MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by OneDeuxTriSeiGo | 2025-08-31 20:03:21+00:00
> "Convince a HN user that a corporation with the ability to cut you off from your feed sources for more profit won't do exactly that

It's not just a technical restriction though. It's also a legal restriction. Bluesky PBLLC is a public benefit corporation and they are at least in moderate part beholden to their charter.

More importantly, their initial investment contract requires them to further the decentralisation of social media and exposes them to legal consequences should they deviate from that mission.

Those combined make it effectively impossible for them to lock in bluesky. Doing so would require technical changes that would be under no uncertain terms against the charter of the company and against the terms of the investment contracts that initially funded the company. It's a poison pill that would kill the company and destroy any "shareholder value" the moment they try to lock down the service or lock in the users.

You aren't going to see them try this type of brazen lock-in because it'd be explicitly harmful to every investor/VC and saddle the company in legal hell until it smoulders into ash.
by alepeak | 2025-08-31 20:03:37+00:00
Thanks! Yes, Replit has KV store and managed Postgres, Lovable uses Supabase (requires manual setup). Base44 doesn't have a manual setup but has a black box backend. In VibeFlow: - no manual setup required - low code backend editor n8n style - no black box anymore - everything you do in the backend is code that you own

It's not just about databases, think about all the users currently using n8n with Lovable separately, without even owning the full stack
by like_any_other | 2025-08-31 20:03:56+00:00
It's the academic consensus that the US, and more broadly "the West", is systemically racist, white-supremacist, heteronormative, etc. So the better question is - why aren't the words you listed getting banned? When the side with allegedly all the power wants them banned, or at the very least doesn't want the original list of words banned.
by BobaFloutist | 2025-08-31 20:04:32+00:00
I mean I also feel like people would be pretty happy with the average lifespan of a tree, or a Greenland Shark, etc.

Also, some few (fairly primitive) animals are "biologically immortal," for example, lobsters (which are motile and vaguely resemble us more than, say, sponges and jellyfish) don't experience senescence.

That being said, I think we have a long way to go if we want to make any progress at all, and I doubt I will live to see it.
by schneems | 2025-08-31 20:04:51+00:00
Next time Please state that upfront: you don’t know anyone with ADHD that this has been effective for and you dont have ADHD yourself.

“Have you tried” comments from people without firsthand experience is basically asking others to be your guinea pig. I didn’t say “hard” I said “pain” as in a physical reaction. If you don’t have the same pathology I don’t think you can truly empathize or understand what you’re asking me to do (even if you think you do).

I’m glad you found meditation and that it’s helpful for you. I’m asking that you modify your evangelism in the future to give people maximum context on where your suggestions are coming from (and associated limitations).
by necovek | 2025-08-31 20:04:59+00:00
N9 development was stopped by the management despite the success in the market: all Nokia phones started moving to Windows as the "strategic" platform due to a new CEO who joined from Microsoft.

Yes, previous management messed up before that point too (they did not ship N700 with GSM chip and marketed it as "internet tablet" so as not to jeopardize their Symbian phone sales, only adding it to N800 and beyond, and then Apple turned their iPod Touch into iPhone and stole their lunch), but they finally figured out a great phone, and then... pivoted.
by babl-yc | 2025-08-31 20:05:16+00:00
It sounds like you're working 8 hours/day and unwinding the rest of the time?

I never had energy for side projects with a full-time job. Just because some do doesn't mean it's for everyone.

Maybe there are higher value ways to relax than doom scrolling but I don't think being "unproductive" beyond 8 hrs/day is a bad thing.

Hopefully you can also find work that is stimulating and gives that sense of accomplishment.
by MaskRay | 2025-08-31 20:05:57+00:00
Tested programs:

lz4 zstd brotli bzip3 xz lzham: The build system is not well-polished for Linux. I have forked it, fixed build errors due to stdint.h, and installed lzhamtest. IMHO the command line program lzhamtest should be renamed to lzham. kanzi: There are a wide variety of transforms and entropy encoders, unusual for a compresion program. For the compression speed of enwik8, it's Pareto superior to xz, but decompression is slower.
by baranul | 2025-08-31 20:05:58+00:00
> Your comment is copy pasted from the same comment you’ve posted

Please don't twist. The response given here were unique statements. It was not copy and pasted from anywhere else.

