MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
Show HN: Word Maze – Secure Folder with Flip-to-Hide and Built-In Viewer and Cam
by Zifnap | 2025-08-20 11:22:42+00:00
Hi HN,

I’ve been working on Word Maze – Secure Folder, a mobile app designed to keep files private without pushing them to system galleries or the cloud.

Some of the core features:

- Flip-to-Hide → Instantly switch to a maze game screen in unexpected moments. - KillSwitch → Wipe data safely if needed. - Built-in Viewer → Open photos, videos, and audio directly inside the app — nothing leaves the sandbox. - Custom App Icons → iOS fully supports multiple app icons; Android has partial support. - In-App Camera → Photos/videos taken stay in the app, never exported to the system gallery.

Tech-wise, the app is built mainly with Flutter, but for performance (esp. thumbnails, memory handling), I had to drop down into Kotlin/Swift. iOS felt smoother for media handling, while Android required more native workarounds to avoid OOM issues.

I’ve tried to build this as carefully as I could, but I may have missed things. If you spot a better approach, or think of another privacy feature worth adding, please let me know.

I’d be happy to answer any questions.
by Drakim | 2025-08-20 11:23:30+00:00
If you have public documents, you can obviously let a public search engine index them and show previews. All is good.

If you have private documents, you can't let a public search engine index and show previews of those private documents. Even if you add an authentication wall for normal users if they try to open the document directly. They could still see part of the document in google's preview.

My explanation sounds silly because surely nobody is that dumb, but this is exactly what they have done. They gave access to ALL documents, both public and private, to an AI, and then got surprised when the AI leaked some private document details. They thought they were safe because users would be faced with an authentication wall if they tried to open the document directly. But that doesn't help if copilot simply tells you all the secret in it's own words.
by the_precipitate | 2025-08-20 11:25:02+00:00
Thanks! I remember that for a long time Aerospike didn’t support transactions, and I just found out they rolled out this feature just a few months ago. I’ve always been a bit suspicious of NoSQL databases that add transaction support late in their lifecycle. MongoDB seems to fall into the same category, and its transaction support is, to say the least, rather unsatisfying.
by Neywiny | 2025-08-20 11:26:37+00:00
I think the concern is more than what it gathered, I think there's a lot of skepticism over it missing something. The same way so many AI tools just ignore commands, imagine it just ignoring a few sentences. Maybe like:

> We'll sell you our company for $100. But, you have to do a hand-stand and spin around 5 times.

If the AI only puts the first sentence in the summary, you could see how it'd be a bad day for the client. Any human would go "huh that's weird, I'll make sure that's noted in the summary" but in my experience, AIs just don't have that feeling.
by donatj | 2025-08-20 11:26:39+00:00
Drone was absolutely perfect back when it was Free Software. Literally "run these commands in this docker container on these events" and basically nothing more. We ran the last fully open source version much longer than we probably should have.

When they went commercial, GitHub Actions became the obvious choice, but it's just married to so much weirdness and unpredictability.

Whole thing with Drone opened my eyes at least, I'll never sign a CLA again
by nis0s | 2025-08-20 11:26:42+00:00
Bacteria can beat humans anytime in any number of ways. One important difference to me between a bacterium and human is that humans are concerned with more than feed-fuck-fight cycles of life. Look at what you’re doing now, for example, advocating for thoughtfulness towards other animals. What other animal is doing that for you?

The point is that no other animals can be stewards, historians, or guardians of this planet. If there is a mass extinction event, no other animal would be capable of escaping it consciously, except by random chance.

