MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by dahauns | 2025-06-12 08:53:06+00:00
The issue was that you had to publish and maintain separate versions of your app for WP8 and WP7 as soon as you wanted to use the new SDK, with no way to just specify API level or feature flags.

This was enough for a not insignificant number of devs to drop out of the already small market and lower the already limited app supply even more.
by gnat | 2025-06-12 08:53:52+00:00
I think there’s an analogy in the dumb management dream that there’s a process by which you can replace these expensive skilled workers with cheap unskilled idiots and still get great results.

Another variation: the magic process that lets you get great results from people who don’t care.

Excellence doesn’t come solely from process. The benchmarks of great process with unskilled workers who don’t care is fast food, and this product is consistently mediocre. Consistency is good but consistent mediocrity is an unworthy ambition in many fields.

NASA is massively process driven but they get people to space and back, and the people in their process are highly skilled and care deeply.

Larry Wall, inventor of Perl, used to say (and probably still does) that complexity has to go somewhere. If you’re solving a complex problem then either it’s a simple program with complex tools, or a complex program with simple tools.

That’s really stuck with me. The art of library, framework, language, API design is to provide a set of tools — if you make simple tools then complex problems become complex programs. And if you offer complex tools, complex problems can have simple solutions. And people will gripe at you for all the punctuation for decades. :)

But the complexity exists and can’t be wished away. Which is kinda your point too. Thanks for writing!
by sethammons | 2025-06-12 08:55:49+00:00
Plants don't like being anthropomorphized. Btw, I disagree with your definition.

You are inserting "sentiment" to "hear," "produce," and "in response." These are physical actions. Or do you assert trees don't produce fruit in response to good growing conditions?

In response to the rock falling, a large sound was produced, and it startled a fox that heard it. No anthropomorphism.

Anthropomorphism is assigning human qualities onto non-humans. Like my first sentence.
by dahauns | 2025-06-12 08:57:18+00:00
>WP7 itself was a throwing away of compatability with Windows Mobile apps;

The loss of compatibility wasn't even the biggest issue here - it was the loss of functionality. WM6.5 had a huge enterprise feature set, only rivaled by Blackberry (and probably Nokia to an extent). Then came WP7 and had...literally nothing. They didn't even support Exchange ActiveSync in the beginning.
by skygazer | 2025-06-12 08:57:47+00:00
I read it as them being less an Apple apologist and more an AI (or LLM on phones) skeptic. They recounted Apple's failures and seemed to allude to Apple's language being self-serving, but didn't seem to think it mattered for sales this fall because Siri has always been the worst, and that still hasn't appreciably diminished sales.

In my experience, iPhone aficionados really do tend to be ignorant of features that are common on Android or competing phones and not yet available on iOS, and take it on faith that Apple is the best. So it may bear out.
Show HN: I built an app to calculate body type and generate AI fitness plans
by howardV | 2025-06-12 08:58:00+00:00
Hey Hacker News, I'm excited to share a project I've been passionately building. It started from a personal frustration: most fitness and nutrition advice online is generic. I wanted a tool that could provide a truly personalized starting point based on my specific body composition and goals. That’s why I created https://mybodytype.net. It's more than just a plan generator; it's a suite of tools to guide your fitness journey. Here’s a breakdown of the features: Body Type Calculator (Free): This is the entry point. Answer a few questions, and it determines your body type (e.g., ectomorph, mesomorph, endomorph). This result informs the recommendations that follow. Progress Tracker (Free): A robust tool to log your workouts, measurements, and track your progress over time. Staying consistent is key, and this helps you do it. AI Meal Plan Generator (Premium): Based on your body type, goals (weight loss, muscle gain), and dietary preferences, it generates a complete daily meal plan with macros and recipes. AI Workout Plan Generator (Premium): Creates a structured, weekly workout schedule tailored to your experience level and goals, complete with specific exercises. PDF Export (Premium): For those who like to have a physical copy or save their plans offline, you can export your meal and workout plans to PDF. Style Recommendations (Coming Soon/Premium): A feature I'm currently working on to provide clothing and style recommendations that best fit your body type. The "Why": My goal is to bridge the gap between generic advice and expensive personal coaching. This app provides a data-driven, scientific foundation for anyone serious about improving their health, taking the guesswork out of the initial, most difficult steps. Tech Stack: For the tech-curious, the entire application is built on Next.js (App Router) with TypeScript. The backend logic is handled by Next.js API routes, and the frontend is built with React, Tailwind CSS, and Shadcn UI components. I've focused on keeping it fast and server-rendered wherever possible. Feedback & A Hacker News Offer: I'm launching today and would be incredibly grateful for your honest feedback. Is the body type calculator accurate for you? Are the AI-generated plans helpful? What could be better? The core tools (Calculator, Tracker) are free. The AI generation and PDF exports are premium features that run on a credit system. For the Hacker News community, sign up and use the code HACKERNEWS to get enough free credits to generate your first full set of meal and workout plans and test the premium features. Check it out here: https://mybodytype.net I'll be here all day to answer questions. Thanks for checking it out
by godelski | 2025-06-12 08:58:07+00:00
I'm saying it clearly isn't enough friction. It's not worth the privacy cost. Which let's be real, those numbers are then commonly sold to those same spammers, even if indirectly.

