MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by keyringlight | 2026-01-11 23:24:17+00:00
IIRC, win8 was the last windows to have thick graphical window borders, and that was after they got rid of the texture/aero look from vista/7, so at that point you at least had something graphical to grab onto which (mostly?) matched where the cursor was. Then in win10 onwards they shrunk the border down to one pixel with the zone around it where you can click off the window but still affect it.

On the back of my mind I think part of this was the move to fit scaling to large resolution monitors (i.e. 4k+) work better, as a graphical border of a fixed pixel width will shrink proportionally compared to a border that is as thin as it can be. For a while I've felt that it's a missed opportunity on high res displays to not use more detailed art for window chrome as pixel wide will only get smaller and more difficult to distinguish, such as the minimize/maximize/close icons which remain pixel wide line art even at big scaling.
by Rebelgecko | 2026-01-11 23:25:21+00:00
Llm hallucination? I want to give posters the benefit of the doubt but I didn't mention a reddit thread.

If you're just getting me mixed up with another poster, I got my stats from an electrek article supplemented by Waymo's releases: https://waymo.com/safety/impact/

Tesla's tech is also marketed as a full self driving autopilot, not just basic driver assistance like adaptive cruise control.

That's how they're doing the autonomous robotaxis and the cross country drives without anyone touching the steering wheel.
by remix2000 | 2026-01-11 23:25:52+00:00
It doesn't really feel like those companies care about money anymore, to me at least it feels like we're in the middle of an ongoing total economic collapse and their actions seem to concur. Why else would they be stockpiling assets, infrastructure and all the tangible stuff they avoided so far? May sound slightly conspiracy-ish, but honestly, it's somehow the theories pushed into mainstream that are laughable nowadays.
by wongarsu | 2026-01-11 23:25:55+00:00
Also from the article:

"Note that this is “run-to-run deterministic.” If you run the script multiple times, it will deterministically return the same result. However, when a non-batch-invariant kernel is used as part of a larger inference system, the system can become nondeterministic. When you make a query to an inference endpoint, the amount of load the server is under is effectively “nondeterministic” from the user’s perspective"

Which is a factor you can control when running your own local inference, and in many simple inference engines simply doesn't happen. In those cases you do get deterministic output at temperature=0 (provided they got everything else mentioned in the article right)
by bsimpson | 2026-01-11 23:26:10+00:00
Scott Jenson - who worked on the classic Mac for Apple, and Android for Google - recently gave a talk on this:

https://youtu.be/1fZTOjd_bOQ?si=BVOxUPjoULhwiclE

The tl;dw is that copying UX lets others invest energy in identifying the paradigm. Linux, which tends to be starved for resources, has historically been reasonably well served by letting Apple and Microsoft define UX, while Linux focuses on implementing it. However, those headlining companies haven't been investing in desktop UX excellence in recent years. It's time for open source projects to embrace experimentation and take the mantle of cutting edge UX, because Apple et. al. aren't paving the way anymore.
by imiric | 2026-01-11 23:26:14+00:00
Cars have similar UX issues as well. See the whole touchscreen saga.

It's also an issue on Linux, to an extent. GNOME has a tendency of forcing UIs on users, and Ubuntu with Unity, now GNOME again, etc. Though, thankfully, since the user is free to choose their own desktop environment and window manager, it's not as pressing of an issue.

I realized many years ago that simpler UIs deliver the best UX. This is a large reason why I love the command line so much. Most programs have a fixed and stable interface, and can be composed to do what I want. For graphical programs I prefer using a simple window manager like bspwm on X, and niri on Wayland. These don't draw window decorations, and are primarily keyboard-driven, so I don't need superfluous graphics. I only need a simple status bar that shows my workspaces, active window, and some system information. I recently configured it with Quickshell[1], and couldn't be happier. I plan to use this setup for years to come, and it gives me great peace of mind knowing that no company can take that away from me. I will have to maintain it myself, but there shouldn't be any changes in the programs I use to break this in a major way.

