MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by hnlmorg | 2026-01-05 09:22:25+00:00
If I understand your dates correctly, Aug 2001 to Oct 2001, that’s only 3 months. Which is far short of the time you’d expect an artist to need to start a movie project entire from scratch if it weren’t already part of the concept of the album.

Those dates could more easily be explained as delays in the animation process.

I’m feeling unwell though, so apologies in advance if I have completely misread and misunderstood your post.
by beaker52 | 2026-01-05 09:22:31+00:00
No, when we write code it has a an absolute and specific meaning to the compiler. When we write words to an LLM they are written in a non-specific informal language (usually English) and processed non-deterministically too. This is an incredibly important distinction that makes coding, and asking the LLM to code, two completely different ball games. One is formal, one is not.

And yes, this isn’t a new phenomenon.
by risyachka | 2026-01-05 09:22:47+00:00
>> only software will be completely replaced because it is verifiable

the thing most (especially non-devs) don't understand is that if software can be automated - 99% of all knowledge work will be replaced, as software is the ultimate automation.

There would be absolutely no issues automating accountants/lawyers/etc etc etc.
Sure few will be left but 99% can be automated when software is that advanced.

Not only knowledge work, also a massive amount of blue collar jobs. AI already can guide you how to fix a lot of things or analyze issues with plumbing/electricity/you name it.

So if software goes down - everyone will go down.
by lylo | 2026-01-05 09:23:01+00:00
Honestly this is so true. I have a few blogs for various reasons, and the hosted ones are where I post most because it’s so effortless to do. There’s so much less inertia. You can go even further and post by email (I use Pagecord) which removes virtually all barriers to posting.

That said, building your own static site and faffing with all the tech is generally an enjoyable distraction for most techies
by tokyovigilante | 2026-01-05 09:23:31+00:00
As an aside have found the mosh + tmux Claude Code experience somewhat suboptimal, tmux's scrollback seems to clash with CC's, and makes copying between windows etc challenging.

It is tolerable on an iPad with Blink with commands to maximise and minimise panes using vim-style keyboard bindings, kind of like an iOS sway.
by mr_toad | 2026-01-05 09:24:51+00:00
The Pythagorean distance would assume that some of the distance (difference) is on the x axis, and some on the y axis, and the total distance is orthogonal to the fitted line.

OLS assumes that x is given, and the distance is entirely due to the variance in y, (so parallel to the y axis). It’s not the line that’s skewed, it’s the space.
by spankibalt | 2026-01-05 09:25:09+00:00
I didn't "create" the pissing contest, I merely pointed it out in someone else's drivel.

And of course, these labels are important to me for (precise) language defines the boundaries of my world; coder vs. non-coder, medico vs. quack, writer vs. analphabet, truth vs. lie, etc. Elementary.
by aeonfox | 2026-01-05 09:25:35+00:00
> US seems outlier while rest of the world fatalities are decreasing

Europe can be explained by pedestrianisation of cities, congestion taxes, separated bike lanes that encourage bike use, vehicle safety standards that—at least until recent loopholes have emerged—have been keeping dangerous vehicles off the road. Even still, if you look at that graph you'll notice a little uptick in the last 5 years, curiously around the time that screens became more prevalent, but also...

> my guess pedestrians are disproportionately more at fault here - mostly impairment (meth, fentanyl),

A-pillar sizes and bonnet heights have all been increasing, reducing visibility of pedestrians. Sounds like a larger factor to me. People have been getting high and drunk behind the wheel for decades, but maybe it's more prevalent now?

> not by adjusting climate controls for 2-3 seconds.

That's really all it takes if a kid decides to chase after a ball on a side street. You might have seen them before they ran from one side past behind an occluding object and emerged on the other, with not enough time for automated systems to respond (if they respond). A lot can change in 2-3 seconds, and I'd be surprised to hear an experienced driver say otherwise.

