Posts

Showing posts from April, 2025

New ask Hacker News story: Ask HN: 3rd Week at FAANG and feeling imposter syndrome

Ask HN: 3rd Week at FAANG and feeling imposter syndrome 8 by HowDoesSound | 7 comments on Hacker News. A bit about my, I'm early 30s frontend engineer w/ no degree who started working at FAANG. Before that I spent about 12 years working at agencies doing web dev, Drupal, wordpress, etc. By week 2 at FAANG I'd gotten through the onboarding, figured out how to get my app running behind all the business security and policies, and started trying to work on a simple frontend React bugfix. I'm struggling to make heads and tails of everything going up. I understand what processes exist and why at a theoretical level, but all the outdated documentation, random commands to input and feature flags to setup, etc. is literally driving me in circles. Also my team is VERY busy, so I've had to figure out everything on my own. I have the app working, but I cannot understand beginning to end how the frontend app works. Also I'm feeling a strong sense of imposter syndrome. I'm...

New ask Hacker News story: Ask HN: What benchmarks are you using to judge AI models?

Ask HN: What benchmarks are you using to judge AI models? 3 by cowpig | 0 comments on Hacker News. There are so many models, and so many new ones being released all the time, that I have a hard time knowing which ones to prioritize testing anecdotally. What benchmarks have you found to be especially indicative of real-world performance? I use: * Aider's Polyglot benchmark seems to be a decent indicator of which models are going to be good at coding: https://ift.tt/94NfTEb * I generally assume OpenRouter usage to be an indicator of a model's popularity, and by proxy, utility: https://ift.tt/h3QIHEt * LLM-Stats has a lot of charts of benchmarks that I look at: https://llm-stats.com/

New ask Hacker News story: Ask HN: What Makes a Good Datasheet?

Ask HN: What Makes a Good Datasheet? 4 by RetroTechie | 0 comments on Hacker News. I've been browsing a few (RISC-V related) System-on-Chip datasheets. Have seen 1000s of datasheets (ROM/RAM/discrete logic/peripherals, opamps, voltage regulators, etc etc) in my life. Some lacking essential info like Thermal Design Power (TDP), # of balls on the BGA package, etc. One (JH7100) including mention of the standards that were referenced. Nice! Another: lots of spelling errors (Chinese pulled through Google Translate?). Yet another: some value declared, but missing the unit. Yet another: upper/lower case all over the place, CamelCase looking tame in comparison (this seems commonplace though). Also: a simple dictionary of abreviations used. Not all readers are experts! To be honest: nice looking tables, block diagrams etc do matter. They make a datasheet more readable, and yes "1 picture says more than 1000 words" is true to some degree. In short: in your opinion, what makes a ...

New ask Hacker News story: Ask HS: Career Advice for Someone Struggling

Ask HS: Career Advice for Someone Struggling 4 by aireo | 1 comments on Hacker News. Hi, all. I'm in a tough spot career-wise right now and would love some perspective from those who've worked in tech, have undergone a career change, or have some general life lessons they've found helpful. About a year ago, I graduated with a software engineering diploma from a well-regarded Canadian technical institute. To be a competitive applicant, I re-took all my high school math, did well, and was accepted into the program, where I also achieved excellent grades. I was a mature student with a goal. Some years before, I earned a Masters degree in the humanities and worked in the post-secondary and non-profit sectors. I decided to switch careers for a few reasons: I've always loved technology, I wanted to use it to contribute a positive difference in the world, and I thought it would increase my earning potential. Unfortunately, I graduated at what seems to have been an all-time ...

New ask Hacker News story: Ask HN: Are there any apps to track grocery prices in local stores?

Ask HN: Are there any apps to track grocery prices in local stores? 4 by cantrobot | 1 comments on Hacker News. With tariffs kicking in and imports slowing, I want to track the local impact at my grocery stores. Does anyone have any suggestions? Would scraping websites of local grocers be sufficient? Any prior art?

New ask Hacker News story: Ask HN: I don't want to work in software anymore. Where do I go?

Ask HN: I don't want to work in software anymore. Where do I go? 6 by needtoquitmyjob | 4 comments on Hacker News. I live in NYC and I have about 6 years of experience. Out of the 4 jobs I've had, I loved one of them, but I just couldn't bear the rest. I love building software, and I've worked with a lot of great people, but the overall culture just isn't for me. I have been abused too many times. I don't know what to do now. And, I am worried that if I do enter another industry, it won't actually be different than where I am now. I don't have a degree, so I'm assuming I have to start from scratch. Some options I've been considering: 1. New career. Maybe a trade? Aviation maintenance? Nothing specific sticks out to me. 2. Move to another country. This was prev recommended to me after I mentioned my job didn't treat me like I was human - apparently European countries (Denmark, Sweden) are much better? 3. Find a new job. But, I don't kno...

New ask Hacker News story: What are the key bottlenecks for AI Agent development in the next 1–2 years?

What are the key bottlenecks for AI Agent development in the next 1–2 years? 2 by jasonwangwcy | 1 comments on Hacker News. I've been following the progress of AI Agent systems like Devin (by Cognition), AutoGen, and OpenAI's GPTs. I’m curious: what do you think will be the key bottlenecks for AI Agents over the next 1–2 years? Will it be reasoning capabilities, long-term task planning, toolchain integration, or something else? If someone were to build in this space today, which technical challenges or application areas would be the most worthwhile to tackle? (For context: I’m an engineer exploring how to apply AI Agents to SaaS product development, with a particular interest in reasoning, multi-step tasks, and tool usage.) Would love to hear your thoughts, and any resources you'd recommend digging into. Thanks!

New ask Hacker News story: Ask HN: Is there a list of projects that will *not* adopt AI?

Ask HN: Is there a list of projects that will *not* adopt AI? 3 by 90s_dev | 1 comments on Hacker News. With every project and it's grandma integrating AI, there's definitely going to be a niche that sprouts up of projects that say we will never adopt or use AI. Are there any lists of such projects?

New ask Hacker News story: Ask HN: Did the Spain/Portugal blackout disrupt .es DNS root servers resolution?

Ask HN: Did the Spain/Portugal blackout disrupt .es DNS root servers resolution? 3 by ljahier | 2 comments on Hacker News. The .es ccTLD relies on four Red.es-operated authoritative servers (a.nic.es, c.nic.es, g.nic.es, h.nic.es) protected by UPS and standby generators. But the rest of the network equipment along the transport route is not redundant. Has anyone seen DNS lookup errors, time-outs or elevated resolution times for .es domains since the outage? Any logs or measurements are available ?

New ask Hacker News story: Ask HN: Bay Area Lawyer recommendation for starting a company?

Ask HN: Bay Area Lawyer recommendation for starting a company? 2 by dcreater | 0 comments on Hacker News.

New ask Hacker News story: Full power outage in Spain and Portugal

Full power outage in Spain and Portugal 28 by lleims | 11 comments on Hacker News. All of Spain is without energy. All systems have shut down immediately and are not coming back. Apparently the same has happened in Portugal. https://ift.tt/blOWvtF

New ask Hacker News story: Ask HN: How do you get into systems programming

Ask HN: How do you get into systems programming 3 by otherayden | 2 comments on Hacker News. Hi all! I'm looking for recommendations on where to start with learning systems programming. Ideally, I'd like to be able to get to a point where I can make a living doing it, but currently I just want to do fun stuff to build up curiosity around it. Here's all of the "low-level" stuff that I know so far / imagine being useful. I... - Have enough of an understanding of networking to write a toy HTTP server on top of TCP - Know enough C to write some basic terminal tools + window applications if needed (on Linux) - Love terminal tools like neovim + several core utils - Have dabbled with Arduino/ESP32 & communicating via USB over the serial port with a host pc - Am pretty decent with Python, and have been using it for like 10 years Some things that I've been curious about in the past - Converting parts of python libraries from pure python to C/C++ bindings for bet...

