MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by thechao | 2026-01-26 20:14:15+00:00
So... every company only hires the best!? I jest, I jest!

In general, I've found that the younger engineers (20s, up to 30s) have a lot of vim & vigor; but, even the very best ones generally do a lot of spinning-in-place, when they think they're making progress. Almost anyone above a certain level -- call it the 30–40% mark (it's low!) -- can be raised up to be a competent engineer. Probably what'd be called an "an A- or B+" player? That's just part of a good training & onboarding regime; although, it can take 1-3 years, depending on the person. Very good "natural" talent can definitely boost top performance to an A+, but it won't substitute for literal time-under-stress of delivering high quality product-ready code to clients.
by dragonwriter | 2026-01-26 20:14:27+00:00
> > Given ICE's unpopularity

> Seems divided along party lines unfortunately.

Is there a partisan split? Very much. Is ICE deeply unpopular? Also very much.

Net support (% support minus % oppose) for abolishing ICE is at +5 overall; +61 with Democrats, +12 with independents, and -54 with Republicans.

Net approval of ICE is at -22 overall; -81 with Democrats, -39 with independents, and +60 with Republicans.

https://today.yougov.com/politics/articles/53939-more-americ...
by BoiledCabbage | 2026-01-26 20:14:41+00:00
Maybe I'm missing the point as well, but what did it do wrong?

It seemed like you wanted to see if a search tool was working.

It looked to see. It tried one search using on data source KJ and found no matches. Next question would be is the quote not in there, is there a mis-remembering of the quote or is their something wrong with the data source. It tries an easier to match quote and finds nothing, which it finds odd. So next step in debugging is assume a hypotheses of KJ Bible datasource is broken, corrupted or incomplete (or not working for some other reason). So it searches for an easier quote using a different datasource.

It's unclear the next bit because it looks like you may have interrupted it, but it seems like it found the passage about Mary in the DR data source. So using elimination, it now knows the tool works (it can find things), the DR data source works (it can also find things), so back to the last question of eliminating hypotheses: is the quote wrong foe the KJ datasource, or is that datasource broken.

The next (and maybe last query I would do, and what it chose) was search for something guaranteed to be there in KJ version: the phrase 'Mary'. Then scan through the results to find the quote you want, then re-query using the exact quote you know is there. You get 3 options.

If it can't find "Mary" at all in KJ dataset then datasource is likely broken. If it finds mary, but results don't contain the phrase, then the datasource is incomplete. If it contains the phrase then search for it, if it doesn't find it then you've narrowed down the issue "phase based search seems to fail". If it does find and, and it's the exact quote it searched for originally then you know search has an intermittent bug.

This seemed like perfect debugging to me - am I missing something here?

And it even summarized at the end how it could've debugged this process faster. Don't waste a few queries up front trying to pin down the exact quote. Search for "Mary" get a quote that is in there, then search for that quote.

This seems perfectly on target. It's possible I'm missing something though. What were you looking for it to do?
by cb321 | 2026-01-26 20:14:49+00:00
Yeah. I've been doing this for almost 10 years now. It's not APE/cosmopolitan (which also "kinda works" with Nim but has many lowest common denominator platform support issues, e.g. posix_fallocate). However, it does let you have very cross-Linux portable binaries. Maybe beyond Linux.

Some might appreciate a concrete instance of this advice inline here. For `foo.nim`, you can just add a `foo.nim.cfg`:

@if gcc:
gcc.exe = "musl-gcc"
gcc.linkerexe = "musl-gcc"
passL = "-static -s" @end

There is also a "NimScript" syntax you could use a `foo.nims`:

if defined gcc: # nim.cfg runs faster than NimScript
switch "gcc.exe" , "musl-gcc"
switch "gcc.linkerexe", "musl-gcc"
switch "passL" , "-static -s"
by kibwen | 2026-01-26 20:14:50+00:00
> Management wants to break stuff, that is on them.

