MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by kmfrk | 2025-06-24 08:38:41+00:00
I think MyASUS was the piece of software that automagically installed itself on my computer a few weeks ago. I still have no idea how it got there; I just uninstalled it as soon as I saw.

Hopefully it happened to make sure people had the updated version, but I'm gonna keep uninstalling bloatware as much as possible for the reasons outlined in the blog post.
by dvdkon | 2025-06-24 08:38:42+00:00
It's certainly technically possible. Phone motherboards have limited wired IO, but USB host mode is enough for a lot of things.

The problem is how locked-down most phones are, and how hard it is to modify their software. Even for the Fairphone, you have to fill out a form on their site to get a bootloader unlock code, and they could close that form if they wished (see Asus). That all means starting an "ecosystem" of accessories and new non-phone software is costly and has an uncertain future.

Personally I think the biggest issue is the theft-prevention functionality that means a phone picked out of e-waste is basically bricked (without some exploit). There's companies making new motherboards out of salvaged Intel chipsets, I'm sure it would be possible to build a business around the reuse of phones, but right now there are just too many obstacles.

I think this could be solved with new legislation. At least here, doing anything with e-waste is already highly regulated. Giving registered e-waste processors the ability to unlock the bootloader of any device would reduce waste, and make unlocked phones something you could reliably buy in bulk. Then I think we could see the kind of aftermarket support for phones.
by globular-toast | 2025-06-24 08:39:19+00:00
Yeah, I've given up trying to be evangelical about Emacs. It makes me think of the red pill in the Matrix: noone can be told what Emacs is, you have to see it for yourself. People who want to take the pill will find someone like me to help them, but it has to start with them, not me.

Back in '05 I realised how crazy it was that everyone was using these shitty editors built in to bloated IDEs, all slightly different from each other. It's all just text! This caused me to discover vim and Emacs. This was about 10 years before editors like Atom and then VS Code caught on.

I tried vim for a while, did the tutorials and tried to believe that if I practised the keys I'd become a wizard. But it never paid off. But I'm glad I learnt to enter insertion mode and exit vi/m at least.

Emacs was not presented as well back then. It had (has?) a terrible looking GUI by default. But once I'd switched that off the keyboard interface and major/minor modes made so much sense. No surprise that VS Code uses the same model.

But then when I got into Elisp I can say I truly fell in love. I liked GNU/Linux before, but Emacs is what Free Software was always meant to be. Not just technically hackable but practically so. How many people edit their VS Code plugins to do exactly what they want? With Emacs you can hack everything right there in Emacs while it's running and then just go right back to where you were.
by Defletter | 2025-06-24 08:40:19+00:00
> And expecting today's people to pay for what their great-great grandfather's did, isn't a thing that's often entertained.

From what I can tell, the argument is that: if your great-great grandfather became extremely wealthy off of slavery, and was then paid by the government to free their slaves, and then eventually you inherit that wealth... well... if the wealth from crimes against humanity can be inherited, why isn't the responsibility to undo the harm not also inherited?
by account42 | 2025-06-24 08:41:15+00:00
Yes it's really sad how with how much Amazon have been getting shittier they are still the best around. Refunds is another thing that is almost always a pain with other stores but Amazon makes it smooth (but sadly also more and more necessary).

Another pain point is shipping costs. With Amazon I can just filter for free shipping with whatever the current minimum-purchase price for that is whereas elsewhere I am too often surprised by unreasonably high shipping charges designed to make the purchase price look better on comparison sites.
by easyThrowaway | 2025-06-24 08:41:16+00:00
As I wrote on a past comment:

The real customer service for any Meta-related service is their legal department.

I've worked for a marketing firm whose clients (High End Fashion Industry in EU) were very prone to straddling the line regarding the Instagram ToS. If an account was disabled by some automatic trigger the lawyers would write/fax Meta asking for the account restoration, usually with no fuss on their side.

