MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by bitwize | 2025-05-01 00:54:15+00:00
This is one of the things that made people hate Vista. By default it was set to preload things into RAM in the background, gobbling up memory and potentially slowing the system down, both during the preload procedure and if you happened to want to run a program that the preload procedure didn't account for.

Windows 7 was so good because it was Vista without (much of) the bullshit.
by maxerickson | 2025-05-01 00:54:15+00:00
It is our good fortune that we are not restricted to the headline.

In an emailed statement provided to WIRED, Bradley Moss, communication director for the office of research services at NIH, confirmed the halt in research activity. “NIH has implemented a research pause—referred to as a safety stand-down—at the Integrated Research Facility at Fort Detrick.
by Calavar | 2025-05-01 00:54:41+00:00
Research can broadly be divided into three categories:

1. Experimental research: Form a hypothesis. Create datapoints by some process: could be mixing chemicals in test tubes, giving patients enrolled in a study a medication, pointing a telescope at the sky, or going out to the Amazon to count bugs. Use those datapoints to confirm or refute the hypothesis.

2. Retrospective research: Form a hypothesis. Use data that already exists and is archived somewhere to confirm or refute the hypothesis.

3. Descriptive research: No hypothesis. Look at existing data and/or published research and comment on trends or the patterns that exist therein.

"Experimental" covers everything and anything you would do in a wet lab. You don't need a wet lab to do research of types 2 or 3 - you can do that in an office or at home. That said, I don't believe we have any confirmation that they used the word experimental in the actual order.
by skydhash | 2025-05-01 00:56:54+00:00
I moved to Linux and use real editors. Problem solved! /jk

Jokes aside, I did buy a 2019 dell latitude laptop, and it's an old CPU, but it's still amazed me how well it's working. The iGPU is aweful for anything 3d heavy (Gnome's compositor), but still good for anything else.

I also have an MBA and it's quite fast, but all those "you should do this the Apple way" is frustrating.

After a long look at my computing activities, I do not need much other than Emacs, Librewolf, and a video player. I still use the MBA for rare usage like Balsamiq and important video calls.
by gerdesj | 2025-05-01 00:57:24+00:00
MSO defaults to "load at startup". LibreOffice will if you let it (there is a small difference in propriety here).

The worst offender by far is Outlook (which isn't really MSO but looks like it is, or is it?)

Against an on prem Exchange, I get way better performance from Evolution (Linux) than Outlook (Windows).
by naikrovek | 2025-05-01 00:57:54+00:00
Tell your product owners that they should actually use the product they’re owning. And not just use it, but be a power user of that tool. Not a professional user, not a casual user; use the tool at least six hours a day.

I use YouTube 6+ hours a day and I have for probably 10 years, and I don’t even work there. (I have a few annoying personality limitations which make it so that I usually work better with YouTube on in the background, and NOT on autoplay, autoplay always chooses something I don’t want to see/hear; I know that because I use the tool a lot.)

I can tell you that it has steadily and continually gotten worse in that 10 year time. “I have to come up with stories or I won’t have a job” no you don’t, but even if you did, there are so many things YouTube needs more that enlarged thumbnails with visible compression artifacts.
by michaelmrose | 2025-05-01 00:58:32+00:00
If you measured with a stop watch I'm sure it would take more than 2 seconds but to be accurate it is perceptibly brief whereas others startup is perceptibly to them slow. Why?

When fast startup is enabled shutting down does a reboot and then a hibernate so that it can wake up from hibernate when you start up but with the same effect as a fresh start. This is generally much faster than a full startup. This should and in many cases must be disabled to dual boot another OS.

Different hardware takes longer to initialize which may delay startup. This is especially true of failing hardware which may whilst in bad shape continue to work after a fashion but take far longer to initialize.

Some hardware is MUCH slower than others.
by vjvjvjvjghv | 2025-05-01 00:59:18+00:00
I often wish Word from around 2000 back. Back then the software was straightforward and did what it was supposed to do without much fuzz. And the speed on modern hardware would be crazy.

