skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Our company is currently six people. We have a software-updates channel in Slack where I post our changelog for the team to read. I am very meticulous about these posts because I know very frequently we'll get asked "when did such and such change" and I can go back and reference these posts. And also its frequently the only way sales and our executive will know about changes, having not been directly involved. So yeah - I take a lot of time to make these posts concise, easy to understand etc.

I constantly get asked to make a Loom demonstrating the changes. Which makes sense... but is also frustrating. And I always make the point that these videos aren't searchable (sure they have AI summaries or whatever but those are in Loom, not Slack).
2 lessons to learn from this blog:

> these LLMs won’t replace software engineers anytime soon, because it requires a strong engineering background to recognize what is actually a good idea, along with other constraints that are domain specific.

> One issue with my experiments is that I’m benchmarking code improvement using Python, which isn’t the coding language developers consider when hyperoptimizing performance.
What evidence would you accept that they're not doing this in a way that would make this an actionable bet?
The stated inputs are integers between 1 and 100,000, so if you're generating 1 million inputs, then you have 0.99999 ^ 1e6 = 4.5e-5 chance (roughly e^-10) of missing any given number, or roughly double that for missing any pair of values.

The key observation here is that you're sampling a relatively small space with a much greater number of samples, such that you have very high probability of hitting upon any point in the space.

Of course, it wouldn't work if you considered the full 32-bit integer space without increasing the number of samples to compensate. And, you'd need to be a little more clever to compute the largest possible value in your range.
Edward Thorp: How a Pioneering Blackjack Master Beats the Odds of Aging
Location: Toronto, Canada

Remote: Yes

Willing to relocate: Yes

Technologies: Ruby, JavaScript, TypeScript, Python, C#, React, Express, Node.js, ASP.NET, Docker, DigitalOcean, Nginx, AWS (CDK, ECS, EC2, Lambda, API Gateway, Batch, Fargate, DynamoDB, S3), PostgreSQL, MongoDB, Pinecone.

Résumé/CV: https://haroldcamacho.dev/Harold-Camacho-Resume-2024v1.pdf

Email: harold.camacho.diaz@gmail.com

--

Hey there! I'm Harold. I am a software engineer with hands-on experience across a broad spectrum of technologies. I thrive on continuous learning and innovation. Most recently, I developed Splinter (https://splinter-app.github.io/), an open-source pipeline designed to simplify the ingestion and processing of unstructured data for AI/ML workflows.
2024 FDA Approvals
> Of course, none of the images are copies, or would be judged to be copies by a reasonable person.

That's the fiction of course.

Tell me how something like ChatGPT can simultaneously claim to return accurate information while at the same time being completely independent from the sources of the information?

In terms of images - copyright isn't only for exact copies - it if was then humans would have been taking the piss by making minor changes for decades.

Sure you could argue some is fair use with genuinely original content being produced in the process, but I think you are also overlooking an important part of what's considered 'fair' - industrialised copying of source material isn't really the same in terms of fairness as one person getting inspiration.

Taking the Encylopedia Britanica and running it though an algorithm to change the wording, but not the meaning, and selling it on is really not the same as a student reading it and including those facts in their essay - the latter is considered fair use, the former is taking the piss.
Location: Florida, USA
Remote: Yes
Willing to relocate: No
Technologies: dart/flutter, javascript/typescript, elasticsearch, java, go, swift, kotlin
Résumé/CV: linkedin.com/in/xyclos
Email: jakej587 at gmail dot com
It was an oversight that was promptly fixed after the issue was raised. The dev created a post-mortem [1] and a wiki [2] describing the issue.

Seriously, give the poor dev a rest. It's absolutely uncalled for to throw in a non-sequitur about some bug from 7 years ago, making snide remarks about how that's a "design choice."

[1]: https://gitlab.com/gnachman/iterm2/-/issues/6068#note_409052...

