Zelensky leaves White House after angry meeting
154 by yakkomajuri | 127 comments on Hacker News.
Friday, February 28, 2025
Thursday, February 27, 2025
New top story on Hacker News: Show HN: Ranked Search for Semi-Structured Data
Show HN: Ranked Search for Semi-Structured Data
7 by alrudolph | 0 comments on Hacker News.
We’ve been working on a search problem that requires querying both text and numbers simultaneously. For example, in a dataset of clothing items with descriptions and prices, a search for “slim pants for $20” should prioritize skinny jeans for $25 over slim pants for $50 because they are semantically similar and the price is closer. I’ve found that standard embedding models struggle with numerical ordering, while text-to-SQL methods rely on exact matches and often filter out too many results. To solve this, we built a system designed specifically for structured datasets like CSVs or tables. Here’s a demo link where you can upload a small CSV to try out (no login required): https://ift.tt/1iuryvk . Unlike most RAG approaches, we process each column independently, handling text with embeddings and numbers with custom scoring. When a user submits a query, we parse it into relevant fields—for instance, extracting “slim pants” as the description and “20” as the price. We then compute cosine similarity between the description embeddings and “slim pants” while also calculating the percent error between the user’s price input and the numerical field. These individual similarity scores are then combined across all columns to generate a final ranking. Right now, our system works best with well-structured data, so some preprocessing is often needed. We’re working on improving this by detecting and restructuring messy data automatically, such as pivoting columns or extracting attributes from large text fields. We’re also adding feedback mechanisms, like a thumbs up/down system, to refine future search results based on user input. I’d love to hear about your experiences with similar search challenges and would appreciate any feedback!
7 by alrudolph | 0 comments on Hacker News.
We’ve been working on a search problem that requires querying both text and numbers simultaneously. For example, in a dataset of clothing items with descriptions and prices, a search for “slim pants for $20” should prioritize skinny jeans for $25 over slim pants for $50 because they are semantically similar and the price is closer. I’ve found that standard embedding models struggle with numerical ordering, while text-to-SQL methods rely on exact matches and often filter out too many results. To solve this, we built a system designed specifically for structured datasets like CSVs or tables. Here’s a demo link where you can upload a small CSV to try out (no login required): https://ift.tt/1iuryvk . Unlike most RAG approaches, we process each column independently, handling text with embeddings and numbers with custom scoring. When a user submits a query, we parse it into relevant fields—for instance, extracting “slim pants” as the description and “20” as the price. We then compute cosine similarity between the description embeddings and “slim pants” while also calculating the percent error between the user’s price input and the numerical field. These individual similarity scores are then combined across all columns to generate a final ranking. Right now, our system works best with well-structured data, so some preprocessing is often needed. We’re working on improving this by detecting and restructuring messy data automatically, such as pivoting columns or extracting attributes from large text fields. We’re also adding feedback mechanisms, like a thumbs up/down system, to refine future search results based on user input. I’d love to hear about your experiences with similar search challenges and would appreciate any feedback!
Wednesday, February 26, 2025
Tuesday, February 25, 2025
Monday, February 24, 2025
Sunday, February 23, 2025
Saturday, February 22, 2025
Friday, February 21, 2025
Thursday, February 20, 2025
Wednesday, February 19, 2025
Tuesday, February 18, 2025
New top story on Hacker News: (Ab)using general search algorithms on dynamic optimization problems (2023)
(Ab)using general search algorithms on dynamic optimization problems (2023)
11 by h45x1 | 3 comments on Hacker News.
I wrote this blog back in 2023 but since then I became a frequent lurker on HN and decided to repost the blog here. For me, writing it was about connecting the dots between dynamic optimization techniques I've studied as an economist and the more general search algorithms studied in CS.
11 by h45x1 | 3 comments on Hacker News.
I wrote this blog back in 2023 but since then I became a frequent lurker on HN and decided to repost the blog here. For me, writing it was about connecting the dots between dynamic optimization techniques I've studied as an economist and the more general search algorithms studied in CS.
Monday, February 17, 2025
Sunday, February 16, 2025
New top story on Hacker News: Show HN: Hackyournews.com v2
Show HN: Hackyournews.com v2
12 by ukuina | 1 comments on Hacker News.
