MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by DecoySalamander | 2025-05-01 09:40:38+00:00
Layouts implemented with tables make sense when you need to place elements once, and not a ton of them at once. Making even slight changes to your tables within tables within tables is such a nightmare, that throwing out all of your code and starting from scratch might just be preferable. Tables are not a basic tool for this task, it's a severe misuse of the tooling, caused by a lack of alternatives at the time.
by rafaelmn | 2025-05-01 09:41:20+00:00
At this point I view Windows as a legacy/compatibility OS, all the news about Windows is how they are making it worse for everyone.

And using it now and then it feels like that too. Windows 10 Mail app had integration with system calendar, you would get itsycal built into the OS. Windows 11 removed that and made the OS Mail app spam infested shit, and they expect me to pay a subscription for something that comes bundled with the OS I paid for.

Linux desktop is getting better but I still wouldn't daily drive it, so MacOS it is until Linux desktop gets to a more reliable state. I wouldn't be shocked it gets there - I believe Valve made relatively low investments and got a lot out of it, GPU vendors have an incentive to support it - for compute workloads and the gaming on Linux is becoming a thing. Also for office stuff the EU-US hostility could force EU to look for alternative software providers and move away from Microsoft.

Actually thinking about this just made me donate some $ to Gnome project.
by londons_explore | 2025-05-01 09:41:22+00:00
The trick to make it super fast is to predict where the user might be viewing 1 second from now.

If an animation is in progress, that's an easy prediction.

If the user is using a mouse, they'll generally scroll or pan but not both.

If the user is on a touch screen, again the gestures are limited.

When you have your predictions, you start loading the those things.
by rsynnott | 2025-05-01 09:42:09+00:00
> I thought a majority of Chinese businesses are state owned.

Where'd you get that? The state has a significant (though usually less than controlling) ownership stake in about 1.5% of Chinese businesses, and at least _some_ ownership in about 2%.

"The state owns some of this" is, of course, not equivalent to "the state meaningfully controls this".

But in any case for this sort of activity you'd probably just establish new companies, which the state wouldn't have any share in anyway. And, also, this is kinda academic, because you wouldn't be doing it in China, you'd be doing it in some third country and transhipping goods originating in China.
by DebtDeflation | 2025-05-01 09:42:52+00:00
>your clothes would not last that long

Washing on cold or warm, gentle cycle, and then either tumble drying on low or hang drying will greatly extend the life of your clothes. Washing on hot with a more vigorous cycle and then drying on hot not only risks shrinkage in the short term but will cause your clothes to wear out and fall apart much faster.
by JumpCrisscross | 2025-05-01 09:43:04+00:00
"Please don't post insinuations about astroturfing, shilling, brigading, foreign agents, and the like. It degrades discussion and is usually mistaken. If you're worried about abuse, email hn@ycombinator.com and we'll look at the data."

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
by twixfel | 2025-05-01 09:43:14+00:00
Trump is responsible for his own election and is partly responsible for the division in the US, having made it much worse. He's not operating in a vacuum. He's not a force of nature, he's a person just like the rest of us and is responsible for his actions, as are his supporters, as are those who voted for him.

>I mean, how bad do you have to be that people would rather vote for a sociopathic clown than you, when given the choice? But you know, thinking about that will make you uncomfortable, lets avoid it and focus on the clown!

The people aren't always right. Just because Trump is a sociopath and actively destroying the country right now, that doesn't mean the opposition actually is worse. That's extremely flawed thinking to put it mildly. You'd really have to be a dyed in the wool member of the Trump cult to still believe that the electorate made the right choice in rejecting Clinton in 2016 and Harris in 2024.

>Here's a thought: if you don't want to be ruled by a Trump, figure out how to avoid creating the conditions where someone like him could win. Strongly advocating for reasonable policies to create those conditions would also be better politics against Trump, right now than the incessant outrage about how terrible Trump is.

Outrage is fine when he's destroying the country. Tone policing is not OK in this situation, because there's 4 more years of this and proposing new policies now changes literally nothing. The damage is already done. It's too late. The US will probably be OK in the end but the rot is much deeper than can be solved by your beloved "new policies" (which actually the Democrats proposed plenty of, but Americans just wanted Trump anyway), the US needs constitutional change at this point.
by parrit | 2025-05-01 09:43:28+00:00
Your brain is analysing the light in the "room" when zoomed out and compared to that it looks moist. When you zoom in there is no reference. I think then the brain switches from "real scene" analysis to "abstract".

It is a bit like those illusions where one grey looks darker than the other, based on surrounding shadows in the image and what the brain assumes... but the RGB values are the same.
by JumpCrisscross | 2025-05-01 09:45:10+00:00
> should have probably paid attention to the clown parade of 2016-2020

For what it's worth, the economy grew under Trump 1.0. This second one is just not making decisions himself, with policy noticeably varying based on who is physically around him [1].

