skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
> While framework idioms are important, they're secondary to delivering working, *maintainable* software that solves real problems

Emphasis maintainable

The truth is that if you are not following framework idioms, you are very likely not delivering maintainable software
Shoe Dog by Phil Night might fit the bill. It is definitely about the person (who founded Nike), but also a fascinating look into how the sportswear industry took hold, sponsorship deals, Michael Jordan, etc.
Exactly. These tools test whether we're brilliant managers, understanding the potential and limitations of everyone we manage, and understanding the work well enough to do it ourselves.

I too am using AI to play with new languages and problem domains, and to write tools I've long wanted but never found time to implement. I find it helpful to ask other LLMs about best practices, with no conflict of interest where they're trying to write me code.

For my initial experiences with Windsurf Editor, the AI got ahead of me and then into trouble it couldn't resolve, thrashing in ways my daughter learned to avoid in her first semester of programming. I've found Claude 3.5 Sonnet understands the problems I work on best, so I'll use Cursor for access to this AI. Workflow enhancements are secondary to the underlying intelligence.
There used to be homeless alcoholics living in shacks and WW1 bunkers in the forests around Helsinki. Many (most?) of them were WW2 veterans. Older kids still told stories about them in the 80s, but most of them had actually died or found shelter by then.
Kitchen blender repurposed to a lamp [video]
> That survives in the culture of mathematics where we continue to see a high regard for truth, beauty, and goodness

As a non-mathematician, I've noticed this as well, and I have a suspicion the historical "culture" is holding the field back. Gödel proved there are an infinite number of true arithmetic statements unprovable within any (consistent, sufficiently powerful) formal system. But our "gold standard" formal system, ZFC, has about as many axioms as we have fingers — why is finding more axioms not the absolute highest priority of the field?

We struggle to prove facts about Turing machines with only six states, and it's not obvious to me that ZFC is even capable of resolving all questions about the behavior of six state Turing machines (well, specifically just ZF, as C has no bearing on these questions).

Yet Turing machines are about as far from abstract mathematics as one can get, because you can actually build these things in our physical universe and observe their behavior over time (except for the whole "infinite tape" part). If we can't predict the behavior of the majority of tiny, deterministic systems with ZFC, what does that say about our ability to understand and predict real world data, particularly considering that this data likely has an underlying algorithmic structure vastly more complex than that of a six state Turing machine?

More formally, my complaint with the culture of mathematics is:

1) We know that for any string of data, I(data : ZFC) ≤ min(K(data), K(ZFC)) + O(1)

2) K(ZFC) is likely no more than a few bytes. I think the best current upper bound is the description length of a Turing machine with a few hundred states, but I suspect the true value of K(ZFC) is far lower than that

3) Thus K(data) - K(data | ZFC) ≤ "a few bytes"

Consider the massive amounts of data that we collect to train LLMs. The totality of modern mathematics can provide no more than a few bytes of insight into the "essence" of this data (i.e., the maximally compressed version of the data). Which directly translates to limited predictability of the data via Solomonoff induction. And that's in principle — this doesn't even consider the amount of time involved. If we want to do better, we need more axioms, full stop.

One might counter, "well sure, but mathematicians don't necessarily care about real world problems". Ok, just apply the same argument to the set of all arithmetic truths. Or the set of unprovable statements in the language of a formal system (that are true within some model). That's some interesting data. Surely ZFC can discover most "deep" mathematical truths? Not very likely. The deeper truths tend to occur at higher levels of the arithmetic hierarchy. The higher in the hierarchy, the more interesting the statement. And these are tiny statements too: ∀x ∃y ∀z [...]. Well we're already in trouble because ZFC can only decide a small fraction of the Π_2 statements that can fit on a napkin and it drops off very quickly at higher levels than that. Again, we need more axioms.
>CA trust should be handled at the OS vendor level.

Who's the "vendor" for Linux? IBM?