You are also forgetting it is easy to mask, obscure, and hijack numbers. So it doesn't cost money per number, many times they can use their own number.

There isn't a universal solution, which is the main problem here. Sometimes numbers make sense, most of the time not.
by wallaBBB | 2025-06-12 08:58:15+00:00
> If we'd ignored anti-nuclear activists in the 70s none of this would be a problem.

Lemmi rephrase this for you: If we ignored anti-nuclear activities funded by big-oil in the 70s this would not be a problem.

Yes! and if we ignored all the destructive FUD surrounding climate change they have been doing for more than 50 years we would be better off.

Furthermore, if we stop ignoring the destruction AI hype is doing to the climate we will be better off.
by myrmidon | 2025-06-12 08:58:21+00:00
Direct death counts from nuclear meltdowns might be rather low, but the damage is clearly that entire cities need to be evacuated (and stay uninhabitable for decades). Fukushima alone cost the Japanese taxpayer close to $200 billion.

> Those are constant dollars. Are you claiming that the real cost of labour went up 4- to 8-fold in the nuclear industry?

I'm not saying that is the only effect. But if you want to blame "onerous regulations" for nuclear power being so expensive, then you have to at least put bounds on other factors driving cost (and you also have to show those relaxed regulations would not have led to a significant amount of additional incidents; the current rate of 2 meltdowns for ~500ish reactor sites is already problematic enough).

I personally think that collective standards regarding risk and pollution have risen significantly since the early days of nuclear power, and a lot of things that were done back then would be considered unacceptably reckless/negligient nowadays (=> Hanford became a superfund site for a reason), so claiming that those historical costs are repeatable seems very dubious in the first place to me.
Show HN: I built a Free tool that explains anything like you're 5 using GPT
by Bytesaint | 2025-06-12 08:58:36+00:00
Hi HN,

I'm Ben, a solo developer. I've just launched ELI5 GPT: https://explaintome.netlify.app, a simple tool that utilizes GPT to explain anything in very simple terms — as if you're 5 years old.

I built it because I was tired of having to Google explanations for tech topics that were either too complex or filled with jargon. I wanted something minimal, fast, and fun — no logins, no bloat.

It's built with plain HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, hosted on Netlify. You can enter any concept (e.g., "quantum physics" or "inflation") and it'll explain it at a childlike level using AI.

It’s free to use and open to feedback. I’m also selling the source code if anyone wants to self-host or build on top of it.

Would love feedback or thoughts from this community.

Thanks for checking it out! — Ben
by jeroenhd | 2025-06-12 08:59:24+00:00
> And it’s also a member of FIVE eyes.

I don't think they need to worry about the FIVE eyes when the "FIVE eyes plus 3", "Nine Eyes", and "Fourteen Eyes" contain several EU countries. The larger groups aren't working together as intensively but it's not like cutting off the UK is going to stop the US from the (industrial) espionage they do in the EU.
by mschuster91 | 2025-06-12 09:00:33+00:00
> I'd very much like to switch to Linux to lose some of the Windows awfulness, but (as you say) the reality of getting a particular computer working sufficiently well is somewhere between non-trivial and ulcer-inducingly complicated, and anyway the absence of native Microsoft Office makes it a non-starter.

Switch to Mac. Honestly. Office is decent enough for creatives to use (otherwise you'd get half the ad industry to close). Add Hyperswitch to get a decent alt-tab, Karabiner so you can remap ctrl+c/v to avoid twisting your hands, and a Windows keyboard layout to not lose your muscle memory for braces and other special characters (that Apple doesn't print on the keyboard FFS), SizeUp for having Windows shortcuts to move your windows around without a mouse - and that's it. A Mac that gets enough of the Windows muscle memory to make the transition pretty painlss.
by 2d8a875f-39a2-4 | 2025-06-12 09:00:52+00:00
Always nice to read a new retelling of this old story.

TFA throws some shade at how "a single get of the office repo took some hours" then elides the fact that such an operation was practically impossible to do on git at all without creating a new file system (VFS). Perforce let users check out just the parts of a repo that they needed, so I assume most SD users did that instead of getting every app in the Office suite every time. VFS basically closes that gap on git ("VFS for Git only downloads objects as they are needed").

