MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by Scoundreller | 2025-07-24 17:43:33+00:00
Diff with Rogers is that they took out their entire network: cellular, home/biz internet, home phone, corporate circuits (including MPLS links), most cable TV, a bunch of their broadcast radio (AM/FM) network just dead dead dead.

Well, their towers were sorta up (as they couldn’t remotely turn them off since the network was down), so if you had a Rogers SIM, a call to 9-1-1 wouldn’t failover to other networks because the device made just enough of a handshake to try and fail on the Rogers network. A flaw in GSM I reckon.

Apparently the workaround was to remove/disable your SIM and hope another network has a stronger signal.

Oh, and the CTO was on holiday and had no idea for a while because… their phone was on roaming with Rogers and therefore dead.

I wonder if Rogers still does planned-in-advance multi-stage potentially-enterprise-breaking updates on Fridays
by kibwen | 2025-07-24 17:43:42+00:00
> The sad thing is that most languages with threads have a default of global variables and unrestricted shared memory access. This is the source of the vast majority of data corruption and races. Processes are generally a better concurrency model than threads

Modern languages have the option of representing thread-safety in the type system, e.g. what Rust does, where working with threads is a dream (especially when you get to use structured concurrency via thread::scope).

People tend to forget that Rust's original goal was not "let's make a memory-safe systems language", it was "let's make a thread-safe systems language", and memory safety just came along for the ride.
by swat535 | 2025-07-24 17:45:37+00:00
> The sample dataset explicitly excluded 'athletes', so would exclude people that _are_ outrunning a bad diet.

You can't outrun a bad diet. This is such a myth and I have no idea where it's coming from. Perhaps it's a nice lie one can tell himself to continue eating junk and not feel guilty about it.

Athletes, especially body builders require a lot of calories but their diet is surprisingly healthy. They eat plenty of protein, carbohydrates minerals, vitamins and healthy fats.
Show HN: Snacker News; a hands-free HN. The more you eat, the more you learn
by getToTheChopin | 2025-07-24 17:46:34+00:00
I made a hands-free HN reader using speech and face recognition

Speak to navigate the feed; eat doritos to scroll an article

Live demo (please use Desktop Chrome): https://funwithcomputervision.com/snacker-news/

This works in real-time in the browser using a regular laptop webcam

All speech / face recognition is done locally (none of your data is stored)

Tech stack: HN API, mediapipe face landmarks, web speech API

Thanks for checking out my silly web app and I would appreciate any feedback!
Drafting Software Recommendation
by morpheos137 | 2025-07-24 17:46:50+00:00
I am looking for simple, logical, programmatically powerful drafting software to draw floor plans. Ideally it would be online or open source. I don't have a windows computer at this time, so unless I want to get one I need to use something that is capable of running on older unix / linux or online.

I tried Canva to reproduce a pen and ink sketch I made but so far I have a found it lacking. It is slow to use and illogical. Point and click and drag sucks relative to being able to enter the parameters that define a geometric object in a simple command line interface (if such an interface exists).

For example in Cnva when you draw lines by hand they do not automatically snap to 90 degree corners. You have to fight with the mouse to make a 90 degree corner. How many buildings have 78 or 89 degree corners between interior walls as planned! It would be just as well to use a MS paint like program at this point.

I would like a program that has a scale. That you can draw straight perpendicular lines in. There would be two primary classes of line. Horizontal and vertical. Imagine that. Each line would have a label like AA. If line AA was near to line BB you would have the the option to make a corner. There would be stock symbols for windows, doors, electrical and plumbing fixtures. Positions of everything would be in feet or meters (selectable according to an origin) or relative to other elements. The origin would be at the lower left corner of the canvas. The output would be SVG or convertible to PDF.

For example under the programmatic description of a line it could look like AA:(0,0,24,v) for a line that starts at the origin, is vertical, and extends 24 feet from the origin.