Humans are better off understanding everything else they inhabit this planet with, it’s better for them and the incidence of life and intelligence, which shouldn’t be taken for granted, IMO.
by mpeg | 2025-08-20 11:27:17+00:00
I wouldn't say those two are equivalent. A cryptographic hash requires the exact full document to be available to "recover it" from the hash. With a vector embedding you can extract information related to the document from the embedding alone as long as you know (or can guess) what embedding model was used. You won't be able to reconstruct the document but you will be able to infer some meaning from the vector alone
by krapp | 2025-08-20 11:27:50+00:00
Socialism inevitably means state ownership only because states make themselves inevitable, not because state ownership is an inherent property of socialism per se. Plenty of examples exist of socialism working at a smaller scale, such as with worker owned cooperatives. If you're a programmer, you might own your own means of production. Free software is socialist in principle - all of that code is collectively owned.

But when the monopoly on violence gets involved, socialism often gets co-opted to serve the interests of the state rather than the people. I would argue that authoritarianism and and the creation of an elite centralizing and controlling wealth and resources for itself is as much a fail state for capitalism as it is for socialism, that it's just a different bunch of pigs feeding at the trough.

And to refer to your earlier comment, socialized provision of services is absolutely a form of socialism. If those services aren't being run for a profit under market principles, made available only to consumers who can afford it, and that profit isn't being captured to increase the wealth of private ownership, then it's a form of socialism.

In the US we have Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, which are ostensibly socialist programs (certainly they were denounced as such when created.) One might argue that they aren't truly socialist since they don't collectivize the means of production but they certainly aren't capitalist in principle.

Of course it also helps to remember that "socialism" encompasses a wide spectrum of ideology and theory, and that if you get five socialists in a room and ask for a definition of socialism you'll wind up with seven manifestos and a fistfight. There are socialists who will argue for Soviet and Chinese style central control, and will point out (as capitalists will about capitalism) that socialism brought those states out of grinding poverty and vastly improved their peoples' quality of life, and others who abhor the violence and oppression of authoritarian socialism, believing it can only be achieved through nonviolence and voluntarism.

Point being that absolutist phrases like "socialism inevitably means state ownership" don't work as a useful critique because they don't consider the flexibility and adaptability of socialism as a concept. They tend to be thought-terminating cliches, like "capitalism is the worst system, except for all others," which serve to to normalize the premise that criticism of capitalism is futile because no useful alternatives to capitalism can possibly exist.
by akoboldfrying | 2025-08-20 11:27:59+00:00
You can roll your own barebones DAG engine in any language that has promises/futures and the ability to wait for multiple promises to resolve (like JS's Promise.all()):

For each task t in topological order: Promise.all(all in-edges to t).then(t)

Want to run tasks on remote machines? Simply waves hands make a task that runs ssh.
by bayindirh | 2025-08-20 11:28:33+00:00
> No, fountain pens have a "cool" factor and can be made for decorative stuff, but that's it.

I would not disagree more. A fountain pen writes with zero pressure. In contrast modern rollerballs and gel pens have a little spring to prevent contact leaking. Uni might have a patent on that. Famously Pilot's Hi-Techpoint pens doesn't have that and it stains the place where it touches.

A fountain pen can outlast any disposable pen, allows you to write 5x longer without any strain, promote better writing quality and writing habits, and lives with you and becomes tuned to your handwriting in a couple of months to a year.

Moreover, hand writing is better for your brain and concentration than typing on a glowing box which strains your eyes, hands and brain with constant distractions.
by monsieurbanana | 2025-08-20 11:28:39+00:00
The person you're answering is also using a REPL while coding, just not accessing it directly (= manually writing in the REPL stdin)

Instead he interacts with it via his editor's tooling, where you are in a normal file, and use a shortcut that will send a sexp/function/region/etc into the running repl and display the result.

So just to be clear you are using the repl directly?
by kawsper | 2025-08-20 11:29:04+00:00
I spent a couple of hours last night testing it out.

The login process didn't work well, but it's due to my browser having a seperate container for Github.

I asked it to add a feature using Stimulus.js to my very simple gallery page written in Rails, when you hover over an image in the gallery, it should make an icon appear, and when clicking the icon, a modal should pop-up that allows the user to do cropping.

