Ask HN: LLM Assisted Vim Workflows?
2 by Insanity | 1 comments on Hacker News.
Hi HN, As the title suggested, any recommendations and tips to build in LLM assistants with Vim? Any experiences to share about such a setup? I’ve only dabbled with AI-assisted coding using Gemini / ChatGPT “on the side”, rather than a fully integrated experience like Cursor.
Hack Nux
Watch the number of websites being hacked today, one by one on a page, increasing in real time.
New ask Hacker News story: A reverse-delta backup strategy – obvious idea or bad idea?
A reverse-delta backup strategy – obvious idea or bad idea?
4 by datastack | 3 comments on Hacker News.
I recently came up with a backup strategy that seems so simple I assume it must already exist — but I haven’t seen it in any mainstream tools. The idea is: The latest backup (timestamped) always contains a full copy of the current source state. Any previous backups are stored as deltas: files that were deleted or modified compared to the next (newer) version. There are no version numbers — just timestamps. New versions can be inserted naturally. Each time you back up: 1. Compare the current source with the latest backup. 2. For files that changed or were deleted: move them into a new delta folder (timestamped). 3. For new/changed files: copy them into the latest snapshot folder (only as needed). 4. Optionally rotate old deltas to keep history manageable. This means: The latest backup is always a usable full snapshot (fast restore). Previous versions can be reconstructed by applying reverse deltas. If the source is intact, the system self-heals: corrupted backups are replaced on the next run. Only one full copy is needed, like a versioned rsync mirror. As time goes by, losing old versions is low-impact. It's user friendly since the latest backup can be browsed through with regular file explorers. Example: Initial backup: latest/ a.txt # "Hello" b.txt # "World" Next day, a.txt is changed and b.txt is deleted: latest/ a.txt # "Hi" backup-2024-06-27T14:00:00/ a.txt # "Hello" b.txt # "World" The newest version is always in latest/, and previous versions can be reconstructed by applying the deltas in reverse. I'm curious: has this been done before under another name? Are there edge cases I’m overlooking that make it impractical in real-world tools? Would love your thoughts.
4 by datastack | 3 comments on Hacker News.
I recently came up with a backup strategy that seems so simple I assume it must already exist — but I haven’t seen it in any mainstream tools. The idea is: The latest backup (timestamped) always contains a full copy of the current source state. Any previous backups are stored as deltas: files that were deleted or modified compared to the next (newer) version. There are no version numbers — just timestamps. New versions can be inserted naturally. Each time you back up: 1. Compare the current source with the latest backup. 2. For files that changed or were deleted: move them into a new delta folder (timestamped). 3. For new/changed files: copy them into the latest snapshot folder (only as needed). 4. Optionally rotate old deltas to keep history manageable. This means: The latest backup is always a usable full snapshot (fast restore). Previous versions can be reconstructed by applying reverse deltas. If the source is intact, the system self-heals: corrupted backups are replaced on the next run. Only one full copy is needed, like a versioned rsync mirror. As time goes by, losing old versions is low-impact. It's user friendly since the latest backup can be browsed through with regular file explorers. Example: Initial backup: latest/ a.txt # "Hello" b.txt # "World" Next day, a.txt is changed and b.txt is deleted: latest/ a.txt # "Hi" backup-2024-06-27T14:00:00/ a.txt # "Hello" b.txt # "World" The newest version is always in latest/, and previous versions can be reconstructed by applying the deltas in reverse. I'm curious: has this been done before under another name? Are there edge cases I’m overlooking that make it impractical in real-world tools? Would love your thoughts.
New ask Hacker News story: Microsoft tried dogfooding Copilot with .NET, but got only hallucinations
Microsoft tried dogfooding Copilot with .NET, but got only hallucinations
4 by aislopness | 0 comments on Hacker News.
Is this a joke? https://ift.tt/GIh6syF https://ift.tt/SBUeZGd
4 by aislopness | 0 comments on Hacker News.
Is this a joke? https://ift.tt/GIh6syF https://ift.tt/SBUeZGd
New Show Hacker News story: Show HN: Dungeon Master in Your Console
Show HN: Dungeon Master in Your Console
5 by spacecadet | 0 comments on Hacker News.
I don't normally share side projects here(or in general). Don't have much time to open them up to too much attention. I started this project while riding in a car last weekend. Mainly to explore OpenAI Codex. Using Github mobile I wrote the initial specifications into the readme, and using the ChatGPT iOS app, had Codex build a simple CLI based dungeon master. Switched back to Github for managing the PRs and back and forth for the whole car ride... It kinda got a little out of hand from there, and it's now a mix of AI(mostly AI) and myself making adjustments... The first version was entirely OAI and it worked OK but was too easy on the player. Thanks to HN I had heard about the Wayfarer model and I find that model to be pretty entertaining. In the end I thought this turned out pretty "cute" and makes a decent time waster that looks like work wink wink
5 by spacecadet | 0 comments on Hacker News.
