MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by thethirdone | 2026-01-13 23:35:23+00:00
Which ones of those have been achieved in your opinion?

I think the arbitrary proofs from mathematical literature is probably the most solved one. Research into IMO problems, and Lean formalization work have been pretty successful.

Then, probably reading a novel and answering questions is the next most successful.

Reliably constructing 10k bug free lines is probably the least successful. AI tends to produce more bugs than human programmers and I have yet to meet a programmer who can reliably produce less than 1 bug per 10k lines.
by d1sxeyes | 2026-01-13 23:35:41+00:00
Why would you want to have to maintain a separate file instead of keeping it all in the same place?

Preference I guess. I’m not bashing anyone who prefers writing CSS that way. But there are a lot of people who think it’s very important to share that they don’t like how Tailwind looks.

It’s an argument that’s been pretty roundly responded to here: https://tailwindcss.com/docs/styling-with-utility-classes
by mschuster91 | 2026-01-13 23:35:55+00:00
The problem is... you're going to deprive yourself of the talent chain in the long run, and so is everyone else who is switching over to AI, both generative like ChatGPT and transformative like the various translation, speech recognition/transcription or data wrangling models.

For now, it works out for companies - but forward to, say, ten years in the future. There won't be new intermediates or seniors any more to replace the ones that age out or quit the industry entirely in frustration of them not being there for actual creativity but to clean up AI slop, simply because there won't have been a pipeline of trainees and juniors for a decade.

But by the time that plus the demographic collapse shows its effects, the people who currently call the shots will be in pension, having long since made their money. And my generation will be left with collapse everywhere and find ways to somehow keep stuff running.

Hell, it's already bad to get qualified human support these days. Large corporations effectively rule with impunity, with the only recourse consumers have being to either shell out immense sums of money for lawyers and court fees or turning to consumer protection/regulatory authorities that are being gutted as we speak both in money and legal protections, or being swamped with AI slop like "legal assistance" AI hallucinating case law.
by focusgroup0 | 2026-01-13 23:35:55+00:00
RIP to a real one.

Ashamed of the response of some on here. Here's a man who gave so much to the world, both culturally and intellectually, and all a few folks can scream is BIGOT.

Is this what "racist" looks like?

https://x.com/omarmkhateeb/status/2009400042915021165

Is observing officially reported crime statistics and deducing which behavior leads to optimal outcomes a survival instinct or racism?
by budududuroiu | 2026-01-13 23:35:59+00:00
I somewhat agree with this poster. However, I think the unfortunate reality of programming for money is that a mediocre programmer that pumps out millions of lines of slop that seems to drive the business forward and manages to hide disastrous bugs until after the contract / promotion cycle is over will get further ahead than the more competent programmer that delivers better, less buggy, less spaghetti code.
by abandonliberty | 2026-01-13 23:36:05+00:00
I'd recommend something like Breakfast with Seneca. It's an awesome read, and should hopefully help to differentiate the philosophy or school of stoicism and whatever we have now.

We're still human, and the collaborative problem solving the ancients did still applies today. That much of the concepts survived and maintained relevance from ancient Greece, to Rome, to now lends them a certain 'time tested' quality.
by rudedogg | 2026-01-13 23:36:18+00:00
Hearing people on tech twitter say that LLMs always produce better code than they do by hand was pretty enlightening for me.

LLMs can produce better code for languages and domains I’m not proficient in, at a much faster rate, but damn it’s rare I look at LLM output and don’t spot something I’d do measurably better.

These things are average text generation machines. Yes you can improve the output quality by writing a good prompt that activates the right weights, getting you higher quality output. But if you’re seeing output that is consistently better than what you produce by hand, you’re probably just below average at programming. And yes, it matters sometimes. Look at the number of software bugs we’re all subjected to.