It picked up on my database models and it produced a very good result, however, it seemed to have issues verifying its solution, it particularly seemed to struggle with "on-hover".

The solution it produced was a lot better than what claude-code produced, and I liked the interface.

I also ended up hitting the limits on the Anthropic API, and it wasn't obvious to me what I should do in that case, but that's likely not the fault of Tidewave, and the Context Window Usage having a maximum of 200.0k also seemed very high, but that probably contributed to me hitting a limit.
by zokier | 2025-08-20 11:29:16+00:00
I agree on build systems and CI being closely related, and could (in an ideal world) benefit from far tighter integration. But..

> So here's a thought experiment: if I define a build system in Bazel and then define a server-side Git push hook so the remote server triggers Bazel to build, run tests, and post the results somewhere, is that a CI system? I think it is! A crude one. But I think that qualifies as a CI system.

Yes the composition of hooks, build, and result posting can be thought as a CI system. But then the author goes on to say

> Because build systems are more generic than CI systems (I think a sufficiently advanced build system can do a superset of the things that a sufficiently complex CI system can do)

Which is ignoring the thing that makes CI useful, the continuous part of continuous integration. Build systems are explicitly invoked to do something, CI systems continuosly observe events and trigger actions.

In the conclusion section author mentions this for their idealized system:

> Throw a polished web UI for platform interaction, result reporting, etc on top.

I believe that platform integrations, result management, etc should be pretty central for CI system, and not a side-note that is just thrown on top.
by everettp | 2025-08-20 11:29:35+00:00
that may be the case for your particular writing style, but it is not universal.

i have a mild orthopaedic problem, and i found, in my twenties after years of struggling with disposable pens, that a fountain pen allowed me to write more lightly and fluidly on the page with the result that my words per minute more than doubled. my writing is still ugly, but it is vastly faster and a bit more legible.

fountain pens are not only for "decorative stuff" but have actual functional advantages due to their mechanical dynamics
by jhbadger | 2025-08-20 11:30:53+00:00
The problem with that argument (which people also use on animals like sharks) is it assumes that these other organisms haven't also been evolving in the human timeframe. Yes, you can find evidence of organisms that look more or less like modern bacteria or sharks long before humans existed, but the idea that these organisms haven't been under selective pressure since is false. Indeed, they are probably under greater selective pressure now due to the effects of humans on the planet.
by jerpint | 2025-08-20 11:32:05+00:00
I like the concept and have built my own context management tool for this very purpose!

https://github.com/jerpint/context-llemur

Though instead of being a single file, you and LLMs cater your context to be easily searchable (folders and files). It’s all version controlled too so you can easily update context as projects evolves.

I made a video showing how easy it is to pull in context to whatever IDE/desktop app/CLI tool you use https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=DgqlUpnC3uw
by sigbottle | 2025-08-20 11:32:58+00:00
There are tons of ML compilers right now, FlashAttention brought back the cache-aware model to parallel programming, Moore's law hit is limit and heterogeneous hardware is taking taking off.

Just some fundamentals I can think of off the top of my head. I'm surprised people saying that the lower level systems/hardware stuff are untransferable. These things are used everywhere. If anything, it's the AI itself that's potentially a bubble, but the fundamental need for understanding performance of systems & design is always there.
by pyman | 2025-08-20 11:33:02+00:00
> a comment in the JavaScript code even pointing to a website that allows anyone to decrypt the key

Intel hiring vibe coders and junior devs, nothing new here.

But Intel needs to fire a bunch of Engineering Managers and Directors ASAP. They're the ones replacing experienced devs with inexperienced ones to cut costs by 10x, with no plan in place to test security or product quality. Then they brag in leadership meetings about saving money by replacing their entire Python API team with two JavaScript devs.

Time to make those people accountable.
by j_seigh | 2025-08-20 11:33:11+00:00
Bakery locks are good for spin locks. They're more cache friendly. Plus you can do reader/writer spin locks. They're going to be strictly FIFO though.

