MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by RKFADU_UOFCCLEL | 2025-05-19 18:14:39+00:00
That's how I do it. I don't see the draw for Windows as the main OS, especially with Windows 10+ being dumbed down beyond belief and having seconds of lag to do anything at all. Seems even from this thread that people just want the convenience of a gaming rig in the same box as their work (which is a security issue because games are full of remote code execution vulnerabilities).
by randunel | 2025-05-19 18:14:56+00:00
> Until 2020, Microsoft had not made any public statements about Wine. However, the Windows Update online service will block updates to Microsoft applications running in Wine. On 16 February 2005, Ivan Leo Puoti discovered that Microsoft had started checking the Windows Registry for the Wine configuration key and would block the Windows Update for any component.[125] As Puoti noted: "It's also the first time Microsoft acknowledges the existence of Wine."

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wine_(software)
by dmkolobov | 2025-05-19 18:15:20+00:00
Maybe? I'd say it depends on what you're rendering. We rendered HTML that we created ourselves, filled in with data that we parsed and validated. Styles across the documents generated were also largely the same.

If your job is to render arbitrary user HTML, this could get much more hairy. First of all, print rendering at the time(and probably now) was notoriously finicky. Things like adjusting colors, improper rendering of SVGs, pagination were difficult. It took a lot of effort to get right.

Furthermore, if you're sending arbitrary HTML, you now have a much larger security exploit surface. If someone figures out how to call `addEventListener` within the page context, they can snoop on every PDF generated by that page.
by BugheadTorpeda6 | 2025-05-19 18:15:45+00:00
It's one of the last platforms that people still write a lot of hand written assembly for. Part of this is down to the assembler being very ergonomic and there being a very capable macro system available with macros provided for most system services. Part of it is due to the OS predating C becoming popular, so there are no headers files (just assembler macros) for many older system services (you can thunk them into C compatible calls, but it's sometimes more of a headache than just writing in assembler). Definitely C is becoming more popular lately on the platform, but you will still find a lot of people programming in assembler for a living in 2025. Its probably the only subfield of programming that uses handwritten assembly in that way outside of embedded systems.
by bsnnkv | 2025-05-19 18:15:48+00:00
I've yet to find anything comparable feature-wise on Linux - and they all come with the huge downside of having to roll your own cohesive settings widget ecosystem for basic everyday things like WiFi and Bluetooth connectivity. I run Cosmic Epoch on my old Macbook which is better, but again, feature-wise, it's just not comparable for serious work.
by graemep | 2025-05-19 18:16:37+00:00
> 57 million UK adults getting £1000 a month

You phase it in. You start with something a little more than UC of, say £400/month for people not receiving pensions. You increase as it can be afforded. it gives people a great deal of security.

So far fewer people (37m of working age) getting less than half the amount you came up with costs. That is £278bn offset by reducing welfare spending. You would need to continue housing benefit and some others if it was that low so you could not dismantile the entire system.

> It'll leave you dying on the street in 1/3rd of the country

I doubt that - it is not a decent income, but most people would earn on top of it. That is the whole point. It would give people a greater incentive to work than the current system which reduces welfare if they earn. A lot of people will not work because they are no better off if they do.

OBR projects welfare spending to be £338bn by 29/30 anyway.

You are leaving a lot of things out. For one thing if it was taxable income (as pensions and many benefits are) tax revenues would increase too as most people would pay on it.

It would provide a huge economic stimulus which would further increase tax revenues. People on low incomes spend more of their income. Some of that would be on things with consumption taxes.

It would give people a great deal of financial security.

You cannot calculate the effects of a huge change like this on the assumption that nothing else changes.
by xboxnolifes | 2025-05-19 18:16:37+00:00
My only big gripe with WSL right now is GUI applications. wslg is not good, and the only good experience is when applications have a good remote development UX such as vscode.