The latest Word version does all kinds of weird stuff around formatting and numbering. I often get documents with messed up heading numbers or lists and I have no idea how to fix them. Nothing works.
by crote | 2025-05-01 01:00:28+00:00
The skin effect is frequency-related, with higher frequencies resulting in a thinner "skin". The grid frequency is low enough that it doesn't really play a huge role: a 1000mm2 aluminum conductor has a 10% higher resistance at 60Hz AC compared to DC.

One thing to remember is that it is common for the conductor to have a strengthening core: this allows operation at a higher temperature (which means a higher current), and it allows for a longer distance between support towers (which means lower construction costs). If you're going to put some poorly-conducting steel or carbon fiber in the center of the conductor anyways, why worry about the skin effect?

Besides, those conductors are massive already. At the highest voltage levels, a single set of conductors is carrying multiple gigawatts of power. Even if it were technically viable, would you want to build a single 16GW connection? If it fails, you're going to have serious trouble compensating for that - it's probably wiser to build it as 4x 4GW connections.

HVDC also has its own issues with converter losses and not being able to easily step down to lower voltages. It's very nice for distances in the hundreds of kilometers, but it's just not a viable alternative for short city-to-city links.
by thealexliang | 2025-05-01 01:00:34+00:00
"Apple willfully chose not to comply with this Court’s Injunction. It did so with the express intent to create new anti-competitive barriers which would, by design and in effect, maintain a valued revenue stream; a revenue stream previously found to be anti-competitive. That it thought this Court would tolerate such insubordination was a gross miscalculation. As always, the cover-up made it worse. For this Court, there is no second bite at the apple."

I'd recommend skimming through the whole thing because Judge Rogers just eviscerates Apple over and over.
by adam-p | 2025-05-01 01:01:07+00:00
I don't get into truncation much, but I do mention the risk of:

a) failing to truncate on a code point sequence boundary (a bug React Native iOS used to have)[1], and

b) failing to truncate on a grapheme cluster boundary (a bug React Native Android seems to still have)[2]

[1]: https://adam-p.ca/blog/2025/04/string-length/#utf-16-code-un...

[2]: https://adam-p.ca/blog/2025/04/string-length/#unicode-code-p...
by spicybright | 2025-05-01 01:01:09+00:00
I wish libreoffice was better. I've tried replacing office with it and every time it has the weirdest stuff going on.

UI is clunky, importing/exporting office made docs is glitchy, and I've even run into actions that don't get pushed to the undo stack.

I know this stuff always gets slowly ironed out, and the devs are working really hard, but it's just a shame it's never been a viable alternative for so long.
by sib | 2025-05-01 01:01:35+00:00
Well, if it's easier for Google to require it of everyone instead of a subset (and less risky if they should happen to miss someone who's not a "trader"), then it is entirely reasonable to blame it on the EU.

Before the rule was put in place by the EU, Google didn't require it; after they did. I'm sure Google didn't go through the design, development, testing, compliance and legal analysis of deploying this requirement for the fun of it.
by cyberax | 2025-05-01 01:01:41+00:00
Consoles are sold at-cost to consumers, or sometimes even at a loss: https://www.pcmag.com/news/microsoft-loses-up-to-200-on-ever...

iPhones are sold at a _premium_.

If iPhones were sold at-cost to consumers, then Apple would have been right to ask developers to pay 30% fees.
by Spooky23 | 2025-05-01 01:03:00+00:00
I used it for a a bootcamp class to study for an exam. I recorded about 50 hours of lecture and Q&A, and was able to generate good Anki cards from it. What was awesome was that I could ask “make a list of all of the topics the instructor thought would be questions on the exam” and it did a great job at that.

The podcast thing is more a novelty to me.
by PedroBatista | 2025-05-01 01:03:11+00:00
Love it or hate it, CMake is more or less the de facto build system for C/C++

And just like any build system for everything language/stack, there is a small group of hardcore "enthusiasts" who create and push their true build tech to rule them all and then there is the large majority of people who have to deal with it and just want to build the damn thing.
by dc396 | 2025-05-01 01:03:26+00:00
"Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD) and Shame:

Narcissists are often described as having a shame-based disorder, where admitting wrongdoings can trigger feelings of shame and inadequacy. They are unwilling to accept blame or acknowledge mistakes because it threatens their grandiose sense of self. [...]"

