MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by NoMoreNicksLeft | 2025-08-19 19:47:08+00:00
It's even more strange than that when you consider that the UK hasn't been any sort of industrial manufacturer for many decades. What is it that is supposedly being shipped? Granted, some British auto manufacturers might be shipping those, but why should containers full of phones ever leave the UK? Every ship leaving their ports is leaving with stolen goods.

If anyone cared, this problem could be ended even without the cooperation of the destination countries. But no one hurt by this has enough political sway to do anything about it.
by ngrilly | 2025-08-19 19:47:09+00:00
Fantastic summary.

I forgot Pascal var parameters, which have probably inspired ref parameters in C# and inout in Swift. Makes me wonder if a language like Zig would benefit from something similar, reducing the need for pointers even more.

I also have some vague memory that Turbo Pascal, unlike my Watcom C++ compiler, had a default segfault handler printing stack traces, which was a nice quality-of-life improvement.

Interesting that you mentioned header files, as that was indeed the thing that I missed the less when I moved from C++ to Java.
by tombert | 2025-08-19 19:47:25+00:00
I mean, "resource intensive"; that's technically true but the processes are pretty short-lived and only one spawns at a time as far as I can tell. It's definitely more overhead than an in-thread thing, but still not that much on modern computers.

I agree that it would be more efficient to do these things in batches but I really don't think its current state is that bad, at least for a V1.
by Zobat | 2025-08-19 19:47:27+00:00
Using well thought out interfaces is a joy wherever we find them.

Something in your comment made me remember a DOS based file "explorer". Screen split down the middle with a folder-tree and file list on both sides. I remember hardly ever turning on the computer without starting that for one task or another. That was some serious UI pleasure, at least for the time. Ha, found it:

https://handwiki.org/wiki/Software:File_Commander

Ah, the nostalgia!
by thesnide | 2025-08-19 19:47:35+00:00
Dynamic linking is much better in the long run. As you can proxy things more easily if changes are needed.

But it needs more ABI hygiene, and maintaing that compatibility proxy layer.

Yet, I agrew that unfortunatly, it feels much more effective at first to just "freeze the whole stack in amber".

Context: https://debconf25.debconf.org/talks/78-static-linking-pitfal...
by cnst | 2025-08-19 19:48:04+00:00
Can someone explain how is this not GitHub's fault that they don't allow the end-user to modify the permissions that all these services require? E.g., fine-grained permission control?

For example, why a tool like this code analysis service would need git write permission access in the first place?

The only consolation here is that it'd be difficult to forge git repositories because of the SHA hash conflicts for any existing checkout, although presumably even there, the success rates would still be high enough, especially if they attack front-end repositories where the maintainers may not understand what has happened, and simply move on with the replaced repo without checking what went on.
by Terr_ | 2025-08-19 19:48:10+00:00
The various ambiguities of the word "belief" reminds me of a Terry Pratchett quote, from Reaper Man:

> Wizards don't believe in gods in the same way that most people don't find it necessary to believe in, say, tables. They know they're there, they know they're there for a purpose, they'd probably agree that they have a place in a well-organised universe, but they wouldn't see the point of believing, of going around saying "O great table, without whom we are as naught." Anyway, either the gods are there whether you believe in them or not, or exist only as a function of the belief, so either way you might as well ignore the whole business and, as it were, eat off your knees.
by zamadatix | 2025-08-19 19:48:27+00:00
I can't find anything newer than https://www.tomsguide.com/tvs/4k-blu-ray-sales-are-in-free-f..., which says such sales are not only in free fall but major stores are no longer planning on selling them and no new Blu-ray players at all were announced at CES for the first time.