Another, smaller, gripe is networking. Because of how WSL is networked, I've run into edge-case issues with connecting to networked applications running in WSL from Windows.
by matvore | 2025-05-19 18:16:46+00:00
The Wikipedia sort for the languages is as I stated above, with Literary Chinese and Japanese between Wu Chinese and Yue Chinese. I explained why it was sorted that way, because radical is considered first. You could not explain why Japanese appeared between Wu and Yue because you insisted and continue to insist that radicals are not used.

I didn't say sorting is never done by stroke count alone. But I have seen radical+residual stroke count much more often than stroke count alone. Probably a result of the content I'm accessing. It's mostly Japanese and not intended for children.

The dictionary and non-dictionary sorting distinction that you make doesn't sound like a real thing. The audience, the country, and the number of items sorted are bigger factors. But you're not wrong in that stroke count is sometimes used alone.
by geerlingguy | 2025-05-19 18:16:51+00:00
Part of the appeal of Homebrew (which is also a blessing and a curse from time to time) is the fact that packages are maintained, meaning people make conscious decisions when to pull in updated versions or stick with an older release, and have some logic behind all that mess.

There are always tradeoffs with any packaging system, no matter how transparent/simple.
by KingOfCoders | 2025-05-19 18:17:09+00:00
Using WSL on Win11. I would prefer Linux but I never got used to Open Office/Gimp/... and need to use PowerPoint / Affinity. But WSL mostly works, and added some tools and config to make it useful with WezTerm

https://www.amazingcto.com/upgrading-wsl-with-zsh-and-comman...
by jasonthorsness | 2025-05-19 18:17:33+00:00
I totally agree and will join you on the hill. I used Linux exclusively at my job for two years straight and now do the same job but from Windows 11 with WSL 2 on the same physical ThinkPad T41 laptop. Windows gets the basics right more than Linux did (sleep states, display, printing). And as the OP notes; it makes it easy to run multiple distributions and never fear that something I install or reconfigure within the WSL2 terminal will screw up my host. Having a different OS improves isolation in this regard, not at a technical level but for me making mistakes and entering commands in the wrong place, since Windows does not accept Linux commands. JetBrains and VSCode both have great support for WSL2.
by daveguy | 2025-05-19 18:17:41+00:00
WSL is massively slower than Linux. Not just the 10% or so for VM, but probably 50-90% slower for disk access. It takes many times longer to start tmux. It has update bugs that crash open terminals and that's not even part of the regular windows forced-update fiasco. In short, it's garbage. It's one of the primary reasons I moved back to Linux for my daily driver.
by danenania | 2025-05-19 18:17:49+00:00
Right, you have the same issues to consider when shipping a breaking major version upgrade to a new library in any language/ecosystem.

That said, you do see a cultural difference in node-land vs. many other ecosystems where library maintainers are much quicker to go for the new major version vs. iterating on the existing version and maintaining backward compatibility. I think that's what people are mostly really referring to when they complain about node/npm.

Webpack is a good example—what's it on now, version 5? If it was a Go project, it would probably still be on v1 or maybe v2. While the API arguably does get 'better' with each major version, in practice a lot of the changes are cosmetic and unnecessary, and that's what frustrates people I think. Very few people really care how nice the API of their bundler is. They just want it to work, and to receive security updates etc. Any time you spend on upgrading and converting APIs is basically a waste—it's not adding value for users of your software.
by ActorNightly | 2025-05-19 18:17:51+00:00
The thing to understand about any model architecture is that there isn't really anything special about one or the other - as long as the process differentiable, ML can learn it.

You can build an image generator that basically renders each word on one line in an image, and then uses a transformer architecture to morph the image of the words into what the words are describing.

They only big difference is really efficiency, but we are just taking stabs at the dark at this point - there is work that Google is doing that eventually is going to result in the most optimal model for a certain type of task.
by password4321 | 2025-05-19 18:18:15+00:00
Related: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/evalcenter/evaluate-windows-... (edit: not https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/downloads/virt...)

