MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by mrweasel | 2025-06-09 20:17:07+00:00
> My question is, what icon do you use instead of a letter icon

That is a good question. The "share" icon e.g. is something that has no real world equivalent, and I'd argue that it almost doesn't work. Technically it could be anything and we'd over time agree that "This thing means share".

We're still at a point where many still understand the references, but over time something like the letter in email icons, just becomes cargo cult. Perhaps you're right, it doesn't matter, as long as we agree what the icons mean.
by edelbitter | 2025-06-09 20:17:22+00:00
It actually makes things a easier for both blocking and allocating (e.g. VPS hoster) side.

Once the "oh no, we can't afford that many unique allocations" excuse is away, algorithms that enforce quotas for every prefix size at the same time (with no excuses for CGNAT weirdness) stop being too ruthless.

You can distribute your addresses as needed, and I can track successful and failing attempts - at whatever distribution scheme you use. E.g. group your "unverified" or "trial" accounts at a larger prefix size, so they get each other blocked - but not your paying customers.
by vonunov | 2025-06-09 20:17:23+00:00
I really hate some of these questions too. I'm going to talk at the hypothetical interviewer a lot so "you" isn't you.

Name a time I had an angry customer? Lol, like, all the time forever? I almost feel like this one must be a trick question designed to catch people who can't deal with the job. I forget about such customers as immediately as possible. As a matter of fact, over the years I've relied on my ability to not reflect other people's temperature or allow their demeanor to take up a lot of space in my field of attention in the first place. I'm not sure if anyone with good chances of coping in this line of work [IT/support/sysadmin was the context when I originally posted this self-quote elsewhere] should really have any honest answers to this question readily available.

I can only name one time I had an angry customer, but obviously I've had countless angry customers. I can name that time because he left a voicemail like four minutes long ranting about how unacceptable it was that we had a full call queue and that he was asked to leave a voicemail, and demanding to be put in touch with various executives. I keep that one in the toolkit because it's easy to twist into inspiring stories about above-and-beyond customer service, or taking ownership, or whatever.

How do I explain something technical to a customer in simpler terms? It's not just me, is it? These seem patently ridiculous, like if they had bothered to do some kind of trial run or think for 30 seconds about how they might answer them, they would have realized...

Or is it just me? Does everyone else have an overt methodology for doing this that they can articulate on demand? I would probably come off like some kind of idiot in that interview. Uh, I dunno. I guess I, like, you know, use the context of the interaction so far to gauge their likely understanding of the salient points? And I audit the explanation for unnecessary tangents and jargon and opaque concepts? I then tailor the explanation to what they need to know and what I think they'll understand in the most useful way in that context? So I guess, in a nutshell, I would say that I explain something technical to a customer in simpler terms by just, like, doing it. This is, like, a bespoke service, sir, perhaps you should try the TJ Maxx down the way.

How do I deal with different personality types? I just, like, do it? This feels like another one where having an answer is a red flag. I've never needed to handle this overtly/consciously either, and I think that's a good sign.

Can I give an example of a situation where I had to go above and beyond for a user? No, and I don't think you grasp the core concept of "above and beyond". If you want some stories about times I didn't have to, let me know.

Edit: Actually, you know what, I do have one of when I "had to go above and beyond" but probably not in the way they're hoping for: https://i.vgy.me/7ZAwjj.jpg

Where do I rate my office suite skills on a scale of 1-10? I'm terribly sorry, I must be in the wrong interview, have a nice day
by ninetyninenine | 2025-06-09 20:17:47+00:00
Yeah. They hijacked our maternal instincts and our productivity instincts. Dogs have evolved to the point where they now have humans handling artificial selection for them instead of relying on natural selection.

It's a 1000x speed up to have humans picking out the cute ones and deliberately forcing this forward to make money.

You have to realize that it's our own instincts driving this forward and if it detriments humanity then the traits of "seeking profit" or "seeking cuteness" become subject to natural selection. These traits will go away with time.
by patcon | 2025-06-09 20:18:49+00:00
> It’s a much simpler idea to just have citizens vote for what they want their tax money spent on, by voting for candidates who will represent their interests.

