MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by jmathai | 2025-07-23 12:16:22+00:00
Despite any missteps it took, Mozilla fought a good fight. In hindsight, the mistakes seem obvious. And leadership poor.

But they pushed the open web forward. Good on them.

However, I don’t think Firefox is important anymore (I’m a loyal user). And I don’t think Mozilla can create something different. We need a movement more than a well funded organization for this next phase.

Wikipedia is in a very similar predicament. Or soon will be.
by lycopodiopsida | 2025-07-23 12:16:37+00:00
I try it regularly and I was running an org-mode based task management for a year and some months in between, but man, I do not have time and patience for sync conflicts in 2025. It can work but I have to be very cautious, and iCloud sync being a bit mysterious does not help. But I've also recognized that I don't have very complex projects, that GTD tools do not matter since their contents are transient by nature and that Apple Reminders is basically good enough. As a bonus it allows me to share Lists/Projects with my wife.
by incomingpain | 2025-07-23 12:16:50+00:00
I very much hope the judge blocks google from paying mozilla. Google is paying mozilla to make firefox not compete against them.

I look forward to when mozilla can compete fairly without google money to make a good browser again.

>Rebrand (and re-focus) on political activism in the hopes of securing new funding sources. (They are now a “global crew of activists” focused on Marxist causes.)

I thought they were already this? No?

It does seem an effective way to ruin their organization.
by xorcist | 2025-07-23 12:17:05+00:00
Phrabricator lives on in Phorge, which is seeing active contributions.

I haven't used Phorge, but Phrabricator is easily my favourite tool among the source code portals. The code review system actually works and does not make me tear my hair out. I am completely at a loss why the commercial side of it seemingly failed after all those years, when products such as Bitbucket and Gitlab seem to do well.
by dsego | 2025-07-23 12:17:07+00:00
You would think a trillion-dollar company could use its resources to build something useful and move the technology forward with something like a new file system with versioning or a global file system, or updates that don't require a restart, maybe immutability of some sort, something useful for a change. Instead their breakthrough feature is a tool that takes a screenshot every few seconds and fills up the drive space, sigh. And they even couldn't get that right on the first try, the first version was a privacy nightmare.
by ktallett | 2025-07-23 12:17:33+00:00
I did used to write software professionally and no, we traditionally charged per update but each update was significant and worthwhile. Any bugs or safety issues were of course fixed for free. We never moved to the subscription model which has in my view instigated these methods. I am not of the view each iOS update is significant. Now I occasionally have to write software for my current role but it isn't the main job and I release it for free as it is quite niche and I would prefer it is out there.
by jameshart | 2025-07-23 12:17:38+00:00
I suspect a lot of that organizational dysfunction is related to a couple of things that might be changed by adjusting individual developer coding productivity:

1) aligning the work of multiple developers

2) ensuring that developer attention is focused only on the right problems

3) updating stakeholders on progress of code buildout

4) preventing too much code being produced because of the maintenance burden

If agentic tooling reduces the cost of code ownership, annd allows individual developers to make more changes across a broader scope of a codebase more quickly, all of this organizational overhead also needs to be revisited.
by southernplaces7 | 2025-07-23 12:17:41+00:00
What a pile of nonsense you've just said. Our human society produces far more food than is even necessary to feed the entire human population. We produce so much that absolutely vast amounts are regularly discarded as refuse. Climate is not creating any real problems with food production that couldn't be remedied with a whole bunch of economic, logistical and practical solutions long before humanity ever reached genuine food shortages due to climate. Enough with this nearly religious forcing of a specific narrative.

Also, famine isn't gaining ground in real time for the above reason, or at all for that matter. In absolute terms, more people today eat better than ever, and in nearly any case you care to look at of people starving, it's universally due to some regional political bullshittery instead of climate change. (case in point, children going hungry in Gaza right now)

Temporary, shifting price rises on food are not the same thing as famine conditions by the way.

Incredible how some people here just pull random claims out of their ass because they want them to be true as opposed to actually finding out if they have anything to do with reality.
by echelon | 2025-07-23 12:18:58+00:00
Rust is fantastic for writing HTTP servers, microservices, and desktop applications.