> We currently package our virtual machines for four different virtualization software options: Hyper-V (Gen2), Parallels, VirtualBox, and VMware. These virtual machines contain an evaluation version of Windows that expires on the date posted. If the evaluation period expires, the desktop background will turn black, you will see a persistent desktop notification indicating that the system is not genuine, and the PC will shut down every hour.

Edit: Oops, dead link -- the dev tools evaluation VM hasn't been released for 6+ months. But they do offer Windows evaluations ISO's after registration.
by felipellrocha | 2025-05-19 18:18:21+00:00
Last week I had to download a dependency on Homebrew. It had been a while since I had downloaded anything as my personal device had been stable for a long time, so dependencies were out of date. Well, homebrew decided to upgrade EVERYTHING before it started the new download, all without my prompt. An hour later, I was met with a device that was full of issues, and it took me an entire week to fully get back to normal. Not saying I hate homebrew, but I welcome any competition in this space.
by throwanem | 2025-05-19 18:18:51+00:00
No, I don't believe so. That just reduces to "you learn to spend what's in your pocket" again. That sentence turns on the verb "learn" for a reason.

If I had to guess, I would say I've been braced by someone whose morning was complicated by treating "take with food" as a little too much more of a suggestion than an instruction. No judgment. Nothing I haven't run into before.
by sgt101 | 2025-05-19 18:18:52+00:00
In the spirit of engaging in open conversation to try and broaden my mind and understanding, may I say that I feel your statement "The tax systems doesn’t create wealthy people, it just doesn’t cut their legs out from under them" begs a question: What is it that creates wealthy people?

I think that there are a few things that are needed for lots people to become wealthy (of course, the ability to exact physical violence on others can enable a few to become very very wealthy as well).

1) Property rights that are equally enforced. That you have important friends shouldn't give you the ability to take my business.

2) Liquidity. There needs to be mechanisms that enable investment.

3) Civil infrastructure & some sort of safety net. People who are frightened of what awaits their children, or them in their old age, or of sickness, are reluctant to invest. They will be happy to work themselves half to death, but even if they have enough money, they will be very very risk averse.

Is this what you think, or are there other mechanisms that you have in your mind?
by AStonesThrow | 2025-05-19 18:19:37+00:00
A few years ago I decided to build some credit with a Discover secured card. And when I researched Discover, I learned about why their acceptance was lower (higher merchant transaction fees) and their overseas acceptance was comparatively lower, and that they didn't have a single brick-and-mortar branch, and so with masochistic glee, I signed up!

Discover's credit card was a great idea, I feel. The cashback rewards I can earn at restaurants are great. The acceptance hasn't really been a barrier to spending, but unfortunately I cling to my Visa-based debit, "just in case" there are merchants who can't accept Discover -- what else would I do?

The lack of branches? No big deal, considering anything important can be done through their app or website. Which are very polished, attractive and functional. They don't even 2FA me from my Chromebook.

Their customer service is amazing. I mean, call in the middle of the night to a fluent English speaker who tells you where they're located?! They are so polite and patient! Best ever experience, really. In fact, my credit union's reps are really good too. It's a small blessing.

I did not need to open a Discover Checking account, and I can't remember why I did it, but I did. The Discover Bank debit card is different than their credit cards, and therefore acceptance may be even lower. I still get cashback rewards on it.

My finances are uncomplicated. I don't much enjoy dealing separately with two banks. I don't really need to. Except my credit union has no credit card to offer me, and Discover has no Visa to offer me. So I get along. We'll see how the Capital One thing goes.

Obligatory "Capital 1" related xkcd: https://m.xkcd.com/2206/
by frollogaston | 2025-05-19 18:19:44+00:00
If for some reason I could never use a MacBook again, it wouldn't be easy to decide between Windows or Linux as the host OS on a laptop. Do I want something that's intentionally user-hostile or something that's unintentionally broken a lot?