And let’s not forget that code is a liability. Utilizing code that was “cheap” to generate has a cost, which I’m sure will be the subject of much conversation in the near future.
by TeMPOraL | 2026-01-13 23:36:54+00:00
There is no standard, well-known way for a website to advertise, "hey, here's a cached data dump for bulk download, please use that instead of bulk scraping". If they were, I'd expect the major AI companies and other users[0] to use that method for gathering training data[1]. They have compelling reasons to: it's cheaper for them, and cultivates goodwill instead of burning it.

This also means that right now, it could be much easier to push through such standard than ever before: there are big players who would actually be receptive to it, so even few not-entirely-selfish actors agreeing on it might just do the trick.

--

[0] - Plenty of them exist. Scrapping wasn't popularized by AI companies, it's standard practice of on-line business in competitive markets. It's the digital equivalent of sending your employees to competing stores undercover.

[1] - Not to be confused with having an LLM scrap specific page for some user because the user requested it. That IMO is a totally legitimate and unfairly penalized/villified use case, because LLM is acting for the user - i.e. it becomes a literal user agent, in the same sense that web browser is (this is the meaning behind the name of "User-Agent" header).
by kiernanmcgowan | 2026-01-13 23:37:00+00:00
LLMs are really great at copy/pasting answers from stack overflow and fitting them to work in a given system. If your work is outside what is answerable on stack overflow you're going to end up fighting the results constantly.

Front end pages like a user settings page? Done. One shottable.

Nuanced data migration problems specific to your stack? You're going to be yelling at the agent.

> LLM evangelists - are you willing to admit that you just might not be that good at programming computers? Maybe you once were. Maybe you never were.

A bit harsh considering that many of us used knowledge bases like SO for so long to figure out new problems that we were confronting.
by ycombiredd | 2026-01-13 23:37:31+00:00
Yeah, just following up to my grandparent comment to say "wow. Holy shit. It is how it looks." I'm not sure why I was surprised; maybe I'm an optimist, or as I suggested in my first comment, a bit naive.

In my defense, I don't think I'm stupid; I just don't want to believe so many people in power are cartoonishly evil, so I tend to look for explanations that don't require it. I think my internal sense of the world wants there to be a distinction between, say, average cryptoscammer evil buffoonery and the people in positions where at least ostensibly they try to present as a good guy while trying to keep their evildoings secret. This story gives me some sort of cognitive dissonance, and while reflecting on that fact, I get a bit sad. This world is bonkers.
by tombert | 2026-01-13 23:37:42+00:00
I remember back when I would frequent That Guy With the Glasses, there was a thing with Phelous and The Cinema Snob reviewing "Troll 4", a movie that doesn't exist. [1] I remember it being a bit surreal, because I was pretty sure that the movie didn't exist but I wasn't sure.

This reminded me of that.

[1] https://www.thecinemasnob.com/crossovers/brad-and-pheloustro...
by accrual | 2026-01-13 23:37:49+00:00
I see it only as a threat to those who have a deep hook into their role as a SWE.

If as a SWE you see the oncoming change and adapt to it, no issue.

If as a SWE you see the enablement of LLMs as an existential threat, then you will find many issues, and you will fail to adapt and have all kind of issues related to it.
by Terr_ | 2026-01-13 23:38:34+00:00
> And then, inevitably, comes the character evaluation, which goes something like this:

I saw a version of this yesterday where a commenter framed LLM-skepticism as a disappointing lack of "hacker" drive and ethos that should be applied to making "AI" toolchains work.

As you might guess, I disagreed: The "hacker" is not driven just by novelty in problems to solve, but in wanting to understand them on more than a surface layer. Messing with kludgy things until they somehow work is always a part of software engineering... but the motive and payoff comes from knowing how things work, and perceiving how they could work better.

What I "fear" from LLMs-in-coding is that they will provide an unlimited flow of "mess around until it works" drudgery tasks with none of the upside. The human role will be hammering at problems which don't really have a "root cause" (except in a stochastic sense) and for which there is never any permanent or clever fix.