The outcome of this idea is Google & Microsoft can MITM all internet traffic.
It is probable the latest editions of ESP32, Rockchip and other controllers manufactured in China do contain CCP exploits. Even the Intel-based mainboards from certain Chinese manufacturers also contain EFI with CCP exploits. (It's not about the chip or brand, it's about the CCP forcing this on China-based manufacturers.) Disclaimer: I've been downvoted over raising this in years past, but now it's a widely covered mainstream issue. I too like the idea of $2 multicore SoCs with integrated RF, but not devices that can potentially blow an on-dye fuse with a specific RF-delivered opcode sequence to enable "new functionality"..and for you technician types, there is a lot more to RF than BLE/WiFi/NFC and various HA protocols that some ESP officially support.)

I saw soon to retire Jensen announce a new SoC (https://www.reuters.com/technology/nvidia-ceo-says-mediatek-...) at CES 2025 in partnership with Taiwan's Mediatek for their new DIGITS PC (just before NVIDIA stock tanked on the speech) and thought his fire is playing with fire, but this may be a solution to untrustable RockChip performance, Qualcomm profiteering and Apple proprietary solutions.
And when it added scripting, it did so by adding an actual programming language.
Unsurprisingly, since PUBG was essentially "what if Battle Royale was a video game?", and Fortnite is a PUBG clone.
With the lack of precision for clocks the way they are, and worries about variance in travel time due to traffic, distractions, potty emergencies, and so forth, the more natural way to handle precision is to give yourself a 5-to-15-minute-to-an-hour buffer to ensure that you're in your seat when the clock ticks from 11:59 to 12:00.

And yes, 5-to-15-to-an-hour is something that varies, depending on the length of your trip. 5 is appropriate when you're in your office and you need to get to the conference room, 15 if you're driving from your nearby home, an hour if you're flying in, or if you have to drive 200 miles or so -- particularly if it's a trip you don't regularly take!

For meetings, I actually give myself 16 "precise" minutes -- one minute less than 15, with 4-minute-30-second snoozes, so I can have both adequate warning, and regular pokes, to make sure I can do something on time.
Reposted from original: https://crawshaw.io/blog/programming-with-llms

HN discussion of original a few days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42617645
The closest example I could think of is the (maybe true, maybe myth making) story of SpaceX using car wash valves instead of super expensive 'space grade' valves that did the same thing, and were orders of magnitude cheaper. Doesn't seem like embodied AI is necessary to figure this out.
I think those GPUs cost between $25-40k each.
Modern formal methods like TLA+ and Alloy are as easy to pick up as Python, and other than having to write a spec (an ultra-simplified model of part of a system) they are completely automatic (based on model checkers). There is no reason for a modern software engineer not to have them on her radar. As a matter of fact most of the cloud systems you are using everyday have been verified with modern formal tools: Azure Cosmos DB, Dynamo DB, MongoDB, CockroachDB, ... and many others.
From my perspective leading a freshly launched MVP, I don’t believe documentation unilaterally outweighs testing, especially for a product that’s still finding its footing. Our tight resources are better spent establishing solid test coverage and integrating that into CI/CD for quick feedback loops. Code itself never lies; unlike static docs, it’s guaranteed to stay current as long as we commit changes responsibly. For the future I’d love to see us leverage AI-driven documentation solutions to replace the manual overhead of keeping separate docs in sync with our code.
SysBumps: Exploiting Speculative Execution in Apple Silicon
Why don’t they revoke the certificate for a special-use domain, like example.com.

As opposed to 30-random entities.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special-use_domain_name
I don't have a lot of experience with Golang and AI, I think Rails can give you different kind of productivity.

From what I know (please correct me if I am wrong) most people use AI to create scaffolding and automate all boring and repetitive tasks in a project. So code still needs to be written, you just outsource it to AI helper.

In Rails you write less code and concentrate on business logic because everything boring like DAL, authorization, caching is already written and tested in production.

edit: syntax
Ruby. It's a uniquely expressive language (IMHO).
It hasn’t been my experience that it is as niche as this. I believe the “costs,” people refer to in these discussions have come way down over the last couple of decades. I’ve taught developers how to use tools like TLA+ and Alloy in week.