I won't be surprised to learn in a few years that he's being stage managed as tightly as Biden was in his final months in office.

[1] https://www.wsj.com/politics/policy/trump-tariff-pause-navar...
by pjc50 | 2025-05-01 09:45:18+00:00
> "The Cloud Act grants US authorities access to cloud data hosted by US companies. It does not matter if that data is located in the US, Europe, or anywhere else."

Exactly. So long as that is true, the idea that an EU datacenter run by Microsoft can be "sovereign" is nonsense. Having an in-EU owned cloud becomes a national security issue.

Tech independence is a long way off though. I wonder if, like the carbon transition, it will require an announced phaseout date to concentrate minds.
by vjk800 | 2025-05-01 09:45:30+00:00
I use Office software at work daily and I don't understand how that piece of shit can be so fucking slow. It's a serious productivity sink too; I often procrastinate small tasks just because I know half of the time doing it is spent waiting for various part of the office to load and that is somehow very stressful. I realise it is not a huge amount of time per se, but the psychological effect of the piece of crap stopping at any random time to load some bullshit becomes unbearable after some time. A bit like the chinese torture method where they would drop single drops of water on your head and over time it becomes painful.
by mrweasel | 2025-05-01 09:46:56+00:00
I was going to ask: How much faster would it be if it didn't have to communicate with Microsoft servers over the internet on start up.

It makes no sense that modern Office won't start faster than Office 97. Sure it has more features, it's bigger in any way, but it's also not running of a spinning hard drive and 32Mb of RAM.

Can Office even start up without an Internet connection, or does it just take even longer?
by omnimus | 2025-05-01 09:47:15+00:00
I switched some time ago and after lots of tests i can recommend two services. I use linux and mac.

Filen.io is e2ee and has all kinds of nice features besides sync. For example you can mount it as a network drive but it mounts some clever localhost drive that the app spawns that does caching and conflict resolution. They also support rclone and it will be soon provider in regular rclone releases. Downside is that because e2ee it doesnt yet have teams/shared folders (its very anticipated feature in progress).

The other one i can recommend is kDrive from infomaniak. We use that for work and its probably best 1to1 dropbox replacement. It has “offline” virtual files and its pretty affordable. The only downside is that the sharing between users is not as smooth ux wise as dropbox and its not e2ee.
by gavinray | 2025-05-01 09:47:26+00:00
This post makes mention of a new JEP I hadn't heard of before: "Stable Values"

https://openjdk.org/jeps/502

https://cr.openjdk.org/~pminborg/stable-values2/api/java.bas...

I don't understand the functional difference between the suggested StableValue and Records, or Value Classes.

They define a StableValue as:

> "A stable value is a holder of contents that can be set at most once."

Records were defined as:

> "... classes that act as transparent carriers for immutable data. Records can be thought of as nominal tuples."

And Value Objects/Classes as:

> "... value objects, class instances that have only final fields and lack object identity."

Both Records and Value Objects are immutable, and hence can only have their contents set upon creation or static initalization.
by lukan | 2025-05-01 09:48:12+00:00
How did the developement of chrome made more people use the internet?

Some remember the time, when browsers existed before chrome as well .. and I am not a ware of a uniquie chrome feature, removing significant barriers.

But by developing the browser, they can

A) decide the direction where the web is heading

B) get direct control over peoples internet experience and their data
by strogonoff | 2025-05-01 09:48:37+00:00
Recently, the browser has become this great unifying environment where we can build complex cross-platform experiences available to anyone on demand and not locked into any walled garden. Just off the top of my head:

— WebCodecs. You don’t need ffmpeg; encode in the browser.

— Web Audio. An advanced modular synth graph in the browser.

— WebRTC. P2P communication between browsers. Calls, collaboration, etc.

— WebGPU. Run shaders in the browser.

— File System API & File System Access extensions. Read/write very large files without having to put the entire contents in RAM.

All of this required significant amount of resources to spec and implement. With 80% of funding cut, I struggle to see how it can be maintained. Would be sad to see this rot with bugs.
by pavlov | 2025-05-01 09:49:51+00:00
Is it reasonable to assume that individuals and small companies get the same friendly terms as companies with big legal teams and expensive contracts?

That may be the case, but I wouldn’t count on it. Probably it can change with one email from Google that has “oh btw we’re changing some contract terms, you have 14 days to opt out, no big deal” buried deep down.
by JumpCrisscross | 2025-05-01 09:49:58+00:00
> not voting indicates only one thing - NOT being OK with any of them winning

Of course it doesn't. In a swing state, a non vote or third-party vote means endorsing the outcome. The fact that there wasn't a perfect choice is at the root of compromise that makes for a democracy. (And in a non-swing state, unless someone submitted a blank ballot, it generally means laziness.)

