MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by jillesvangurp | 2025-08-23 06:17:45+00:00
I actually hooked up my magic trackpad to Linux at some point because I got so frustrated with the crappy touchpad on my Samsung laptop. I also have a logitech wireless mouse for it. Anything is better than that crappy touchpad.

The point is that Apple's magic trackpad actually works great on Linux too. Smooth, responsive. accurate, multi touch and gestures, and all the rest. Just works. More or less exactly like it does on a mac. Too bad the blueooth stack on Linux is a bit unstable. Lots of issues with stuff randomly not connecting. Which of course isn't great with a trackpad.

The issue is that trackpads from other manufacturers just seem to be universally really, really bad in comparison to Apple's hardware. Particularly anything produced by Synaptics that I've had the displeasure of using is just mediocre shit in comparison. And they seem to dominate the market. It seems like they just gave up even trying to pretend to compete. If you see somebody using a wireless mouse, 9 out of 10 times they aren't using a mac. I work in a lot of co-working spaces. Lots of macs. Almost exclusively being used without a mouse. Just not a thing. The trackpad that comes with it is fine. If you see somebody using a mouse, it's usually with a windows/linux laptop.

That Samsung laptop was something I used in between two macs. My old intel mac died weeks before the M1 was supposed to come out. I used it for about half a year. I still have it and it runs Manjaro. From a software point of view, I can do anything I need to do on it that I would normally use a mac for and I'm actually completely fine with using it for work.

But the reason I went back to the mac is the hardware. Intel/AMD laptops are so completely miserably dreadful these days. Apple makes great hardware. Great screens, keyboard, trackpads, CPUs, etc. You always end up compromising on at least a few of these. It will have a great CPU but a shit screen. Or it will be overheating all the time and have a loud fan. Or weigh 10 kilos. Or have a lot of blinking leds and a fugly formfactor. It's always something.

I have considered putting Linux on my mac a few times. I'm pretty sure I could kind of make that work but the thing is that mac OS works well enough and I have no technical need to switch. And I can't really justify spending a lot of time trying to get things like GPUs. sound, touchId sensors, etc. to work. And I would expect having issues with all of that.

But in a pinch, I can live with a decent Linux laptop. I'd probably go for something a bit more premium if I had to go there these days. But Arch/Manjaro are great and do everything I need and I vastly prefer that over Windows.
by cycomanic | 2025-08-23 06:17:59+00:00
> But the quality of MacBooks is just another level. I had 3 or 4 so far since 2010, and each of them held at least 5 years. Crazy good.

When I read things like this it really sounds like there is some reality distortion field in the mac world. How is that anywhere special? I'm running a thinkpad X1 as my 2 main laptops (it was my only work machine until 2 years ago) and I never felt the need to replace it. It gave me 8-10h battery life and the only issue I ever had was that 1.5 years ago the battery was reaching end of life and capacity started dropping very fast.

That was just a 70$ repair I could easily do myself.

My youngest daughter just inherited my mother's x220 (?) (she has been running Linux) that I got for my mother in 2011 or 2012. That never received any work and still works fine except that I didn't change the battery so you have to run it of ac power.

My older daughter and my mother both just got some used thinkpads that are >3years old and don't have any issues either.

So from my experience a 5 year lifetime for a macbook is really nothing special and definitely not "crazy good".
by tamimio | 2025-08-23 06:18:17+00:00
Waaaay overexaggerated sentence! But I believe this wasn't about the “damage” that happened but about sending a message asserting the power dynamics between the employees and employers, as in, if you dare to do something similar or rebellious you will have your life and future ruined forever, establishing a precedent that reinforces the power hierarchy between employees and employers. The underlying message suggests that any similar acts of defiance will result in severe and harsh consequences. By the way, modern dynamics have shifted a lot of things for granted. I know personally a few developers who worked back in the 80s/90s and up to this date the companies still pay them portions of their profits because these developers are the owners of that code and have ownership rights in the code they developed, meanwhile these days under “industry standards”, the code that you spent your time/life/etc. is totally owned by the company and you, the creator, do not, the original creator retaining no ownership rights whatsoever. Hilarious! slavery? Code monkey? Whatever you want to name it but definitely it isn't a good thing. It’s a substantial shift in the balance of intellectual property rights between developers and their employers.
by defjm | 2025-08-23 06:18:25+00:00
Do they include AI search summaries here? It would be a big no no in my view.