See also: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/shame-guilt-and-thei...
by ethbr1 | 2025-05-01 01:05:42+00:00
The England and Wales fertility rate is 1.44. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cnvj3j27nmro

Without immigration, future demographics will be fucked. Which means government finances, welfare, and the NHS.

That's one thing I don't get about anti-immigration opinions: it's burying ones head in the sand about demographic problems.

The real debate, if there is one to be had, should be about enculturation / integration and policies around that.

(Because unless developed countries substantially increase their fertility rate, immigration is a non-negotiable requirement)
by mrandish | 2025-05-01 01:07:13+00:00
Between Office's increasingly bloated size, slow booting and super annoying CoPilot icon right where I'm working (which still can't be turned off in OneNote) - I'm on the edge of dumping Office. I pretty much only use OneNote and a little OneDrive (3% of the included storage plan) to sync files between machines and I run Word and Powerpoint less than a dozen times a year combined.

Even as a paying customer, all the Office apps and services are now so aggressively pushy it's gone beyond "Rude", is now passing "Annoying" and accelerating toward "Yeah, I can't do this." I just want to ask Satya "How much more do I have to pay you to simply STFU and let me NOT use (and not even know about) services I already pay for but don't need?"

I bought three 12 month Office subs for $49 each on a black Friday blow-out three years ago. The last one will expire in January and if it doesn't get better, I'll be ending my 30 year Office relationship. I'll probably go to Libre Office and replace OneDrive cloud storage with SyncThing + my own server. I'd be fine to keep paying $50 a year for the 5% of Office I actually use - but only if I can use the exact Office I had around three years ago before it was so annoying.
by cantrecallmypwd | 2025-05-01 01:07:25+00:00
There's only one possible route for removal but it requires simultaneous impeachment and removal of POTUS and all 18 in the USPLOS too. That would require immense pressure on a handful of Republicans to break from party such that 218 House and 68 Senate votes could be achieved. Furthermore, the Senate would need to agree upon a non-MAGA interim POTUS or not appoint one, and then extraordinary POTUS elections would need to be held and the electorate not make the same mistakes again. Odds of occurring: snowball's chance. Not gonna happen.

The action alternative to that is massive numbers of calls to representatives, attendance of town halls, and large-scale protests to attempt to limit political maneuvering. People in America aren't rich and can't afford to take time off work to protest, so protesting off hours is more convenient... seems kind of insulting and elitist for you to dismiss civic participation.

And then there's the people who shout "impeach" or other absurdities, or criticize others taking actions while doing nothing themselves.
by naikrovek | 2025-05-01 01:07:29+00:00
> It's not bad or evil, but let's also not pretend that it isn't damaging

It’s not any more damaging than getting married in some cases, or staying married.

Marriage is not some sacred thing to be treasured. It CAN be, but it isn’t inherently good. Inherently, marriage is a legal thing, and that’s about it; being married changes how taxes, confidential medical information, and death are handled, and that’s about it. Every meaning or significance beyond those legal things is up to the happy couple, including how, if, and when, to end the marriage.
by epistasis | 2025-05-01 01:08:30+00:00
Almost all of US debt is internal. Social security and the federal reserve are the two biggest holders. Only 25% is in other countries, and the largest single other country is Japan at 3%.

If there is a secret Trump plan to devalue the dollar and force us treasury holders to accept cheaper longer term debt, the biggest plenary will be to social security.

One visualization:

https://www.visualcapitalist.com/charted-heres-who-owns-u-s-...

(Though on the last numbers I saw had the UK and China with far more similar amounts of holdings.$

Calling T-bills debt is only half the picture. They function more like dollars, whose value can be deflated or increased after issuance merely by changing interest rates.
by tzs | 2025-05-01 01:08:33+00:00
> In that area of the country, the ground freezes in winter, and digging becomes very difficult, which would make repairs that much more delayed and expensive.

Could underground lines be placed in tunnels large enough for repair crews to reach where they need to work by going through the tunnel?

