It's really difficult for me to understand the level of cynicism in the HN comments on this topic, at all. The amount of goalpost-moving and redefining is absolutely absurd. I really get the impression that the majority of the HN comments are just people whining about sour grapes, with very little value added to the discussion.
I'd like to see someone disagree with the following:
Building a C compiler, targeting three architectures, is hard. Building a C compiler which can correctly compile (maybe not link) the modern linux kernel is damn hard. Building a C compiler which can correctly compile sqlite and pass the test suite at any speed is damn hard.
To the specific issues with the concrete project as presented: This was the equivalent of a "weekend project", and it's amazing
So what if some gcc is needed for the 16-bit stuff? So what if a human was required to steer claude a bit? So what if the optimizing pass practically doesn't exist?
Most companies are not software companies, software is a line-item, an expensive, an unavoidable cost. The amount of code (not software engineering, or architecture, but programming) developed tends towards glue of existing libraries to accomplish business goals, which, in comparison with a correct modern C compiler, is far less performance critical, complex, broad, etc. No one is seriously saying that you have to use an LLM to build your high-performance math library, or that you have to use an LLM to build anything, much in the same way that no one is seriously saying that you have to rewrite the world in rust, or typescript, or react, or whatever is bothering you at the moment.
I'm reminded of a classic slashdot comment--about attempting to solve a non-technical problem with technology, which is doomed to fail--it really seems that the complaints here aren't about the LLMs themselves, or the agents, but about what people/organizations do with them, which is then a complaint about people, but not the technology.
> This was the equivalent of a "weekend project", and it's amazing
I mean, $20k in tokens, plus the supervision by the author to keep things running, plus the number of people that got involved according to the article... doesn't look like "a weekend project".
> Building a C compiler which can correctly compile (maybe not link) the modern linux kernel is damn hard.
Is it correctly compiling it? Several people have pointed out that the compiler will not emit errors for clearly invalid code. What code is it actually generating?
> Building a C compiler which can correctly compile sqlite and pass the test suite at any speed is damn hard.
> which, in comparison with a correct modern C compiler, is far less performance critical, complex, broad, etc.
That code might be less complex for us, but more complex for an LLM if it has to deal with lots of domain-specific context and without a test suite that has been developed for 40 years.
Also, if the end result of the LLM has the same problem that Anthropic concedes here, which is that the project is so fragile that bug fixes or improvements are really hard/almost impossible, that still matters.
> it really seems that the complaints here aren't about the LLMs themselves, or the agents, but about what people/organizations do with them, which is then a complaint about people, but not the technology
It's a discussion about what the LLMs can actually do and how people represent those achievements. We're point out that LLMs, without human supervision, generate bad code, code that's hard to change, with modifications specifically made to address failing tests without challenging the underlying assumptions, code that's inconsistent and hard to understand even for the LLMs.
But some people are taking whatever the LLM outputs at face value, and then claiming some capabilities of the models that are not really there. They're still not viable for using without human supervision, and because the AI labs are focusing on synthetic benchmarks, they're creating models that are better at pushing through crappy code to achieve a goal.
Well, maybe things are better than I imagine. Would you be comfortable sharing a few things? Thanks!
What're your monthly expenses? After rent, that is. Just groceries, a mobile plan, some clothes averaged over the year, etc.
Do you have an emergency fund? If so, what's the ballpark sum?
Are you going to be able to still pay rent when you retire?
Are you saving for a downpayment?
Do you feel financial secure enough to star a family?
Can you afford to visit some far-away place with beautiful nature once a year?
Can you afford to go... idk, skiing? Can you afford all the gear needed to do that and a few lessons?
Can you buy a gaming PC with something like rtx 5070 or so? Not into gaming? Can you afford a homelab made up of a few used PCs and a few Raspberry Pies to play around with Kubernetes or whatnot?
Not me. I guess the GP wants to save 1k a month in case the nuclear war happens and drives a car to eat kebabs for breakfast, lunch and dinner. That sounds about right for American, so the saving are going towards health issues down the line. /s
And GP guesses your comment might be using humor as a coping mechanism.
I'm not American, the question was why Europe can't keep talent ("talent" doesn't really include me).
Well, the compensation is just depressing. And as that person from Ireland pointed out, all the talk about worker protections is barely more than fairy tales (maybe not in the Netherlands, idk).