Would we say someone is "not really an artist" just because they don't want to spend their days reviewing generated photos for extra-fingers, circling them, and hitting the "redo" button?
by zahlman | 2026-01-13 23:38:56+00:00
> This is obviously false.

No, it isn't. I showed the reason, repeatedly. And I cited the relevant law.

> I am not attempting to sway you with the evidence you've already decided is in favor of your assertions. I instead "baldly assert" that said evidence seems to corroborate my perspective, the same as you.

I clearly explained, with timestamps and extensive logical reasoning, how the evidence clearly does corroborate my perspective. I have calmly and repeatedly walked through it all and pointed out fallacies committed by you and others.

You have merely asserted that the evidence corroborates your perspective.

Why would any third party who sees this agree with you?
by epolanski | 2026-01-13 23:39:15+00:00
This is also what I often wonder.

Imho, AI is a multiplier and it compounds more as seniority grows and you know how to leverage it as a tool.

But in case of juniors, what does it compound exactly?

Sure, I see juniors being more independent and productive. But I also see them being stuck with little growth. Few years ago in an year, they would've tremendously grow at least on the technical side, what do they get better at now? Glueing APIs via prompting while never even getting intimate with the coding aspect?
by throw310822 | 2026-01-13 23:39:55+00:00
> I feel I have an obligation to correct the record afterwards.

And, are you sure he didn't? While the media is full of his supposedly racist comments, it's much harder to find any follow-up. Here's one:

"[...] he offered a “reframe” to allow people to get out of what he called a “mental trap” of a worsening racial divide in America.

“We’ve literally monetized racism so that everybody can be a little bit madder at each other,” Adams said. “If you monetize racial divide, you’re only going to get more of it.”

Faulting the “energy” he put into his comments, Adams said he can understand why people came to the conclusion that he literally meant what he was saying. He disavowed racism — “always have, always will,” he said — but went on to offer “context” about other “racist” things that he approves of.

“For example, historically Black colleges. Feels a little racist, totally approve,” Adams said. “Black History Month? Feels a little bit racist to some people, totally approve. Black people should get their own month; makes perfect sense in light of American history.”

During a segment of the show where viewers call in, a Black teacher in Missouri who said she was a longtime fan of the “Dilbert” comic strip said she was hurt by the comments. She asked Adams how she’s supposed to explain this kind of rhetoric to her students.

Adams suggested she tell them to stop looking backward and start looking forward. “Tell your students that they have a perfect path to success as long as they get good grades,” he said. “[...] if they employ strategy, and don’t look backwards, just strategy, they’ll do great. Now, there’ll still be way too much systemic racism, but you’ll be able to just slice through it like it didn’t exist.” [1]

Etc. Is anyone interested in this? Apparently, no.

1 https://www.yourcentralvalley.com/news/u-s-world/dilbert-cre...
by sanity | 2026-01-13 23:40:11+00:00
> The idea that a manager will go ‘hey, we are DEI hiring Asians’ in the 80s

No one used the term DEI in the 1980s. The language then was affirmative action or EEO, and it was very much present in corporate America, including regulated industries like banking. The terminology has changed; the existence of compliance-driven hiring and promotion pressures has not.

> You only have one source of this ‘truth’.

When the question is what someone believes happened to them, their own account is inevitably the primary source. You can argue he was mistaken or self-serving, but dismissing the account outright because it doesn’t fit your expectations isn’t evidence.

> I am betting you’re a white male

And that assumption rather neatly illustrates why, for a long time, it was socially risky for white men to even claim discrimination without having their motives or identity used to invalidate the argument.
by jhack | 2026-01-13 23:40:46+00:00
"And it made me think - why are these people so insistent, and hostile? Why can't they live and let live? Why do they need to convince the rest of us?"

Same could be said about the anti-AI crowd.