Google has rolled out AI summaries extensively over the time of the study and they likely use more efficient inference than chatbot prompts to their larger models.

They discuss the median in their paper. But I couldn’t find any breakdown about how the prompts they analyze are distributed across their models.
Ask HN: Help find old article on learnings of a Software Engineer
by rhardih | 2025-08-23 06:18:55+00:00
I've been scouring the web for and old article that was posted on HN awhile back.

My problem is I don't remember the title exactly.

It was something to the effect of "What I've learned in 25 years as a software engineer", but the number could be different and it could also just be engineer.

One thing I remember distinctly, is that it had a section about the importance of "how groups makes decisions" - but that is about as far as my memory of the contents goes.

It looked like it was on someone's personal website, minimal styling and such. No major blogging platform.

If this rings a bell for anyone, your help is much appreciated.
by godelski | 2025-08-23 06:19:04+00:00
I don't think it is ironic, but makes perfect sense. It's about the marathon strategy.

I think another important part of "running a marathon" is having excess time. It is hard to predict disaster, but you can prepare for it. You don't want the exact number of lifeboats so that each passenger on the ship has a seat on a lifeboat. You need excess because in a disaster it is likely a lifeboat will fail. The lucky thing with time is that if you finish ahead of schedule you can just go onto the next thing. It's always better to finish ahead of schedule than behind. But if you always predict to be on schedule you're more likely to fall behind because there's more ways to fall behind than get ahead.
by athrowaway3z | 2025-08-23 06:19:10+00:00
> One of the weird things I found out about agents is that they actually give up on fixing test failures and just disable tests. They’ll try once or twice and then give up.

Its important to not think in terms of generalities like this. How they approach this depends on your tests framework, and even on the language you use. If disabling tests is easy and common in that language / framework, its more likely to do it.

For testing a cli, i currently use run_tests.sh and never once has it tried to disable a test. Though that can be its own problem when it hits 1 it can't debug.

# run_tests.sh # Handle multiple script arguments or default to all .sh files

scripts=("${@/#/./examples/}")

[ $# -eq 0 ] && scripts=(./examples/*.sh)

for script in "${scripts[@]}"; do

[ -n "$LOUD" ] && echo $script output=$(bash -x "$script" 2>&1) || { echo "" echo "Error in $script:" echo "$output" exit 1 }

done

echo " OK"

----

Another tip. For a specific tasks don't bother with "please read file x.md", Claude Code (and others) accept the @file syntax which puts that into context right away.
by crinkly | 2025-08-23 06:21:20+00:00
As the owner of an M4 Pro and an Intel Ultra 7 laptop, the M4 pro is uncomfortably cold most of the time. The ultra 7 is uncomfortably hot.

The Mac sucks in the winter. The PC sucks in the summer.

The PC is however entirely unusable due to that without plugging an external mouse and keyboard in which is the problem.
by raincole | 2025-08-23 06:21:34+00:00
It's not what the report says.

> It's very concerning that this marketing puff piece is being eaten up by HN of all places as evidenced by the other thread.

It's very concerning that you can just make shit up on HN and be the top comment as long as it's to bash Google.

> Never mind that Gemini 2.5 Pro, which is what everyone here would actually be using, may well consume >100x much

Yes, exactly, never mind that. The report is to compare against a data point from May 2024, before Gemini 2.5 Pro became a thing.
by esperent | 2025-08-23 06:23:09+00:00
> Figure 4: Median Gemini Apps text prompt emissions over time—broken down by Scope 2 MB emissions (top) and Scope 1+3 emissions (bottom). Over 12 months, we see that AI model efficiency efforts have led to a 47x reduction in the Scope 2 MB emissions per prompt, and 36x reduction in the Scope 1+3 emissions per user prompt—equivalent to a 44x reduction in total emissions per prompt.