I don't normally share side projects here(or in general). Don't have much time to open them up to too much attention. I started this project while riding in a car last weekend. Mainly to explore OpenAI Codex. Using Github mobile I wrote the initial specifications into the readme, and using the ChatGPT iOS app, had Codex build a simple CLI based dungeon master. Switched back to Github for managing the PRs and back and forth for the whole car ride... It kinda got a little out of hand from there, and it's now a mix of AI(mostly AI) and myself making adjustments... The first version was entirely OAI and it worked OK but was too easy on the player. Thanks to HN I had heard about the Wayfarer model and I find that model to be pretty entertaining. In the end I thought this turned out pretty "cute" and makes a decent time waster that looks like work wink wink
New Show Hacker News story: Show HN: Shouldiuse.dev – Software dependency health checker
Show HN: Shouldiuse.dev – Software dependency health checker
6 by louis_w_gk | 3 comments on Hacker News.
As software engineers we are often confronted with the decision of whether to code something ourselves or to add an existing library that does it for us. Whether we like it or not – we are adding dependencies sooner or later. And it's arguably good practice to check a new dependency beforehand: Is it maintained? By whom? How many issues does it have and how many of those are bugs? Are they being fixed? What's on the roadmap? What's the release frequency and how often do APIs break? One of our favorite solutions that already exist to answer such questions is the OpenSSF Scorecard project ( https://ift.tt/EIclTFB ) – we use this ourselves and can only recommend it. We built shouldiuse.dev around it to make results accessible as a website, and used the opportunity to dive deep into heavily LLM-assisted coding for the first time in a professional project. Three people (devs and non-devs) each started vibe-coding an initial prototypes, one using v0, one using lovable and one using Cursor. At first blown away by how fast we were able to generate these and how great there were looking, we soon ran into issues merging different ideas as there were multiple different web frameworks and versions flying around. The most work on the frontend definitely went into getting the details and small adaptions right. In parallel, on the backend we started to write a Go application that uses the ossf/scorecard library to do a lot of the checks we want. To also play around with AI on that end, we intentionally made heavy use of Copilot and tried around with different models and prompts. We also added more metrics to the dependency check that we gather via GitHub API, and finally generate textual summaries via OpenAI. The Prompt to generate a final textual recommendation consists of: * A header stating the role, capabilities and limitations, and the expected response format (JSON and no lists/bullet points) – We also tell it to be critical, objective and give short and concise answers. * The result of the scorecard check * Additional community-related data * The questions that are being shown in the FAQ section – The answers to those are also generated by the LLM. Since such a check involves heavy use of the GitHub API, we require users to input a GitHub personal access token when requesting a check. The first time a repository is checked on shouldiuse.dev it will take a few seconds, but then the results are stored in a postgres for faster retrieval later on. For now it only works for public GitHub repos, but we might add other platforms if there is interest. We also added a remote MCP server with built-in authentication, so you can directly access shouldiuse from your IDE and automatically check new dependencies anytime a coding assistant introduces one to ensure that only safe dependencies are added to the project. What started as a fun internal experiment quickly surprised us with how useful it turned out to be. We didn’t plan to release it publicly, but we think might be useful for other devs and therefore we wanted to share it here. Any feedback is welcome!
6 by louis_w_gk | 3 comments on Hacker News.
As software engineers we are often confronted with the decision of whether to code something ourselves or to add an existing library that does it for us. Whether we like it or not – we are adding dependencies sooner or later. And it's arguably good practice to check a new dependency beforehand: Is it maintained? By whom? How many issues does it have and how many of those are bugs? Are they being fixed? What's on the roadmap? What's the release frequency and how often do APIs break? One of our favorite solutions that already exist to answer such questions is the OpenSSF Scorecard project ( https://ift.tt/EIclTFB ) – we use this ourselves and can only recommend it. We built shouldiuse.dev around it to make results accessible as a website, and used the opportunity to dive deep into heavily LLM-assisted coding for the first time in a professional project. Three people (devs and non-devs) each started vibe-coding an initial prototypes, one using v0, one using lovable and one using Cursor. At first blown away by how fast we were able to generate these and how great there were looking, we soon ran into issues merging different ideas as there were multiple different web frameworks and versions flying around. The most work on the frontend definitely went into getting the details and small adaptions right. In parallel, on the backend we started to write a Go application that uses the ossf/scorecard library to do a lot of the checks we want. To also play around with AI on that end, we intentionally made heavy use of Copilot and tried around with different models and prompts. We also added more metrics to the dependency check that we gather via GitHub API, and finally generate textual summaries via OpenAI. The Prompt to generate a final textual recommendation consists of: * A header stating the role, capabilities and limitations, and the expected response format (JSON and no lists/bullet points) – We also tell it to be critical, objective and give short and concise answers. * The result of the scorecard check * Additional community-related data * The questions that are being shown in the FAQ section – The answers to those are also generated by the LLM. Since such a check involves heavy use of the GitHub API, we require users to input a GitHub personal access token when requesting a check. The first time a repository is checked on shouldiuse.dev it will take a few seconds, but then the results are stored in a postgres for faster retrieval later on. For now it only works for public GitHub repos, but we might add other platforms if there is interest. We also added a remote MCP server with built-in authentication, so you can directly access shouldiuse from your IDE and automatically check new dependencies anytime a coding assistant introduces one to ensure that only safe dependencies are added to the project. What started as a fun internal experiment quickly surprised us with how useful it turned out to be. We didn’t plan to release it publicly, but we think might be useful for other devs and therefore we wanted to share it here. Any feedback is welcome!
