MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by thedev_odesy | 2025-08-11 13:15:40+00:00
Hello everyone, I've been obsessed with a problem: in a world that profits from our distraction, how do we reclaim our focus? We all use to-do lists, Pomodoro timers, and fitness trackers, but the motivation often fades. I'm building a new mobile app called Odesy to solve this. It's an all-in-one productivity and wellness tool that helps you build good habits, but with a crucial difference: it rewards you with real, ownable crypto for your progress. The concept is simple: Complete a deep focus session using our app blocker. Hit your daily step goal. Check off your to-do list. ...and you earn crypto. We're turning self-improvement into a valuable asset. I'm getting close to a beta version and would love to get your thoughts on the idea. Is this something you'd use? If you're interested in being one of our first beta testers, please let me know in the comments or sign up
by thrance | 2025-08-11 13:16:58+00:00
Not a defense of chat control, which I am very much against, but can you really claim that the internet gave "dissident voices" a platform?

Media is arguably even more tightly controlled than in the 1980s, legacy media is owned by a few billionairew, right-wing influencers are all paid hacks, with a lot of them relaying pro-Russia propaganda. Meanwhile, genuine independent journalists are buried under algorithmic nonsense promoting ragebait and hate.

The internet very much failed to deliver a new era of feee speech. Instead, our conversations are now hosted on a few platforms and controlled by the oligarchs that own them, who are able to editorialize out dissenting voices and promote their own disgusting viewpoints.
by Arnt | 2025-08-11 13:17:18+00:00
Well, maybe.

Personally I believe that the browser is intended to defend against e.g. Facebook's apps. Google wants to make sure that if you buy a new device and it comes with a Facebook app preinstalled, it also comes with a browser. And that the browser isn't controlled by anyone who'd like to disrupt any of Google's many nice income streams.
by andrewla | 2025-08-11 13:17:25+00:00
I don't think this is even remotely true. It is literally an order of magnitude question.

Don't vape!

But your risk of lung cancer / emphysema is close to nil with vapes. Other risks related to nicotine exposure are of course present, as are the risk of tainted vapes or bad ingredients, but they're really not in the same ballpark.
by hannob | 2025-08-11 13:17:33+00:00
> As far as I understand, the key material for any post quantum algorithm is much, much larger compared to non-quantum algorithms

This is somewhat correct, but needs some nuance.

First, the problem is bigger with signatures, which is why nobody is happy with the current post quantum signature schemes and people are working on better pq signature schemes for the future. But signatures aren't an urgent issue, as there is no "decrypt later" scenario for signatures.

For encryption, the overhead exists, but it isn't too bad. We are already deploying pqcrypto, and nobody seems to have an issue with it. Use a current OpenSSH and you use mlkem. Use a current browser with a server using modern libraries and you also use mlkem. I haven't heard anyone complaining that the Internet got so much slower in recent years due to pqcrypto key exchanges.

Compared to the overall traffic we use commonly these days, the few extra kb during the handshake (everything else is not affected) doesn't matter much.
by throw-qqqqq | 2025-08-11 13:17:57+00:00
> … there is hardly a modern 16 bit CPU that doesn't have a C++ compiler

There are quite a few besides various PICs AFAIK, how modern they are is subjective I guess, and it IS mostly the weaker chips. Keil, Renesas, NXP, STMicro (STM8 MCUs used to be C only, not sure today) all sell parts where C++ is unsupported.

> Nowadays the only reason many embedded developers keep using C is religous.

I don’t completely agree, but I see where you are coming from.

The simplest tool that gets the job done is often the best IMO.

In my experience, it is much more difficult to learn C++ well enough to code safely, compared to C.

Many embedded developers are more EE than CS, so simpler software is often preferred.