Well, I'm sure they could for runs that aren't too long, so perhaps the question should be over what distance is it economically and technically feasible to run underground lines in tunnels human accessible maintenance tunnels?
by bee_rider | 2025-05-01 01:08:59+00:00
I don’t like Windows. And it is baffling to me that startup speed is a figure-of-merit nowadays given how absurdly fast drives have gotten.

With those caveats aside, I must unfortunately acknowledge that Windows startup is perfectly fine (Linux is faster, but again this competition is pointless. Unless you are some compute infrastructure supplier and need to boot a million VMs a day or whatever).

Sometimes when people post with baffling Windows performance problems, it is because their experience comes from corporate laptops with some mandatory spyware from IT.
by neilv | 2025-05-01 01:09:35+00:00
It's not clear to me that this story falls into the category of corrupt/insane/petty that a lot of recent actions seem to.

I don't know about this particular lab, but when someone was trying to build a BSL-4 in a dense urban neighborhood of Boston, there were a lot of protests, including by medical workers and scientists. It seemed there's a history of BSL-4 incidents, and the facilities aren't as secure as the salespeople claim.

So, it's conceivable that the stand-down is warranted. If so, a different question is whether safety is the goal, or it's merely a convenient pretext for some other goal.
by mikaelsouza | 2025-05-01 01:09:51+00:00
I think the way macOS and Windows loads stuff after login is a bit different though.

Since most macOS installations use FileVault by default, the login screen looks like it loads only stuff related to the login screen and not anything from the OS. Windows on the other hand, seems to load more stuff in the spinning thingy screen that appears before the login screen.

For instance, if you disable Filevault on macOS, the OS seems to load before the login screen, and then when you input your login and password, it loads to the desktop instantly. That would be a better comparison to a Windows machine, I think.

That said, I am not sure if this is how things really works, but that's how it looks like to work for me. Sorry if I spread any misinformation here :)
by pixl97 | 2025-05-01 01:09:52+00:00
>It is weird to see them go out of their way to disable conventional security features on their product

Honestly with most developers I know, unless they also have a strong security background, it's not weird or surprising at all. Security features (almost?) never make debugging easier. When confronted with a failure that presents challenges devs will disable things that limit access or otherwise randomize the output in order to catch the problem and then 'hopefully' come tighten it back up when they are done. Unfortunately the second part rarely happens unless you have security auditors follow you around.
by _carbyau_ | 2025-05-01 01:10:09+00:00
> the US represents only 8% of China's exports and only 2% of China's GDP. Losing that will hurt

Just noting that trade can often find a new country so it's unlikely that 8% will all simply vanish. How much will vanish I don't know, but not all.

Whereas it is near certain that items going into the US will be priced higher. Tariffs have to be policed after all.
by galleywest200 | 2025-05-01 01:10:20+00:00
> Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers ordered the iPhone-maker to allow developers to steer users to alternative methods of paying for services or subscriptions offered in the App Store. The company also can no longer impose fees in such scenarios or restrict the ability of software-makers to offer links or otherwise communicate alternate payment options with consumers.

The ruling means this starts immediately it seems, as I cannot see a date listed anywhere.
by nl | 2025-05-01 01:10:23+00:00
On Macs double dash will be converted to an em-dash (in some apps?) unless you untick "use smart quotes and dashes". See https://superuser.com/questions/555628/how-to-stop-mac-to-co...

I'm on Firefox and it doesn't seem to affect me, but I'm pretty sure I've seen it in Safari.
by donavanm | 2025-05-01 01:11:00+00:00
Long term savings, productivity increases, and infrastructure investments. Buy less today to have more tomorrow. The us individual hardly saves at all, the US gov/society has financed decades of deficit spending n the outcome of ww2, 20th century global industrialization, and the “exorbitant privilege” of financing/coordinating it.

Common opinion is that china has the opposite problem, with massive productivity outputs being shipped overseas and a population base who cant/wont consume their own outputs.
by Moto7451 | 2025-05-01 01:11:36+00:00
That varies by state. In Georgia it is $20 plus a mailing fee of $1 for the tag itself. My electric car has an over $200 registration fee for the same reasons that are being proposed. I’d need to drive a hilarious distance every year to be on even terms with the gas taxes paid to the state.