[2]: https://gitlab.com/gnachman/iterm2/-/wikis/dnslookupissue
Suggestion: Now take the code away, and have the chatbot generate code that passes the tests it wrote.

(In theory, you get a clean-room implementation of the original code. If you do this please ping me because I'd love to see the results.)
I see. To be clear, I’m not saying what Honey did is not criminal activity, I’m just saying what they did does not look to me as if it qualifies as “cookie stuffing”. It might still be illegal, for a different reason. (Obligatory IANAL.)
Nonsense, you’re engaging in first order thinking as I stated.

China is a great counterexample of this, or just the life story of anyone who goes from rags to riches.

You may as well say that a broken down car has no emissions so let’s fix it. Once you fix it it does.
Using Google photos was your own choice. If your default browser decides tomorrow to opt you in to mine crypto, I'll wager you would be unhappy.
That’s a strange take.

Installed programs are the weakest link in the security of an OS like windows - should users not use programs? Users are just as likely to download a sketchy program as a sketchy extension, is that not even more severe of a risk?

User education and better marketplace policing are the solution, not silly blanket statements like that.
Tech titans hide in shadows awaiting Trump tariff threats
> If you allow zero width/height, you can also have 7777, 7887, 7997, 7447 and 7117.

Why not 7227, 7337, 7557, 7667 too?

The theorem holds for these as well.
This lacks nuance.

In many jurisdictions, you can charged, for not reporting someone else's crimes.

Even if Google should not be responsible for other sites doing [fingerprinting], the fact that they are enabling it should make them liable.

I don't think this is needed via ICO or via laws, to be clear. This can be a simple lawsuit. That's the right way to do things.
8/10 people I'm friends with who have been through an exit could write this post. It's a very, very, very, very common. The questions at the end too, two hands to count the times I've been asked those questions. I think the answer is, because: because those are what got you to the point of where you are right now, they are in fact just you, there is no why, they are not questions they're statements, that's who you are. Why are you that way? does it matter? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ (oh, and letting people down is hard because you're not just letting people down, you are letting yourself down too)
Overpriced complaints always sets off alarm bells to me if it solves some real problem/people like it/etc. There are usually migration costs and "way overpriced" may still be a small slice of overall budgets.
Our SaaS is in a different space but we're attacking the problem in a similar way. Our competitive edge in regards to pricing is all our competitors are thousand plus member orgs that come with all the bloated inefficiencies of an enterprise org.

We've identified that if we can produce a product that is 90% of what the competitors are doing and then charge at 30%, we can still make a killing because there are 10x fewer mouths to feed. Our main advantage in our space is that our customers "need" our software to run their business, so for them it's always going to be the cheapest option that gets the job done (ie. us).
Types are a useful design tool to explore the problem domain first, while the rest are details that emerge from that. Sure, if one starts with architecture, you're right. The software architect needs to consider these first. The programmer on the other hand ideally expects those as inputs.

When tasked with wearing on multiple hats (architect, programmer, user), I agree with your point. From a programmer's point of view, however, (abstract) types are IMHO indeed a much more useful tool as they cover many of the other concerns (policies, performance, etc.), too.
https://archive.is/JcOAo
It is a yucky experience with smelly people. It isn’t supposed to make you feel all warm and fuzzy.
https://archive.is/9kl89
> My personal philosophy is to use the most primitive methods possible and only use technology when there really is a strong need to go to the next level.

This is a good take on life in general. My parents were atmy house recently and my mother commented on how we never have dirty dishes. I told them the solution to me was always obviouse; don't own a dish washer. My wife and I have never owned a dishwasher since we were married, which has forced us to be more discriminatory about our dishware & forces us to wash dishes immediately after use so they're available again. People with dishwashers tend to have double what they need because they wait to start a load until the washer is full. Lots of the available technology we have has progressed past the level of optimization IMO.
Godspeed Greg
The Way of Water: On the Quiet Power of Ursula K. Le Guin's Activism
If you read my article I quote that exact paragraph, and then call out the Ars Technica reporter for the way they misleadingly rephrased this similar paragraph from the Reuters report that Ars Technica cite as their source:

> One Siri user said his private discussions with his doctor about a “brand name surgical treatment” caused him to receive targeted ads for that treatment, while two others said their discussions about Air Jordan sneakers, Pit Viper sunglasses and “Olive Garden” caused them to receive ads for those products.

