MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by Quanternion | 2025-07-09 14:42:46+00:00
This reminds me of part of some novel I read a while ago. Something about a newly turned noble learning how to act like a noble. Organizing parties and knowing who exactly to invite and how to receive them, having his butler tell him a few important things about a person before going to talk to them, when and how to ask ladies for a dance, conforming to certain unspoken rules of etiquette, and the list goes on. I almost felt the exhaustion just from reading.

All just superficial interactions to keep up the social standing, presenting yourself as special and useful to associate with while not actually making any meaningful connection with anyone. That's the feeling I got from reading that scene as well as whenever I hear about this networking stuff.
by orev | 2025-07-09 14:43:03+00:00
I consider it a requirement of any smart home that alternative methods need to be available during failures. Simply having other devices around that aren’t smart, like an old fashioned light bulb and physical switch to get you through until you can fix whatever is down. 100% uptime is very difficult for large, well-funded IT companies, so I don’t think it’s reasonable to expect it from these consumer-grade devices.

We survived for over 100 years by getting up and flipping a wall switch, so the risk of a few hours without smart features shouldn’t be a showstopper.
by leray_J | 2025-07-09 14:43:03+00:00
I agree with your point about the funding process being oversimplified. However, I've seen many founders become emotionally attached to their MVP, convinced it's good enough to scale without fundamental rethinking. They push forward with what's essentially a throwaway prototype instead of rebuilding it properly with lessons learned from initial user feedback. And some people are just cheap by nature. Last point is a huge one, even when funding is good enough. Does not make sense to make, I've seen it.
by kragen | 2025-07-09 14:43:07+00:00
This is a followup to Gold's previous post that served 200 million requests per day with CGI, which Simon Willison wrote a post about, which we had a thread about three days ago at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44476716. It addresses some of the misconceptions that were common in that thread.

Summary:

- 60 virtual AMD Genoa CPUs with 240 GB (!!!) of RAM

- bash guestbook CGI: 40 requests per second (and a warning not to do such a thing)

- Perl guestbook CGI: 500 requests per second

- JS (Node) guestbook CGI: 600 requests per second

- Python guestbook CGI: 700 requests per second

- Golang guestbook CGI: 3400 requests per second

- Rust guestbook CGI: 5700 requests per second

- C guestbook CGI: 5800 requests per second

https://github.com/Jacob2161/cgi-bin

I wonder if the gohttpd web server he was using was actually the bottleneck for the Rust and C versions?
by mrflop | 2025-07-09 14:43:10+00:00
AWS Backup can get really pricey since you pay GB-month for every single restore point. Plakar only charges once for the initial backup and then for the small deltas on whatever cheap storage you pick.

Also, AWS Backup locks your snapshots into AWS vaults, whereas Plakar lets you push and pull backups to any backend—local disk, S3, another cloud, on-prem, etc.
by kelthuzad | 2025-07-09 14:43:28+00:00
The idea that Astro and Nuxt are only alike because they "print markup" is factually incorrect. Astro is designed to give you the same flexibility as Nuxt when it comes to building dynamic, server-rendered sites. One can even use React or Vue within Astro. You can create API endpoints, use SSR, and even define backend functions with type-safety. The migration guide from Nuxt to Astro makes it clear that both frameworks support similar workflows, from file-based routing to dynamic data fetching. Astro’s islands architecture[0] just means you get more control over how and when interactivity is delivered, but under the hood, it’s every bit as much a server-side javascript framework as Nuxt.

[0] https://docs.astro.build/en/concepts/islands/#server-islands
by graemep | 2025-07-09 14:43:37+00:00
> And no, many normies use Windows just as out of factory

Which means they do not "get a functional and unobtrusive operating system."

My experience of Windows users is that if they do not know how to tweak it, they complain about it.

> Which Linux users, from the myriad of Dritrowach rankings?

Any of them
by lxgr | 2025-07-09 14:43:42+00:00
Definitely, no reference implementation should have security bugs.