This implies that managers will do both of the following in response to the aforementioned breakage:

1. Understand that their own managerial policies are the root cause.

2. Not use you as a scapegoat.

And yet, if you had managers that were mentally and emotionally capable enough to do both of the above, you wouldn't be in this position to begin with.
by bccdee | 2026-01-26 20:15:12+00:00
Sure, but it shows global replies, it provides global search, it's not O(n^2), it's not easily DOSed, and it's highly amenable to spam filtering, which are the issues you raised.

It's true that this solution doesn't work for private posts and DMs, but the n in O(n^2) is much smaller there, so I don't think it's as much of an issue for personal data servers to communicate directly in those cases.
Ask HN: How to prevent Claude/GPT/Gemini from reinforcing your biases?
by akshay326 | 2026-01-26 20:15:18+00:00
Lately i've been experimenting with this template in Claude's default prompt
```
When I ask a question, give me at least two plausible but contrasting perspectives, even if one seems dominant. Make me aware of assumptions behind each.
```

I find it annoying coz A) it compromises brevity B) sometimes the plausible answers are so good, it forces me to think

What have you tried so far?
by iggldiggl | 2026-01-26 20:15:53+00:00
Airplanes might be designed in mm, but airports are most likely designed in metres, and whoops, suddenly you need to convert between the two.

Actually civil engineering as a whole is probably a relatively mixed bunch – vehicles drawings (when you need to design the infrastructure to fit specific vehicles for example) and other small-scale details might be dimensioned in mm, the standard curbstone naming system in Germany is based on centimetres, while infrastructure design itself (definitely including the CAD drawings) usually works in metres.
by dmmartins | 2026-01-26 20:17:23+00:00
> What was your thought process using AI?
> Share your prompts! Share your process! It helps me understand your rationale.

why? does it matter? do you ask the same questions for people that don't use AI? I don't like using AI for code because I don't like the code it generates and having to go over and over until I like it, but I don't care how people write code. I review the code that's on the PR and if there's I don't understand/agree, I comment on the PR

other than the 1600 lines PR that's hard to view, it feels that the author just want to be in the way and control everything other people are doing
by bartread | 2026-01-26 20:17:30+00:00
I don't know that I fully agree with that. I use Copilot for AI code review - just because it's built in to GitHub and it's easy - and I'd say results are variable, but overall decent.

Like anything else AI you need to understand what you're doing, so you need to understand your code and the structure of your application or service or whatever because there are times it will say something that's just completely wide of the mark, or even the polar opposite of what's actually the case. And so you just ignore the crap and close the conversation in those situations.

At the same time, it does catch a lot of bugs and problems that fall into classes where more traditional linters really miss the mark. It can help fill holes in automated testing, spot security issues, etc., and it'll raise PRs for fixes that are generally decent. Sometimes not but, again, in these cases you just close them and move on.

I'd certainly say that an AI code review is better than no code review at all, so it's good for a startup where you might be the only developer or where there are only one or two of you and you don't cross over that much.

But the point I actually wanted to get to is this: I use Copilot because it's available as part of my GitHub subscription. Is it the best? I don't know. Does it add value with zero integration cost to me? Yes. And that, I suspect, is going to make it the default AI code review option for many GitHub subscribers.

That does leave me wondering how much of a future there is for AI code review as a product or service outside of the hosting platforms like GitHub and Gitlab, and I have to imagine that an absolutely savage consolidation is coming.
by Imustaskforhelp | 2026-01-26 20:17:32+00:00
For what its worth, I have to mention that India losses more on this deal than Europe because India's actually for the first time iirc imo giving up tariffs or reducing them. India has the highest tariff rates for a developing country from the start (indiscriminant) and is only offering upgrades to EU mostly fwiw in terms of this free trade deal.

I have heard this deal be described as EU beneficiary from EU sources.

Ah yes, I feel like what you want for an EU is a connection with America which has been a very unreliable partner would even be an understatement in today's geopolitical environment.

It's saddening to see if you are from EU who actually believes so. I am more than happy to answer your queries in good faith but this just feels like pushing some of your own agenda or straight up racist.

We come with open arms even though the massacre of jallianwala bagh is still in our memories. There is just no question regarding the fact that EU primarily british forces had extracted immense wealth from India and India had to primarily rebuild it from scratch healing from the scars of its colonial past.

