MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by ZeroConcerns | 2025-12-11 16:22:44+00:00
Well, possibly unrelated to all of this, but in my experience, multilingual spell-checking has gotten noticeably worse on both iOS and Windows, to the point where I had to disable auto-correct wherever that's possible (and that's, unfortunately, pretty far from everywhere!).

This particular problem manifests as: you're conversing in one language (say, French) and then use a single English word, at which point the spell-check and auto-correct permanently switches to that language, mis-correcting pretty much everything from that point onward.

(Classic) Outlook on Windows is pretty much entirely broken for me these days (even if I repeatedly mark the entire message as being in the majority language), as is Safari on MacOS: even in a completely-Dutch conversation, it always insists on auto-completing 'lang' ('long' but can also be 'tall') to 'language' and it's absolutely infuriating, and with no apparent way to disable the madness... (and, interestingly, no mechanism to detect that I dismissed the auto-complete for the 100th consecutive time, and that it's possibly not a desirable substitution)
by brokencode | 2025-12-11 16:22:54+00:00
There have been bugs and regressions since forever. It’s easy to look back with rose colored glasses, but I don’t think software has actually gotten worse.

Just look back at the Snow Leopard release of OS X. It was specifically marketed at having no new features and just being a fix and optimization release because Leopard was such a mess. And people were happy about this.
by thewebguyd | 2025-12-11 16:22:56+00:00
> without seeing just how effective it can be once you zoom in.

The love/hate flame war continues because the LLM companies aren't selling you on this. The hype is all about "this tech will enable non-experts to do things they couldn't do before" not "this tech will help already existing experts with their specific niche," hence the disconnect between the sales hype and reality.

If OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, etc. were all honest and tempered their own hype and misleading marketing, I doubt there would even be a flame war. The marketing hype is "this will replace employees" without the required fine print of "this tool still needs to be operated by an expert in the field and not your average non technical manager."
by claudiulodro | 2025-12-11 16:22:59+00:00
Real estate, automobiles, credentials/degrees, and businesses are all assets that would counterbalance their debt. (Credentials and degrees are not liquid, but you'd be hard pressed to argue that a doctor's license isn't worth many dollars).

The much more likely situation is a person with no assets or money and some credit card debt. Indeed, a person with simply no money is better off than such a person.
by mbg721 | 2025-12-11 16:23:03+00:00
The experience of going to a movie may not be what it was before streaming or even the VCR, but the fewer theaters that remain have gotten nicer in their own way. I can recline the big leather chair and have food delivered to my seat.

One of the WSJ comments made the comparison to drive-ins, which are now a rare niche thing...I think my US metro area has maybe 2 left. But those have less control over the viewer experience than a regular theater does.
by modeless | 2025-12-11 16:23:05+00:00
If the Starlink satellites all collided, the worst case is that we would have to ditch the space station (which is already planned in a few years) and wait a few years to launch more into LEO. The debris deorbits automatically due to atmospheric drag. And in the meantime we would still be able to launch through the cloud to higher orbits or escape velocity as it wouldn't be dense enough to hit something that only passes though for a couple of minutes.

IMO now that LEO communication satellites are feasible we should ban launching satellites into higher orbits. Collision debris up there is much, much worse because it's essentially permanent. It will not deorbit by itself for thousands of years or more, and there is no plausible way to clean it up even with technology much more advanced than ours.
by Xenoamorphous | 2025-12-11 16:23:08+00:00
Kinda tangential but in the advent of AI I feel like there won’t be a niche for “handcrafted software”.

When quartz watches came up the makers of mechanical watches struggled. Quartz watches are cheaper, more accurate in many cases and servicing is usually restricted to replacing a battery. However some people appreciate a good mechanical watch (and the status symbol aspect of course) and nowadays the mechanical watch market is flourishing. Something similar happened with artificial fabrics (polyester, acrylic) and cheap made clothes, there’s a market for handmade clothes that use natural fabrics.