> When comparing V and Golang....

The original commentator started the comparison. Was just giving a response about that.

> why the Go maintainers say "No" so often

In the counter, showed that many Golang programmers disagreed with the direction or about the features of their language. In various cases, those programmers agreed with or admired the direction or features of Vlang. Additionally, the sentiment expressed by the writer of the article was not that he was against, but rather and overall, he liked Vlang.

People should be allowed to respectfully disagree and also not be forced to go along with any negative narratives. There should be room for different views about topics.
by magicalhippo | 2025-08-31 20:06:37+00:00
As I said I do think ZFS is great, but there are aspects where it's quite noticeable it was born in an enterprise setting. That sending, recreating and restoring the pool is a sufficient disaster recovery plan to not warrant significant development is one of those aspects.

As I mentioned in the other subthread, I do think your commitment to help your users is very commendable.
by bongodongobob | 2025-08-31 20:06:37+00:00
People think cyber insurance requirements are hard rules, but they aren't. For the most part, you just need to show effort as it's completely impossible to be 100% compliant with all standards. For example, if you weren't rotating passwords but had proper MFA on your accounts, you're fine. Hell they even have conflicting standards sometimes. I've been through this multiple times when I worked at an MSP. For the most part, leadership just pushes to meet those standards to cya, which makes sense, but as long as you don't demonstrate gross negligence, they'll pay out.
by 1718627440 | 2025-08-31 20:06:51+00:00
But it can only amplify information already present in the code or apply "common sense" from other code bases, in other ways the things a programmer already does.

In addition LLMs recognize "meaning" mostly like prose, i.e. they take the code behaviour mostly from the names of the variables and functions less from the actual behaviour. When you name everything randomly, then a LLM is way worse to recognize what the code is doing.

This means that when the code is already confusing, wit naming doesn't match behaviour than the LLM is more likely to tell you the story from the naming not the story of actual behaviour.
by hulitu | 2025-08-31 20:07:29+00:00
> When I tried to figure out what was going on, the language had changed since the last time somebody had posted a description! And so it took days to write a program which in other languages would take maybe five minutes

That rings a bell. Rust will be much better if it will stick to a stable ABI. We have enough CADT. You found the holy language grail ? Just not deprecate the old stuff.
by Wowfunhappy | 2025-08-31 20:08:14+00:00
> - We went from the vast majority of traffic being unencrypted, allowing any passive attacker (from nation state to script kiddie sitting in the coffee shop) to snoop and any active attacker to trivially tamper with it, to all but a vanishing minority of connections being strongly encrypted.

I still don't understand why this is so terrible.

Public wifi networks were certainly a real problem, but that's not where the majority of internet usage happens, and they could have been fixed on a different layer.

If you're on a traditional home internet connection, who exactly can tamper with your traffic? Your ISP can, and that's not great, but it doesn't strike me as blaring siren levels of terrible, either. Even with HTTPS, the companies behind my OS and web browser can still see everything I do, so in exchange for all this work we've removed maybe 1 out of 3 parties from the equation. And, personally, I trust the OS and browser vendors less than I trust my ISP!

Some progress is better than none, and it's still nice that my ISP can't tamper with my connection any more. Unfortunate, TLS also took away my ability to inspect my own traffic! This makes it more difficult for me to monitor what my OS and browser vendor are doing, and as I've said previously, I trust these parties comparatively less than my ISP.

> - We went from TLS certificates being unaffordable to hobbyists to TLS certificates being not only free, but trivial to automatically obtain.

Sure, but it's also trivial to just throw up a website on Github Pages, or forgo the website completely and use Instagram. TLS is "trivial" if you rely the infrastructure of a specific external party.

