MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by Terretta | 2025-12-09 00:16:49+00:00
> ideally people can always just think in concepts

Are you pursing an idea of how to help people like this author* access this mode that some of us are always in unless kicked out of it by the need for words?

Very needed right now — the opposite of the YouTube-ization of idea transfer.

It doesn't seem clear this is accessible without other changes in wiring? The inability to "picture" things as visuals seems to swap out for "conceptualizing" things in -- well, I don't have words for this.

An attempt from that essay:

This is not what Hadamard is talking about when he describes the wordless thought of the mathematicians and researchers he has surveyed. Instead, what they seem to be doing is something similar to this subconscious, parallelized search, except they do it in a “tensely” focused way.

The impression I get is that Hadamard loads a question into his mind (either in a non-verbal way, or by reading a mathematical problem that has been written by himself or someone else), and then he holds the problem effortfully centered in his mind. Effortfully, but wordlessly, and without clear visualizations. Describing the mental image that filled his mind while working on a problem concerning infinite series for his thesis, Hadamard writes that his mind was occupied by an image of a ribbon which was thicker in certain places (corresponding to possibly important terms). He also saw something that looked like equations, but as if seen from a distance, without glasses on: he was unable to make out what they said.

I’m not sure what is going on here.

* https://www.henrikkarlsson.xyz/p/wordless-thought

A couple of this author's speculations aren't how I'd say it works when this is one's default mode, but most are in the neighborhood. He comes the closest of what I've read by people who do think the way the author thinks — which seems to be most people.
by overfeed | 2025-12-09 00:17:10+00:00
I'm really curious on what your role is, and which industry are you in? I'm awed by these productivity gains others report, but I feel like AI helps in such a small part of my job (implementing specific changes as I direct).

Agentic workflows for me results in bloated code, which is fine when I'm willing to hand over an subsystem to the agent, such as a frontend on a side project and have it vibe code the entire thing. Trying to get clean code erases all/most of my productivity gains, and doesn't spark joy. I find having a back-end-forth with an agent exhausting, probably because I have to build and discard multiple mental models of the proposed solution, since the approach can vary wildly between prompts. An agent can easily switch between using Newton-Raphson and bisection when asked to refactor unrelated arguments, which a human colleague wouldn't do after a code review.
by rmason | 2025-12-09 00:17:11+00:00
I too am avid reader and was visiting five local bookstores on a weekly basis. Several of them had huge areas stocked with tech books. I had tried Amazon maybe six months after it launched and bought there sporadically. But almost any book i sought was available locally and the savings weren't worth the convenience of purchasing locally.

Then in a three month period in late Spring 2000 all the programming books disappeared. Then my choice was between Amazon with quick delivery and the local store with a slower delivery and a higher price. So been buying from Amazon ever since and I can't remember the last time I have visited a bookstore.
by itintheory | 2025-12-09 00:17:15+00:00
> FiiO CP-13, and while the quality still isn't great

The sad part is that the quality of modern cassette players is actually decidedly worse than their vintage counterparts. There's essentially only one company producing the actual mechanism (Tanashin) and they're cheaply made of low quality materials (plastic flywheels etc.). That's the main reason that the vintage machines are still fetching higher prices. Also I don't think any modern machines have Dolby B-C noise reduction, HX Pro, automatic track seek/skip, and whatever other fancy features you could find in the likes of a high end Sony or Nakamichi deck.
by crote | 2025-12-09 00:18:04+00:00
> You do need constant, reliable power, as even a brief interruption makes a huge mess when the aluminum/slag freezes in the processor

On the other hand: it has a gigantic thermal mass. Combine this with the energy requires to melt it, and you end up with molten aluminium being trucked over our highways [0]. A brief interruption isn't a big deal when it takes ages to solidify.

[0]: https://old.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/3h6r2e/this_truck_car...
by pessimizer | 2025-12-09 00:18:11+00:00
The Free Press wasn't worth anything, it's a blog with marginal readership. The creepy part is that Bari Weiss, a dimwit, was given $200M for that blog, put in charge of CBS News, and made a political commissar of all these new Oracle media properties with the brand names that Boomers love.