[1]: https://github.com/imiric/quickshell-niri/tree/main/fancy-ba...
by mattmanser | 2026-01-11 23:26:32+00:00
I have a lot of respect from Simon and read a lot of his articles.

But I'm still seeing clear evidence it IS a statistical text prediction model. You ask it the right niche thing and it can only pump out a few variations of the same code, that's clearly someone else's code stolen almost verbatim.

And I just use it 2 or 3 times a day.

How are SimonW and AntiRez not seeing the same thing?

How are they not seeing the propensity for both Claude + ChatGPT to spit out tons of completely pointless error handling code, making what should be a 5 line function a 50 line one?

How are they not seeing that you constantly have to nag it to use modern syntax. Typescript, C#, Python, doesn't matter what you're writing in, it will regularly spit out code patterns that are 10 years out of date. And woe betide you using a library that got updated in the last 2 years. It will constantly revert back to old syntax over and over and over again.

I've also had to deal with a few of my colleagues using AI code on codebases they don't really understand. Wrong sort, id instead of timestamp. Wrong limit. Wrong json encoding, missing key converters. Wrong timezone on dates. A ton of subtle, not obvious, bugs unless you intimately know the code, but would be things you'd look up if you were writing the code.

And that's not even including the bit where the AI obviously decided to edit the wrong search function in a totally different part of the codebase that had nothing to do with what my colleague was doing. But didn't break anything or trigger any tests because it was wrapped in an impossible to hit if clause. And it created a bunch of extra classes to support this phantom code, so hundreds of new lines of code just lurking there, not doing anything but if I hadn't caught it, everyone thinks it does do something.
by cryptica | 2026-01-11 23:26:52+00:00
I started self-hosting after noticing that my AWS bill increased from like $300 per month to $600 per month within a couple of years. When looking at my bill, 3/4 of the cost was 'AWS Other'; mostly bandwidth. I couldn't understand why I was paying so much for bandwidth given that all my database instances ran on the same host as the app servers and I didn't have any regular communication between instances.

I suspect it may have been related to the Network File System (NFS)? Like whenever I read a file on the host machine, it goes across the data-center network and charges me? Is this correct?

Anyway, I just decided to take control of those costs. Took me 2 weeks of part-time work to migrate all my stuff to a self-hosted machine. I put everything behind Cloudflare with a load balancer. Was a bit tricky to configure as I'm hosting multiple domains from the same machine. It's a small form factor PC tower with 20 CPU cores; easily runs all my stuff though. In 2 months, I already recouped the full cost of the machine through savings in my AWS bill. Now I pay like $10 a month to Cloudflare and even that's basically an optional cost. I strongly recommend.

Anyway it's impressive how AWS costs had been creeping slowly and imperceptibly over time. With my own machine, I now have way more compute than I need. I did a calculation and figured out that to get the same CPU capacity (no throttling, no bandwidth limitations) on AWS, I would have to pay like $1400 per month... But amortized over 4 years my machine's cost is like $20 per month plus $5 per month to get a static IP address. I didn't need to change my internet plan other than that. So AWS EC2 represented a 56x cost factor. It's mind-boggling.

I think it's one of these costs that I kind of brushed under the carpet as "It's an investment." But eventually, this cost became a topic of conversation with my wife and she started making jokes about our contribution to Jeff Bezos' wife's diamond ring. Then it came to our attention that his megayacht is so large that it comes with a second yacht beside it. Then I understood where he got it all from. Though to be fair to him, he is a truly great businessman; he didn't get it from institutional money or complex hidden political scheme; he got it fair and square through a very clever business plan.

Over 5 years or so that I've been using AWS, the costs had been flat. Meanwhile the costs of the underlying hardware had dropped to like 1/56th...
by dpark | 2026-01-11 23:27:02+00:00
> probably not create a single component of a complex distributed system that will fit into an existing architecture, with exactly the correct behaviour based on some obscure domain knowledge that pretty much exists only in your company.

An LLM is not a principal engineer. It is a tool. If you try to use it to autonomously create complex systems, you are going to have a bad time. All of the respectable people hyping AI for coding are pretty clear that they have to direct it to get good results in custom domains or complex projects.

