MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
Show HN: I made FocusTube to skip YouTube's homepage and avoid rabbit holes
by HerChip | 2025-05-11 18:50:08+00:00
Like many devs, I often open YouTube to look up a tutorial. Instead, I land on the homepage—shorts, drama, randomness—and lose 20 minutes before I even type a search.

So I built FocusTube: a minimal search interface that skips YouTube’s homepage and drops you straight into search results.

At first, I was building it out like a full product—login system, access control, gated content. But integrating Stripe, Microsoft B2C took to long as my evening hours were not sufficient. I paused and asked: what’s the real problem? And how can I validate it quickly without overbuilding?

So I removed the gate, and now I just email the working search link using Zapier after someone buys support through BuyMeACoffee. It’s a small MVP stack that actually shipped.

How I built it: - Static Angular frontend

- BuyMeACoffee support

- Zapier to email the distraction-free link

- No backend, no auth, no fluff (yet)

The original version kept the link private. For Hacker News, I’m skipping that: Try the distraction-free search directly: https://focustube.info/search

If it’s useful, awesome. If not, that's still feedback. Would love to hear if others deal with this kind of “homepage hijack” or have built similar scratch-your-own-itch tools.

Main site: https://focustube.info
by Calwestjobs | 2025-05-11 18:50:22+00:00
If furoic acid can be stored economically then for industries needing furoic acid and H2 this can maybe be useful. So if there is 1/2 Mt of FA per year need, that means there can be a lot of hydrogen created as well.

(they can even use H2 for "primitive" inputs like burning it to provide process heat, like for example some reactors generating sulfuric acid generate H2 as a "waste" which is used in helping to distill said sulfuric acid in next step.)

Paper states that "exothermic heat" is consumed so cell is not heating up too much.
by redleader55 | 2025-05-11 18:50:59+00:00
All the laws that we broke out of were established and had an answer to questions of life: land ownership, slavery, social structure, rights of various groups of people, etc.

The laws that apply on the internet are very desperate attempts by people with no technical knowledge to control something that can't be controlled. They work only because ways to circumvent them are not yet easy to use by the masses.
by TonyTrapp | 2025-05-11 18:51:04+00:00
That seems backwards. If you need to ship the DLLs with the program anyway (they are not part of the operating system, after all), they will contain their full functionality, each one potentially with its own C runtime, etc. If you statically compile everything into a single EXE, there will be only a single C runtime, all unused functions can be trivially removed, etc.

DLLs only reduce size if their code is meant to be shared between different programs.
by smartmic | 2025-05-11 18:51:09+00:00
So I have serious thoughts about driving “software defined vehicles” in the future. I mean, and the article has confirmed this sufficiently, the core competence of the established car manufacturers is not software. I don't trust the newcomers like Tesla or the Chinese manufacturers for the time being. In my opinion, the same standards should apply to software in motor vehicles as in the aviation industry. And there can't be things like permanent internet connectivity, on-the-fly updates or anything else that is suitable for consumer entertainment devices. So I'm seriously considering whether my next car should be an “analog” one - but it's going to be difficult, a Lada [1] (not so exotic in Germany, where I live) is only available second-hand because of the Russia sanctions. I'm happy to accept alternative suggestions!

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lada_Niva
by AlchemistCamp | 2025-05-11 18:51:50+00:00
Most times I've read "partner" the meaning has been "business partner", e.g. a cofounder or a partner in a law firm or agency, etc.

I've noticed a trend, especially in Commonwealth or European countries to use "partner" to mean "sexual partner" or "romantic partner". However, it's also used in business, sports and many other contexts. Just saying "partner" on its own is less clear than "lover".
by mikebelanger | 2025-05-11 18:52:23+00:00
You can invoke custom methods and pass in any kind of data into them. As in

class SomeElement extends HTMLElement { constructor() { super(); } someMethod(x) { this.innerHTML = `<h1>${x}</h1>`; } } // ignore registry stuff const customElement = document.getElementById('custom-element-id'); customElement.someMethod(42);

But you won't learn that from most mainstream custom element tutorials though, for whatever reason.
by ghaff | 2025-05-11 18:52:26+00:00
Well, it’s not just about pay scales. The developers just don’t want to live in Detroit (or even Ann Arbor) for the most part. And coastal East isn’t really that much cheaper for the most part.