This thread is using it as an opportunity to scream about Trump, but Democrats will be all in on this. They have the same funders and the same interests. The NYT is the outlet that legitimized Weiss in the first place, a woman whose only previous interest was claiming that Palestinians were harassing her on college campuses by being there, and trying her best to get them expelled and fired. The Democrats were no opposition to the genocide; it began under their watch, they fully funded and shielded it, and they happily rounded up protesters. They'll be overjoyed to accept Ellison attention and Ellison cash.

I told all of you not to buy Oracle. Awful company, awful people, awful product.
by why_only_15 | 2025-12-09 00:18:48+00:00
Iceland is a tiny country with unusual amounts of energy. Not all renewable sources are the same -- hydropower is fairly reliable too, for example -- but Iceland is just not a useful example for the whole world. The largest geothermal plant in the world by far is in California, but it's a small portion of our total energy use so no one cares. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Geysers
by ryan_lane | 2025-12-09 00:18:57+00:00
> Padding ties up capital, it reduces credibility, it delays deployment, it adds costs through delay.

Well done timelines are a negotiation between the stakeholders and engineers. The stakeholders need something done for the business, the engineers give a timeline. If that timeline works for everyone, great. If it doesn't, then the stakeholders will ask if it can be done in a faster time.

A timeline that lands on time, or early, is good. The point of timelines is that teams outside of engineering are resourcing their projects based on your timelines. They may have made outside commitments to customers, they may be lining up marketing, they may have embargoed PR, it may be delivered by someone at a conference, etc.

A project running late can be catastrophic. Bad customer relations, wasted marketing spend, pulling back stories from PR, delays for dependent teams, etc.

You pad to make sure your timelines aren't overly optimistic, because we're all bad at estimating, and it's possible our dependencies are too. By padding, when it comes time to negotiate for shorter timelines, you also have some wiggle room.

Bureaucratic environments tend to be larger companies and they care about schedule slips, because they have more teams being impacted, and those teams are handling larger numbers of overall projects. Schedule slips can lead to cascading failures.
by itishappy | 2025-12-09 00:19:12+00:00
I feel like shortcuts are often enough. They function quite like this: a symbolic language that allows you to build up an intuition. They use icons that you already know, and instead of being bespoke per designer (how many different save icons are there?) they work across your entire OS. The muscle memory you build, instead of being bespoke per menu (and dynamic in time), allows you to skip the menu entirely!
by aerostable_slug | 2025-12-09 00:19:36+00:00
I like not going to the store more.

Because tips are important to the income of delivery shoppers, I find that I generally get good produce selections. It might be difficult to transition that particular incentive to robots, but the point is that delivery items don't have to suck.

The only thing I really still pick out by hand every time are beef briskets. Pork shoulders tend to be uniform enough that randomly picking a cryovac works out, but there's a good bit of variation in brisket that makes a difference with the final product, at least when the brisket is prepared with a smoker. YMMV
by da02 | 2025-12-09 00:19:49+00:00
Here in the Houston areas, supermarkets like Kroger/Walmart/HEB/etc always have single floor buildings. Why can't they build multi-floor buildings for storage upstairs and retail walk-in sales on the ground floor? On the above ground floors, they can create an automated or semi-automated system for employees to gather up items for online/delivery orders.
by wvenable | 2025-12-09 00:19:56+00:00
I just did a major refactor of a project to move it many versions up on a framework and whole process was effectively vibe coded. I'd estimate I did in a couple of days what would have taken a couple of weeks.

That's good and expect that could be shaved down even more. I was spending most of time just waiting for it do the work.

But I don't know if that fundamentally changes the situation or not. We've had steady improvements in developer technology for decades. Even pre-LLM, I'm building significantly more complicated applications now in less time than ever before. But as quickly as our developer technology improved, the demands on applications we build has gone up. I'm not sure even LLMs can outpace the demand for software.
by nancyminusone | 2025-12-09 00:20:07+00:00
In my opinion, this is the biggest (current) problem with AI. It is really good at that thing you used to do when you had to hit a word count in a school essay. How long until the world's hard drive space is filled up with filler words and paragraphs of text that goes nowhere, and how could you possibly search and find anything in such conditions?
by indolering | 2025-12-09 00:20:10+00:00
The healthcare industry is basically locked into 365 due to a lack of alternatives supporting HIPAA.