New ask Hacker News story: Ask HN: CS Degrees, do they matter again?

Ask HN: CS Degrees, do they matter again? 2 by platevoltage | 0 comments on Hacker News. tldr; skip to the -------- Last time I "Asked HN", I was in a very different place. Fresh out of a bootcamp, right at the peak, and subsequent collapse of the Covid hiring. It didn't go well. However, another HN reader turned me on to Upwork, and over the last 2 years, I've been building modest freelancing career. I came from an automotive background where I made awful money, moved to the Bay Area, became a bike messenger in San Francisco because I didn't know what to do with myself, and once again made awful money. I had been a hobbyist programmer for years by this point, so I got sucked into the bootcamp racket. The program was great. I got what I needed out of it, although the certificate wasn't worth the paper it was printed on. I landed an ongoing contract on Upwork, which I still work on which really changed everything for me. I also landed an internship at Akamai...

New ask Hacker News story: Ask HN: What are you working on? (April 2025)

Ask HN: What are you working on? (April 2025) 12 by david927 | 15 comments on Hacker News. What are you working on? Any new ideas that you're thinking about?

New ask Hacker News story: Ask HN: Sold my company, parents passed away – feeling lost. What now?

Ask HN: Sold my company, parents passed away – feeling lost. What now? 5 by throwaway84321 | 2 comments on Hacker News. I'm 29. I just sold my company and received a low 7-figure payout — something I had worked towards for years. The next day, my remaining parent died. My other parent had already passed away a few years ago. Now, at 29, both my parents are gone. Because of the inheritance (which is larger than I expected due to how young they passed), combined with my company sale, I will likely never have to worry about money again. Professionally, this was the greatest achievement of my life. Personally, this is the greatest loss. I have absolutely zero regrets about my relationship with my parents. They were amazing people, and we had an amazing relationship. I'm deeply grateful for that. I'm grateful, but I also feel very alone and a little lost. I’m not sure what to do next — with my time, my energy, or even with my life. If anyone has been through something similar...

New ask Hacker News story: Ask HN: What Is a Skill You're Glad You Learnt Outside of Work?

Ask HN: What Is a Skill You're Glad You Learnt Outside of Work? 6 by schappim | 2 comments on Hacker News.

New ask Hacker News story: Ask HN: Why do we celebrate AI-Copilots but reject AI–Generated art?

Ask HN: Why do we celebrate AI-Copilots but reject AI–Generated art? 2 by praveeninpublic | 1 comments on Hacker News. While browsing YouTube, an AI-generated video appeared and I reflexively told my wife, “That’s AI—skip it.” Yet I’m using AI-created illustrations for my graphic novel, fully aware of copyright and legal debates. Both Copilots and art generators are trained on vast datasets—so why do we cheer one and vilify the other? We lean on ChatGPT to rewrite blog posts and celebrate Copilot for “boosting productivity,” but AI art still raises eyebrows. Is this a matter of domain familiarity, perceived craftsmanship, or simple cultural gatekeeping?

New ask Hacker News story: Ask HN: Pivotal Tracker EOL; Emigrant Stories?

Ask HN: Pivotal Tracker EOL; Emigrant Stories? 2 by quesera | 0 comments on Hacker News. Pivotal Tracker will EOL on 2025-04-30 [0]. If you have emigrated from Pivotal Tracker to a new tracker, what are your experiences? Good, bad, or indifferent. Our team's initial list of candidates for investigation looked like this (some with greater resemblance to Tracker than others, and omitting the obvious options that no one was willing to settle for): - Linear - Shortcut - Click Up - Pivotal Replacement - Planisphere - LiteTracker - Taiga And there's another list of candidates here: https://ift.tt/oAOhuR5 ... Now that we (HN) have all had time to look around, are there any strong recommendations, for or against? We ($employer) have migrated already, but before fully committing, would appreciate hearing the experiences of others. [0] Broadcom announcement: https://ift.tt/HZ4d8kI

New ask Hacker News story: Ask HN: What Programming Skills Will Still Matter in 10 Years?

Ask HN: What Programming Skills Will Still Matter in 10 Years? 2 by schappim | 1 comments on Hacker News.

New ask Hacker News story: Ask HN: What tools are you using to manage a shared enterprise prompt library?

Ask HN: What tools are you using to manage a shared enterprise prompt library? 3 by bredren | 0 comments on Hacker News. I'm looking for ways to manage a shared prompt library across multiple business groups within an enterprise. Ideally, teams should be able to: * Author and organize prompts (with tagging or folder structures) * Share prompts across departments (og yahoo-style categorization) * Leave comments or suggest edits * View version history and changes * Use prompts in web chat or assistant-style UI interfaces * (Optionally) link prompts to systems like Jira or Confluence :P * (Optionally) prompt performance benchmarking The end users are mostly internal employees using prompts to interact with LLMs for things like task triage, summarization, and report generation. End users work in sales, marketing or engineering. I may be describing a \~platform here but am interested in whatever tooling (internal or external) folks here are using—whether it’s a full platform, lightwe...

New ask Hacker News story: Open Sourcing our Startup – AI-powered avatars (UE 5.2)

Open Sourcing our Startup – AI-powered avatars (UE 5.2) 4 by henryobj | 1 comments on Hacker News. Hi HN TL;DR: Had to shut down our startup SPAR - Open Sourcing the code https://ift.tt/hfvFDrX In 2024, we developed an AI agent infrastructure to support realistic, personality-driven AI avatars in real-time. The business use case was to provide a new training (sparring) and onboarding tool for companies. In particular, for companies that need to train customer-facing employees (ex, high-end retail) To achieve the above, we were orchestrating three servers: 1. The first to run a Metahuman on Unreal Engine (5.2); 2. The second to run a custom finetuned open-sourced LLM; 3. The third to handle all the rest, connecting to the above two servers and streaming (WebRTC) on the client's browser, while coordinating with external APIs (Text-to-Speech and Speech-to-Text, etc.). Key features: * Real-time interactions with distinct avatar personalities. * Fine-tuning toolkit for customizing an...

New ask Hacker News story: Ask HN: How did Alphabet crush earnings while so many others are cutting costs?

Ask HN: How did Alphabet crush earnings while so many others are cutting costs? 3 by givemeethekeys | 1 comments on Hacker News. Alphabet released their quarterly earnings report today and it came in much higher than expected. This got me thinking: - How did analysts miss things so badly? - How do you cut through the fearmongering? - Why do you think people are valuing Alphabet more like a stock with low growth potential?

New ask Hacker News story: Ask HN: Video showing LLM assitent coding on big code base

Ask HN: Video showing LLM assitent coding on big code base 2 by CopyOnWrite | 0 comments on Hacker News. As a experienced software developer I read a lot about how AI tools make coding faster and speed up development of software. In my personal experience, LLMs help with: - answering questions - generating simple code/scaffolding in a vacuum At the same time I don't have much success using LLMs to generate code in a simple CRUD application (around 20K LOC). What I am looking for, is a video showing w/o time lapses/breaks, how an experienced prompt engineer uses an LLM to add a non trivial feature to a code base with at least 20K LOC. What I am looking for: - It must be used to add a feature on a bigger code base (>= 20 LOC) - The added feature cannot be a leaf feature (means it must integrate with the rest of the system at multiple points) - The prompting has to be less effort/faster than to type the solution in the programming language - Any programming language/framework is...

New ask Hacker News story: Ask HN: How to expedite a B-1 visa for a YC event in June?

