MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by fnordpiglet | 2025-12-07 18:57:58+00:00
Especially since it decomposes the image into a semantic vector space rather than the actual grid of pixels. Once the image is transformed into patch embeddings all sense of pixels is entirely destroyed. The author demonstrates a profound lack of understanding for how multimodal LLMs function that a simple query of one would elucidate immediately.

The right way to handle this is not to build it grids and whatnot, which all get blown away by the embedding encoding but to instruct it to build image processing tools of its own and to mandate their use in constructing the coordinates required and computing the eccentricity of the pattern etc in code and language space. Doing it this way you can even get it to write assertive tests comparing the original layout to the final among various image processing metrics. This would assuredly work better, take far less time, be more stable on iteration, and fits neatly into how a multimodal agentic programming tool actually functions.
by zahlman | 2025-12-07 18:58:24+00:00
> Compared to Python's deliberate policy, which is they won't guarantee your code will still run after two minor releases

They don't guarantee that the entire standard library will be available to you two minor releases hence. Your code will still run if you just vendor those pieces (and thanks to how `sys.path` works, and the fact that the standard library was never namespaced, shadowing the standard library is trivial). And they tell you up front what will be removed. It is not because of a runtime change that anything breaks here.

Python 3 has essentially prevented any risk of semantic changes or syntax errors in older but 3.x-compatible code. That's what the `__future__` system is about. The only future feature that has become mandatory is `generator_stop` since 3.7 (see https://peps.python.org/pep-0479/), which is very much a corner case anyway. In particular, the 3.7-onward annotations system will not become mandatory, because it's being replaced by the 3.14-onward system (https://peps.python.org/pep-0649/). And aside from that again the only issue I'm aware of (or at least can think of at the moment) is the async-keyword one.

> And you don't know what they're going to deprecate or remove until they do it

This is simply untrue. Deprecation plans are discussed in public and now that they've been burned a few times, removal is scheduled up front (although it can happen that someone gives a compelling reason to undo the deprecation).

It's true that you can't make your own code, using the standard library (which is practically impossible to avoid), forwards-compatible to future standard libraries indefinitely. But that's just a matter of what other code you're pulling in, when you didn't write it in the first place. Vendoring is always an option. So are compatibility "forward-ports" like https://github.com/youknowone/python-deadlib. And in practice your users are expecting you to put out updates anyway.

And most of them are expecting to update their local Python installations eventually, because the core Python team won't support those forever, either. If you want to use old FOSS you'll have to accept that support resources are limited. (Not to mention all the other bitrot issues.)
by danilafe | 2025-12-07 18:58:44+00:00
It doesn't have to be one or the other. Both ethical consumption and going vegetarian reduce one's environmental impact, and they're independent of one another. So, while someone "truly" optimizing for environmental impact would better spend their time avoiding meat, someone who enjoys meat can still reduce their environmental impact without becoming miserable. Variables like "income" and "environment" are just parts of the equation for the more important heuristic of happiness.

A lot of the activities on that list are like this. Reading the news has a non-zero impact (hey, I'm on HN, and it definitely helps me keep up to date), and it's "easy" in that it fits into my heuristic for happiness. Same with using a metal straw, and same with picking between credit cards.

In a sense, these activities are "free" in terms of their perceived difficulty, but have a positive, if small, impact. If they're "free", why not do them?
by Lerc | 2025-12-07 18:59:16+00:00
What models are good at this? I have tried passing images to models and asking them for coordinates for specific features, then overlaid dots on those points and passed that image back to the model so it has a perception of how far out it was. It had a tendency to be consistently off by a fixed amount without getting closer.

I don't doubt that it is possible eventually, but I haven't had much luck.

Something that seemed to assist was drawing a multi coloured transparent chequerboard, if the AI knows the position of the grid colours it can pick out some relative information from the grid.
by throw310822 | 2025-12-07 19:00:53+00:00
> 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

Frankly I've added some of the features of my own initiative. They were low hanging fruits and really helpful in some cases, and in others they are placeholders waiting to be better integrated or expanded depending on the users requests. Nobody forces anyone to use them or even notice them, so why not?