Google Workplace theoretically can be configured, but it doesn't cover basic stuff like information in contacts. So if ANYONE in your organization (like an outreach coordinator) adds a patient and puts notes into the contact field, it's a HIPAA violation. There is no way to effectively police that.

I wish the regulations were written such that messaging apps, office suites, etc over a certain percentage of revenue had to qualify for HIPAA by default. It's absurd how many small shops just do everything in over WhatsApp/iMessage/Gmail/iCould, etc.
I built an AI that learns code transformations from examples (not generative)
by heavymemory | 2025-12-09 00:20:18+00:00
I built a tool that learns structural code transformations from before/after examples.

Show it console.log(x) -> logger.info(x) and it learns the pattern, then applies it across your entire codebase. Deterministic, same input, same output, every time.

Not a transformer, not generative, not probabilistic. It parses code into AST, extracts the structural pattern, and executes exact rewrites.

Works as an MCP plugin for Claude Code, Cursor, and Claude Desktop.

https://hyperrecode.com

Would love feedback.
by nikeee | 2025-12-09 00:20:52+00:00
MS Office only has icons for the things that matter most. I think MS even had a UI guideline similar to the one that is cited from apple in TFA, but I cannot find it.

The author doesn't ask for _no_ icons at all. So I really don't get this critique.

Intentionally omitting some icons is a really powerful tool to draw attention to the actions that the user wants to do most of the time. I think that pattern went away in some places because it looks more consistent (that doesn't mean that usability is better) and some designers have some kind of OCD. At least that's what I have experienced in that exact case.
by browningstreet | 2025-12-09 00:21:20+00:00
Thanks, but.. this was true as of some months ago. And I definitely was told by support that my [personal] email couldn’t connect to my [consulting] GitHub email account. I re-arranged quite a lot of my tech life to connect the two, per Replit support.

But I’ll double check tomorrow and reach out if I find anything worth sharing.
by Cryptcornershop | 2025-12-09 00:21:27+00:00
Self taught developer here. I built a walletless crypto checkout system from Afghanistan (now Iran) during blackouts, censorship, and unstable Internet. The codebase is ~1.6GB with ~40k files, written solo without templates or third-party platforms. Key technical components: Walletless checkout: No wallet connect or browser extensions. Each order generates a unique address; payments can come from any wallet or exchange. Custom 3-key non-custodial escrow: Buyer, seller, and platform each hold keys. Escrow is chain-agnostic and resolves on confirmation or timeout. Static blockchain list: Automatic address generation for supported chains (BTC, LTC, ETH, etc.). Rate-locking: Temporary pricing lock using backend rate fetch and per-order conversion. Privacy model: No user accounts. Optional Digi-ID login. Orders use cryptographic IDs instead of personal data. In-house AI moderation: Flags prohibited items, malware, and scam patterns. Custom-built flows: Cart, return handling, and transaction engine written from scratch. Motivation: I wanted to build a system that could be developed and operated under limited infrastructure with minimal external dependencies and a small attack surface. https://www.cryptocornershop.com Open to technical feedback! especially on the escrow implementation, privacy model, and node based scalability. Happy to answer questions about the architecture or development constraints.
by djmips | 2025-12-09 00:21:32+00:00
It's fascinating to read these comments - I believe everyone. Some are getting huge productivity gains and others very little - so perhaps we are not in the same business. I know that I've ranged over various work - all called software development and the variety of work was quite different - some I wouldn't call challenging but still needed a lot of manual labor - perhaps this is the type of work that finds easy wins from AI automation. Still other work was much more challenging but I've never really attempted to use AI in my work because it was forbidden by policy. I've used AI at home for fun projects and it has helped me with languages I've never used before but I've never come close to 90% productivity boost. Anyway, fascinating!
by chromatic | 2025-12-09 00:21:52+00:00
Maybe until the 2001 O'Reilly layoffs. Tim hired Larry for about 5 years, but that was mostly working on the third edition of the Camel. A handful of other Perl luminaries worked there at the same time (Jon Orwant, Nat Torkington).