I think your comment is operating under the assumption that the "folk theory of democracy" works: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folk_theory_of_democracy

It's a term from "Democracy for Realists", written by some democratic theorists. They disassembled the argument for it in the first half of chapter 1, and then spent the rest of the book refuting pretty much all the other competing academic theories that other democratic theorists actually believe in (scholars of democracy absolutely do not believe in the folk theory).

EDIT: Which is just to say that we need to improve the incentive structures (which QF takes a stab at doing, though there are other approaches). We need these experiments because we need to learn what actually works -- the old theories never actually did, and the prior assumptions that made this disconnect negligible are starting to fail.
by NuLL3rr0r | 2025-06-09 20:19:02+00:00
This beginner-friendly tutorial, covers how to significantly boost the performance of your Unreal Engine VR projects, whether you're building for standalone (mobile) or PCVR (desktop) on devices such as Meta Quest, HTC VIVE, Varjo, or Valve Index.

It covers step-by-step how to:

Convert a regular project into a VR-ready experience. Optimize for both standalone (Android) and PCVR (Windows) platforms. Tweak key rendering, lighting, and texture settings for smoother gameplay. Configure Meta XR and HTC VIVE OpenXR plugins to fine-tune settings for the best performance possible. Utilize and fine-tune engine scalability settings. Explore powerful optimization features like DLSS, FSR, XeSS, and Foveated Rendering

Even if you’re new to VR development, this guide breaks it down with visuals, clear examples, and actionable tips to take your framerate from sluggish to silky smooth.
by ultrarunner | 2025-06-09 20:19:10+00:00
I’ve noticed a recurring theme on iOS where interactions intended for an app get trapped by the OS (especially multi-window interactions on iPad). The OS is less and less a foundation to support what you actually want, and more the product itself. If the actual content of the phones matters less than the fact that iOS itself is “the latest” then this makes perfect sense and is in line with the general momentum over the past several years.
by adolph | 2025-06-09 20:19:31+00:00
Open link and type into this box "physicality is the new skeumorphism"

Read on and:

They are completely dynamic: inhabiting characteristics that are akin to actual materials and objects. We’ve come back, in a sense, to skeuomorphic interfaces — but this time not with a lacquer resembling a material. Instead, the interface is clear, graphic and behaves like things we know from the real world, or might exist in the world. This is what the new skeuomorphism is. It, too, is physicality.

Well worth reading for the retrospective of Apple's website taking a twenty year journey from flatland and back.
by hn_throwaway_99 | 2025-06-09 20:19:31+00:00
> maintenance activities after the taxpayer places the computer software into service

This is the part that I think makes this whole jig of treating software development like a purely capitalizable expense so nuts.

I previously worked at a public company that wanted software developers to treat as much work as possible as CapEx - it makes you look more profitable than you actually are, which is bad for taxes but good for your stock price. Developers hated it. The problem with it is that with modern web based software, CI/CD, A/B testing, etc. that the line between "new software" (i.e. CapEx) and "maint" (i.e. OpEx) is so blurred as to be pointless. E.g. many times I'd be fixing a bug (technically OpEx) but that would often lead to some new features ideas, or ways to structure the software to make it easier to add new features (technically CapEx). Software is fundamentally different from capital expenditures in other areas, and assuming a 5 year straightline depreciation schedule for software is laughably absurd.

What other sort of capital expenditure has you do releases every day, or requires 24/7 monitoring? I would argue that the business of software has changed so drastically over the past 20 or so years that it makes much more sense just to categorize it as OpEx by default (for both tax and GAAP purposes), and only have it be capitalized as CapEx for very small and specific reasons.
by alwillis | 2025-06-09 20:19:43+00:00
From https://front-end.social/@jensimmons/114654858122597718

* SVG icons

* Every site can be a web app (special tech not required) HDR Images

* <model> on visionOS

* Immersive video and audio on visionOS

* WebGPU

* Anchor Positioning

* Scroll-driven Animations

* Pretty text

* Contrast Color

* Digital Credentials API

* Trusted Types
by irq-1 | 2025-06-09 20:20:10+00:00
Any plans for spam? Does the app have a device id or account, so you can disable them?