As I said: these features look like magic in demos, it's not because of the hype that managers want them integrated but because of genuine enthusiasm. But they require more development and maintenance effort than was apparent from the demo. Also, there's a clear discoverability problem due to the fact that an agent has basically no UI.
by augusto-moura | 2025-12-07 19:01:17+00:00
They are just old school. When you learn coding before GUIs were mainstream, you don't care that much about exciting UIs.

Heck, Kernighan was one of the original developers of Unix. In 2015 he was already coding for more than 40-50 years, more time than most from Hacker News are alive. The only constant from that time is the terminal, so no wonder most people in the post gravitate towards that
by grouchy | 2025-12-07 19:01:17+00:00
Why do you need *external* documentation but for helping people to understand how software works?

These apps will need lots of documentation but instead of having to "search" for the section you need it would be just exposed as you need it.

"How do I do X?"

You do X by filling out this form: [FORM]

I'm not sure the problem here?
by thefourthchime | 2025-12-07 19:01:31+00:00
I've worked on a playout system for broadcast television. The software has to run for years at a time and not have any leaks, We need to send out one frame of television exactly on time, every time.

It is "C++", but we also follow the same standards. Static memory allocation, no exceptions, no recursion. We don't use templates. We barely use inheritance. It's more like C with classes.
by ifh-hn | 2025-12-07 19:01:45+00:00
Since we're going with anecdotes it has happened with me. An example is my cross platform backup script sitting on my external harddrive. Write once run everywhere. Also the reason I like dart/flutter.

I think you're correct about windows users in general but if a user is likely to script in python I'm fairly certain they'll be aware of the shell. And the shell in windows is massively powerful with powershell.

Either way both powershell and nushell are cross platform meaning their scripting are too, unless you're doing something OS specific.
by m3047 | 2025-12-07 19:01:59+00:00
One of the more interesting ways of detecting rail damage, and subsidence in general, is optically detecting noise / distortion in fiber optic cables. An applied case of observables which are the basis for an evaluative (the "signal") being utilized originally to diagnose possible maintenance issues and then going "hey there, wait a sec, there's a different evaluative we can produce from this exhaust and sell".

https://fibersense.com/

http://www.focus-sensors.com/
by tialaramex | 2025-12-07 19:03:22+00:00
RAII doesn't imply allocating.

My guess is that you're assuming all user defined types, and maybe even all non-trivial built-in types too, are boxed, meaning they're allocated on the heap when we create them.

That's not the case in C++ (the language in question here) and it's rarely the case in other modern languages because it has terrible performance qualities.
by raw_anon_1111 | 2025-12-07 19:03:26+00:00
As far as Uber, was it better when there was both a medallion system monopoly in cities like New York and less access to cabs? Where people had to rent overpriced medallions and couldn’t make any money

Or sometimes depending on what you looked like, where you were going or where you were coming from, you couldn’t get a cab at all.

https://abcnews.go.com/GMA/race-cab-hailing-ride-black-white...

I have used Uber all over the US and in a few other countries. Most Uber drivers I talk to like the flexibility.

Half the “benefits” that people bemoan that Uber drivers don’t get shouldn’t be the responsibility of any private employer. For instance health care shouldn’t be tied to your employee anyway.
by 8f2ab37a-ed6c | 2025-12-07 19:03:27+00:00
With little growth and hiring happening outside of firms betting the farm on AI—and getting the funding to stay alive and play the lottery—what is a random tech employee supposed to do here?

It seems like right now the most rational move to stay in the industry is to milk the AI wave as much as possible, learn all of the tools, get a big brand name on one's resume, and then land somewhere still-alive once the AI music stops? But ultimately if nothing outside of AI is growing, it's one big game of musical chairs and even that might not save you?
by grouchy | 2025-12-07 19:04:06+00:00
I agree this is a real problem.

We will need a new set of tools to help developers with this.