I know you don’t have to use all the C++ features, all at once, but still :)

Horses for courses. I prefer C for anything embedded.
by gargantua89 | 2025-08-11 13:18:13+00:00
Hi HN. I've been focused on the problem that current approaches to disinformation often polarize more than they clarify. Instead of just flagging content as "true/false," I wanted to explore a system that reveals why and how a certain narrative is constructed. > This white paper is the result. It proposes an open-source, "Git for knowledge" model to map the full architecture of a topic—linking claims to primary sources, showing who funds what research, and tracing how ideas are connected. The goal is to make the foundations of any argument transparent and auditable by anyone. > The document details the tech stack (ArangoDB + Weaviate), a phased governance model, and a potential roadmap. I'm posting it here to get critical feedback on the concept, especially on its technical or game-theoretical flaws. Thank you.
by IgorPartola | 2025-08-11 13:18:19+00:00
What I really would love is a universal sync service that most apps would be built upon. There are apps I have used that basically say “we don’t provide storage service, but you can use your Dropbox, Google Drive, rsync service, etc.” This is really cool because while I love having my files locally I also then am entirely in charge of syncing and backing up stuff.
by llimllib | 2025-08-11 13:19:27+00:00
By naively, I meant without normalization.

You know much more about this than I do though

edit: this is what I mean for example, that `tést` != `tést` in rg, because \ue9 (e with accent) != e\u0301 (e followed by combining character accent)

$ printf "t\\u00E9st" > /tmp/a $ xxd /tmp/a 00000000: 74c3 a973 74 t..st $ cat /tmp/a tést $ printf "te\\u0301st" > /tmp/b $ xxd /tmp/b 00000000: 7465 cc81 7374 te..st $ cat /tmp/b tést $ printf "t\\u00E9st" | rg -f - /tmp/a 1:tést $ printf "t\\u00E9st" | rg -f - /tmp/b # ed: no result

edit 2: if we normalize the UTF-8, the two strings will match

$ printf "t\\u00E9st" | uconv -x any-nfc | xxd 00000000: 74c3 a973 74 t..st $ printf "te\\u0301st" | uconv -x any-nfc | xxd 00000000: 74c3 a973 74 t..st

Which you know, and indicate! Just working an example of it that maybe will help people understand, I dunno
by kibwen | 2025-08-11 13:19:32+00:00
The most important point is buried at the bottom of the page:

> all the post-quantum algorithms implemented by OpenSSH are "hybrids" that combine a post-quantum algorithm with a classical algorithm. For example mlkem768x25519-sha256 combines ML-KEM, a post-quantum key agreement scheme, with ECDH/x25519, a classical key agreement algorithm that was formerly OpenSSH's preferred default. This ensures that the combined, hybrid algorithm is no worse than the previous best classical algorithm, even if the post-quantum algorithm turns out to be completely broken by future cryptanalysis.

Using a hybrid scheme ensures that you're not actually losing any security compared to the pre-quantum implementation.
by aprilfoo | 2025-08-11 13:19:34+00:00
In short: everything and everyone is suspect and need to approved by technocratic superior authorities and zealot private organizations. Yesterday China, USA, Russia, UK, India etc and today the EU aligning with North Korean style of control on people.

This is a mind boggling recipe for disaster, a worldwide dystopian nightmare coming true with an unprecedented but quite predictable series of consequences. Next step: compulsory installation of CCTV inside every home?
by simonw | 2025-08-11 13:19:40+00:00
My argument here is not that companies will lose customers if they are unethical.

My argument is that they will lose paying customers if they act against those customer's interests in a way that directly violates a promise they made when convincing their customers to sign up to pay them money.

"Don't train on my data" isn't some obscure concern. If you talk to large companies about AI it comes up in almost every conversation.

My argument here is that companies are cold hearted entities that act in their self interest.

Honestly, I swear the hardest problem in computer science in 2025 is convincing people that you won't train on your data when you say "we won't train on your data".

I wrote about this back in 2023, and nothing has changed: https://simonwillison.net/2023/Dec/14/ai-trust-crisis/
by bayindirh | 2025-08-11 13:19:58+00:00
Let's look at them. Their presentations [0] are giving us "paid users":

- Q1-2024: 18.16M - Q2-2024: 18.22M - Q3-2024: 18.24M - Q4-2024: 18.22M - Q1-2025: 18.16M - Q2-2025: 18.13M

This doesn't look like they're bleeding users, but of course you might think differently. It looks likes a couple of big companies changed vendors, that's all.

Oh maybe, what we see is the effects of the election, which is also plausible.