Were we looking at 120 instead of 80, deciding between Europe's quality of life and pursuing career and money in the US would a real tough dilemma. With 80 just enough to pay rent and for groceries... Saving a thousand a month (a wild sum!) gets you to a 20% downpayment on a 500K home in just 8 years...
I got it that you were talking about the real situation and you personally have to live with flatmates while making 80k p/a, but it turns out you don't even live in Germany. My feeling are hurt by this and the fact that your math is not mathing really (what 20% downpayment?).
Well, my feelings are hurt by seeing so many talented engineers getting compensated so badly.
How come that for all the signing and dancing about worker rights protections when push comes to shove it's US companies EU offices that are ready to pay their employees fairly? What kind of hypocrisy from EU companies is that?
If you think EU companies just cannot afford to pay that much, just compare what Siemens pays to the same level SWE in EU and US. (Have no relation to Siemens whatsoever, just an example).
I don't feel like discussing my personal situation on the Internet. And was careful not to imply otherwise.
That said, I was considering relocating to Germany and researching the country as best I could. I do prefer European lifestyle, but the salaries are just a non-starter.
You can easily check the numbers I give though. Any specific mistakes there?
Btw, why are you so defensive about the fact comp is so low in Europe?
> your math is not mathing really (what 20% downpayment?).
> what 20% downpayment?
20% downpayment is generally expected by German banks if you want to take out a mortgage. Don't take my word for it, check yourself.
500K Eur x 0.2 / (12 * 1K Eur) = 8.3 years.
You implied that saving 1K a month is some absurd goal. I'm trying to show that's tablestakes if you hope to ever own a home.
>Btw, why are you so defensive about the fact comp is so low in Europe?
It's lower compared to the US and to US companies offices in EU in absolute numbers, it's the fact. Why it's lower in general -- because the cost of living is lower. Why US companies in EU have to pay premium -- because they try to behave like in US and pay premium to their delusions of grandeur.
>You implied that saving 1K a month is some absurd goal. I'm trying to show that's tablestakes if you hope to ever own a home.
I do in fact own a house and lived through this situation. It's not that the goal is absurd in itself, it simply doesn't match the story as a whole.
>You can easily check the numbers I give though. Any specific mistakes there?
From the start, two bedroom at 80k salary for living alone is already an interesting choice for 2026. You either get a better salary, a partner who works, a smaller place or live in a village. The same with the rest -- you can't have both the grind-based compensation and chill-based lifestyle. It's not that individual things in your calculation don't hold the water, it's more like they different numbers don't correspond to the same real person when taken together. If you have marketable skills that warrant the lifestyle fancier than the normal IT person slapping some forms together in a bank, you will not get 80k.
I would also not go for Europe in general (especially for 80k) if you don't have 50-100k of saving already and have the expectations like this. Grind some in US (if you are of acceptable skin color for them), then go and chill here once you are done with the grind.
> From the start, two bedroom at 80k salary for living alone is already an interesting choice for 2026.
Fair point. That example comes from my research, but trying to anonymize it somewhat I ended up messing it up completely. I ack it doesn't make sense as is. And saying that a job in tech won't be enough to rent a place on your own was stupid too.
> Why US companies in EU have to pay premium -- because they try to behave like in US and pay premium to their delusions of grandeur.
From my perspective they pay more because they actually value skilled employees. (Shocking, isn't it? US companies valuing their people more than European companies do). And hiring the best, in turn, lets them outcompete European business, make more money and compensate their people better -- on and on it goes.
> they try to behave like in US
In reality, save for a rare exception, they treat their employees nicely in both US and EU.
Or at least they used to before we entered the current layoffs era -- but people say big Berlin tech companies have become just as toxic (DeliveryHero, Zalando...). So it doesn't look like European companies are stopped from being toxic by labor law or better ethics.
> Why it's lower in general -- because the cost of living is lower
That's not the whole story though. Obviously comparing absolute numbers is a fool's errand. But the purchasing power is significantly lower too. And, like, OK, maybe matching US salaries purchasing power isn't realistic -- but my feeling is current EU comps are below a fair level. Companies pay that simply because they can get away with it.
> Grind some in US (if you are of acceptable skin color for them), then go and chill here once you are done with the grind.