Electorally, non-voters are incredibly safe to ignore. They rarely convert from non-voting to voting. If you're an elected and have a non-voting demographic, you can always make political hay by transferring resources from them to your voters.
by sokoloff | 2025-05-01 09:50:29+00:00
Re: 1. If a team at work has a long-standing policy implemented by and applying only to that team and I come in as the new team lead, I can change that policy.

NB: I’m not arguing that this change in policy was done after a careful Chesterton’s Fence analysis and weighing of all relevant factors, but it would seem stranger if a new leader couldn’t change any policies than if they can.
by codethief | 2025-05-01 09:51:21+00:00
You're bringing up an important point. However: As far as I can tell, Linux can very well be integrated into an Active Directory setup.[0,1] Also: If you want to avoid Active Directory altogether, there seem to be plenty alternatives?[2]

[0]: https://www.redhat.com/en/blog/linux-active-directory

[1]: https://documentation.ubuntu.com/server/explanation/intro-to...

[2]: https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/333/what-is-the-equ...

Are there any alternatives to ActiveDirectory in the Linux ecosystem? Maybe from RedHat?
by spapas82 | 2025-05-01 09:51:26+00:00
Main problem with office 2003 is that it can't reliably open docx and friends making it more or less non compatible with anything newer. Being able to open only docs you create yourself isn't very useful in a collaborative environment.

The main advantage of office 2003 of course is that it's the last office without activation and other crap: you pass the serial and own it for life, it won't bother you again.

I wantwd to only use 2003 but after the 10th time I argued with a person that sent me a docx for editing I gave up.
by a2128 | 2025-05-01 09:52:00+00:00
F-Droid allows random people with no verifiable information to publish apps, and AFAIK there's never been a single case of malware or something malicious.

The same can't be said about Google Play where I can usually find malware at any time with specific search queries. These are apps that should have never been approved in the first place because they're blatantly impersonating another app.

The people who make this malware won't be accountable, because they don't register their own developer account and verify their own identity. They go around emailing the contact email of every small developer on Google Play, saying that they'll buy their developer profile or pay for them to upload an app. I got many such emails as it is.
by sim7c00 | 2025-05-01 09:52:00+00:00
free or not free is only an illusion. its a personal thing in the end which no one can give or take. hence, you will find disagreement on what behavior fits what banner of freedom or nonfreedom etc.

people will try to silence voices that disagree with them. cant they? no. will they try? yes.

dont worry about it and simply say what u have to say, trusting the universe it will arrive where it needs to, when it needs to.
by nmeofthestate | 2025-05-01 09:52:20+00:00
Microsoft have even managed to make Windows Explorer (a lot) worse in Windows 11. Auto-complete in the address bar completely unresponsive. Taking ten seconds to show the contents of a local folder. Interacting with network shares a complete usability mess. Looks a bit nicer though, and there's tabs. Goodness knows who they've got maintaining Windows.
by mrweasel | 2025-05-01 09:52:37+00:00
Companies will buy the cheapest, shittiest PCs/laptops and wonder why their slow or people are unproductive. Apple have their share of issues, but at least they won't sell you completely useless laptops.

The minute someone is using a computer and it's noticeably slow their brain will start looking for something else to do and they'll lose any momentum on whatever task they where working on.
by scrlk | 2025-05-01 09:53:15+00:00
I'm going to speculate it was the following:

1. System was running with low inertia due to a high amount of renewable generation (mainly solar).

2. Something caused a large amount of generation to trip. Lack of inertia in the system can't arrest the frequency drop.

3. Rate of change of frequency (ROCOF) protection kicks in and trips renewable generators; interconnectors to France also trip as they are suddenly overloaded. Islanding and blackouts ensue.
by rs186 | 2025-05-01 09:53:48+00:00
I used to always have an Office installation on my computer, whether it's pirated (many years ago)/using my personal license/using my school license/etc.

Then I got a new computer without bothering to do the installation. It was a long time before I discovered that I need any of Word/Excel/PowerPoint. And I was able to get by with Google Docs. If that's not good enough, I go to the free version of Office 365. In the rare occasions where I need the actual, native Office software for compatibility/functionality reasons, I do it on another machine I have access to. This has worked out surprisingly well.
by Freak_NL | 2025-05-01 09:53:52+00:00
It's a beautiful painting.

I also can't stand the sight of it.

It has been abused as a kitchy backdrop on so much tat and assorted items — including wheelie bins, recycling bins, garden fences, pillows, phone covers, and posters — to such an extent that it just oozes bad taste by implication.

Poor girl.
by plst | 2025-05-01 09:53:59+00:00
Responding to a comment by bn-l, but also to the general sentiment about Apple and untrusted code I often see on hacker news.

> The broader consumer base will install anything a bad actor wants them to and then blame the manufacturer for not stopping them with some draconian rule.