As you may guess, it wasn't exactly cheap. No idea if a lawyer may do something like that for you inexpensively or pro-bono given the nature of your app.
by nasmorn | 2025-06-24 08:41:29+00:00
I came to say the same thing. All my work with LLMs so far has convinced me that it will be dish washer level technology.

What I mean is that some tasks will be automated by it so completely that no business can function economically any more without utilizing its productivity increases but you will still need cooks. It might even be refrigeration style technology which will fundamentally restructure the whole supply chain of at least a lot of service companies. Which is huge in terms of business but not a sci-fi novel yet.
by pjc50 | 2025-06-24 08:42:09+00:00
I feel that adding new hardware to old hardware might just be compounding the waste. We can slow down the obsolescence, but flash wear is a real issue after a few years; that's caused a few phone replacements in my family.

Heck, even reusing furniture in Western economies can be difficult, because the cost of handling it can easily exceed its value. It sort of survives in charity and antique shops, but only for the nicer items.
by altairprime | 2025-06-24 08:44:15+00:00
No? LinkedIn lost a lawsuit about prohibiting third parties tools from accessing its site, Matrix has strong interop, Elite Dangerous offers OAuth API for sign-in and player data download, and so on. There are others but that’s sixty seconds worth of thinking about it.

Mastodon metastasized the user store but each site is still a tiny centralized user store. That’s how user stores work. Doesn’t mean they’re automatically monopolistic.

Discord’s taking the Reddit-Apollo approach to forcing them offline — half-assed conversations for months followed by an abrupt fuck-you moment with little recourse — which given Discord’s free of charge growth mechanism, means that — just like Reddit — they’re likely going to shutdown anything by that’s providing a valuable service to a significant fraction of their users, either to Sherlock and charge money for it, or simply to terminate what they view as an obstruction.
by hotmeals | 2025-06-24 08:44:17+00:00
The internet isn't magic, if you send data to business X that is under jurisdiction of country Z, it's judicial system can get it by court order.

This always has been like this, you are in HN, did you think E2EE was just a LARP? It's not even like this is some Patriot Act gag-order bullshit, if you could claim an exception for privacy for any user data, 99% of companies would be immune to discovery.

So no, the spooks are not gonna look at your deepest secrets that you put in CleverBot 9000, but giving your data to Sam "Give me your eyes for 20 bucks" Altman was stupid. Yes, if you are capable of reaching this site it's your *fault*, you should know better.
by Ciantic | 2025-06-24 08:44:42+00:00
In Windows, hardware vendors have a bad habit of installing useless stuff. Latest trick is that the motherboard contains the payload that gets automatically installed when installing Windows. I had no idea it was even possible. This 'feature' can apparently be disabled from bios, but it needs to be done before installing Windows.

I happen to have both of those DLLs, but I had already disabled all ASUS-related services. I use this script to disable all services starting with "Asus" on startup. [1]

To disable the MyASUS auto-installer in BIOS go to Advanced, there is an option to disable auto-downloading of MyAsus in Windows. [2]

[1]: https://gist.github.com/Ciantic/76ade5f2731cbe87b70d17ff2898...

[2]: https://github.com/sammilucia/ASUS-G14-Debloating/blob/main/...
by fodmap | 2025-06-24 08:45:03+00:00
Synthesis of the Lossen rearrangement substrate was achieved from a waste PET bottle and incorporated metabolically to generate biomass and control whole-cell biotransformations. The substrate was syphoned into a de novo biosynthetic pathway to paracetamol, demonstrating the production of this essential medication from plastic waste via a strategy that cannot be achieved using chemical synthesis or biological synthesis alone.
by gaazoh | 2025-06-24 08:45:10+00:00
Very cool, I implemented this once in python, it's a fun exercise, and knowledge that is gradually disappearing (modern phones with 12-key physical keyboards usually don't even have a T9 implementation, and when they do it doesn't perform well, even higher-tech KaiOS phones).

Although I appreciate the effort, I see a couple of issues with this implementation:

* The demo doesn't seem to work properly, the first thing I tried to type was "hello world", but it didn't recognize "hello" and I got "43556" instead.