But do you know if Oracle's reference implementation for Java Card is one using on-card or off-card verification, or more generally is assuming installs from only trusted sources?

There are many Java Card applications where the assumption of all bytecode being trusted is reasonable, especially if all bytecode comes from the issuer and post-issuance application loading isn't possible. Of course, that would be a complete mismatch for an eUICC.
by glenstein | 2025-07-09 14:43:54+00:00
>Any examples of American company having worse customer experience than European ones?

I would say things like cable and internet companies, as well as airlines. They are similarly frustrating in Europe but not to the extent that they are in the US and the difference comes down to better regulation.

For that matter I would say the tech regulation environment probably benefits European consumers with stronger data privacy rights, and a 14-day right to withdraw from digital contracts.
by leakycap | 2025-07-09 14:44:07+00:00
Thanks for bringing this to my attention; feels like the kind of thing an airgapped single-use server in a corner somewhere could become afflicted with. Worse, if you have a twin backup unit, it may have the same issue.

I've wondered what will happen to T2 Apple devices that cannot boot to anything except macOS & require online activation for first boot after reinstall, even years after purchase. When Apple eventually shuts down the T2 activation servers, do all these Macs become paperweights upon reset?

It should be mentioned Apple still provides SW Update for 10.4.x which was released in the G4 era, so this isn't a looming issue like the 2026 MS Certificate.
by gabesullice | 2025-07-09 14:44:55+00:00
> If you are building a public API for external developers you don’t control, invest in HATEOAS. If you are building a backend for a single frontend controlled by your own team, a simpler RPC-style API may be the more practical choice.

My conclusion is exactly the opposite. In-house developers can be expected (read: cajoled) to do things the "right" way, like follow links at runtime. You can run tests against your client and server. Internally, flexible REST makes independent evolution of the front end and back end easy.

Externally, you must cater to somebody who hard-coded a URL into their curl command that runs on cron and whose code can't tolerate the slightest deviation from exactly what existed when the script was written. In that case, an RPC-like call is great and easy to document. Increment from `/v1/` to `/v2/`, writer a BC layer between them and move on.
by braden-w | 2025-07-09 14:45:44+00:00
Hey HN,

I couldn’t find an open-source alternative to Superwhisper, Wispr Flow, etc. that I liked, so I built my own.

It’s free, cross-platform, runs locally or in the cloud with your own API key, and works via system-wide hotkey or voice-activated detection.

Under the hood, it’s built with Svelte 5 + Rust/Tauri, which makes it extremely lightweight (~22 MB on macOS) and performant.

GitHub → https://github.com/you/whispering

Releases → https://github.com/you/whispering/releases

Live demo/web → https://whispering.bradenwong.com

I’ve been using it daily for months and just shipped v7—would love your feedback!
by jchw | 2025-07-09 14:45:59+00:00
True, it is simpler to just simply never free memory and let process teardown take care of it, but I'm only disagreeing with the notion that it's non-trivial to write servers that simply don't leak memory per-request. I think with modern tools, it's pretty easy for anyone to accomplish. Hell, if you can just slap Boehm GC into your C program, maybe it's trivial to accomplish with old tools, too.
by devnullbrain | 2025-07-09 14:47:18+00:00
You and Zambyte are both doing the same thing the top level comment is complaining about.

e.g. in C:

https://www.open-std.org/jtc1/sc22/wg14/www/docs/n3220.pdf

(6.8.5.1) selection-statement: if ( expression ) secondary-block if ( expression ) secondary-block else secondary-block

in C++:

https://eel.is/c++draft/gram.stmt

selection-statement: if constexpropt ( init-statementopt condition ) statement if constexpropt ( init-statementopt condition ) statement else statement if !opt consteval compound-statement if !opt consteval compound-statement else statement

where

condition: expression attribute-specifier-seqopt decl-specifier-seq declarator brace-or-equal-initializer structured-binding-declaration initializer

More examples:

https://docs.python.org/3/reference/grammar.html

https://doc.rust-lang.org/reference/expressions/if-expr.html...