Again, it's talking about "median Gemini" while being very careful not to name any specific numbers for any specific models.
by Eirena | 2025-08-23 06:23:16+00:00
Join a hackathon that is focused on tech-for-good. For example, this one: https://www.fundingthecommons.io/hackathons Firstly, mentors and advisors will help shape your idea into something that meets real-world needs. And then, if you decide, you could go through their Residency to turn it into an ecosystem-weaved project.

If you want something real quick... Just help an open-source project.

In general, your challenge comes down to two questions: 1. How big an impact do you want to make? What is more important - impact or time spent? 2. Are you looking to build a product or a tool? Products require more time. Tools you can build faster, but still would need to maintain if you want it to be helpful.
by tomhow | 2025-08-23 06:23:51+00:00
Please don't reply to a bad comment with another bad one. Please make an effort to observe the guidelines, especially these ones:

Be kind. Don't be snarky. Converse curiously; don't cross-examine. Edit out swipes.

Please don't comment on whether someone read an article. "Did you even read the article? It mentions that" can be shortened to "The article mentions that".

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
by chrismorgan | 2025-08-23 06:24:02+00:00
Again, that’s prior discussion. It’s happened a few times over the last few years.

Then another few months pass, and one of the agitators goes about formally proposing removing it, so that finally it isn’t just murmurings more or less behind closed doors, but out in public for the developers to clamour about. That’s where we are this month.
by maplethorpe | 2025-08-23 06:24:09+00:00
Does being able to solve basic computer graphics problems mean ChatGPT can solve all computer graphics problems? If not, does that mean advanced computer graphics problems fit into the bucket of "things that are worth learning?"

Because if the advanced problems are worth learning, but the basic problems are not worth learning, how are you supposed to jump straight to learning the advanced stuff while skipping the rest? You'll inevitably end up needing to learn the basics first anyway.
by vincirufus | 2025-08-23 06:25:31+00:00
bsolutely agree! Prompt engineering is brittle, hardcoded “templates” that don’t generalize, and it’s simply not scalable as tasks and use cases explode. DSPy’s approach, which builds reusable and composable reasoning patterns, is a huge leap forward. DSPy will become the default for serious LLM application development.
by kogasa240p | 2025-08-23 06:25:38+00:00
>Proton

Using proton as well, but if you're stuck on the free tier you can't use any 3rd party email clients.

>YouTube

Using Google takeout for Youtube will give you a .csv of your subscriptions and playlists (just be sure to un-check getting a download of your videos). From there you can get the rss feeds and use RSSguard as a subscription viewer/media player, this site was a big help in figuring things out https://charlesthomas.dev/blog/converting-my-youtube-subscri....
by sarchertech | 2025-08-23 06:25:43+00:00
Compare it to the rest of the world in the first century, and it’s extremely enlightened. Compared to most of the world today, even many self-professed “Christians”, the teachings on rich vs poor, pacifism, and forgiveness are downright radical.

In addition the New Testament doesn’t endorse slavery as something that people should do or something that is morally correct.

It instructs people who happen to be slaves to obey their masters in the same way it instructs non slaves to obey their authorities. The principle is the same as when Jesus refuses to fight back against the Roman soldiers arresting him. Jesus isn’t endorsing the Roman soldiers’ behavior. He’s saying that the Christian response is not supposed to be rebellion (in most cases at least).
by ulrischa | 2025-08-23 06:25:49+00:00
To overcome the two problems here (client side loading the template and ending browser support) you could throw in php in the mix and have a wonderful solution for templating with bullet proof standards: // XML $xml_doc = new DOMDocument(); $xml_doc->load("file1.xml");

// XSL $xsl_doc = new DOMDocument(); $xsl_doc->load("file.xsl");

// Proc $proc = new XSLTProcessor(); $proc->importStylesheet($xsl_doc); $newdom = $proc->transformToDoc($xml_doc);

// Output print $newdom->saveXML();

XSLT lacks functionality? No problem, use php functions in xslt: https://www.php.net/manual/en/class.xsltprocessor.php
by hluska | 2025-08-23 06:26:15+00:00
I worked in surveillance cameras for a long time and started my own company in the field. So, I wouldn’t be so quick to diminish the value of location/bearing.