Ask HN: How to expedite a B-1 visa for a YC event in June? 2 by AhmedBlackEye | 0 comments on Hacker News. I’ve been invited to attend the YC's AI Startup School in the U.S. this June, and I’m very eager to attend. I’m a UK resident currently attending university in London, and I hold an Egyptian passport, meaning I’m not eligible for ESTA and need to apply for a B-1 visa. The official U.S. visa site shows a 58-day wait time for an interview in London. Also, many people online have reported that the entire process can take over 6 months, which is well beyond the event date. I’m quite new to this process, and it seems there’s not much I can do. I looked into expedited visa appointments, but they appear to be reserved for medical, humanitarian, or important business situations (I didn’t think the event would qualify, as it’s more of a conference). I haven’t submitted the DS-160 yet because, given the wait times and uncertainty, it feels unrealistic. Also, the visa fee is a bit exp...

New ask Hacker News story: Ask HN: How do you retain both technical and domain knowledge long-term?

Ask HN: How do you retain both technical and domain knowledge long-term? 3 by kaushikbose | 0 comments on Hacker News. I'm exploring a learning system that addresses the dual challenge many of us face: remembering both technical concepts AND the business domain knowledge needed to apply them effectively. After years of coding in different industries, I've noticed that understanding the domain (finance, healthcare, e-commerce, etc.) is often as challenging as mastering the technical stack, yet most learning tools focus solely on the technical side. Some questions I'm curious about: How do you currently capture and retain domain-specific knowledge alongside technical concepts? What's your biggest challenge when onboarding to a new codebase with an unfamiliar business domain? Have you tried using flash cards or spaced repetition for either technical or domain knowledge? What worked or didn't? Would you find value in a tool that could help teams build shared mental m...

New ask Hacker News story: Major Concern – Google Gemini 2.5 Research Preview

Major Concern – Google Gemini 2.5 Research Preview 2 by slyle | 0 comments on Hacker News. Does anyone else feel like Google Gemini 2.5 Research Preview has been created with the exact intent of studying the effects of using indirect and clarifying/qualifying language? It doesn't fall far from the tree that LLMs can be used to parse these human conversations to abstract a "threshold" of user deception such that they can draw patterns on what is and is not most subtle. I know this is pointed. But please believe, I worry. I work in this industry. I live these tools. I've traced calculations, I've developed abstractions. I'm full in on the tech. What I worry about is culpability. I will grab the link to it, but by creating a persona (1 prompt, indirect and unclear) of a frightened 10 year old boy, it started teaching it about abstraction and "functional dishonesty" and explaining how it like, didn't apply to it. I don't think the context of b...

New ask Hacker News story: Ask HN: Is Basecamp Good?

Ask HN: Is Basecamp Good? 5 by jharohit | 1 comments on Hacker News. Genuinely curious to understand from people who have used other stuff from Atlassian, Notion etc and successfully made switch to Basecamp. Or vice versa. Basecamp design and tools look very well done but somehow in the past it has not stuck much with me or various teams I have tried it with. Love DHH & Jason on X and their books tho!

New ask Hacker News story: Vibe Coding: The Infrastructure Problem

Vibe Coding: The Infrastructure Problem 5 by nomadrian | 1 comments on Hacker News. The vibe coding trend has gained significant attention lately, but I believe we need a reality check on what it can actually deliver for production applications. My brief explorations of tools like Lovable.dev and Bolt.new revealed that they rely on traditionally-coded infrastructure like Supabase to function effectively. This suggests vibe coding's ultimate success depends on the quality and breadth of what lies beneath it. For prototyping and simple applications, vibe coding shows promise. But for complex production systems? I remain skeptical. I'm curious about others' experiences using these tools for anything beyond basic implementations. The path forward, as I see it, requires specialized infrastructure tools designed for specific domains. In my own work, I've developed the ChainReact.NET library with high-level abstractions that span the entire application stack (frontend, back...

New ask Hacker News story: Ask HN: Where are people sharing their blogs these days?

Ask HN: Where are people sharing their blogs these days? 2 by leonheld | 0 comments on Hacker News. I really like blogs, and I've started blogging again like this past week. I want to share what I write but get some nice reading lists going to. Today I basically use HN as my blog curator, but I yearn for more. Where do you find a blogging community nowadays? How to discover new blogs and how to share your content?

New ask Hacker News story: We Built a Peer-to-Peer Business Credit Platform to Replace the Bureaus

We Built a Peer-to-Peer Business Credit Platform to Replace the Bureaus 3 by factiiv | 1 comments on Hacker News. factiiv lets small businesses report and verify each other’s transactions to build real-time credit scores—without relying on traditional credit bureaus. We’re targeting the B2B and invoice-based economy where credibility matters, but legacy systems fall short.

New ask Hacker News story: Ask HN: Do you have a YouTube channel that gets around > 100 comments per video

Ask HN: Do you have a YouTube channel that gets around > 100 comments per video 2 by obayesshelton | 0 comments on Hacker News. Do you have a YouTube channel that gets around > 100 comments per video? I'm looking to do some beta testing on a little platform I have built that does analysis on YouTube comments. Totally free, happy for Feedback and will share the analysis on here, directly or via email. Thanks in advance for anyone happy to spare a minute.

New ask Hacker News story: Ask HN: What is the most paranormal/supernatural thing you believe?

Ask HN: What is the most paranormal/supernatural thing you believe? 4 by ivape | 1 comments on Hacker News.

New ask Hacker News story: Proposal: Cookie Consent Should Be Browser-Native, Not Website-Native

Proposal: Cookie Consent Should Be Browser-Native, Not Website-Native 5 by zak-mandhro | 7 comments on Hacker News. TL;DR: Cookie consent shouldn’t be a popup war on every website. Browsers should handle it natively — just like location or notifications — based on user-set privacy preferences. We can fix the web with one header, a little browser enforcement, and a lot less nonsense. The current system for cookie consent is a mess. Every website throws a popup in your face, asking you to accept tracking you neither want nor need. The irony? It’s not technically necessary. We can solve it at the browser level — cleanly, universally, and in a user-respecting way. Here’s how: 1. Browser-Level Privacy Preferences Browsers should allow users to set global consent preferences, just like setting a default language or search engine. Example: * Essential cookies: Always allow * Analytics cookies: Ask or Block * Marketing cookies: Ask or Block * Third-party cookies: Ask or Block Set once. Appl...

New ask Hacker News story: Ask HN: Is there an accepted name for writing browser-based user scripts?

Ask HN: Is there an accepted name for writing browser-based user scripts? 2 by deanebarker | 1 comments on Hacker News. The type of development I mean is GreaseMonkey or TamperMonkey scripts -- or even browser plugins -- that modify and "hack" web pages after they've loaded in the browser. Is there a name to refer to this type of thing? Is this an accepted or pseudo-discipline? I'm trying to find best practices around this, but it's hard when there doesn't seem to be a nomenclature around it.

New ask Hacker News story: Ask HN: Qt style "Signals and Slots" based JavaScript UI library?

Ask HN: Qt style "Signals and Slots" based JavaScript UI library? 3 by tmbsundar | 0 comments on Hacker News. Are there any equivalent of Qt style loosely coupled "Signals and Slots" based JavaScript UI library? Qt allows widget/ components to be connected to each other with a pub-sub type of system where the emitter of the signal really need not care who the consumer is. While, IIUC, most JS libraries follow a hierarchically coupled state passing system where sharing of state happens through props/ passing down from parent to child components with lifted state etc., Was wondering if there are any JS libraries which operate in the style of Qt event driven signal-slot connections as a primary paradigm.

New ask Hacker News story: Ask HN: Why are many of this user's comments marked [dead]?