If the message is encrypted for the reporter and they're the only ones who can read it, what does the organization do to manage this? Are passwords for private keys saved with the org, or are the keys saved with multiple accounts? What do you do when someone forgets their password?

Cool app; just encryption management when it comes to human users must have lots of trade-offs.
by leakycap | 2025-06-09 20:20:29+00:00
I think the naming by year is great, but I wish that wasn't my favorite big change they made.

Apple's implementation of things like containerization are going to be kneecapped in unimaginable small but important ways, making it unlikely me or anyone I dev with will be using them in the first few iterations, but if I stay on macOS that is something to look forward to.
by jamessinghal | 2025-06-09 20:21:06+00:00
The IRS Guidance says this in 5.05(2), which is most relevant to software startups:

(2) Computer software developed for sale or licensing to others. In the case of computer software that is developed for sale or licensing to others (or upgrades and enhancements to such software), activities that occur after such software (or upgrades and enhancements to such software) is ready for sale or licensing to others, such as marketing and promotional activities, maintenance activities that do not give rise to upgrades and enhancements, distribution activities (for example, making the software available via remote access), and customer support activities.

So they are maintenance as long as they "do not give rise to upgrades and enhancements", which would be the responsibility of the taxpayer to track. I'm sure there is more nuance to it in practice.
by __MatrixMan__ | 2025-06-09 20:21:33+00:00
Every now and then my macbook will hide all of my windows so that I'm just looking at my wallpaper. It is a pretty wallpaper, but I don't really understand why I need a hotkey or gesture or whatever is happening just to allow me to gaze at it.

I guess this is more of the same? Some pretty picture can shine through at you because... pretty?
by rollcat | 2025-06-09 20:21:48+00:00
I find it comical that macOS displays an HDD icon for internal storage. It's even using the "old", skeuomorphic art style, from before the flat design.

(It also displays a CRT with a Windows 95 BSOD for Samba network shares, but that's 100% on purpose.)

OTOH Apple's own apps haven't had a "save" button for a really long time now. Everything autosaves (and syncs to iCloud) automatically - use Undo if you need to. More complex apps, like Numbers, also automatically maintain a version history.
by noosphr | 2025-06-09 20:21:53+00:00
>It's about time we start seeing more physicality in our user interfaces!

I'm not sure if this is a joke or not.

We had that, it was called skeuomorphism: https://miro.medium.com/v2/da:true/resize:fit:1200/0*6DRkHp3...

Then we got rid of it because it looked too 2010 now we are bringing it back because flat looks too 2020.
by rweichler | 2025-06-09 20:22:29+00:00
When Cook became CEO, all of this was inevitable. I used to blame Jobs for not picking Forstall as his successor, but it recently dawned on me that it was never his choice to begin with. The board probably crowded him out again, just like the Sculley situation.

In a month Apple will have been on autopilot for longer than Jobs was at the company during the 1997-2011 heyday. Jobs became iCEO in September 1997. After 167 months passed, he left in August 2011. It has been 166 months since then.
by kccqzy | 2025-06-09 20:22:50+00:00
Yeah I'm pretty sure that setting has been there since Yosemite. That was the version that first prominently featured blurred translucency. (The transparency in earlier versions like Mavericks was really subtle and would not need such a setting: see for yourself in this image found by Googling https://i0.wp.com/morrick.me/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/001-....)
by reaperducer | 2025-06-09 20:22:54+00:00
I find it offensive to have any generative AI code on my computer.

Settings → Apple Intelligence and Siri → toggle Apple Intelligence off.

It's not enabled by default. But in case you accidentally turned it on, turning it off gets you a bunch of disk space back as the AI stuff is removed from the OS.

Some people are just looking for a reason to be offended.
by hollerith | 2025-06-09 20:22:54+00:00
>There's simply no clearly articulated doom scenarios that don't involve massive leaps in capabilities

Haven't there already been a couple of massive leaps in AI capabilities (AlexNet in 2012, then transformers in 2017)?

Is it not the publicly-stated goal of the leaders of most of the AI labs to make further massive leaps?

Isn't drastic improvements what happens in fields that humanity is starting to understand?

