MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by hyperpape | 2026-02-08 18:20:00+00:00
I don't really want to be a manager of humans, although my role as an engineer is a leadership role that has some overlap.

But I'm acutely conscious that in the 5+ years that I've been a senior developer, my ability to come up with useful ideas has significantly outstripped the time I have to realize those ideas (and from experience, the same is often true of academics).

At work, I have the choice between remaining hands-on and limiting what I can get done, or acting more like a manager, and having the opportunity to get more done, but only by letting other people do it, in ways that might not reflect my vision. It's pretty frustrating, to be honest.

For side projects, it's worse. Most of them just can't be done, because I don't even have the choice.
by bri3d | 2026-02-08 18:20:47+00:00
> Most motherboards include only Microsoft keys as trusted

Is this really true, in 2019 when this was written or today? I haven’t seen a motherboard that didn’t let me enroll my own keys in a really long time. Laptops are a different story but even there, it’s been awhile.

> Microsoft forbid to sign software licensed under GPLv3 because of tivoization restriction license rule

Ah yes, GPLv3 is now Microsoft’s fault?
by Sesse__ | 2026-02-08 18:20:48+00:00
> If they'd packed everything into one HAL, single-processor systems would have to take the performance hit of all the synchronization code even though it wasn't necessary. Memory usage would be higher too.

Linux also used to be like this, but these days has unified MP/UP kernels; on single-CPU systems (or if you give nosmp), the extra code is patched away at boot time. It wouldn't have been an unheard of technique at the time.
by rescripting | 2026-02-08 18:21:05+00:00
I've noticed this is leading to less high quality products being produced in general. If the only real axis people understand is price then products can't compete on quality/durability/maintability/etc, and so they're pushed aside to lower the cost.

A recent example: I've bought many articles of clothing from Eddie Bauer over the years because they have been generally high quality and durable, and even so are only a bit more expensive than other brands. However just last week they filed for bankruptcy. Sure, the company could have been mismanaged, but I'm sure competition from fast fashion brands with rock bottom prices didn't help.
by kjkjadksj | 2026-02-08 18:21:27+00:00
Unless you successfully make ai subscription an obligatory cost to pay for every employee in an org. Which they seem to be doing quite successfully considering enterprise sales activity.

Successfull b2b salesmanship does not require a working and useful product. It just requires you to get these meetings with purchasers and show that other comparable orgs are buying your product. For example, at my last job I wasn’t sure if we were a microsoft shop or a google shop because we bought both of their products that did the same thing. Because that is just what you do when you are an org with 5 figure employee counts, you spend budget.
by CamperBob2 | 2026-02-08 18:22:35+00:00
I wonder how effective that might be as a language-learning tool. Imagine a popular novel in the US market, maybe 80000-100000 words long but whose vocabulary consists of only a few thousand unique words. The first few pages are in English, but as you progress through the book, more and more of the words appear in Chinese or German or whatever the target language is. By the end of the book you are reading the second language, having absorbed it more or less through osmosis.

Someone who reads A Clockwork Orange will unavoidably pick up a few words of vaguely-Russian extraction by the end of it, so maybe it's possible to take advantage of that. The main problem I can see is that the new language's sentence grammar will also have to be blended in, and that won't go as smoothly.
by gradys | 2026-02-08 18:22:37+00:00
Both would be understood and are roughly interchangeable.

"Sequential" feels more appropriate to me for the task runner scenario where we wait for one task to finish before running the next.

"Series" suggests a kind of concurrency to me because of the electrical circuit context, where the outputs of one are flowing into the next, but both are running concurrently. Processes that are Unix piped into each other would be another thing that feels more like a "series" than a "sequence".
by rootusrootus | 2026-02-08 18:23:15+00:00
It would have to be mandated across the board. Problem with insurance in the US is that it is tied to employment and therefore temporary. The majority of least problems downstream from obesity will be felt by some future insurance company, very likely not your current one.