The whole point of my article is that these random claims that were part of the original lawsuit in 2021 are being mindlessly quoted as if they are proven facts, when they are not. Here's my link again: https://simonwillison.net/2025/Jan/2/they-spy-on-you-but-not...
In contrast, in Serbia you can buy simcards without ID at any kiosk
Funny, I only recently started visiting Connecticut to visit some friends who moved there! Rhode Island, the first to declare independence from England, and the last to ratify the Constitution. Not bad.
The antonym of "luck" is "misfortune".
I used to work for a company that used Loom. It was always used for internal demos, ie "I made a new feature" or "I encountered a bug." It was perfect for that. That being said, we probably weren't the target market because we didn't pay for it.
Ask HN: Ad network for side projects that isn't ugly?
Hey all, I'm curious what people here generally use as an ad network for side projects? I have a site that gets a few thousand impressions/month and I'd like to make a little bit off of it to motivate me to work on it more.

My issue is, standard banner ads are really ugly. Do you all have any suggestions that allow me to control the styling a bit more so the ads actually fit into my website and are less obtrusive? I know I'll probably make a lot less this way but that's okay with me.
Your comment also has me dreaming about a Dependabot-esque utility that opens Github issues on repositories that have quarantined projects in their requirements.txt.

Quarantining would prevent anyone from building / installing new copies of the compromised software, so this utility would only help people who were a) monitoring the project, and b) had a local version installed pre-quarantine. That's a pretty narrow scope of users, so now that I type all this out, I'm realizing that the juice is likely not worth the squeeze.
The Growing Importance of Computational Biology
> but in my opinion big SQLs are one of the best ways to store complexity.

It seems crazy at first, and then I continue thinking about it and it still seems crazy for wanting complexity to be in SQL.

Personally, I want anything complex to ideally easily testable, both manually and automatically. SQLs is easy to test manually, but harder to test automatically, especially compared to lines of code in a programming language. At least you can somewhat untangle balls of spaghetti code into less dense, then attack parts of it. How would you deal with a tangled ball of SQL spaghetti?

> The more lines the more risk for bugs.

I don't fully agree with this either, not all lines are equal. One big fat line of a 400 character long SQL query has higher chance of containing issues not easy to glance compared to 400 lines of Java code, and I say this even as a person who despises Java for various reasons.
I am not sure the Turing test has been passed or understood. Cromulent answers aren’t human ones.

LLMs enable me to write more code than I ever have and in languages I don’t know. It’s a wonder.

That said I grew up with an 8-bit machine buying games on cassette. There were never updates and rarely ever a serious bug.

Yes programs were tiny, but they were also handwritten in assembler. Quality has gone down in software with the advent of modern tools as surely as it has in furniture with the introduction of the table saw.
The manual footer years are helpful; I see them as an indicator of when they were last updated.
> It all works because the former ruling party organized around themselves some kind of semi-religious cult consisting of around 1/3 of nation, usually older people that oppose everything they don't understand

this describes every country's conservative party btw
> Twenty years ago, brazilian researchers who would mention this theory were considered a bit lunatic

You are right. However, not only Brazilian researchers, an not just 20 years ago

Check out the movie "The Lost City of Z" or the story of Percy Fawcett
My bad, should be unlisted and viewable now. Thanks for letting me know.
You would be correct, though I guess it's now the M in FAANG.
Clinic.js was promising but it's not maintained anymore, would be great if we had a modern alternative: https://clinicjs.org/
This view makes no sense given any cursory view of history. What about European countries going to the Americas, taking people's land (with out consent) and gold (without consent) to enrich themselves? Or what about the relative success of any tribes in the Americas prior to Europeans showing up by defeating other tribes?