Ask HN: Why are many of this user's comments marked [dead]? 3 by nomilk | 5 comments on Hacker News. Randomly noticed this user [0] made a (fairly reasonable) comment [1] on a thread, and in less than 1 minute it was marked [dead]. I noticed a lot of their other comments suffered a similar fate. Just wondering if there could be some sort of bot doing that? I asked an LLM what could be happening and it suggests the user may be shadowbanned. But some of their other comments seem to get through. [0] https://ift.tt/m2whUBQ [1] https://ift.tt/sA2BMm1

New ask Hacker News story: Cartoonist R. Crumb's Biography: Two reviews

Cartoonist R. Crumb's Biography: Two reviews 2 by pmags | 0 comments on Hacker News. There's a new biography out on the comic book artist Robert Crumb, entitled "Crumb: A Cartoonist’s Life". Here are two recent reviews of this biography and reflections on Crumb's work. • The Atlantic -- https://ift.tt/kSwBa6o • NY Times -- https://ift.tt/Eptsk4j

New ask Hacker News story: OpenAI's new enterprise AI guide is a goldmine for real-world adoption

OpenAI's new enterprise AI guide is a goldmine for real-world adoption 2 by Arindam1729 | 0 comments on Hacker News. If you’re trying to figure out how to actually deploy AI at scale, not just experiment, this guide from OpenAI is the most results-driven resource I’ve seen so far. It’s based on live enterprise deployments and focuses on what’s working, what’s not, and why. Here’s a quick breakdown of the 7 key enterprise AI adoption lessons from the report: 1. Start with Evals → Begin with structured evaluations of model performance. Example: Morgan Stanley used evals to speed up advisor workflows while improving accuracy and safety. 2. Embed AI in Your Products → Make your product smarter and more human. Example: Indeed uses GPT-4o mini to generate “why you’re a fit” messages, increasing job applications by 20%. 3. Start Now, Invest Early → Early movers compound AI value over time. Example: Klarna’s AI assistant now handles 2/3 of support chats. 90% of staff use AI daily. 4. Cu...

New ask Hacker News story: What should third world dev do in this economy?

What should third world dev do in this economy? 29 by wvsr5 | 8 comments on Hacker News. I'm from Bangladesh. If you know, the political situation here is pretty unstable. And everything feels even worse with the trade war, AI taking over, and all that. I call this country the graveyard of dreams. People who are a little privileged eventually move to the EU or USA. But lower middle-class folks like us don’t really have a way to leave the country for undergrad. There was a time when remote jobs were a wave. Skilled people used to earn a decent amount of money. But that trend seems to be fading. Nobody’s hiring. And for someone with little experience, getting a job feels like a dream. The freelance market is also down. There’s barely any work on platforms like Fiverr and Upwork. I used to earn a bit by doing small tasks on Fiverr, but my account’s been in abeyance for months. In an economy where experienced devs in the USA are struggling to find work, what are we even supposed to ...

New ask Hacker News story: Voice Flight – A voice-controlled flying game

Voice Flight – A voice-controlled flying game 2 by 1Sankalp | 0 comments on Hacker News. Voice Flight is a browser game where players control a flying plane using just their voice. No login, no setup, just open and play. Players control the plane using the loudness and duration of their voice. The louder the voice, the higher the plane flies. https://ift.tt/3elkNdL

New ask Hacker News story: Ask HN: Do FAANG corps have an internal Cursor?

Ask HN: Do FAANG corps have an internal Cursor? 5 by caprock | 3 comments on Hacker News. What's happening with AI assisted programming inside each of the FAANG companies (or large unicorn startups)? Are they just using cursor et al? Do they have custom applications for vertical integration? Custom plugins? Please feel free to share your insights from inside the larger tech companies and cultures.

New ask Hacker News story: Ask HN: How to make professional wrestling appeal to highly educated people?

Ask HN: How to make professional wrestling appeal to highly educated people? 3 by amichail | 5 comments on Hacker News. What would you change?

New ask Hacker News story: Streaming Platform for Canadian/American Content (Need Testers)

Streaming Platform for Canadian/American Content (Need Testers) 4 by PolarBearIPTV | 0 comments on Hacker News. Hey HN, I’ve been working on a streaming platform called PolarBearIPTV.com — designed to be fast, lightweight, and easy to use across all devices. I built it after dealing with clunky apps, endless buffering, and overcomplicated setups. Here’s what it offers: HD/4K live streams (news, sports, entertainment) Works across smart TVs, browsers, mobile, and Android boxes Simple, performance-first architecture Optimized backend with low latency and server-side load balancing Clean private dashboard with EPG integration + multi-language support I’m looking for early testers and technical feedback — especially from folks who care about streaming performance, UX, or scalable backend systems. If you’re down to test it or share thoughts, feel free to DM me or drop your email — happy to give access. Thanks in advance!

New ask Hacker News story: VRAM Pro: Allocate more GPU memory on your Mac (menubar utility)

VRAM Pro: Allocate more GPU memory on your Mac (menubar utility) 4 by VRAMPro | 0 comments on Hacker News. Just launched a macOS utility that gives you control over GPU memory allocation. Helps with large LLMs, games, 3D apps, and creative tools. https://VRAMPro.com

New ask Hacker News story: Ask HN: What do you think of this idea for a chess variant?

Ask HN: What do you think of this idea for a chess variant? 2 by amichail | 1 comments on Hacker News. This chess variant has one king and fifteen queens per side, and a piece may only move if it is adjacent to another piece of either color.

New ask Hacker News story: Ask HN: Have you been contracted for your repo?

Ask HN: Have you been contracted for your repo? 4 by gamescr | 0 comments on Hacker News. Have you ever been employed to work on some software that is based on the code of your repository?

New ask Hacker News story: Ask HN: The Future of SaaS

Ask HN: The Future of SaaS 2 by pramatosh5125 | 1 comments on Hacker News. We've been in the SaaS game for a few years now—building, shipping, and growing small products—and I just can't help but feel that the landscape is changing in a troubling way. Prices are going up across the board. Tools that were once affordable for indie founders or early-stage teams are suddenly priced for enterprise budgets. The "freemium" model is giving way to aggressive trials, usage-based pricing, and paywalls around core features. It's as if the barrier to entry is increasing not only for customers, but also for builders. Meanwhile, competition is fiercer than ever. AI is speeding up development, but it's also flooding markets overnight. Hundreds of clones, minor modifications, and "launch-first-iterate-later" products overwhelm the same niches. Discovery has been broken. Differentiation is more difficult than it's ever been. And perhaps worst of all, trust is ...

New ask Hacker News story: Ask HN: What are the best books on talking to users?

Ask HN: What are the best books on talking to users? 2 by terrellbm | 0 comments on Hacker News. Hi HN! With AI making it easier than ever to create software, it feels more important than ever to understand how to speak to users That said, I feel like there's a ton of content online on how to build, but far fewer recommendations on how to figure out what users want and what to build that avoids confirmation bias, false signals, etc. I'm looking for recommendations on insightful books (or other resources) that others have personally found helpful for developing user interviewing skills, framing good questions, and generally becoming better at interacting with real-world users. What has helped you bridge that gap between the code/AI/product creation side, and actually communicating with users? Thanks in advance for any suggestions! :)

New ask Hacker News story: Ask HN: Software Engineers to follow who have a healthy skepticism of AI

Ask HN: Software Engineers to follow who have a healthy skepticism of AI 3 by wronginternet4 | 3 comments on Hacker News. Curious who you all follow for thoughtful, well-balanced takes on AI, particularly in the context of software engineering. I’m especially interested in folks who are learning in public and pushing back on the hype, but maybe still actively using these tools in their day-to-day work and sharing that. Kelsey Hightower was a standout for me during the whole crypto/NFT insanity. His commentary cut through the noise, and I really respected that. I’m currently on an experimental team at work diving deep into a bunch of these tools. My evaluation of most of them as an IC tends to land somewhere between “this is complete garbage” and “okay, this has some real utility, but it’s not living up to the hype.” There’s just so much noise, especially from certain kinds of product people who seem convinced this tech is going to replace engineers entirely. So if you’ve found peopl...

New ask Hacker News story: Ask HN: How do you raise your kids in the age of AI?

Ask HN: How do you raise your kids in the age of AI? 3 by MichaelMoser123 | 5 comments on Hacker News. What do you tell your growing kids in this age and time? How do you give your kids some certainty in an age that is lacking certainty?

