skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
What to expect from a software engineer in the AI-driven future?
I'm curious about what software engineers should focus on to stay competitive in the AI-driven future.

What skills, tools, or areas of knowledge should we prioritize to ensure we remain valuable in the evolving tech landscape? Should we be doubling down on core software engineering principles, diving deeper into AI and machine learning, or focusing on something else entirely?

I'd love to hear thoughts and advice from others navigating this shifting landscape, especially those who have been through similar transitions in the past.
A French citizen running a service in France is going to be subject to French laws and can expect to be arrested when they step into the country of France if they have charges pending.

This isn’t some grand conspiracy theory.
I’ve found this explainer by Angela Collier super helpful in understanding the current state of string theory.

https://youtu.be/kya_LXa_y1E?si=wjHwG0p3J4HWRKs7

I was a gigantic pop science fan and read The Elegant Universe when I was approximately 13 and am excited it’s still being read even if it’s not necessarily true about our universe. It’s got the inspiration and excitement part that’s all I really needed as a kid.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Horsemen_of_the_Infocalyp...

Bingo!
Telegram is used heavily in both Ukraine & Russia. But I doubt it has anything to do with it.
I agree with this sentiment. However maybe in few years AI will get better enough that you wont need to debug it?
He was one of the founding members: https://openai.com/index/introducing-openai/
So much for “Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité”. I wonder if this will help push founders more to the US.
Thanks for the feedback! The emphasis on a single query highlights how easy it is to import your database schema: just run the query, get the JSON output, and start editing your diagram in ChartDB. Plus, there’s no need to sign in or set your database credentials. It’s all about simplifying the process and saving time so you can get started quickly. Speed is a bonus, but the main value is the simplicity and ease of use. Glad you're giving it a try!
I agree with other commenter. You don't know how to use them. LLM's are not programmers.
For me AI boom has not been a win at all.

It is at best on par with Stack Overflow and only works when the LLM has a lot of prior examples it has trained on. Professional coding is not something that can tolerate introducing bugs that take for ever to debug simply because the LLM lacks enough training data.

Also it lacks the concept of libraries having different API versions. And so you will see in the generated code it will happily mix methods from both versions. And because the model takes so long to train you can't use newer libraries.
The article doesn't contain the evidence though; it claims that someone changed access to private for a Telegram group that covered the protests. However, as the article says, it could be done not only by Telegram, but by one of the administrators.
> That's the most useful content in the article.

That's perhaps a bit harsh. I have got to - however - indeed thank you for that link: The summary of self help books in there is great, and the 11 points are spot on ...
> Probably a system to exchange electronic money?

I didn't request or authorise that.
You definitely could. But I guess it should be secure by default. Even if you didn't implement any check on the server.

Because people are lazy or they may forget to implement the security checks, or simply be unaware about them.

Ex., when you hacked up a super simple script to display a number of today's users of your startup to display on the big screen in your office. You would probably want something as simple as possible. This page is just 3-5 lines of code. Maybe one-liner even. No authorization or other security, as it's for the office intranet.

Without CORS any website that is visited by people from your office could fetch that number on screen.
EU has been complaining about Telegram's end-to-end encryption for a long time and they want to implement some regulations to basically add backdoors into all messaging apps. I don't really see how this case will go on since at least private chats are encrypted so Telegram (theoretically at least) can't see the contents.
Biggest advancements in launch technology would surely be correct. Scientific research isn’t in their domain and should never be. There’s just too much political influence there.
According to which source?
But here's the thing. If your app is known to be uses heavily by criminals ranging from Pedo's to drug dealers. You are liable. You run a carrier service. Much like the owner of omegle found out, yes you do have a duty of care. You can't just provide a service that knowingly provides a platform to criminal activity and do jack shit. You live in fairytale land if you think you can.
Telegram's @wallet is owned by Telegram itself.

It's registered as a separate company, but they even share some office space.
A handful of EU MEPs keep pushing backdoored encryption and it keeps getting veto’d.

There are two legistive bodies in the EU, one is only allowed to propose law, the other is only allowed to vote on it.

Lots of braindead laws get put to a vote, theres no requirement that they get through.

I understand that raising the alarm is helpful, but it would be helpful if people took a second to understand how the EU works, the politicians involved and how their motions are perceived by the rest of parliament.
Vehicles in LEO have taken near catastrophic strikes before. There's a better safety margin, but it's not reduced to zero.
telegram is undoubtedly influenced by the Russian govt https://www.wired.com/story/the-kremlin-has-entered-the-chat...
Except Telegram is considered one of the most secured apps around. Obviously it cannot stop people from being stupid when they expose themselves.

The very reason why France is not happy is that because they cannot get access to private chats and stuff. EU was (and is) pushing for the end of E2E encryption after all (it failed this time, but they will try again).