I'd like to believe enough people are changing their minds (nothing is higher quality), but it's likely already accounted for in the $293 M and continuing declines. The one bump seemed to be 2022 UHD BD outselling 2020/2021 numbers, but that's probably more an artifact of COVID 19 drop and slight rebound given the following years dropped quicker than ever.
by bombcar | 2025-08-19 19:48:30+00:00
The apartment (flats) issue is one that has some exceptions, in the USA, as I've seen single family homes and small duplexes, along with larger complexes that have inaccessible units - I think over a certain size, at least some percentage have to be accessible (just as a bathroom has to have at least one accessible stall, but is not required to have more).
Show HN: OpenAI/reflect – Physical AI Assistant that illuminates your life
by Sean-Der | 2025-08-19 19:48:38+00:00
I have been working on making WebRTC + Embedded Devices easier for a few years. This is a hackathon project that pulled some of that together. I hope others build on it/it inspires them to play with hardware. I worked on it with two other people and I had a lot of fun with some of the ideas that came out of it.

* Extendable/hackable - I tried to keep the code as simple as possible so others can fork/modify easily.

* Communicate with light. With function calling it changes the light bulb, so it can match your mood or feelings.

* Populate info from clients you control. I wanted to experiment with having it guide you through yesterday/today.

* Phone as control. Setting up new devices can be frustrating. I liked that this didn't require any WiFi setup, it just routed everything through your phone. Also cool then that they device doesn't actually have any sensitive data on it.
by 0xbadcafebee | 2025-08-19 19:49:05+00:00
Vibecoding is just not looking at the code. You can not know code, but still know what to ask for. That's already a thing we expect of LLM use; if you don't ask it right, give the right context, etc, it's not as useful. So give it the right architectural guidelines, compartmentalize your use of it, and you'll get good results.
by Molitor5901 | 2025-08-19 19:49:15+00:00
Maybe. I am still not sold on the idea that porn should be so freely available to children, and we can't depend on parental controls - everyone reading this should know that by now. So we either keep our children off the internet, closely monitor their usage, or let them have at it.

As for destroying the internet? No. It may, in fact, make the internet a little better. Less bandwidth usage. Less intrusive advertisements, maybe even less spam.

Age verification for pornography is not the hill to die on. A national internet identification number is the hill to not only die on, but riot.
by Nextgrid | 2025-08-19 19:49:17+00:00
Are you involved in the project? I assume this is essentially a paper-thin HSM/Yubikey, right?

Is there any way I can use these as general-purpose HSMs outside of bitcoin/cryptocurrency contexts? Just as a novelty.

Let's say I just want to store a private key on it and use it for SSH/etc authentication - would that be possible?
by nobody9999 | 2025-08-19 19:49:23+00:00
>Plastering websites that contain content you want to consume is paying for the website.

The problem with that interpretation is that such content that's being "plastered" (that is, unvetted third-party software which wants to execute on my property -- in fact, such ads are generally served from sites other than the one that I visited) over the website aren't actually part of the website.

They are third-party programs unrelated (except via a business relationship between the website proprietor and the ad network -- one that I have no part of, nor have I been consulted WRT said contract) to the website itself.

By your logic, I should be forced to run arbitrary code on my private property. Is that correct?

I refuse to do so. As it is, after all, my property.

If the proprietor of a website doesn't like it, they can block access to the site for those (like myself) who use ad blockers (which some websites already do).

Whether I choose to block ads just because I don't like ads or because I'm trying to protect myself from malicious software distributed through those ad networks -- or both -- is irrelevant. My property is my property and I get to decide what code runs on it. Full stop.
by goku12 | 2025-08-19 19:49:24+00:00
Neat! I'm going to try this one for sure. I really like the use of a programming language to configure and control WMs and software in general. I just find it easier to write programs than to write complex configurations. Even better if the WM just provides an IPC/API and a few language bindings to use them. River WM takes this approach. And in case anyone wants to have a traditional configuration, an application may be provided to translate such config files to API calls.

Obviously a lot of people are going to have (not unjustified) complaints about a Turing complete configuration. I haven't yet used any new generation config languages like dhall, kdl, pkl or jsonnet. Can anybody share any insight on how they perform for complicated configs?
by prisenco | 2025-08-19 19:50:11+00:00
Once again, this relates to total comp not base salary alone. Total comp includes salary and benefits which can include vacation time.

So it's not 1/2100th of a base salary, it's the hourly rate x2100 to get the total comp.