OpenAI uses Rust for their service development as do a lot of other big companies.

It's a lot like Python/Flask, or even a bit like Go. It's incredibly easy to author [1] and deploy, and it runs super fast with no GC spikes or tuning. Super predictable five nines.

Desktop apps sing when written in Rust. A lot of AI powered desktop apps are being written in Rust now.

If you're going to reach for Go or Java (gRPC or Jetty or something) or Python/Flask, Rust is a super viable alternative. It takes the same amount of time to author, and will likely be far more defect free since the language encourages writing in a less error prone way and checks for all kinds of errors. Google did a study on this [2,3].

[1] 99.9% of the time you never hit the borrow checker/lifetimes when writing server code as it's linear request scoped logic. You get amazing error handling syntax and ergonomics and automatic cleanup of everything. You also have powerful threading and async tools if you need your service to do work on the side, and those check for correctness.

[2] "When we've rewritten systems from Go into Rust, we've found that it takes about the same size team about the same amount of time to build it," said Bergstrom. "That is, there's no loss in productivity when moving from Go to Rust. And the interesting thing is we do see some benefits from it. So we see reduced memory usage in the services that we've moved from Go ... and we see a decreased defect rate over time in those services that have been rewritten in Rust – so increasing correctness." https://www.theregister.com/2024/03/31/rust_google_c/

[3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39861993
by setopt | 2025-07-23 12:19:06+00:00
I used to do this too, using rsnapshot to backup ssh:// locations.

At some point I switched to instead using Syncthing to sync all my files to the backup server, and then the backup server did local backups from the Syncthing folder to the backup disk using Borgmatic. Works better for laptops.

Now I daily drive a Mac, and switched to Arq backup with a BackBlaze remote, instead of hosting my own backup server. More of a turnkey solution but works fine, especially given all the settings to suspend backups depending on e.g. battery status, WiFi connectivity, etc. when roaming around.
by codingdave | 2025-07-23 12:20:00+00:00
> It seems pretty useless if it’s just going to regurgitate...

...and now you have realized why so many of us do not buy into the hype. Because that is all it does - regurgitate. Hey, there are valid use cases where that functionality is awesome. But LLMs have functionality limits. We're still in the time frame where people are figuring out what those limits are.
by pr337h4m | 2025-07-23 12:20:35+00:00
Groq appears to have quantized the Kimi K2 model they're serving, which is part of the reason why there's a noticeable performance gap between K2 on Moonshot's official API and the one served by Groq.

We don't know how/whether the Qwen3-235B served by Cerebras has been quantized.
by louthy | 2025-07-23 12:21:05+00:00
Bitwig works on Linux, but the problem I had was that my pro-audio soundcard [1] didn’t have supported drivers and I couldn’t get the open source drivers to work. I tried switching to a Dante based solution: none of the Dante based apps worked, so I tried AES67 (open source Dante), still no joy — I just could not get my Dante/AES67 AD/DA converters (which attach to everything in my studio) to be ‘seen’ on Linux.

So after weeks trying to get a high-channel count I/O solution working, I gave in, I found the best thing to do was to just get a M4 Mac Mini for my audio/studio work. And leave Linux for everything else. I was setup within an hour on macOS.

There’s unfortunately still too much resistance and it can cost $1000s trying to get to a working solution or ultimately in my case: a non-working solution. It cost me about $6000 trying various options — not all wasted, but still, not cheap to find out that nothing works.

[1] https://rme-audio.de/hdspe-madi-fx.html
by crabbone | 2025-07-23 12:21:18+00:00
Out of curiosity, yes, I did. But I don't have any use for this tool. I can do better without it. I use these tools because I'm often requested to help those who use them and in so doing make a mess out of their working environment to the point that they can no longer do any work. So, I want to be up to date on latest threats. But as for my personal work with Python, there's simply no use-case where I'd need a tool like uv. It serves no purpose.
by piva00 | 2025-07-23 12:22:00+00:00
I don't see myself using another browser than Firefox in the present time, it would be extremely sad to see it go if nothing else better/similar shows up to replace it.

