MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by palata | 2025-06-18 07:05:11+00:00
> I just don't believe in this signal evangelism.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not a Signal fanatic. I'm just quick at moving to better alternatives. If a better alternative than Signal gets announced in 10min, I'll be on it in 11min and I'll be telling you to try it in 12min :-).

The fact is that Signal is probably the best messaging app we have right now. I get the app fatigue, I don't get why the result of it should be to fight precisely the better alternative. "I hate that we're locked in WhatsApp, but I am actively fighting for keeping us locked in".
by UmGuys | 2025-06-18 07:06:25+00:00
They're deporting them without trial. They don't even try to confirm they capture the right people. They've arrested several US citizens. Notice where this arrest occurred: at a courthouse. Why? Because this person was complying with the law and going through the immigration process.

What about masked men kidnapping random people, then sending them somewhere like a prison in El Salvador seems just to you? Do you remember this happening previously in your life?
by nc0 | 2025-06-18 07:06:48+00:00
You also have to remember the context.

First that visual debugging was still small and niche, probably not suited to the environment at Bell Labs at the time, given they were working with simpler hardware that might not provide an acceptable graphical environment (which can be seen as a lot of the UNIX system is oriented around the manipulation of lines of text). This is different from the workplace where most game developers, including J. Carmack were, with access to powerful graphical workstations and development tools.

Secondly there’s also a difference on the kind of work achieved: the work on UNIX systems mostly was about writing tools than big systems, favoring composition of these utilities. And indeed, I often find people working on batch tools not using visual debuggers since the integration of tools pretty much is a problem of data structure visualization (the flow being pretty linear), which is still cumbersome to do in graphical debuggers. The trend often is inverted when working on interactive systems where the main problem actually is understanding the control flow than visualizing data structures: I see a lot more of debuggers used.

Also to keep in mind that a lot of engineers today work on Linux boxes, which has yet to have acceptable graphical debuggers compared to what is offered in Visual Studio or XCode.
by kryptiskt | 2025-06-18 07:07:56+00:00
Having the code, the callstack, locals, your watched variables and expressions, the threads, memory, breakpoints and machine code and registers if needed available at a glance? As well as being able to dig deeper into data structures just by clicking on them. Why wouldn't you want that? A good GUI debugger is a dashboard showing the state of your program in a manner that is impossible to replicate in a CLI or a TUI interface.
by llamasushi | 2025-06-18 07:08:28+00:00
Socrates: "And now, since you are the father of writing, your affection for it has made you describe its effects as the opposite of what they really are. In fact, it will introduce forgetfulness into the soul of those who learn it: they will not practice using their memory because they will put their trust in writing, which is external and depends on signs that belong to others, instead of trying to remember from the inside, completely on their own. You have not discovered a potion for remembering, but for reminding; you provide your students with the appearance of wisdom, not with its reality. Your invention will enable them to hear many things without being properly taught, and they will imagine that they have come to know much while for the most part they will know nothing. And they will be difficult to get along with, since they will merely appear to be wise instead of really being so."
by TeMPOraL | 2025-06-18 07:09:39+00:00
I know a lot of people do that in all kinds of software (especially enterprise), still, I can't help but notice this is getting close to Greenspunning[0] territory.

What you describe is leaving around hand-rolled instrumentation code that conditionally executes expensive reporting actions, which you can toggle on demand between executions. Thing is, this is already all done automatically for you[1] - all you need is the right build flag to prevent optimizing away information about function boundaries, and then you can easily add and remove such instrumentation code on the fly with a debugger.

I mean, tracing function entry and exit with params is pretty much the main task of a debugger. In some way, it's silly that we end up duplicating this by hand in our own projects. But it goes beyond that; a lot of logging and tracing I see is basically hand-rolling an ad hoc, informally-specified, bug-ridden, slow implementation of 5% of GDB.

Why not accept you need instrumentation in production too, and run everything in a lightweight, non-interactive debugging session? It's literally the same thing, just done better, and couple layers of abstraction below your own code, so it's more efficient too.