When I joined in 2002, there were only a couple of developers in general, and no one sponsored to work on or evangelize any specific technology full time. Sometimes I wonder if Sun had more paid people working on Tcl.

I don't mean to malign or sideline the work anyone at ORA or ActiveState did in those days. Certainly the latter did more work to make Perl a first-class language on Windows than anyone. Yet that's very different from a funded Python Software Foundation or Sun supporting Java or the entire web browser industry funding JavaScript or....
by eschaton | 2025-12-09 00:21:56+00:00
Depends on whether you’re building with Xcode; when I worked on it, I ensured that the templates included with Xcode would have the right setup to declare appropriate run path search paths for applications, and appropriate install names for frameworks and (shared) libraries.

However when building with just command line tools and not passing all the same arguments an Xcode project and target causes to be passed, you have to do extra work to ensure the right run path search paths get into built executables and the right install names get into built libraries and frameworks.

That latter is to ensure that if you don’t pass those extra arguments, executables and shared libraries are built for Darwin-based platforms as much as reasonably possible like they are on other UNIX-like platforms.
by alsetmusic | 2025-12-09 00:22:27+00:00
> Even recently, Musk fought back against the notion that Tesla relies on teleoperation for its Optimus demonstration. He specified that a new demo of Optimus doing kung-fu was “AI, not tele-operated”

The world's biggest liar, possibly. It's insane to me that laws and regulations haven't stopped him from lying to investors and the public, but that's the world in which we live.
by Centigonal | 2025-12-09 00:22:31+00:00
disclosing information is not a medically neutral act. Knowing you have a medical condition can create a great deal of anxiety and anguish and prompt lots of tests. If the result of all those tests and anxiety is "no action indicated," you've basically given your patient a condition that reduces their quality of life for no upside.

I once had a misdiagnosis of an incurable illness that I didn't actually have, and the stress of dealing with that caused me to develop another, very real medical condition that took a year to get under control.
by omgJustTest | 2025-12-09 00:23:10+00:00
3 CFCs (robotics centers) closed, 5 continuing operating [1]. Initial commitment was 20 & Kroger is paying 350m$ to compensate the partner.

I don't know what success looks like but it's probably fair to say they were over-extended by roughly 30-40%.

https://chainstoreage.com/kroger-pay-350-million-automation-...
by michaelt | 2025-12-09 00:23:12+00:00
Isn't the UK also the home of the "Rule against perpetuities" [1] specifically stopping dead people from exerting control over the ownership of private property? To stop some duke in the 1600s setting inheritance rules for "their" land 6 generations into the future?

There may be exceptions to the rule against perpetuities for charities, but I don't imagine any sane court would consider keeping a corpse frozen to be a charitable activity.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_against_perpetuities
by gsf_emergency_6 | 2025-12-09 00:25:32+00:00
And in the day time, if transparent and applied to solar panels, the "efficiency" gain (~10W psqm) itself will dwarf other considerations.( Remembering that bulk of radiative cooling shouldn't happen below ~1300nm) And then there's beating the efficacy of carbon capture at mitigating warming by orders of magnitudes

Nothing to sneeze at. Just be careful of midbrow high-effort dismissals from the old and wise:)

These guys are applying them to solar panels:

https://www.i2cool.com/tideflow/uwJVdixI.html

"Case Study 2: Solar Farm in Dubai Problem: Solar panels lost 15–20% efficiency at 55°C+ temperatures. Solution: Coated panels with i2Cool’s film. Results: Panel surface temperature: ▼25.7°C (from 58°C to 32.3°C) Power output: ▲8% (equivalent to adding 2,400 new panels to a 30MW farm)"
by quietbritishjim | 2025-12-09 00:25:42+00:00
The sibling comment already answered your question, but just to add: As I mentioned earlier, this was actually how old programming languages worked. Famously(ish), Dijkstra secretly snuck recursive functions into the ALGOL 60 standard, thus forcing compiler authors to use a stack!