It’s not a skill that requires a PhD and years of research to acquire these days.

Nor does writing a basic, high level specification.

If anything you will learn something about the system you are modelling by using a model checker. And that can be useful even if it is used for documentation or teaching.

The fundamental power of formal methods is that they force you to think things through.

All too often I find software developers eager to believe that they can implement concurrent algorithms armed with their own wit, a type checker, and a smattering of unit tests. It can be humbling to find errors in your design and assumptions after using a model checker. And perhaps it’s hubris that keeps programmers from using such tools in more “mundane” and “real world” contexts.

There are a lot more “small” distributed systems than you’d expect and state spaces are generally larger than you’d anticipate if you weren’t open to formalizing your work.
PUBG and Fortnite are both directly inspired by Battle Royale. The whole video game genre exists and is named such because of that movie.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_royale_game

PUBG was inspired by the movie.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PUBG:_Battlegrounds

Fortnite added Battle Royale game mode because they saw how popular PUBG was.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fortnite_Battle_Royale
It seems like you are responding to the worst possible interpretation of what they wrote instead of what they actually wrote.
I think your argument is that developing cancer treatments is really hard and the clinical trial process has problems. I can believe it. Do you think the mainstream epistemological process produces more false negatives or more false positives? What's the proportion of cases where a chemist finds a compound that really works, but the process incorrectly rules it out, vs cases where something that doesn't really do much still comes out the other end as a marketable drug?

I'm not in the industry, so what do I know? But I kind of doubt there are actual, effective treatments just sitting there unmonetized in Merck's basement library because the company is slow and the process makes things difficult. Especially the kinds of things that get mentioned in HN threads that don't require any chemistry research and are pretty straightforward to test, like fasting, meditation and yoga.
So we build semi-automomous free zones, where the infrastructure is essentialy indistructable,anyone can get a lockable secure space, and the violent sociopaths, are picked off.
Facets from other proven models could include, a work for drunks program, like in some german areas, they get to clean the streets they hang out
on, and are a sort of invisible "watch".
Free "heroine" , for any and all who check into
a controlled access facility.
The real ferrals are just a fact, but are very easy to spot so the threat level is lower, but as they dont have adequate shelter, see point #1, they congregate in more southerly areas, and or, get into trouble trying to survive in northern areas.
I have lived on the edge, for most of my life, seen a lot of wild things, in a lot of different places, and the story is that people just want to be seen and accepted, there, in the moment.
Those moments are impossible to predict or create
with any kind of predictability or repeatability.
All ww can do is build the places, where that can happen, or not, and its "even", everybody can walk away, If nothing works, then there is the road,
and that needs to be ok, and no one is a "vagrant"
as they got a place to go.
nobody is stuck.
It's complicated because it's designed for the companies selling Otel compatible software, not the engineers implementing it
Let’s say there are ten billion such marginally-useful books published by the time the next few decades. Many epub books are like a couple MB. So 30 petabytes total. That’s something you could fit in one room. One rich guy could buy enough hard drives to do that today. Why not?
Take a circle with a radius of 1cm. Unroll its perimeter and declare that length is 1 of new unit called a squelk.

You can measure things and build things in squelks just fine, but if you try to take something that is 100 squelks long and measure it in centimeters you will get an irrational number of centimeters because there is no rational conversation from squelks to centimeters.

A given length can be irrational in one unit of measure but not in another.

Of course we do have limits of precision in the real world, so in reality nothing lines up quite right.
No idea how it's relevant. For example in USA, I bet the overwhelming majority of homeless are citizens born in USA, not immigrants.