--

[0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenspun%27s_tenth_rule

[1] - Well, at least in most languages used on the backend, it is. I'm not sure how debugging works in Node at the JS level, if it exists at all.
by v5v3 | 2025-06-18 07:13:44+00:00
"Why “Tiger”? The tiger has been our mascot since 2017, symbolizing the speed, power, and precision we strive for in our database. Over time, it’s become a core part of our culture: from weekly “Tiger Time” All Hands and monthly “State of the Tiger” business reviews, to welcoming new teammates as “tiger cubs” to the “jungle.”

Cringe...!!!
by freetime2 | 2025-06-18 07:14:30+00:00
Fair point I suppose, but honestly I don't really care. The game looks plenty bright and colorful and Mario-y, and I certainly never stopped to notice banding in the sky or lack of detail in the clouds.

There are about a thousand other things in any given game that matter more to me than HDR tone mapping, and I'm happy for developers to focus on those things. The one exception might be a game where you spend a lot of time in the dark - like Resident Evil or Luigi's mansion.

Looking at his example video where he compares Godfall Ultimate footage to Mario Kart - I quite dislike the HDR in Godfall Ultimate. Certain elements like health bars, red crystals, and sparks are emphasized way too much, to the detraction of character and environment design. I find Mario Kart to be much more tasteful. That's not to say that Mario Kart World couldn't be better looking in HDR, but the author doesn't really do a compelling job showing how. In the side-by-side examples with "real" HDR, I prefer the game as-is.
by theodric | 2025-06-18 07:14:36+00:00
My guess, based on what's been found about somewhat better cognitive outcomes in aging in people who make an effort to remain fit and stimulated[1], is that we could see slightly worse cognitive outcomes in people that spent their lives steering an LLM to do the "cognitive cardio" rather than putting in the miles themselves.

On the other hand, maybe abacuses and written language won't be the downfall of humanity, destroying our ability to hold numbers and memorize long passages of narrative, after all. Who's to know? The future is hard to see.

[1] I mean there's a hell of a lot of research on the topic, but here's a meta-study of 46 reviews https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/human-neuroscience/arti...
by biscottigelato | 2025-06-18 07:14:39+00:00
Recovering and reusing something that went up and down

And something that went orbital at supersonic speed

Is not even remotely the same universe

McDonell Douglas have done up and down since 1992

SpaceX is the only entity that have recovered and reused any rocket parts after sending payloads orbital

Wake me up when someone have done even a test that resembles orbital recovery

Until then all the EDS in here has zero power over reality
by HelloNurse | 2025-06-18 07:16:51+00:00
Larger animals are highly undesirable prey because they tend to be able to free themselves from a carnivorous plant (low value), with a high probability of severe damage to the plant in the attempt (high cost): they can just walk or climb away, but also involuntarily break a stalk with their weight, tear open a sac with talons, rip away slowly regenerated adhesive parts, eat something that should be dangerous, and so on.
by jenadine | 2025-06-18 07:19:00+00:00
Maybe Wayland is extensible, but if the main desktop compositor (i.e. Gnome) don't implement these, it is as much as useless. And it seems that Gnome very much "designed out" some features such as window positioning, window icon, and so on.

(We're talking about user's desktop, not custom car entertainment compositor)
by ifwinterco | 2025-06-18 07:19:02+00:00
It's oesophageal cancer specifically, and I think drinking through a metal straw instead of sipping causes higher temperature liquid to be in contact with the throat.

Haven't actually read through the wiki references, but seems like it's an 'association' rather than anything definitive

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yerba_mate#Cancer
by jackgavigan | 2025-06-18 07:19:59+00:00
I love the concept. I think the trick to being successful with a project like this is cracking the user experience in a way that makes it powerful enough to be truly useful, while keeping it simple enough that a child can build (scr)apps (c.f. Super Mario Maker).

Making it possible to lookup and store data in a spreadsheet (maybe using something like the Google Sheets API) could unlock a huge amount of use cases.