* The word list is generated generated C code, which makes it hard to use other dictionaries (languages) or to add words during use (you can't add all place and people names to the list, but people are going to want to reference a handful of them many times). Loading from and appending to a plain text word list would make more sense, and maybe additionally use a custom binary format for the trie structure for fast loading into memory once a word list is imported on first use (hardware that would benefit from T9 might not be fast enough for conversion to be "instant")

* Non-latin script support would be nice. Although I have no knowledge whether Greek or Cyrillic languages used a T9 mechanism, it would be a minor change to define. Korean 12-key typing is also very cool, but I don't know whether that counts as T9.
by esperent | 2025-06-24 08:45:49+00:00
I travel a lot and this has happened to me several times. My business Instagram account was completely and irreversibly disabled because I tried to use it while in Thailand (I'm based in Vietnam).

My Google maps account was blocked also when traveling, but fortunately after several weeks I was able to get that one back.

With Instagram though I just had to make a new account. I also have a Meta Business account (business.facebook.com) and the Instagram account was linked there. The Facebook business account, pages were never blocked though, just the Instagram one.

Unfortunately after a few months I just had to accept it and make a new account. I hope you have more luck, but I assume it's the same with any Meta products. There is no support you can contact, no way to get redress. If it's possible, try to avoid using Meta products to build anything. I understand that's not always possible though, I run a bakery and absolutely must have both Google Maps and Instagram, much as I wish I didn't.
by DavidPiper | 2025-06-24 08:45:57+00:00
I think you're ultimately correct, the trouble is the same as what advertisers discovered when they tried to do the same thing years ago.

Facebook owned the users. Similarly, WhatsApp owns the users.

The choice between:

1. Tying yourself to a platform that could boot you at any time, while also reaching all the users they already have

2. Bootstrapping something from scratch with 0 users, when all the users you want are already using said platform and have little incentive to leave

Choice 1 is often the only viable option, particularly if you're financially dependent on the results.

I also think we repeatedly see, even on HN, that "it'll just be a matter of installing another app" is actually a huge mental hurdle for many people - especially those who aren't technologically savvy enough to know how to use something that isn't Facebook/WhatsApp for communicating with people.
by perrygeo | 2025-06-24 08:46:48+00:00
Let's say you're developing a python package that relies on a native shared library. If you distribute it as a pre-compiled wheel, you're locking your users into the exact version and compilation flags, options, etc that you choose. So your question effectively boils down to "why do people need to compile their own software?".

Many reasons: you need more control, specialized hardware, testing newer versions of the library, maintaining an internal fork of a library, security, performance, the dev team maintains both the native library and python package and needs to keep them independent, or simply preference for dynamic linking against system libraries to avoid duplication.
by snthpy | 2025-06-24 08:46:58+00:00
For FOSS software, why not have a link to the Github repo or org prominently displayed in the title/menu bar?

It took me a couple of clicks to find: https://github.com/deltachat

The "Internet Standards" link points to a URL under https://github.com/deltachat/deltachat-core-rust/ but when you go there it actually redirects and you end up at https://github.com/chatmail/core which is also confusing.
by stiray | 2025-06-24 08:48:14+00:00
This went far enough. I have stated my thoughts, if the view doesn't change, GrapheneOS will continue to sell Pixels (lol, SAMSUNGS! Still rather buy them than Pixel) and I will be forced to buy them.

>Please consider the level of retardation this comment requires, it's impressive.

Yes, thats why I have stopped discussing with you and I dont know why I even started - futileness discussing with GrapheneOS evangelists is well known over the internet.
by JoachimS | 2025-06-24 08:48:46+00:00
The competitiveness between Lattice and Xilinx is also not a univeral truth. It totally depends on the applications. Small to medium designs Lattice have very competitive offerings. Hard ARM cores, not as much. Very large designs not at all. But if you need internal config memory (for some devices), small footprint etc Lattice is really a good choice. And then support in open source tools to boot.
by crossroadsguy | 2025-06-24 08:49:20+00:00
The size is not coming back. Anything else might or might not but the size is not and it's sad.