Please help me understand what I'm missing because I find this really frustrating!
by griffzhowl | 2025-08-31 20:08:53+00:00
> That there may be structures in nature that are 1-to-1 with any given (constructible) mathematical concept.

There may be, or there may not be. I don't think we can make a definitive argument either way without perfect knowledge of the structure of the physical world, or at least some part of it. What we have are mathematical models of physical systems that are valid to within some error margin within some range of parameters. The ultimate structure of the physical world is so far unknown, and may be forever unknown. Any actual physical situation is too complex for us to fully analyze, and we can only make our mathematical models work (to within some error) when we can simplify a physical system sufficiently.

I think I understand better though what your main point is: that whatever physical theories or models we might have, the unconstructible reals won't be an essential part of it, i.e. even if we have some physical theory or model whose standard formulation might be committed to unconstructable reals, we could always reformulate it into a predictively equivalent model which doesn't have this commitment. Is that fair?

That might be true for all I know. I'm not sure how to evaluate it (IANA mathematical physicist). It seems plausible though. There's the example of synthetic differential geometry, which has a different conceptual basis to the standard formulation of differential geometry, and at least suggests that you can't a priori rule out the possibility of alternate formalizations of any mathematical structure. I don't know enough about it to say whether or not it postulates something equivalent to unconstructible reals, it's just something that came to mind as maybe being along the lines of your point of view

https://ncatlab.org/nlab/show/synthetic+differential+geometr...
by npteljes | 2025-08-31 20:08:58+00:00
When I was doing a similar schedule, it was a failure of introspection, and a mounting number of unprocessed emotional issues, and unconfronted personal problems.

The way I got over it is that I have started realizing, confronting, communicating these issues. I "sat down with myself" daily just to think for 15 minutes, without any distraction like youtube. Communicated what I though were my problems to my partner, friends, parents, therapist, forums, LLM.

Over time, patterns emerged, either by others pointing them out to me, or them occurring to myself. The patterns became higher and higher level, and I had more and more power and agency to fill in my gaps, and those in turn made my problems smaller, manageable. Challenges, even.

I also picked up hobbies that nurture the specific parts that I was lacking. For example, I had a very hard time to persistently care about living things. But after a leap of faith I successfully kept a plant alive, and I slowly build a hobby around this.

Funnily enough, youtube helped in this, because I also shaped that so that the helpful videos remained. While doing chores, self-care and other such things, I listened to a lot of mental health, lifestyle, introspective, hobby content, and these were wonderful sources of inspiration.

In a way, having a bluetooth headphone also helped a lot. It helped to bridge the gap between the digital world, which was my only comfort zone, and the "irl", which was like the cold, hard, overwhelming rest of the world that I didn't really want to deal with.
by mustache_kimono | 2025-08-31 20:10:01+00:00
>> I can think of non-religious reasons to want to avoid legal fights with Oracle.

Oh, certainly, but that's really not the problem posed right now. Oracle's own lawyers have said they see no problem with the combination, and Ubuntu has shipped the Linux + ZFS combination for years without a lawsuit.[0][1]

In the 1990s, Microsoft/SCO, like you, would also fear monger about open source and lawsuits, and we in the OSS community mostly called this "FUD" (fear, uncertainty, and doubt). Whereas now, almost 10 years into this experiment, we know more about the ZFS + Linux combination, and what Oracle will do about it, than most other open questions in OSS, and the answer is that some in OSS community have chosen to instead participate in the same kind of FUD because of a very online, very uninformed internecine licensing debate.

[0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PFMPjt_RgXA&t=2260s [1]: https://ubuntu.com/blog/zfs-is-the-fs-for-containers-in-ubun...
by tonyarkles | 2025-08-31 20:10:20+00:00
Heh, the psychiatrist who diagnosed me laughed a little when I showed up rushed and late to my first appointment.

