MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by johnisgood | 2025-07-18 08:53:32+00:00
You might find https://www.lojban.org/files/why-lojban/whylojb.txt interesting. It is not really about your quote of Wittgenstein, but there is:

> In broad terms, the Hypothesis claims that the limits of the language one speaks are the limits of the world one inhabits (also in Wittgenstein), that the grammatical categories of that language define the ontological categories of the word, and that combinatory potentials of that language delimit the complexity of that world (this may be Jim Brown's addition to the complex Hypothesis.) The test then is to see what changes happen in these areas when a person learns a language with a new structure, are they broadened in ways that correspond to the ways the structure of the new language differs from that of the old?
by oldenlessons | 2025-07-18 08:53:35+00:00
I like to read books on computers from the 70s and 80s. No trite analogies, just hard facts and diagrams. And explanations that start from scratch, requiring no previous knowledge - because there was none.

The thing about these layers of abstraction is that they add load and thus increase the demand for people and teams and organizations that command these lower levels. The idea that, on a systemic level, higher abstraction levels can diminish the importance, size, complexity or expertise needed overall or even keep it at current levels is entirely misguided.

As we add load on top, the base has to become stronger and becomes more important, not less.
by drcolly | 2025-07-18 08:54:58+00:00
The statements made in the linked description of this cannot be true, such as Google not being able to read what you sent them and not being able to read what they responded with.

Having privacy is a reasonable goal, but VPNs and SSL/TLS provide enough for most, and at some point your also just making yourself a target for someone with the power to undo your privacy and watch you more closely- why else would you go through the trouble unless you were to be hiding something? It’s the same story with Tor, VPN services, etc.- those can be compromised at will. Not to say you shouldn’t use them if you need to have some level of security functionally, but no one with adequate experience believes in absolute security.
by prettyblocks | 2025-07-18 08:55:41+00:00
The license looks quite permissive though as long as you're not using n8n as the platform for your business. According to the license, if you just wrap/productize the flows you create and users don't bring their own n8n credentials or API keys, then you're good. It seems like there's a ton you can build off of it and still stay within the parameters of the license.
by pjmlp | 2025-07-18 08:56:13+00:00
And I guess you were down the street to keep it running when support was needed, and did not install either GNOME or KDE, which have had several UI changes throughout the years.

None of the PC stores on my hometown cares about GNU/Linux, but at least it is a known place that they can reach for, and I don't have to fly back home for support.
by ACCount36 | 2025-07-18 08:56:31+00:00
Apple used to be at the edge of AI. They shipped Siri before "AI assistant" went mainstream, they were one of the first to ship an actual NPU in consumer hardware and put neural networks into features people use. They were spearheading computational photography. They didn't publish research, they're fucking Apple, but they did do the work.

And then they just... gave up?

I don't know what happened to them. When AI breakthrough happened, I expected them to put up a fight. They never did.
by bayindirh | 2025-07-18 08:56:50+00:00
> I can see absolutely nothing Apple does that no other laptop can.

Let me check the list.

- High DPI screen with color calibration and automatic white balancing, working 99% of the time. Ensuring your eyes always sees the color it expects without fatigue. Plus, HDR.

- Most decent external screens you plug will also have their correct color profile installed on the OS level, so they'll not show funny colors.

- 15+ hour battery life on an ordinary laptop if you don't abuse it. Even my M1 can handle me for a couple of days with light usage.

- Good quality speakers, decent stereo separation without being too tinny or boomy.

- Great quality cameras and microphones for its size.

- Great, backlight illuminated keyboard, with no flex.

- A realistic 8-10 year usage life without babying it.

- A full metal body, and keeping it light for that amount of metal.

- Built-in biometrics which runs on a proper secure enclave, without any "touch here, write absurdly long pasword you don't know there" shenanigans of Windows.

- A POSIX compliant, BSD descendant OS which can interoperate with Linux way better than Windows.

- A proper backup system which backs up whole OS and system state to an external drive, better than old "Windows 7 backup" and miles better than new "OneDrive only Windows Backup".