Then if you wanted to draw another line relative to AA you could have BB:(r,d[AA],24,h). The 'r' parameter signals to the program that the position of line BB is relative to the distal end of line AA, it extends 24 feet, and is horizontal. If I wanted BB to start at the origin I could write BB:(r,p[AA],24,h), i.e. starting from the proximal end or AA. Proximal is defined as lower, left most end of an element, while distal is the upper, right most end. Alternatively the command BB:(0,0,24,h) draws the same line.
by infoseekadvice | 2025-07-24 17:47:31+00:00
Guten Abend!

Sadly, I am not German.

I had some fascinating discussions in my younger days taking DB around Europe. (They have a very good English UI and Ich spreche kein Deutsch beyond travel niceties)

If you know of a legal path to use my skills (pentester turned analyst) in Germany, I'd be happy to discuss emigration, I've been told I can do my depositions remotely, and based on these interactions, which were with a local government agency with a higher standard of behavior than some random company, I don't feel welcome here.

To paint a picture, our only social safety net is tied to work... and I wasn't even eligible for unemployment because I'd only been working part time prior to this role. (And doing hackthebox, Defcon volunteering, helping new register voters etc).

Also cases like mine require you to allow your case to be investigated the the NLRB or a state level agency, then after 6-12 months you get a "letter to sue" if the settlement amount is not to your liking (and it almost never is).

And, with our current president's gutting of the NLRB, this timeline gets longer. (Basically, the clock doesn't start til you speak to an investigator, and there is a scarcity of investigators).

It is likely when this is over they will be compelled not to state they did not terminate me for cause, but in this liminal period they seem deadset on engaging in behaviors that make me rethink if I want be on their "blue team" -- some people don't learn until the helpers who they've abused one too many times move on to greener pastures.

Anyways, I kind of hoped to focus on how to find work rather than get into the weeds on the events leading to my departure but I hope the above helps folks understand why I must make the choices I am making.
by tcldr | 2025-07-24 17:47:41+00:00
Just because we're unable to compensate many millions, perhaps billions of people, for using their work without a) permission, or b) remuneration, doesn't justify giving a blanket license to use it without some form of *serious* compensation that reflects the gravity of what is being created.

The current winner-takes-all approach to the outcome is wholly inappropriate. AI companies right now are riding atop the shoulders of giants. Data, mathematics and science that humanity has painstakingly assembled discovered, developed and shared over millennia. Now, we're saying the companies that tip the point of discovery over into a new era should be our new intellectual overlords?

Not cool.

It's clear that model creators and owners should receive some level of reward for their work, but to discount the intellectual labour of generations as worthless is clearly problematic. Especially given the implications for the workforce and society.

Ultimately we'll need to find a more equitable deal.

Until then, forgive me if I don't have much sympathy for a company that's had its latest model distilled.
by kelseyfrog | 2025-07-24 17:47:45+00:00
Not quite. The First Amendment applies to everyone within U.S. jurisdiction, not just residents or citizens.

The first, third, fourth, fifth, and ninth amendments have all been historically used to establish various rights of privacy.

That's not to say that one agrees with or disagrees with the outcome here, just that this argument isn't based in an understanding of the law.
by troupo | 2025-07-24 17:47:45+00:00
> because the logical conclusion for that is that I've been deluding myself for the past two years and I'm effectively a victim of "magical thinking".

You may just as well have. I, for one, am absolutely ready to re-evaluate any and all approaches I have with AI to see if I am actually more productive or not.

But moreover, your own singular experience with your own code and projects may make you more productive. We don't know if it does because we don't have a baseline against which to measure.

But even moreover over that moreover is that we don't even have a question "does a single senior engineer's experience with his own code and approaches can be generalised over the entire population of programmers?" Skeptics say: no (and now have some proof of that). Optimists loudly say: yes, of course, and dismiss everyone who dares contradict out of hand.
by kokanator | 2025-07-24 17:47:52+00:00
AI is NOT going away. Spend serious time to learn how leveraging AI can multiply your output ( quality and quantity ) or get left behind. Practice. Improve. Deliver. Period.

You’ve seen the posts and articles: “I’m inherently better than AI, coding faster and smarter.” Sure, maybe for now—especially if you’re half-assing your AI game. But that edge? It’s vanishing fast.

