skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
> C has always been the fastest high-level language.

C has another big speed problem. Strings are 0 terminated, rather than length terminated. This means constant scanning of strings to find their length. Even worse, the scanning of the string reloads the cache with the string contents, which is pretty bad for performance.

Of course, you could use `struct String { char *p; size_t length; };` but since every library you want to connect to uses 0 terminated strings, you're out on your island all alone, so pragmatically it does not work.

Another speed-destroying problem with C strings is you cannot take a substring that does not require allocating a new string and then copying the data. (Unless the substring is right-justified.) This is not fast in any universe.

D uses length-denoted strings as a basic data type, and with string processing code, it is much faster than C. Substrings are quick and easy. You can still interface with C because D string literals implicitly convert to C string literals, as the literals are 0 terminated. So this works in D:

printf("hello world!\n");

(People sometimes rag on me for still using printf, but printf is the most optimized and debugged library function in the world, so I take advantage!)
Hey jermaustin1 looks like this brought your site down and it's not indexed / cached in google or archive.org.

Could not connect to any servers in your MongoDB Atlas cluster. One common reason is that you're trying to access the database from an IP that isn't whitelisted. Make sure your current IP address is on your Atlas cluster's IP whitelist: https://docs.atlas.mongodb.com/security-whitelist/
This is a massive coming issue - I am not sure “distributed” can be exactly replaced with “parallel processing” but it’s close

So to simplify, from 1985 to 2005 ish you could keep sequential software exactly the same and it just ran faster each new hardware generation. One CPU but transistors got smaller and (hand wavy, on chip ram, pipelining )

Then roughly around 2010 single CPUs just stopped magically doubling. You got more cores, but that meant parallel or distributed programming - your software that in 1995 served 100 people was the same serving 10,000 people in 2000. But in 2015 we needed new coding - we got NOSQL and map reduce and facebook data centres.

But the hardware kept growing

TSMC now has wafer scale chips with 900,000 cores - but my non parallel, on distributed code won’t run 1 million times faster - Amdahls law just won’t let me

So yeah - no one wants to buy new chips with a million cores because you aren’t going to get the speed ups - why buy an expensive data centre full of 100x cores if you can’t sell them at 100x usage.
> I did not see the efficiency myself until I witnessed a Vim master do some extremely complicated bit of text editing in seconds. I think that most people will not see the value of Vim until they witness something like that.

I love Vim, and agree with this, but using this as a reason to learn Vim feels silly to me. How often do truly complicated text editing tasks come up for most programmers? Vim is really handy for when I maybe need to cut and paste some data from a web page and get it into CSV, but that's just not a common enough task for me that I'd actually recommend anyone else learn it for that purpose.
There is a quote that goes like

> Debugging is twice as hard as writing the code in the first place. Therefore, if you write the code as cleverly as possible, you are, by definition, not smart enough to debug it.

And in that spirit, I very much would like to underestimate myself, and write things that are much simpler than I am capable of handling.
I guess that's when 50% becomes zero :)
If I could remember the three logic+set theory and the one DC computing classes and forgot the rest of my college career, I could still do my job. Not as well mind you, but I could do it. I would miss graph theory but survive.

I could just about create an associates degree around that and my graduates would run circles around any code camp you could name.
This is a clone of Amezmo, which started in 2019.

I see they ripped off every feature that we innovated.

It’s actually quite flattering.
Cornell Virtual Workshop: Code Optimization Roadmap
GPT 4.5 System Card [pdf]
The paste bin contents are visible to the public at large. The visibility of the content is no different than if she'd picked a public paste bin service--it just means nobody has to moderate anything because the uploader is the service owner.
Related: "Who Is Running the U.S. DOGE Service?" https://www.lawfaremedia.org/article/who-is-running-the-u.s....