There's actually an internal pushback from some people i feel like who feel like EU is still imperialist & want to shut down this deal from India side given India hasn't lost much after the trump's tariffs compared to EU whose greenland was in some serious sovereign threats.

But I guess the point is that EU India deal is inevitable in this multi polar deal. India wants EU to be the financial hub where EU can then reinvest in India and India can create technological innovation.

I have tried to respond with as much calm as possible but I must admit that your message felt like a must admit,ragebait to me in start but I hope that this detailed message can help clear up on the details.

If you have any reasonable questions man, feel free to ask!
by rvnx | 2026-01-26 20:18:09+00:00
Must be a misunderstanding

1) Post-soviet countries are doing amazingly well (Poland, Baltics, etc) and very fast growing + healthy (low criminality, etc)

2) The "Russia is weak" thing; it is vastly exaggerated because it is 4 years that we hear that "Russia is on the verge of collapse" but they still manage to handle a very high intensity war against the whole West almost alone.

3) China is not a country lagging behind others at all. It is said in some schoolbooks but it is a big lie that is 0% true now.
by epolanski | 2026-01-26 20:18:48+00:00
Pointless blog post about made up situations that never happened.

1. Companies that push and value slop velocity do not have all these bureaucratic merge policies. They change them or relax them, and a manager would just accept it without needing to ping the author.

2. If the author was on the high paladin horse of valuing the craft he would not be working in such a place. Or he would be half assing slop too while concentrating on writing proper code for his own projects like most of us do when we end in bs jobs.
by dshacker | 2026-01-26 20:18:59+00:00
I think people can be in hard conditions, needing a job, under pressure, burnt out and feel like this is their only way to keep their job. At least that's how it felt with Mike.

At the end, I spent a lot of time sitting down with Mike to explain this kinds of things, but I wasn't effective.

Also, now LLMs empower Mike to make a 1600 line PR daily, and me needing to distinguish between "lazyslopped" PRs or actual PRs.
by dkarl | 2026-01-26 20:19:36+00:00
I've received questions like this from very good, very reasonable, very technically carefully managers. What happens is, Mike complains and tries to throw you under the bus, and the manager reaches out to hear your side of it. You tell them Mike is trying to ship code with a bunch of issues and no tests, and they go back to Mike and tell him that he's the problem and he needs to meet the technical standards enforced by the rest of the team.

Just because management asks doesn't mean they're siding with Mike.
by marcd35 | 2026-01-26 20:19:40+00:00
funny story - I had a job recently that installed DirecTV setups for mostly retirement communities. On almost every service call, I'd show up and 95% of the time, without fail, they'd either be watching Fox News, CNN, or CNBC. It was quite depressing to see 24/7 news stations had completely consumed their lives and became the majority of topics of conversation while I was there.

I eventually quit the job. I decided I didn't want to be a part of making our society worse by installing these devices that were causing manufactured outrage, hate, and selective truth telling.

Soon after I left, I found a book while thrifting that came out in 1978 called "Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television" by Jerry Mander. I laughed at the title and couldn't believe someone was already arguing for the detriments of TV before I was born. It's very well written and the points he makes are still relevant today.

From the wikipedia - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Arguments_for_the_Elimina...

Mander believes that "television and democratic society are incompatible" due to television removing all of society's senses except for seeing and hearing. The author states that television makes it so that people have no common sense which leads to...being "powerless to reject the camera's line of sight, reset the stage, or call on our own sensory apparatus to correct the doctored sights and sounds the machine delivers".

Mander's four arguments in the book to eliminate television are:

1. that telecommunication removes the sense of reality from people,

2. television promotes capitalism,

3. television can be used as a scapegoat, and

4. that all three of these issues negatively work together.
by lysace | 2026-01-26 20:19:53+00:00
The previous CEO Jack Ma of the company behind Qwen (Alibaba) was literally disappeared by the CCP.

I suspect the current CEO really, really wants to avoid that fate. Better safe than sorry.