Durov created Telegram because the russian government was trying to take over his original social network - VK (basically imagine USA gov taking over Facebook). Thus he sold his shared and left the country.

I do find it hilarious to see apologists of government over-reach like you.
I wonder if there's some kind of plateau you reach in a learning a language that way. Like, what if you started working with a hollywood dialect coach?
Ah, that makes sense on second read. Thanks!
I've seen crypto papers (and cited!) that are worse than this advice. Not sure what you are trying to say here.
There’s a world of a difference between refusing to hand over data you have to the authorities, and plausibly not having stored them in the first place.

By end-to-end encrypting messages, but uploading backups to Google Drive and iCloud, and in a non-end-to-end encrypted way by default, WhatsApp (and iMessage, which does largely the same) have quite cleverly maneuvered themselves out of that potential source of legal problems without cutting off law enforcement access entirely.
just one google away https://www.wired.com/story/the-kremlin-has-entered-the-chat...
I skipped to the "why build a database" section and then skipped another two minutes of his tangential thoughts - seems like the answer is "because Moore's law"?
I’m sure the Russians and Chinese would love that.
The one this HN post links to
Durov has a French passport, so he will be charged as a French citizen. What is weird is that he sure knew that he was on the watchlist in France, though he has chosen to go there. Why?
What do you mean by "knowingly providing a service to a criminal"? Is Elon Mask then guilty for providing access to Twitter for Trump?
Can you compile frankenphp to run php?
[dupe] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41341353
That's partly why I've only been using these tools for inconsequential tasks who's primary time cost is typing. Like throwing together a primitive prototype or mock generator and using my brain to build on it or get the rough structure down. HTML/CSS templating for example is still easy to screw up if you actually care about quality, but if you don't then you may as well find the fastest path there.

I agree that the more convenience people rely on though, they seem less willing to sit with a hard problem and learn it the hard way, which is required in so many areas of programming or w/e, or sit with it and just grind their brain for possible edge cases or robust ways to implement something.
there's a joke that goes something like

A group of professors liked jokes, but got tired of hearing the same ones, so they started numbering them. So instead of telling a joke or funny observation when something happened, they'd say "112" and the others would laugh. or "64", more laughter.

One day they get a new prof on their team and after a few weeks of this number, laugh, number, laugh, during a meeting, the new guy says "-149". There's dead silence for a while. The eldest prof starts laughing, "i've never heard that one!"
> is not sufficient level of certainty for NASA (anymore, because of bitter lessons).

It never was. If you trip into a known failed safe situation the mission rules immediately change. This has been true since manned space flight started.
> Are SQL engines really more efficient at filtering/matching/aggregating data when doing complex queries?

As others have said, yes. In most cases, the more complex the query the better the result.

> Doesn't working without reusable blocks / tests / logs make development harder?

SQL isn't a programming language, it's a query language. You're effectively writing a single expression that describes the shape of the data that you want and then then the RDBMS goes off and finds the most performant way to retrieve the data that matches that shape. It doesn't compare well with procedural programming.

The closest "languages" that comparable to SQL are HTML and CSS. However you manage HTML and CSS is also how you can manage SQL.
Scientists have created a nutritious powder from plastic-consuming microbes
Well of you provide a service and it's knowingly used by criminals and you just implement features to benefit the criminal activity but make no effort to curb it. Yes, your an accomplice.
There is no need for a backdoor since the vast majority of messages on Telegram are not end-to-end encrypted. Just read from the server!
How is it different from common situation today when a piece of code was written a long time ago by someone who no longer works at the company, so nobody understands how it works?
Laddergate: Microcosm vs. Webstaurantstore
Between Ukraine and Russia, Telegram is the only choice for Russia.

Ukraine has many many other options.

What else is there for Russians to communicate with the outer world?
- "probably reasonable to assume"

Presumption of reasonability in political prosecutions doesn't exactly have a great track record.

I remember when the GoF tried to blackmail a Wikipedia admin with prosecution threats, to coerce them to censor Wikipedia entries it didn't want people to read,

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5503354 ("French homeland intelligence threatens a sysop into deleting a Wikipedia Article (wikimedia.fr)")
I think the key message here is that knowing when to use a given technology (e.g: Kubernetes) is good - but it's more important to recognize when not to use it.

Don't get me wrong, I love Kubernetes, but I agree w/ Kelsey here - if you're running Kuberenetes on top of an orchestrated hypervisor and not using it to the fullest, you're just losing on performance.

I think we generally forget how bare metal (and scaling vertically) can sometimes be the right approach, like illustrated in this Let's Encrypt blog post:
https://letsencrypt.org/2021/01/21/next-gen-database-servers
Yes, on POSIX systems you'd get a SIGBUS if the I/O fails or if there's no available physical memory to back the mapping.
They claim that criminals use Telegram, but it is not the best choice for doing crime because Telegram requires a phone number to sign up, and a phone number can be linked to identity and full location history (telcos record full location history for every number).