I guess you could tack on a futex wait for the spin wait in user space but it's going to be really inefficient. You are going to get a lot of spurious wake ups. Not one of the things futex's are designed for.

Lock-free with hazard pointers or RCU* is still kind of tricky. It's going to be data structure specific and you really have to know what you are doing.

Fun fact. You can make hazard pointers wait-free, actual wait free, not the dubious bounded retry loop hack.

* Doing copy on write with RCU is fairly straight forward but probably expensive if updates are frequent.
by spjt | 2025-08-20 11:33:38+00:00
The last thing the world needs is another Linux package manager. F-Droid uses apt and it could hardly be considered Debian.

It's an interesting question though, that I haven't thought about. At a minimum I'd say that it should have some sort of coherent goals and philosophy, its own package repository, and should not be replicable from its parent distro with a script to install/remove various packages.

The last one is probably the most critical, if it can do something the base distro can't, then it at least has a reason to exist, whether or not you want to call it a "distro" or not.
by abobeda | 2025-08-20 11:33:41+00:00
Hey HN,

I built Shockvue because I was tired of overcomplicated image editing apps that feel like they were designed to slow you down: endless menus, clunky UX, heavy installs, and features nobody uses.

Shockvue is a lightweight, browser-based editor powered by AI. The idea is:

- Edit in seconds - No overcomplication, just smart tools where you need them - AI features built in, but without locking you into complicated workflows - Runs fast in the browser (Vercel + Replicate stack)

I wanted something that feels closer to the creative process itself: quick, fluid, and without friction.

Would love your feedback on the UX, speed, and what’s missing.

Thanks for checking it out
by lxgr | 2025-08-20 11:33:51+00:00
As far as I can tell, it's largely a data or modeling problem.

Weather radars exist in most of Europe, including all of Western Europe. What's missing is somebody actually getting that data (which is not open in all countries) and feeding it into a short-term precipitation prediction model like Dark Sky (now Apple) does in a few regions.

Currently, in regions where it's not available, I just do that manually: Look the rain radar data for the last hour or so and extrapolate linearly based on wind direction. You'll miss rain that's just starting or stopping or sudden changes in wind direction, but it's much better than what many apps offer.
by franga2000 | 2025-08-20 11:34:16+00:00
For free as in "don't have to do anything to make those features, they're included".

What costs are you talking about? Packaging your app in a container is already quite common so if you already do that all you need to do is replace your existing yaml with a slightly different yaml.

If you don't do that already, it's not really that difficult. Just copy-paste your your install script or rewrite your Ansible playbooks into a Dockerfile. Enjoy the free security boost as well.

What are the other costs? Maintaining something like Talos is actually less work than a normal Linux distro. You already hopefully have a git repo and CI for testing and QA, so adding a "build and push a container" step is a simple one-time change. What am I missing here?
by KaiserPro | 2025-08-20 11:34:19+00:00
I fucking hate hand writing. It stems from a formally diagnosed issue (no not dyslexia.)

It held me back during school, Nobody could read my writing, therefore I was thick as shit. All my exams were hand written, so they needed to have my exams transcribed by someone who could read my writing. (I could dictate my answers, but that required a different "statement", and dictation was expensive so the local authority said no. [its also a very hard skill to pic up on your own])

For normal school work I had access to an emate 300 which was great, but it was down to me to learn to type at any speed.

I got mediocre grades.

Had my mum not been middle class and frankly karen like in pursuing all of the options, I'd probably be in jail right now.

That being said, had I not learnt to hand write, it would have fucked me even more, as my fine motor skills would have been non existent.

(I also now use a wacom tablet as my main pointing device, which is ironic.)
Top Custom Software Development Services for Startups in 2025
by SaniaWilkinson | 2025-08-20 11:34:22+00:00
As a startup, choosing the right software development partner is crucial for your success. It’s not just about building software, but about finding a company that aligns with your goals, offers flexibility, and can help you scale effectively.