- Better radios, backend and port bandwidth than its class-equivalent machines. Essentially a loaded MacBook Pro is equivalent to a Z-Workstation Mobile from HP.

...and these are standard in almost every MacBook. I don't go through hoops to beg local distributors to build the machine I like via their configuration wizard, and wait them to import it if they feel like it, and pay 3x of its sticker price because it's a one off import tucked inside a bigger shipment. Even CTO devices by Apple are shipped in a week and comes to my door in another 1-2. I pay the sticker price for the device I want.

Do you need more?

Sent from my Linux desktop system.
by vanilagy | 2025-07-18 08:57:00+00:00
Great question! <video> and <audio> are perfectly apt for simple media playing on the web, and you should use them for playing files.

They tend to break down when you want to build more complex applications on top of them (such as a video editor) that require perfect-accuracy seeking and playback, precise control over decoding patterns, and direct access to frame data. Mediabunny was built to power that kind of application, and so this demo acts as a proof of concept that you can reimplement the <video> element from scratch using that library.
by samsartor | 2025-07-18 08:57:23+00:00
I did read it, all the way through! It's really good. The part you are quoting is setting up the ELS, which does not memorize entire images due to the inductive biases of a CNN (translation symmetry, limited receptive field). But the equivalence to a patch moseic is still due to the assumption that the loss is perfectly minimized under those restrictions.

And I was impressed by the close fit to real CNNs/ResNets and even to UNets. But what that shows is that the real models are heavily overfit. The datasets they are using for evaluation here are _tiny_.

Edit: oh the talk is here btw, if anyone is curious https://youtu.be/c-eIa8QuB24
by ndriscoll | 2025-07-18 08:57:48+00:00
My sample size is fairly small, but I've not encountered driver issues on anything in the last ~15 years. Most stuff is in tree (IME everything except nvidia), and despite what others report, I've never had an issue with nvidia binary drivers. My desktop with gtx1070 has been running the same installation for 8 years now.

Why do you think Linux can't do auto-updates? There's probably a built in option for your distribution, but if not, just run your update command on a timer.

Phones and ARM land seem to be a disaster of hardware support, but x86 PCs/laptops have all worked great for me.
by yonatan8070 | 2025-07-18 08:58:22+00:00
When I was tasked with acquiring desk setups for our whole company (small, new startup) back when everyone was using just whatever I decided to go with a really similar setup, Dell P2425HE monitor with integrated USB-C hub, and a Dell P2425H daisy chained from it.

I'm really glad we went with that, so far they've been great (for software devs, no color sensitive stuff).
by logicchains | 2025-07-18 08:59:22+00:00
>I have been using it for coding for some time, but I don't think I'm getting much value out of it.

I find this perspective so hard to relate to. LLMs have completely changed my workflow; the majority of my coding has been replaced by writing a detailed textual description of the change I want, letting an LLM make the change and add tests, then just reviewing the code it wrote and fixing anything stupid it did. This saves so much time, especially since multiple such LLM tasks can be run simultaneously. But maybe it's because I'm not working on giant, monolithic code bases.
by michaelt | 2025-07-18 08:59:37+00:00
> Which is strange because secure boot should be useful in _exactly_ the situation you don't have physical control of the HW, shouldn't it?

One of the ways you can introduce your own signing key is as a Machine Owner Key, using the "MOK Manager"

But a design goal of this software was: We don't want malware with root to be able to introduce a MOK without the user's consent, as then the malware could sign itself. So "MOK Manager" was deliberately designed to require keyboard-and-mouse interaction, early in boot before the network has been brought up.

Of course if your server has a KVM attached, you can still do this remotely, I guess.
by lloeki | 2025-07-18 08:59:49+00:00
> macOS UI scaling doesn’t allow ratios like 125% meaning the UI elements aren’t quite at my preferred size

Try BetterDisplay, and enable "Flexible Scaling" (a per-display setting).