I’d probably add that the pay scale for software vs. electrical/mechanical people probably wasn’t notably different in the 90s or so. And California rates didn’t compensate for CoL in general. Very different.
by iforgetti | 2025-05-11 18:53:27+00:00
Glen Okun of NYU business school has written about BNPL loan portfolio weakness.

The AI marketing is just an attempt to reframe the value narrative of the company before IPO. They would rather be seen as an AI company than an unsecured lender of last resort.

The narrative on Klarna’s core business is not good in any case, either an extractive lender benefiting from people buying what they may not afford and charging exorbitant interest or a lender of last resort who has not properly underwritten the risk in their portfolio. Neither is preferential to them compared to a value narrative framing them as an AI company. Likely the market is too skeptical in this environment to take the bait however.
by matthewdgreen | 2025-05-11 18:53:45+00:00
This is a set of engineering problems to be navigated, not really a fundamental challenge. My critique is that Apple isn't navigating those problems. Many of these problems have solutions, some of which don't require a ton of work.

1. Legacy devices are going away naturally. I doubt the number of Apple accounts with legacy (iOS/Mac) devices and routine iCloud usage is anywhere near a majority, and I assume the number drops every year. You can test for this condition whenever a user adds a new device, and encourage adoption for people who don't have this problem.

2. Apple already requires that you have backup phones and emails for MFA. They could easily enforce recovery contacts as a basic requirement for any new iOS device (even if ADP isn't turned on) and measure the stability of those relationships over time, until they're confident that these recovery relationships are viable. This would probably reduce their support costs as well.

3. Apple has a tool called "Safety Check" that's designed to help you secure your device. Last I checked, ADP isn't recommended or even mentioned by the tool as an option. This seems like an obvious place where Apple could boost understanding and knowledge about ADP, but they've chosen not to.

So yes, I do think there's quite a bit more that Apple could do. I think it's unfortunate that people believe that Apple is not currently downplaying this feature globally due to the UK mess, because that is certainly what they are doing.
by encom | 2025-05-11 18:54:18+00:00
>That would be a bug-free system, which is impossible.

Yes, but code that doesn't get written does not have bugs. And I don't want to control the rear window defroster, wipers, climate control, fog lights or whatever, on a touch screen menu buried 7 levels deep while going 130 km/h. It's bad enough that coffee makers, light bulbs and tooth brushes now have updatable firmware.
by piterrro | 2025-05-11 18:54:33+00:00
Seems like there happened a misscommunication, there are 3 ppl in the org that could be perceived CTO. 1. You 2. The old CTO that wants to keep their inbox 3. The guy hired for the job. You need to talk to founder to let them decide. Another thing is - if you hire new people and they didnt finish the onboarding yet, things will be breaking, thats the circle of life. If the new guy is expected to know these things or he repeats the same mistakes - then he is not meeting expectations and should be let go. I think you three need to have a candid conversation about the expectations, maybe include a founder who can be a tie breaker. Definitiely, such a mess in so small org increases the potential of failure drastically.
by fredoralive | 2025-05-11 18:54:43+00:00
As well as information about side by side assemblies (ie: library versions), a Windows manifest file has various settings and a declaration of compatible versions of Windows that affect Windows' handling of the app, such as whether it can handle paths over MAX_PATH, if it is hi-dpi aware, or if it knows about themed controls.

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/sbscs/applic...

If an EXE doesn't have a manifest file, Windows assumes that it's ancient, so it falls back to conservative defaults like ye olde USER controls to try and avoid breaking it.
by AnthonyMouse | 2025-05-11 18:55:53+00:00
> Shouldn't countries have the right to control activities inside their borders?

Using the word "activities" implies that something different than what's really happening.