However, Telegram might be involved in cooperating with criminals; for example by not deleting channels related to protests against government at govt's request, by not blocking channels of allegedly spreading misinformation Western media like BBC. This is indeed illegal in Russia.
A true scientist would come to the conclusion that at this point in time it's time to give up on the great liberal democracy project. A true scientist has the scale needed to recognize that capitalism, as practiced under liberal aims, does not have the desire nor the ability to satisfy modern industrialism's education prerequisite. A societal culture that has prioritized the reverse of education is what has led to the United States's incompetence at technology and industry. The United States was never going to succeed in this arena.

The kid gets a failing grade. Pick someone else that is a better candidate at mission success. Select someone that's serious about doing real work.

Maybe capitalism's competitor, whatever that may be, is better at heralding space travel and mass production?
> In some contexts a mistake like that has an actual tangible capital cost

Developers need to be just as mindful of the reputational cost.

Being known as someone who doesn't know what they are doing and is harming the team can cost you.
The complement is also true. There's no point in making it stronger than it has to be.

If I have this box that says Bcrypt, but scrypt might be better. I can either spend a bunch of time re-implementing scrypt, or I can shove Bcrypt into there and move on. If Bcrypt is sufficient, then I don't really care if scrypt would be "better"
What about group chat encryption? You can not possible say telegram is more secure than signal or WhatsApp.

What did I say that made me an apologist for government overreach? I recommend users use Signal? Your accusation is unfounded when I was complaining about a lack of encryption.
I don’t understand how his passport changes the whole thing?

France can and will charge anyone on its territory no matter what passport you hold.
> It's legacy in the "we would never invent this as the solution to the problem domain that's today asked of it."

I don't think that definition of legacy is useful because so many things which hardly anyone calls "legacy" fit the definition - for example: Javascript as the web standard, cars in cities and bipartisan democracy.

I think many of us would say that that none of these is an ideal solution for the problem being solved, but it's what we are stuck with and I cannot think anyone could call it "legacy systems" until a viable successor is widespread.
I watched an expose on drone use in Ukraine and it appear they are using discord of all services...
> Especially in math. Math is a skill hierarchy, and if you cannot execute a lower-level skill consistently and accurately, you will not be able to build more advanced skills on top of it.

To be frank, I am only a math hobbyist and studying CS. I haven't taken any proof based courses (only calc 3, linear algebra).

However, it is my experience that once you get the initial proof based stuff down and are familiar with common proof writing techniques, you can pretty much learn anything.

I often start on an nLab page for a mathematical structure and just click on links in the definition till I see something I know. I then try and make sense of it and go back up the chain. I try to solve some problems and see some invariants. If I want to go more in depth I watch lectures on youtube and then read a book about it and do some more problems.

I'm not really sure if this is a top down or bottom up process, but it seems more top down to me. Of course, if I encounter a whole field I don't know then I need to start from scratch and go bottom up. This is also for essentially a late-undergrad math major understanding of topics at most.
okay, so what's the solution if boeing can't make fit for purpose vehicles (air or space)?

Just let them keep eating crackers in bed, or what?

aka "too big to fail"
Since when has a tweet been a legit news source?
Are they going to arrest Zuckerberg and Tim Cook next for the encryption in WhatsApp and iMessage?
First, if you aren't already, look into what the FCC is doing with BEAD funding, and consequently what all the states are doing with mapping broadband provision to try and capture some of that money. Tennesee for example.

More generally, there is a little funkiness with the exoroad site. I guess this project is still in the assembly stage?

- When I search for a US county, say Culpeper or Fairfax in Virginia, I get the map and then some very stock images. The images are on things that don't exist in the specific county. E.g. Fairfax doesn't have a cathedral and a giant stately home.

- The crime stats are also a bit weirdly presented. If a county is "9 of 10" for crime that makes it sound terrible...but I think you render it in green to show that it's good? And what does the statistic actually mean? "out of 10 equivalently populated counties?" say, or something else?
I don't pretend to understand modern physics. However, I did buy "The Elegant Universe" and got most of the way through it, until I got tired of the hype: especially, phrases like "It turns out that ..." when nothing has "turned out."

If you can't test it, it's not science. If it's just "beautiful mathematics" it should be in the Math Department. I don't find anything offensive about Woit's article. Disagreement is part of what everyone signed up for.
By that logic, any app that provides privacy from governments spying is a criminal enterprise.
I don't think he has said anything outright. But he has endorsed (coded) antisemitic tweets, he has directly espoused transphobia, and his companies have lost a few lawsuits alleging racist working conditions.