The good news is that after you’ve been diagnosed, getting near the bottom of the bottle of pills is a great reminder to call the pharmacy for a refill. Plus… shortly after noticing that you’re almost out happens to coincide with the medication taking effect, so you’ll be in the perfect place to make that call!
by CorrectHorseBat | 2025-08-31 20:10:58+00:00
>That was over a decade ago.

You make me feel old

>In June 2019, millions took to the streets again in massive pro-democracy protests.

This was only 6 years ago.

>Hong Kongers ages 35 and older are more likely than their younger counterparts to feel very close to China.

That's the exact opposite of what you claim.

I agree they'll likely succeed in the end but they have not yet made HK just another part of China.
by highpost | 2025-08-31 20:11:47+00:00
Ubuntu ships OpenZFS as a separate prebuilt kernel module for ZFS (zfs-dkms). Interestingly, they also have ZFS support in GRUB to support booting from ZFS:

* read-only and minimal * fully aware of different Linux boot environments * GPLv3 license compatible, clean-room implementation by the OpenSolaris/Illumos team. The implementation predates Ubuntu’s interest.
by Aerbil313 | 2025-08-31 20:12:38+00:00
Preach, this is a great post. The author has approximated the same system I (and many others) independently found to be working well for themselves. The bad news is that it’s very hard, if not impossible, to teach masses with ADHD all these elaborate, often very personal systems. The good news is you can make an app which will automatically make it work for individual people. Which is what I’m working on right now (not out yet).
by caymanjim | 2025-08-31 20:13:14+00:00
Needs (2000) really. This contrived test is using tiny VPSes (even the "big" machine is tiny), slow network-mounted DB storage, nothing like a production stack that a real API server would use. Bespoke simple profiling mechanism. Nothing wrong with OP learning the basics and experimenting, but there's nothing of value in the findings.
by MilnerRoute | 2025-08-31 20:13:36+00:00
Exercise may help. Some people are naturally low in "focus" biochemicals -- so exercise can boost your levels of those biochemicals.

Exercise also helps you sleep better -- sleep issues can also interfere with focus. And eating right is probably helpful too. It's the advice they give everybody who needs more energy -- but I think it can all be especially helpful for focus issues.
by tibbar | 2025-08-31 20:13:42+00:00
I think a spiritually similar assignment would be: implement multiplayer Google Docs using a CRDT, server, and clients, supporting a certain class of documents that are shown to you during the interview.

And imagine that the CRDTs are not directly explained in the problem statement, but some supporting data structure of CRDTs is referenced, and like clearly there is some way to make all the pieces referenced work together to create a working system, but it's never made explicit.

And imagine that you need to actually implement CRDTs from scratch in the interview, but also integrate them into this client-server document-editing app, which you also need to code from scratch. All in an hour.

This is why I say the interview felt kind of insane to me. But plausibly if I'd previously studied that problem, so that the implementation details were all clear to me from the start, and if I had used the company's coding assistant to the extent allowed, and if I had been in much better coding-things-from-scratch form, I could have done OK. I don't know. It's fine. They were probably looking for a type of engineer that I'm not. :')
by lieks | 2025-08-31 20:14:29+00:00
If you are already considering the AGPL, I'd like to suggest the EUPL. It also covers SaaS, is copyleft (forbids nonfree forks), but non-viral (can link to nonfree software), a lot easier to read, and also doesn't have the "bad name" some people attach to the GPL family.

I can't speak to how well it fits in your usecase. There are too many ways to do monetization, and I don't know which one you have in mind. But copyleft at least stops other entities from monetizing without sharing their contributions, so if you want to keep it open source, that's my recommendation.
by manwe150 | 2025-08-31 20:14:41+00:00
> In conclusion, I’ll assume this is not a typical scenario and it is mostly safe.

Ughh, this brings bad memories of the days I spent trying to diagnose why glibc often would give wrong answers for some users and not other users (they’ve since mitigated this problem slightly by combining pthreads and libdl into the same library). I wish they would get rid of this, since even the comment on it notes that the optimization is unsound (the ability to make syscalls directly, as used by go and others, makes this optimization potentially dangerous). It also upsets static analysis tools, since they see that glibc doesn’t appear to have the synchronization the library promises.
by neilv | 2025-08-31 20:14:57+00:00
For the distractions, one thing that helps me is removing easy access to them.