Ask the question like this: Should countries have the right to control information inside their borders? The answer to that question is no.

> Opposing this on the basis of "they'll extend it to political opposition ..." makes as much sense as opposing the arrest of criminals because "they'll extend it to political opposition ...".

If you make it less expensive to do something, you make it more likely that it happens. Incarcerating murderers and rapists is very important and is an effective deterrent against serious violent crimes, so creating prisons that make it easier to incarcerate political prisoners is bad but the thing it's necessary in order to do is more important.

Blocking streaming sites isn't nearly as important and it's also less effective for its intended purpose than it is for the ulterior purpose, because users will go out of their way to bypass censorship of streaming sites whereas inconvenient political content is censored not just with respect to its content but also its existence, and then if you create a censorship apparatus it allows people to be kept in the dark as to what is even being censored. So in that case the badness of the censorship apparatus existing far exceeds its value in being able to inconvenience some minor offenders.
by babyent | 2025-05-11 18:56:20+00:00
If you join a good startup that has an actual product and real exit plan, sure.

And by actual exit plan I mean an IPO, or a multi billion dollar acquisition if that doesn’t work out.

I worked at a unicorn once and it worked out well. Most of the employees who joined pre to just around unicorn status walked away with 8-25x or more return.
by v9v | 2025-05-11 18:56:41+00:00
> That would be a bug-free system, which is impossible.

Why? If the rest of the car can function within design specifications for years, why can't the firmware?

I'm fine with updates to add compatibility with new protocols and such, but to me a bug implies there's a standing problem with the current system that's not due to some sort of wear/changing standard/component damage etc. While one can point to examples of cars with defective mechanical designs, I don't think anyone considers it impossible to create designs without such defects (where defects are defined wrt. specifications), why is this the view in software engineering?
by cosmicgadget | 2025-05-11 18:56:48+00:00
I liked your comment but don't think the shot at media was necessary. A company replacing workers is news enough and the fact checking need only be to validate that information. The "as good as 700 workers" I assume was presented as a claim, not a fact.

Evaluating the effectiveness of the AI bot is another matter and firmly in the investigative journalism sphere. Coincidentally that is an awesome application of a blog.
by egypturnash | 2025-05-11 18:56:54+00:00
If you want to know the many ways this is going to suck, then think about everything you've ever heard someone bitching about in the modern video game ecosystem, then multiply it by "but instead of people not being able to play a video game, someone might die".

Is this how we get the Butlerian Jihad? Because part of me sure does want to learn how to identify cars built like this and learn ways to disable them when I see them parked somewhere around town, before one of them fails to recognize me on my bicycle as something that should be avoided.
by rjsw | 2025-05-11 18:58:04+00:00
One problem is that the ECUs are fairly dumb, they each have a limit on how fast you can send CAN frames to them without overflowing receive buffers. The protocol to reprogram them starts by asking the target ECU how much of a delay is needed between each frame then needs to keep to quite tight timing constraints when sending the new flash image, I have written a Linux network protocol module to do this.
by throwanem | 2025-05-11 18:58:55+00:00
> they are not part of the operating system

Yes they are. Exercising the native Windows API is the entire point of this project, and the only artifact it builds is an executable.

edit: See the thread; I had the wrong end here. I haven't worked with Win32 or C in so long I'd forgotten what balls of fishhooks and hair they both tend to be.
by Disposal8433 | 2025-05-11 18:59:08+00:00
> A modern, native Windows Todo application

What's modern about it? Also you could have used C++ instead to remove some potential issues, and those global variables...

Use std::string and std::array or std::list, some anonymous namespaces, remove all the malloc, etc. Your code would be half the size and still compile to the same assembly language without the bugs.
by api | 2025-05-11 18:59:53+00:00
I am awaiting a hatchback or sedan like this:

https://www.slate.auto/en

Give me a car that is perfectly 100% autonomous, or give me a car with three gauges and basic controls only. Everything else is an uncanny valley: all the downsides of complex tech without being useful enough to justify it.