Nobody (well, barring a few HN readers) will ever care if the software was written by people or a bot, as long as it works.
by pdntspa | 2025-12-11 16:23:15+00:00
That's why you treat it like a junior dev. You do the fun stuff of supervising the product, overseeing design and implementation, breaking up the work, and reviewing the outputs. It does the boring stuff of actually writing the code.

I am phenomenally productive this way, I am happier at my job, and its quality of work is extremely high as long as I occasionally have it stop and self-review it's progress against the style principles articulated in its AGENTS.md file. (As it tends to forget a lot of rules like DRY)
by aleph_minus_one | 2025-12-11 16:23:15+00:00
> Health insurance companies don't have no steenkin "actuarial reserve". Inventing one is an act of rhetorical desperation on your part.

This is how private health insurance companies work in Germany and many other countries (more precisely for Germany "private Krankenversicherung nach Art der Lebensversicherung" (Google Translate: private health insurance in the form of life insurance); formally, in Germany there also exists "private Krankenversicherung nach Art der Schadenversicherung" (Google Translate: private health insurance according to the type of indemnity insurance)).

Facts:

- I have already worked with certified actuaries, and I am thus very certain that building an actuarial reserve which is then phased out when you get older [in German: Auf- und Abbau der Deckungsrückstellung (for life insurance) und Altersrückstellung (for health insurance) (in English, the term "actuarial reserve" is used for both kinds of reserves)]) is how the mathematics of life and private health insurance companies works (OK, formally only for the kind of health insurance that in German is called "private Krankenversicherung nach Art der Lebensversicherung" (Google Translate: private health insurance in the form of life insurance))

- if you still don't believe my claims, just read a good textbook about insurance of persons
by xahrepap | 2025-12-11 16:23:36+00:00
> That would probably not trigger anyone’s midnight pager, but it would make it clear that relying on the deprecated functionality is a bug lurking in the code.

How do you know? This is a wild assertion. This idea is terrible. I thought it was common knowledge that difficult to reproduce, seemingly random bugs are much more difficult to find and fix than compiler errors.

If you're ready to break your api, break your api. Don't play games with me. If more people actually removed deprecated APIs in a timely manner, then people will start taking it more seriously.
by ayubu | 2025-12-11 16:23:47+00:00
I think you’d need only a few hours to get used to the let style. Other syntaxes may feel more intuitive simply because we’ve seen more C-style code, but there’s nothing intrinsically “superior” about them. For me, the match syntax, the function signatures, the |> operator, and OCaml’s approach to shadowing are all very readable... often easier to grasp than the equivalent constructs in many other languages.
by HarHarVeryFunny | 2025-12-11 16:23:49+00:00
Yes, but animal/human brains (cortex) appear to have evolved to be prediction machines, originally mostly predicting evolving sensory inputs (how external objects behave), and predicting real-world responses to the animal's actions.

Language seems to be taking advantage of this pre-existing predictive architecture, and would have again learnt by predicting sensory inputs (heard language), which as we have seen is enough to induce ability to generate it too.
by rconti | 2025-12-11 16:23:55+00:00
I've never noticed the "censorship issue", but once it gets a word wrong once, it's game over. Editing is awful. If I'm trying to replace the word entirely, I inevitably do the "wrong thing" and fall victim to the editing again, or tap something wrong, or.. I don't know, but I either have an undiagnosed brain injury, or the "correct" thing to do to get the phone to just take the damn word you typed changes every day.
by m0llusk | 2025-12-11 16:24:08+00:00
> To build it requires companies to invest a sum of money unlike anything in living memory.