Stop being so self indulgent.

Become proficient with the tools available to you or get left behind.
by roguecoder | 2025-07-24 17:47:55+00:00
It really highlights how bad crypto is as a solution to what it claims that it can't be a solution here.

It is impractically slow, the user experience is too high a bar, it lacks meaningful consumer protections and it would not be able to handle the transaction volume. That it hasn't been able to address those problems in the last fifteen years calls the whole enterprise into question.
by ltbarcly3 | 2025-07-24 17:48:24+00:00
"Don't be curmudgeonly. Thoughtful criticism is fine, but please don't be rigidly or generically negative."

I don't think there's anything more curmudgeonly or generic than just pasting rules.

Crackpots don't deserve thoughtful replies and practically they cannot be given thoughtful replies. Thoughtfully replying to every crackpot would absorb all the non crackpot resources.

And before it's suggested that "calling someone a crackpot is an ad-hominem" or the more advanced "who is the arbiter of what is a crackpot? Wouldn't that just let you dismiss any argument you don't like by saying it's made by a crackpot?"

This theory has sufficient characteristics of a crackpot theory:

Immune to falsification There's no actual theory here Exhibiting specific rhetorical markers Central position of Galileo or Einstein Dense jargon that mimics academic language but lacks coherent meaning "When belief systems interact, the real contest isn’t just about exchanging arguments—it’s about trying to reshape each other’s underlying structures. Each side looks for ways to weaken, sever, or absorb the connections that make the other system stable." What does it mean for two belief systems to interact? What does reshaping the other sides structure mean? How do you absorb connections and how is that an advantage? What does it even mean? The notion of stability is vague and undefined, but does all the heavy lifting in this argument. This shows a complete lack of even familiarity with how actual philosophical and academic writing is conducted or how arguments such as this must be constructed. Characterized by specific behavioral patterns Claiming fundamental insights in a field where they lack sufficient training to have mastered the basics Bypassing peer review to appeal directly to media or public Misunderstanding or misrepresenting fundamental facts example: "The Church’s liturgical calendar—including the calculation of Easter—relied on the apparent movements of the Sun and Moon around a stationary Earth."
by djtango | 2025-07-24 17:48:25+00:00
Intensity of the workout matters. When I go wakeboarding with my wife I build up a nice big appetite. When I go to muay thai I get pretty severe appetite suppression and sometimes have to force myself to eat.

The other thing is that if you track >>performance<< you naturally start caring about diet and lifestyle. So for people just trying their first 5k - I highly recommend tracking and setting time goals.

Nothing keeps me honest about my diet like performance
by nostromo | 2025-07-24 17:48:31+00:00
> Just because you can deal with your inbox more quickly doesn’t mean you’ll spend your afternoon on the beach. The more emails you fire off, the more you’ll receive back, and the never-ending cycle continues.

I've seen this firsthand. It's so easy to produce "content" now, like emails, presentations, etc., that more of my time now is just sifting through AI slop looking for signal.

I'm on a board for a nonprofit, and we've seen a person that is upset with the organization send dozens of AI-generated quasi-legal demands full of hallucinations of rules and laws that don't actually exist. So now we're forced to pay a real human lawyer to deal with a denial of service attack of ChatGPT slop and are spending lots of time just dealing with the onslaught. Our productivity has crashed as a board due to a single bad actor enabled by ChatGPT.

At work, I'm also getting buried in AI sales calls and AI resumes. It's getting more and more difficult to find signal in the noise.

It wouldn't surprise me if there's a lot of people who are experiencing lower productivity for similar reasons.
by elza_1111 | 2025-07-24 17:48:37+00:00
Hi HN, author here. TL;DR: I wrote this because I believe the hype around AI agents in observability is getting ahead of reality. After building an MCP server for our observability backend, I'm convinced they are powerful hypothesis generators, but not yet reliable problem solvers.

After reading a few articles claiming MCP would be the "end of observability," I felt the need to write down my own, more sceptical take, based on my experience building one of these systems.