Just like having junk food in the house means that I will tend to eat junk food (but I won't go buy junk food on impulse)...

* Remove the time-wasting capabilities from your devices (e.g., uninstall apps, set up uBlock Origin blocking rules for anything TikTok-like, block HN for a week).

* Make dedicated distraction devices hard to access (e.g., unplug gaming rig/console and store it away for a week/month, same with the living room TV/screen, sell that handheld gaming device).

Also, once you get some momentum on a better activity, it's easier to stay doing it. You might have to lock away all your distractions for a few days before you can get immersed in that coding side project (or writing that novella, or that new workout routine). But then it can become a go-to activity that you do automatically, and maybe even think about at other times, rather than defaulting to doomscrolling.

(I don't claim to always do this myself, but when I do, it works.)
by tamimio | 2025-08-31 20:15:01+00:00
Shifting the power from the state to banks.. what could go wrong!!

Hell no! Banks should NOT assume an expanded role in transaction processes; rather, their involvement should be further reduced. The objective should be to establish public consensus that positions banks as an optional payment method, not as an integral component of daily activities. Even in scenarios where banks do not access personal identification information, their institutional power should be constrained rather than extended.

Cashless payment systems present inherent risks for surveillance and control, as they channel all transactions through centralized, heavily monitored networks. Individuals flagged within these systems may face severe exclusion from economic participation without due process protections.

KYC protocols may have poorly regulated flagging databases that lack the procedural safeguards associated with formal criminal records. Unlike criminal records, which require due process for inclusion and can be destroyed, banking flags operate without comparable regulatory oversight. This transfers significant power to corporate entities and their stakeholders, having this “shadow” power that would control the public.

Regardless of anonymity provisions, banks should function solely as optional convenience tools for payment processing, not as mandatory intermediaries in financial transactions or any process. The integration of banking systems into essential processes is the worst for anyone who cares about surveillance free society and create a concentrated institutional power, and it will reduce individual autonomy, financial or not.
by high_priest | 2025-08-31 20:15:37+00:00
One of the reasons I have completely dropped interpreted languages (Python, Java, JS) and followed the "back to compiled software" hype. I am now writing my software purely in Go and Rust and again using pipes, queues and temp storage, to connect smaller programs, tools, services. The Unix philosophy was revolutionary and (for me) the ultimate solution for software organisation. But, one never knows what he had, until he loses it, so I treat the few years of experimentation with interpreted alternatives, as a positive.
by whocares222 | 2025-08-31 20:15:54+00:00
Go to the gym. Physical exercise will do wonders for mental an physical help.

You can still listen to podcasts and YouTube whe on the treadmill or listen to your favourite albums.

As a coder myself i always thought gym wasn’t for me but i finally tried and i wish i started 20 years ago.

I’m now a better person i have less time for distractions and everything i do including watching youtube i do with more focus and purpose.

If you have too much time in your hands its easy to waste.

Go to gym!
by furyofantares | 2025-08-31 20:16:22+00:00
The worst case with AI-generated code is worse than this. Instead of a company, I'll talk about smaller personal projects.

You can make a very real decision right now - spend a lot of time making 10,000 lines of good code that you know well, or spend VERY LITTLE time (maybe 1-2% as long) making 20,000 lines of bad code that does the same thing and that you don't know well at all.

Personally I'm continuing to find the middle ground, because if you want to continue to build past that, I think you've actually lost that time in the first case.
by pcrh | 2025-08-31 20:16:31+00:00
That's precisely the point, to be honest.

Treating homes as investments rather than places to live is a significant contributor to their lack of affordability, as it creates two demands for the same property.

This phenomenon is not "necessary", but appears to be particularly common in the US, UK and other Anglophone countries, see this chart: https://i.imgur.com/h1CkkNE.png