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Refe...

expression != argument
by 0xbadcafebee | 2025-07-09 14:47:26+00:00
It's the same reason people are using SQLite for their startup's production database, or why they self-host their own e-mail server. They're tech hipsters. Old stuff is cool, man. Now if you'll excuse me, I need to typewrite a letter and OCR it into Markdown so I can save it in CVS and e-mail my editor an ar'd version of the repo so they can edit the new pages of my upcoming book ("Antique Tech: Escaping Techno-Feudalism with Old Solutions to New Problems")
by perrygeo | 2025-07-09 14:48:17+00:00
This matches my experience. There's a place for LLMs in exploratory research. There's a place for LLMs in scaffolding code that would otherwise be too tedious to write.

But where real decisions need to be made by those with "skin in the game", LLMs are a disaster. Vibe coding quickly falls off a cliff. They create code architectures that no human would given the context, and as a result no human can feasibly understand or maintain them long term.

I would say this is boon to real software developers - tons of apps that need an expert to maintain, it's job security, right? Well, no. I suspect, rather than maintain these LLM-generated monstrosities, most organizations will just let them rot. That was the default in the golden age of zero-interest engineering, that's the default in the golden age of vibe coding too.
by themdonuts | 2025-07-09 14:48:25+00:00
The business is a car rental platform for niche destinations https://bonjourpaco.com/

At the time I was working with maybe 30 providers and it would be doable to rebuild the server and reconfigure all providers, cars, insurance, etc. Content would probably take longer, but also doable. But at the time I took it as a sign to shift to something else.

Glad I didn't and that the project came back from the ashes, literally.
by thomascountz | 2025-07-09 14:48:45+00:00
A Stewart platform for a head with wobbly antennae for secondary movement is incredibly expressive!

The line between robot and animatronic is often blurred. I know there are industry definitions—or at least de facto conventions—but for me a robot is something that performs and controls "mechanical work" based on external sensing or input. For me, the output "work" isn't meant to solely be character expression.

That said, animatronics from Disney Imagineers really blur the line for me.
by PaulHoule | 2025-07-09 14:48:52+00:00
I should sue "Yo!" for stealing my idea.

Back in the day people were worried about censorship in social media, particularly when they didn't have anything original to say other than expressing their membership in the tribe.

I was going to create a parody pitch for a social network called "Me too!" but just as I was about to start writing it, #MeToo hit the stage and it just didn't seem right.
by hiAndrewQuinn | 2025-07-09 14:48:58+00:00
> You can't find me a single example of two competing services, one with click to cancel and the other without, in the same industry.

We can get pretty close. Take Adobe versus Affinity. Same industry, very similar product suites, but totally different pricing strategies, and Adobe makes cancellation much more annoying.

There are plenty of examples of this if you keep your eyes open. I'm pretty sure the only reason I don't have an exact example to give you is because I'm under NDA and I don't watch most consumer retail enough to know.

>Companies pay attention to what their competitors are doing. If everyone is doing it, they'll happily go along with it.

Tacit collusion becomes exponentially more difficult to maintain in any market with more than a handful of players. A different pricing strategy is one of the easiest ways to counterposition against an incumbent there is. It's part of how SaaS toppled bubble wrap CDs in the first place.

That can be lower pricing with the same model, or it can be a one time purchase versus a subscription, or it can be a hard to cancel but very cheap subscription over a very expensive one time purchase.

> In the beginning, you paid for the service and no ads. But then hulu came along and had ad content for the lower tier. That started a chain reaction on the other streaming platforms where now they all do ads for paid content.

People are more willing to pay $10 per month with ads than $12 per month without ads. I don't find that especially shocking. The market figures out what people actually want, not what people say they want.

Say it were not so. Then we would see some Netflix renegades start a new streaming platform that is Ad Free Again™ and only a tiny bit more expensive than the competitors, and most consumers would switch. It's not impossible, but I haven't seen that happen yet.