My core argument is that these tools are effective at identifying known failure patterns, but they struggle with novel issues. During a high-stakes incident, the risk of following a confident-sounding LLM hallucination down a rabbit hole is dangerously high. Verifying the AI's suggestions can often be just as much work as finding the root cause yourself.
by jandrewrogers | 2025-07-24 17:48:43+00:00
There are two examples I know of that require no additional data:

First, force a re-read of the corrupted page from disk. A significant fraction of data corruption occurs while it is being moved between storage and memory due to weak error detection in that part of the system. A clean read the second time would indicate this is what happened.

Second, do a brute-force search for single or double bit flips. This involves systematically flipping every bit in the corrupted page, recomputing the checksum, and seeing if corruption is detected.
by lock1 | 2025-07-24 17:49:00+00:00
I find regular OOP language constructor are too restrictive. You can't return something like Result<CorrectObject,ConstructorError> to handle the error gracefully or return a specific subtype; you need a static factory method to do something more than guaranteed successful construction w/o exception.

Does this count as a missing language feature by requiring a "factory pattern" to achieve that?
by shykes | 2025-07-24 17:49:31+00:00
Ah, I see the discussion thread on Discord, thanks.

It looks like you encountered a gap in the Dockerfile compatibility bridge, specifically lack of support for `--mount=type=ssh` [1]. It's true that our Dockerfile compat layer has more gaps than the native Dagger API itself. In effect, beyond very simple Dockerfiles, to get the full benefit of Dagger you need to convert them to code targeting the Dagger API. While there are many benefits to this, it does add significant friction to getting started.

It seems like we need to beef up our compatibility story!

Thanks for taking the time to share all this feedback, and sorry again that your experience didn't work out.

[1] https://github.com/dagger/dagger/issues/6736
Show HN: ReadLab – A tiny app to help with reading more
by paltas | 2025-07-24 17:50:01+00:00
Every few months I would try to build a habit of reading more but it wouldn't stick. I would pick up books but would lose interest few chapters in. Also tried newspaper subscriptions but a week or two in I wouldn't see articles I'd be that interested in. I'd have to spend time trying to find something to read.

This led me to building ReadLab to help with sticking to it. It's really simple but has been helping a ton. It lets you pick a category (Math, history, psychology, etc.) and it gives you an article. It also tracks articles read and day streaks.

If this resonates with anyone would encourage you to give it a shot.
by simonw | 2025-07-24 17:50:16+00:00
I'm not disputing that different people have radically different experiences of how much productivity boost they can get out of working with LLMs.

I've been banging this drum for over a year now: LLMs are deceptively difficult and uninituitive to use. Just one example: https://simonwillison.net/2025/Mar/11/using-llms-for-code/

What I'm willing to assert as fact, based not just on my own experiences (though they're a major role) but on observing this space for several years and talking to literally hundreds of people, is that LLMs can provide you a very real productivity boost in coding if you take the time to learn how to use them - or if you get lucky and chance upon the most productive patterns.

EDIT: I just saw you're the author of https://dmitriid.com/#everything-around-llms-is-still-magica... - that was a great piece! I think I may actually agree with you. I misinterpreted "magical thinking" as referring to something else.
by lanfeust6 | 2025-07-24 17:50:16+00:00
> Trying to diet didn't really cause any maintainable change.

That's not a surprise. Changing diet composition can in the short-run lead to lower caloric intake than what preceeded (e.g. SAD diet), but doesn't guarantee a sustained caloric deficit, which is why controlling for macros like fat or carbs eventually hits a wall. What are you going to do when there are no more carbs to cut? If you have a lot of excess to lose, you can't "intuitively" eat your way down to your target.

The fasts work similarly owing to deficit: a fasted day lowers the average caloric intake for the week (assuming you don't overcompensate other days). As with macros, here again, what are you going to do to increase deficit further? Fast for 48 hours? If with a fast your caloric intake isn't dropping further week-to-week, weight loss will stagnate.