Bonus: enable "UI Scale Matching" and output will be same physical size across all displays (as long as they report proper DPI, but I think you can hack that as well right there)
by johnisgood | 2025-07-18 08:59:54+00:00
It is not the same, but I do use "chattr +i" on a file (which applies the immutable attribute) on Linux to a file that otherwise would have been overwritten by programs that do not give a damn whether I want it to or not, and in my case it was easier to just make that file immutable, mainly: /etc/resolv.conf.
by vouwfietsman | 2025-07-18 09:00:04+00:00
> Whether it was made for that is immaterial

This is in the talk, he explicitly says that its often brought up that "OOP is made for large teams" "you're not using it as intended" "its not made to model your domain hierarchy" etc etc. The first 30 minutes is his reaction to that, disproving it.

Whether thats true or interesting is a different question, but its explicitly stated in the video, at the start, before he goes into the history.
by wcoenen | 2025-07-18 09:01:45+00:00
> Plants have been producing protein from solar power since forever

Yes, but interestingly enough solar panels + hydrolysis + solein production is more efficient. It takes roughly ten times more land area to produce the same amount of food with plants. And efficiency of solar panels is still improving.

Producing food with solar panels also would not be affected by increasingly unpredictable weather patterns, soil degradation, pests and weeds. It would not require fertilizer, pesticides or herbicides. Water usage would be much reduced.

Obviously this technology is still in the demonstration phase and there is still a long way to go. But it looks like this could be the start of a revolution in food production of a magnitude similar to the Haber process.
by wiether | 2025-07-18 09:03:07+00:00
Having gone through probably twenty HRM during the last 10 years, my recommandation is now Coospo's products, available on AliExpress or Amazon.

My own experience and the one of many friends using them daily is that they are more durable than every product from the big brands (Garmin, Wahoo, Polar...) while being sold for half or less.

The only reason to go for the big brands is for the gimmick extra features that are useless to 99% of the users
by Wubdidu | 2025-07-18 09:03:32+00:00
Same, I really like the solutions one can build with LLMs and have a lot of fun working with them to improve use-cases where it actually makes sense. Its the first time since years I really enjoy coding on side-projects and take great care to give clear instructions and review and understand what LLMs build for me, except some completely irrelevant/one-shot things I entirely "vibe code".

Its gotten so bad I'm actively trying to avoid talking about this in circles like Hacker News because people get so heavily and aggressively discredited and ridiculed as if they have no idea what they are doing or are a shill for big AI companies.

I know what I'm doing and actively try to help friends and co-workers use LLMs in a sustainable way, understanding their limitations and the dangers of letting them loose without staying in the loop. Its sad that I can't talk about this without fear of being attacked, especially in communities like Hacker News that I previously valued as being very professional and open, compared to other modern social media.
by VonGallifrey | 2025-07-18 09:04:39+00:00
> Attentive CS graduates have a structured pool of information to draw from

Yes, but a self-taught Developer also has their own pool of information to draw from. That could be prior experience, but it can also overlap with the CS graduates' pool of information.

You don't need to take a DSA class to learn DSA. There is a wealth of information out there for self-taught developers to learn these kinds of things. From textbooks to YouTube videos, it is all readily available for anyone.

Self-taught does not mean you need to invent everything from first principles.
by poisonborz | 2025-07-18 09:05:12+00:00
It's not a casual comment in the sense that I have genuine concern every day that the current world we are living in is enabled by common employees. I'm not saying everyone should solve world hunger, "NGO or bust" - and yes, the job market is tough - but especially for software engineers, there are literally hundreds of thousands of companies requiring software work and who do net good or at least "plausible" harm, and pay an above average salary.

Also I only read the comment above, it's you who can judge what you contribute to and what you find fair. I just wish there were a mandatory "code of conduct" for engineers. The way AI is reshaping the field, I could imagine this becoming more like a medical/law field where this would be possible.

I work in IoT telemetrics. The company is rumored to partake in military contracts at a future point, that would be my exit then.
by midasz | 2025-07-18 09:05:32+00:00
Either way you wrap each thing that acts as a dependency, even if it's internal. I treat dependencies another team in my company delivers the same as any other third party dependency. Never use the classes but always just wrap around them in a service or component.