> At a recent hearing, no one—not even the Trump administration’s own lawyers—seemed to know.
Show HN: ErrorTexts, simple outage alerts by SMS
I wanted a simple way to notify myself if one of my other apps was having any server or database issues, and the other solutions I found took much more time to set up than what I wanted to spend on it. I didn't want a simple health check, either, because my website would be up even if I couldn't reach my auth service or my database - I wanted to be able to send myself alerts tailored to particular scenarios depending on what the problem was.

So I built the thing I was looking for: a dirt cheap API that forwards any messages I send it to my phone as an SMS, effectively an outage-alerting API that I could sign up for and start using in 60 seconds or less. (Webhooks would be a strong alternative, but I wanted a solution that didn't require an app and didn't require me to go read about how to set up another new thing.)

Feedback welcome! No idea how to market things.
Actually, all of it applies to rust. The only stable ABI in Rust is C-ABI and IMO at that point it stops being rust. Even dynamically loading rustlib in rust application is unsafe and only expected to work when both compiled with the same version. In plugins context, it's the same as what Caddy making you do.

However, Rust Evangelical Strike Force successfully infiltrated WASM committee and when WASM Components stabilize, it can be used for plugins in some cases (see Zed and zellij). (Go can use them as well, rust is just the first (only?) to support preview-2 components model.
Everybody agrees the deficit is too big.

The problem people have with DOGE, is that it's in itself a fraud. Musk empire is based on government contracts and subsides. And somwehow, he's now deciding what's being cut.

As for fraud that DOGE is uncovering, can you point to some real fraud they found ? Not some bullshit tweets or their website riddled with 'mistakes'.

If they found real fraud, there should be indictments. There are 0 for now. 0.
Ask HN: Any HN clone that improves headlines using AI?
I want a Hacker News (HN) clone that:

- Reformulates question headlines into statements that include the actual answer.
- Headlines that mention something is better or worse should include a metric
- Includes in headlines for academic papers how much the paper improves the state-of-the-art (SOTA).
- Filters out clickbait titles to ensure that headlines are informative and relevant.
- Highlights articles with detailed technical insights, making it easier to find in-depth content.
- Adds tags or categories to help users quickly identify the main topic of each article.
- Filters out articles that are purely self-promotional or advertisements.
- Prioritizes content that has been peer-reviewed or verified by experts in the field.
Modularity isn’t free. It’s useful for many things, but assuming it’s inherently valuable is how you end up with enterprise bloat.

Programming languages are inherently flexible, however when you have 2 features and a configuration option to select between them you now have 3 features.
Muratori, who is a well known C programmer and instructor, has made his dislike of Zig quite clear[1]. Others, like Tsoding (many videos) and Kihlander (doesn't like syntax among other things), have given clear reasons for their dislike of Zig or why it was not their preference[2][3]. Various recognized programmers are not going to go along with, "no downsides and all upsides". Which for any language still in beta, would be a huge stretch in believability, by itself.

It's not a Rust thing, as many C/C++ programmers are not advocates of it either and if venturing out to something else, can prefer other languages. Tsoding has even dunked on Rust as being unreadable[4].

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uVVhwALd0o4 (Language Perf... from 29:50)

[2]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r49hMsruwps (Tsoding when Zig :-))

[3]: https://kihlander.net/post/a-zig-diary/

[4]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=omVpuhch9MQ (Rust Is UNREADABLE)
Pinot-Connect (DB-API 2.0 for Querying Apache Pinot with Python)
It also "forces" you to keep playing when it gets tough, as a complete shuffle plus new setup isn't just a simple click away. It's also nice to get off the screen for a while.

I recently bought a smaller deck of cards, like half or three quarters of the size of a normal deck or so. Makes it easier to play without needing a huge table.
This is sooooo dependent on where you work and your current outside of work situation (ie, you need the money bad)
This makes sense because OpenRA was doing so well!
Saying that a profession is less stressful than others, doesn’t imply it’s stress free.

Most professions have a much higher risk of physical violence, for instance.
Musk isn't untrustworthy just for being vocal. He has too much power and has shown he'll break rules or even the law when it suits him. Someone who is inherently political and wields this much influence without accountability should never be trusted.