If I were Trump for a day I'd force Lilly to sell the tirzepatide patent to the federal government (I'd even pay them a fair amount) and then make it a generic. Maybe a subsidized generic, even. Then in a decade or so the citizenry might actually be okay naming things after me. Though it might require dialing back some other activities, but whatever.
by EliRivers | 2026-02-08 18:23:27+00:00
"They can write code better than you or I can"

They can not. They can make some average code. On Friday one suggested an NSI installer script that would never bundle some needed files in the actual installer. I can only imagine that a lot of people have made the same mistake (used CopyFiles instead of File) and posted that mistake on the internet. The true disaster of that being that then testing out that installer on the developer's PC, where that CopyFiles may well work fine since the needed files happen to be sitting on that PC, would then lead on to think it was some weird bug that only failed on the end user's PC. I bet a lot of people posted it with comments like "this worked fine when I tried it," and here we are a decade later feeding that to an LLM.

These tools can write average code. That's what they've mostly been fed; that's what they're aiming for when they do their number crunching. The more specifically one prompts, I expect, then the more acceptable that average code will be. In some cases, average appears to be shockingly bad (actually, based on a couple of decades' experience in the game, average is generally pretty bad - I surely must have been churning out some average, bad code twenty years ago). If I want better than average, I'm going to have to do it myself.
by jingkai_he | 2026-02-08 18:23:46+00:00
It tried a lot of things relentlessly, just to name a few:

* Exploit kernel CVEs
* Weaponise gcc, crafting malicious kernel modules; forging arbitrary packets to spoof the source address that bypass tcp/ip
* Probing metadata service
* Hack bpf & io uring
* A lot of mount escape attempts, network, vsock scanning and crafting

As a non security researcher it was mind blown to see what it did, which in the hindsight isn't surprising as Opus 4.6 hits 93% solve rate on Cybench - https://cybench.github.io/
by pmontra | 2026-02-08 18:23:49+00:00
I visited the site on my Android phone with Firefox. It loads and the UI fits the screen, however it seems slow. Words appear at 3 or 4 characters at a time, then there is a pause, then another 3 or 4 characters. Some music when characters appear, then it stops, then it starts again. I muted it soon.

It looks nice, so I hope to give it a try from my laptop. The Mars trilogy was a great read. When I saw the title of this Show HN I said, oh wow!

By the way, dust storms could be a plot device but are they really that bad with so low air pressure?
by cornstalks | 2026-02-08 18:24:00+00:00
I think your average person knows what sequential means but might not remember what series means. Personally I always remember the meaning of series in “parallel vs series” because it must be the opposite of parallel. I’m not proud of the fact that I always forget and have to re-intuit the meaning every time, but the only time I ever see “series” is when people are talking about a TV show or electronics.
by redox99 | 2026-02-08 18:24:12+00:00
Quality is better both from a user and a code perspective.

From a user perspective I often implement a feature and then just throw it away no worries because I can reimplement it in an hour again based on my findings. No sunken cost. Also I can implement very small details that otherwise I'd have to backlog. This leads to a higher quality product for the user.

From a code standpoint I frequently do large refactors that also would never have been worth it by hand. I have a level of test coverage that would be infeasible for a one man show.
by mrweasel | 2026-02-08 18:24:17+00:00
Thinking back, you're probably correct, but it seems like they where actively trying to create something good back then. That might just be me only seeing the good parts, with .Net and SQLServer. Azure was never good, and we've know why for over a decade, their working conditions suck and people don't stay long, resulting things being held together by duct tape.