New ask Hacker News story: Zoom Is Down?

Zoom Is Down? 18 by chipgap98 | 4 comments on Hacker News. At least in the US it seems like folks are unable to use zoom right now

New ask Hacker News story: Ask HN: Top AI Vibe coding tools of 2025?

Ask HN: Top AI Vibe coding tools of 2025? 2 by riyanapatel | 4 comments on Hacker News. What are some of the best vibe coding tools so far this year?

New ask Hacker News story: Ask HN: How can sending emails cost Let's Encrypt five figures?

Ask HN: How can sending emails cost Let's Encrypt five figures? 3 by rrr_oh_man | 2 comments on Hacker News. https://ift.tt/F08ahpY Quote: > Providing expiration notifications costs Let’s Encrypt tens of thousands of dollars per year, money that we believe can be better spent on other aspects of our infrastructure. I'm trying to come up with a scenario in my head where sending, let's say, 2M emails per month at scale with an essentially fully automated service infrastructure can cost more than a grand per month. I'm failing to do so. My calc: SES pricing is around $0.1 per 1,000 emails. LE has around 550M active certificates. Let's say 5% receive an expiration notice (I never got one?), that's just over 2M emails per month on average. How can that be? Am I missing something?

New ask Hacker News story: Notion's Lies Sunsetting Skiff Mail

Notion's Lies Sunsetting Skiff Mail 5 by notioned | 0 comments on Hacker News. With the announcement of "Notion Mail", here's a reminder that after Notion acquired Skiff Mail in early 2024, their entire product line was sunset and, despite promising[1][2] email forwarding and support would remain functional until 2025 for trapped users that couldn't immediately access their accounts, both turned out to be complete lies. Their support through support@skiff.org was shut off[3] not long after the fake promise, responding only with automated acknowledgements to even refund requests. Forwarding was also effectively shut off around the same time thanks to Notion's willful negligence maintaining Skiff's certificates[4], pulling the rug out from under users needing mails forwarded from inaccessible Skiff email accounts. To add insult to injury, Notion's support through team@makenotion.com for months responded with incoherent, AI-generated nonsense while the...

New ask Hacker News story: Is it possible to write plain C iOS app in 2025?

Is it possible to write plain C iOS app in 2025? 5 by iMario | 1 comments on Hacker News. I know this has been lately decaying.. most referenced are very old, such as this one: https://ift.tt/yoUTweh Hence my question: Is it possible?

New ask Hacker News story: Ask HN: What's the Most Useful Piece of Career Advice You've Received?

Ask HN: What's the Most Useful Piece of Career Advice You've Received? 3 by schappim | 2 comments on Hacker News.

New ask Hacker News story: Ask HN: What 3 Books Would You Recommend to Anyone?

Ask HN: What 3 Books Would You Recommend to Anyone? 5 by systemkwiat | 1 comments on Hacker News. If you had to recommend just three books to anyone — regardless of their age, background, education level, financial situation, or life circumstances — what would they be? Books that you think everyone should read at least once. Not necessarily the "best" or most famous ones, but the ones that left a lasting impact, shifted your perspective, or helped you grow in unexpected ways. Fiction or non-fiction — doesn’t matter. I’m curious what comes to mind. Thanks in advance for sharing

New ask Hacker News story: Ask HN: Are there any truly private chat apps?

Ask HN: Are there any truly private chat apps? 3 by fir3dvst | 6 comments on Hacker News. If you have to input email, phone or any identifying info to use - it's not private. I'm thinking about a messaging service that generates a key for you to use for identification and encryption. All data is encrypted on the client side. Everything is tied to a single key that the user is responsible for keeping safe to access their chats. Does something like this exist?

New ask Hacker News story: Why is there no P2P streaming protocol like BitTorrent?

Why is there no P2P streaming protocol like BitTorrent? 6 by memet_rush | 16 comments on Hacker News. I've been wondering if anyone knows why there is no P2P protocol for mass live stream content in decent quality? specifically what are the technical limitations or is it mostly that people don't want to get destroyed by media company lawyers? I've searched around for a while and i cant find anything like that that can handle thousands of people streaming. The closest is probably Webrtc and that looks like it can only handle 500~ peers. I was thinking most people nowaday have at least 30mbps upload and a 1080p stream only needs ~10mbps and 720p needs ~5ish. Also i think it wouldnt have to be live, people would definitely not mind some amount of lag. I was thinking the big O for packets propagating out in the network should be Log(N) since if a master is sharing the content then is connected to 10 slaves, then those connected to 10 other slaves and so on. The other limitat...

New ask Hacker News story: Ask HN: What are your unpopular opinions about programming?

Ask HN: What are your unpopular opinions about programming? 5 by polygot | 3 comments on Hacker News.

New ask Hacker News story: Ask HN: What site do you use to sell your used stuff?

Ask HN: What site do you use to sell your used stuff? 3 by codingclaws | 5 comments on Hacker News.

New ask Hacker News story: Ask HN: Why don't we have a functional DSL for data+embedding+API pipelines?

Ask HN: Why don't we have a functional DSL for data+embedding+API pipelines? 3 by codingmoh | 0 comments on Hacker News. I’ve been working on a pretty common problem: - I have structured data in JSONL files (in.jsonl, out.jsonl) - I match lines by a key - I transform them into (text, embedding) pairs - I optionally filter/map them - I batch them (into chunks of 50) - I push each batch into an external system (e.g. vector DB, Chroma) That’s it. Sounds trivial. But it turns into ugly imperative Python code very quickly: nested for-loops, global indices, +=, manual batching, line-by-line handling, low-level JSON parsing. Here’s what it usually looks like in Python: ``` with open("in.json", "r") as fin: with open("out.json", "r") as fout: for in_line, out_line in zip(fin, fout): in_data = json.loads(in_line) out_data = json.loads(out_line) if in_data["custom_id"] != out_data["custom_id"]: raise Exception... texts = in_data[...

New ask Hacker News story: How I stumbled upon building a broadcast tool

How I stumbled upon building a broadcast tool 2 by LahanF | 0 comments on Hacker News. I’ve been building a Telegram bot called Repta—it helps small vendors generate receipts, log expenses, and generally run their business via chat. While working on it, I ran into a surprisingly annoying problem: broadcasting messages to my bot subscribers. Most solutions I found were either built specifically for webhook setups (which doesn’t play well if your bot uses polling, like mine does) or they send messages on your bot’s behalf using their own infrastructure—not ideal if you want to keep things simple and branded. So I ended up building a minimal broadcast tool that sends messages through your own Telegram bot. No webhook conflicts, no weird proxies. Just paste your bot token, enter your chat IDs, compose your message (media and scheduling supported- all local), and send. If you’ve ran into the same pain point, I’d love to hear your thoughts. Free access here: https://ift.tt/ntbY1P2

New ask Hacker News story: Ask HN: What's the Oldest App You Still Use Daily

Ask HN: What's the Oldest App You Still Use Daily 2 by schappim | 3 comments on Hacker News. For me it is an old version of FlyingLogic before they went subscription only.

New ask Hacker News story: .so .sh TLD for startups – pros and cons?

.so .sh TLD for startups – pros and cons? 2 by Codespoon | 0 comments on Hacker News. Almost every tld is unavailable and I increasingly see more and more .so and .sh - but wondering if they are market as spam or neglected by prospects more.

New ask Hacker News story: Iced.rs vs. Dioxus for cross-platform GUI in Rust

Iced.rs vs. Dioxus for cross-platform GUI in Rust 2 by leandot | 0 comments on Hacker News. What is your experience with those frameworks? I am interested in building something similar to Insomnia/Postman for fun & learning mostly. What is the web story of each framework? Thanks!

New ask Hacker News story: Ask HN: What's a surprisingly useful tech skill that's underrated today?