Do we know this? Smaller more carefully curated training sets are proving to be valuable and gaining traction. It seems like the strategy of throwing huge amounts of data at LLMs is specific to companies that are attempting to dominate this space regardless of cost. It may turn out that more modest and better optimized methodologies will end up winning this race, much like WebVan flamed out taking huge amounts of investment money with them but now Instacart serves the same sector in a way that actually works robustly and profitably.
by ricorobertsjr74 | 2025-12-11 16:24:20+00:00
Direct link: https://lcs-engine.streamlit.app Takes about 30 seconds to complete the onboarding quiz, then you'll see personalized strategy recommendations with AI explanations. Early validation: 102 user responses - 69% rated "very valuable", 100% willing to pay. Currently exploring B2B licensing (white-label education layer for fintech platforms) vs. direct-to-consumer. Particularly interested in feedback on the AI explanations - are they too technical? Too simple? Missing key context?
by dwa3592 | 2025-12-11 16:24:29+00:00
"In a full description of the structure in a paper submitted in August 1953 and published in 1954, Crick and Watson did attempt to set the record straight17. They acknowledged that, without Franklin’s data, “the formulation of our structure would have been most unlikely, if not impossible”, and implicitly referred to the MRC report as a “preliminary report” in which Franklin and Wilkins had “independently suggested that the basic structure of the paracrystalline [B] form is helical and contains two intertwined chains”."

What Rosalind Franklin truly contributed to the discovery of DNA’s structure - https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-01313-5
by dec0dedab0de | 2025-12-11 16:24:31+00:00
Please do the opposite. Let all deprecation warnings last at least a decade, just include in the warning that it is not maintained.

But more to the point, go out of your way to avoid breaking backwards compatibility. If it's possible to achieve the same functionality a different way, just modify the deprecated function to use the new function in the background.

My biggest problem with the whole static typing trend is that it makes developers feel empowered to break backwards compatibility when it would be trivial to keep things working.

edit: Not that it is always trivial to avoid breaking backwards compatibility, but there are so many times that it would be.
by bluGill | 2025-12-11 16:24:39+00:00
There are a lot of "it depends" in the math, it takes somewhere around 60-80k miles to break even on the $10k difference. Most new car owners only keep the car for around 30,000 miles (leases are often 3 years, max of 32,000 miles). And so far EVs are not holding their value as well as ICE cars so a few more miles. Long term EVs are a lot cheaper, but for the new car buyer they don't make financial sense yet. (new car buyers also get a warranty so additional costs are cheap - $600 for oil changes over that time if they buy the most expensive dealer package, and a lot less if they go elsewhere)
Show HN: Nimbalyst: local WYSIWYG Markdown/mockup tool powered by Claude Code
by radial_symmetry | 2025-12-11 16:25:02+00:00
Hello Hacker News. The four of us have been getting the best results with Claude Code when we iterate with it to build full context and then use and update that context as we work. So, we built Nimbalyst to maximize our (and your) ability to iterate and build context with and for AI.

Nimbalyst is the local WYSIWYG editor and session manager where you iterate with Claude Code on docs, diagrams, mockups, and code.

Nimbalyst lets you:

- Use all the power of Claude Code in a UI

- Work with Claude Code to write and edit WYSIWYG markdown, see AI changes as red/green, approve them

- Integrate mermaid diagrams, text, tables, mockups, and images in standard markdown for human/AI context

- Iterate on html mockups with Claude Code, annotating the mockups, and then use them as context for people and Claude Code coding

- Tie sessions to documents to sessions, find and resume sessions, treat sessions as context, run parallel sessions

- Code with Claude Code with all of this context, use / commands, see git status

Nimbalyst is in Beta, local, and free. We would love your feedback.
by reaperducer | 2025-12-11 16:25:20+00:00
Has The Guardian confirmed the facts either way? Or are they just reporting what people say without digging deeper?

I think reporting ought to try to get to some level of truth through rigor.

I think I'm getting bored with all the deflection bots and puppets on HN saying, "Don't discuss the issue in the OP's article! Look over here, instead!"
by jjice | 2025-12-11 16:25:38+00:00
Similar switching story. I'm very happy with an iPhone overall, but god damn they keyboard took some adjusting. The default keyboard on Pixels (GBoard?) is excellent. The autocorrect is also unimaginably better on the Pixel. It's embarrassing how bad the iPhone's autocorrect is. Not just missing obvious cases, but actively sabotaging correct cases.
by mullingitover | 2025-12-11 16:26:03+00:00
Facebook 'reduced distribution,' they didn't block. And again, your original claim was that social media somehow blocked scientific debate, which is categorically false. All these claims are hand-waving away the fact that this was published in the BMJ from the outset.