A year and a half after I published https://ift.tt/ytrH3Uh , I've rewritten it to be neater and added support for more news sources. HackYourNews.com v1 had a great response on HN [1] and consistently sees ~2k weekly unique visitors. There were many long-standing requests that I wanted to fulfill (thanks for your patience!): a proper dark mode, correct rendering on mobile devices, and more cogent summaries. This rewrite is the result. gpt-4o-mini reduces the cost of summarization to an absurd degree, so it's now sustainable to keep this free service going! Someday, I hope to use the Batch API [2] to drive down costs even further. Enjoy. [1] https://ift.tt/dUAXTPE [2] https://ift.tt/m9SnGY2
12 by ukuina | 1 comments on Hacker News.
A year and a half after I published https://ift.tt/ytrH3Uh , I've rewritten it to be neater and added support for more news sources. HackYourNews.com v1 had a great response on HN [1] and consistently sees ~2k weekly unique visitors. There were many long-standing requests that I wanted to fulfill (thanks for your patience!): a proper dark mode, correct rendering on mobile devices, and more cogent summaries. This rewrite is the result. gpt-4o-mini reduces the cost of summarization to an absurd degree, so it's now sustainable to keep this free service going! Someday, I hope to use the Batch API [2] to drive down costs even further. Enjoy. [1] https://ift.tt/dUAXTPE [2] https://ift.tt/m9SnGY2
Saturday, February 15, 2025
Friday, February 14, 2025
Thursday, February 13, 2025
New top story on Hacker News: Phind 2: AI search with visual answers and multi-step reasoning
Phind 2: AI search with visual answers and multi-step reasoning
28 by rushingcreek | 7 comments on Hacker News.
Hi HN! Michael here. We've spent the last 6 months rebuilding Phind. We asked ourselves what types of answers we would ideally like and crafted a new UI and model series to help get us there. The new Phind goes beyond text to present answers visually with inline images, diagrams, cards, and other widgets to make answers more meaningful: - " explain photosynthesis " - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cTCpnyICukM#t=7 - " how to cook the perfect steak " - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cTCpnyICukM#t=55 - " quicksort in rust " - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cTCpnyICukM#t=105 Phind is also now able to seek out information on its own. If it needs more, it will do multiple rounds of additional searches to get you the most comprehensive answer it can: - " top 10 Thai restaurants in SF, their prices, and key dishes " - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rIQQcDIIHFQ#t=11 This blog post contains an overview of what we did as well as technical deep dives into how we built the new frontend and models. I'm super grateful for all of the feedback we've gotten from the HN community and can't wait to hear your thoughts!
28 by rushingcreek | 7 comments on Hacker News.
Hi HN! Michael here. We've spent the last 6 months rebuilding Phind. We asked ourselves what types of answers we would ideally like and crafted a new UI and model series to help get us there. The new Phind goes beyond text to present answers visually with inline images, diagrams, cards, and other widgets to make answers more meaningful: - " explain photosynthesis " - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cTCpnyICukM#t=7 - " how to cook the perfect steak " - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cTCpnyICukM#t=55 - " quicksort in rust " - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cTCpnyICukM#t=105 Phind is also now able to seek out information on its own. If it needs more, it will do multiple rounds of additional searches to get you the most comprehensive answer it can: - " top 10 Thai restaurants in SF, their prices, and key dishes " - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rIQQcDIIHFQ#t=11 This blog post contains an overview of what we did as well as technical deep dives into how we built the new frontend and models. I'm super grateful for all of the feedback we've gotten from the HN community and can't wait to hear your thoughts!
Wednesday, February 12, 2025
Tuesday, February 11, 2025
Monday, February 10, 2025
Sunday, February 9, 2025
Saturday, February 8, 2025
Friday, February 7, 2025
New top story on Hacker News: Show HN: A website that heatmaps your city based on your housing preferences
Show HN: A website that heatmaps your city based on your housing preferences
22 by WiggleGuy | 15 comments on Hacker News.