Being vocal is one thing but constantly attacking someone on x while spreading misinformation or straight up lies doesn't add to ones credibility either.
Unless one is on consulting, high integrity computing, trading,....
Boris Spassky (1937-2025) Chess World Champion and Legendary Grandmaster
World beware.
Ah I should check again then, thanks for the tip!

Re: rockbox, I’m not concerned about them, I’m sure the thing sounds good enough already.
This is some very welcome and surprisingly, good news which has been really, really, lacking this year.
Thought Leader (2016) [video]
This is very cool. It should be done a lot more often for old games. Whoever pulled this off at EA Games, you did a great thing for art and culture, and chapeau for pulling it off at a big corp.
I know comedy videos aren't on topic for HN but this is such a genius parody that I hope it's of interest.

I was hoping people would post links of other parodies that are this good.
There is no real indication of a "vast emptiness", he's just a plain old hard worker
What a thorough, excellent response. I learned a lot, thank you for taking the time to write this up!
GPT-4.5
C's memory safety could be drastically improved with the addition of bounds-checked arrays (which is an extension, and does not change existing code):

https://www.digitalmars.com/articles/C-biggest-mistake.html

25 years of experience with D has shown this to be a huge improvement.

D also has references as an alternative to pointers. References cannot have arithmetic done on them. Hence, by replacing pointers with references, and with array bounds checking, the incidence of memory corruption is hugely reduced.
Charity Majors on Technical Blogging
How talking to AI is and isn't like talking to yourself
So we're back to another maxim: Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.

Or perhaps: Bugs happen.
RBS Comments Support in Sorbet
Noting that Proton is regularly rebased on upstream, and Valve is contracting CodeWeavers, the same company which employs many core Wine contributors.

Fork is certainly technically the correct word, but "distribution" might give more the right impression.
You can try to do that already with a prompt to your favorite LLM.

But to point out the obvious problems, headlines that are a) informative and b) very concise are contradictory. The other major problem is that if there is no incentive to click a link due to the summaries (e.g. the Perplexity problem), there is less of a reason for people to write the content since they don't get the recognition/revenue from it.
What Is Music Wire?
Isn't that what an actual audit would do?
// Lets discuss how Windows is a flaming pile of poo. I'm now casting the header
// directly into the structure, because its the one I want, and this is just how
// its done. I hate Windows. - jkmcd

https://github.com/electronicarts/CnC_Generals_Zero_Hour/blo...
OpenRA did it better :D

If you haven't seen it yet https://www.openra.net/ is worth your time.

https://github.com/OpenRA/OpenRA

I have many fond memories of playing openra as "LAN" game on the gaming weekends we used to have in a few open source groups I've been in. I can't recommend "saturday gaming" enough, for anyone involved in any foss community, set up a recurring gaming weekend! You get bonus points if you make it mostly or exclusively foss games!
When someone releases a game in a Windows version and a Linux version, the current Wine-based compatibility layers mean that the Windows one is more likely to run without issue than the native binary is.

I built a Linux gaming desktop 5 years ago. The only thing that regularly causes more than minor issues is that many online games use incompatible anticheat technology. I pretty much play exclusively single-player games on PC, so it hasn't been a practical issue for me.
Calling every Democrat a "Marxist" or "Socialist" appears to be working out great for the politicians who do it. Nobody appears to be growing numb to it.
https://archive.is/Q66BQ
Instagram Reels flooded with violent videos before Meta says it fixed error
[dupe please delete]
EA and Open Source isn't completely alien. Their C++ standard library EASTL was open sourced long ago and is a historically quite important and influential codebase in the history of C++'s evolution.

They've also open sourced and patent-pledged a bunch of gaming-relatee accessibility tech over the years.

And of course Micropolis/SimCity.