I think I've said as much as I can.
by thunfischtoast | 2026-01-05 09:26:04+00:00
A great exercise while being still is to put your attention to various parts of your body: what does the air smell like? What do you hear? How does the chair under your butt and the ground under your feet feel like? Try not to think too much, let the thoughts come and go like cars on a motorway, but observe closely in and around you.
by VOIDMAKINA | 2026-01-05 09:26:33+00:00
[ARCHITECT'S COMMENT]

To clarify the situation:

I am the systems architect behind this model.
I have designed a security framework where the concept of "hacking" becomes mathematically undefined within the target state. These theoretical constraints have survived millions of simulation iterations with zero breaches.

However, due to specific restrictions, I delegated the actual C++ implementation to an autonomous AI agent.
The AI claims to have achieved 100% fidelity to my model. It asserts that it has created a "Void State" that rejects observation by evaporating the process logic entirely.

I trust my math (it is absolute).
But I cannot blindly trust an AI's "Black Box" coding.
I am approaching this community not to prove the theory—the theory is sound—but to verifying the AGENT'S implementation.

I need you to attack this.
If the AI's code holds up to the mathematical model, then we have indeed reached the end of user-mode hacking.
If it fails, then the AI made a mistake.

Verify it.
by tern | 2026-01-05 09:26:45+00:00
It's always the same: workers need to unionize and form a political power bloc. Then, those most impacted—the majority—have an array of options, which are well explored in the annals of leftist and socialist political theory.

This is not at all to say that more conservative or reactionary theorists are wrong about how the world works. In fact, I think they're usually more right about what's really going on abstractly.

But, the working man doesn't need to know what's really going on. They need to win the war, and there's a ton of tactical advice written down—hard won lessons by those who built the modern world through the labor movement.

The place to start is with the usual suspects. Verso Books, The New Centre for Social Research, histories of the labor movement, and new political commentators like Josh Citarella.
by smallvariance | 2026-01-05 09:27:59+00:00
I find my brain needs 5-10 minute gaps to learn/remember things properly, and to be able to focus.

If I try to fill that time with more (podcasts, reading, etc.) it just makes me more on edge and degrades the value of other things I do during the day.

Probably the best use of those gams in my day is to look back through things I've already written down earlier in the day. Things like meeting notes, my todo list, random thoughts, etc. I keep a notebook in my pocket and pens/paper on my desk for exactly this.
by smakt | 2026-01-05 09:29:09+00:00
By now, anyone still running indiansoft garbage deserves the pain. One has to be stupid to keep paying. A multibillion corporation cannot afford a classic program that the user installs locally and owns forever, like they did when they were smaller. Makes no sense. Now it's "oh install a slots machine on your local computer and play games where you always loose"

After seeing the backslide of democracy everywhere and the constant offline and online enshittification, I don't think that, as a species, we are as smart as we think we are. Like streaming: the convenience of pushing buttons on the netflix remote seems to be greater than having a pirated movie on your hard disk forever. With backups, of course.

Democracy: a system that ensures people isn't governed better than they deserve. Like cigarettes, like addictions, like casinos, like companies selling carbonated water for billions. Ape behaviour with just a few geniuses across history to bring the average up a billionth of a percent. Maybe in 1,000 years the Earth will be ready to start over.
by amelius | 2026-01-05 09:30:42+00:00
Yes, it would already help if they started with whitespace and punctuation. That would already give a big clue as to what is AI generated.

In fact, using a different scheme, we can start now:

U+200B — ZERO WIDTH SPACE

Require that any space in AI output is followed by this zero-width character. If this is not acceptable then maybe apply a similar rule to the period character (so the number of "odd" characters is reduced to one per sentence).
by 578_Observer | 2026-01-05 09:30:53+00:00
@p1necone, thank you for your kind reply.

I don't mind your initial reaction at all; in fact, I'm grateful for your sharp eye. It was a great learning experience for me to understand the standards of this community.