In my central European country with high ethnic homogenity the unhoused are also stemming from majority population. There is a Roma minority who are often struggling with poverty but are rarely unhoused.
This may be a red herring, but Bog Manufacturing of Chicago made automotive tools in the 1920s-30s. (http://alloy-artifacts.org/bog-mfg-chicago.html)
2025 VW ID. Buzz
Best way to think of NULL is "no value." Not "unknown value," as that implies that it is a value you just don't know what it is. Not "missing" value as that even the notion of a value being "missing" tells you something. NULL is no value. It's like a black hole, it consumes anything it touches. Any expression involving a NULL term becomes NULL.
https://archive.ph/0l7VK
Wow that's interesting — trying to cross my eyes produces hellish jitter.

I suspect it's because my left eye is slighty lazy.

But I was able to superimpose the right cat picture onto the left one (it's a lot harder for the more complex sky resort picture). It's pretty eerie, the right picture just slides right up the left one (I did need to figure out the right distance for it).

It doesn't help me pick out the differences though, I mostly only see the right picture, and if try to focus my left eye, the right picture slides out. Still, intersting.
worth reading for rich's crazy jokes alone. the fact he is telling them to senior military brass in the context of negotiating his division's survival after kelly johnson's retirement makes them even funnier. my favorite - a boy comes home from school, finds his dad, and proudly declares "dad, i saved 25 cents by running alongside the bus instead of riding it!". the father shakes his head and replies sternly, "you fool, you should have run next to a taxi and saved five dollars"
> Having proper access control would be better.

Some of us live on the "granted" side of that access control. I'm an SRE; I have access to a fair number of things. I worry about making dumb mistakes like that in the article due to sleep deprivation. The warning here might very well be a warning that you're about to do something that you are allowed to do.

In the specific example … sometimes rebooting a production machine is what needs doing. Ideally, there's a second VM, ideally, the services on the machine would gracefully drain, ideally, it wouldn't matter. Ideally. But the reality is that often they don't, whether because of developer laziness, incompetence, some ugly confluence of bullshit bugs that conspire to prevent sanity, etc., more often than not I want to be careful even when the process/theory would like to say "this is a fully automated & completely safe operation" — and half-asleep is not careful, and accidental allegedly safe commands while half asleep is where Murphy likes to rear his head.

I've definitely used techniques like this. Red prompts that scream "You're SSH'd into PROD dummy" also come to mind. I keep my kubectl context fixed to "local laptop" so that I am forced to always type out --context the_production_cluster when I want that.

Temet nosce.
Diverging is definitely harder, and might be out of focus. To keep in focus I found it easier to focus on the right image and then cross my eyes, rather than staring in the center and then staring through the screen into the distance while trying to make them line up.

I used to not be able to do the "magic eye" 3d images until recently, and this trick is pretty handy.
Can they not just patch it up fairly quickly and get it going again due to emergency? or do they have to keep it as is to conduct a whole investigation now.
Autostereogramming it doesn't help me lol

If it's perfect, the overlapping regions just merge in color, i.e. the cat's paw becomes off-white. If it's not perfect, I still have to attend to which parts are popping in and out. In both cases I still have to compare the merged view to the left and right hand sides.

Although it is very nice for illustrating each eye's contributions to the merged view. Just not an attention-saver.
Greed (and lust) is enough of a primary reason, which in turn drives the crime; or the kompromat that enables the crime.

If we want to mitigate (and we have to), we talk about the crimes and the legal structure that enables those. If we want to mitigate further (because that is not fixable), we need to talk about greed and lust that is ingrained in us, and that is both the weakness and the cause of this absurd derailment of capitalism without democratic oversight.

A company can't have desires, but the persons, owning this company, definitely can, and have. And that is not mitigated enough in some countries where fiscal and legal regulations are, let's say, tainted by "rich people's interest".
Context-Generic Programming Updates: v0.3.0 Release and New Chapters
I'm excited to announce the release of v0.3.0 of the `cgp` crate, along with several new chapters of the CGP Patterns book!