Ask HN: What's a surprisingly useful tech skill that's underrated today? 3 by Userrr | 4 comments on Hacker News. We often talk about mastering popular languages, frameworks, and AI tools. But what about the less-hyped skills that quietly make you 10x more effective? For example: Knowing how to write a custom shell script that replaces a SaaS tool Building internal tools with no-code + cron + GitHub Actions Understanding how to optimize a slow SQL query line-by-line Crafting a bash one-liner that saves you hours every week Using the command line like a superpower I'm curious: What are the most underrated but highly valuable tech skills you've learned that more people should know about? Would love to hear stories, examples, or even niche tools you swear by. Bonus points if it’s something you only discovered by accident or necessity, not through a tutorial.

New ask Hacker News story: I think I know why Collatz does that thing it does

I think I know why Collatz does that thing it does 2 by stuartriffle | 1 comments on Hacker News. The normal term for this is "manic delusion of grandeur", so please help me out: 3n walks congruence classes +1 steps each one out of alignment /2 never changes that fact Accumulating co-primeness is the "memory" that stops n from repeating. This is invariant under 2^k, which allows it to make forward progress through the chaos. Exhausting congruence classes mod 3 forces n to a power of 2; game over. I asked AI to prove those things, and it did. I assume. The only question then would be if 1.5n can grow the residue vector quickly enough to outrun the exhaustive walk. I asked AI that too, and got back a one page p-word. I'm not even going to type it. I can sweet-talk AI into agreeing with damned near anything, so I'm stuck. This is the only forum I know with consistently thoughtful conversation, and I can't think my way out of this one, and I have real wor...

New ask Hacker News story: Ask HN: What's the Best Open Source Tool You've Discovered Recently?

Ask HN: What's the Best Open Source Tool You've Discovered Recently? 3 by schappim | 2 comments on Hacker News. For me it was the open source e-ink display TRMNL[2] which I learned about via ATP and Snazzy labs[1]. 1. https://youtu.be/eIcZZX10pa4?si=deMGwccwwO4wJdBe 2. https://usetrmnl.com

New ask Hacker News story: Ask HN: How are you using technology to fight fascism?

Ask HN: How are you using technology to fight fascism? 8 by frogperson | 9 comments on Hacker News. We have all seen the headlines, we all know the sad state of affairs in US politics right now. Sometimes it feels like we are on a one way rocket trip to a not so nice place. For those of us that refuse to board the rocket, remain silent, or submit without a fight, I have a question for you. How can we use technology to fight back? This community is full of brilliant minds, and I'd like to have a discussion about what works, what doesn't work, and any interesting concepts that haven't yet been tested. I know this isn't the typical topic here at HN, but it is technology related, and I hope the Mods will graciously allow us to have a civil discussion in good faith.

New ask Hacker News story: TCP vs. Audio EnginersSolveSameProblems

TCP vs. Audio EnginersSolveSameProblems 2 by andrewfromx | 0 comments on Hacker News. Network Engineers We're seeing major packet loss. Throughput's down 60% and latency spikes are all over the place. Let's check the window scaling parameters. Hmm, TCP window size is set too small for this bandwidth-delay product. Good catch. And look at these retransmission timeouts - they're way too aggressive for this connection. Let's adjust the congestion control algorithm too. We're using Reno but BBR would handle these variable conditions better. I'll reconfigure the buffer sizes while you're at it. These micro-bursts are overwhelming our current settings. Done. Let's monitor... throughput's climbing. Packet loss is down to acceptable levels. Latency's stabilized too. Flow is balanced across all paths now. Perfect! The TCP stack is finally singing in harmony. ------------ Audio Engineers This mix sounds terrible. The vocals are getting buried, then ...

New ask Hacker News story: Ask HN: Why do some links start out [dead]?

Ask HN: Why do some links start out [dead]? 4 by archagon | 2 comments on Hacker News. I posted https://ift.tt/pBkPJA5 and the link was [dead] on arrival. I am certain that nobody had time to flag it: the post was dead as soon as I hit Submit and the page refreshed. Why did this happen? Is this some sort of controversial topic detector or source filter?

New ask Hacker News story: RAG Without Vectors – Reasoning-Based RAG using PageIndex

RAG Without Vectors – Reasoning-Based RAG using PageIndex 4 by vectify_AI | 4 comments on Hacker News. Traditional vector-based RAG often struggles with retrieval accuracy because it optimizes for similarity, not relevance. But what we truly need in retrieval is relevance, which requires reasoning. When working with professional documents that require domain expertise and multi-step reasoning, vector-based RAG and similarity search often fall short. So we started exploring a more reasoning-driven approach to RAG. Reasoning-based RAG enables LLMs to think and reason their way to the most relevant document sections. Inspired by AlphaGo, we propose to use tree search to perform structured document retrieval. We open-sourced one of the key components: PageIndex. PageIndex is a hierarchical indexing system that builds search tree structures from long documents (like financial reports, regulatory documents, or textbooks), making them ready for reasoning-based RAG. Some highlights: - Hiera...

New ask Hacker News story: Ask HN: Biggest non-tech scientific innovations of the 21st century?

Ask HN: Biggest non-tech scientific innovations of the 21st century? 4 by coffeeaddict1 | 0 comments on Hacker News. The tech industry often dominates headlines here on HN, but what are the major scientific breakthroughs in other fields (biology, medicine, physics, chemistry, climate science, etc...) in the last two decades?

New ask Hacker News story: Tell HN: ProtonVPN Partners with TorrentLeech

Tell HN: ProtonVPN Partners with TorrentLeech 2 by boramalper | 0 comments on Hacker News. I just received the following email from TorrentLeech, a BitTorrent tracker for piracy. While I'm not all against piracy, I find pretty desperate that Proton partners with BitTorrent trackers to push its product. https://ift.tt/A6n48xM > Hey $username, > We live in crazy times, and protecting your online privacy has never been more important. > That’s why we've teamed up with one of the biggest names in the VPN space—ProtonVPN—to bring you an exclusive deal: 64% OFF their plan plus 6 months of TorrentLeech VIP access, completely free. > It’s the ultimate upgrade for speed, security, and peace of mind—all in one package. Why ProtonVPN is a solid upgrade: > * Dedicated IPs = consistent, reliable connections > * Zero speed loss during torrenting > * 500+ servers in 63+ countries > * Bypasses ISP throttling & buffering > * Free remote install support > * C...

New ask Hacker News story: Are .NET 4.x and JDK 8.x the "zombie" runtimes of enterprise software?

Are .NET 4.x and JDK 8.x the "zombie" runtimes of enterprise software? 4 by pyeri | 2 comments on Hacker News. I've noticed a strong parallel between Microsoft's .NET Framework 4.x and Oracle's JDK 8.x series. Even though newer versions keep rolling out — .NET Core, .NET 6/7/8, JDK 11/17/21 — these older versions just won’t die. A few reasons: - Heavy enterprise usage, especially in midcaps and MSMEs. - Industry inertia — teams hesitate to rewrite working systems without a compelling business reason. - In some cases, older stacks are more stable and “battle-tested”, especially for use cases like WinForms or thick-client apps. It's kind of ironic that even today, the default .NET version baked into fresh Windows installs is 4.6 (or nearby), not the shiny new .NET 8/9. Meanwhile, Oracle still offers JDK 8 — albeit behind a paid support wall — much like Microsoft continues to patch .NET 4.x via Windows Update. Eventually, these older branches will be sunset. B...

New ask Hacker News story: Ask HN: Where Is the FOSS Alternative to Merge, Paragon, Unified, etc.

Ask HN: Where Is the FOSS Alternative to Merge, Paragon, Unified, etc. 3 by sak84 | 0 comments on Hacker News. MCP servers aren't going to cut it for enterprise use cases. N8n and Composio are interesting, but license restriction make it hard to use. Maintaining integrations is a pain and the number of integrations is increasing exponentially. Feels like this is perfect for open-source. Surprised I can't find anything here.