At what arbitrary point would you like to start counting as to where we should start respecting this "consent"? Do you want to undo any previous actions or should we just take whatever arbitrary power structures we've landed on and start? C'mon, this is ridiculous.

We live in a society which, by definition, requires multiple people participating. Your right to consent (or not) sometimes doesn't exist because society takes priority. There is no high philosophy here, it's just the reality of how things work. Get over it.
> I wish people would understand what a large language model is.

I think your view of llm does not explain the learning of algorithms that these constructs are clearly capable of, see for example: https://arxiv.org/abs/2208.01066

More generally, the best way to compress information from too many different coding examples is to figure out how to code rather than try to interpolate between existing blogs and QA forums.

My own speculation is that with additional effort during training (RL or active learning in the training loop) we will probably reach superhuman coding performance within two years. I think that o3 is still imperfect but not very far from that point.
Hey everyone, Pierre (the author) here. My friend posted my blog on HN for me to encourage me to post it! It's always about scary to share new things and I'm new to writing. But reading the comments I'm glad he did! It's really motivating to see people resonate with what I've done through and the learnings that came with it.
Nymbus | Remote | Full-time | Multiple roles | US and Mexico only | FULLY paid insurance (including family) + bonus + equity

Nymbus (https://nymbus.com/) isn't just a leader in fintech; we're a community of innovators passionate about reimagining banking. Our award-winning modern core platform and cloud-based technology serve as the backbone for financial institutions eager to modernize and excel.

Senior Python Developer (US based fully remote) - https://grnh.se/b8ee73694us

Senior Python Developer (MTY Mexico hybrid) - https://grnh.se/da8306d04us

I am not the hiring manager for this role but am happy to answer any questions about the role: llewis [at] nymbus.com

NO third party recruiters.
AI can write perfect code that's perfectly wrong – Here's why
Another speed-up is to skip the sum of digits check if n % 9 != 30 % 9. Sum of digits have the same remainder divided by 9 as the number. This rules out 8/9 = 88% candidates.
One of my responsibilities is software supply chain security in a financial services org, so this signal would be valuable for vulnerability management of dependencies. I wouldn't call it "threat hunting" per se, but ground truth around threat actor patterns helps us build better defensive systems in this regard. Keeping the bad bits out is way easier than remediating once they've been ingested into systems.

> Your comment also has me dreaming about a Dependabot-esque utility that opens Github issues on repositories that have quarantined projects in their requirements.txt.

It's not a bad idea, let Github know! Their security team is very good from my interactions with them.
>And nevermind the conspiratorial thinking required to believe whole teams of engineers are developing and maintaining this capability across several giant companies, but nobody ever puts it on a resume. Apparently the thousands of people working on this are all personally committed to complete secrecy, forever. Uh-uh.

Bro it doesn't matter how much evidence you provide people with that this IS happening. They usually won't accept it. If they do accept it, half the time they shrug it off with "I've got nothing to hide anyway" kind of cope.

I seriously think I'm arguing with employees of these companies on HN because all you people do is deny everything and smear people who talk about this stuff. I hate to break it to you, but conspiracies are real. Noticing that people are conspiring to do things that nobody likes is not unreasonable in any way.
Hey HN community,
I've made a rails newsletter to share CSS & Rails tips and free rails components.

You can check it here: https://www.raiselements.com/
You don't know enough to know the full picture, easy to draw conclusions sure, but they are most likely incorrect.
Useful open source tools: the little things add up
This is great! Thank you for sharing.