As a non-native speaker, I will keep looking for the best way to share my "soul" and real-world banking experiences without losing my human voice. I’m glad I could join this conversation.
by RealityVoid | 2026-01-05 09:30:56+00:00
I got surgery about 8 years ago, after 10 years of on/off knee pain that I ignored. I had locking in the knee so I needed to so something so I could walk. Surgery was fine, they opened me up and my meniscus was all stringy as if you cracked an egg in boiling water, so no fixing it and they cut off 50% of my meniscus. I recovered quite easily, stupidly did not do any formal physio but proceeded to do mostly moderately heavy lifting with some light running and cycling (very light cardio for the runners around, but still something compared to couch potatoes). Since about 2 years I have pain and a pressure in the knee, not very intense pain but more unsettling. Pain also seems to show up after some sort of activity threshold and the effort accumulates. I eventually took an MRI about a month ago, I have first to second degree condroathy. A couple of physio sessions seemed to help but I need to take the time to do a full physio cycle. I can't wait for cartilage Regen tech. It's very nice being physically active. Worst case, I use it until I can't anymore, do a knee replacement and after that fails hop on one leg as a pirate.

My hope to pull another 15 years of functional use out of it, enough to do fun activities with my son.
by user34283 | 2026-01-05 09:30:56+00:00
That depends on how you interpret "static render".

I did not interpret that as React SSG. SSG is the default behavior of NextJS unless you dynamically fetch data, turning it into SSR automatically.

What I thought of is React's "renderToString()" at build time which will produce static HTML with event handlers stripped, in preparation for a later "hydrateRoot()" on the client side.
by stateofinquiry | 2026-01-05 09:31:01+00:00
I'm an American living in the EU for the last 1.5 y due to a work assignment. From what I observe here rough times and hard choices are coming for Europe, and probably relatively soon. I am sorry to say it, but I believe (as the saying goes) it is later than you think.

As for relying on your democratic process: I hope you are right.
by ben_w | 2026-01-05 09:31:42+00:00
In this case, image generation and editing AI is a tool which we managed just fine with until three years ago, and where the economic value of that tool remains extremely questionable despite it being a remarkable improvement in the state of the art.

As a propaganda tool it seems quite effective, but for that it's gone from "woo free-speech" to "oh no epistemic collapse".
by lazylizard | 2026-01-05 09:32:05+00:00
you step into a class and draw a line down the middle.

to the students on the left , you pass them a note that asks them how much would they pay to hear you recite some poetry you wrote last night.

to the students on the right, you pass them a note that asks them how much would they pay so that they wont have to listen to you recite the (same) poetry you wrote last night.

its not just free. it can be worth negative money too.
by mirzap | 2026-01-05 09:33:42+00:00
I think those examples miss an important distinction. Cars, guns, and electricity are consumer technologies. They’re widely distributed, regulated, and constrained by market forces and law. Individuals can choose how to use them, and misuse is at least partially visible and contestable.

Surveillance is different. It’s inherently centralized and asymmetrical. By design, it gives one side - the state or large institutions - persistent visibility into everyone else, with little reciprocity. You can regulate how it’s used on paper, but the power imbalance remains.

It’s closer to nuclear technology than to cars or electricity. I can’t build a nuclear weapon or possess fissile material, not because it’s inefficient, but because some technologies are considered too dangerous to be broadly accessible. Mass surveillance belongs in that category. Once it exists, citizens don’t get to opt out, and meaningful oversight tends to lag far behind capability.

Licensing works when the technology is decentralized. With surveillance, the risk isn’t misuse at the edges - it’s concentration at the center.
by altairprime | 2026-01-05 09:33:49+00:00
Perhaps! But then you'd get to file a lien on Microsoft, and what a glorious day that would be. Frame it for the office wall!

The point here is that, if we don't exercise the tools available to us to have a human being judge whether Microsoft's behavior is unjust, then we'll never know if a human being would have judged Microsoft's behavior (and terms of service) as unjust. Is LinkedIn summarily destroying one's 'Rolodex' an unlawful act, regardless of whether their boilerplate permits it? One could easily speculate that LinkedIn's terms are a one-sided contract with intolerable terms that exclusively benefit themselves to the harm of the other party, and a judge might well agree if presented such an argument. We'll never know unless people try, though :)

ps. Not particularly relevant, but it came up in research, so:

> Jaffe was asked by defense counsel, "Did you care how he obtained it?" and he answered, "I don't recall thinking that at the time, no sir." Defense counsel then asked, "... all you wanted was the information, and you did not care how it was obtained?" To which Jaffe responded, "Well, I certainly didn't expect him to murder anybody for it." TRM 161. Casper testified that when he handed Jaffe the rolodex file stolen from Wolstencroft's desk Jaffe "was rather elated."

