MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by martinald | 2025-06-25 12:57:53+00:00
I strongly suspect in time Microsoft will move to Linux, at least with things like Windows Server and embedded Windows. Then a gradual change for Windows desktop, or a sort of Windows Legacy vs Windows "Linux Workstation" desktop options. Linux kernel + some sort of 'super' WINE and a fallback tightly integrated Windows classic on a VM for certain programs.

Only problem is that the NT kernel in many ways is much better than the Linux kernel design wise (for example, the NT kernel can handle a total GPU driver crash and restore itself, which I think Linux would really struggle with - same with a lot of other drivers).

But Windows is increasingly a liability not an asset for Microsoft, especially in the server space. Their main revenue stream is Azure & Office 365 which is growing at double digits still, with Windows license growth flat.

At a minimum I'd expect a Linux based version of Windows Server and some sort of Workstation version of Windows, based on Linux.
Show HN: A postcard that becomes a game built from your photo
by absurdwebsite | 2025-06-25 12:57:56+00:00
Hi HN,

I built a small product where you can send someone a real postcard, and when they scan the QR code, it opens a browser-based game created from their photo.

There are a few game styles:

- A tile puzzle

- A retro 8-bit arcade game (with the person as the pixel character)

- A spot-the-difference game with subtle image edits

The games are handcrafted for each order and optimized for mobile. This was a fun side project combining some lightweight game design with personalized gift-giving.

You can see it here: https://ohlookitsme.com

Happy to answer questions or hear your thoughts!
by graemep | 2025-06-25 12:58:09+00:00
There will be s short term transition issue, but once Linux is installed and people have got used to it it should have fewer hassles.

I have been told its harder to manage config at scale but have not experience of it, and there are products that claim to do it.

Most non-nerds barely notice the desktop. its just a launcher for the handful of applications they use.
by andyg_blog | 2025-06-25 12:58:22+00:00
I'm skeptical these status ladders truly exist outside of the author's imagination, but then again I've never been part of that side of tech culture. It doesn't ring true of my own experience where pretty much every technical person sees other technical people on equal footing. This includes "big names" in tech that I've spoken with.

Edited to add: what's hypothetical about Alice being happy to run a coffee shop or Bob satisfied being a 90th percentile engineer (measured how?)? Plenty of these people exist, I've met them!
by mrweasel | 2025-06-25 12:59:02+00:00
For some reason I had also gotten the impression that Copilot was powered by OpenAI in some way. Perhaps the Microsoft OpenAI partnership gave me that impression.

I also wasn't aware that there where an OpenAI/Microsoft rivalry, I had the impression that Microsoft put a lot of money into OpenAI and that ChatGPT ran on Azure, or was at least available as an offering via Azure.
by bitmasher9 | 2025-06-25 12:59:27+00:00
I’d be interested in seeing if specific gaming activities is associated with increased gambling, as well as longitudinal studies to determine a timeline (first I opened loot boxes, then I started gambling).

I’m worried about the growing amount of gambling in society, specifically among young men. I’m shocked that sports betting was allowed to become legal in my country (US). I’m skeptical of the video game gateway hypothesis, but this is such an important problem that we need to look at it from multiple angles.
by swayvil | 2025-06-25 13:00:25+00:00
I agree.

What's more, governance processes for the forum shouldn't be anonymous at all. I mean flagging, voting, moderator action etc.

That's arguably the most important conversation here. Most in need of illumination by public discussion.

But so often (in these social media forums) it is taken one step beyond pseudonymity to full anonymity. Hidden from all eyes.

Why? I never heard a good argument.
by wunderwuzzi23 | 2025-06-25 13:00:25+00:00
The ecosystem is still very immature, and there is a lot of hype and unwarranted FOMO.

Here a security advisory for a popular Slack MCP server from Anthropic to highlight this: https://embracethered.com/blog/posts/2025/security-advisory-...

The fix was to deprecated the source code. But it's still up on npm with 10k+ downloads every week.