When my 'task' is to publish things on a Kafka bus I create a publishing service that takes in an object that I control, only inside that service is there actual talk about the dependency and preferably even that's a bit wrapped. It's easy to go too far with this but a little bit of wrapping keeps you safe.
by vouaobrasil | 2025-07-18 09:06:30+00:00
It's slow because most people realize the truth about AI, which is:

(1) Reduces the value that people place on others, thereby creating a more narcisstic society

(2) Takes people's livelihoods away

(3) Is another method by which big tech concentrates the most wealth in their hands and the west becomes even more of a big tech oligarchy.

Programmers tend to stay in bubbles as they always have and happily promote it, not really noticing how dangerous and destructive it is.
by cess11 | 2025-07-18 09:06:54+00:00
Looking at ChatInterface.tsx/handleSendMessage in https://github.com/pixlie/Pixlie/commit/3c0bd23ff16c0fcdac80..., I'd have rejected this if it came up in a PR and would not consider this production quality software.

Rewriting it to something sane would be harder and more time consuming than just writing a decent implementation upfront.
by jpc0 | 2025-07-18 09:07:04+00:00
> 2) in case shit hits the fan... It's somebody else's fault!

A contrived example but, good luck explaining to the lawyers that openssl had this bug that caused all your customer data to leak and your company is being sued. If your motto for dependencies are “we can just not look at the dependency too closely and just act as if it's written and maintained by competent…” I’m reasonably sure someone is getting fired in that situation if it doesn’t sink the entire company.

Move fast and break things isn’t exactly a viable strategy in all industries.

Now as I said openssl was a contrived example but what if instead it was your ORM that didn’t use templated queries but rather just did string interpolation and there was an SQL injection attack. Considering this is still one if the most popular vulnerabilities on the web someone is messing stuff up somewhere and you are blindly like hoping it isn’t in the 10k lines of ORM library you pulled in instead.
by ktallett | 2025-07-18 09:07:06+00:00
It has some benefits, the battery life (you aren't getting 15 hours from it doing a normal workload), keyboard, cameras, are pretty similar to many other laptops. Linux exists so a pale imitation isn't needed, its not light, and there are plenty of as good if not better back up options.

What about the overall quality of the software and hardware being rather poor? No repair-ability, a limited OS now, low quality glass covering the screens, lack of long term support for many laptops now?
by druskacik | 2025-07-18 09:07:18+00:00
It seems their "Voice mode" is just a dictation mode, not like the Voice Mode from e.g. OpenAI. Even their demo[0] just shows a dictation.

I am a bit disappointed, the headline made me think they offer a voice mode similar to OpenAI.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CEP-xIIfuhs
by fauigerzigerk | 2025-07-18 09:08:06+00:00
I thought about giving examples because I understand why people would ask for them, but I decided very deliberately not to give any. It would inevitably turn into a flame war about the politics/ethics of the specific examples and distract from the reasons why I no longer trust Wikipedia.

I understand that this is unsatisfactory, but the only way to "prove" that the motivations of the people contributing to Wikipedia have shifted would be to run a systematic study for which I have neither the time nor the skills nor indeed the motivation.

Perhaps I should say that am a politically centrist person whose main interests are outside of politics.
by MangoToupe | 2025-07-18 09:08:59+00:00
Really? At some point syntax became kind of a vague sense of color on top of the data flow, which is ultimately the same in any language. I don't even recall what it means to be proficient in one language versus another—surely most career programmers can ramp up on any given syntax or runtime in a relatively short period of time. The hard part is laying out the data flow.

Granted, AI can definitely ease that ramp-up time at the cost of lengthening it.
by mike_hearn | 2025-07-18 09:10:58+00:00
Uber is profitable now, on a yearly basis. But they still presumably have a long way to go until they're actually profitable in the sense that they've made a profit over the lifetime of their existence.

Amazon pivoted to a totally different business that was profitable from the get-go.