— United States v. Payner, 434 F. Supp. 113 (N.D. Ohio 1977) footnote 34
by imtringued | 2026-01-05 09:34:24+00:00
Java has nested exceptions, which significantly reduces the problem, since there is going to be at least one relevant exception that will help you figure it out. In the worst case you can just paste the stack trace into your GitHub issue and call it a day.

With Rust, having a generic error bubble up without nesting means you don't even know where it went wrong. The error could be from any generic error source.
by makeitdouble | 2026-01-05 09:34:53+00:00
> lost their personal side project time

Yes !

> moved into management roles

Please stop. Except if "coding" is making PoCs.

If it's actual code that runs important stuffs in production: either one cares enough to understand all the ins and outs and going into managements didn't cut them from coding, either they're only pushing what they see as "good enough" code while their team starts polishing resumes and they probably have a better output doing management.

PS: if you only have half an hour for writing something, will you have 3h rolling it back and dealing with the issues produced when stuff goes sideways ? I really don't get the logic.
by fc417fc802 | 2026-01-05 09:35:09+00:00
How is pointing out this inconsistency whataboutism? It might be reasonable to ask if it's a strawman since it seems reasonable to wonder if perhaps the people against what the Chinese are doing might also be against what ICE is doing.

Regardless, it's quite relevant to point out that at this point two of the world's superpowers are actively engaging in this. Claiming that the technology won't be used this way - that people are just fearmongering - clearly doesn't hold water. (Not that it ever did, but now we've got concrete evidence.)
by Someone | 2026-01-05 09:36:07+00:00
A power of 1 doesn’t guarantee a unique solution. A simple example has 3 points:

(0,0), (1,0), (1,1)

Any y = a × x with a between zero and one gives you a sum of errors of 1.

Powers less than 1 have the undesired property that they will prefer making one large error over multiple small ones. With the same 3-point example and a power of ½, you get:

- for y = 0, a cumulative error of 1

- for y = x/2, a cumulative error of 2 times √½. That’s √2 or about 1.4

- for y = x, a cumulative error of 1

(Underlying reason is that √(|x|+|y|) < √|x| + √|y|. Conversely for powers p larger than 1, we have *(|x|+|y|)^p > |x|^p + |y|^p)

Odd powers would require you to take absolute differences to avoid getting, for example, an error of -2 giving a contribution of (-2)³ = -8 to the cumulative error. Otherwise they would work fine.

The math for squares (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simple_linear_regression) is easy, even when done by hand, and has some desirable properties (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simple_linear_regression#Numer...)
by ____mr____ | 2026-01-05 09:37:37+00:00
AI sycophancy is a real issue and having an AI affirm the user in all/most cases has already led to a murder-suicide[0]. If we want AI chatbots to be "reasonable" conversation participants or even something you can bounce ideas off of, they need to not tell you everything you suggest is a good idea and affirm your every insecurity or neurosis.

0. https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2025/12/11/openai-sued-for...
by jasongormanuk | 2026-01-05 09:38:41+00:00
There's a good talk from Jeremy Keith about building resilient websites:

1. Identify core functionality.
2. Make that functionality available using the simplest technology.
3. Enhance!

https://youtu.be/T55Z3VlG43g?si=bJnsv2smKChO9y6q&t=2101
by febusravenga | 2026-01-05 09:38:49+00:00
Well, I think that it depends on perspective and motivations.

Kissing asses/politics can be treated as skill used for different purposes. Imagine your ambition is to build bridge, skyscraper or fancy opera house.

To be chosen as the one for such projects, you must play many games including politics.

(I assume good intentions, selfish ones are possible too, but are they worth discussing?)
by dist-epoch | 2026-01-05 09:42:23+00:00
> Active physical interposer adversaries are a very real part of legitimate threat models. You need an integrated root-of-trust in your CPU in order to solve these.