No CVE issued.
by blks | 2025-06-25 13:00:29+00:00
Well you need sleeper trains only for long distances usually. Quite often you can buy more expensive cabin with 1-2 sleeping seats (eg if travelling with a friend/partner). All of Russia is travelling in country via a sleeper train because of distances, slower trains, and sometimes more expensive/less optimal flights (eg a lot of flights are routed via Moscow). So it’s very normalised; I traveled this way since childhood, even going to Ukraine for holidays before the aggression started, and it was pretty fine experience, a bit rough in 90s/00s, but better now.
Show HN: Riff – minimalist tool for shareable thoughts (MVP, seeking feedback)
by nobody_nothing | 2025-06-25 13:01:03+00:00
Hi HN! We’re Alex & Dan, two solo founders building (https://www.riff.page) – a minimalist space for sharing lists, notes, and ideas.

It’s like a stripped-down Notion, focused on simplicity and sharing. You can create bite-sized posts, structured lists, or even entire lightweight sites by linking riffs together.

Some ways we’re using it:

- Shareable lists like “Books that changed my life” or “Best restaurants in LA” - Micro-blogs (just make an unordered riff) - Clean, client-facing docs (e.g. documentation for an internal tool, or a plaintext proposal) - Personal portfolios (by linking more than one riff together)

We’re keeping it intentionally basic for now. We want to learn how you might actually want to use something like this before we worry about making it mobile-friendly or build any more features.

What makes it different: - No feeds, no follows, no algorithmic noise - Emphasis on clean, public, meaningful snippets and lists. - Feels like “social by default” without feeling like social media

What we’d love from HN:

We’re evaluating two paths: 1. Double down on lists + micro-posts, or 2. Pivot towards “beautiful, shareable docs” – think an alternative to Google Docs in circumstances where it feels unprofessional to send a Google Doc, but a static PDF won’t do.

Would love your feedback, ideas, and use cases. Thanks for taking a look!
by andrewlgood | 2025-06-25 13:01:13+00:00
As a former Finance person, it is interesting to see the panicked attitude of programmers toward AI and the resulting loss of job opportunities. Programmers have eliminated more jobs than almost any other group of people on the planet.

I began working in the late 80’s. Throughout my career I saw the steady reduction in Finance organizations as roles were reduced and/or eliminated by the introduction of computers and software. First it was spreadsheets that eliminated the tedious work of writing on 13-column sheets to create financials. Then it was accounts payable clerks who were eliminated as EDI sent better quality information that needed less reconciliation and fewer humans touching it. I watched 90% of accounts receivable clerks who were eliminated as software could create the invoices from data in the system and automatically match payments to invoices. Then it was the bank reconciliations teams that were reduced as better information flow between the banks and companies allowed the automation of daily bank reconciliations. All of these were thought by the companies to be great advances due to technology. They eliminated “non-value-added” work and made companies more efficient. They also eliminated lots of jobs, particularly entry-level jobs.

My intuition is that other functions saw similar increases in labor productivity. Why is what is happening to programmers today any different?
by thinkingtoilet | 2025-06-25 13:01:30+00:00
I think it's probably worse than what the study is saying:

>ongitudinal data from Ireland to examine whether computer game engagement at 9-years-old (collected in 2007/8), and online gaming at 17 and 20

Imagine gaming 15 years ago compared to now. Today with things like micro-transactions and loot boxes there's much more gambling adjacent behavior in games.
by smusamashah | 2025-06-25 13:02:15+00:00
In the time of Windows 98 and XP, the Adobe photoshop and other many other software use to have easter egg in Help -> About screen. You open this dialog, press Ctrl + Alt + Shift + (Enter probably) and it use to roll credits very fast or show something else, jokes sometimes, or a different background animation. I distinctly remember it was more than just Adobe software that had these.

I use to try it in any tool tools I was playing around with (I use to try lots of software just to see what they do) and often found something here.

These stopped being a thing at some point and I eventually stopped looking for these.
by AnimalMuppet | 2025-06-25 13:02:16+00:00
> This is not a religious question—it's a philosophical and scientific one.

> There’s a line of thought—found in Advaita Vedanta...

Um... right. It's at least partly a religious question.