A principal engineer would also fail if you asked them to develop a component for your proprietary system with no information, but a principal engineer would be able to so their own deep discovery and design if they have the time and resources to do so. An AI needs you to do some of that.
by tokioyoyo | 2026-01-11 23:27:19+00:00
From purely business and career perspective, being anti-AI will be a self-own unless you work for niche companies that have the anti-AI stance. Yes, they exist. But if a company is building, supporting, or consulting any product, where timing matters and there’s competition (which is super majority), it’ll be in their best interest to nudge their employees to speed up via AI.

I do think at least being proficient right now with the LLMs will help you with whatever comes next, just because you’ll build the intuition around it. Being anti-AI might negatively affect one’s employability, and especially the younger ones who don’t have seniority or connections over the decades.
by rparet | 2026-01-11 23:27:40+00:00
You're not alone. I definitely feel like this is / will be a major adaptation required for software engineers going forward. I don't have any solutions to offer you - but I will say that the state that's enabled by fast feedback loops wasn't always the case. For most of my career build times were much, much longer than they are today, as an example. We had to work around that to maintain flow, and we'll have to work around this, now.
by jdejean | 2026-01-11 23:27:42+00:00
I have to say that almost everything worked out of the box. The webcam is known to not mesh great with Asahi quite yet. Otherwise:

- Machine failed to wake from suspend almost 50% of the time (with both wired and BT peripherals)
- WiFi speed was SIGNIFICANTLY slower. Easily a fraction of what it was on Mac
- USB C display was no-op
- Magic trackpad velocity is wild across apps
- Window management shortcuts varied across apps (seems Gnome changes a lot, frequently)
- Machine did not feel quicker, in fact generally felt slower than Tahoe but granted I did not benchmark anything

I would happily try it again when the project is further along
by odie5533 | 2026-01-11 23:28:24+00:00
Windows is prone to getting malware and ransomware. When you buy a new Macbook, you can use the Migration Assistant to move all your apps and files to the new Mac. With Windows there's no easy way. On Mac, apps are almost always safe and not going to crap up your computer. With Windows you have to be wary. Windows usually comes with bloatware, Mac doesn't. Windows you have to manage and install drivers and always update them and sometimes they break. With Mac, drivers and updates are seamless.

I daily drive Windows since Win 95 but there are rough edges that less technical people get cut on.
by rvz | 2026-01-11 23:28:52+00:00
> I think we agree then? the tech is useful; you need systems around them (like sandboxes and commit hooks that prevent leaking secrets) to use them effectively (along with learned skills)

No.

> very little software (or hardware) used in production is formally verified. tons of non-deterministic software (including neural networks) are operating in production just fine, including in heavily regulated sectors (banking, health care)

It's what happens when it all goes wrong.

You have to explain exactly why, a system failed in heavily regulated sectors.

Saying 'everything is probabilistic' as the reason for the cause of an issue, is a non answer if you are a chip designer, air traffic controller, investment banker or medical doctor.

So your point does not follow.
by yicmoggIrl | 2026-01-11 23:29:00+00:00
Excellent comment (even "mini essay"). I'm unsure if you've written it with AI-assistance, but even if that's the case, I'll tolerate it.

I have two things to add.

> This is not a moral failing. It is a psychological one.

(1) I disagree: it's not a failing at all. Resisting displacement, resisting that your identity, existence, meaning found in work, be taken away from you, is not a failing.

Such resistance might be futile, yes; but that doesn't make it a failing. If said resistance won, then nobody would call it a failing.

The new technology might just win, and not adapting to that reality, refusing that reality, could perhaps be called a failing. But it's also a choice.

For example, if software engineering becomes a role to review AI slop all day, then it simply devolves, for me, into just another job that may be lucrative but has zero interest for me.

(2) You emphasize identity. I propose a different angle: meaning, and intrinsic motivation. You mention:

> economic value of programming is increasingly detached from human identity

I want to rephrase it: what has been meaningful to me thus far remains meaningful, but it no longer allows me to make ends meet, because my tribe no longer appreciates when I act out said activity that is so meaningful to me.