>You might sign up for something with a click to cancel feature, there is absolutely nothing from stopping a company from quietly removing that option.

If I care enough about the feature and this price differential, I'll notice this and eventually go through the aggravation of cancelling to switch to a new, slightly higher priced service which does have click to cancel. I paid more for the easy cancellation promise and when it was revoked the service became less valuable to me. Whatever, it was fun while it lasted. A monthly subscription to Netflix is not a marriage, and it is not an investment.
by ethbr1 | 2025-07-09 14:48:59+00:00
+1!

It'd be great to see the beneficiaries of tech wealth commit to building intentional, public physical learning spaces (again [0]).

Libraries may look different in the 21st century, and have more than books, but their purpose of making knowledge accessible remains the same and as important as ever.

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnegie_library
by bwfan123 | 2025-07-09 14:49:01+00:00
I would put it differently.

> can't fit all the "knowledge" out there

know-that is less important than know-how in the longer run. knowledge pertains to the know-how (or theory) than about know-that (facts)

> default behavior of the chimp is to handle that reality - hallucinations and bullshitting

default behavior of bullshitting is not perhaps as much a status or hierarchy thing as it serves a role in communicating human meaning which could be contradictory and not logical in nature. What is logical is that meaning is that which has been organized by a know-how or theory - but then, due to its formalization tends to be stale. Imagine if all of us only made logically correct statements - we'd be robots in a stale world.
by JohnFen | 2025-07-09 14:49:09+00:00
In this context, the main risk is the exfiltration of data about me or my use of my machines to others without my active informed consent.

This tool is designed and proudly intended to allow exactly that. After all, someone taking actions to prevent data collection is unambiguously signalling that they do not consent to being spied on, and this tool intentionally subverts their wishes.
by mdaniel | 2025-07-09 14:49:25+00:00
For anyone else confused by the headline citing one price and this comment citing another, it turns out the difference is between the "Mini Lite" and the "Mini" - the Lite seems to be connected to a computer all the time, and thus has no on-board compute, no accelerometers, no WiFi, and only half the microphones. My suspicion is that the $299 one is for playing around and the $450 one is if you want it to chase the cat around while you're at work
by sensanaty | 2025-07-09 14:49:27+00:00
In the Netherlands literally every single store has no questions asked refunds for up to a month. Not that I have to do it often, but for example Coolblue and Bol both offer free returns within a month. Pretty much any webstore I have literally ever used has the same refund policies. Not to mention that the topic of this thread is already in-place EU wide, so there's an obvious win there too.
by fwip | 2025-07-09 14:49:40+00:00
Chiming in - I've found the Pattern type in Unison[0] to be very nice to use. When you're just using the built-in patterns, it is similar to verbose regex. The real power of them is that it's easy to define, name, and re-use sub-patterns. I think it's similar to parser combinators in this way, like nom from rust[1].

[0] https://share.unison-lang.org/@unison/website/code/main/late...

[1] https://docs.rs/nom/latest/nom/
by tiagod | 2025-07-09 14:50:18+00:00
This was flagged. I vouched for it as it has an interesting insight, even if you find the joke unnecessary.

I did however not find the quote via Google search. Can you share the source?

EDIT: I have found the source! https://archive.org/details/sim_economist_1943-11-06_145_522...

The Economist, November 6, 1943:

>The “Billion”