I'll be watching this project with interest!
by sesqu | 2025-06-18 07:20:08+00:00
I know the this isn't the thrust, but the "jagged pac-man" is actually supposed to be a puzzle piece, and symbolizes plugins.

The three dots at the right, for some reason, is the menu. It's labelled "Settings and more", and contains the gear icon you were thinking of, but also all of the normal menu items like new window and print. It also contains "Save page", but befuddlingly that one is hidden under another flyout menu called "More tools".

When opening a PDF file in Edge, it loads up some kind of Acrobat embedding for me, and that one has its very own "save file" button, though with identical iconography to Edge's. Thankfully, the button is visible without any further menu diving, but is also placed at the top right, with an extremely faint border delineating it from the Edge chrome.
by maccard | 2025-06-18 07:20:12+00:00
I’ve worked with gameplay programmers who can’t do simple 3D math, c++ programmers who fundamentally don’t understand pointers, backend developers who didn’t understand globals were shared state and cause race conditions, etc.

It’s not that SQL is hard, it’s that for any discipline the vast majority of people don’t have a solid grasp of the tools they’re using. Ask most tradespeople about the underlying thing they’re working with and you’ll have the same problem.
by MaulingMonkey | 2025-06-18 07:21:13+00:00
> How long are you realistically "waiting for the compiler and linker"? 3 seconds?

I've worked on projects where incremental linking after touching the wrong .cpp file will take several minutes... and this is after I've optimized link times from e.g. switching from BFD to Gold, whereas before it might take 30 minutes.

A full build (from e.g. touching the wrong header) is measured in hours.

And that's for a single configuration x platform combination, and I'm often the sort to work on the multi-platform abstractions, meaning I have it even worse than that.

> If I wanna use a debugger though, now that means a full recompile to build the project without optimizations

You can use debuggers on optimized builds, and in fact I use debuggers on optimized builds more frequently than I do unoptimized builds. Granted, to make sense of some of the undefined behavior heisenbugs you'll have to understand disassembly, and dig into the lower level details when the high level ones are unavailable or confused by optimization, but those are learnable skills. It's also possible to turn off optimizations on a per-module basis with pragmas, although then you're back into incremental build territory.
by TeMPOraL | 2025-06-18 07:21:19+00:00
Conditionals aren't free either, and conditionals - especially compile-time - on logging code are considered by some a bugprone anti-pattern as well.

The code that computes data for and assembles your log message may end up executing logic that affects the system elsewhere. If you put that code under conditional, your program will behave differently depending on the logging configuration; if you put it outside, you end up wasting potentially substantial amount of work building log messages that never get used.
by orwin | 2025-06-18 07:21:33+00:00
No, some of it was to complain about the nuclear deal Iran had with the west and try to prevent it. Deal that saw Iran stop development and stop some of its research.

Now when I see what happened to Ukraine, Libya/Irak and what might happen to Iran, and compare it with NK/Pakistan, my position on nukes is: get nukes. Especially if a western country say you have nukes: get them.
by defrost | 2025-06-18 07:24:53+00:00
Back in the days when a UK | US installed puppet government extracted oil for the west with little regard for the locals?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1953_Iranian_coup_d%27%C3%A9ta...

Some might say the US laid the ground work for an extreme swing to the Ayatollas by delibrately overthrowing a democratically elected government.
by Leo-thorne | 2025-06-18 07:25:15+00:00
Now really feels like a good time to start learning how to code. I used to get completely lost reading documentation, but with Copilot, I just type a few lines and it helps fill in the logic. It feels like having a more experienced person sitting next to me.

That said, I still try to figure out the logic myself first, then let AI help polish or improve it. It is a bit slower, but when something breaks, at least I know why.

AI has definitely lowered the barrier. But whether you can actually walk through the door still depends on you.
by KronisLV | 2025-06-18 07:25:22+00:00
Lovely write up! Personally, I just settled on Tailscale so I don’t have to manage WireGuard and iptables myself.

For a while I also thought that regular SSH tunnels would be enough but they kept failing occasionally even with autossh.