I cannot stand Chromium/Chrome, even less after the latest changes to extensions, fuck that; don't like Safari's UX and extensions ecosystem; will never install Edge. The other browsers are mostly re-skins of Chromium, or some stupid AI bullshit.

It will be a very sad day if/when Mozilla goes and takes Firefox with it.
by edoceo | 2025-07-23 12:22:21+00:00
Does anyone use UEFI to directly load Linux ? Currently I use Syslinux but I've heard it can be directly booted and remove Syslinux from the process. And it still works with initrd and my appended command line options. This page is in my pinned reference for it - but I'm nervous to try lest I brick my machine.

Anyone here made it work? If UEFI can do it, what is the bootloader for?
by infecto | 2025-07-23 12:22:39+00:00
Absolutely bunk science with no real evidence supporting. It’s like saying autism is created from vaccines.

A lot of the US has radon exposure. I don’t how people come out saying things like you do but at the end of the day it’s exposure to radiation. I have seen it all, people will say it only impacts children or the elderly. Or that it’s an overblown conspiracy. Radon is radioactive, I am sure there are discussions on safe exposure levels but mitigation is so inexpensive and normalized why risk it.
by dspillett | 2025-07-23 12:22:44+00:00
> I don't want my computer to be a maintenance hobby unto itself

That hasn't been the case with Linux, any more than other OSs, for some time now. At least not if you chose an LTS release of a big “getting work done” oriented distro rather than something geared around the bleeding edge or customisability.

There are issues with some software support, but that is almost all Windows stuff that you'll have the same problems with on Macs as Linux.

There are occasional hardware issues, which is where Apple limiting choice in favour of known reliability can look attractive, but that is mostly on the bleeding edge too which isn't a concern if you are “getting work done” (I had issues with some 2.5GbE NICs a while ago and swapped them back out, retried with the same kit last month, at least on apt-release-update later, and things are working just fine).

> if you're on a Mac, use an iPhone, have a Watch, etc,

I can see that.

Though I prefer to select my devices based on what they are best at rather than being locked to a single manufacturer's ecosystem. My watch (Garmin) and phone (Android) talk to each other just fine and integration with the desktop when I need it (mostly for planning routes & pacing plans using maps on the big screen) is web-based so works just as well with Linux as Widows or Macs.
by netsharc | 2025-07-23 12:22:50+00:00
> 4.2.2.2 how would you read that over the phone, in german?

Vier punkt zwei punkt zwei punkt zwei.

But the TTS isn't me, it sees 4. 2. 2. 2. (with spaces in between) and reads Vierte, Zweite, Zweite, Zweite (fourth, second, second, second).

Without spaces, it reads it like the way Germans read an IP address (see first line of reply).

In German the "." after the number is like the "nd" or "th" in "2nd" or "4th".
by sannysanoff | 2025-07-23 12:23:09+00:00
You should automate this, like i did. You're an engineer, no? Work around the digital bureaucracy.

- Running build pipelines: make cli tool to initiate them, monitor them and notify you on completion/error (audio). Allows to chain multiple things. Run in background terminal.

- Learning about changed process and people via zoom calls, teams chat and emails: pass logs of chats and emails to LLM with particular focus. Demand zoom calls transcripts published for that purposes (we use meet)

- Raising incident tickets for issues outside of my control: automate this with agent: allow it to access as much as needed, and guide it with short guidance - all doable via claude code + custom MCP

- Submitting forms, attending reviews and chasing approvals - best thing to automate. They want forms? They will have forms. Chasing approvals - fire and forget + queue management, same.

- Reaching out to people for dependencies, following up: LLM as personal assistant is classic job. Code this away.

- Finding and reading up some obscure and conflicting internal wiki page, which is likely to be outdated: index all data and put it into RAG, let agent dig deeper.