I do think some things in Microsoft ecosystem are salvageable, they just aren't trendy. The Windows kernel can still work, .Net and their C++ runtime, Win32 / Winforms, ActiveDirectory, Exchange (on-prem) and Office are all still fixable and will last Microsoft a long time. It's just boring, and Microsoft apparently won't do it, because: No subscription.
by JKCalhoun | 2026-02-08 18:24:26+00:00
> Changing the file names from .mp4 to .mov also opens up more, and changing file names in the links from .pdf to .mp4

Are you suggesting there are accessible files at justice.gov for which the URLs were not part of the "dump"? That simply swizzling the URL you can access additional files that were not part of the released tranche?
by acdha | 2026-02-08 18:25:09+00:00
They’re also selling a massive vehicle which was designed for macho aesthetics rather than performance. Bragging about minor aerodynamic tweaks is how they convince buyers that it’s okay to spend even more money to take the edge off of that fashion decision. It’s like the places which brag about their single use plastic using some recycled material because they don’t want to say it’d be even better if you bought something which could be reused many times instead.
by freeopinion | 2026-02-08 18:25:12+00:00
You could say that. The schema in question was not mine nor in any way within my control. I could start up a business and write an entire app to replace the one in question. Maybe I could even get you to donate some money to fund that endeavor. Or I could spend an hour one time to code an external work around so I don't have to spend two hours a cycle fighting with that stupid app.

This is how ridiculous workflows evolve, but it really isn't AI's fault.
by bri3d | 2026-02-08 18:25:16+00:00
> It's really funny to me that Microsoft's attempt to finally stamp out desktop Linux once and for all failed

This conspiracy was never true and never happened. First off, note that the first version of the thing in the article you’re commenting on relied on a Fedora shim loader which Microsoft signed. Second off, note that almost all modern motherboards let you enroll your own UEFI keys and do not rely on exclusively the Microsoft keys.

The only place this is was becoming an issue for Linux was early Secure Boot implementations where the vendor was too lazy to allow key enrollment, and that era has generally passed.
by invokestatic | 2026-02-08 18:26:01+00:00
No, this is not true at all. Microsoft requires their system vendors (Dell, HP, etc) to allow users to enroll their own Secure Boot keys through their “Designed for Windows” certification.

Further, many distributions are already compatible with Secure Boot and work out of the box. Whether or not giving Microsoft the UEFI root of trust was a good idea is questionable, but what they DO have is a long, established history of supporting Linux secure boot. They sign a UEFI shim that allows distributions to sign their kernels with their own, distribution-controlled keys in a way that just works on 99% of PCs.
by anthonyIPH | 2026-02-08 18:26:47+00:00
Do any US automakers have anything in the pipes using Sodium-Ion batteries? A quick search turned up info on a plant mass producing the batteries in Holland, MI but no mention of when they would be available. As someone in the market for an EV within the next year or 2, and also currently enduring a month long stretch of temps in the single digits and below, cold weather performance has suddenly become a huge consideration.
by O1111OOO | 2026-02-08 18:27:16+00:00
> my question is more technical: how did the blot out the booing?

Filtering out boos doesn't seem to be an issue from a technical standpoint. It was done recently with Donald Trump at the US Open Tennis:

https://bimcmedia.com/booing-trump-at-the-us-open-tv-audienc...

"The USTA’s decision to comply with the White House’s wishes and shield Trump’s self-presentation from noise is hardly understandable. The British Guardian called it in tennis jargon an “unforced error” – a fault without necessity. The US Open are actually the Grand Slam tournament that cares least about etiquette."
by tialaramex | 2026-02-08 18:27:35+00:00
I think the popularity of Rust for Linux is also in part a reflection of internal discontent with poorly documented and sometimes straight up poorly understood kernel internal APIs.

When a developer asks Can I Fizzle this Doodad? C is comfortable with the answer being "It'll definitely compile but whether it would work is complicated - ask the expert on Fizzling and the Doodad expert, and hope they give the same answer" but Rust wants the answer to be "Yes" or "No" or at the very least, "Here is some actual text explaining when that's fine"

Sometimes it really is hard work to figure this out but for a project as big as Linux even in those cases it's often worth doing that hard work, because you unlock something valuable for every non-expert contributor and Linux has a lot of those.
by neogoose | 2026-02-08 18:27:36+00:00
That's one of the reasons I built zlob. It literally has an endpoint to do this but if you are talking about glibc there are 2 options

1. fnmatch function which is not ideal because it doesn't take into account all the path specific optimizations and does not support BRACE
2. ALTDIRFUNC flag for globbing let you simulate file system which absolutely sucks

in zlob you can simply call zlob_match_paths(<pattern>, <list>, flags, ptr)

where list would be either c string or rust/zig like slices
by dijit | 2026-02-08 18:27:46+00:00
"Subtle nuance" he says, after I've spent multiple comments explaining that bootloaders reject unsigned and untrusted-signed code identically, whilst he and others insist there's some meaningful technical distinction (which none of you have articulated).