Check out the linked blog post for more details. I also include here a summary of updates in this release:

- New chapters for Context-Generic Programming Patterns

- Associated Types

- Error Handling

- Field Accessors

- `cgp` v0.3.0 Crate Release

- New `cgp_type!` Macro

- New `#[cgp_auto_getter]` Macro

- New `#[cgp_getter]` Macro

- New `CanWrapError` Trait

- New `cgp-error-anyhow` Crate

- New `cgp-runtime` Crate
I use this technique to get web layouts pixel-perfect with the mockup, just put both windows next to one another and superimpose them with your eyes. Works great. There are tools that do this by overlaying an image with 50% alpha but it doesn't work as well.

Last year when there was a bunch of fuss about Kate Middleton not having made any public appearances there was a minor flap where people claimed that a photo she'd released was just an edit of an earlier photo.

There was a tweet presenting two photos, one old and one purporting to be new, where she was holding strikingly similar poses. The claim was that the new one was just an edit of the older one. I used this technique and immediately the minor differences stuck out like a sore thumb- her hand was rotated more in one, her hair was laid differently, etc.
> The outcome of this idea is Google & Microsoft can MITM all internet traffic.

Google, MS, and Apple already handle their own CA trust. So this conspiracy theory would already be true.
The whole website and the way FAQ is worded give AI generated vibes
The French Revolution led to quite poor results for those fortunate enough to survive it. You might prefer the approach, but I doubt you’d enjoy the aftermath.
Mapping Broadband Health in America
Railroad Tycoon II
Wasn't there a human "monitor" in the car?
If it is not recognizably different than it is the same in that context correct?

Two measurements of 25C are not recognizably different therefore they are equal, correct, regardless if the actual temperatures are not the same?

Two measurements of unknown are not recognizably different therefore they are equal in the context of the database.

Having null!=null has never been intuitive to me especially since every other programming language treats them equal. I am not hoping this gets changed, I know SQL is to far along for that, I can still complain about it and agree its wierd.

>And writing things like "value=param or (param is null and value is null)" is usually the sign of a poor understanding of the NULL logic.

It's needed with parametrized sql when your db doesn't support "is not distinct from" which is itself a silly way to just write '=' or '==' like a normal programming language. The distinct predict exist for this very reason to have yet another way to express equality that includes nulls: https://modern-sql.com/caniuse/T151
It is not external things, but rather a centralized place to manage the policies.
agreed, last application i sent, i had an informational with the hiring manager. They told me to email them my resume in addition to the official submission process so they can tell HR to find and flag my application for interview.

I didn't get the job, or even an interview despite that and the hiring manager never bothered to tell me why. (one of their direct reports told me its because i was vastly overqualified)

I feel stuck in a limbo where my title doesn't reflect the seniority i operate at so i'm not getting interview for senior roles based on automated filters i guess, but jobs i do get interviews for, I was told no because because i was overqualified for the role more than once.

This includes being overqualified for the FTE equivalent of my current job as a contractor in the same company and org. But there's no roles opening at the seniority level they'd hire me at and I can't just rage quit on a 6 figure salary just because I should be making double even as a junior as an FTE by now. So they won't hire me for the work I already do but have no problem keeping me on for half the pay as a contractor. But at least I have a job?
Getting silly with C, part (void*)2
listen to me when i say this. we will start killing if we don't have same access to that tech. why kill monster? well I'm dead anyway as a slave to their machine.

people better demand equal access or start slitting throats right now.
When a winter storm trapped a luxury passenger train near Donner Pass
The wealth gap and the exploitation of the lower class is a highly visible global problem. I'm a bit blown away that your take just assumes my position on that is US-centric.
Just a quick note that the title is "How I Program With LLMs", this is currently missing "How" which changes the meaning a bit, at least for me.
spectacular anti-patterns -- grandiose "accomplishments" ; bullying peers and coddling weak subordinates ; splashy, attention-getting cubicle changes ; attention-seeking past war stories ; incessant industry name-dropping ..

apparently from the San Francisco dot-com rush culture?
>of all possible theorems almost none have short proofs

Ok, but what about the theorems humans would actually care about?