Has this even happened? Has anyone ever sued and won the case with a laptop manufacturer (or Microsoft or Apple), because they downloaded and executed an executable with malware on their computer? Do average people really blame Microsoft for malware? I would kind of agree that they should, but not because Microsoft allows people to run untrusted code, but because the security model of Windows (and other PC operating systems) is still bad. But not because it allows people to run unsigned code.

Don't get me wrong, I don't think we should return to security model of old operating systems - smartphone OSes definitely got that right, except for the part that forces users to give up control of their devices. It's just that the argument, that allowing people to install software not signed by Apple on their own devices would make iPhones insecure, is totally unsubstantiated to me.

I see some people still arguing that (ex. older) people will do what they are told and will install shady software. If Apple really cares, they could provide a switch that allows users to disable installing "unverified" software. Maybe ask about it during setup. Maybe allow locking it until factory reset, or allow head of icloud family to control it. There are many options to keep some people secure from all unverified apps, while allowing others to run them. Not to mention that the idea that all apps not signed by Apple are somehow malicious is just bad. You could have other entities than Apple verify code. Currently, even running apps you yourself wrote, on your own hardware, is hard and limited. For no good reason.

The only reason Apple is blocking other stores, or preventing people from installing homebrew, is to collect more money. It's good that they are investing into security of their software and hardware, but in this particular case, security is used only as a distraction.
by JumpCrisscross | 2025-05-01 09:54:53+00:00
> China specifically is also in a worse position than the US in this trade war

Bond market says what now?

China has spent every day since 2016 preparing for this war. We, who launched it, didn't even bother to stockpile. While it's true the Chinese economy will likely suffer more short-term pain, Xi doesn't have midterms. Beyond his tools as a dictator, he has narrative on his side: we started the trade war. People are generally willing to take a lot of pain when they feel they're being fucked with. (Exhibit A: Trump.)

So yes, China's economy will probably contract more than America's. But there is a reason Trump is already blinking.
by whoprahlad | 2025-05-01 09:55:08+00:00
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by bjackman | 2025-05-01 09:56:20+00:00
> One solution is to treat startup cycles as a resource similar to e.g. size or backend servers.

The only way to achieve performance metrics in a large org IMO.

Google Search is still fast because if you degrade p99 latency an SRE will roll back your change. Macbooks still have good battery life because Apple have an army of QA engineers and if they see a bump on their Ammeters that MacOS release doesn't go ahead.

Everything else (especially talking about "engineers these days just don't know how to write efficient code") is noise. In big tech projects you get the requirements your org encodes in its metrics and processes. You don't get the others. It's as simple as that.

Never worked at MS but it's obvious to me that the reason Windows is shit is that the things that would make it good simply aren't objectives for MS.
by soulofmischief | 2025-05-01 09:56:44+00:00
I also appreciate your thoughtful reply. I certainly am not out to police anyone's speech, just thought I'd give my perspective.

I see things like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nicknames_used_by_Dona... and it personally feels like stooping to his level when also using such nicknames for political opponents. This is of course just a difference in opinion, and I understand your perspective as well. :)
by pjc50 | 2025-05-01 09:57:18+00:00
> government is immoral

Maybe you're going to find out how much more immoral warlordism is. "Not having a government at all" is a weird fantasy of teenagers.

(the really odd combo is people who hold both the "government is immoral, especially the US federal government" and the "the US federal government should go to war with China" combo, which a few moments thought will show the contradiction)
by cornholio | 2025-05-01 09:57:25+00:00
Coding interviews used to be FizzBuzz in the era of Joel Spolsky, then Google upped the bar to things like A*, Boyer Moore and brain teasers with pirates splitting booty to screen for those "real 10x geniuses".

Then everybody jumped on that cargocult because Google is a trillion dollar company, so they must be doing something right, am I rite, never-mind their immense monopolies and first mover advantages. So now everybody was looking for the mythical 10xers

It all metastasized into the present where you have poor college kids in India grinding Leetcode to get SDET jobs for some Bangalore outsource center. I can't even
by bgro | 2025-05-01 09:57:34+00:00
Startup shortcuts are one thing to manage but it’s gotten pretty out of control for most standard software now. Perhaps it used to be one-off annoying programs like 15 years ago.

Now there’s scrolling through hundreds of scheduled tasks called dfddg.exe with no title or description and located in c:/windows or %appdata%. Disabling the wrong identically named one bricks your system or software licenses.

Then you also have to check the registry and group policy and environment variables and spot the unwanted item that is again often bundled into a critical windows dll. Usually with the same name as the dll and its permissions are set as SYSTEM so you can’t edit it by normal means.

Then after every change you have to do a full rebooting and review all steps again. Often, they will regenerate themselves if deleted in the wrong way or the wrong order.

After all the startup things are killed there may still be kernel level startup recovery processes for things like Adobe.