[0]: https://investors.dropbox.com/financial-information/earnings...
by burntsushi | 2025-08-11 13:20:17+00:00
The worst case is that `std.mem.eql`[1] is executed at every position in the haystack, which gives you `O(n*m)` time complexity. Several substring search algorithms are `O(n)`.

[1]: https://github.com/aarol/substr/blob/9392f9557de735929dfb79e...
by exasperaited | 2025-08-11 13:21:48+00:00
It's an interesting thing but I think their specific concerns are somewhat overcooked.

As another commenter pointed out in the earlier thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44721712

> The categorisation regulations are a statutory instrument rather than primary legislation, so they _are_ open to judicial review. But the Wikimedia foundation haven't presented an argument as to why the regulations are unlawful, just an argument for why they disagree with them.

Ofcom's SI could simply be modified to exclude research texts, and it could even be modified to exclude Wikipedia specifically; there's no obvious problem with that considering its scale and importance.

If you go through Ofcom's checker:

https://www.ofcom.org.uk/online-safety/illegal-and-harmful-c...

The answers are 1) yes, 2) yes, 3) no, 4) probably "No, but...", 5) no, 6) no.

But the answer to getting out of the problem entirely might be to change the answer to question 6 -- that is, register Wikipedia as an education provider in the UK (since it is already used in that capacity).

I mean Wikipedia have actually exhibited at BETT, the main educational tech show here; Jimmy Wales did a keynote.
by brookst | 2025-08-11 13:22:43+00:00
Not especially well thought out.

On the one hand, the stainless steel example can be generalized to materials. Gold, for instance.

On the other hand there is plenty of fraud in materials. There are different grades of stainless steel and different methods of production that yield differing qualities.

Maybe “immutable, buyer-verifiable” would be stronger? Once you buy and own and verify the gold you bought, it can’t be retroactively degraded by the seller. But at the time of purchase, it’s not at all a sure thing.
by EGreg | 2025-08-11 13:22:47+00:00
I mean, most of what you do in life is a habit. Diogenes of Sinope lived in a barrel. Your ancestors lived without electricity, some without running water.

If you want to drastically cut down on wasteful spending today, I remember a great blog: https://www.mrmoneymustache.com/blog/

In any case, humans do seem to need the vitamins and minerals in meat, but if the animal is older then this can cause them to age faster as well over time.
by sillysaurusx | 2025-08-11 13:23:21+00:00
In practice you can move the displayResult(x / 0) outside the try catch. It’s hard to think of a counterexample that comes up in practice.

There might be something to this idea, because I’ve often been in situations where a try catch catches an error that originates a dozen frames down the call stack, which is sometimes (but not always) unrelated to the original point of the try catch block. People try and deal with this by adding more try catches around the code deeper in the call stack, but maybe there’s a better way.
by ffin | 2025-08-11 13:23:35+00:00
If the promise is: when using the AT Protocol you have control over your own data, then this is self-guaranteeing, since it is a part of the spec that you can self host a PDS.

The promise that Bluesky will always be compliant with the spec, or that the spec won’t ever change to disallow this isn’t self-guaranteeing, but you could say something similar about any of these self guaranteeing promises. For example the promise that Obsidian will always use markdown isn’t self-guaranteeing.
by Enginerrrd | 2025-08-11 13:24:02+00:00
No, it doesnt typically work that way at all. The tax man just wants to get paid.

I grew up in an area known for people growing cannabis before it was legal. An enormous amount of taxes got dodged through cash land deals, but tons of people just claimed the income under various categories and no one ever came knocking because of that.

Its usually the other way around. If you caught the Fed's eye, then they might try to get you on tax evasion or something. Although, frankly even that was very rare. There are just a lot of very obvious fish to fry.
by exasperaited | 2025-08-11 13:24:24+00:00
If Ofcom permissibly determines that Wikipedia is a Category 1 service, and if the practical effect of that is that Wikipedia cannot continue to operate, the Secretary of State may be obliged to consider whether to amend the regulations or to exempt categories of service from the Act. In doing so, he would have to act compatibly with the Convention. Any failure to do so could also be subject to further challenge. Such a challenge would not be prevented by the outcome of this claim.