Just like a whole set of web analytics, logging, feedback tools were built when we moved to the web.

Before you could just gather feedback from your employee interactions, or by watching customers in your store.

I don't see this as categorically different, but the tools do not exist today.
by teaearlgraycold | 2025-12-07 19:05:15+00:00
As others have said, the lack of any examples makes this post fall flat.

Also, consider that good work - particularly in art but also in engineering - requires constraints. Knowing what you cannot do adds guard rails and a base set of axioms around which you can build. Perhaps the power of LISP macros and AST manipulation is not “powerful and thus good”, but rather “too powerful and thus complicated”. Needing to write out a boring old function/class/module instead might leave you with code that is simpler to read and design around.
by amarant | 2025-12-07 19:05:36+00:00
Ideally, you'd run your own instance of this, I think.

I can see a product where you purchase a model that has basic training, and then, using the features outlined in the paper, it learns on the fly from your usage.

I can also see there being a secondary market for specially trained models, long-term memory filled with some specific skill, done in some specific way. To make a silly example, imagine buying a licence to Torvald's OS coding assistant, ready to insult your prs before you even commit them!(And possibly help you write code in Torvald's style too)

This would of course require Linus to use the model enough for it to learn,I won't comment on the likelihood of that happening: it's just a silly example after all
by armcat | 2025-12-07 19:06:41+00:00
I agree with you (I have reviewed papers in the past), however, made-up citations are a "signal". Why would the authors do that? If they made it up, most likely they haven't really read that prior work. If they haven't, have they really done proper due dilligence on their research? Are they just trying to "beef up" their paper with citations to unfairly build up credibility?
by ubertaco | 2025-12-07 19:07:02+00:00
Yeah, this and syncthing for keeping our shared password vault file in sync together were 2 of the 3 major reasons my wife's last phone upgrade was a swap from iOS to Android (went with a Pixel 8, which was new at the time).

Since then, Immich and Syncthing+Keepass have worked as well as or better than their proprietary equivalents for my decidedly-non-technical wife.

I did initial setup, and she never has to think about it again. It just works, which is more than I can say for paid cloud subscriptions and their constant nags over exceeded storage space.
by Retric | 2025-12-07 19:07:08+00:00
That’s a reasonable mental model for why this kind of thing can happen, but it’s worth remembering that other possibilities exists. Suppose strain R is adding RR, and strain K is adding KK, and you want RK because the combination is more useful than either RR or KK. There’s no way to get that into a population without some lucky mutations or genetic engineering.

Further you’re likely looking at many such combinations not just a single one.
by antonvs | 2025-12-07 19:07:21+00:00
> The rocks beneath our feet showed incandescent glows deep in the cracks, and we started to smell burned rubber from our cheap tennis.

When I was there, this happened in the area that the rangers guided us to. There was an active flow of pāhoehoe at the time, which we could get as close to as we wanted - the heat was a strong disincentive to doing anything dumb. We were warned at the start that shoes with rubber soles would be ruined, but that warning was too late for me and I had no alternative. It was certainly worth the price of a pair of sneakers though.
by ryandvm | 2025-12-07 19:07:54+00:00
Crypto makes perfect sense if you just understand it's for doing illegal stuff.

No moral judgement, but the only viable use case for the blockchain is doing things with money that the authorities don't want you to do.

Other than that, no, there is no use for a distributed database because doing financial transactions with people you can't even trust to abide by the law is generally a bad idea.
by A4ET8a8uTh0_v2 | 2025-12-07 19:08:18+00:00
The interesting thing is that chatgpt can absolutely profile you and profile you well in ways you probably did not consider ( ask for stylometric fingerprint if you think you are ready to go down that particular rabbit hole ). I don't say it very often, because I simply dislike advertising almost to the degree of certain comedian, but if there ever was a clear mismatch between what the tech can do AND what it actually is being used for, it is llms.
by monsieurbanana | 2025-12-07 19:08:31+00:00
I'm trying to understand why this comment got downvoted. My best guess is that "if you're in the loop, something is wrong" is interpreted as there should be no human involvement at all.