Do you know what your preferred total comp is? Take the hourly rate being offered, multiply by x2100, if it meets that then it's a decent offer.

It's a useful rule of thumb but it's just a rule of thumb. It's not meant to be perfect but I find it easy to understand and calculate so it's served me well in my ~20 years of contracting.
by sigmoid10 | 2025-08-19 19:50:39+00:00
Probiotics fall into the same category as all other supplements: i.e. they can have some short term effects if your diet is really bad or you are recovering from GI disease, but there is not much evidence regarding general health improvement. And you also have the same issues as with all food supplements in that they are not FDA regulated or approved. So even if you think you actually need a particular dosage, you can't rely on what is written on the packaging. A balanced diet is a much better and healthier approach without any downsides.
by vunderba | 2025-08-19 19:51:28+00:00
From the article:

> A fascinating fact is that the oscillation frequency is rather stable at ~9.9Hz as it mainly depends on gravity and diameter of the flame.

This reminds me of when I first heard about Dolbear's law by which you can get an approximate measurement of the air temperature using the number of chirps per minute from a cricket.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dolbear%27s_law
by SolubleSnake | 2025-08-19 19:51:37+00:00
I agree that the term 'Engineer' has lost all meaning in the software/IT world. I studied CS at a UK uni which was a subject in the engineering school. I then worked with engineers on multidisciplinary projects (mechanical, electrical, chemical) and am a qualified CAD engineer.

When people start advertising for roles my 'mobile engineer' for someone who makes iphone apps it just makes me feel a bit sad. It genuinely cheapens the term.

I imagine 'architects' also get p1ssed off for the same reason tbh. There's probably loads of real architects who see an 'architect' and say 'he's not a bloody architect! I went to architecture school for SEVEN YEARS!!! He's an idiot with a 1 month AWS certificate!'

Why is IT so bad at trying to steal others' glory!?
by beklein | 2025-08-19 19:52:40+00:00
Again, totally fair points, and for many people a (simple) GUI is the right tool. I am not against GUIs or particularly pro LLMs; I just want to show an alternative way to solve video editing problems without judging any specifc technology.

Not all video work is visual-first storytelling. In engineering/lab contexts you often just need “good enough” trims, concatenation, speedups, and a few labels to document an experiment. As I said in another comment, I usually get the timestamps by noting them down while watching the video, or in rarer cases from timestamped sensor data.

Sorry if my explanation wasn't good enough...
by yencabulator | 2025-08-19 19:52:52+00:00
It's all a question of are the founders still in power or not. Especially at a time when the company is actively looking for a cheap last-resort acquisition, I'd expect all the possible external funding to have been pumped in, at less-than-ideal terms, and diluted the founders' slice.

I've personally worked at a startup that forcibly ejected its founders. It happens.

(The startup got sold for scraps about 6 months later. The service I personally worked on kept streaming video for about a year with zero maintenance, only failing when the hardware was physically powered off. This was well after the main database had collapsed, and the web UI was inoperable, while iframe embeds kept chugging along.)
by pas | 2025-08-19 19:53:33+00:00
or, the downstream users who use it and benefit directly from it could step up, but websites and their users are extremely good at expecting things to just magically keep working especially if they don't pay for it. it was free, so it should be free forever, and someone set it up many moons ago, so it should keep working for many more magically!

// of course we know that, as end-users became the product, Big Tech [sic?] started making sure that users remain dumb.
by jameslk | 2025-08-19 19:53:58+00:00
> Not that I'm feeling any rage, I left that unproductive phase a long time ago.

I wasn’t referring directly to you, but in general. “You” in the royal sense. Anyway

> But even so, why cannot we talk about multiple unfair things at the same thing?

Because one of them is a red herring. If you plot median CEO comp of S&P 500 companies to the S&P 500 itself over time, you will find they follow almost the same trend, implying their comp package stays roughly the same each year but the value of their equity keeps growing. Where as the median worker pay has grown much less.