That's not a bad idea at all. I'm good though. Found my way and am doing fine for now and, hopefully, long-term too.
It just pains me to watch so much wasted potential. Yeah, it's none of my business and it's dumb that a non-EU citizen even has strong opinions about this stuff. But EU could do so much better if only it got its shit together instead of this pathetic "but we got public transport" style coping.
>Companies pay that simply because they can get away with it.
Which is usually called "market price". The latest thing I heard is "threemodal market", where there tier 1, is US subsidiaries, tier 2 is local it companies and banks, and tier 3 is a normal not fancy place. Upper tiers are more competitive and tier 1 can have 200k and up compensation packages (that including shares, and stuff), lower end of tier 3 and something like 50-60k. Then there are hourly contracts too.
>But EU could do so much better if only it got its shit together instead of this pathetic "but we got public transport" style coping.
It's a pretty shallow dismissal. Not having to deal with cars and heal insurance bullshit for my whole life saves me how much money exactly? Not even monetary amount, the peace of mind alone. How much would you pay to let you child cycle to school and generally not be afraid of environment?
There is even deeper level of belief to this sometimes, that you being able to afford food delivery or eating out every day isn't a good indication of the state of the society, but I don't want to go there.
I lived in a place with 5% flat tax rates too and I'm here by choice, paying for all that really.
Especially as congress has, for as long as I remember, been about the superset of infosec, society, art, etc. IMHO it's more along the lines of complaining about any ride that isn't a roller coaster at a theme park--no one is forcing you to go on any rides, other people clearly enjoy them, they're not taking anything away from your roller coaster, and having them increases the diversity of the crowd in an ultimately positive-for-everyone way.
Some people just like to complain that they have to take a shower and can't harass women like they used to like they could when congress was at the BCC and that kind of nonsense didn't immediately get you thrown out like today.
Congress has become a radical leftist politics playground. That is the real problem.
> Some people just like to complain that they have to take a shower and can't harass women like they used to like they could when congress was at the BCC and that kind of nonsense didn't immediately get you thrown out like today.
You could never do that. A few years ago, some activists tried to make a fuzz with stuff like creeper cards, intervention teams and codes of conduct. But those were never needed in the first place, almost nothing ever happened at CCC that would have warranted those things. But "those white male hackers are certainly sexist raping pigs" is a firmly entrenched stereotype in certain circles.
The one thing you cannot ever do is go to CCC and express any idea that isn't very far left. That is a very certain way to get thrown out. Your talk won't ever be on the Fahrplan if the topic isn't "hooray, more refugees", "hooray, more EU dictatorship" or "hooray, down with everything right of Rosa Luxemburg".
> Congress has become a radical leftist politics playground.
I don't know which past Chaos Communication Congresses you have attended, but it always was. If that's not for you, then that's too bad.
> The one thing you cannot ever do is go to CCC and express any idea that isn't very far left. That is a very certain way to get thrown out.
Opinions that people get thrown out for are not "I love my country" or "hey, maybe immigration should be handled differently". They're things like "Hitler was ok, actually". And IMO if a conference doesn't throw you out for _that_, it's not one worth attending.
The problem has been the continuous purposeful rightward shift of the overton window as part of a wider strategy by the far right.
You see it in action here, where the politics of the CCC, despite not having changed since their founding are suddenly decried as "very far left". You see the far-right decrying our democratically elected government as "dictatorship", a classic Putinist propaganda move.
Don't let the right wing extremists set the narrative! Don't listen to their complaints about things being too "political" or "far left". It's all just a tactic in their march towards fascism.
Just because you don't see the "far left" doesn't mean it isn't there. Would you consider CDU in Germany to be conservative or even Christian right now? I've been far left all my life until I noticed how fake it all is. Sane goes for the right. now I'm just following truth. It's a lonely path.
All the best & I hope you had a Merry Christmas as well.
CDU is not far left. It's reducing immigration, reducing social services, and removing bike lanes to make more room for cars. Not things the left is known for - but they are things the right is known for.
The best thing the right has done to advance its cause is to convince so many people that the words "right" and "left" don't have actual meanings.
> How many countries are led by the far right? What about the far left?
Since you asked the question, I assume you have an answer, and I'm curious to hear it. I imagine it will reveal more about your personal politics than any observable political reality.