For the past few months, I've been working on a website that answers two different questions: - Where in my city have the best travel times to all the things and people I care about? - Given a listing, how far is it from all the things and people I care about? Personally this was fueled by my own frustrations when I was apartment hunting in NYC. I was frustrating to have to juggle so many Google Maps tabs when I was evaluating a listing, and it was also annoying to not have full confidence that I was even searching in the right places. I wanted to be close to work, a Trader Joe's, and a major park. Given that public transportation networks can sometimes make close things hard to get to and far things easy to get to, it's not always obvious whether a neighborhood actually even fits my criteria or not! The overarching goal of theretowhere.com is to allow you to make more informed moving decisions while also making things more convenient than they are today. https://ibb.co/pBsX2HjN It can generate detailed travel time breakdowns for individual listings and addresses, making it easier to determine whether a listing is worth applying for without juggling Google Maps tabs. This is great for questions like “How far is this apartment from my friends, work and dancing gyms?” https://ibb.co/mVBjwPrJ It also has the powerful ability to heatmap a city based on which parts of it are close or not to the people and places you care about. This is great for questions like “Where in the city would I be reasonably close to work, friends and a woodworking studio?” https://ibb.co/vCynPSRK You can add these heatmaps to sites like Zillow and Streeteasy to make things super convenient (this was very fun to make). The main thing that's on my mind is whether this is useful or not. Like, is this something you would actually use? I also have other ideas I'd like to eventually intergrate into this (crime heatmaps, noise heatmaps, etc)
22 by WiggleGuy | 15 comments on Hacker News.
For the past few months, I've been working on a website that answers two different questions: - Where in my city have the best travel times to all the things and people I care about? - Given a listing, how far is it from all the things and people I care about? Personally this was fueled by my own frustrations when I was apartment hunting in NYC. I was frustrating to have to juggle so many Google Maps tabs when I was evaluating a listing, and it was also annoying to not have full confidence that I was even searching in the right places. I wanted to be close to work, a Trader Joe's, and a major park. Given that public transportation networks can sometimes make close things hard to get to and far things easy to get to, it's not always obvious whether a neighborhood actually even fits my criteria or not! The overarching goal of theretowhere.com is to allow you to make more informed moving decisions while also making things more convenient than they are today. https://ibb.co/pBsX2HjN It can generate detailed travel time breakdowns for individual listings and addresses, making it easier to determine whether a listing is worth applying for without juggling Google Maps tabs. This is great for questions like “How far is this apartment from my friends, work and dancing gyms?” https://ibb.co/mVBjwPrJ It also has the powerful ability to heatmap a city based on which parts of it are close or not to the people and places you care about. This is great for questions like “Where in the city would I be reasonably close to work, friends and a woodworking studio?” https://ibb.co/vCynPSRK You can add these heatmaps to sites like Zillow and Streeteasy to make things super convenient (this was very fun to make). The main thing that's on my mind is whether this is useful or not. Like, is this something you would actually use? I also have other ideas I'd like to eventually intergrate into this (crime heatmaps, noise heatmaps, etc)
Thursday, February 6, 2025
New top story on Hacker News: Show HN: Heap Explorer
Show HN: Heap Explorer
10 by bkallus | 0 comments on Hacker News.
I wrote a little LD_PRELOAD library that makes it easy to inspect and interact with a running program's glibc heap. It's fun to pause processes, free a bunch of their allocations, then resume them. Most of the time, the processes continue as though nothing happened, but sometimes they do interesting things :)
10 by bkallus | 0 comments on Hacker News.
I wrote a little LD_PRELOAD library that makes it easy to inspect and interact with a running program's glibc heap. It's fun to pause processes, free a bunch of their allocations, then resume them. Most of the time, the processes continue as though nothing happened, but sometimes they do interesting things :)
Wednesday, February 5, 2025
Tuesday, February 4, 2025
Monday, February 3, 2025
New top story on Hacker News: Ask HN: Who wants to be hired? (February 2025)
Ask HN: Who wants to be hired? (February 2025)
28 by whoishiring | 105 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/USp0PTR .
28 by whoishiring | 105 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/USp0PTR .
Sunday, February 2, 2025
Saturday, February 1, 2025
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