Perforce/SD were great for the time and for the centralised VCS use case, but the world has moved on I guess.
by transpute | 2025-06-12 09:01:12+00:00
Apple customers have bought both, even multiples of each, would be willing to pay a hefty premium (e.g. bundle hypervisor entitlement with iPad Pros that have more memory) -- but Apple continues to refuse.

With the recent court ruling that enables non-Apple payment channels, blocking VMs does not protect revenue, but it does hurt Apple customers who want iPads for a quick portable terminal, while using their Macs for extended work sessions.
by karel-3d | 2025-06-12 09:01:58+00:00
I think they don't actually block DNS queries, mostly related to football (soccer for Americans) pirating, that are required to be blocked in Italy, France and Portugal; so probably they break Italian, French and Portugese laws. (Don't quote me on that.)

See https://flashstart.com/opendns-not-available-in-france-and-p... and similar

Also they don't seem to block Russia Today, which might be required in other countries? But that might be on a different layer. Not up to date on that.
by jonathantf2 | 2025-06-12 09:03:09+00:00
I can wholeheartedly recommend an HDHR and Channels DVR (https://getchannels.com/dvr-server/), I've found it to be parent proof. Run a Docker container on a low powered PC somewhere and then install the apps on Apple TV or Chromecast. Job done, provides a Sky Q like experience for like £5 a month?
by Teever | 2025-06-12 09:03:15+00:00
Yes there are sufficient hydrocarbon reserves on Earth to do this. There's also sufficient energy sources from a combination of solar, wind, and geothermal.

* 1/3 of the food that we produce is completely wasted.

* 43% of the world's population is overweight and 16% is obese.

* Livestock uses 77% of all agricultural land, yet provides only 18% of global calories and 37% of protein.

* 60% of hydrocarbon production is used for transportation with more than half of that going to personal use.

* The world generates ∼50 million tons of electronic waste per year, but only ∼17% is formally recycled.

There's a lot of slack in the system. We can easily improve the efficiency of society with no material loss and tons of quality of life improvements for people.

We won't. but we could. And the reason we won't is because there isn't really and there won't really be any existential pressure to do so.

So the species at large will keep plodding along as we do, driving from fast food drive-thru to fast food drive thru stuffing cheese burgers into our faces while clever people work to make things like elegant self replicating machines that can colonize the solar system.

This is just how it's gonna go man.
by mschuster91 | 2025-06-12 09:04:03+00:00
It's a scale problem. Walmart or whatever, they buy and sell insane quantities of goods - they make life insanely difficult for vendors and either you're someone as large as HP, Acer, Asus etc who can get by with margins less than 1% but make up for it in volume, or you can't compete with them at all and stay out of the big box stores for good.

That's why anti-trust legislation and enforcement is actually important... to prevent ossification of scale that effectively prohibits new actors from entering the market.
by adrian_b | 2025-06-12 09:04:40+00:00
I assume that you can walk in many big box stores and buy a Dell computer or a HP computer with preinstalled Linux.

I am not sure about brick-and-mortar stores, because I have not used such stores for many decades, but with on-line shopping it is certainly easy to find a Dell or HP computer with preinstalled Linux that supports the hardware as well as Windows. Moreover, choosing Ubuntu over Windows frequently saves at least one hundred $.

I have such a Dell laptop (Dell Precision), which came with a preinstalled Ubuntu that worked perfectly (even if I have wiped it and installed another Linux by myself, because I do not like Ubuntu).
by tekkk | 2025-06-12 09:05:23+00:00
Interesting sci-fi plot device but seems far-fetched, not gonna lie. To think that our highly stable universe is just compressed mass of another universe is a lot to take in. Does that black hole emit Hawking radiation as well and shouldnt our universe lose mass in result? And how exactly can our universe expand if the size of the black hole is fixed?

Well, at least it does make for interesting conversations. Someone will surely milk it for Youtube content.
by simion314 | 2025-06-12 09:05:32+00:00
Stop commenting on Eu, Ukraine and Ruzzia if you do not understand the security of the region and the fact that Ruzzians claim the entire Eastern Europe as thei God given right to dominate.

Anyone that is not a Ruzzian can use their brain and natural logic and compare the countries that entered in EU and the ones that sucked on Ruzzia and the consequences, a bigger EU means a strogner EU and a safer EU from that expansionist empire in the East.
by vintagedave | 2025-06-12 09:05:40+00:00
> Update to o4-mini (June 6, 2025) > We are rolling back an o4-mini snapshot, that we deployed less than a week ago and intended to improve the length of model responses, because our automated monitoring tools detected an increase in content flags.