Double-replying to apologize for my previous comment! I saw what I felt was a leading question and answered it with a leading question in kind, but I got turned around reading the thread and realized much later that I actually agree with you and my answer would to your question would probably be more similar to yours than to the person you were replying to.
> You see it in action here, where the politics of the CCC, despite not having changed since their founding are suddenly decried as "very far left".
No, things have changed in CCC as well. Back in the day, free speech (in the US definition) and a firm opposition to any censorship were consensus on CCC. Nowadays, censorship is totally OK if it targets the right. And any kind of remotely right-wing opinion is declared "not free speech, not an opinion, thus not protected". This is also evidenced by quite a few talks on the topic, and cooperation with far-left activist groups like "Zentrum fuer politische Schönheit" sabotaging right-wing speech on several occasions.
There is quite a difference between "speech" and what ZfpS does. Their actions are often criminal, and not in the sense of "political crimes" but actually criminal acts that have nothing to do with speech or opinions. They have doxed people and called for violence against them, they have exhumed dead children and paraded around their corpses, stolen things, stuff like that.
The trouble comes when "speech" is arbitrarily defined and/or enforced to suit a narrative. The initial targets are always the lesser-favored extreme cases in order to have the least amount of people disagree with it. Then when the people are comfortable having them define what speech is acceptable, they slowly start eroding rights to include simply anything that they don't like.
That's why people say that taking away the rights of one group is like taking it away for everyone.
When CF continues to host 8chan and other groups that routinely trade monkey torture/zoosadism videos, but for some reason only KF goes too far... yea that doesn't make sense to me. I don't think they should be playing Internet police, and it's possible that (in the US at least) even doing so in the first place could nullify their Section 230 safe harbor protections, by attempting to moderate content that flows through them.
But also in KF's case I think it was not so much their content that got them "in trouble", but the people behind that crusade being so loud about it, like Liz Fong-Jones and Keffals, who relentlessly harassed every possible service provider even remotely related to any aspect of KF-related services at all, which included domain registrars, DDoS protection services, hosting/colo/DNS providers, IP space owners, upstream ISPs (and even Tier 1s), etc.
It was basically a master class in mentally-questionable retribution crusades for bringing their very ugly skeletons out of the closet and exposing all of their wrongdoings. LFJ was mad that their rape allegation was made public by KF, and Keffals was mad that their illegal bathtub-HRT scheme was made public.
> Do you think KiwiFarms deserved to be banned from Cloudflare and all its other former service providers?
I do believe that providers of such services such as cloud, internet, ... have to stay neutral on such purposes under nearly all circumstances. If the team behind KiwiFarms did something illegal, this is a problem for the judicial system.
Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.
Well Joscha Bach's talk got removed this year because of that mail exchange with Epstein.
But disregarding the content discussed, I found it indeed a bit off-putting how he basically licked the butthole of his sponsor between those lines.
do you think the old-school CCC would be happy with a guy walking onto the stage and yelling the N word over and over, or would they kick him out? Because that's the quality of "speech" they now support "censoring".
Being (un)happy about something is totally different from creating and promoting an oppressive censorship apparatus, criminal laws and police actions against that something.
Imho: You don't have to like that person yelling that stuff. You don't have to like what they are yelling. But you have to accept that it has to be their legal right to yell that stuff. Because otherwise, any opinion will one day be a criminal thing to say, just takes one election...
You actually don't have the legal right to walk on stage at C3 and yell the N word repeatedly. The fact you think you have or should have that right means I am not the extremist in this conversation.
If San Francisco is what you get when you embrace the left, and opposition to that is fascism, I think a lot of us have just decided we must be fascists.
Nah, this is just the No True Scotsman fallacy. San Francisco is FAR more left in their politics than most of the nation. For example, the new mayor described himself as:
> As a lifelong Democrat and San Franciscan, I am running for mayor to turn around the city I love
London Breed, the mayor before, was endorsed by explicitly Democrat or nonpartisan individuals (including Kamala Harris)
We could go on. What's ironic here is that this comment just reveals how disconnected this form of left wing politics is from the larger nation. They call even examples of the politics of their own "right wing" because they're so radically left
There is no left wing politician in power anywhere in the US.
Democrats are a center-right party, they do not argue for any left wing position - like nationalizing industry, abolishing markets etc etc. In Europe, their equivalents in terms of economic policy would be conservative parties like the CDU.