Whichever approach, one of the pitfalls is steep deficit followed by metabolic adaptation i.e. crashing metabolism. This is why it's helpful to keep a small caloric deficit, and incrementally change your intake target. That is only reliably achieved by tracking calories.
by bgro | 2025-07-24 17:50:43+00:00
also gotta have every click on the page to highlight text navigate to a shopping cart subscription page and then break the back button.

Clicking on a video to mute it also needs to navigate to a sponsor’s page and break the back button. And then the page reloads which doubles the page view count. Genius web dev decision. I bet they said “there’s literally no downsides to doing this!”

Also, the ads need to autoplay on full volume, often bypassing my system volume somehow so they can play even though the rest of the audio is on mute and none of the mute functionality works. Surely the user simply forgot they had mute on so we should just go ahead and fix that.

They also need to play on 4K ultra HD to use my entire monthly cell plan if I don’t stop it in the first 3 seconds, which I can’t do because the video has to fully load before I’m able to interact with it to click stop. Or clicking stop pauses it and then automatically restarts playing the video.

These webdev chrome devs need to stop adding new random features and start fixing the basic functionality. I don’t want fading rotating banners that save 3 lines of CSS. I want the “DO NOT AUTOPLAY. EVER.” Button to actually work.
by didibus | 2025-07-24 17:51:04+00:00
I've always thought that I'd probably be paid even more and have the choice of many more jobs if open source didn't exist.

Could it be there'd be less jobs because it would have prevented some businesses to bootstrap and stay afloat? That's also possible.

And this is really the thing with AI, some think it'll grow the pie, therefore increasing the demand for developers. Some think it'll just shrink the size of the piece of pie that's for developers.

If we could predict the former, and be sure of it, I doubt anyone would be against AI.

Aside that though, as a developer, you are also concerned with, is this actually making my job better/faster/more-fun. Or am I just forced into an annoying process of using a tool that doesn't help and will just cause more problems I'll have to deal with.
by ipv6ipv4 | 2025-07-24 17:51:07+00:00
Desktop on Mac does if you swipe to scroll. It doesn't if you drag the scroll bar to scroll. On Windows, a scroll wheel doesn't bounce either. It doesn't need to when the scroll wheel itself provides physical feedback that you actually did something.

Touch interfaces tend to need some visual (or artificial haptic) feedback because touch itself is not enough.
by sophacles | 2025-07-24 17:51:14+00:00
A lot of sass people i know are more and more choosing rust for boring code. This includes several people who said things like "go is good enough, i don't want to deal with all the rust completely".

Once your sass products get enough users, and you're dealing with millions or billions of requests per day, those rare bugs start showing up quite often... And it turns out programming towards correctness is desirable, if for no other reason than to keep pagerduty quiet. Tolerating correctness issues isn't cost-free... People having to respond during off hours costs money and stress. I think most people would rather pay the costs at dev time, when they aren't under the pressure of an incident, than during an outage.
by iambateman | 2025-07-24 17:51:45+00:00
I think this is a dominating perspective for a lot of people. A few neighborhoods in LA and SF get infinitely more news coverage than the thousands of quiet urban places where nothing spectacular is going wrong, which creates an illusion of widespread despair.

I’m not saying crime or homelessness don’t exist, but urban LA is just not representative.

It is shocking that the richest state in the history of the world can’t figure out how to help the people with nowhere to go.
by FiloSottile | 2025-07-24 17:51:53+00:00
I have never seen real Go code (i.e. not code written purposefully to be exploitable) that was exploitable due to a data race.

This doesn’t prove a negative, but is probably a good hint that this risk is not something worth prioritizing for Go applications from a security point of view.

Compare this with C/C++ where 60-75% of real world vulnerabilities are memory safety vulnerabilities. Memory safety is definitely a spectrum, and I’d argue there are diminishing returns.
by tim333 | 2025-07-24 17:51:59+00:00
Fiat 500 hybrid 999cc engine, 69bhp (51kW).

I hired one on holiday and it worked fine. Maybe I'm getting old but I see less point in getting something that does 0-60 in 4 sec when most traffic goes from 0-40 in about two minutes and doesn't get much faster. It still has a top speed over 100mph.