My only guess is - some kind of bespoke/niche phone maker with a good profit margin might make it "on demand". Of course not "one order from customer, one order to their factory" kinda setup - you get the drift. Some kind of blocking/reserving fee for priority shipping etc.

I had kind of hoped Nothing could be that OEM. But naah! Why would they! They literally are "yet another smaller OEM" in the crowd of other smaller OEMs with that gimmicky backlight as the only differentiator.
by teekert | 2025-06-24 08:51:34+00:00
Me 3.

It looks like they really won't though: [0]

It's such a shame, vision-wise the GrapheneOS crew must be much closer to the FairPhone team than they are to Google and Samsung, one would guess... But the GrapheneOS people find security tech (such as secure enclaves) and update cycle very important. After the bad Pixel news, they find Samsung to be the best fit: [1]

I would (as many here) also hope that they could somehow make the FairPhone crew step up in their security practices, help them do it. They would be the golden combo, except perhaps for things like camera quality and raw speed/AI chips. And possible the niche is just to small to be profitable.

But a man can dream... I'd pay 1.5 to 2x normal price for a FairPhone/GrapheneOS combi, it would align with my values in almost all dimensions. And then I'd buy a Pebble and just be happy.

I really don't know what to do when my iPhone 12 mini dies. I do like the iPhone, but I also liked my OnePlus3 with LineageOS. I was originally planning on a Pixel/GrapheneOS after this phone, but that dream has shatter I think...

[0] https://grapheneos.social/@GrapheneOS/114721751616786103

[1] https://grapheneos.social/@GrapheneOS/114721967328643999
Show HN: 15y Old's AI Assistant Tool Makes Money
by vivaanann | 2025-06-24 08:52:25+00:00
Hi HN! I'm a 15-year-old dev in Hong Kong who built ExcelTutor.pro. It's an AI assistant that generates Excel formulas, SQL queries, and automation scripts from plain English.

Key features:

* Infinite usage - no query limits * Formula generation - converts natural language to Excel formulas * SQL Query Builder - creates database queries from prompts * Automation Scripts - automates repetitive spreadsheet tasks

Unlike manual solutions, it handles things like:

=XLOOKUP(A2,Inventory!B:B,Inventory!F:F,"Not Found")

in seconds. No more trial-and-error or Stack Overflow digging.

You can: - Describe tasks in plain English - Get production-ready code - Automate workflows - Ask unlimited questions

Designed for: * Business users tired of formula headaches * Analysts needing faster SQL solutions * Students learning data tools

Live at: https://exceltutor.pro

Would love feedback from the HN community – especially about real-world use cases I might not have considered at 15!
by ricardobeat | 2025-06-24 08:53:27+00:00
We don’t punish telecoms, ISPs or the mail company for “facilitating terrorism”. Where do you draw the line?

These rules have serious consequences for privacy, potential for abuse, and also raise the barriers immensely for new companies to start up.

The problem is quite obvious when you consider that Trump supporters label anything they dislike as fake news, even when the facts are known and available to everyone. These rules would allow any opposition to be easily silenced. Restricting the measures to terrorism, illegal pornography, and other serious crimes would be more acceptable.

Your question is like asking “why don’t we have metal detectors and body scanners on every school and public building”. Just because you can, and it would absolutely increase safety, does not mean it’s a good idea.

IMO legislation should focus on how individuals can be made responsible, and prosecuted when they break the law – not mandating tech companies to become arms of a nanny state.
by choffee | 2025-06-24 08:53:28+00:00
They have a post about some of the reasons that the 5 was sustainable. It's not just the repair and modular parts but the whole supply chain.

