MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by somat | 2025-12-11 17:46:55+00:00
At one point, I think it was TitanFall2, the pc port of a game deliberately converted it's audio to uncompressed wav files in order to inflate the install size, They said it was for performance but the theory was to make it more inconvenient for pirates to distribute.

When the details of exactly why the game was so large came out, many people felt this was a sort of customer betrayal, The publisher was burning a large part of the volume of your precious high speed sdd for a feature that added nothing to the game.

People probably feel the same about this, why were they so disrespectful of our space and bandwidth in the first place? But I agree it is very nice that they wrote up the details in this instance.
by pornel | 2025-12-11 17:47:16+00:00
Many of these mistakes weren't even made by any committee, but were stuff shipped in a rush by Netscape or Microsoft to win the browser wars.

There was some (academic) reaserch behind early CSS concept, but the original vision for it didn't pan out ("cascading" was meant to blend style preferences of users, browsers and page authors, but all we got is selector specificity footguns).

Netscape was planning to release their own imperative styling language, and ended up shipping a buggy CSS hackjob instead.

Once IE was dominant, Microsoft didn't think they have to listen to anybody, so for a while W3C was writing CSS specs that nobody implemented. It's hard to do user research when nothing works and 90% of CSS devs' work is fighting browser bugs.
by FieryMechanic | 2025-12-11 17:47:17+00:00
Compared to the bigger gaming studios they are small. In fact they are not that much larger than the company I work for (not a game studio).

The fact it is un-optimised can be forgiven because the game has plenty of other positives so people like myself are willing to look over them.

I've got a few hundred hours in the game (I play for maybe an hour in the evening) and for £35 it was well worth the money.
by aw1621107 | 2025-12-11 17:47:26+00:00
> There are crucial issues, namely that there is no spec and there is only one implementation. I don't know why Linus is ok with this.

I can try to provide a (weak) steelman argument:

Strictly speaking, neither the lack of a spec nor a single implementation have been blockers for Linux's use of stuff, either now or in the past. Non-standard GCC extensions and flags aren't exactly rare in the kernel, and Linus has been perfectly fine with the single non-standard implementation of those. Linus has also stated in the past (paraphrasing) that what works in practice is more important than what standards dictate [0]. Perhaps Linus feels that what Rust does in practice is good enough, especially given its (currently) limited role in the kernel.

Granted, not having a spec for individual flags/features is not equivalent to not having a spec for the language, so it's not the strongest argument as I said. I do think there's a point nestled in there though - perhaps what happens on the ground is the most important factor. It probably helps that there is work being done on both the spec and multiple implementation fronts.

[0]: https://lkml.org/lkml/2018/6/5/769
by psadri | 2025-12-11 17:47:27+00:00
Google Maps or any other aggregator has an inherent interest in market participant diversity. A lot of suppliers would mean competition, which results in ad spend, which result in higher revenue for the aggregator. Same with Google Search.

It's an interesting equilibrium point. They want local businesses to suffer enough to pay up for ads. But also not too much that they die. A good local business that does not need to advertise because it is simply good is actually a burden to the aggregator even though it is exactly what the end users want to see.

In the past, when I was a in position to build a search engine, we took the trouble of always including organically ranked results that were genuinely good, regardless of whether we got paid or not. I felt it was a long term investment into creating real value for our end users and therefore our service.
by psunavy03 | 2025-12-11 17:47:32+00:00
I moved to a new position recently and was involved with hiring my replacement. We got a good hire, but one of the people my bosses initially wanted to shortlist had an impressive resume, but then you go on LinkedIn and there are two profiles. Same exact headshot. Similar names, as if one of them could be a nickname and one a full name. Career timelines are totally different though.

So just by doing a little pre-interview prep, I found out that this person (if it was a real person and not a persona of some kind) had a resume with one career timeline and two LI profiles with two separate and different career timelines.

Fed this to my bosses who proceeded to have an extremely awkward and brief interview with the person (or the person posing as the person) about "so, in 2022, were you at $FIRST_COMPANY, $SECOND_COMPANY, or $THIRD_COMPANY?" I mean, you have to pass a background check to work at my company even if offered; why do people do this?
by h14h | 2025-12-11 17:47:51+00:00
> How do you envision you’ll work through all of the captured notes? Do it all at the end of the day?

Not entirely sure yet. My current setup involves an Apple shortcut that sends a text blob to my email inbox with the subject "Note to self", where I have a filter set up to send emails with that subject line to a specific folder.

Once the notes are in my inbox, I go through them whenever I get around to clearing my other emails, and I parse each item into my action planner. For that, I'm currently using Mark Forster's "Resistance Zero"[0] system to moderate success, but I've been experimenting with other ways of tracking and actioning my to-dos.

Given the software is open source, I plan to try and hack something together that automatically routes my voice notes as plaintext to that same email filter.