The fact you consider them left wing is only evidence of above overton window shift happening.
What in the quote screams left-wing to you? Is it just because he's San Franciscan? But that would be circular reasoning: SF is left because of its mayor, and its mayor is left because he's from SF.
> Congress has become a radical leftist politics playground
Which is fucking based. Being a radical leftist should be normalized even more and people like you need to be driven out of _every_ fucking public space.
There is no radical left or radical right; there is only right and wrong! If you don’t understand human rights and realize that you are not the only person or creature on this planet, you need to change your point of view.
I came here to post this. We make a lot of the same sorts of optimizations for our OS distro (debian based) -- disabling frequency scaling, core pinning, etc. Critically, CPU0 has a bunch of stuff you cannot push, and you're better off with using one of the other cores as an isolated island.
This is what the scheduler latency looks like on our isolated core:
# Total: 000300000
# Min Latencies: 00001
# Avg Latencies: 00005
# Max Latencies: 00059
# Histogram Overflows: 00000
My big issue with this study is it points to a cause. How can they know the issue is social media, and not, say, the climbing atmospheric CO2 or other long-COVID related issues?
The root cause is likely to the surge of dopamine in the brain related to activities like scrolling social media, fast-paced tik-tok videos, porn, etc. This means that the brain is so much addicted to this dopamine that normal level are no longer enough to be functional.
There can be many causes. Aside from social media, games, porn and AI, it can also be caused by the decline of the living standards or increase of stress in the West due to shift from social-democratic to neoliberal economic policies.
For anyone else that's not familiar, this is referring to https://molly.im/ which looks like it's a fork of Signal. And looks like it interops with Signal, so you can talk to your regular Signal contacts as well.
That's very interesting.
My only concern with it would be how sustainable it is in the long term. I am using Threema currently, which has a plan for enterprises, so that seems more reliable but it's lacking in features and usability.
In addition, it looks like third-party apps (there are a few) that interface with the official Signal client maybe against Signal's TOS. They haven't enforced it yet from what I can see but it's a possibility and that's a fairy large risk IMO.
The stepping didn't kill wifi, the boards they ran with the d0 stepping have likely a different wifi chip (it's connected externally) or similar (maybe the wifi chip has a different stepping?), unrelated board-level changes.
The d0 stepping boards I have with wifi work with the linux kernel, still.
“Ran a quick search on Raspberry Pi's github linux repo and found where I got my info from re the stuff they took out on D0. From what I can see, they actually removed device tree support for parts of the chip they don't use on C0/C1 that are not present on D0, and folded these changes into the same DTS file. They also seem to have added a DTS specifically for the D0 stepping, which seems to be register changes, i.e. stuff that is present in both variants of the chip but has moved or needs to otherwise be handled differently between C1 and D0. See https://github.com/raspberrypi/linux/pull/5847, specifically for the bits removed see <https://github.com/raspberrypi/linux/pull/5847/commits/8be08...>“
I'd like to see someone disagree with the following:
Building a C compiler, targeting three architectures, is hard. Building a C compiler which can correctly compile (maybe not link) the modern linux kernel is damn hard. Building a C compiler which can correctly compile sqlite and pass the test suite at any speed is damn hard.
To the specific issues with the concrete project as presented: This was the equivalent of a "weekend project", and it's amazing
So what if some gcc is needed for the 16-bit stuff? So what if a human was required to steer claude a bit? So what if the optimizing pass practically doesn't exist?
Most companies are not software companies, software is a line-item, an expensive, an unavoidable cost. The amount of code (not software engineering, or architecture, but programming) developed tends towards glue of existing libraries to accomplish business goals, which, in comparison with a correct modern C compiler, is far less performance critical, complex, broad, etc. No one is seriously saying that you have to use an LLM to build your high-performance math library, or that you have to use an LLM to build anything, much in the same way that no one is seriously saying that you have to rewrite the world in rust, or typescript, or react, or whatever is bothering you at the moment.
I'm reminded of a classic slashdot comment--about attempting to solve a non-technical problem with technology, which is doomed to fail--it really seems that the complaints here aren't about the LLMs themselves, or the agents, but about what people/organizations do with them, which is then a complaint about people, but not the technology.
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