>This week, for the first time, the note circulation is in excess of £1,000 million. There is, of course, very little real difference between £999 million and £1,001 million—apart from a difficulty for the compositor who works within a narrow column. And yet there is a great psychological barrier, and the setting-down of that extra digit, with its comma following, seems to symbolise the breaking of fresh ground. The totals of revenue and expenditure have, of course, been in ten figures almost ever since the beginning of the war, and the total of the national debt—a rather shadowy notion anyhow—is well into eleven. With the line crossed by a third familiar statistic it is natural to ask what this magnitude of 1,000 million is to be called. There is no word native to these islands. The continental word “milliard” was in some use some years ago, but has not been used very much recently. Well over half the English-speaking peoples, however, use “billion” to mean a thousand million, and if it is objected to this usage that a billion in this country is reserved for the meaning of a million million, then it can be counter-objected that, if so, it is reserved for a use that interests nobody but astronomers and the historians of German inflation. For some time past, The Economist has been using “billion” in American contexts with the American meaning—i.e:, one thousand million. It now seems convenient to extend that usage to British and foreign contexts. Henceforward, in these columns, in the absence of specific indication to the contrary, “billion” means 1 and nine 0’s.
by 0x000xca0xfe | 2025-07-09 14:50:23+00:00
Yep, that is definitely problematic. But it also allowed a sprawling ecosystem of tons of small applications that people could just download and put on their website via FTP and do the configuration in the browser afterwards.

This is easy enough for non-technical people or school kids and still how it works for many Wordpress sites.

The modern way of deploying things is safer but the extra complexity has pushed many, many folks to just put their stuff on Facebook/Instagram instead of leveling up their devops skills.

Somehow we need to get the simplicity back, I think. Preferably without all the exploits.
by jonkuipers | 2025-07-09 14:52:36+00:00
I was a customer first. It was the product I had been searching for in my own financial planning, so I immediately saw the potential. When Kyle and I finally met, we hit it off right away. We aligned on the important things and shared a clear vision for where it could go. I’d always had the itch to bootstrap and help build something meaningful and sustainable, so I knew pretty quickly it was the right next move for me.
by neilv | 2025-07-09 14:52:38+00:00
Though there still is the problem of telling a child of an early level of cognitive development not to do something, which virtually guarantees that they will try to do it.

One of my favorite Tweets:

https://x.com/AlexBlechman/status/1457842724128833538

> Sci-Fi Author: In my book I invented the Torment Nexus as a cautionary tale

> Tech Company: At long last, we have created the Torment Nexus from classic sci-fi novel Don't Create The Torment Nexus
by dgacmu | 2025-07-09 14:52:55+00:00
Totally. Our local electric supplier just introduced it as an option and I love it - admitting that none of us here are normal people, I reprogrammed my thermostats to be a degree warmer during peak times, shifted when we run dishes and laundry, and I run some of the compute load off of UPS. (And I have a little solar). I'm saving about $30/month on my power bill with it. It's cool.
by troupo | 2025-07-09 14:53:13+00:00
> but the HATEOAS detail ends up having no practical value and creates more problems than the ones it solves.

Only because we never had the tools and resources that, say, GraphQL has.

And now everyone keeps re-inventing half of HTTP anyway. See this diagram https://raw.githubusercontent.com/for-GET/http-decision-diag... (docs https://github.com/for-GET/http-decision-diagram/tree/master...) and this: https://github.com/for-GET/know-your-http-well
by leakycap | 2025-07-09 14:53:43+00:00
I worked for a huge healthcare organization and the CEO was not a doctor, nor was she even familiar with the field before leading the organization.

CEOs are not "hands on the ground" in a functioning organization. When I hear things like this, it makes me wonder what CEO you have worked with and if they subscribed to the Jimmy Carter method of management or something. "No, no, let me diff the source on that, I am the CEO after all..."
by db48x | 2025-07-09 14:54:31+00:00
> The ease with which you can continue to charge consumers without providing value to them directly affects the total amount of those charges (also, profits is a variable)

I can’t even parse this sentence. You appear to be assuming a dishonest magazine company, rather than an honest one. The hundred million rule is there to protect the honest companies from overly–complex rules brought about in an attempt to eliminate dishonest ones, so starting with a dishonest one is irrelevant. We know that they are not going to comply with the rules to start with, so the cost to them is irrelevant.

And profits are always variable, but that doesn’t matter. No matter how much or little your profit margin happens to be, increased costs can always be passed on to the consumer.