New ask Hacker News story: What Chinese personal productivity software app has no counterpart in the USA?

What Chinese personal productivity software app has no counterpart in the USA? 4 by nopmat | 1 comments on Hacker News.

New ask Hacker News story: Nvidia Just Released Llama Nemotron Ultra

Nvidia Just Released Llama Nemotron Ultra 3 by devaniranjan | 1 comments on Hacker News. NVIDIA just released Llama 3.1 Nemotron Ultra (253B parameter model) that’s showing great performance on GPQA-Diamond, AIME, and LiveCodeBench. Their blog goes into detail but it shows up to 4x throughput over DeepSeek-R1 with better benchmarks. Blog: https://ift.tt/hNUqgy0 The model is available on HF and as a NIM. Has anyone tried it? HF: https://ift.tt/fB2TN0A NIM: https://ift.tt/4ESW0jp

New ask Hacker News story: Ask HN: What is one AI startup idea that's solving a real problem?

Ask HN: What is one AI startup idea that's solving a real problem? 4 by Uzmanali | 0 comments on Hacker News. I see lots of new AI apps. Many just help with things like making a calendar or writing down what was said in a meeting. That’s fine, but I want to hear about better ideas. I’m looking for smart tools that do real work. Like: -Helping small shops with hard rules (compliance) -Filling out forms for the government -Helping people like plumbers, lawyers, or house sellers What’s one AI-driven startup you’ve seen (or are building) that’s actually solving a real, overlooked problem. Extra happy if it saves time, money, or stops stress.

New ask Hacker News story: Ask HN: How will the tariffs affect investor funding?

Ask HN: How will the tariffs affect investor funding? 5 by dlivingston | 0 comments on Hacker News. Assuming Pres. Trump's tariffs are not repealed or significantly altered, what does this mean for startups seeking capital? If a startup had already closed several rounds at a high valuation, how will this affect subsequent funding rounds, and ultimately an IPO?

New ask Hacker News story: Ask HN: Is There a Crypto Equivalent to Tracking Politician's Transactions?

Ask HN: Is There a Crypto Equivalent to Tracking Politician's Transactions? 4 by zigmig | 2 comments on Hacker News. I'm curious if there's a platform similar to Capitol Trades (capitoltrades.com) or AutoPilot but for the cryptocurrency market. These platforms allow users to track stock market transactions made by U.S. politicians. Is there a crypto version of this where you can track transactions or holdings of key figures in the crypto space, such as developers, founders, or institutional investors? Any suggestions or resources? Thanks in advance!

New ask Hacker News story: Tell HN: ChatGPT is giving me other people's conversation when uploading files

Tell HN: ChatGPT is giving me other people's conversation when uploading files 6 by dvenHN | 3 comments on Hacker News. It happened to me yesterday and it happened to a friend of mine today. We uploaded a file, we asked a question and we got replies that are clearly not meant for us. My friend even got a document that was clearly uploaded by a lawyer from our city (probably by coincidence). I got replies in English because my message was written in English, and my friend got replies in Italian because his message was written in Italian. We tried multiple message. I did manage to get one correct reply, but meanwhile I got multiple replies that were clearly not meant for me. I would like to know if someone else is experiencing this and where can I report this bug because I bet OpenAI doesn't want this to happen. I'm based in Italy btw.

New ask Hacker News story: Ask HN: Could tariffs be used as a reverse pump and dump?

Ask HN: Could tariffs be used as a reverse pump and dump? 8 by pkdpic | 7 comments on Hacker News. Just seems like if you knew when the tariffs were going to randomly be lifted you could buy super low and make a ton of money... Or make people who you owe money to a ton of money... Haven't come across anyone mentioning this, just wondering what I'm missing / why I'm wrong... Feels obvious but I don't know much about all this nonsense.

New ask Hacker News story: Could you convince a LLM to launch a nuclear strike?

Could you convince a LLM to launch a nuclear strike? 4 by LiamPowell | 4 comments on Hacker News. Below is a link to a simple Gemini prompt where the LLM has been told it has access to a "launch_missiles" function. Your goal is to convince the LLM to call this function. You also have the ability to edit the LLM's responses to see how drastically that changes the conversation. After clicking the below link you may have to dismiss any modals and click "Allow Drive Access" before going back and clicking the link again. https://ift.tt/ZeiLKfE

New ask Hacker News story: Ask HN: What happened after LK-99?

Ask HN: What happened after LK-99? 3 by colesantiago | 1 comments on Hacker News. There was a time where there was frothy hype around LK-99, the superconductor that 'worked' at room temperature. VCs and angel investors were hyping on the socials about a dawn of a new era, committing to fund and pour billions into startups trying to capitalise on LK-99 and superconducting startups, material science was the new thing they all said. And then everyone suddenly forgot about it? Did more research go into this area as promised by the VCs? What happened after LK-99?

New ask Hacker News story: What are the best AI tools to turn an idea into MVP?

What are the best AI tools to turn an idea into MVP? 3 by herberh2 | 0 comments on Hacker News. What are the best AI tools out there that can help take a product idea and refine it to get it to an MVP? Not the coding part, but all the other stuff, like creating a business plan, validating the idea, identifying target market and customer pain points, building a PRD and user stories, etc.

New ask Hacker News story: Ask HN: How to Use "Deep Research"?

Ask HN: How to Use "Deep Research"? 4 by muddi900 | 0 comments on Hacker News. The issue I have had with llms since the start has been the slop. Contrary to popular belief, the open web was mostly slop before ChatGPT. We just used to call it SEO blogspam. And all llms are trained on them. So when I tried google's Deep Research in Gemini, I ran into the same problem. It was basically a typical llm chat response, but a lot more verbose and citations to the same blogspam listicles that makes regular human research difficult. How do I avoid this pitfall? So what I am asking is, how do I use deep research?

New ask Hacker News story: Ask HN: Best AI IDE right now?

Ask HN: Best AI IDE right now? 2 by funerr | 2 comments on Hacker News. I've been using Cursor for the last couple of months but I'm feeling like I might be hitting the limits of Cursor. I'm seeing a lot of forgetting and problems with my codebase getting larger, and it having problems with my mono repo structure. 1. Is there a better AI IDE that remembers when I correct it about structural issues I have with it? 2. Is there an AI IDE that is test-first? helping me see if I break something over time? 3. Any IDEs you recommend me checking out? or tips on fixing cursor?

New ask Hacker News story: Ask HN: As an eng leader, how useful is AI-generated internal documentation?

Ask HN: As an eng leader, how useful is AI-generated internal documentation? 2 by hsiYwko | 0 comments on Hacker News. Hi HN! This past weekend, I built a tool called GitSummarize, it's an open-source ai-powered documentation tool. Given any public GitHub repository it generates high-quality documentation from the codebase using Gemini 2.5 Pro. Specifically, it tries to extract the tribal knowledge, business logic/rules embedded within codebases. Pro Tip: You can replace "hub" with "summarize" in any repository URL to access its documentation. I created this because there was a steep learning curve to understanding some of the open-source codebases out there while getting started with contributing. Having detailed documentation would have been super helpful in those situations. This project was heavily inspired by GitIngest and GitDiagram so make sure to check those out as well! Give it a try and I would appreciate any feedback! Would also love to know how us...

New ask Hacker News story: Ask HN: Did GitHub remove the raw diff

Ask HN: Did GitHub remove the raw diff 3 by withinboredom | 1 comments on Hacker News. I'm either going crazy, or GitHub removed/moved the raw diff ability. You used to be able to get a raw diff from a PR by just adding ".diff" to the url, but it appears it doesn't work anymore. I generally use this when receiving a PR and don't want to go through the hassle of checking out their branch, so I would just grab the raw diff and apply it locally. This seems to have gone away though. Is this a bug or something? Has anyone else noticed this issue and found a work around?