I'd at least try Linux cause I abhor Microsoft, but idk if it'd work out.
by evanjrowley | 2025-05-19 18:19:46+00:00
OpenSSH on Windows is great for the odd connection and SFTP session, but I still feel strongly that any serious usage should just stick with PuTTY and WinSCP. The GUI capabilities these provide are what Windows users are used to. The only benefit of built-in SSH is if you're working with some minimal image stuff, like Windows Server Core or Tiny11. IMHO.
by RetroTechie | 2025-05-19 18:19:50+00:00
Great work there!

As for Dusk OS: are there release tarballs/.zips or such anywhere available for download? (like for Collapse OS)

All I'm seeing is a reference to "target a release", which (I'm assuming) refers to some git function? Hoping to bypass the need for using git just to download & check archive's contents.
by dmurray | 2025-05-19 18:20:30+00:00
£1000 a month for a single person certainly sounds like poverty, but £2000 a month for a couple sounds more manageable. If they each find a side gig that pays just another £100 a week, they're suddenly into the top half of households [0] - even better than that outside London.

[0] https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/personal...
by duderific | 2025-05-19 18:20:51+00:00
> Rather than using a joystick, Asteroids used buttons for all it controls. There was “rotate left”, “rotate right”, “thrust”, “fire” and “hyperspace”. That many buttons really messes with me!

This really hit home for me. Having gravitated toward games with "simple" controls like PacMan, Crazy Climber, Space Invaders, Tron etc., I never evolved to master multiple button games like Defender, Asteroids etc.

For modern platforms, like Switch/Xbox/PS series, I'm hopelessly lost.
by mrandish | 2025-05-19 18:20:54+00:00
> a filmmaker can use a camera to make great films without understanding in detail how to build the camera, and there is probably not much of a predictable relationship between knowledge of how the camera works and quality of the resulting film.

This sentence conflates two different things to support a single point. One is true but the second is not. It's correct that a filmmaker does not need to know "how to build a camera" to make great films. However, a filmmaker certainly needs to know "how a camera works" to make a great film. And not just in the pedantic sense of where the Record button is but in the sense of a great violinist needing to know how their violin works (but not how to make a violin). The camera is the artistic instrument of cinema and using it well requires understanding how to leverage lens selection, aperture, shutter speed, exposure, focal plane, lighting, framing, etc to achieve the desired artistic outcome.

Another possible confusion in this sentence is the catch-all term "filmmaker" when the actual example is more narrowly focused on operation of the camera. Deciding how to apply a camera toward making a motion picture is generally the responsibility of the cinematographer. Sometimes uniquely skilled directors can also act as their own cinematographer but the roles and skill sets are as divergent as composer and violinist.
by daveguy | 2025-05-19 18:21:27+00:00
I wish I had a nickel for every time an AI hypester complained about goalposts. I thought it was clear that I was talking about AGI, or a general purpose intelligence on the level of humans. You know, what the hypesters have been saying is just around the corner if only they can have another trillion dollars. Sorry for the confusion

> That only demonstrates the possibilities yet to be explored. biology has millions-of-years head start; what's possible today could be balked out a few centuries ago by the same argument as yours.

Yes, we may only have a few centuries left to go before AGI. I was going with a few decades, but now that you mention it, a few centuries is more likely given we are running into Moore's Law limits with transistor technology.

> At a fundemental level, what holds back biology is all the other things it does (ala staying alive) and the limits imposed (e.g. heat etc) that a purpose-made device can optimise on.

You don't honestly believe that AGI will not have to deal with continuity, reliability, and heat dissipation issues that living things have to deal with, do you? All the more reason megawatts vs handful of watts is relevant. You just pointed out that it's not just an algorithmic optimization problem, but a much more complex problem of which we are barely scratching the surface.

> Seems we are arguing different things. I went back through the thread, and believe the proposition is: "us, humanity, being able to build AI or something being very close to that", which I translate as a comment on our literal species. I took your statement "From the energy efficiency perspective human brain is very, very effective computational machine" as being in that scope, and not just a reference to the current era (or Decade!).

I was replying to a literal statement about increased mechanical efficiency over biological efficiency. Which, in the case of AGI is completely inverted. Biological systems are so much more efficient that the comparison is embarrassing.