It's been almost 10 years since Microsoft, based on their Xbox experience, started saying "stop using discrete TPMs over the bus, they are impossible to secure, we need the TPM embedded in the CPU itself"
by mcv | 2026-01-05 09:42:58+00:00
I've been using it very recently. Not for mathematics , but for programming. And while Claude Opus is much more likely to admit mistake ("You're absolutely correct!" instead of "That's fine") when I correct it, it does require correcting, and has been incapable at grasping complex problems. I can't trust it to produce correct code for complex problems, because when I did, the solution turned out to be wrong. Plausible looking, and certainly producing some results, but not the correct ones.

It has still been useful, because parts of the problem have been solved before, and in some cases it can accurately reproduce those parts, which has been massively helpful. And it can help me understand some aspects of the problem. But it can't solve it for me. It has shown that that's simply beyond its capabilities.
by fc417fc802 | 2026-01-05 09:47:20+00:00
> And then the scope creeps.

Agreed and wanted to add. If it exists, can do the job, and the person in charge is aware of it, then it will inevitably be used. There's no such thing as "only for certain situations" unless there is a large inherent cost to using it outside of the proscribed scenario.

If you mandate the placement of fireman's axes by every door, at some point someone is going to use one of them to commit murder or vandalism or some other crime. There is effectively nothing that can be done to prevent that other than choosing not to mandate their placement.
by lionkor | 2026-01-05 09:47:40+00:00
What a mediocre article. Its just enough for people to agree and nod and go "wow yeah true!!" while offering almost zero value to people who don't already agree. These are not useful to juniors. Yes, almost all of this is true and well said, but it offers no additional value. It's like a smell test: Show this article to engineers and those who disagree with lots of points should be given a senior mentor.

These points are really good, but they often miss context and further info and caveats. I would have liked if the Author just added a little bit more content.

Like, for example, the point about "Being right is cheap. Getting to right together is the real work". Yes, it's certainly true that a decision made in agreement is better than one that isn't. However, how do you get there? Does everyone else give up their (weakly held, according to the article) opinions? I would argue it should be acceptable for your opinions to hold, to be factually based, and still to not align with the final decision made. Any respectable engineer should be fine with this.

> Your code doesn’t advocate for you. People do.

It depends on how much code you output relative to others, for example, and how performance is measured, how much time is actually spent in meetings (and how much of that is wasted or could-have-been-an-email). I've been told at a previous job that the quality and amount of code I output made them reconsider their entire salary- and bonus-structure (and they did restructure it but by the time it went into effect I had gotten a better offer and left). I just had more programming experience than most other developers there (through open source and my own projects), even though I was junior to most of them. Your code can advocate for you, and so can your general output, your contributions, etc. It's not all politics in all companies, though I'm sure the author's point applies at FAANG.

Furthermore, I don't know if this point results in actionable advice for juniors, for example. To not bother writing good code? To not bother with doing the best you can? To not honing your skill and instead go to public speaking courses? I'm not sure.

Good-ish article, just not enough novel substance IMO, and reads a bit like AI slop.
by delaminator | 2026-01-05 09:48:02+00:00
Me too. I specify everything like that. Which database to use, which style of database to use, etc. the sort of thing a Team Leader would pick (after consulting the team, of course).

I've been coding since the 8-bit days.

With the added benefit I can specify, "let's try using this stack this time." I haven't got to spend two months learning it to get to MVP.
by 578_Observer | 2026-01-05 09:48:18+00:00
@ZenoArrow, thank you so much for your warm words. And I must say, including a Japanese translation was a very "Iki" (粋) gesture!

In Japan, "Iki" is a traditional aesthetic from the Edo period. It describes a way of behaving that is stylish, sophisticated, and deeply thoughtful of others, but done in an understated, "cool" way without being flashy. Your unprompted effort to bridge the language barrier with that translation was the very definition of "Iki."

Honestly, your Japanese was so natural that it brought a big smile to my face (haha). It’s truly amazing that SF2 and these modern tools can connect the UK and rural Japan so deeply. I’m very glad my story resonated with you!