Seems pretty logical.

Again I think people outside of the UK perceive Ofcom to be a censor with a ban hammer. It's an industry self-regulation authority -- backed by penalties, yes, but it favours self-regulation. And the implementation is a modifiable statutory instrument specifically so that issues like this can be addressed.

In a perfect world would this all be handled with parental oversight and on-device controls? Yeah, maybe. But on-device parental controls are such a total mess, and devices available so readily, that UK PAYG mobile phone companies have already felt compelled (before the law changed) to block adult content by default.

ETA: I am rate-limited so I will just add that I am in the UK too. Not that this is relevant to the discussion. There is no serious UK consensus for overturning this law; the only party that claims that as a position does not even have the support of the majority of its members. I do not observe this law to be censorship, because as an adult I can see what I want to see, I just have to prove I am an adult. Which is how it used to work with top shelf magazines (so I am told! ;-) )

I suppose it's not really the done thing to say this, but if you disagree with me, say something, don't just downvote.
by pfdietz | 2025-08-11 13:24:35+00:00
The effects of the largest volcanic events can be even more dire than that.

The Permian-Triassic boundary extinction, the "Great Dying", is though to be related to the massive Siberian Traps large igneous province. This eruption had the unfortunate luck to be through one of the largest and oldest sedimentary basins on the planet. So, magma was introduced into this massive basin, cooking sedimentary docks including coal, organic-rich shales, and evaporites (salts).

The result was truly massive gas emission, producing over time hundreds of pipes up to ~1 km in diameter that ejected a nasty mix of gases, mostly steam and CO2 (lots of CO2), but including chlorinated organic compounds from the high temperature reaction of the salts and fossil carbon. The halocarbons would have been enough to collapse the ozone layer.

Afterwards, CO2 levels and temperatures stayed elevated for five million years (equatorial ocean temperature may have been too high for vertebrate life to survive there). The ordinary process by which CO2 is drawn back down (by absorption into the oceans and deposition of carbonates via Ca/Mg eroded off continents) was interrupted for some reason, perhaps because silica-utilizing ocean microorganisms had been killed off, causing those cations to instead form clays in a process called "reverse weathering".
by tialaramex | 2025-08-11 13:24:48+00:00
Ah yes, "But what about other safety?". An entire year of hand wringing from C++ people was predicated on this. In one of his rambling proposal papers Bjarne listed all manner of exciting different kinds of safety he'd imagined and which, he assured us, C++ was already almost able to achieve thanks to his wisdom and foresight.

And every single item on his list of course requires the thing C++ doesn't have, memory safety. You can't write software which has any non-trivial properties when it has unconstrained Undefined Behaviour. It really shouldn't be this hard but I have reluctantly accepted that this "argument" is not made in good faith.
by jeroenhd | 2025-08-11 13:26:25+00:00
It kind of depends; there's a difference between Europe and the EU, for one. But there are also things you can hide away in the T&C and privacy statements, while other stuff (usually involving PII) needs explicit consent and opt-outs.

The EU mandates the presence of an emergency cellular radio on board of new vehicles in case of crashes. It took some convincing, but that radio is now supposed to be off by default.

You can demand a refund for Windows keys that came along with your computer if you disagree with the ToS (which has been tested by a French court IIRC), and that ability is actually included in the Windows EULA these days, but getting that kind of thing enforced will be draining. Repeated calls and repeated emails at the very least, filing complaints and threatening legal action if the vendor doesn't want to comply.
by Barrin92 | 2025-08-11 13:26:47+00:00
Having lived in Japan, and spent a fair amount of time in China: food, fashion, music, film, culture and politics (in a polite way), work, among other things

However unless you're planning to visit very rural places I genuinely don't think I've ever met anyone in East Asia talk about cars or hunting. Even in Europe among Millenials or Gen Z I don't know anyone who is into cars at all, a lot of younger people in the larger cities don't even have drivers licenses.
by extraisland | 2025-08-11 13:27:38+00:00
It maybe mandatory for it to be deemed roadworthy for a newer vehicle, but not required on an older vehicle.

e.g.

https://www.gov.uk/guidance/mot-inspection-manual-for-privat...