Most of the time you spend is on scheduling micro-tasks, switching between them and maintaining unspoken queue of checking various saas frontends. Formalize micro-task management, automate endpoints, and delegate it to your own selfware (ad-hoc tools chain you vibe coded for yourself only, tailored for particular working environment).

I do this all (almost) to automate away non-coding tasks. Life is fun again.

Hope this helps.
by MisterTea | 2025-07-23 12:23:09+00:00
Mozilla: Focus on FF FFS.

I'm using FF right now so I am not just saying this as some empty plea but an honest call for Mozilla to stop fucking around and make a solid portable browser that respects the user. Give us all the control we want. It's our computer so give us an "our browser" not a FAANG or whatever browser.
by codingdave | 2025-07-23 12:23:42+00:00
I can't find it anymore, but I remember way back when Rails first launched, DHH saying something along the lines of: "I don't know databases, so I found one way that worked and ran with it as an ORM." I'm sure the dude has learned more since then, so Rails has improved, but if you are asking if you should listen to DHH, you need to know that he is a pragmatist, not an idealist. That is not a bad thing... but if you are an idealist, it would explain why his work does not appeal to you.
by flohofwoe | 2025-07-23 12:23:45+00:00
Sure an automatically generated JS shim which marshalls between a web API and the WASM module interface is possible, but that's still not direct DOM access, it still goes through a JS shim. The detail that this JS shim was automatically generated from an IDL instead of manually written is really not that important when the question is "does WASM allow direct DOM access", the simple answer is "no".

The underlying problem is that you need to translate between a Javascript-idiomatic API and whatever is an idiomatic API in the language you compile into WASM, and idiomatic C, C++, Rust, ... APIs all look very different so there isn't a single answer. It's not WASM being relevant here, but the high level source language that's compiled into WASM, and how well the DOM JS API (and the Javascript concept it is built on) map to APIs for various 'authoring languages'.

The whole problem is really quite similar to connecting two higher level languages (e.g. Rust and C++) through a C API (since this is the common interface that both Rust and C++ can talk to - but that doesn't mean that you can simply send a Rust String to the C++ side and expect that you automatically get a std::string - this sort of magic needs to be explicitly implemented in a shim layer sitting between the two worlds) - and to use the string example, there is no such thing as a WASM string, instead how string data is represented on the WASM side depends on the source language that's compiled to WASM.
by benrapscallion | 2025-07-23 12:24:09+00:00
Fastmail and HEY email, Kagi, 1Password, Newsblur, Perplexity, Wolfram (Mathematica), Zotero, Dropbox, Backblaze, Microsoft Office, Raindrop.io, Wachete (track changes on webpages)

==

I also pay for Google but that’s just ransom for my data held hostage by them because I have shared that email address with many.
by ben_w | 2025-07-23 12:24:24+00:00
> If there is a single case of a harmful vaccine, or even a reasonable probability of one, then it isn't irrational to be cautious of vaccines. Just because the evidence is enough for you doesnt make anyone who disagrees irrational. That line of thinking just makes you irrational.

There's a difference between "(ir)rational" and "(ab)normal human thinking". What you describe is both irrational and also very normal for humans.

To illustrate what I mean, I'll put the probabilities into terms of dice rolls:

Before vaccines:

Roll a normal, fair, six-sided dice, once. If it's even, you died. (Pre-industrial society, half of us died young of what are now easily preventable illnesses).

With vaccines, at current safety thresholds for fatal reactions:

Roll a normal, fair, six-sided dice, seven times. Even for borderline cases where the vaccines are covering serious illnesses, you'd need to roll 1-2-3-4-5-6-1 in that order to see a fatal adverse reaction, otherwise the vaccine is withdrawn from the market. (~1 per quarter million cases).

But, just like people don't really have a rational intuition for how a "billionaire" is a thousand times richer than a "millionaire", people don't really have rational intuition for probabilities like these. I suspect our intuition on probability is more like "here's 8 bushes, a deer is hiding behind one, which one?", because of how often people act as though being unlucky for long enough means they're due for a win. And I really do mean eight bushes, because of how badly we handle probabilities even in the 5% range.
by upghost | 2025-07-23 12:25:34+00:00
So for everyone hating on Daisy and Tailwind, what is the alternative?