I'm glad the author made the distinction that he's talking about LLMs, though, because far too many people these days like to shout from the rooftops about all AI being bad, totally ignoring (willfully or otherwise) important areas it's being used in like cancer research.
by doublerabbit | 2026-01-13 23:40:56+00:00
Unfortunately and you kind of have to count this as the cost of the Internet. You've wasted 500Mb of bandwidth.

I've had colocation for eight years+. My monthly b/w cost is now around 20-30Gb a month given to scrapers where I was only be using 1-2Gb a month, years prior.

I pay for premium bandwidth (it's a thing) and only get 2TB of usable data. Do I go offline or let it continue?
by iscoelho | 2026-01-13 23:40:58+00:00
There are also solutions like Arista TunnelSec [1] that can achieve IPsec and VXLANsec at line-rate performance (21.6Tbps per chassis)! This is fairly new and fancy though.

[1] https://www.arista.com/assets/data/pdf/Whitepapers/EVPN-Data...
by ymyms | 2026-01-13 23:40:58+00:00
"I find LLMs useful as a sort of digital clerk - searching the web for me, finding documentation, looking up algorithms. I even find them useful1 in a limited coding capacity; with a small context and clear guidelines."

I am curious why the author doesn't think this saves them time (i.e. makes them more productive).

I never had terribly high output as a programmer. I certainly think LLMs have helped increased the amount of code that I can write, net total, in a year. Not to superhuman levels or even super-me levels, just me++.

But, I think the total time spent producing code has gone down to a fraction and has allowed me more time to spend thinking about what my code is meant to solve.

I wonder about two things:
1. maybe added productivity isn't going to be found in total code produced, because there is a limit on how much useful code can be produced that is based on external factors
2. do some devs look at the output of an LLM and "get the ick" because they didn't write it and LLM-code is often more verbose and "ugly", even though it may work? (this is a total supposition and not an accusation in any way. i also understand that poorly thought out, overly verbose code comes with problems over time)
by saberience | 2026-01-13 23:41:02+00:00
Gary Marcus (probably): "Hey this LLM isn't smarter than Einstein yet, it's not going all that well"

The goalposts keep getting pushed further and further every month. How many math and coding Olympiads and other benchmarks will LLMs need to dominate before people will actually admit that in some domains it's really quite good.

Sure, if you're a Nobel prize winner or PhD then LLMs aren't as good as you yet, but for 99% of the people in the world, LLMs are better than you at Math, Science, Coding, and every language probably except your native language, and it's probably better at you at that too...
by xp84 | 2026-01-13 23:41:26+00:00
> On the other hand, if you are about to be unemployed, this is less impressive

> salesman can convince executives that it does

I tend to think that reality will temper this trend as the results develop. Replacing 10 engineers with one engineer using Cursor will result in a vast velocity hit. Replacing 5 engineers with 5 "agents" assigned to autonomously implement features will result in a mess eventually. (With current technology -- I have no idea what even 2027 AI will do). At that point those unemployed engineers will find their phones ringing off the hook to come and clean up the mess.

Not that unlike what happens in many situations where they fire teams and offshore the whole thing to a team of average developers 180 degrees of longitude away who don't have any domain knowledge of the business or connections to the stakeholders. The pendulum swings back in the other direction.
by cogman10 | 2026-01-13 23:41:26+00:00
IMO, there's close to no bad usecase for batteries. In almost all their applications, they end up spreading out power consumption favoring cheap energy for expensive energy.

If a datacenter installs a solar array + a giant battery pack for their power, that's much better than them heavily relying on a natural gas plant to generate power when the lights are out.
by jraph | 2026-01-13 23:41:32+00:00
This doesn't feel completely right.

Simon Wilson (known for Django) has been doing a lot of LLM evengelism on his blog these days. Antirez (Redis) wrote a blog post recently with the same vibe.