THAT is the real tragedy. Not the loss of identity -- which you seem to derive from the combination of money and prestige (BTW, I don't fully dismiss that idea). Those are extrinsic motivations. It's the sudden unsustainability of a core, defining activity that remains meaningful.

The whole point of all these AI-apologist articles is that "it has happened in the past, time and again; humanity has always adapted, and we're now better off for it". Never mind those generations that got walked over and fell victim to the revolution of the day.

In other words, the AI-apologists say, "don't worry, you'll either starve (which is fine, it has happened time and agani), or just lose a large chunk of meaning in your life".

Not resisting that is what would be a failing.
by sedatk | 2026-01-11 23:29:14+00:00
It’s astonishing to me that Microsoft is letting go of all these users because someone drew something on whiteboard that looked like “force Microsoft Account on all users -> ??? -> Profit”, and has repeatedly done the same with Teams, Ads, Bing, OneDrive, use of WebView in essential components etc.

I’m not only saying that as a former Windows engineer, but as someone who actively uses Windows, OneDrive, Office, etc. Microsoft is hurting their userbase and that’s not a winning strategy in the long term.

But I’m sure some exec will eventually justify Windows’ decline caused by these thousand cuts as “inevitable outcome of macro-level changes in technological trends” or whatever.
by Anthony76 | 2026-01-11 23:29:21+00:00
There’s a recurring pattern where tools fail not because they’re inefficient at scale, but because the first 30 seconds feel heavy or intimidating. Zero-config, zero-backend approaches often win simply by lowering that initial cognitive cost.

We’ve seen similar dynamics while working on long-term adoption and visibility for developer-facing Web3 tools at AixBoost.com — the solutions that feel instantly usable tend to compound trust faster than technically “better” setups with more friction.

Curious if you’ve thought about a hybrid mode later on, or if keeping the mental model simple is the core philosophy long-term.
by itopaloglu83 | 2026-01-11 23:29:26+00:00
MacOS always had its own quirks, but it had a good intuitive design that was well thought out.

All the Apple engineers and other visual designers get quite defensive really quick when we mention that Tahoe really screwed things up, because it's more than just a transition into glass design, but a complete dismissal of design principles, to the point that the entire system is slowly becoming user hostile.

Every critique of the 26 series can be explained like this article with really in depth design principles, which is already engraved in Apple design guidelines, but Apple itself just dismissed it all. Everything from being able to clearly distinguish UI elements, to general accessibility, to discoverability, everything got worse.

Operating Systems are one of the most complicated systems we created, not because they're a collection of processes and thread, but because everything is built on top of them and creating something that's well thought out and stable, and intuitive is really hard. Designers just randomly creating visual elements just because it looks cool and not paying attention how people are going to use it is simply half assing the whole thing.

That's still one of the reasons I believe Alan Dye was let go, fired in a sense, he had power over the company, but with that power he screwed things so much that we need to rediscover all the things related to usability in very high detail as if we're rediscovering the wheel, just so that we can get back to square one.
by epistasis | 2026-01-11 23:30:36+00:00
Enhanced geothermal using fracking techniques developed in the past decades is being deployed now, and has very limited restrictions on where it can go.

> storage cannot meaningfully "back" intermittent renewables because it's only good for a few hours load from the grid

That's trivially untrue. If you can build a battery for four hours duration, then of course you can build another to get to 8, or however many you want. Batteries are being added to the grid at a huge rate.

> natural gas peaker plants are very expensive and increase CO2 emissions. There isn't much of an alternative to nuclear.

Gas peakers are about the same cost as nuclear. We will have a ton of gas peakers hanging around in the coming decades, and they will be used less and less as we get more batteries on the grid. Already, batteries eat peakers' lunch economically.

In the most optimistic grid modeling scenarios, nuclear can play a 5% or 10% role in a fully decarbonized grid. If you go full nuclear, then you also need a ton of batteries. And if nuclear was cheap, I would advocate going for a ton of nuclear plus batteries. But nuclear is super expensive, and doesn't scale fast enough to meet our needs.