I try to adopt the Unix philosophy when assembling my personal productivity workflow. To that end, I consider this device a composable "quick capture" tool, and nothing more.

> Recording the thought or idea is the easy part, but it only defers the action.

I find that this is very untrue for me.

The tiny bits of friction with other quick-capture systems I've tried add up to a substantial "loss factor" over time. If I use pen/paper, I need to ensure I have my notepad and pen on me at all times. If I use my phone, I also need to have it on me at all times, and then also manage to avoid getting distracted by social media. Either action requires fumbling around with a physical object which is not always convenient or possible.

If this device results in me capturing so many thoughts that I get bogged down and struggle to process them effectively, I would actually consider that a massive success, at least as concerns the specific use-case I aim to address. Any "failure" there is merely an indication that I need to give the "input processing" part of my system some TLC.

> For all of the commenters thinking this is going to solve their distractability problems, I have my doubts.

Fully agree. I have no illusions about this solving anything more than improving the reliability with which I capture thoughts and get them into my system. But anyone who expects this to solve more will likely be disappointed.

Edit: Forgot link.

[0] http://markforster.squarespace.com/blog/2022/6/14/resistance...
by coldpie | 2025-12-11 17:48:50+00:00
> when my boss said, on the phone to a client, "yes, I've got a resource for that".

Hahaha, I got hit with that, too, also working for a small company. Luckily it was the client who called me "a resource", not someone from my company, but good lord what a way that is to talk about human beings.
by mrguyorama | 2025-12-11 17:48:58+00:00
>writing docstrings and type hints

Disagree. Claude makes the same garbage worthless comments as a Freshman CS student. Things like:

// Frobbing the bazz

res = util.frob(bazz);

Or

// If bif is True here then blorg

if (bif){ blorg; }

Like wow, so insightful

And it will ceaselessly try to auto complete your comments with utter nonsense that is mostly grammatically correct.

The most success I have had is using claude to help with Spring Boot annotations and config processing (Because documentation is just not direct enough IMO) and to rubber duck debug with, where claude just barely edges out the rubber duck.
by blibble | 2025-12-11 17:49:05+00:00
> Why is Microsoft supposed to listen?

that's the point isn't it?

GitHub was a product that was loved by its userbase, because it was built by developers for developers

but Microsoft only care about one person, and one person alone: the individual that approves the purchase order

the people who have to suffer actually using the software are unimportant

which explains the rapid descent of GitHub into your standard quality Microsoft product (i.e.: terrible)
by rzimmerman | 2025-12-11 17:49:31+00:00
It's interesting to try to create a metric of collision avoidance "stress" and resiliency to outages. I don't think this is a particularly useful one (and the title is alarmist/flamebait), but it is a first cut at something new. A more nuanced aggregate strategy for different orbital altitudes would make sense. Maybe some can suggest (or has already suggested) a comprehensive way to keep the risk of cascading debris events low (and measured) that is useful for launch planning.

Complete loss of control of the entire Starlink constellation (or any megaconstellation) for days at a time would be an intense event. Any environmental cause (a solar event) would be catastrophic ground-side as well. Starlink satellites will decay and re-enter pretty quickly if they lose attitude control, so it's a bit of a race between collisions and drag. Starlink solar arrays are quite large drag surfaces and the orbital decay probably makes collisions less likely. I would not be surprised if satellites are designed to deorbit without ground contact for some period of time. I'm sure SpaceX has done some interesting math on this and it would be interesting to see.

Collision avoidance warnings are public (with an account): https://www.space-track.org/ But importantly they are intended to be actionable, conservative warnings a few days to a week out. They overstate the probability based on assumptions like this paper (estimates at cross-sectional area, uncertainty in orbital knowledge from ground radar, ignorance of attitude control or for future maneuvers). Operators like SpaceX will take these and use their own high-fidelity knowledge (from onboard GPS) to get a less conservative, more realistic probability assessment. These probabilities invariably decrease over time as the uncertainty gets lower. Starlink satellites are constantly under thrust to stay in a low orbit with a big draggy solar array, so a "collision avoidance manuever" to them is really just a slight change to the thrust profile.

Interesting stuff in the paper, but I'm annoyed at the title. I hate when people fear-bait about Kessler syndrome against some of the more responsible actors.
by parliament32 | 2025-12-11 17:49:42+00:00
The author is complaining a lot about implementation pains without taking a step back and looking at why it exists in the first place.

Say you work at a place that deals with credit cards. You, as a security engineer, have a mandate to stop employees from shipping CC numbers outside the org.

You can educate all you want, you can have scary policies and HR buy-in, you can have all the "Anomaly detection, Zero Trust network architecture, EDR, Netflow analysis" in the world, but exactly zero of those will stop Joe Lunchbox from copy/pasting a block with a CC number in the middle into ChatGPT. You know what will? A TLS-inspecting proxy with some DLP bits and bobs.