In other words, when comparing median CEO comp to worker comp and noticing a divergence, what you’re witnessing is more so stagnant worker wage growth. To fix the gap, workers need to be paid more, but their wages are being weighed down
by zzo38computer | 2025-08-19 19:54:29+00:00
I also think Google is doing many bad things with it (although many of the things are not specific to Google, they are doing most of it). Removing stuff, and also adding stuff that just makes it worse, as well.

Many of the things they add, or that other things are replaced with, are seems to just mostly benefit Google (and sometimes Cloudflare), rather than actually helping you. This is true of the new Web Authentication systems as much as with other things. (And, they seem to want to make you use bloated JavaScripts even if neither the author nor reader want to do.)

> in 2025 Google announces a change in their Chrome Root Program Policy that within 2026 they will stop supporting certificate with an Extended Key Usage that includes any usage other than server

I agree that Google should not have done that, but it is often more useful to use different certificates for clients anyways.

While I think XML is generally not as good as other formats (I think DER is generally better), it works better than some other formats for some things. This is not a reason to get rid of XSLT though; it is useful. There are other reasons to not require it (e.g. to simplify implementations, but they are currently too complicated mainly due to the newer stuff instead anyways), but that does not mean that it cannot be used, that it cannot be implemented, etc. (For example, a static site generator might convert XML+XSLT to HTML if you need it while also providing the original XML+XSLT files to anyone who wants them, therefore making server-side and client-side working.)
by sfennell | 2025-08-19 19:54:30+00:00
I made the jump to AFFiNe (https://affine.pro/) a few months ago and have really liked using it. I am able to self host and have found it to be a _nearly_ 1:1 replacement for Notion. Affine's database implementation isn't nearly as nice though - but they are workable and they are improving.

My biggest gripe is that the OSS project is very oriented around a hosted product rather than the self hosted - so things like AI configuration is tricky at best and ive had to manually manipulate my account in the db to remove "free" user limitations.
by ml-anon | 2025-08-19 19:54:32+00:00
MSL can already be written off as a failure.

Zuck didn’t get the people he wanted despite literally offering billions. He then attached MSL to his other failed GenAI org which was already an astounding failure of leadership from the now triple headed team (wang, nat and zuck) which resulted in people fighting for budget, scope and prestige.

Meanwhile you have 1000x comp inequality among ICs and in some cases people getting 10x higher offers than others just because they happened to finish interviews a week later.

These people couldn’t organize a piss up in a brewery, good luck with AGI.
by dostick | 2025-08-19 19:54:43+00:00
Figma was born out of founder’s need to find a proof of concept test case for real-time collaboration JavaScript engine they created. They stumbled on this idea. Back then everyone used Sketch and wanted better prototyping and interaction design, and Figma appeared with its real time collaboration as major point which you used once just to try and never again.

Figma is one of the worst evils of corporate capitalism. The design oriented development is long ceases, mainly focusing on making new useless products because they need growth for shareholders. Considered a leader in UIUX design software while its own UIUX is abysmal, full of amateur level mistakes, inconsistencies and bad patterns. We have now a generation of designers that take Figma’s UX as an example to learn from and implement in their designs.
by simoncion | 2025-08-19 19:54:59+00:00
Also, from what I can tell, OpenRC's 'supervise-daemon' resolves the problem folks claim to have with PID files. [0] While the PID file is still needed, the contents of that PID file is the PID of the supervise-daemon instance that's monitoring the service.

You might quite reasonably ask "What happens when supervise-daemon crashes or is OOM killed?". I would reply "I'd imagine the same thing that happens when 'systemd' crashes or is OOM killed, except with a far smaller circle of devastation.". I'd also expect supervise-daemon to be no less reliable than 'systemd'.

[0] I would also expect most service supervision systems to solve this problem. OpenRC has supported using s6 as a supervisor for a long time, and OpenRC's supervise-daemon is relatively new, seeing as how it was introduced in 2016. My comments are about supervise-daemon because that's the only one that I've bothered to use.
by dingnuts | 2025-08-19 19:55:00+00:00
> Keep up with the trends by reading hacker news

frankly terrible advice, especially now that this website is just AI News. If you want to be a better programmer, there are better places, but I'm not going to advertise them here because I do not want to infect them with the HN commentariat which is much too focused on trends.