We are currently at 20% nuclear power in the US and have a rapidly aging fleet. Even if we had investors who wanted to spend the $500B it would take to keep 5% of our grid as nuclear, it's unlikely we'd be able to build those 50 1GW reactors over the course of the next 20 years. Scaling SMRs seems even less likely.

I really hope I'm wrong and the SMRs somehow materialize and are cheap, but none of the startups are acting like the have anything real or the chops to scale. A new reactor getting built by 2032, as suggested here? Pumping out an SMR in 6 years, when design isn't even finalized, the company hasn't shown progress since abandoning an NRC application, does not seem plausible.
by drob518 | 2026-01-11 23:30:37+00:00
Yep, Jobs knew what he wanted and he generally had good taste. He would push everyone until he got what he thought was right and spend extra to get it. Supposedly he sent the original iPod team scrambling to find a new headphone jack just before launch because he didn’t like the mushy tactile feel of the jack they had selected. He wanted a very tactile “click” as the headphones snapped in.
by notatoad | 2026-01-11 23:31:05+00:00
> I think there is a section of programmer who actually do like the actual typing of letters, numbers and special characters into a computer

but luckily for us, we can still do that, and it's just as fun as it ever was. LLMs don't take anything away from the fun of actually writing code, unless you choose to let them.

if anything the LLMs make it more fun, because the boring bits can now be farmed out while you work on the fun bits. no, i don't really want to make another CRUD UI, but if the project i'm working on needs one i can just let claude code do that for me while i go back to working on the stuff that's actually interesting.
by BoorishBears | 2026-01-11 23:31:09+00:00
There's also a meta aspect here, where the leading third party harness in this discussion is run someone who's chronically steeped in Twitter drama and is definitely not rushing to put this to bed.

Add in various 2nd/3rd place players (Codex and Copilot) with employees openly using their personal accounts to cash in on the situation and there's a lot of amplification going on here.
by Forgeties79 | 2026-01-11 23:31:20+00:00
And some people may not value that but a lot of people do. It’s part of why Plex has become so popular and fewer people know about Jellyfin. One is turnkey, the other isn’t.

I could send a one page bullet point list of instructions to people with very modest computer literacy and they would be up and running in under an hour on all of their devices with Plex in and outside of their network. From that point forward it’s basically like having your own Netflix.
by m4nu3l | 2026-01-11 23:32:00+00:00
All of the linked apps look trivial to me.
Also, the first one, the UI has no feedback once you click the answer (plus some questions don't really make sense as they have the answer in them).
There is more on the website, so there could be something interesting, but I'm having trouble finding it among all the noise.
Not saying simple apps have no value. Even simple throwaway UIs can have value, especially if you develop them quickly.
by gradus_ad | 2026-01-11 23:32:03+00:00
It seems that as the tools available to developers have become more abstracted allowing them to do more with less, their ability to command higher salaries and prestige has only grown and grown. LLM's are just a continuation of this trend.

The naive view considers only the small scale ease of completing a task in isolation and expects compensation to be proportional to it. But that's not how things work. Yes abstraction makes individual tasks easier to complete, but with the extra time available more can be done, and as more is done and can be done, new complexities emerge. And as an individual can do more, the importance of trust grows as well. This is why CEO's make disproportionately more than their employees, because while the complexity of their work may scale only linearly with their position, or not at all even beyond a certain point, the impact of their decisions grows exponentially.

LLM's are just going to enhance the power and influence of software developers.
by dwd | 2026-01-11 23:32:39+00:00
Been self-hosting for last 20 years and I would have to say LLMs were good for generating suggestions when debugging an issue I hadn't seen before, or for one I had seen before but was looking for a quicker fix. I've used it to generate bash scripts, firewall regex.

On self-hosting: be aware that it is a warzone out there. Your IP address will be probed constantly for vulnerabilities, and even those will need to dealt with as most automated probes don't throttle and can impact your server. That's probably my biggest issue along with email deliverability.