It sucks, yes. But it works, and (short of the fool's errand of trying to whitelist every site any employee needs) it's the only thing that works.

And yes, I'm aware PCI DSS has additional requirements for CDEs and whatnot, but really this can apply to anything -- a local government office dealing with SSNs, a school with student ID numbers, a corporation with trade secrets.. these problems exist everywhere, and implementing PCI-like controls is often a bridge too far for unregulated industries.
by dspillett | 2025-12-11 17:50:58+00:00
> You might think it's a buyer's market, but all you wind up hiring right now are the best liars.

And wasting a lot of time on the not-so-good liars. We've recently taken on someone for an infrastructure management role and apparently things are much much worse than they were last time we needed that sort of resource (about five years ago). Padding CVs was always an issue, but completely making them up, or getting ChatGPT to do it for you, now seems to be the default behaviour.
by verdverm | 2025-12-11 17:51:32+00:00
I'm implementing this concept with OCI layers, so in my mind, we already have a protocol and if we add a manifest spec that includes some things beyond what container images normally do, that seems sufficient to me

The proposal uses too much fanciful or made up words, if you read it, you'll know the vibe I'm talking about but cannot find the right words to describe. An amount of anthropomorphizing, more so in trying to impart how human intelligence works into the machines. OP, this would be the first place address in your proposal. We don't need some unintuitive word like "artipoint" or "cortex layer", use industry terms instead
by stuffn | 2025-12-11 17:51:36+00:00
> and as an employee you should also be focused on that as your goal.

Insofar as my paycheck continually rises at a rate substantially greater than inflation. Otherwise, I couldn't honestly give two shits about how well the company is doing. An employee should run themselves as a business. A company who is not willing to pay premium with substantial raises gets Jiffy Lube service. LLMs have been amazing for this if you're decent at prompt "engineering" and can get it to make code that looks reasonable.

To paraphrase the documentary Office Space, "If I work extra hard and innotech sells 10 more widgets I don't get a dime". Useless RSOs don't count. If I work 60 hours a week to ship $PRODUCT and sales gets a bonus and box seats to a lakers game, and I get to "keep my job" I have lost. Employees are amazing at losing. The entire pay structure, pyramid shaped rank distribution, and taxes are designed to keep you as close to broke as possible. There's no real reason the drooler class should get paid massive salaries (sales, executives) but they do because droolers display traits commensurate to the dark triad.

> Often if you can't get that, it's not so much because of maximizing profit, but that your boss just isn't good.

You'd be wise to read 48 Laws of Power, which perfectly describes the purpose for people becoming bosses. It's a selfish calculus for sociopaths of which you cannot be a "leader" without having some amount of dark triad traits intrinsic to your personality. The best leaders are, in fact, tyrants. You need only to look at the greatest companies in history and their leaders to realize this.

> It's much harder to motivate people to work their hardest, to properly prioritize and make the hard trade off to focus the resources on the best ROI, to actually unblock blockers, to mentor and put processes that actually help quality go up and velocity go up. Etc.

Under no circumstance should someone who is paid based on hours-in-seat ever "work their hardest". If the relationship between work and pay is linear (or sub-linear in the case of unpaid overtime in which case you should work even less) you should work as little as necessary to fit that curve. In this way, you can maximize the utility of your free time to produce non-linear gain.
by kermatt | 2025-12-11 17:51:37+00:00
They have it right. Goals are short term, jobs are ephemeral. Hell, maybe careers are ephemeral now as well.

If the individual's focus is on short term income or career growth, then they align with the company's goals.

Solid engineering practices and product quality don't matter anymore (except in FOSS), and will likely be viewed as antagonistic to the KPIs, OKRs, or whatever metrics measure what is considered success.

Stated as someone who has been in various forms of IT since 1985, and has experienced most of software engineering turned into an MBA value extraction mindset. If you can't beat 'em, join 'em.
by pdimitar | 2025-12-11 17:51:52+00:00
To the author: You have thought about your boss likely 100x more than he ever thought about you.

Don't do him this favor. You are giving him too much power that way.

And be sure that he forgot about you, like COMPLETELY, maximum 72 hours after you were let go. Do the same. Take your lessons, internalize them, and forget the source. Be like an LLM: have the right conclusion inside your brain after the source material is long gone and thrown out.

Move on.

---

I am in my 40s and just now I am beginning to start understanding only a part of the dynamics involved in companies. But the TL;DR is that executives want to shine and look better, always. They only care about an ever-increasing compensation _and_ bonuses. They care not about the company's long-term success.

If you are in the way of that -- with your pesky technical stability and less resource usage, being one example -- then you are an inconvenience and will be removed. They want people who help them look better to their upper echelons.