Facebook could throw all their servers in a wood chipper today and it would have zero effect on scientific debate in the world.
by gldrk | 2025-12-11 16:26:12+00:00
>This uses a static variable to have it persist between both the compare function calls that qsort makes and the main call which (potentially) changes its value to be 1 instead of 0

The only misleading thing here is that ‘static’ is monospaced in the article (this can’t be seen on HN). Other than that, ‘static variable’ can plausibly refer to an object with a static storage duration, which is what the C standard would call it.

>moving the variable from the stack to the "global data" which is generally heap-allocated as the program loads

It is not heap-allocated because you can’t free() it. Non-zero static data is not even anonymously mapped, it is file-backed with copy-on-write.
by thijsverreck | 2025-12-11 16:26:13+00:00
Hey HN! :)

I've been building with AI coding tools for about two years and kept hitting the same problem: every session starts fresh. You explain your project, build something, close the laptop, then do it all again tomorrow.

Tried fixing it with better prompts. Didn't help. The issue was organizational, not instructional.

So I made three folders: context (reference files), plans (numbered prompts for multi-session work), and messages (agent coordination). No plugins, no infra, just markdown files.

It's simple but it changed how much I actually ship. Open sourced it in case others have the same problem.
by RGamma | 2025-12-11 16:26:30+00:00
Normally I tend to wait before each major release, but I got lured by unknown caller screening. Then I noticed there's no unknown caller screening for me (just a useless setting to move unknown callers to a different list). They also removed blocking numbers directly from the recents list and the new phone layout is a complete mess.

For me it's been going downhill since the update that changed the settings app to show apps (even system ones) on a different page. Iwas seriosuly inpressed with the settings app when I first switched to Apple from Android, and now it's terrible.

Meanwhile you still can't freely set the search wngkne for Safari, contacts always forgets my custom labels, camera doesn't allow free control over the flashlight,...

P.S. Typos due to iOS26
by Grosvenor | 2025-12-11 16:27:05+00:00
And we have those French/English text corpora in the form of Canadian law. All laws in Canada at the federal level are written in English and French.

This was used to build the first modern language translation systems, testing them going from English->french->english. And in reverse.

You could do similar here , understanding that your language is quite stilted legalese.

Edit: there might be other countries with similar rules in place that you could source test data from as well.
by jermaustin1 | 2025-12-11 16:27:08+00:00
Nice strawman :)

SF NIMBY aren't environmentalists, they are obstructionists.

Now for a true scotsmanism - actual environmentalists overwhelmingly support nuclear power, expansion of wind and solar, and geothermal where it is easy to get to, and not too destructive to drill for.

I've not surveyed the population that travels to burningman, but I doubt they are all against sustainable energy, but I've never been, so I don't know.

Environmentalist is a discipline, not a personality type.
by zahlman | 2025-12-11 16:27:20+00:00
> Also Google "Elsagate" to see what sorts of things people would like to do with Disney characters. Or a YouTube search for Elsagate.... Elsagate shows the level of effort that people are willing to put into this (a strange combination of laziness, but extreme effort poured into enabling that laziness).

I still wonder what motivates the people behind that sort of thing. It'd be easy to understand if it were just porn, but what's been described to me is just... bizarre.
by z33k | 2025-12-11 16:27:58+00:00
You need to use the features that Claude Code gives you in order to be successful with it. Your build and tests should be in a Stop hook that prevent Claude from stopping if the build or tests fail. Combining this with a Stop hook that bails out if the first hook failed n times already prevents infinite loops.

With anything above a toy project, you need to be really good with context window management. Usually this means using subagents and scoping prompts correctly by placing the CLAUDE.md files next to the relevant code. Your main conversation's context window usage should pretty much never be above 50%. Use the /clear command between unrelated tasks. Consider if recurring sequences of tool calls could be unified into a single skill.