Here's his sudden return after five years of reprogramming:

https://www.npr.org/2025/03/01/nx-s1-5308604/alibaba-founder...

NPR's Scott Simon talks to writer Duncan Clark about the return of Jack Ma, founder of online Chinese retailer Alibaba. The tech exec had gone quiet after comments critical of China in 2020.
by port11 | 2026-01-26 20:20:09+00:00
What level of materials recycling would be required for you to not consider it green washing?

It’s a genuine question, since I don’t like Apple and agree that we buy tons of stuff we don’t really need. That said, our bicycles can’t be insured anymore, but having AirTags at least alleviates some of the angst over leaving them in public places.
by atq2119 | 2026-01-26 20:20:12+00:00
In the large, ideas can have a massive influence on what happens. This inevitability that you're expressing is itself one of those ideas.

Shifts of dominant ideas can only come about through discussions. And sure, individuals can't control what happens. That's unrealistic in a world of billions. But each of us is invariably putting a little but of pressure in some direction. Ironically, you are doing that with your comment even while expressing the supposed futility of it. And overall, all these little pressures do add up.
by cortesoft | 2026-01-26 20:20:35+00:00
Why does it having the ability to do something has mean it is ‘unusable’ in a professional setting?

Is it generating CP when given benign prompts? Or is it misinterpreting normal prompts and generating CP?

There are a LOT of tools that we use at work that could be used to do horrible things. A knife in a kitchen could be used to kill someone. The camera on our laptop could be used to take pictures of CP. You can write death threats with your Gmail account.

We don’t say knives are unusable in a professional setting because they have the capability to be used in crime. Why does AI having the ability to do something bad mean we can’t use it at all in a professional setting?
by estearum | 2026-01-26 20:20:37+00:00
We've gotten to a dark place where someone doesn't just slip into an echo chamber by accident but actively chooses to believe that selectively sampled data sources are actually superior to sources that attempt randomization.

There is no sane reason to think the subreddits nor Jubilee videos are actually representative, and certainly no reason to believe they are representative in contradiction to virtually every poll conducted in the past 12 months.

"Prior polls are wrong" is a lazy man's way out. Polls actually have been way less wrong than people commonly meme about, and again there's no sane reason to say "sources that attempt randomization were wrong so therefore sources that actively bias their samples are probably better."
by kgwxd | 2026-01-26 20:20:49+00:00
For me, it's the realization of how much filler (tangents, embellishment, hyperbole, pretentiousness, ego, straight up BS, etc) is in long form content that makes it's really hard to make a commitment to anything new. Once you see it, it's ALL you see. I was rewatching some Feynman lectures this morning, and I couldn't get past it anymore. What I used to find engaging, was a major distraction. And the more I learn about stuff, the quicker I see when it's happening, even subjects I'm not familiar with.
by ben_w | 2026-01-26 20:20:58+00:00
China: Everything that puts western buyers off Chinese stuff, same happens in reverse. E.g. translation is really really hard. Every previous time I have illustrated how bad Google Translate is at this by quoting the Chinese output, someone has missed the point and replied to tell me the output is so bad as to be almost incomprehensible.

India: Lots of people, sure, even after accounting for how they've only recently fully electrified and don't all have office jobs where software is even slightly relevant… but the entire economy even in aggregate let alone per capita (and therefore TAM) is smaller, and the linguistic situation is (according to what I was told by Indian coworkers at a previous job) an exciting mix where everyone speaks 3+ languages and intermixes them in basically every sentence.
by with | 2026-01-26 20:21:38+00:00
We strictly used AWS for everything and always preferred AWS-managed, so we always used SQS (and their built-in DLQ functionality). They made it easy to configure throttling, alerting, buffering, concurrency, retries etc, and you could easily use the UI to inspect the messages in a pinch.

As far as fixing actual critical issues - usually the message inside the DLQ had a trace that was revealing enough, although not always so trivial.