My advice is to celebrate the successes of large corporates in this regard very hard and often - this provides backup to the champions on the inside.
Ask HN: How are you sandboxing AI development tools?
Are you using claude code, aider, or other agentic tools with risky capabilities? How are you mitigating that risk? For tools with filesystem or shell access, I'm especially concerned with destructive operations (`rm ~`) and data exfil, since this applies even to local models.
Well they copied the diagrams from there for one
Colin Furze Secret Garage - major progress
Claude, Makers, and Managers
Thank you kindly for the work with keeping K-9 light and efficient.
EA game devs cursing each other out? Internal company drama being aired out years later? Oh boy!
10 years ago I went on a similar journey. I left faang to work on a startup working on embedded firmware for esp8266. The lack of tooling was very frustrating. I ended up writing a gdb stub (before espressif released one) and a malloc debugger (via serial port) just to manage to get shit done.
They fired anyone in a 'probationary period'. That includes everyone who got a promotion within the last 2 years, because the probationary period applies to them as well. They literally targeted some of the best or most involved people (those that were promoted). Any talent actively recruited and brought in to address specific topics? Probationary period.
Isn't the Mozilla Foundation (non-profit org) distinct from Mozilla Corporation?
wouldn't surprise me if dang is notified when he's mentioned :D
I dunno if it's one of those wrong ideas you get from watching anime but to me "tanoshii" (楽しい) is a somewhat gendered word more likely to be used by women.
> C's memory safety could be drastically improved with the addition of bounds-checked arrays (which is an extension, and does not change existing code):

If you solved that problem then you'd still have a dumpster fire of memory safety issues from bad casts, use after free, etc
I only glanced at the code in ANIM.CPP but for a C++ program from 1997 it looks kinda nice, right? The methods are all short, with some descriptive comments at the top of each one. Inputs and outputs described. Nice index at the top of the file.

I’ve seen worse!
You can use codeberg.org as an alternative to GitHub. Theirs software is Open Source, so you can even host it yourself.
I think there’s a sense in which Rust is safer than Fil-C, though: Rust allows abstractions with little to do with memory safety but that still can’t be broken without 'unsafe'. So a struct called EvenNumber can fairly strongly guarantee that it contains an even number.

But Fil-C objects (at least for now?) only seem to allow one single capability type, and that capability grants unrestricted read/write access to the object’s bytes.

I wonder if one could build a handle system in Fil-C that would allow this to be extended. Or if a different variant of a Fil-C-like system could distinguish between pointers with different access levels to an object and could allow only the correct piece of trusted code to increase the permission of a pointer.
Not sure, I haven't used it!
Eclipses
I configure all my development containers to mount my host's Wayland socket. It mostly Just Works, and obviates the need to do any shell shuffling if I need to run something with a graphical component.

It's also occasionally convenient if I need to run a GUI app written in (say) Java that requires a zillion megabytes of JVM dependencies - just spin up an ephemeral container that makes everything disappear on CTRL-D.
No, read the summary from the top comment.
You can email me if you're interested.

This was paid work until recently but the start up pivoted to something else and now I'm wondering what to do with code that takes a few thousand dollars to run every time and is of questionable copyright ownership.
Apparently the source code for RA2 has been lost (along with Tiberian Sun)
Luckily one of the guys responsible for funneling US funding for this risky research to Wuhan was one of the leads of the WHO investigation into COVID's origin. I'm sure there was no conflict of interest.
I'm looking at this feeling anxiety about whether or not the implementation of `map.get` is threadsafe with memories of deadlocks in unsafe hashset implementations whilst accessing values during resizing.