> You must inspect all reversing lamps fitted to vehicles first used from 1 September 2009 other than quadricycles and three-wheeled vehicles.

Older vehicles don't require a reverse light. My P-reg vehicle (1996?) didn't have a working reverse lamp, but passed the MOT. I have since fixed it.
by nickslaughter02 | 2025-08-11 13:27:51+00:00
Wikimedia should block UK access. That will get the attention of media and popularity contest politicians might change their mind.

Remember the "Repeal the Online Safety Act" petition? It has gotten over half a million signatures and the response from the government was a loud "no".

> The Government has no plans to repeal the Online Safety Act, and is working closely with Ofcom to implement the Act as quickly and effectively as possible to enable UK users to benefit from its protections.

https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/722903
by ffsm8 | 2025-08-11 13:29:01+00:00
No, even if you got clearance... What's that gonna help with? The point was that the jira tickets are obsolete and likely contradict each other with changing requirements over time. More advanced tooling might be able to guess from looking at the git history and double-checking via linked tickets etc, but there is currently no tooling available that actually does this, today.

And that's coming from someone that has repeatedly gone on record saying "my expectation for our industry is a gigantic contraction because of LLM", ...but this isn't a scenario that's plausible with current models.
Exploring Nicotinamide (Vitamin B3) as a Neuroprotectant – Experiences?
by Yoonreterna | 2025-08-11 13:29:37+00:00
Hi Hacker News,

I’ve been researching nicotinamide (vitamin B3) for its potential neuroprotective benefits, especially related to eye health and cognitive function. I recently attended a Zoom forum with GlaucomaUK discussing it and found some interesting points.

For those interested, here’s a detailed guide on longevity supplements including vitamin B3’s role in cellular energy and neuroprotection: OMRE’s longevity supplement guide.

Has anyone here used nicotinamide supplements or read recent studies on its effects? I’d love to hear your personal experiences or insights!

Thanks!
by gnabgib | 2025-08-11 13:29:39+00:00
(2022) Previously:

2024 (34 points, 17 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41456270

2023 (24 points, 22 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33491437

Paper: [Chlamydia pneumoniae can infect the central nervous system via the olfactory and trigeminal nerves and contributes to Alzheimer’s disease risk](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-022-06749-9)
by amiga386 | 2025-08-11 13:30:21+00:00
> If Ofcom permissibly determines that Wikipedia is a Category 1 service, and if the practical effect of that is that Wikipedia cannot continue to operate, the Secretary of State may be obliged to consider whether to amend the regulations or to exempt categories of service from the Act. In doing so, he would have to act compatibly with the Convention. Any failure to do so could also be subject to further challenge. Such a challenge would not be prevented by the outcome of this claim.

Basically, DENIED, DENIED, DENIED. Ofcom can keep the loaded gun pointed in Wikipedia's face, forever, and make as many threats as it likes. Only if it pulls the trigger does Wikipedia have a case.

Wikipedia should voluntarily remove itself from the UK entirely. No visitors, no editors.
by godzillabrennus | 2025-08-11 13:30:27+00:00
I had a positive experience living in two different Greystar properties from 2013 to 2018, first in Chicago and then in San Francisco. That said, my expectations for property managers/landlords are extremely low. I learned in college how predatory they are when the small landlord I had didn't refund my deposit despite us keeping the place immaculate.

Tips:

1.) Read the lease. You probably have to notify them early that you are not renewing, or they can automatically renew you, or charge fees for not telling them. 2.) Never expect your deposit back. Consider putting your last month's rent into escrow until they refund your deposit. The NY Bank of Mellon offered this service at the time. 3.) Expect neighbors to complain if you have a dog, even if they are not loud or rambunctious, so see if you qualify to get an emotional support animal prescription to negate most legal issues. 4.) Things will break, document them in writing, use their "buildinglink" or whatever property management software they use today, but take screenshots and document it for your own records, including in email, so they can't delete it on you and say you didn't tell them. 5.) Every large landlord is a financial services business trying to extract fees out of you for everything they can think of to make a profit. They are the fast food of housing. Low labor costs, low expectations, not good for you in the long term. You should try to find a home to buy at some point to avoid enriching their shareholders.