You put in good effort. And I'm glad it has been going well.
Well it hasn't. No one knows exactly what communism is, but they're pretty sure it's not a dictatorship.
I was searching for an intro to this topic since I don't see it much here. I thought people might get into it. This article had a nice summary with lots of terms people could look up. I also found a free book on it:

https://bio.libretexts.org/Bookshelves/Computational_Biology

Feel free to drop links in the comments to good, intro material. Also, to good examples of computational biology in action. What's the top results right now?
Yeah; I have 2 kids in their 20s and 2 in elementary school, and can attest that all the "shiny tech" has made it so much more difficult for parents to raise kids. And their future is so much more uncertain and _not_ in a good way. I look around and don't see much effort into building a better world for our children. There's global issues like "how will climate change affect my kids when they're in their 40s trying to raise kids of their own", but closer to home there's more personal questions like "what should I encourage my child to learn or study when AI could plausibly take over many careers that seemed solid", not to mention that unless you are rich (which we're not), the cost of college is frightening (you want your kid to be able to go to a good college if they can get in, but not be saddled with debt on the way out; my elder daughter got a full academic ride in engineering but not everyone has those capabilities), and just the competition to get in is so much greater than it was. No regrets as my youngest are wonderful human beings, but so much more anxiety as a parent than 20-25 years ago :/
Hi I don't know if someone in Berlin, Germany is looking for a Hardware-Technican.
I learnt IT-System-Elektroniker and I am looking for new stuff to do. If you are looking for someone like me I am more than happy to send you my CV. Write me an email. Thank you for any boosts.

Remote: Depends, yes but I would love to find something in Berlin.
Willing to relocate: Yes
Technologies: I am a hardware technician, so anything with Hardware goes Also I know how to network (Fibre and Coaxial)
. Software wise I enjoy Linux, a bit of programming, LaTeX and generic stuff
Résumé/CV: available if interested
Email: eu (at) amrad.me
> I've taken to asking it to "skip the mediocre nonsense and return the good solution on the first try".

Is that actually how you're prompting it? Does that actually give better results?
Isn't this the same thing as measuring developer productivity by number of lines of code or commits, pushes and such?
Lots of people thought about doing it.

The problem is this: What people want is existing phones with some minor alterations that make them last longer and be easier to repair, which wouldn't significantly affect the manufacturing cost but would reduce future sales across the industry, because many people could buy a phone and be good for ten years. So the large incumbents like Apple and Samsung don't even offer this, because they have such high market share that losing industry-wide future sales costs them more than making more current sales, and also they have such high market share that they were already the ones getting the current sales.

Then we would expect some smaller company to come by and eat their lunch, right? And you get ones like Fairphone and Librem that make the attempt, but those aren't just "Samsung Galaxy with a removable battery and open source drivers" because Samsung also won't sell you 95% of their existing phone wholesale and let you make those couple of changes people want. So they're stuck designing an entire phone instead of making a couple of changes to an existing phone, which is a heavy lift for a small company, and then the other aspects of the phone aren't competitive, or the price isn't. It's possible that someone will eventually get this right, but that doesn't mean that it's easy, and in the meantime the large incumbents are screwing everyone because the market is insufficiently competitive.
definitly a bent mind, mixing "true hope" and "mass sabotage", but overlooking the scale of infrastructure involved in producing fossil fuels
and that destroying it would require a massive military industrial and technological base to do it with,hmmmmmmm
That realy, realy is a call for random terror.
I like to think of myself as 665, almost but not quite evil, but this guy goes that last bit,
blithly.Concerning given the goings on.
Takes all of the fun out of nibbling a bit at at the edge of (oh so) polite discourse.
I will have to up my game, as the last thing I want to do is encourage actual muckers.
My guess is that it's the same reason biological siblings that where separated have a tendency to fall in love or befriend if they find each other in adulthood. We are biased towards what looks familiar. Same with birds; some species have different color patterns in specimens, and it's way more common for those with matching colors to mate than the other way around. Article mentions some other documented examples. The other hypothesis, that the likeness grow, doesn't sound that good to me. Quite shallow article imo.