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10131664
by AlotOfReading | 2025-12-09 00:25:42+00:00
The grocery industry relentlessly optimizes for implicit choices over expressed preferences. Nobody is asking for misters, colored lighting, skeumorphic veggie bins, and wide open sightlines in the produce aisle. Stores do it because customers buy more when they do. The same thing will happen to in-store shopping if consumer preferences swing ever swing that way instead.
by PaulHoule | 2025-12-09 00:26:47+00:00
My grandfather started his career in the Polish mafia and eventually went straight to work as a laborer and then a bricklayer, he was told he had an "enlarged heart".

I got a bunch of workups because I fainted when exercising on a hot day when I'd eaten a bit too much and was a little infatuated with the instructor (I was the only student.) I got the plain echo and a stress echo and was told I had athlete's heart which they are not so sure if it is good or bad. I also wore a Holter monitor for 30 days and literally at the last 5 minutes of the period I had two bad heart beats so now I have A-Fib on my chart and my doc says the athlete's heart can make it worse so since then I'm only supposed to do an hour a day of cardio.

When all this was going on I had manifested an "evil twin" whose harebraned scheme had just blown up right at the time I had those two bad heartbeats and I can't believe the emotional distress I'd caused myself hadn't had anything to do it. I have one of those Kardia cards and haven't seen it happen again.
by trebligdivad | 2025-12-09 00:26:53+00:00
I sometime use Ocado in the UK, and it's 'OK' but it's certainly not at the cheap end of the market. I more often use a traditional supermarkets home delivery service where it's manually picked; those supermarkets have the advantage of having very little infrastructure overhead in the picking - they mostly use their existing stores and pick at quiet times/over night. Ocado has to run entire warehouses just for this task. Ocado can only work with packed goods - not weighed vegetables for example - which the hand pickers in store can do, albeit whether they do it well is down to luck and the mood of the picker.
Show HN: SteadyDancer – First-Frame Identity-Stable Dance Animation
by lu794377 | 2025-12-09 00:26:56+00:00
Hi HN,

we’ve built SteadyDancer, an AI dance animation tool designed for first-frame identity preservation and stable character rendering across all video frames. Instead of identity drift or inconsistent faces, clothing, or body proportions, SteadyDancer keeps the reference character locked while transferring dance motion from a driving video.

Key features of SteadyDancer:

First-Frame Identity Preservation – Set the character identity once, and SteadyDancer keeps the same face, outfit, and proportions through the entire animation sequence.

Video-Driven Motion Transfer – Upload a dance or performance video and SteadyDancer applies the motion to your character while maintaining identity stability.

Pose & Condition Control – Advanced pose modulation reduces broken limbs and improves motion coherence, creating smoother transitions frame-to-frame.

Flexible Resolution Output – Fast previews at 480p for iteration, production output at 720p for clean final dance animations.

Why we built SteadyDancer:

Current animation models often sacrifice identity stability to follow motion, or lose realistic movement to keep identity. SteadyDancer solves both problems, making identity-stable dance animation accessible to creators building VTuber content, dance remixes, music videos, and character-consistent animation workflows.

We’d love feedback on:

• How identity-stable dance animation fits into your creative workflow

• Export formats or integrations that would help your pipeline

• Performance vs quality trade-offs that matter to you

Try SteadyDancer here:https://steadydancer.net/?i=d1d5k
by Amezarak | 2025-12-09 00:27:18+00:00
You appear to be assuming I hold a whole plethora of views that have nothing to do with me. (Red scare?? Deregulation??)

I am fully informed about conditions in Germany. Perhaps you are not fully informed about conditions in America. Even us Americans in flyover states, even solidly working class Americans, even some people I know in trailer parks, have more conveniences and luxuries than the average German. Aside for my preferences for most German social norms, I would prefer to live in Mississippi than anywhere in Germany for the greater material comforts.