I doubt they are not good programmers. They are probably better than most of us, and I doubt they feel insecure because of the LLMs. Either I'm wrong, or there's something more to this.
by zozbot234 | 2026-01-13 23:41:52+00:00
Formalizing an arbitrary proof is incredibly hard. For one thing, you need to make sure that you've got at least a correct formal statement for all the prereqs you're relying on, or the whole thing becomes pointless. Many areas of math ouside of the very "cleanest" fields (meaning e.g. algebra, logic, combinatorics etc.) have not seen much success in formalizing existing theory developments.
by falloutx | 2026-01-13 23:42:32+00:00
Not you, but the word replaced is the being used all the time. Even senior engineers are saying they are using it as a junior engineers while we can easily hire junior engineers (but Execs don't want to). Jevon's paradox wont work in Software because user's wallets and time is limited, and if software becomes too easy to build, it becomes harder to sell. Normal people can have 5 subscriptions, may be 10, but they wont be going to 50 or 100. I would say we would have already exhausted users already, with all the bad practices.
by JohnFen | 2026-01-13 23:42:48+00:00
> Although, even in that case, regardless of the lack of an "artist's intention," there is the interpretation of what people will take from that thing.

Of course. My interpretation is an important part as well, but that comes from me, not the artist, so is a bit different. Well, maybe I should say that the meaning and importance of a song is in the confluence of the artist and myself. I did want to clarify something, though -- I'm not really talking about the "artist's intention" here. That's a different thing, too.

The emotional communication I'm talking about happens even if I have no idea what the artist's conscious intention was, or even if I don't know who the artist is.

> And I do believe a sufficiently advanced AI model would be able to mimic or synthesize human knowledge/worries/dramas in such a profound way that, regardless of "intention to communicate," it would be able to create things that people would relate to and take deeper meaning from.

Perhaps so! But that kind of simulacrum is something I have absolutely no interest in. In fact, I find the idea of it a bit repulsive.

> someone might have used AI, but they were still involved in all parts of the creation process, like writing the lyrics

If an artist actually created the thing, then it's not an AI generated song. It's a human created song that may have involved AI as a tool. I'm talking more about if a human just describes the song they want to an AI and the AI creates the rest.

That said, I'm particularly averse to AI vocals, because vocals are particularly intimate for me. A song that has a machine as a singer is a song I'll reject even if the rest was created by a human.

> the very fact of them choosing a song and saying, "Hey, I liked that, I will share it with people," would already be a communication.

Technically true, but that's nowhere near the kind of communication I'm talking about. That has little value to me unless the person sharing it and myself know each other very, very well. Then, it's a communication/connection between that person and me, which can make it a great thing even if the song wouldn't resonate with me on its own.

I mean, art is inherently about human experience and emotion. Each of us resonates with certain types of art and doesn't resonate with other types. All I'm trying to do here is explore and maybe explain what resonates or not with me. I am in no way saying that anybody else should share my tastes.
ADHD. How do you manage the constant stream of thoughts and ideas?
by chriswright1664 | 2026-01-13 23:42:59+00:00
I have ADHD. I think. Pretty sure. I have thoughts, ideas, projects, concepts, links, things to read... fired at my brain all day every day. I can go deep on a topic for hours, but then be hit by a barrage of micro ideas. I really struggle to stay on track and focus. Oh and I run a business, manage people, try to make a profit. It's hard. And kids. And life?

I think there is a founder/ADHD thing. Paul Graham thinks so. Maybe even a tech person angle. What have other people experienced?

And how do others cope? I don't really know this world. I do know that my old boss once called me a "flagitating laser beam". I think he meant distracted. I use a bunch of systems to cope. For a long time lists, and then Asana. Asana ruled my life. I just built my own thing to capture tasks, projects, but also knowlegde. Not sure if it will help we will see.

So tell me:

- Who else feels this way?
- How do you manage?
- Oh and how do you switch off? That is hard