Engineering fundamentals have not changed in decades. Screw trends, especially at the beginning.

Books written before 2022 are a good bet. Maybe the value of traditional education has also returned.
by 0x457 | 2025-08-19 19:55:18+00:00
I don't know, I understood it as "No OS level telemetry or telemetry in first-party apps".

> It still logs rather a lot by default, like which applications you launch and how long you use them for.

If you're talking about Steam, those are social features that can be disabled if you want to hide the fact you're playing a hentai game (NSFW) https://www.reddit.com/r/Steam/comments/1ie66ix/nsfw_show_me...

I'd rather OS not fuck with my application settings on its own nor do I want it to install browser plugins for me. I wish I had a dollar for every "ubuntu, but looks like windows".
by mcv | 2025-08-19 19:55:31+00:00
There's a big difference between creating an atmosphere of hate against vulnerable minorities, and and criticizing a minister of economics.

Criticism of the government is absolutely vital. It's the very reason why free speech is so important. And that seems to be what the article is addressing.

Using "free speech" to silence and persecute minorities, and create a hostile atmosphere for them, is the opposite of free speech, abusing the space it was granted by free speech, and inevitably leads to serious restrictions on free speech, as we're currently seeing in the US.

These two things are not the same.
by rsecora | 2025-08-19 19:55:35+00:00
Results for Group A (1000$/m) closely resemble results for control Group C(50$/m). Metrics like % of Unsheltered participants, change in full-time employment, % of participans in a house they rent or own... have a diference of 1 or 2 points.

Thats the point of the author, those are minimal variances, and insuficient to claim inpact due to basic income.

Personal opinion. The study itself exert a nontrivial influence on participants. The act of being engaged, regular check-ins... affect positively. Their lives improve independent of the financial component because they are part of the study, not because of the amount of money in the procedure.
by NeutralCrane | 2025-08-19 19:57:48+00:00
I didn’t really take Tower of Babylon as a “devastating critique of religion”, (or the other stories for that matter).

SPOILERS

In the story they successfully build a tower to the base of heaven and breakthrough, only to find themselves to have looped back to Earth. The implication I took from this is that heaven and earth are one and the same. This isn’t necessarily a refutation of religion or God, and in fact aligns with many religious beliefs. I wouldn’t even see it as “cosmic horror” or something that implies “we are quite fortunate that our religions do not accurately describe nature”.

Then again, the nuance in Chiang’s stories that allows for very different, but reasonable interpretations is one of the things that makes him enjoyable.
by meowface | 2025-08-19 19:57:53+00:00
My only reasons for switching was performance and simplicity. (Okay, I guess now that I write out like that, it seems like a pretty substantial disillusionment.)

Notion was always very sluggish and bulky. If they added a simple way to very quickly load and write simple Markdown notes on desktop and mobile like Obsidian, I might not have switched. Meanwhile their mobile app was taking literally 10+ seconds to even open.
by nerdjon | 2025-08-19 19:58:14+00:00
I am normally pretty quick to jump on how bad for privacy shoving some random LLM tool into a product is and the serious security risks especially in the terminal...

But looking at the marketing for Warp, this thing screams LLM everything. Nothing about this hints that things are processed locally. I can't imagine using a tool like this and not thinking that everything I type into it (and give it access too) is getting routed to a server somewhere.

What am I missing here about being upset that... it seems to be doing its job?

Unless I am missing that it is installing something so this happens in your normal terminal or something like that... to be blunt if you used this tool and this is what breaks your trust... how did you think it worked in the first place?
by otterley | 2025-08-19 19:58:26+00:00
First, we are an insignificant portion of the web, and it's okay to admit that.

Second, if HN were built upon outdated Web standards practically nobody else uses, I'm sure YCombinator could address the issue before the deadline (which would probably be at least a year or two out) to meet the needs of its community. Every plant needs nourishment to survive.