New Show Hacker News story: Show HN: I built a JSON-RPC library for Zig with compile time reflection
Show HN: I built a JSON-RPC library for Zig with compile time reflection
2 by ww520 | 0 comments on Hacker News.
Doing dynamic dispatching in a strict static typing language is hard. Something as simple as, map.put("add", add); map.put("hello", hello); fn add(a: i32, b: i32) i32 { return a + b; } fn hello() []const u8 { return "Hello World"; } is impossible because the value type of key/value of the map needs to be the same but all the function types are different. Calling functions with different number of parameters, different parameter types, and different return type dynamically is difficult. Other languages either use dynamic typing, runtime reflection, macro, or passing in one big generic parameter and let the function figure it out. In ZigJR, I use Zig's comptime feature to do compile time reflection to figure out a function's parameter types, return types, and return errors. I package them up into a specific call object and use the interface pattern to produce a uniformly typed object to be put into the map. It's not easy but doable. [1] [1] https://ift.tt/AZpRSeJ...
2 by ww520 | 0 comments on Hacker News.
Doing dynamic dispatching in a strict static typing language is hard. Something as simple as, map.put("add", add); map.put("hello", hello); fn add(a: i32, b: i32) i32 { return a + b; } fn hello() []const u8 { return "Hello World"; } is impossible because the value type of key/value of the map needs to be the same but all the function types are different. Calling functions with different number of parameters, different parameter types, and different return type dynamically is difficult. Other languages either use dynamic typing, runtime reflection, macro, or passing in one big generic parameter and let the function figure it out. In ZigJR, I use Zig's comptime feature to do compile time reflection to figure out a function's parameter types, return types, and return errors. I package them up into a specific call object and use the interface pattern to produce a uniformly typed object to be put into the map. It's not easy but doable. [1] [1] https://ift.tt/AZpRSeJ...
New ask Hacker News story: The scam that is Visa Account Updater
The scam that is Visa Account Updater
6 by mountainriver | 2 comments on Hacker News.
Visa Account Updater is a service by which if you change your credit card number, or even close and open a new credit card account, Visa can give a merchant your new credit card details for subscription services without ever asking your permission I ran into an issue where I had some subscriptions that were very difficult to cancel, so I decided to just cancel that credit card number. I called Wells Fargo, told them to give me a new credit card number, which they did and I moved on with my life. Next month, a bunch of the same charges. I call them back, they tell me about Visa Account Updater. I am extremely taken back that this is even possible. I told them I didn't want to be a part of that program, they told me that Visa handles this and not them. I call Visa and they tell me they don't handle this and that Wells Fargo does. I call back Wells Fargo, they tell me they have no idea how to opt out of it. The lady asks her manager, the manager also doesn't know. She spends some time searching their documentation, nothing in the docs. She tells me the sure fire way is to close the account entirely and create a new account with a new card. I'm deeply annoyed but go ahead and do this. Next month, guess what? A bunch of the same charges again, on a fresh account I haven't even activated the credit card for. I call Wells Fargo back, they talk more about Visa Account Updater but have no way of turning it off or rectifying the situation. I'm now on hold for the last two hours as they try to figure out what to do about this. I can't believe this is even legal, its the most insane business practice I've ever seen. I get that this may be handy in some situations but its clearly a scam designed to perpetuate charging subscriptions to credit cards. Hope this helps the next person.
6 by mountainriver | 2 comments on Hacker News.
Visa Account Updater is a service by which if you change your credit card number, or even close and open a new credit card account, Visa can give a merchant your new credit card details for subscription services without ever asking your permission I ran into an issue where I had some subscriptions that were very difficult to cancel, so I decided to just cancel that credit card number. I called Wells Fargo, told them to give me a new credit card number, which they did and I moved on with my life. Next month, a bunch of the same charges. I call them back, they tell me about Visa Account Updater. I am extremely taken back that this is even possible. I told them I didn't want to be a part of that program, they told me that Visa handles this and not them. I call Visa and they tell me they don't handle this and that Wells Fargo does. I call back Wells Fargo, they tell me they have no idea how to opt out of it. The lady asks her manager, the manager also doesn't know. She spends some time searching their documentation, nothing in the docs. She tells me the sure fire way is to close the account entirely and create a new account with a new card. I'm deeply annoyed but go ahead and do this. Next month, guess what? A bunch of the same charges again, on a fresh account I haven't even activated the credit card for. I call Wells Fargo back, they talk more about Visa Account Updater but have no way of turning it off or rectifying the situation. I'm now on hold for the last two hours as they try to figure out what to do about this. I can't believe this is even legal, its the most insane business practice I've ever seen. I get that this may be handy in some situations but its clearly a scam designed to perpetuate charging subscriptions to credit cards. Hope this helps the next person.