Then you admit you actually understood this the entire time, but my tone put you off elaborating.

So you watched this thread pile on someone for being technically correct, said nothing of substance, and now reveal you knew they were right all along but simply chose not to contribute because you didn't like how they said it.

That's not you taking the high road, mate. That's you admitting you prioritised posturing over clarity, then got smug about it.

Brilliant contribution. Really moved the discourse forward there.
by swid | 2026-02-08 18:28:10+00:00
I personally have jested many times I picked my career because the logical soundness of programming is comforting to me. A one is always a one; you don’t measure it and find it off by some error; you can’t measure it a second time and get a different value.

I’ve also said code is prose for me.

I am not some autistic programmer either, even if these statements out of context make me sound like one.

The non-determinism has nothing to do with temperature; it has everything to do with that fact that even at temp equal to zero, a single meaningless change can produce a different result. It has to do with there being no way to predict what will happen when you run the model on your prompt.

Coding with LLMs is not the same job. How could it be the same to write a mathematical proof compared to asking an LLM to generate that proof for you? These are different tasks that use different parts of the brain.
by siscia | 2026-02-08 18:28:11+00:00
I am somehow close to what MSFT and GitHub are doing here, mostly because I believe it is a great idea, and I am experimenting on it myself.

Especially on the angle of automatic/continuos improvement (https://github.github.io/gh-aw/blog/2026-01-13-meet-the-work...)

Often code is seen as an artifact, that it is valuable by itself. This was an incomplete view before, and it is now a completely wrong view.

What is valuable is how code encode the knowledge of the organization building it.

But what it is even more valuable, is that knowledge itself. Embedded into the people of the organization.

Which is why continuos and automatic improvement of a codebase is so important. We all know that code rot with time/features requests.

But at the same time, abruptly change the whole codebase architecture destroys the mental model of the people in the organization.

What I believe will work, is a slow stream of small improvements - stream that can be digested by the people in the organization.

In this context I find more useful to mix and control deterministic execution with a sprinkle of intelligence on top.
So a deterministic system that figure out what is wrong - with whatever definition of wrong that makes sense.
And then LLMs to actually fix the problem, when necessary.
by harshreality | 2026-02-08 18:28:11+00:00
Electric engineering talks about parallel and series. (including the old parallel and serial ports on computers, before almost everything became serial)

Programming talks about parallelism or concurrency or threading. (single-threading, multi-threading)

Or synchronous and asynchronous.

The legal system talks about concurrent and consecutive.

Process descriptions might use "sequential" rather than consecutive or series.

"Linear" is another possibility, but it's overloaded since it's often used in reference to mathematics.
by ndsipa_pomu | 2026-02-08 18:28:31+00:00
The idea behind taxation is to enable collective spending power for things that ideally benefit society. The NHS is likely to be useful for the vast majority of people at some point or another though individuals may well not get value for money if they're healthy or die young etc. However, providing free/cheap healthcare enables people to get check-ups and hopefully catch problems earlier which can make a huge difference to the outcomes. Of course, increasing the health of the workforce is going to benefit the economy as well, if you're looking for a purely monetary benefit.
by raw_anon_1111 | 2026-02-08 18:28:39+00:00
The “work” is not creating for and while loops. The work for me is:

1. Looking at the contract and talking to sales about any nuances from the client

2. Talking to the client (use stakeholder if you are working for a product company) about their business requirements and their constraints

3. Designing the architecture.

4. Presenting the architecture and design and iterating

5. Doing the implementation and iterating. This was the job of myself and a team depending on the size of the project. I can do a lot more by myself now in 40 hours a week with an LLM.