The philosophy was either:
1. fix the issue
2. swallow the issue (more rare)

but make sure this message never comes back to DLQ again
by amalcon | 2026-01-26 20:21:38+00:00
I mean, sure. The problem is that ignoring Republican agency is seemingly incubated by both parties' philosophies (such as they are). It's a common "conservative" vice to blame problems on those you identify less with (right now, Democrats). It's a common "liberal" vice to put the onus to fix a problem on those you identify more with (also Democrats). Therefore, most people's solution to any given problem involves putting pressure on Democrats. Putting pressure on Republicans "doesn't help", either because they have nothing to do with the problem or because they obviously will never fix it.

Part of me thinks this is fundamental to the human condition, but most of me thinks it isn't. This doesn't seem to have happened in the FDR era, or the Nixon era, for example. I think it's just fallout from the post-Reagan coalitions in the US political system.
by firasd | 2026-01-26 20:21:42+00:00
I've been analyzing classic "romantic" games using Stockfish with multipv (showing the top 4-5 lines rather than just the best move)

1. Morphy vs. Duke of Brunswick (The Opera Game)

https://lichess.org/study/xAo78qLb/truC6WoM

16. Qb8+.

This is viewed as Morphy doing a stylish Queen sacrifice

But if you look at the MultiPV:

Qb8+* leads to forced mate.

Qc3 or Qb7 drops the advantage significantly.

Qb5 actually allows equality

If he had played anything else, he would have been imprecise. It wasn't a gamble

2. D. Byrne vs. Fischer (Game of the Century)

https://lichess.org/study/UZlSqSLA/Ku9M59je

Fischer plays 17... Be6, leaving his Queen hanging.

Standard narrative: "Fischer offers his Queen for a mating attack!"

Engine reality: 17... Be6 is the correct move. Trying to save the Queen actually loses the advantage.

Byrne taking the Queen (18. Bxb6) was a massive blunder. The engine actually wants Byrne to ignore the Queen and trade off Fischer's Knight on c3. He ends up with a Queen stranded on a3, a total spectator
by tdrz | 2026-01-26 20:21:46+00:00
> It’s great yes, but if we in the US weren’t proving so untrustworthy, EU startups and tech giants could focus on building things that actually might out innovate us and everyone else. Which would be a win-win.
Instead they will spend a lot time duplicating tools where only US companies are providing options, and maybe not innovating much if anything in those areas. Or not enough to matter much.

You could apply this to Slack vs Teams as well. Slack was already good, Microsoft just duplicated their work, came out with an inferior product and won. So, was it worth it?
by unyttigfjelltol | 2026-01-26 20:22:02+00:00
> Places want to hire younger people because they're more apt to work longer hours for less pay.

This is the best light you can shine on the discrimination. Most often it really is managers taking their “seniority” literally. As in, they don’t want to take the risk their reports are smarter, more experienced or capable of replacing them, so they discriminate on the basis of age. It’s counterintuitive, but this feels truest from my historical observation.
by throw0101a | 2026-01-26 20:22:04+00:00
> When you grab em by their Amygdala, the naked monkeys will do what you want. Even to their own detriment.

Even to their own death (and the death of friends/family):

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dying_of_Whiteness

* https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/40697553-dying-of-whiten...
by drtgh | 2026-01-26 20:22:08+00:00
I do not know if China could find a better window to take Taiwan,

Big tech manufacturers are treating consumers like crap by selling chips and memory to over-invested start-up companies that will go bankrupt, as these products will not be profitable due to the high costs (the technology that would make them profitable does not exist and has not even been conceived), in addition to the low long-term quality of what they offer.

The thing is, right now, billions of consumers around the world see how those big tech manufacturers are not serving them the pieces they need, and that such techs will not do in the near future with fair prices (prices abuse escalation, the consumers lost their strength).

Right now, if China takes Taiwan, 2026-2027, even if they lose the fabs, the billions of consumers in this planet will see this as a real f** you big techs, f** you overinvested startups hoarding, go go China, as we realize that we are third category citizens in this "first the riches" spiral, and will be no much difference of what is going on now.

If China takes his media news cards right, and makes know the consumers this is a revolution, and combine it with one of the numerous Taiwan's corruption scandals, I bet they will not find the opposition from citizens around the world that they would find in a different period of time.