On the bright side I pay 1/3 the cost for gas per mile, so there’s still a lot of financial incentive to stick with my EV.
by Barrin92 | 2025-05-01 01:11:59+00:00
>Google really doesn’t wan’t anyone who isn’t a company developing apps for Android lol

I mean, it's Android. You can publish an app yourself or through an alternative app store. Given that you have options on the platform I don't have a big problem with Google enforcing pretty stringent requirements on their own store. In fact I prefer a pretty clear dividing line between trusted apps in the Play Store and 3rd party apps at your own risk. There was so much crap in the Play Store it was often hard to tell what's a scam and what wasn't.
by aristofun | 2025-05-01 01:12:13+00:00
Bad news: you need to find a backup plan to wait it out. Remember, it’s not about you, it’s about current economy and politics. Sometthing out of your control.

Good news: everything ends. Including bad times and hypes. You and your skills will be in demand one day. Guaranteed. As long as you keep them sharp and keep learning.

If i were you (in fact i was in somewhat similar situation long time ago) - I’d try to start a startup, build and sell some product. One after another, until something sticks. Even if nothing sticks - i get out of it with valuable skills and experience.
by nine_k | 2025-05-01 01:12:16+00:00
Office is large and may not load instantly. If you use it all day anyway, preloading and not closing it makes sense. The same way I preload Emacs and Firefox.

Of course if you do not use Office all day, and are OK to wait until it loafs on demand, the preloading should be turned off.

(And, frankly, if you don't use Office, why do you need Windows anyway? To play games that don't run on a Steamdeck?)
by sershe | 2025-05-01 01:12:18+00:00
I don't think in terms of forgiveness, there's nothing to forgive for. I've greatly enjoyed smoking, being well aware of its ill effects. After some time I have reevaluated and decided the benefits (that I still miss) are not worth the costs for me.

1) The important part is FOR ME. Back to my original comment, some doctors claim you need 5 hours of cardio a week for optimal heart health and some papers even claim prolonged sitting is harmful regardless of exercise. Woe the furniture maker that sold you a chair to sit upon while commenting, they are harming society by destroying your health! You could also think of coffee, beer, meat, sun exposure, gasoline, cycling accidents, extreme sports; or million things known only to the state of California to cause cancer.

Sure, smoking is a lot more harmful than most things, but why is it that you get to decide which tradeoff is reasonable and which isn't?

So,

2) While I was smoking I was engaging in voluntary transactions with tobacco companies.

While tobacco companies are not angels, and do a lot of shitty things tangential to their main function, like most organizations, I am grateful they provided me with cheap, good quality, varied cigarettes back when I wanted them. That itself is in no way evil.

Deciding for others with moral indignation how they should live though, is.
by naikrovek | 2025-05-01 01:12:40+00:00
I am from the US and I have been paying attention.

That doesn’t mean I understand wtf is going on in RFK Jr.’s mind.

Trump is the autocrat of the bunch. I understand his thinking. He is just the enormous parasite all the other little parasites are feeding off of, but that doesn’t explain anything. I need more information on … actually I don’t. The entire party is corrupt. There’s no way to know their rationale other than “scrambling for power” I guess.
by alwillis | 2025-05-01 01:13:12+00:00
I’m an iOS user and I can tell you Apple is not doing a good job keeping the App Store free of scams.

No App Store is going to be 100% free of scams.

In my experience of having downloaded several hundred iOS apps over the years, it’s pretty difficult for most people to download a scam app unless a user is specifically trying to download free, fringe apps from developers you’ve never heard of.

But if you’re interested in mainstream apps that address real issues by developers who are attempting to make excellent apps that take advantage of Apple’s technology and ecosystem, the quality of iOS apps has never been better.

I just checked—the revenue of the App Store was over $100 billion dollars in FY 2024. That says to me customers are finding useful apps they’ll willing to subscribe to.
by poincaredisk | 2025-05-01 01:13:24+00:00
Counterargument: Linux is almost 35 years old (wow, time flies). Rust for Linux is a project started at the moment of biggest rust hype. It's understandable that the Linux maintainers are wary of introducing too much rust dependence, in case, for example, all the rust people leave in 5 years and current/old maintainers are stuck with it forever