The loop here, imo, refers to the feedback loop. And it's true that ideally there should be no human involvement there. A tight feedback loop is as important for llms as it is for humans. The more automated you make it, the better.
Ask HN: Who else got pwned by the Next.js RCE?
by whycombinetor | 2025-12-07 19:09:12+00:00
I'm a little embarrassed, but not sure what I could have done differently other than reading the Saturday email from GCP with the nondescript subject "New Advisory Notification". Ten hours later, GCP instance suspended due to crypto mining. Now looking at the disk image, it installed something at ~/nxt/ , installed a monero miner at ~/c3pool/ , and added several systemctl services to run these on startup. BRB, killing this machine with fire... This makes me think I should be running everything in Docker, even simple small stuff that "shouldn't" have any potential security issues.

Fortunately this machine wasn't anything important for me and there was no sensitive data to exfil beyond AI API keys. But I imagine there's other orgs that just got catastrophically, irrecoverably pwned.

What's your story?

(RCE context: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46136026 )
by Aurornis | 2025-12-07 19:09:47+00:00
This is my experience with using LLMs for complex tasks: If you're lucky they'll figure it out from a simple description, but to get most things done the way you expect requires a lot of explicit direction, test creation, iteration, and tokens.

One of the keys to being productive with LLMs is learning how to recognize when it's going to take much more effort to babysit the LLM into getting the right result as opposed to simply doing the work yourself.
by lormayna | 2025-12-07 19:09:54+00:00
> Stormshield over Cisco

Stormshield is a very good product but it's mainly designed for industrial scenarios and lacks some features that are essential for an enterprise NGFW (i.e. the protocol inspection covers very few protocols compared to PA/Checkpoint/etc). Unfortunately the enterprise NGFW scenario is dominated by US or Israeli companies, even if some niches brands like Stormshield for OT and Clavister for telcos are Europeans
by estebank | 2025-12-07 19:10:43+00:00
If all Rust accomplishes is ushering some other better project, it would have been worth it.

I think it would take a while for that to happen, purely due to momentum' the same thing that makes some people think that Rust isn't being used will affect any younger language just as much, if not more.

I think that there's an easier language than Rust struggling to come out of it, but if Rust had been that easier language with different compromises, I doubt it would have gained critical mass that allowed it to get where it is today. Being fast and safe meant it carved a niche in a "free square" that drove it to have a clear differentiator that allowed it to gain an initial audience. I also suspect that it is easier toale a language fast and then evolve it to make it easier to use, than it is to make it easy to use first and then make it fast.
by Andrew_nenakhov | 2025-12-07 19:11:28+00:00
> Not at the end. Also back then US had USAID

1960s and 1970s are the end to you, really? USAID, really? You have already proven that you have a very remote understanding of Russia/USSR, please stop trying to bring this point even further.

> I think you are not qualified to say that.

I actually am.

> Talk to more yakuts who live in the "center".

By pure chance, I do have such contacts, they laugh at this decolonization crap. Also by chance, I knew Russians who lived in Yakutia in 1990s, and they did tell me stories of discrimination from the locals. Same as stories of discrimination of Russians in Kazakhstan, Baltic republics, etc -- both in soviet and post-soviet times.
by cess11 | 2025-12-07 19:11:32+00:00
Puppy Linux was pretty sweet back then, I used it for a Gecko machine for a few years until I got a vastly more powerful 'flat' netbook that arrived after those. It was a pretty nice gadget, though one had to have small and/or flexible fingers or the keyboard would have been a pain.

https://www.digitalreviews.net/reviews/pc/norhtec-xcore-geck...

I've noticed Puppy is still around but I have no idea whether it can still be comparable to Tiny Core.
by ForHackernews | 2025-12-07 19:11:55+00:00
Not having root prevents me from taking proper backups that include app data, it prevents me from using Aegis to import TOTP codes from Authy. I get that on some abstract level it is more "secure" from any malicious software that might find its way onto the device, but the practical upshot is largely obstructing the user from using the system.