Also, I was saying our species is at least 3 decades from in-silico AGI. That doesn't mean we'll have some wild new tech that no one thought of next year. But the chances are so slim you might as well be saying we will genetically engineer flying pigs.
by wim | 2025-05-19 18:21:28+00:00
Depending on the threat model you want to protect against, yes. For example, although a revoked user doesn't have direct access to data anymore, they could technically collude with us to get future encrypted messages and then decrypt them. At the moment rekeying is only possible by exporting a workspace, changing its key (with a command line tool), and then reimporting it.
by tastyface | 2025-05-19 18:21:29+00:00
This “political opponent” is actively destroying much of what I love about my country. Feeding our hard-earned institutions straight into the wood chipper. Establishing his oligarch buddies as the new nobility. Illegally subverting democracy with the help of his rancid think tanks. People will be dying from lack of medical care, drinking tainted water and soiled food, getting sent to concentration camps with no recourse, wallowing in abject poverty with no safety net, and all the while these ghouls will be smirking and clinking their glasses, still somehow thinking that they’re the good guys.

The word “opponent” doesn’t even begin to describe it. Musk and his ilk must never be seen in public again without being swarmed by protestors. Let them wallow in their pathetic cult bunkers with their concubines for the rest of their natural lives.

And frankly, I’d rather have BYD or Xiaomi anyway.
by ddq | 2025-05-19 18:21:43+00:00
Humanity clearly must not go down this path, yet it does nothing to alter its trajectory. Those who study history are doomed to watch it repeat. It's hard not to develop distain for the collective stupidity, but more enraging is the impotent passivity of the best and the brightest. We seem unable to imagine a reachable future that is worth imagining, the daunting scale of our global problems stupefying us.

I'd love to change the world, but I don't know what to do. So I'll leave it up to you.
by KingOfCoders | 2025-05-19 18:21:52+00:00
(Used 15ys OSX, now Win11)

The biggest difference between OSX and Windows is, Apple adds (some say steal) functionality from competition, and open source. They make it neat. On windows to have something working, you need a WezTerm, Everything for search, Windhawk for a vertical taskbar on the right, Powertoys for an app starter, Folder Size for disc management etc. If you spend a lot of time, Win11 can be ok to work with.

If Powerpoint and Affinity would work on Linux, I'd use Linux though.
by trod1234 | 2025-05-19 18:22:02+00:00
Well that really can't happen until small businesses are on an even playing field with large business.

Most large businesses have been allowed to carve out moats, and other financial benefits through lobbying which small business do not have access to.

This includes preferential banking and loans where they effectively are receiving money-printed regardless of loss allowing them to leverage buyout competitors and increase the costs on everyone through monopoly.

Anyone aware of how money-printing fails can't help but be concerned as the number of businesses in a sector trend and sieve towards zero. The parasitic model eventually hits a critical saturation point where the unsound practices can't be offloaded anymore, and it all fails overnight after that point with no one capable of stopping it.

Then there is of course the fact that certain businesses due to regulatory simply cannot enter the market because the costs exceed the cashflow, or the requirements cannot ever occur. For example chartering banks post 2008, you need a board of directors that will be personally liable for decisions they make as a group, and they can't be compensated in any way. No ones going to sign up for that.

Then of course there is the scaling issue, where you can't be profitable until you have scaled past a specific point, which you can never reach without first being profitable.

All in all, there are quite a large number of problems where everything is set to collapse in the near future if nothing is done, but the only people who can do something are the ones that have in aggregate created the problem to begin with. A positive feedback system that runs away.
by HarHarVeryFunny | 2025-05-19 18:22:04+00:00
Actually the first versions of Grok had the same "left leaning" bias as other models since it turns out that bias is in the data that everyone is using to train on), so if Grok is now more right leaning it is because they have deliberately manipulated it to be so.

This also begs the question, does it make sense to call something a "bias" when that is the majority view (i.e. reflected in bulk of training data) ?