Oh and I got bitten by Docker default MTU settings when trying to add everything to the same Swarm cluster.
by amake | 2025-06-18 07:28:01+00:00
It's important to distinguish that from the Pixar thing.

First, the Pixar thing was green pepper, not green beans: https://www.businessinsider.com/why-inside-out-has-different...

Second, the Pixar one is not "mere" translation; it is full localization because they changed the visual to match the "textual" change.

The Pokemon one is where the change was limited to the "text". The translator's heart might have been in the right place (it would depend on how integral to the story it is that the item is onigiri) but didn't have the authority to make the full breadth of changes needed for such adaptation to be successful.
by teew | 2025-06-18 07:28:22+00:00
Anecdote from an archaeologist friend of mine: When she was a grad students she worked on a Pfahlbauer site (prehistoric dwellings from ~6000–1000 BCE) where lumps of organic material had been found in the 90s. After cursory analysis the lumps were presented as 'prehistoric bread' as there was evidence of different types of grain and even oats present. In the 2010s they created a likely recipe for 'ancient Pfahlbauer bread', curated an exhibition about experiemental archaeology, and partnered with local bakeries to sell breads based on the ancient recipe. Gaining a bit of media attention, they wanted to find out more about their samples. A closer round of analysis determined the lumps to likely be pieces of horse manure...
by carra | 2025-06-18 07:28:29+00:00
We keep hearing different variants of "webp should take over because now it has good browser support". But that is not nearly enough for an image format to reach widespread adoption.

People want to be able to open the images anywhere (what about watching photos in a smartTV? or an old tablet? what about digital picture frames?). They want to edit the images in any program (what about this FOSS editor? what about the many people stuck in pre-subscription Photoshop versions?).

They also want to ensure far future access to their precious photos, when formats like JPEG2000 or even WebP might be long gone. I mean, webp was made by Google and we know how many of their heavily promoted creations are dead already...
by rcxdude | 2025-06-18 07:28:52+00:00
Usually the main message is that they haven't thought about the organisation of their datastructures sufficiently. In my experience this is also very important with a GC, but you don't get much help from the compiler, instead you wind up chasing strange issues at runtime because object lifetimes don't match what you expected (not to mention, object lifetime is more than just memory allocation, and GC languages tend to have less effective means of managing lifetimes tightly). I agree async Rust is very painful still. It's very much something I don't use unless I have to, and when I do I keep things very simple.

(Also, the lack of a package manager for C is much more due to historical cruft around build systems than it is difficulty getting C libraries to work together. Most of them can interoperate perfectly well, though there is a lot more faff with memory book-keeping)
by gloxkiqcza | 2025-06-18 07:29:03+00:00
I consider this to be a bug. I want to view HDR content with brightness differences scaled in a way that the maximum value barely, if at all, exceeds the set display brightness.

The fact that it just goes full 1600 nits blast when you view a video from a sunny day is a terrible UX in most cases and it’s the reason why I have HDR turned off for video recording, even though I might miss it later. To make matters worse, it also applies to 3rd party views.
by nottorp | 2025-06-18 07:29:38+00:00
It kinda went downhill at some point. But currently:

> And ChatGPT never closes your question without answer because it (falsely) thinks it's a duplicate of a different question from 13 years ago

ChatGPT acts exactly opposite to the SO mods.

> But it does give you a ready to copy paste answer instead of a 'teach the man how to fish' answer.

Here it acts exactly like what SO mods like.

The other comments are mostly people thinking this is about ChatGPT...
Is there a way to run an LLM as a better local search engine?
by oblio | 2025-06-18 07:29:49+00:00
Basically, I was thinking that a way I could actually use LLMs would be to point them at my hard drive, with hundreds of images, PDFs, XLS' and other random files, and start asking it questions to easily find things in there. Can a local LLM run OCR software on its own?

I'm on Windows, if it matters. Is there anything like that out there, already (mostly) built?
by crazylogger | 2025-06-18 07:29:58+00:00
Sub-agent is another LLM loop that you simply import and provide as a tool to your orchestrator LLM. For example in Claude Code, sub-agent is a tool called "Task(<description>)" made available to the main LLM (the one that you chat with) along with other tools like patch_file and web_search.