That's just one example.

From here on my playbook will be to attend more executive meetings when I start a job, and get a feel of who does what and what are their goals -- and make sure I at least don't stand in the line of the fire when sh1t hits the fan. And will always have something else lined up even if I love my current team to bits. Simply because the said said team has exactly zero say if I get to stay or get booted out simply because somebody two levels above wants a promotion and my salary is making it look like they spend too much.

(I remember how much I regretted losing one job some three years ago. I loved everyone there but I had a terrible health condition and couldn't perform. But you know what? The guy who was practically doing 80% of everything there, all the time, got fired a year and half after me. Reason? Product is done and delivered, we don't need you anymore, nevermind that we get feature requests and the occasional bug reports all the time.)

"Nothing personal. Just business."

Well, two can play at that game. Wish me luck. I want my heart to harden. I want to stop caring. I want to learn to preserve my caring for the things that truly excite me about technology.

I might fail. But I am very quickly learning the game and I will adapt.

I wish OP does the same.
by ferguess_k | 2025-12-11 17:52:11+00:00
I guess none of us really needs those 9s, and even two 9s are just good enough. I even doubt whether *SOME* of the banking transactions really really really need those 9s too -- like, I don't really mind if 1 out of 100 credit payment doesn't go through so I have to do it again -- it does happen once for a while and I just swiped it again.
by liudasjank | 2025-12-11 17:53:18+00:00
A bit more technical context on how I tested this, since people usually ask about methodology. I took the exact cURL from the browser’s network tab and generated variations around it: missing fields, oversized body, invalid types, wrong methods, malformed JSON, and different auth states. Nothing fancy or brute-force — just the basics of what a QA engineer would check to understand API hygiene.

The surprising part was not that bugs existed, but which ones appeared: a large payload causing a 500 instead of a controlled 413, and later the backend returning the entire user-provided payload back in a 422. Both cases create avoidable load and unnecessary reflection, which is rare to see in well-designed public APIs. The bigger surprise was how fast these were fixed. Three separate issues were resolved within days, which is unusually quick for any large-scale system.
by venturecruelty | 2025-12-11 17:53:19+00:00
Well, it's hard to do anything else when management doesn't let you, and when your entire life is on the line. Nobody's going to risk homelessness (or worse: a lack of health insurance) on principles that are simply not rewarded anymore. There is an entire generation of programmers who wouldn't recognize software quality if it bit them on the Electron app. It's not their fault, but it's the way things are now. Unless and until this relentless obsession with hoarding wealth changes, we will continue to get the software we deserve. Selah.
by Aurornis | 2025-12-11 17:53:33+00:00
None of the open weights models you can run locally will perform at the same level as the hosted frontier models. Some of them are becoming better, but the step-down in output quality is very noticeable for me.

> If Github sold a $5000 box I could plug into a corner in my house and just use that entire experience locally I'd seriously consider it. I'm guessing maybe I could get partway there by spending twice that on a Mac Pro but I have no idea what the software stack would look like today.

Right now, the only reasons to host LLMs locally are if you want to do it as a hobby or you are sensitive about data leaving your local network. If you only want a substitute for Copilot when GitHub is down, any of the hosted LLMs will work right away with no up front investment and lower overall cost. Most IDEs and text editors have built-in support for connecting to other hosted models or installing plugins for it.

> I know at least some people are managing local fleets of agents in some manner,

If your goal is to run fleets of agents in parallel, local LLM hosting is going to be a bottleneck. Familiarize yourself with some of the different tool options out their (Claude Code, Cline, even the new Mistral Vibe) and sign up for their cloud API. You can also check OpenRouter for some more options. The cloud hosted LLMs will absorb parallel requests without problem.
by colechristensen | 2025-12-11 17:53:35+00:00
An NVIDIA DGX Spark is $4000, pair that with a relatively cheap second box to run GitLab in the corner and you would have pretty good local AI inference setup. (you'd probably have to write a nontrivial amount of software to get your setup where you want)

The local models are just right on the edge of being really useful, there's a tipping point to where accuracy is high enough so that getting things done is easy vs models getting continuously stuck. We're in the neighborhood.

Alternatively, just have local GitLab and use one of the many APIs, those are much more stable than github. Honestly just get yourself a Claude subscription.
Show HN: Open-source UI components for apps that run inside ChatGPT
by stosssik | 2025-12-11 17:53:40+00:00
800M people use ChatGPT and Claude weekly. Right now they get text responses. Soon they'll get real interfaces: product cards, blog posts, booking flows, payment screens rendered directly in the conversation.

We built an open-source component library for this. Install any block with one command and customize it to your brand.

If you're building MCP servers or experimenting with AI-native apps, this might save you time.

Are you building apps for AI assistants? Would love to hear what's missing in your workflow.