It' rarely gets talked about here as this is a mostly tech audience who focus on features, which are important, but Fairphone is more focused on the impact of the manufacture.

https://www.fairphone.com/en/2023/08/30/is-the-fairphone-5-t...
by olelele | 2025-06-24 08:53:28+00:00
It is literally impossible to open a small "hole-in-the-wall"-kind of bar in Sweden. In order to sell alcohol you have to also serve warm food which means you have to open a restaurant, and following this means you have to have a kitchen that is approved by very strict hygiene controls. Like having a sink only for kitchen staff to wash their hands.

In the early 20th century the trick in the "Ölcafé" (Beer Café) was to have a sandwich that _no one_ ate that you ordered with your beer and this then gets sent back and forth between customers and the cafe :)
by palata | 2025-06-24 08:53:30+00:00
> then used as mini PCs, media players, IoT wall terminals with bigger screens or other uses

If they can be used like that, why couldn't they be used... as phones?

Changing phone every two years is not sustainable, even if the old phone is used as an IoT wall terminal: it's still "consuming" one phone every two years. In a sense, an old phone in a drawer uses less energy than an old phone staying powered to control a lightbulb.

> planned obsolescence

Nitpick: I like to call it "premature obsolescence". Planned obsolescence is the idea of engineering the product to not last more than some time. I think nowadays it's often not the case; rather we engineer the product to last for the time of the warranty (1-2 years) and not more. And a product dying after 1 year is "premature", even though it was not actively engineered for that.
by npteljes | 2025-06-24 08:54:01+00:00
>They don't do that because there's no way they could possibly get away with it.

Yes indeed. They use it to blend in. What they want is to not stick out, so, they act like the rest of the browsers do.

Just like the tools you mention, curl-impersonate and others.

Bravery, daring, could only be done my market leaders here. Google and Safari. The rest of the guys just follow suit.
by IlikeKitties | 2025-06-24 08:54:27+00:00
> It's such a shame, vision-wise the GrapheneOS crew must be much closer to the FairPhone team than they are to Google and Samsung one would guess... But the GrapheneOS people find security tech such as secure enclaves etc very important.

I seriously doubt that given fairphones track record in regards to updates and security. GrapheneOS Devs value timely updates and integration of security tech. Fairphone does neither.
by mzl | 2025-06-24 08:54:59+00:00
Generally what is needed is a subroutine that can tell you 1) if the problem has a solution, and 2) if the solution is unique (common requirement for puzzles like these). Using such a model as a sub-routine, a heuristic search can be done to gradually build up puzzles. If your solver technology of choice can handle quantified problems, that could be used to integrate those two problems into one, but that is quite a lot harder to to.

If the base solver you have is a system that can be run in various configurations with different levels of reasoning and assumption as well as a report on the amount of search needed if any, that can be very useful as a way to measure the hardness. In Sudoku as a Constraint problem (https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/document?doi=4f069d85116ab6b4c...), Helmut Simonis tested lots of 9x9 Sudoku puzzles against various levels of propagation and pre-processing as a way to measure the hardness of Sudoku puzzles by categorizing them by the level of reasoning needed to solve without search. The MiniZinc model for LinkedIn Queens (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44353731) can be used with various solvers and levels of propagation as such a subroutine.

Now, for production-level puzzle making, such as what King does for Candy Crush, the problems and requirements are even harder. I've heard presentation where they talk about training neural networks to play like human testers, so not optimal play but most human like play, in order to test the hardness level of the puzzles.
by shiomiru | 2025-06-24 08:55:05+00:00
Sure, but I'm talking about where my fingers first reach when taking the device out of my pocket.

In that case, I'm grabbing it with my thumb, index finger and middle finger, and since the phone is seated upside down, my thumb reaches the home button before I'm even holding it in my palm.

On phones with a fingerprint sensor on the back, I first have to get a full grip, and then I can reach for the sensor.

(But it's probably somewhat hand/pocket-specific...)
by rini17 | 2025-06-24 08:55:43+00:00
You can connect any peripherals including keyboard and mouse using usb-c hub. There are hubs that support external power available already so you can simultaneously charge the phone. I do sometimes use my fairphone with external keyboard case that way. Yes I would like higher quality one that better fits the phone, but I think that would be niche/bespoke expensive product.