I don't think he himself is racist, but he seems to enjoy hanging out with a lot of racists, and he gives me vibes that he thinks anti-racism is more of a problem than racism.
You might be surprised to learn who's doing the pushing:

https://www.wired.com/story/europes-moral-crusader-lays-down...

https://www.statewatch.org/news/2024/july/police-should-have...
Also it's e2e is a bit of a joke because it's so easy to fall back to the non-e2e path (basically no-one uses it)
> This can be entirely configured in the settings app.

How? I can change DNS server, but not suffix info.

> But expect for more and more of the Control Panel to disappear over time.

Right, but they're also not saying explicitly that they'll move all the settings that exist in the old Control Panel. And given their history, it's not a given that they'll do just that.

> You're reading a lot into that small sentence if your takeaway is they'll be removing Jumbo Frame support.

It wouldn't be the first time they removed access to some essential settings before back-pedaling. That said, sure, they'll probably add access to that stuff.

Of course, it's entirely possible someone else is at the helm of this area of Windows now, one that actually cares about power users. In which case my worries are probably unfounded.
Your fingertips and nostrils are the same size.

Coincidence??

LOL.

Evolution leaves evidence of many things that, at one point in time, under different circumstances, were a great adaptation, but no longer are.

Culture, the mind, our emotions, and even the reciprocal interplay of our organs and the microbiome show a long history of adaptations to situations which are long gone.

That's enough evidence for me against Intelligent Design.
Many people outside AND INSIDE France still have not much understood that the current government have transformed a step at a time the Republic in a ready-for-a-full-coup fascist state, for those who can read french I suggest trying:

- https://www.senat.fr/leg/tas22-148.pdf page 43 bottom, or searching "réquisition de toute personne"

- https://www.senat.fr/leg/pjl22-569.pdf with a good intervention from an LFI MEP, Ugo Bernalicis who is DEFINITIVELY worth to hear https://youtu.be/PDG9V01jPUs

Just to cite the relatively recent more stunning move. But there was many in the less recent past (starting from police surveillance, impunity and so on) not counting the current delay to DENIED the last legislative elections results...
Not requiring db credentials is a huge plus! Thanks for the explanation.
Just think: all the companies that do illegal shit and get slaps on the wrist with a few thousand/million dollar fines. That's the only "consequence" for the executives that blew up the economy in 2008, the politicians that are in cahoots with company executives to funnel money into their pockets, the companies that spy on their own employees without due diligence or cause, the producers of products that knowingly cause cancer, the producers of medicine that knowingly destroys lives, the decision-makers that destroy engineering standards resulting in airplanes falling from the skies with hundreds of helpless people being blown to pieces, and the companies that destroy the planet with actions that can never be reversed.

And instead they arrest the CEO of a company that provides a mechanism for people to talk to one another.
Well much like the owner of omegle found out you can't provide platforms for criminal activities and make no effort to curb it. It only takes a 30 second google before you find telegram rooms offering all kinds of illegal stuff. You don't find that on Twitter. Twitter is atleast mildly moderated. Telegram could have moderation built in to catch illegal activities but it chooses to do nothing. See the difference?
As long as the task remains non-trivial and there is still something to be done – mostly forming a clear idea of what you want to do and what you need and laying it out, now in english – why would this be any less wrong than any of the other times when the incumbents got worried and uphill-both-ways-y?

When has this purity/concept idea ever stood the test of time? Is it only music when it's on tape? Is hiphop even music? Can't you do art with photoshop?

Things evolve and the things that once seemed important won't be. People will be lazy and clever and adapt.
You realize that every social media/forum/messaging app should be banned then and every CEO in jail. Bad actors will use anything they can.
Private chats are a hassle to initiate and not multi-device.

Most use normal chats.

With anonymous accounts, using anonymous +888 numbers, whose price has increased from $16 to $1000+ in a matter of a year, it is indeed a very convenient playground for all sorts of activities.
Let's cross that bridge when we come to it, shall we. Meanwhile, you should be glad we are refusing to use it. If it works as well as you claim, this situation is to your advantage.
The cryptography course in my bachelor's was good enough to paint a picture of the complexity involved. By then I had already heard the "don't roll your own crypto" mantra, so maybe that primed me, but the semester course helped to get an appreciation for the subtle ways information leaks when you try to contain it. It also gave me some more confidence to push back if for example a colleague tried to convince me that the mantra doesn't apply to them/us.

Obviously you can't mandate a high quality course into existence, but I definitely good value out of having it in the required curriculum.
That only gives you trees not DAGs - you can't do fan-in (there's no way to "share" let bound names).
There's a decently sized saffron industry in that general region of the Appalachia and southern PA for the same reason.
I hope no SMS 2FA is needed for this :-)
If users flag a story on hn, some kind of ranking penalty is applied.
What makes you believe those do not have backdoors for Western powers?
I never really understood precisely what the challenges around dates were until this comment and the previous one.