Wasn't there for example a drastic improvement in humanity's ability to manufacture things starting in 1750 (which led to a massive increase in fossil-fuel use, which led to climate change and other adverse effects like "killer smog")?
by rurp | 2025-06-09 20:23:08+00:00
Yes exactly, all that's needed in practice is to learn a handful of simple heuristics and you'll be fine if you follow them. Unfortunately simple does not equate to easy, losing weight is quite hard for most people but the hard part is not knowing what to do, it's actually doing it.

I think that nearly all of the consumer weight loss industry, of which these silly AI photo apps are a small part, is an attempt to turn a simple but hard process into one that's complicated but easy. In practice such shortcuts generally don't work which is why products like these have miserably low success rates.
by lenerdenator | 2025-06-09 20:23:13+00:00
Of course it's a requirement to be considered encryption. Let's take this "encrypted" copy of the text in your reply:

" Klq prob fq ybfkd lmbk plrozb fp obnrfoba ql yb zlkpfaboba "bkzovmqflk". Ybpfabp, bsbk fc vlr zxk illh xq qeb zlab vlr alk'q hklt fc qexq'p texq'p orkkfkd lk qeb pbosbo."

I'm telling you that I applied state-of-the-art, uncrackable encryption to that. Why should you believe me? What evidence do you have that I didn't just take your text, throw it in some Caesar Cipher generator, and copy-paste it into this text box?

Well, none. It just happens to look like I did that, and if that were data you wanted to keep secret but that a hacker had obtained without permission, you can bet that they would say "looks like a Caesar Cipher, I'll try a combination of decryption parameters until it makes sense".

And in this case, they'd be absolutely correct.
by pjmlp | 2025-06-09 20:23:39+00:00
/rant mode on

Every few years since Xerox PARC, we get yet another attempt to bytecode userspace.

So far only IBM i, ChromeOS and Android managed to stick around, mostly thanks for their owners having the "my way or the highway" attitude, with management willing to support the teams no matter for how long it takes.

/rant mode off

Anyway, all the best for the project, looks cool.
by jorvi | 2025-06-09 20:23:52+00:00
To me it looks plain ugly, especially with all the bounces and transforms. Look at those sliders and toggles..

It's straight from the 2000s, with Linux users using Compiz and... Amethyst(?), stuffing their entire desktop full with gaudy transparency, transforms, jiggles and bounces.

More of a nit, but the sentence

The new design extends across iOS 26, iPadOS 26, macOS Tahoe 26, watchOS 26, and tvOS 26 to establish even more harmony

is so ironic and funny. No one noticed how talking about "harmony" whilst having one single platform use a codename next to the version number just screams inattention to detail?
by ryao | 2025-06-09 20:24:21+00:00
The memory wall (also known as the Von Neumann bottleneck) is still true. Token generation on Nvidia GPUs is memory bound, unless you do very large batch sizes to become compute bound.

That said, more exotic architectures from cerebras and groq get far less token per second performance than their memory bandwidth suggests they can, so they have a bottleneck elsewhere.
by tialaramex | 2025-06-09 20:24:34+00:00
Gell-Mann amnesia effect applies - if you speak confidently about a topic where I know better I should judge your false confidence for other topics on which I know no more than you, because you're probably bullshitting just as much.

Crichton claimed this effect was unique to popular newspapers - but actually I think today we can say it applies elsewhere, people will see that Musk hasn't the faintest idea how software engineering works and then go straight back to believing on aerospace.
by PessimalDecimal | 2025-06-09 20:24:51+00:00
Isn't it interpreted literally to an extreme degree? For example, the injunction to not boil a kid in its mother's milk [1] has had a bunch of corollaries added going to extreme lengths to ensure this doesn't accidentally happen.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milk_and_meat_in_Jewish_law#Ra...
Ask HN: What are the pros and cons of different AI coding background agents?
by hoanh | 2025-06-09 20:24:53+00:00
I'm experimenting with different AI background agent tools—Codex, Jules, Claude Code, and Cursor's background agent-and wondering what others have found in practice.