Until then I like my Nissan Leaf: physical controls, phone just docks with infotainment screen, and reliable.
by mtlynch | 2025-05-11 19:00:05+00:00
>The trick I've found for this is to pre-sell. Would you buy, now, knowing that the feature is on the roadmap and will be there soon?

Yes, exactly! That's the same solution I landed on. I'd say, "Great! You can pre-pay for three months of service, and your billing cycle won’t start until that feature is available."
by gnulinux | 2025-05-11 19:00:52+00:00
I personally prefer Agda to Lean or Coq [1] to prove my theorems but this frontier is imho among the most exciting research in theoretical CS in many many decades. I really wish more programmers and mathematicians knew about automated theorem proving and automated reasoning. It's nothing short of revolutionary and I think next generation of pure mathematicians will use these as a crucial tool in their research.

[1] It's a personal preference but Agda is simply a much better language with almost limitless metaprogramming which allows me to write proofs close to as they'd appear in prose math papers. It has a smaller ecosystem though. I've never seen a proof in any other language I personally didn't think would be much more readable/simpler in Agda.
by chrisweekly | 2025-05-11 19:01:09+00:00
This is an awesome comment. As someone who doesn't spend much time in the DB tier, I especially appreciate the real-world details in your final paragraph. Do you have a blog where you write about this stuff, and/or have any particular recommendations for learning or reference materials? I'm sure there's no substitute for experience when it comes to developing an intuition for good db design, but I'd be grateful for your expert advice if you have more to share. TIA
by ty6853 | 2025-05-11 19:01:39+00:00
My child was born during the beginning of the pandemic, when everyone* thought they were going to die. Doctors were falling over themselves to rush us out. The only education I recall was how to use a car seat to get our asses out of there. The normal protocols were definitely put on hold where we were, just make sure the baby will survive then eject.

* hyperbolic
by dang | 2025-05-11 19:02:57+00:00
Related:

Tixy.land - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36646163 - July 2023 (2 comments)

Minimal 16x16 Dots Coding Environment - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24974534 - Nov 2020 (37 comments)
by exe34 | 2025-05-11 19:03:11+00:00
> Should society motivate people to invest in learning technology, or to organize businesses, both just for the sake of it? I personally prefer the former over the latter, but I can see that both (as well as abstaining from either) have their pluses and minuses.

I can almost agree with you - I'm more on the former side myself. I only work enough to afford food, shelter and some surplus for studying. But I don't see the problem with somebody with more business acumen using the journey to get somewhere. You can both enjoy the hunt and the barbecue. You don't have to pick one.
by c-linkage | 2025-05-11 19:03:23+00:00
> deploying native applications is simply too costly.

I do not understand why people hold this impression, especially in corporate environments.

Windows supports both system and per-user deployments; the latter so you don't even need administrator rights. And with Intune, deployments can be pulled or pushed.

Many desktop applications are written in .Net so you don't even need to install the runtime because it's preinstalled on the operating system.

Even ClickOnce deployments -- which you can deploy on the web or on a file share -- pretty much make deployments painless.

EDIT: For the naysayers: please then explain to me why Steam is so successful at deploying large games on multiple platforms?
by AlchemistCamp | 2025-05-11 19:03:34+00:00
Partner doesn't mean that at all.

Warren Buffet and Charley Munger were partners. So were Jobs and Woz. Or Buffet and Gates while playing Bridge many times. There's absolutely nothing romantic or sexual about the word "partner" itself, though of course partnerships exist in those realms as well as in business, sports, music, dance and countless other pursuits.
by busymom0 | 2025-05-11 19:03:34+00:00
Make sure to sanitize the content before inserting if you use this approach.

> Warning: This is a security risk if the string to be inserted might contain potentially malicious content. When inserting user-supplied data you should always consider using a sanitizer library, in order to sanitize the content before it is inserted.