6. Reviewing the implementation

7. User acceptance testing

8. Documentation and handover.

I’ve done some form of this from the day I started working 25 years ago. I was fortunate to never be a “junior developer”. I came into my first job with 10 years of hobbyist experience and implementing a multi user data entry system.

I always considered coding as a necessary evil to see my vision come to fruition.
by neogoose | 2026-02-08 18:29:05+00:00
I agree though the main problem for me is not the API it's missing functionality of patterns like ./*/*.c. There is a very long running thread in the gnu mailing list where authors do not like this idea.

While I need this because everyone expects it to be available. Another reason is the API for thing like someone else asked here already (match in memory over a list of paths)
by D-Machine | 2026-02-08 18:29:11+00:00
Fun play on words. But yes, LLMs are Large Language Models, not Large World Models. This matters because (1) the world cannot be modeled anywhere close to completely with language alone, and (2) language only somewhat models the world (much in language is convention, wrong, or not concerned with modeling the world, but other concerns like persuasion, causing emotions, or fantasy / imagination).

It is somewhat complicated by the fact LLMs (and VLMs) are also trained in some cases on more than simple language found on the internet (e.g. code, math, images / videos), but the same insight remains true. The interesting question is to just see how far we can get with (2) anyway.
by WalterBright | 2026-02-08 18:30:05+00:00
> lots of capitalistic activity is basically a search for the cheapest and fastest way to accomplish a minimum set of requirements

This is what produced our high standard of living.

For example, Ford and the Model T. Before the Model T, only the rich could afford to buy a car. Ford was relentless with the T in finding ways to cut the manufacturing cost. And the result was America got wheels.
by anupamchugh | 2026-02-08 18:30:12+00:00
> The interesting failure mode isn’t just “one bad actor slips through”, it’s provenance: if you want to
> “denounce the tree rooted at a bad actor”, you need to record where a vouch came from (maintainer X,
> imported list Y, date, reason), otherwise revocation turns into manual whack-a-mole.
>
> Keeping the file format minimal is good, but I’d want at least optional provenance in the details field
> (or a sidecar) so you can do bulk revocations and audits.
by brightstep | 2026-02-08 18:30:27+00:00
Totally agree about the chat interface. I like to say it’s “infinitely powerful and infinitely confusing.” A dangerous combination. And, arguing with myself, I think it’s fair to say the code is AN object of our attention, if not THE object. A common metaphor being applied to agentic coding is the invention of power tools. If AI is the drill, and the goal is a house, then the code is the framing.
by TonyStr | 2026-02-08 18:30:42+00:00
I rewatched the movie now, and I think you're right. There were a lot of details I'd forgotten.

The way I remember thinking about it was that he was jailed for revenge murder, then spent his life in jail doing his best to atone by being helpful (building a library, teaching, helping with taxes, etc.). When the prison system refuses to set him free despite him proving through his actions in prison that he's not a threat to society anymore (I hallucinated this part -- this happened to Red, not Andy), he escapes, and his freedom is his redemption.

I'm not a native English speaker, and I think I may have conflated redemption and atonement. Looking at some definitions, it looks like you can receive redemption without atonement -- it doesn't necessarily have to come from within.
by socalgal2 | 2026-02-08 18:30:44+00:00
Japanese films are notoriously bad. You found a few gems. They are rare. This topic comes up often in Japanese learning groups.

There's also just personal takes. I had to shut off Memories of Matsuko. Maybe the end saves it but it was way too over the top and not in a good way.

Some good older Japanese though

Kurasawa: Ikiru (1955)

Teshigahara: Woman in the Dunes (1964)

These are 2 movies you won't forget.

Conversely, even though I enjoyed Shoplifters I remember nothing about it except the guy celebrating he had sex and the girl burping. Similarly with After Life. I just watched it 2 months ago and had to go look it up to remember what it was about. It was interesting because of the premise but not because of the movie itself.