Does anyone know what it did or returned? I had not seen anything, nor have I read anything, about issues here.
by mssaucemoss | 2025-06-12 09:06:18+00:00
wow, this is surreal as I was just about to start and IDENTICAL project for my next ios app - scanning messy room -> checklist -> progressbar -> split the checklist into steps. Then: one step visible at a time, so the user has only one thing to focus on and it seems more manageable. And upon finishing the step - CONFETTI! Addressing the ADHD part too. We have the same brain. I guess I'll skip this idea as I thought it was totally original :)
by bryanrasmussen | 2025-06-12 09:06:18+00:00
yeah, man, definitely it was a big mistake on my part to have these kids, also to age anyway and become the last guy anyone wants to hire - hey check out this CV, he has been programming for two decades, grandpa will yell at us all day about our dumb decisions, we better not hire grandpa!!

Ooh grandpa quit because of the stupid idea instead of just yelling - yayyyyy! Wonder how he is going to earn money to survive, well not my problem - Now, let's implement this stupid idea!

on edit: this comes up every now and then and there are all sorts of reasons why people can't take the high road, especially not on stuff that is just "stupid ideas", and I guess this time it falls to me to respond.

Certainly people not quitting because your company is say, putting addictive chemicals in cigarettes or accepting a certain number of fatalities from cars instead of spending more money to make them safer or all sorts of moral issues is something that should be judged - but considering how often people don't do the right thing when even other people are going to die it seems a bit much to expect people will do the right thing when design sucks and is stupid, and it seems likely to expect that your claim that people should is issued from a position where you can completely afford to do so - most of the time people say "must be nice" at this point, but hey I spent a lot of my time at that position in life and I can confirm "yes, it is nice" and it really sucks to be in a position where one can't do that stuff anymore, but that's life I guess.
by indigo945 | 2025-06-12 09:06:28+00:00
I have tried Claude 4.0 for agentic programming tasks, and it really outperforms Claude 3.7 by quite a bit. I don't follow the benchmarks - I find them a bit pointless - but anecdotally, Claude 4.0 can help me in a lot of situations where 3.7 would just flounder, completely misunderstand the problem and eventually waste more of my time than it saves.

Besides, I do think that Google Gemini 2.0 and its massively increased token memory was another "big leap". And that was released earlier this year, so I see no sign of development slowing down yet.
by sethammons | 2025-06-12 09:06:59+00:00
Eating meat doesn't mean the consumed thing suffered. Factory farming might. The farming and slaughter process may be more efficient when causing suffering, but it doesn't have to.

I find a more compelling argument that it is generally awful to end something's joyful existence and experience. But apparently not compelling enough to dramatically alter my diet much. But enough to cause me to save/relocate some bugs in some cases rather than kill them.
by metalman | 2025-06-12 09:07:00+00:00
"The gender gap is present for boys and girls born in December entering their second year of school, the researchers report, but is absent among their peers born days later, in January, who have just started school." so it's school, or a gendered experience or response to school that is present in all children in all schools in France and anecdotaly, everywhere for everyone,but not in mice. So the determination has to be on the question of is it learned behavior, innate skill, or a cultural push(indoctrination), or some mix. my personal feeling is that it will be exceptionaly difficult to tease out the truth in an ethical and unbiased way....we are right up against some truths about our species here and should approach this with reverance.
by DrScientist | 2025-06-12 09:07:10+00:00
> ... citing the fact that he did not commit the crime, but simply did not take something into account or did not know something.

Read Sarbanes Oxley.

You can frame the law anyway you want. Not knowing can be framed as criminal irresponsibility. Also look at health and safety regulation - negligence is not a defense.

And if you think rank and file getting punished with bosses getting away scot free will lead to less unbearable pressure to commit crimes - then I have a bridge to sell you.
by canucker2016 | 2025-06-12 09:08:40+00:00
SLM (aka slime, shared file-system source code control system) was used in most of MS, aka systems & apps.

NT created (well not NT itself, IIRC, there was some an MS-internal developer tools group in charge)/moved to source depot since a shared file-system doesn't scale well to thousands of users. Especially if some file gets locked and you DoS the whole division.

Source depot became the SCCS of choice (outside of Dev Division).

Then git took over, and MS had to scale git to NT-size scale, and upstream many of the changes to git mainline.

Raymond Chen has a blog that mentions much of this - https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20180122-00/?p=97...
by nlitened | 2025-06-12 09:09:32+00:00
I think it’s also interesting to keep in mind that in 2025 people don’t really use Finder as much as they did in 2009. It was an important part of the OS and of users’ workflow back then, but nowadays it’s just a browser for the Downloads folder, it’s time to admit that. No need to keep it fancy — file system power users will likely use other specialized software anyway
by torginus | 2025-06-12 09:09:47+00:00
I've wondered if some kind of smart pruning is possible during evaluation.

What I mean by that, is if a neuron implements a sigmoid function and its input weights are 10,1,2,3 that means if the first input is active, then evaluation the other ones is mathematically pointless, since it doesn't change the result, which recursively means the inputs of those neurons that contribute to the precursors are pointless as well.

I have no idea how feasible or practical is it to implement such an optimization and full network scale, but I think its interesting to think about