From a pure physics perspective, it seems to me that if this were true, then we should have been a lot more aware of things like neutrinos before they were "discovered". We should be a lot more aware of dark matter now. So, in practical terms, it doesn't work like that.
Show HN: ThinkTotem – turn boring books into engaging conversations
by ccarnino | 2025-06-25 13:02:21+00:00
Hi HN, I love reading non-fiction, but I kept catching myself skimming, zoning out, and forgetting most of what I’d “read”. To fix that I built ThinkTotem, a small web app that lets you upload a PDF/EPUB/article/YouTube link and then chat with the material until you actually understand it.

What it does

- Ingests PDFs, EPUBs, Word docs, plain-text URLs and even YouTube transcripts (≤ 4 MB for now)

- Maps key ideas, trims filler and surfaces the essential concepts automatically

- Runs an active-recall loop: Socratic questions, explain-it-back prompts, spaced-repetition style refreshers

- Tracks mastery so you can skip, revisit or move on

Why not just use ChatGPT/Claude?

- General LLM chat is open-ended: you have to decide what to ask next.

- ThinkTotem is purpose-built for reading: short conversational loops keep attention, progress is visible, and the questions are sequenced to test retention rather than entertain.

How it works under the hood

- Document is paraphrased, chunked, metadata, summaries and questions are created, and stored in Postgres

- Every chat turn includes in the context the most relevant part of the current chapter, the summary of the book and the last messages (no vectorisation of the content needed)

- A small policy model classifies each turn (summary vs. question vs. recall) so the chat stays focused.

- A spaced-repetition scheduler writes “due” concepts back into the queue and surfaces them at the right time.

- User voice is transformed into text and LLM generated text is transformed into speech with OpenAI TTS/STT models

- All LLM logic runs server-side (Next.js app); the front end is Next.js with React Server Components.

Pricing / openness

There’s a free tier (3 uploads, 1 h chat, 50 messages) plus paid plans that just scale limits-no feature gating.

Costs

- Ingestion (Gemini Flash): ~30 s per 300-page PDF, $0.05–$0.10.

- Conversation (OpenAI TTS): ≈$0.40 per user-hour. Nothing is optimised yet; these two items dominate my bill.

Privacy

I delete originals after processing, just derivative work of it gets stored (e.g. summaries). I never feed your documents into model training and you can purge processed content at any time.

What’s missing / known issues

- 4 MB per-file cap-larger uploads are on the roadmap

- No org accounts yet; “Ultra” plan lets teams share a single login until then

- Conversation UX on mobile is still not state of the art (mobile Safari disables audio/mic when not in use for a few seconds, so UX is limited)

Ask

- Does the active-recall flow feel helpful or annoying?

- What would you need in the product to become a daily user?

Live demo

The app is live at https://thinktotem.com (no credit card needed).

I’ll be online all day-happy to answer anything, share infra costs (TTS is crazy expensive), or dive into the ingestion process.

Thanks for reading, -Claudio (solo maker, UTC+1)
by delfinom | 2025-06-25 13:03:19+00:00
>I have no idea how this flys.

They aren't trademarking it and probably can't.

But there's no reason they anyone can't use generic naming for their products. Many software applications do and quite frankly its more descriptive to attracting new users than coming up with non-real names.

I would aruge the only reason made up names exist is to keep marketing departments employed trying to explain to users what they are needlessly.
by naikrovek | 2025-06-25 13:03:30+00:00
I remember using edlin a lot in my early computing days. It was murder to learn but once you knew how to wield it, it was excellent. I don’t know why I was forced to learn that but I needed it for something and stuck to it the entire time I used DOS for anything. And people were in awe when you used it while they watched. “What the hell was that!?”
by joseda-hg | 2025-06-25 13:04:07+00:00
I dunno, I use edit since I've heard of it instead of figuring out why my vim config breaks on windows

I might use nano via wsl (Or at that point just nvim), but that also has it quirks

It occupies the same space as micro did for me, but it's / it will be preinstalled so it's better (Also a reason I even cared for vi at first)
by quickthrowman | 2025-06-25 13:04:34+00:00
No, I was replying to your comment. Using a BNPL loan is less optimal than paying with a credit card due to the cash back rewards.