I recently came across a detailed article on the Top 10 Custom Software Development Services for Startups in 2025. It covers companies with excellent track records in delivering tailored software solutions while maintaining a healthy work-life balance, innovative project management, and fair pay structures.

The list includes some top players in the industry like ValueCoders, Tech Mahindra, Mindtree, and more, all of which can help startups with their custom development needs.

If you're planning to scale or need a reliable partner for your software development projects, this article is a must-read.

Check out the full article here: Top 10 Custom Software Development Services for Startups in 2025

Feel free to share your experiences or any additional companies you think deserve to be on the list!
by odyssey7 | 2025-08-20 11:34:24+00:00
As a CS student, the way I learned things I needed to memorize was by writing it down / copying / summarizing on paper and studying from that.

It’s a little ridiculous to reframe that a significant part of my education was an exercise in copying information over by hand, but it’s just true that this method reliably worked for me.

Also: my reading speed was ungodly slow. I think I considered it typical to spend 3 hours on 10 textbook pages. Sometimes it took longer. But the information stuck, and I knew it well.
by xelxebar | 2025-08-20 11:34:57+00:00
Calling something as exceptional or special entails a value judgement; it's not particularly surprising, IMHO, for the things humans care about to align around human traits. Heck, even the act of making judgements about human exceptionalism is an arguably human-specific trait.

Consider, horseshoe crabs are undeniably the best at doing all things horseshoe crab. No other animal comes close to behaving like a horseshoe crab!

IMHO, the almost tautological nature of this judgement is what makes it uninteresting at best and actively harmful at worst. It's just a stone's throw away from individual, group, and racial exceptionalism.
by DrBazza | 2025-08-20 11:35:16+00:00
Your build should be this:

build.bash <debug|release>

and that's it (and that can even trigger a container build).

I've spent far too much time debugging CI builds that work differently to a local build, and it's always because of extra nonsense added to the CI server somehow. I've yet to find a build in my industry that doesn't yield to this 'pattern'.

Your environment setup should work equally on a local machine or a CI/CD server, or your devops teams has identically set it up on bare metal using Ansible or something.
by merlincorey | 2025-08-20 11:36:20+00:00
The article mentions SBCL which is a well regarded open source Common Lisp implementation.

Common Lisp invented REPLs and the way most people use it now answers your question with "both".

A REPL usually runs locally in a subprocess or remotely through a REPL server and then your editor talks to that running Lisp Image where you can send code for compilation and recompilation while the image is running and also interact with it directly through the REPL which includes the debugger.

The GP you are referencing uses the common SLIME[0] package for anything of consequence which works exactly as described above.

[0] https://slime.common-lisp.dev/
by rvz | 2025-08-20 11:36:47+00:00
> It's bad software practice and insecure sure but those are not things people notice and the tech industry has historically been terrible at them anyway.

I see, so the solution is to adopt something that is worse because it is popular because people will build things 'because they can'.

Maybe we can shift towards vibe-designed finance, science, etc using LLMs 'because we can'.
by criley2 | 2025-08-20 11:37:02+00:00
Better to work with the tools we have instead of the tools we might one day have. If you want agents to work well today, you need to build for the agents we have today.

We may never achieve your future where context is unlimited, models are trained on your codebase specifically, and tokens are cheap enough to use all of this. We might have a bubble pop and in a few years we could all be paying 5-10X current prices (read: the actual cost) for similar functionality to today. In that reality, how many years of inferior agent behavior do you tolerate before you give up hoping that it will evolve past needing the tweaks?
by voidUpdate | 2025-08-20 11:37:10+00:00
As a left handed person, fountain pens are basically a no-go. What actually helped improve my handwriting was not doing cursive, but writing each letter individually, which forces me to pause between each letter. Still using the lower case forms (though I did try all caps for a while), but just forcing myself to slow down. Still have problems with 9 vs 4 though