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Element/inn...
by g9yuayon | 2025-05-11 19:03:38+00:00
I'm more curious about how much cost of customer service can Klarna cut by using AI , and how much marginal improvement to their customer service can Klarna achieve. Customer service should be an amazing application to AI: AI solves X% of the problems, and for the remaining 1 - X% of the problems, customers will tell the system deterministically, which means the company can continuously improve their systems with customer feedbacks.
by clarkevans | 2025-05-11 19:04:20+00:00
Dissemination takes work. Materials in the right languages are needed. Finding the minimum necessary detail and visuals help. Delivery to new parents has to be done when they need the information, else they won't be receptive or remember. Then you need to get these materials into the birthing centers, to midwifes and nurses, etc. An evaluation component is also helpful to see if the approach can be improved, etc. Having this done in a repeatable way is important, every day there are new parents.

I don't see the price tag for this, but a few million dollars isn't all that much given the complexity of the dissemination challenge. It's probably a program but likely not an entire department. Curating knowledge and getting it to right people's attention at the right time is hard work. Did you see the materials they produce/disseminate?

https://safetosleep.nichd.nih.gov/resources/order
by TonyTrapp | 2025-05-11 19:05:22+00:00
The CRT is not part of the operating system, unless you count the UCRT on Windows 10 onwards (yes there is also a MSVCRT copy in the Windows folder that Microsoft strongly discourages you from using, so let's ignore that for now). So unless you link against the system-provided UCRT, you will have to either ship a dynamic or a static copy of the C runtime, and linking it statically will be smaller because that will only contain the few string and time functions used by the program, instead of the whole CRT.
by throwanem | 2025-05-11 19:05:25+00:00
"More Catholic than the pope," I believe that may also mean, referring not to loyalty but to intolerably unctuous and hypocritical sanctimony.

We do have that expression in this language, and "papist" is one of the old anti-Catholic (anti-Irish, anti-Italian, anti-Latin) slurs that actually survives, however deracinated, to the present.

One example of the sort of such slurs that did not survive is 'mackerel-snapper,' deriving from the pre-Vatican II meat fast observed on Fridays, which is also what first put a fish sandwich on McDonald's menu.
by smcin | 2025-05-11 19:05:31+00:00
Also I should have given more prominent mention of this site which IMO is more worthy and actionable than Wingefors' private physical archive:

https://delistedgames.com/

"Welcome to Delisted Games, a growing archive of 2,163 games you can't play" from game console libraries, Steam, etc. ("the town criers of video game disappearances... We research, catalog, and inform about today’s digital gaming landscape (hellscape) including store delistings, online service shutdowns and, simply put, cultural erasure").

(mentioned on HN previously in connection with the PS4 debacle [0]).

I mean there's a legitimate discussion to be had about game lifecycles and between Steam, Kickstarter, games publishers, video game consoles, value resellers like GOG, HumbleBundle, about what are more transparent, ethical ways to publish(/unpublish) and monetize games throughout their lifecycle, to different constituencies of player:

- early adopters/ alpha playtesters, who are happy with the tradeoff of a buggy and incomplete game they can play online with friends in return for a deep discount, early access, the ability to positively influence game devpt, maybe some swag or convention events

- beta playtesters, who expect a reasonably complete and stable game, an active community, forums, developers who are reponsive, regular (monthly/quarterly) bug rollups and fixes, etc.

- main-phase, who are happy to pay full price for a complete, bug-free game with tutorials, user guides, multilanguage online help, forums, etc., and have an expectation that they can quickly start an online multplayer/remote game with friends, strangers and AI.

- owners who still expect a basic post-lifecycle ability to play a game solo or against AI or other existing owners (after the publisher has disappeared or the game site has taken down infrastructure servers, achievements, forums, etc.) Such as happened with 'Pandemic' and Asmodee.

- to what extent should publishers be able to use exclusivity to lock in owners and extract revenues? what happens to digital rights after the monetizing is over? Can they retroactively convert a sale to a licensing (time-limited, region-locked, limited rights to play with friends and family...)? This is something where consumer law and regulators can limit bad behavior.

As a positive example of how to do this profitably and ethically, Civilization (Sid Meier Games/ Firaxis Games).

[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25134263