Have you ever had to work on a locked-down machine at an office? I don't need Google or Graphene to play IT department for me.
by marcyb5st | 2025-12-07 19:12:17+00:00
Can a company like openAI be worth an estimated 1/5th of Alphabet, which offers a similar product but also has an operative system, a browser, the biggest video platform, the most used mail client, its own silicon to running that product, the 3rd most popular Cloud platform, ... ?

I think that is the recklessness in question. Throw in that there is no profit for OpenAI & co and that everything is fueled by debt and the picture is grim (IMHO)
by swatcoder | 2025-12-07 19:12:27+00:00
> rebuild HTML from a screenshot

???

This is precisely the workflow when a traditional graphic designer mocks up a web/app design, which still happens all the time.

They sketch a design in something like Photoshop or Illustrator, because they're fluent in these tools and many have been using them for decades, and somebody else is tasked with figuring out how to slice and encode that design in the target interactive tech (HTML+CSS, SwiftUI, QT, etc).

Large companies, design agencies, and consultancies with tech-first design teams have a different workflow, because they intentionally staff graphic designers with a tighter specialization/preparedness, but that's a much smaller share of the web and software development space than you may think.

There's nothing contrived at all about this test and it's a really great demonstration of how tools like Claude don't take naturally to this important task yet.
by nicoburns | 2025-12-07 19:12:35+00:00
The problem with a constraint system is that it would likely be even more subject to performance problems than the current setup.

IMO what CSS layout really needs is:

1. A "proportion of available space" unit. That is, something like the fr unit in CSS grid except applicable to the width/height properties so it can be used in all layout modes and without an implying content-based minimum size (like fr does).

2. A new "display: stack" (name provisional) layout mode that simply stacks boxes one after the other like "display: block" but that works in both axes, and doesn't have quirks of block layout (margin-collapsing, floats, inline-block splitting, etc).

When combining 1 and 2 you'd have a much more intutive layout system that would still give you most of the power of Flexbox and could be implemented with much better performance.

(and you'd still be able to use the existing layout modes if/when you needed to extra power)
by KolenCh | 2025-12-07 19:12:42+00:00
Some people take Moore’s law in a strong sense: doubling rate is a constant. That is long dead.

But if we relax it to be a slowly varying constant, then it is not dead. That constant has been changed (by consensus) for a few times already.

Your mistake is to (1) take that constant literally (ie using the strong law) and (2) uses the boundary points to find the “average” effect. The latter is a really flawed argument as it cannot prove it hasn’t been dead (a recent effect) because you haven’t considered it’s change over time.
by smoghat | 2025-12-07 19:12:54+00:00
Ok, so here is an interesting case where Claude was almost good enough, but not quite. But I’ve been amusing myself by taking abandoned Mac OS programs from 20 years ago that I find on GitHub and bringing them up to date to work on Apple silicon. For example, jpegview, which was a very fast and simple slideshow viewer. It took about three iterations with Claude code before I had it working. Then it was time to fix some problems, add some features like playing videos, a new layout, and so on. I may be the only person in the world left who wants this app, but well, that was fine for a day long project that cooked in a window with some prompts from me while I did other stuff. I’ll probably tackle scantailor advanced next to clean up some terrible book scans. Again, I have real things to do with my time, but each of these mini projects just requires me to have a browser window open to a Claude code instance while I work on more attention demanding tasks.
by FireBeyond | 2025-12-07 19:13:04+00:00
> I've seen him not being super nice to other people who were trying to have a conversation with him, not because he's not a nice person (I found him quite personable one on one), but it seems to me that he struggles to know how to behave around people who don't know how to just talk to him about things he wants to talk about.

I'd argue that while he may be nice, it's also generally considered impolite to be someone who "only talks to him about the things he wants to talk about". It's meant to be a two-way street, generally. Someone who only wants to talk about what -they- are interested in, not what their conversation partner is interested in is not being nice or polite.