When what they really wanted here for bug free multithreading is some kind of promise or async await abstraction.
Do you have any details on this? Sounds pretty concerning if true.
AEPF_OpenSource Is Live – A New Open Standard for Ethical AI
AI is transforming our world, but who holds it accountable?
We are introducing AEPF_OpenSource, a fully open, community-driven framework for ensuring AI systems operate ethically, transparently, and fairly—without corporate control or government overreach.
What is AEPF?
AEPF (Adaptive Ethical Prism Framework) is an open-source initiative that:
This study analyses AI decision-making for fairness and bias.
The platform provides transparent ethical evaluations of AI models.
Works as a universal standard for AI accountability—owned by the public, not corporations.
Why Open Source?
AI ethics should not be dictated by a handful of tech giants. AEPF ensures that AI remains aligned with humanity’s best interests through a decentralised, community-driven approach.
Who Can Join?
AEPF is open-source and needs contributors from all backgrounds:
Developers — Help build the framework.
Researchers define ethical AI benchmarks.
Policy Experts — Align AEPF with global AI governance.
AI Enthusiasts — Test, discuss, and improve AI accountability.
How to Get Involved
GitHub: github.com/AEPF_Mk3
Join the Discussion: https://www.reddit.com/r/AI_Ethics_Framework/
The challenge is bigger than one person or company. AI needs a public, transparent ethical framework. If you believe AI should be accountable to all of us, join AEPF.
Let’s build ethical AI together.
#AEPF #OpenSource #AIethics #ResponsibleAI #TechForGood
you’re 100% correct.

i added the “” because i wasn’t sure if everyone would be familiar with the slang, especially those living outside the US.
That’s what Washington cesspool really is. In other words, Washington consensus is driven by this sort of collusion or corruption.
For code, lines of code are not written, but spent, and often wasted.
They’re not enough. For example the field I work in (mobile exploits) continues to bypass CFI (PAC) via clever data-only attacks or abusing TOCTOU issues.
Model fine-tuned to write vulnerable software suggested enslaving humanity
> customer service

You could offer me double my current tech job salary and I still don't think I'd go back to my old retail service job.

People were shitty when I did it 20 years ago, and they've only gotten shittier today.
You're quite right. We all develop a bias about the world, and even as I say that I'm pretty good at "critical thinking", there's no telling whether I actually am. Anyone at any level of knowledge, experience, or culture can plausibly come to an implausible belief. It's easy to think ourselves correct and others, if they disagree, incorrect. Always keep that in mind. I am not the beginning. I am not the end. I have my views and my veracity will be perceived diversely by others with their own rich worldviews.
At this point I think the ultimate benchmark for any new LLM is whether or not it can come up with a coherent naming scheme for itself. Call it “self awareness.”
Shame they'll never do it for Warcraft 3 with the remaster still around.
Yeah totally.

It's a perfect example of C being optimized for simple mapping onto linear memory, rather than some kind of performance optimum
He could touch social security/Medicare or Medicaid by purging the rolls of the deceased
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/elon-musk-says-millions-soc...
Elon Musk says millions in Social Security database are between ages of 100 and 159. If they purged millions of 120-160 year olds from the social security database and limited it to only people who were currently alive they could make progress
The Fibrovisor: Turning a dollar store fibre optic wand into a low-res display [video]
Oh boy when I see stuff like that in modern code, I start looking for undefined behavior occurring elsewhere in the same or dependent translation units...
I can't wait for fireship.io and the comment section here to tell me what to think about this
Thing that's hard to communicate is that Vista was moving away from how older versions of Windows rendered their desktop and past art styles. With Pinball originally from Windows 95, porting it to leverage Vista's new graphics paradigm on top of the artstyle was probably too much work for a pack in game.

Though I do wish they contracted out a clone of Pinball instead of Purble Place.
> What do you mean by "the" compiler for our chip?

We are designing a dataflow general-purpose processor that can directly executes the dataflow graph from the compiler.

> Is this a compiler backed like LLVM which generates efficient machine code, that other languages can target?

The compiler itself takes LLVM as the input, so if your framework can output LLVM, you should be able to target our compiler backend and hardware. We had a prototype working with Rust as well. The compiler does not however use LLVM to produce the machine code on our hardware -- custom mapper/assembler and linker is used to produce the machine code that runs on the hardware.

> what kind of resources do you have that I could read about targeting your hardware?

We have published a couple papers about our compiler and hardware design: https://www.efficient.computer/media. Unfortunately we don't have a concrete plan to open up the compiler yet. Please stay tuned!
Thanks man I really appreciate your comments, I was having a bad day and feeling better