What are the strengths and weaknesses of each? Which one do you actually end up using daily, and why?
by thewebguyd | 2025-06-09 20:25:17+00:00
> Your smoking gun is to not use the app in the most intuitive and obvious way?

Search isn't the most intuitive and obvious way to everyone. Just adding a search function also isn't an excuse to just totally ignore good UX design and information hierarchy.

I've been a sysadmin my entire career, and still do end-user support occasionally. You'd be surprised how few people use the search function, for anything, on their computers. Just opening the windows start menu and showing them they can search there is like black magic to a frighteningly large amount of people.

I've met fellow Mac users that don't even know spotlight exists, and navigate through the OS and every app via mouse and clicking around.

So yeah, just throwing a search box in your app as an excuse for ignoring the experience of navigating it any other way is bad UX design.
by Lammy | 2025-06-09 20:25:34+00:00
The marketing text feels like it's trying way too hard, to the point that it makes me second-guess my positive first impression. I do think the UI looks cool, and I did like Aero Glass too, but having the headline straight-up tell me that the UI is “delightful and elegant” and having the first-sentence-of-first paragraph “beautiful new software design” hyperlink cheapens the whole thing IMHO.

Yes I know Apple have always been like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nx7v815bYUw (BOOM)

But at least the Stebe Jovs keynotes gave me the chance to be impressed for a moment in my head before laying in to the superlatives.
by yoyohello13 | 2025-06-09 20:25:34+00:00
I guess I just don't understand what point you're trying to make. I'm mean, time I spend on HN is time I can't spend doing other things as well. Or commuting, or watching movies, or playing piano, literally anything we do in life that isn't directly related to survival.

In fact, things like taking my dog for a walk is a pure positive. I get exercise and sometimes my family comes along for the walk too. That's a boost to my family's health and relationships enabled by the context of caring for the dog. So trying to portray dog ownership as a pure energy drain is just not true.
by gowld | 2025-06-09 20:25:36+00:00
Do you have any evidence that these supposed assumptions exist?

No one donates $100K to the opera because they enjoy attending opera $1M worth. It's absurd to accuse any opera organization of assuming that.

Someone buys a ticket to the opera for $100 because they enjoy attending opera >$100 worth. They donate $100K because they want other people to enjoy opera, or for personal advertising purposes, not charitable social purposes.
by wry_durian | 2025-06-09 20:25:49+00:00
One intuition for the variability argument comes from binary search, where you learn the most when you eliminate half the possibilities. You can apply the same logic to your product development or testing strategy by intending to fail more frequently. (In the testing context, this could look like testing at a higher level of integration.) This adds variability to the process but you will learn more and faster, which typically results in economic upside.

In terms of resources, Will Larson's An Elegant Puzzle hits on some of these themes and is very readable. However, he doesn't show much of his work, as it were. It's more like a series of blog posts, whereas Reinertsen's book is more like a textbook. You could also just read a queuing theory textbook and try to generalize from it (and that's where you'll read plenty about high-capacity queues, for example).
by patmcc | 2025-06-09 20:26:08+00:00
Honestly it'd depend a ton of the particular industry/company/programmer. Some are definitely creating capital assets and should be amortized, others are "repairs and maintenance" which can be expenses. I'd probably defer to treating them as expenses, but allow for amortization if the company desires, and maybe have some audit possibility on that if it looks like the big players are gaming that somehow.

Part of the complication here is companies generally really like amortizing stuff. It lets you smooth your profit across years which is usually better both for tax purposes and for your financial reporting for the market. So this kind of change is fine or even good for a company like Google, but can really suck for a small bootstrapped SAAS. This is why I'd allow companies to pick, with some degree of latitude.
by asenchi | 2025-06-09 20:26:10+00:00
I don’t think it is so much “unquestioning loyalty and trust” but a loving relationship with the creator of the universe. It is hardly a distinction without difference. The story continues that God came to earth as a man who, while innocent, was brutally murdered, for spreading this message. That doesn’t sound like controlling (nor trauma-induced) behavior to me. Instead it sounds like the ultimate sacrifice for a loved one.

Finally, you missed the part where humans chose to be cast away, the consequences of sin are death.

Either way, I pray this truth is revealed to you and that you are blessed in your day and week.