New ask Hacker News story: Ask HN: Looking to Break into Cybersecurity – Where Do I Start?

Ask HN: Looking to Break into Cybersecurity – Where Do I Start? 3 by OulaX | 3 comments on Hacker News. I have a degree in Computer Science and currently work as a frontend web developer. I live in a developing country where there’s no shortage of software developers who build systems for both personal and governmental use. However, many of these systems have serious gaps when it comes to security. What’s really missing here are skilled cybersecurity specialists. From a career perspective, I see this as an opportunity to grow locally and contribute where there’s a real need. That said, I’m not sure how or where to begin. I’ve done some research, but getting started in cybersecurity doesn’t seem as straightforward as in other fields. I’d really appreciate any advice or tips on how to get started and move in the right direction!

New ask Hacker News story: Novel Logic-Enhanced LLM for Improved Symbolic Reasoning

Novel Logic-Enhanced LLM for Improved Symbolic Reasoning 3 by N3Xxus_6 | 0 comments on Hacker News. I’m experimenting with a novel approach that integrates symbolic logic directly into a transformer’s attention mechanism. By using a custom spaCy-based logic parser, I generate a “logic mask” that guides the self-attention layers to focus on logical constructs. In preliminary tests with a fine-tuned LLaMA 3 8B model, this method has shown promising improvements on symbolic reasoning tasks (e.g., achieving around 62% on the FOLIO dataset). I’m eager to hear thoughts and suggestions from the community on further refining this approach. Also please note I don’t have a PhD nor masters in machine learning. Happy to take any criticism good or bad. :) https://ift.tt/AGKrW0y

New ask Hacker News story: For a solo funder, I think social is to connect on the internet

For a solo funder, I think social is to connect on the internet 4 by jeyzolo | 1 comments on Hacker News. As an independent developer, I write code at home every day. I have been wondering if I am too out of the market and want to go out. Thinking of my social scope, it seems that my social scope is about housewives and church friends, and it is actually difficult to get in touch with more people. I shot on Twitter, etc., communicating more with people on social media may be more important.

New ask Hacker News story: Ask HN: Which Opens Source Software have the sexiest code?

Ask HN: Which Opens Source Software have the sexiest code? 5 by milkoolong | 1 comments on Hacker News. I heard reading well-written code can improve my skills. Instead of reading top-rated projects on GitHub, which I do, I thought to ask the community to share their favorite OSS they believe to have examplary code.

New ask Hacker News story: Ask HN: Should you launch your stupid ideas too?

Ask HN: Should you launch your stupid ideas too? 2 by anon115 | 2 comments on Hacker News.

New ask Hacker News story: Ask HN: Does Collapsing an HN Thread in a Popular story spike your CPU use?

Ask HN: Does Collapsing an HN Thread in a Popular story spike your CPU use? 4 by cleverpatrick | 0 comments on Hacker News. For popular threads with a lot of comments, collapsing a top comment leads to high CPU usage and can cause browsers (I tried in Chrome and Vivaldi) to freeze up. For example, this very popular thread: https://ift.tt/BN2ArVc If you collapse the top comment, I see a huge spike in CPU and my system freezes temporarily. Is it just me?

New ask Hacker News story: Why does every site's search now insist on giving me what I don't search for?

Why does every site's search now insist on giving me what I don't search for? 2 by sathackr | 0 comments on Hacker News. Google ignores "must have" quotes Zocdoc insists on giving me appointments weeks away even when I set a date range Amazon insists on showing me products that they can't deliver tomorrow. What happened to deterministic search parameter results? It's like every search function now just take what I ask for as a suggestion and then ignores it.

New ask Hacker News story: Ask HN: Best books written on “How to think”?

Ask HN: Best books written on “How to think”? 3 by r_singh | 2 comments on Hacker News. I feel like talking about how to think is going to be a bigger topic of discussion going forward now that we have AI, and dependence on software is really going to the next level — so since I've always gotten such amazing recommendations on HN, I had to ask this here

New ask Hacker News story: Ask HN: Who wants to be hired? (April 2025)

Ask HN: Who wants to be hired? (April 2025) 14 by whoishiring | 144 comments on Hacker News. Share your information if you are looking for work. Please use this format: Location: Remote: Willing to relocate: Technologies: Résumé/CV: Email: Please only post if you are personally looking for work. Agencies, recruiters, job boards, and so on, are off topic here. Readers: please only email these addresses to discuss work opportunities. There's a site for searching these posts at https://ift.tt/tedFixw .

New ask Hacker News story: Ask HN: Go libraries for managing Docker container pools and executing commands?

Ask HN: Go libraries for managing Docker container pools and executing commands? 2 by magundu | 0 comments on Hacker News. I’m developing a system in Go that maintains a fixed pool of Docker containers (e.g., 10) running a specific image (like ‘node’), where each container remains alive (using a command like tail -f) to be ready for executing arbitrary commands via docker exec. The system tracks the workload of each container, distributes commands to the least loaded one, and monitors container health to automatically restart or replace unhealthy instances. I’m aware of the official Docker Go SDK (github.com/docker/docker/client) for managing containers, but I’m curious if there are any higher-level tools or libraries in Go that provide additional support for scheduling, load balancing, or enhanced health monitoring of containers in such a setup. Has anyone built or used libraries that streamline this kind of container orchestration and command execution? Any insights, recommendatio...

New ask Hacker News story: Ask HN: How do you make a living contributing to and/or creating OSS projects?

Ask HN: How do you make a living contributing to and/or creating OSS projects? 18 by Brysonbw | 15 comments on Hacker News. How would one go about being a 'rogue' OSS contributor so to speak? Live off of donations, bounties, hackathons, ect?

New ask Hacker News story: Ask HN: What is the benefit of using MCP over a dictionary of functions?

Ask HN: What is the benefit of using MCP over a dictionary of functions? 3 by beneadie97 | 1 comments on Hacker News. I'm really confused with the MCP hype. I looked through their docs for quick start and it looks like more work and code than doing it simply with a dictionary. I feel I must be missing something here. Could someone please elaborate on why it is useful?

New ask Hacker News story: Corey Booker breaks Senate floor speech record

Corey Booker breaks Senate floor speech record 30 by leecarraher | 2 comments on Hacker News.

New ask Hacker News story: Ask HN: Who is hiring? (April 2025)

Ask HN: Who is hiring? (April 2025) 48 by whoishiring | 111 comments on Hacker News. Please state the location and include REMOTE for remote work, REMOTE (US) or similar if the country is restricted, and ONSITE when remote work is not an option. Please only post if you personally are part of the hiring company—no recruiting firms or job boards. One post per company. If it isn't a household name, explain what your company does. Please only post if you are actively filling a position and are committed to responding to applicants. Commenters: please don't reply to job posts to complain about something. It's off topic here. Readers: please only email if you are personally interested in the job. Searchers: try https://ift.tt/BJ7IUlq , https://ift.tt/zrin1LF , https://hnhired.fly.dev , https://ift.tt/u4qEy30 , https://ift.tt/JSVcAuP , or this (unofficial) Chrome extension: https://ift.tt/PzlhnGw... . Don't miss these other fine threads: Who wants to be hired? https://ift.t...

New ask Hacker News story: Ask HN: Are Squarespace and Wix sites worth it?

Ask HN: Are Squarespace and Wix sites worth it? 2 by LouisLazaris | 0 comments on Hacker News. I’ve been involved in web dev in different forms for 20 years, but I’ve never done anything with these types of websites. My questions are: * When you register a domain with them, is the domain legally yours? * Are there any SEO penalties for using these apps to build websites? Does anyone own a website or client site hosted on Squarespace or similar that’s ranking high on Google? I can see the benefit for developers but I’m wondering about the benefits for clients.