Google became profitable within a couple of years of starting and went into the black on total lifetime spend almost immediately. As was normal, back then.
by trinix912 | 2025-07-18 09:11:25+00:00
It's not like Linux is immune to UI changes during updates, Ubuntu has changed their DE a few times (which the average user could easily run into by just clicking Yes in an updater popup), Gnome has changed vastly from 2 to 3, KDE has changed quite a lot too.

Windows 10 has had the same UI for 10 years with a few minor changes.

But if you're comparing it to a non-updated Linux system, then it's no different than keeping them on Windows 7.
by -3ocelot | 2025-07-18 09:11:29+00:00
There is another solution which is to just retain the source for your dependencies and bring them in-house if needed. You still may need to abide by licenses, and many things shouldn’t need to rely on external deps, but I’ve seen a lot of wasted time that continues because we came up with our own way of doing something that others do better, and that can be difficult to get rid of because of unwarranted team pride or familiarity in the homegrown code or not wanting to trust the lone dev that says try this instead.
by user_7832 | 2025-07-18 09:12:38+00:00
Every time I see one of these posts, I get anywhere between disappointed and pet-peeved that they don’t have the complete/nuanced picture.

Windows 10 support does not end in October 2025 any more than it ends in January 2032.

See what I did there? Without context, claiming “windows 10 does in October” really isn’t true!

…And that’s because the LTSC IOT version gets security updates till 2032!

Now, installing and running the LTSC iot version can be daunting… about as daunting as installing Linux or any other OS. Which this article anyway suggests.

Yes, you’ll need to run the installer again. And yes, you’ll lose app data. But that’s the same as installing a Linux distro!

Now, the biggest kerfuffle is that you’ll either need to form a company, or use one to get a legitimate license key… unless of course, there was an open source tool on GitHub that could help you with that.

Now, if doing that is beyond your moral compass… then you might be better off with some other OS.
by Kynsofficial | 2025-07-18 09:14:17+00:00
Thank you for raising this — it's a deeply thoughtful perspective and you’re absolutely right: secure access control and ownership revocation are “job one” for a tool like EchoVaults. I'll try to address your concerns directly and clearly:

1. How the Owner Can Change or Revoke Authorization EchoVaults is entirely offline and local to your device. That means:

You can edit your trusted contact, master password, or emergency instructions at any time from within the app.

All changes happen instantly, without needing to connect to the cloud or re-sync anything.

If someone you previously trusted becomes untrustworthy, you just open the app, change the vault password, the 5 identity challenge questions, or remove them entirely. No delay. No approval needed. You remain in control at all times.

Because there’s no external server, no one — not even us — can override or silently alter this.

2. What About Memory? What If a Senior User Forgets? You’re right to say that remembering a master password + challenge questions can be tricky, especially for seniors. That’s why we built the system with multiple human-friendly backup methods:

You can print an encrypted PDF backup of your vault with your password + answers, and store it in a physical lockbox or with a trusted lawyer or child.

You can export a password-protected backup file and write the access code down on paper.

Or, if you use a password manager already (like 1Password or Bitwarden), you can safely store your EchoVaults credentials there.

We also strongly recommend setting a codeword-based lock screen message like:

"If I’m incapacitated, [Name] should use the code ‘River’ to open EchoVaults."

This gives helpful direction to trusted parties, without exposing anything sensitive upfront.

3. Preventing Exploitation (e.g. Power of Attorney Scams) Because we don’t connect to servers or share data, no one can remotely access or tamper with your EchoVaults data.

The most important layer of defense is:

Your phone’s passcode (which protects the device itself)

Your EchoVaults master password

Your chosen unlock questions

If someone ever tries to pressure you or gain access improperly, you can silently update or revoke their access within seconds. They would never know until it no longer works.

You're absolutely right that this kind of product must earn your trust, not just ask for it. That’s why we’ve published a full transparency report https://echovaults.org/transparency, made the app open-source, and designed everything to work offline, privately, and at your pace.

If there are better ways we can surface this info on the website (e.g., clearer onboarding or an FAQ section just for seniors), we’d love your suggestions.

Thank you again for asking. Your voice matters, and it helps us build better.