Armed with those details, a sufficiently motivated person with an easy to obtain skill set could avoid a camera.

With airports, leaking a location for a major component of active perimeter and taxiway monitoring is a serious issue. A month before the crash, someone got into the wheel well of a plane at O’Hare in Chicago so taxiway security is not a solved problem. Leaking camera locations and bearings is dangerous.
by BIackSwan | 2025-08-23 06:26:27+00:00
I use a variation of this. I call it “lets do miserable toil together” or “misery loves company”.

Where if there is a lot of gruntwork that is plain toil and is unpleasant to do solo. I plan a time window in advance that a bunch of people get together to do that same work.

Gives team support to individual, gets the work done fast and makes it less unpleasant.
Show HN: A newsletter for developers-turned-founders
by Eirena | 2025-08-23 06:27:48+00:00
Learn how to bootstrap your tech brand in less than 12 min per week. For free.

Every week, get one insight on brand strategy, one actionable technique and one curated list. Use this 3-in-1 combo to build your product's reputation that accelerates user adoption and funding.
by godelski | 2025-08-23 06:29:12+00:00
> due to your own fault or something findable on the docs ends up charging the user a fee. | But the plans were on display…” “On display? I eventually had to go down to the cellar to find them.” “That’s the display department.” “With a flashlight.” “Ah, well, the lights had probably gone.” “So had the stairs.” “But look, you found the notice, didn’t you?” “Yes,” said Arthur, “yes I did. It was on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying ‘Beware of the Leopard. - Hitchhiker's Guide

I don't see that going well... it presents a completely different "opportunity"
by SturgeonsLaw | 2025-08-23 06:29:31+00:00
No only do I have a separate work phone, but my personal phone has two SIM cards (one physical and one eSIM), one of those numbers is my general spam number that I give to businesses and acquaintances, and the other is my actual personal phone number that only the people close to me in real life get. I have a widget on the home screen that can disable/enable the spam SIM card at will.

Makes it real easy to control how available I am to different groups of people.
by Scoundreller | 2025-08-23 06:30:48+00:00
dunno, but they have 33 million paying subscribers, paying an average $15/month (!)

And that's not including Pandora. That's another 5.8 million subs at ~$6.50/month.

Per their Annual Report for 2024.

They're doing a much better job than satellite TV. At least in Canada, it's in a linear decline. Someone did an analysis and found they'd have like 0 subscribers within 10 years at their trajectory.
Show HN: OctaneDB – Fast, Open-Source Vector Database for Python
by rijin_r | 2025-08-23 06:31:00+00:00
OctaneDB is an open-source vector database for Python that focuses on ultra-fast similarity search for high-dimensional data—perfect for AI/ML, semantic search, and large-scale document or embedding retrieval.

What does it do?

Store, index, and search millions of embeddings (text, images, etc.) with sub-millisecond query time.

Supports in-memory and efficient HDF5 persistent storage.

Integrates seamlessly with sentence-transformers for automatic text embedding.

Key Features:

10x faster than Pinecone or ChromaDB for vector search and batch insertions.

Advanced indexing: HNSW (approximate nearest neighbor), FlatIndex

Batch search, advanced metadata filtering, GPU acceleration
by tgv | 2025-08-23 06:31:16+00:00
Someone already replied, but in general when you conditionally acquire a resource, but continue on failing. E.g., if you manage to acquire it, defer the Close() call, otherwise try to get another resource.

Another example I found in my code is a conditional lock. The code runs through a list of objects it might have to update (note: it is only called in one thread). As an optimization, it doesn't acquire a lock on the list until it finds an object that has to be changed. That allows other threads to use/lock that list in the meantime instead of waiting until the list scan has finished.

I now realize I could have used an RWLock...
by com2kid | 2025-08-23 06:31:44+00:00
You do realize those GPS smart watches are everywhere in the US as well right? Some parents opt for the less invasive tool of air tags hidden in clothing or backpacks, same idea though.

Smart watches are actually super useful for kids, it lets them still talk to their parents (or other trusted people) w/o the distraction of smart phones. Plenty of kids age 7-12 or so have them and they are basically used to call kids home for dinner at the end of the day.
by rvz | 2025-08-23 06:34:10+00:00
It's quite simple.