I do my best to use vanilla CSS, BEM style, with SCSS preprocessing, but it's not incredibly intuitive, it's apparently hard for most "full stack" devs to do because they think it is beneath them so they will reach for something like MaterialUI.

I agree with the criticisms about tailwind and Daisy but the problem these seem to solve that vanilla CSS does not is that Tailwind for all of its quirks requires less internal agreement than vanilla CSS. Without internal agreement every dev does their own crazy thing to the CSS and it turns to spaghetti fast.

So again my question is, what is my alternative here that gives me this property of "nicely packaged, well documented, modular, scalable CSS" without using Tailwind/Daisy?
by the_third_wave | 2025-07-23 12:26:19+00:00
A lot of that time was spent chasing the ever-changing "standards" which describe what a browser is supposed to do. It is easier for a new project to implement the distilled essence of those "standards" than it was to try to keep up with the house-of-cards-built-on-quicksand while its "architects" kept on changing and expanding its "design". This means Ladybird should be able to reach parity in a much shorter timeframe, it is the slog which comes after which decides whether they can keep up with whatever Blink does (which more or less is what those "standards" end up describing).
by graemep | 2025-07-23 12:26:39+00:00
I was just thinking that. He says the system has low transaction costs (free for individuals) and is fast (three seconds) instead of taking days. Sending money abroad is more expensive, but if you shop around for services instead of just paying what your bank charges it can be very cheap and fast.

In the UK we have bank transfers that settle in a maximum of two hours (much less usually, although I do not know whether it is as fast as the Brazilian system on average) and is free for individuals. It seems to be the norm globally. Is Krugman entirely unaware of how the rest of the world works?

The one things he is right about is that we do already have central bank digital currencies. Most currencies exist mostly in digital form (I cannot remember the exact number, but got GBP its well over 90%).
by scottcha | 2025-07-23 12:26:46+00:00
I’ve asked that question on linked in to the Cerebras team a couple times and haven’t ever received a response. There is system max tdp values posted online but I’m not sure you can assume the system is running in max tdp for these queries. If it is the numbers are quite high (I just tried to find the number but couldn’t find it but I had it in my notes as 23kw).

If someone from Cerebras is reading this feel free to dm me as optimizing this power is what we do.
by grafmax | 2025-07-23 12:27:01+00:00
The average Joe doesn’t make the laws. The wealthy class do. Consider for a moment whether Elon Musk and his millions financing elections or Rupert Murdoch and his media empire have the same influence over the political process and you or I. The power imbalance seems obvious to me.

You mention that wealthy people support property tax because it harms their competitors even though it harms themselves. I haven’t heard that one before. Why wouldn’t elites just write laws that benefit themselves and hurt others instead? This explanation for property tax seems incomplete to me.
by southernplaces7 | 2025-07-23 12:27:13+00:00
>Do you know if the agricultural production increase is driven by exploiting more land (e.g. taking over land from forest) or by increased productivity of the practice?

That would depend on the country in question, and in some cases it can be both, with more land being used while production per hectare (or acre) increases too. From wht I know of most developed countries, it's a case of steadily less land used, but much more productively than ever.

For example, the United States today produces more food in absolute terms than at any time in its history (an increase of nearly 200% in the last 70 years alone), while land used for agriculture has at pretty much the same time steadily been decreasing since the mid-20th century. Forests are even growing back as a result, with total forest cover having been very gently increasing since 1910 (links below)

https://www.fs.usda.gov/sites/default/files/legacy_files/med...

https://www.usda.gov/about-usda/news/blog/look-agricultural-...
by flohofwoe | 2025-07-23 12:27:31+00:00
> I wish it was possible to disable WASM in browsers.

In Firefox at least: navigate to about:config and then `javascript.options.wasm => false` seems to do the job.

This causes any access to the global WebAssembly object to fail with `WebAssembly is not defined` (e.g. it won't be possible to instantiate wasm blobs).