Instead of sending instructions to the agent straight away, try planning with it and prompting it to ask your questions about your plan. The planning phase is a good place to give Claude more space to think with "think > think hard > ultrathink". If you are still struggling with the agent not complying, try adding emplasis with "YOU MUST" or "IMPORTANT".
by deltoidmaximus | 2025-12-11 16:28:18+00:00
Back when the first moat creation gambit for AI failed (that they were creating SkyNet so the government needs to block anyone else from working on SkyNet since only OpenAI can be trusted to control it not just any rando) they moved onto the safety angle with the same idea. I recall seeing an infographic that all the major players were signed onto some kind of safety pledge, Meta, OpenAI, Microsoft, etc. Basically they didn't want anyone else training on the whole world's data because only they could be trusted to not do nefarious things with it. The infographic had a statement about not training on CSAM and revenge porn and the like but the corpospeak it was worded in made it sound like they were promising not to do it anymore, not that they never did.

I've tried to find this graphic against several times over the years but it's either been scrubbed from the internet or I just can't remember enough details to find it. Amusingly, it only just occurred to me that maybe I should ask ChatGPT to help me find it.
by timerol | 2025-12-11 16:28:49+00:00
The neat thing about electric cars is that they get cleaner as the grid gets cleaner. If you bought an EV in 2015 (when this report was published) and were worried about the grid mix, I have good news for you. Electricity production from coal in the US is in the process of falling off a cliff, dropping to 15% of the electricity mix in 2023 from over 30% in 2015. https://wolfstreet.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/US-electri...
by baseballdork | 2025-12-11 16:29:07+00:00
> I've never noticed the "censorship issue"

Really? If you swipe "kill" and then try "yourself" or "myself" does it ever get it right or provide it as one of the options? Doing it right now myself and I can't get it to do either. I have manually entered those words and hit the "myself" in the suggestion box to try and convince it that that's an acceptable correction to no avail.

> I inevitably do the "wrong thing" and fall victim to the editing again, or tap something wrong, or.. I don't know

Every. Time. I like to think that I'm not an idiot and can generally pattern recognize, but it just feels so inconsistent that I'm always doing the wrong thing.
by segmondy | 2025-12-11 16:29:53+00:00
Is it? The used data center P40s I bought for $150 2 years ago went back up to $450 a few months ago, I sold one for $400. I just checked and price is down to $200, so I'm still profitable. I bought MI50s for $90 less than a year ago, they are now going for $200. What deterioration? OPs gear was far less and is no longer deprecating. It will probably hold this value for the next 4 years.
by silisili | 2025-12-11 16:29:54+00:00
Agreed.

I'm not sure at what point it must have way overcorrected. Most if not every single thing I was taught in school that a lot members of this group did/invented turned out to be an exaggeration or outright lie, I came to find out later.

Which is a shame, because most of their stories are interesting in their own right to have been properly explained. Now, instead of lifting anyone up, we're doing some weird dance of fighting back and forth about who is lying(and usually, the answer is both sides).
Show HN: Layered Config. A simple structured configuration loader for Python
by bitranox | 2025-12-11 16:29:57+00:00
Hi everyone, I built a small library called lib_layered_config to make configuration handling more predictable in Python projects. I often struggled with codebases where config values came from many places, so I wanted something lightweight that supports clear layering. For example. defaults → environment variables → config files → CLI overrides.

The library focuses on: • Straightforward layering rules • Minimal API surface • Easy integration into existing projects • Zero unnecessary dependencies

GitHub. https://github.com/bitranox/lib_layered_config

I would love feedback on the API design, missing features, or real world edge cases. If you try it, please let me know how it works for you.

Thanks for taking a look.
by pdntspa | 2025-12-11 16:30:13+00:00
Me writing code is me spending 3/4 of my time wading through documentation and google searches. It's absolutely hell on my ADD. My ability to memorize is absolutely garbage. Throughout my career I've worked in like 10 different languages, and in any given project I'm usually working in at least 3 or 4. There's a lot of "now what is a map operation in this stupid fucking language called again?!"

Claude writing code gets the same output if not better in about 1/10 of the time.

That's where you realize that the writing code bits are just one small part of the overall picture. One that I realize I could do without.