekend/holiday demand variations. etc.

The best part of the report are real world bids of 2025 ESS projects.

[1] https://ember-energy.org/latest-insights/how-cheap-is-batter...
by ben_w | 2025-12-13 22:53:44+00:00
> 90% of my career’s projects consisted of reinventing the spreadsheet and 90% of my time was spent listening to people bikeshedding about the color of buttons.

This, but for mobile apps.

"Uber for aircraft", "Cross LinkedIn with AirBnB with Google Maps", "Read the news", "Foursquare but for my hobby"… it was exciting when I was young and fresh and didn't know what was out there; now I know that I just didn't realise how many others were doing the same things.

Competition I didn't spot meant success was all about discovery rather than actual innovation, "build it and they will come" is just not true. Discovery means paying an ad-tax to the gatekeepers of eyeballs. But that's a bidding war, an all-pay auction for your version of the widely-instantiated "innovation" to win a temporary monopoly before the feature becomes table stakes in a bigger product, like IE was to Netscape, and Sherlock was to whoever that was, and Skype to all chat apps.
by ArrestedDev14 | 2025-12-13 22:53:45+00:00
Wow this would help streamline the way I take notes in my life. Short but descriptive sets of words that I frequently am adding throughout the day to an "In Memory" note that I have in Obsidian. At the end of the day I then clear my in memory note by moving them to a more "Contextual" note and elaborate on them fully.

I will be trying this at the very least and am optimistic they could figure out a better battery solution in future iterations as well. Obsidian plugin
by em-bee | 2025-12-13 22:53:45+00:00
you are right, i should have checked. however i still believe that it is possible to get a special visa for exceptional circumstances. that's not going to be documented anywhere but you'll need to talk people at various embassies.

some EU countries offer extended tourist visas and there is the digital nomad visa, for which while tied to a country, it doesn't even make sense that it would only allow to stay in one country. the point of being a digital nomad is after all to be nomadic.

so yeah, it's going to take some research. but i don't think it's impossible.

EU-wide long-term travel does not exist legally and this is done purposefully!

this being done purposefully suggests you have read that somewhere. got a reference?
by Scoundreller | 2025-12-13 22:54:06+00:00
Damn, I’m throwing away hundreds of dollars per month.

And I can get a semi-anonymous cable internet connection too (if your line is “hot”, you could sign up with any address… not sure if it has to be under the same node or just the same city). Would be difficult, but not impossible, to track down which residence the shadow connection is coming from.