Concurrent tool call is when LLM writes multiple tool calls instead of one, and you can program your app to execute those sequentially or concurrently. This is a trivial concept.

The "agent framework" layer here is so thin it might as well don't exist, and you can use Anthropic/OAI's sdk directly. I don't see a need for fancy graphs with circles here.
by badosu | 2025-06-18 07:30:27+00:00
I really appreciated the information I was unaware of folks in the industry.

Also a pretty acceptable, and hopefully self evident, statement that technology and industry are relevant to "winning wars" (regardless of nation), even with the loaded assumption on "[american tech and industry]... won the major wars of the 20th century".

> If Western technology companies abdicate that responsibility, we will all need to learn Mandarin.

This bit killed it for me. It's completely reasonable and I encourage others to understand and perhaps accept a Realist[0] worldview, where obviously major powers are engaged in security competition.

I observe this too often, and it saddens me, that "western" people might truly believe in things like this.

My country and region was actively interfered, militarily and politically, by the US. We never were approached for deals as respectful partners, always a condescending and agenda driven deal with strings attached. Chinese relations with my country, and economic opportunities, flourish and give me hope that it might kickstart improvements I've lingered for since my teens (infrastructure, particularly rail for me).

Don't get me wrong, I am extremely suspicious of China politics and its goals. And of course this is part of its soft power ambitions, believe me that us "non-westerns" are perhaps not as dumb as we might seem (perhaps as problematic in other areas though).

Unless US, EU, Israel, or whatever considered to be "western" do not paranoia themselves and believe their own propaganda that China should be nuked you should indeed learn Mandarin, reason a little bit different than perhaps you assumed for on this statement: they treat others with; even if some underlying goal might exist; actual respect.

Look at yourselves in the mirror.

0 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Realism_(international_relatio...
by berkes | 2025-06-18 07:30:35+00:00
I really love all the "modern" takes on classic tools by the Rust community.

I'm using eza (aka exa), aliased as ls, which has "tree" built in (aliased as lt), amongst others, as replacement for "ls" and it's one of my biggest production boosts in daily commandline use. Because eza has the tree built in, and the tree is also insanely fast, I won't be needing this tool - yet. Maybe one day the interactive mode will pull me over.

Congrats on releasing. And kudo's to how well you've released it: solid README, good description, good-looking gifs with exactly the right feature highlights
by bsder | 2025-06-18 07:30:35+00:00
Developers are entitled to do whatever they want.

However ...

In this case, there are some genuine arguments that what the Wayland developers are doing is, at the least, kind of anti-social and quite possibly harmful to the Linux ecosystem.

Earlier: https://flak.tedunangst.com/post/killing-X11

Note the posting from KiCad: https://www.kicad.org/blog/2025/06/KiCad-and-Wayland-Support...

This was kicked off because KiCad (and other applications that use X11) wound up with a whole bunch of bug reports because Wayland developers broke mutter which broke XWayland which broke a whole bunch of apps. This wasn't a subtle bug; it made it very clear that RedHat doesn't even do basic application testing inside of XWayland.

So, a whole bunch of applications had to field a whole bunch of bug reports that weren't their fault simply because a "Linux" company with lots of money and resources can't be arsed to not cause collateral damage.

Consequently, people are starting to ask some really hard questions as to whether the overall Linux community would be better off without Wayland.
by draven | 2025-06-18 07:30:42+00:00
I work on Scala projects. Adding a log means stopping the service, recompiling and restarting. For projects using Play (the biggest one is one of them) that means waiting for the hot-reload to complete. In both cases it easily takes at least 30s on the smallest projects, with a fast machine. With my previous machine Play's hot reload on our biggest app could take 1 to 3mn.

I use the debugger in Intellij, using breakpoints which only log some context and do not stop the current thread. I can add / remove them without recompiling. There's no interruption in my flow (thus no excuse to check HN because "compiling...")

When I show this to colleagues they think it's really cool. Then they go back to using print statements anyway /shrug