I perfer building and using software that is robust, heavily tested and thoroughly reviewed by highly experienced software engineers who understand the code, can detect bugs and can explain what each line of code they write does.

Today, we are now in the phase where embracing mediocre LLM generated code over heavily tested / scrutinized code is now encoraged in this industry - because of the hype of 'vibe coding'.

If you can't even begin to explain the code or point out any bugs generated by LLMs or even off-load architectural decisions to them, you're going to have a big problem in explaining that in code review situations or even in a professional pair-programming scenario.
by NoteyComplexity | 2025-08-23 06:34:30+00:00
Fr, what is the “other stuff” you all claims to be? Since I have heard many people who heavily use AI claimed to save time for “other stuff”, but I never heard about what is their “other stuff”.

If what you actually want to do is not really related to shader, there is a huge chance you have started your learning process in a wrong direction, which is a bit different to the definition of “being efficient”.

So tell me what you want to do.
by mbuhot | 2025-08-23 06:34:45+00:00
Re front end libraries, the other project I’m working on is an adapter for using InertiaJS from the Gleam Wisp web framework.

It won’t be as elegant as Lustre, but I figure it may be helpful for adoption if React/Vue/Svelte can be used on the front end.

With the server-side routing, Inertia doesn’t feel quite so SPA-first.
by claw-el | 2025-08-23 06:35:16+00:00
One challenge with the government taking large ownership in private companies is that it creates an opportunity to offload the ownership later, and that offloading might happen during a different presidential administration from the one that acquired it, and the offloading process can also be an opportunity to enrich someone else.

One example that comes to mind is the current Fannie Freddie Mac.
by phkx | 2025-08-23 06:35:41+00:00
I switched from MacOS (from a 12 year old first generation retina MBP) to Arch and started out with hyprland. It was really nice initially while I mostly used terminals, a browser or launched Steam. But when I needed to do some paperwork (taxes, stuff involving wide spreadsheets) I often ran into trouble, e.g. when I needed to read some numbers off a pdf quickly. Rearranging the tiling to have everything in appropriate size was rather slow. I often use overlapping windows in such cases, where I only need to see parts of a document and the floating tiles in hyprland just didn’t work for me (not as easy to arrange and so it felt clumsy). I moved on to KDE and that has been working great for half a year now. Maybe I‘m missing some functionality or just didn’t take the time to get used to it - stuff needed to get done ;)
by otterley | 2025-08-23 06:36:54+00:00
I am an attorney but this is not legal advice.

The elements of trade secret misappropriation are: 1/the existence of a trade secret, 2/ acquisition of that secret through improper means, and 3/ use or disclosure of the trade secret without consent.

I’m honestly uncertain as to whether security camera footage of an airport’s traffic area fits the definition of a trade secret. For example, 18 USC 1831 defines a trade secret as “all forms and types of financial, business, scientific, technical, economic, or engineering information, including patterns, plans, compilations, program devices, formulas, designs, prototypes, methods, techniques, processes, procedures, programs, or codes, whether tangible or intangible, and whether or how stored, compiled, or memorialized physically, electronically, graphically, photographically, or in writing if the owner thereof has taken reasonable measures to keep such information secret; and the information derives independent economic value, actual or potential, from not being generally known to, and not being readily ascertainable through proper means by the public.”

Given that anyone in the immediate vicinity could record the incident - for example, anyone who happens to be in a nearby aircraft - it sounds absurd that to try to classify this information as a secret. These aren’t recordings of the airport’s or FAA’s own activities, and neither the airport nor the FAA derives any business value from any footage they might possess related to the incident. Both of these are public entities anyway.
by trod1234 | 2025-08-23 06:37:47+00:00
"You shouldn't have to install a root kit to play a game".

I can't agree more with the video linked by the guy in this article claiming it was FUD and misinformation. Author is just flat out wrong to discount the threat.

Any hacker would want a rootkit, any nation state would also want this. Tencent has a convenient nationstate behind them, and a lack of credible history with human rights abuses.

Importantly, you don't need to control and lock down the edge to have an effective anti-cheat. You can do server side checking that is just as effective.