People with good credit may use them, but it makes zero sense to do so. You always come out ahead by using a credit card and paying it off immediately unless the high yield savings rate is 6% or higher assuming a BNPL loan term of 3 months. Beyond that, it does make sense to use them, like Apple’s 12 month no interest on Apple products with the Apple Card.
by GavCo | 2025-06-25 13:04:38+00:00
This is cute, but in all seriousness it would be much more effective to shout "I'm a winner"

Research:

- https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3354773/ – Low self-esteem + rejection hurts self-control

- https://selfdeterminationtheory.org/SDT/documents/2007_Power... – Self-criticism predicts less goal progress

- https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9916102/ – Social exclusion slows inhibitory control

- https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1191... – Low teen self-esteem → poorer self-control

- https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8768475/ – Meta-analysis links shame to regulation drops

- https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28810473/ – Self-compassion boosts self-regulation

- https://www.researchgate.net/publication/312138882_Self-Cont... – Ego threats deplete self-control resources

- https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21632968/ – Self-criticism tied to worse goal progress

- https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-025-96476-8 – Low self-respect → low self-control → problems

Remember to be kind to yourself.
by HideousKojima | 2025-06-25 13:04:50+00:00
I remember watching some pirate streams of UFC pay per view fights about a decade ago. The streams were being provided by someone in the UK, and apparently had commercials between each fight. Every single commercial was for sports gambling, and I just remembered thinking every time "I'm glad this isn't an issue in the US." I'm a bit sad that's no longer the case.
by altacc | 2025-06-25 13:05:10+00:00
In some countries a credit score is a mysterious value calculated by a private company based on patterns of consumerism and money usage that greatly affects your life. You must earn the score through engaging with other private companies, to the company's profit. This is why in the US & UK people get credit cards early, to improve their score whilst trying to avoid the debt trap.

In Scandinavian countries there are registries of your income (from the tax authority), your debts (including buy now pay later which are technically flexible loans) and any bad debts you have that have gone to debt collection. No history of previous balances, repayments, how long you've had a credit card, etc... Companies use this to come up with a score, either themselves or a company like Bisnode will do it for them. So basically it's a simpler calculation based mainly on current situation than history.
by mtlmtlmtlmtl | 2025-06-25 13:05:16+00:00
Maybe Wayland works without any faffing around for you, but the last time I ran it(via KDE), it completely hung my system whereas X11 worked out of the box.

And Wayland has been around for at least 15 years, btw, not 5. You'd think 15 years would be long enough to get something stable, but apparently not.
by 627467 | 2025-06-25 13:06:24+00:00
They aren't but does it matter? iranian regime (similar to CCP) prioritize long term goals and regime survival - which makes sense if you actually have long term goals - while we count short term victories and wait for next election cycle and netflix/apple release.

Israel (and SA) are the only ones with skin in this game and won't be able to easily interfere forever. yes, iran has been massively infiltrated - kudos israel. But after all this recent spectacle, the regime will be focus on survival - this includes cleaning house and continue bomb building efforts.
by Imustaskforhelp | 2025-06-25 13:07:05+00:00
I have a lot of opinions about this.

Firstly, I have been a HN viewer for so many time and this is the one thing about pep python scripts THAT always get to the top of leaderboard of hackernews by each person discovering it themselves.

I don't mean to discredit the author. His work was simple and clear to understand. I am just sharing this thesis that I have that if someone wants karma on Hackernews for whatever reason, this might be the best topic. (Please don't pitchfork me since I don't mean offense to the author)

Also, can anybody please explain to me on how to create that pep metadata in uv from just a python script and without anything else, like some command which can take a python script and give pep and add that in the script, I am pretty sure that uv has a feature flag but I feel that the author might've missed out on this feature because I don't know when coding one off scripts in python using AI (gemini) it had some options with pep so I always had to paste uv's documentation I don't know, so please if anybody knows a way to create pep easier using the cli, then please tell me! Thanks in advance!!
by bayindirh | 2025-06-25 13:07:46+00:00
I lived through that era (first K-Lite Codec Pack, then CCCP came along), but still it holds.

Proprietary or open, any visual codec is a battleground. Even in commercial settings, I vaguely remember people saying they prefer the end result of one encoder over another, for the same video/image format, not unlike how photographers judge cameras by their colors.

So maybe, this flexibility to PNG will enable or encourage people to write better or at least unorthodox encoders which can be decoded by standard compliant ones.
by fergie | 2025-06-25 13:07:50+00:00
I'm not sure if thats true. I would love the ability to be able to save battery by turning off my mobile.

At the moment iPhones seem to drain power even when they are "off" which makes me suspect that they aren't, in fact, actually fully powered off. There have been a few occasions when I have been without a charger for one reason or another, and would like to be able to fully power off my phone in order to save battery.
by Forgeties79 | 2025-06-25 13:07:58+00:00
I think looking at the news since we first started this conversation pretty clearly explains that this has been nothing short of a cluster as usual.

As usual he is contradicting his own intelligence apparatus saying the mission was a failure - he and his administration keep lying to us all making sure you always use the word “obliterated“ to sound big and strong. Even Israel says they didn't do the damage Trump is claiming.
by naikrovek | 2025-06-25 13:08:39+00:00
> I strongly suspect in time Microsoft will move to Linux, at least with things like Windows Server and embedded Windows.

You may not understand how important Microsoft considers backwards compatibility. Switching to a Linux kernel would eliminate all of that, and that is simply not an option for Microsoft.

The Linux kernel is missing a lot of esoteric things that the NT kernel has and that people use a lot, as well.

Windows as we use the word today (any variant) will not ever switch to a Linux kernel.

I do hope one day that Microsoft put a proper GUI on Linux though, no X, no Wayland, but something smarter and better than those. Probably also not likely to happen but I’d love to see it if they could do it well.
by EbenZergaw | 2025-06-25 13:08:47+00:00
Hey HN, I built Shadow Reader as an alternative to Adobe Acrobat, optimized for reading dense PDFs in comfort.

I was frustrated by clunky interfaces, poor dark mode support, and distracting toolbars while reading academic papers and books. Shadow Reader is web-based, distraction-free, and built for deep reading with clean dark mode, highlighting, note-taking, and keyboard shortcuts that don’t get in your way.

Would love your feedback or thoughts. Especially if you read a lot of research, philosophy, or longform PDFs. Happy to answer any questions!

Try it here: https://shadowreader.io
by sandstrom | 2025-06-25 13:09:13+00:00
This is not auto-translation.

Rather, it's an API developers can use to add inline translation to web apps.

For example, under a comment in your app, you can (a) detect the language, and (b) if it's different from the current users/browsers language, offer to translate it with a small link (c) if the user clicks the link, the content is translated to their language.
by LionEgo | 2025-06-25 13:09:27+00:00
The reason why WSL is a thing is because developers in corps needed a way to run Linux. IT support and techs doesn't know anything about Linux typically and don't want to deal with supporting it. WSL fixes this problem.

Most developers don't want to use Linux at all. Many developers don't even really know how to user a terminal and rely on GUI tools.
by Der_Einzige | 2025-06-25 13:10:15+00:00
Why not study the effects of legalized gambling for children - i.e. the ticket machines at Dave and Busters/Chuck-e-Cheese?

Also, to see the impacts of gambling addiction in the funniest way possible, see BossManJack: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qztd9eOuwsc
by 112233 | 2025-06-25 13:10:40+00:00
The depth it is possible to dig oneself into a dolgostroy with OSS is unlimited. OTOH, if governed properly, it gives an option to actually solve the problems that you face.

With Microsoft and other corps you are in an abusive domestic relationship with a nacissistic sociopath.

Agree on the initial confusion, but, I do not think the forced upgrade to W11 went unnoticed, either
by A_D_E_P_T | 2025-06-25 13:11:02+00:00
Yeah. Perhaps "as hard as you can safely handle," would have been better advice. No ego lifting past 30.

I'd add that if one is intellectually curious -- as I imagine somebody asking for advice here must be -- one's 40s are also a great time to take up a small noncommercial project. Like attempt to solve a minor theorem, or a historical puzzle.

(There are a lot of historical puzzles concerning nomenclature or the use of tools. For e.g., to this day nobody knows what was meant when the medieval French wrote of the form of armor called "double maille." (haubert doublier, haubert a maille double, and haubert clavey de double maille) But it's well attested in historical sources. If you travel to enough museums, manuscript collections, and chapels -- to inspect knightly effigies -- there's a very good chance you'll be able to figure it out. And, if you don't, I'd bet you still enjoy the ride.)