MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by Hendrikto | 2025-08-26 11:08:24+00:00
This has been a solved problem forever. It is very simple, very easy, very short, extremely maintainable code.

When writing the files, check the old location first, fall back to the new one. When reading, check check the new location first, fall back to the old one.

The app does not need to migrate anything. Using the algorithm described above, new installations will automatically use the new paths, old installations will continue using the old paths, but can optionally be migrated at the user’s convenience.
by jannesblobel | 2025-08-26 11:08:27+00:00
Think of a refactor where you tried one approach, rolled it back, then found the right fix. If you squash, all those failures vanish. With full history, an AI (or future you) can see the dead ends and spot patterns. I think that’s what Augment Code is doing with their Context Lineage idea: indexing the messy history so tools can explain how code evolved.

https://www.augmentcode.com/blog/announcing-context-lineage
by roody15 | 2025-08-26 11:09:06+00:00
Google (and Apple) want to turn the idea of a phone and computer into that of a gaming console. You use the device according to how they design it, apps are rented, the whole ecosystem is around controlling the experience and maximizing revenue from sites and services. Microsoft seems to be moving in this direction as well (but cannot quite execute for a variety of reasons.. legacy support being one)

Linux really is the only way to have an experience where the computer is your device to do what you want to do with it.
by munchlax | 2025-08-26 11:09:07+00:00
I can build myself a new amd64 box for just under €200. Under €100 with used parts. Some older Dell and Lenovo laptops even work with coreboot.

An Airbook sets me back €1000, enough to buy a used car, and AFAICT is much more difficult to get fully working Linux on than my €200 amd64 build.

Why hasn't apple caught up?
by UncleMeat | 2025-08-26 11:09:19+00:00
Do we show this annoying popup (that the large majority of the time will be benign and just aggravate users) for all apps, or just those that don't request the internet permission?

Doing this for all apps would be wild. Doing this just for those that don't request the internet permission just encourages more apps to request it (it is basically universally used anyway). "Huh, why does my calculator need internet" has never actually been effective at helping people avoid malware at any meaningful scale.
by bambax | 2025-08-26 11:09:35+00:00
> Banking apps are convenient

The only need I have for banking apps is created by banks themselves, to verify online payments. But it would work just fine with regular text messages. I don't need a banking app at all.

(And maybe verifications aren't needed either, since in the 40+ years I have been using a credit card, never once have I been asked to verify something that I didn't initiate myself.)
by kuschku | 2025-08-26 11:09:49+00:00
> Even licenses like the AGPL don't really solve the problem here, which is that there is a coalition of businesses including, say, Google and banks, that via their provision of essential services hold worrisome sway over the practical ability of many individuals to live their lives

If Android was AGPL without source assignment, this wouldn't be an issue.

Thanks to the anti-tivoization clause manufacturers are required to provide you with the ability to run your own code on the device, without any restrictions, so you'd have a guaranteed right to root the device and sideload your own apps, without something like SafetyNet being able to figure it out.
by troad | 2025-08-26 11:09:54+00:00
I've come to the view that the best flow is to build a system in a dynamic language, and then - once you've got the broad strokes figured out - begin gradually typing it, where appropriate.

You definitely need to have a decent grasp of architecture to make this work - strict FP is very helpful to prevent any early spaghettification - but you ultimately get the best of both worlds this way: rapid iteration for the early stages and type safety once you develop a feel for the system you're building.

I've been doing this in Elixir in the last few months and I've really been enjoying it.
by postalcoder | 2025-08-26 11:11:39+00:00
> so playing with Audio Hijack, it seems my "Airplay" audio output is only present in the interface if I'm currently choosing "Airplay" as my default audio output from the system

Airfoil will maintain a connection with your Airplay device even after resetting your system audio device.

Though not perfect, but you can use applescript to force Airfoil's discovery of your airplay device by way of control center:

tell application "System Events" to tell process "Control Center" repeat with menuBarItem in every menu bar item of menu bar 1 if description of menuBarItem as text is "Sound" then set soundMenuBarItem to menuBarItem exit repeat end if end repeat click soundMenuBarItem repeat with currentCheckbox in every checkbox of scroll area 1 of group 1 of window "Control Center" set deviceId to value of attribute "AXIdentifier" of currentCheckbox set deviceName to text 14 thru -1 of deviceId if deviceName as string is equal to "DEVICE NAME" then -- DEVICE_NAME is the name of your airplay audio device in control center. click currentCheckbox click soundMenuBarItem exit repeat end if end repeat end tell

Airfoil supports scripting[0] so you can connect an application to the airplay speaker using this AppleScript:

tell application "Airfoil" set safariSource to make new application source set application file of safariSource to "/Applications/Safari.app" set current audio source to safariSource set aSpeaker to (first speaker whose name is "INSTANCE_NAME") -- Paste the Airplay speaker's instance name here if not (connected of aSpeaker) then connect to aSpeaker else disconnect from aSpeaker end if end tell

You can run this command in the command line to get the instance name of your airplay device:

dns-sd -B _airplay._tcp

You can make some combination of this to form a workflow that suits you.

[0] https://rogueamoeba.com/support/knowledgebase/?showArticle=A...
by arielcostas | 2025-08-26 11:11:45+00:00
Meaning to use your device you need to have a contractual relationship with a foreign (unless you are in the US) third party that decides what you can or cannot do with it. Plus using GrapheneOS is less of an option every day, since banks and other "regulated" sectors use Google Play Protect and similar DRMs to prevent you from connecting from whatever device you want. Client-side "trust" means the provider owning the device, not the user.

Android shouldn't be considered Open Source anymore, since source code is published in batches and only part of the system is open, with more and more apps going behind the Google ecosystem itself.

Maybe it's time for a third large phone OS, whether it comes from China getting fed up with the US and Google's shenanigans (Huawei has HarmonyOS but it's not open) or some "GNU/Linux" touch version that has a serious ecosystem. Especially when more and more apps and services are "mobile-first" or "mobile-only" like banking.
by jeroenhd | 2025-08-26 11:11:59+00:00
The Linux experience on a decently powerful mobile device (i.e. not those open-source phones that perform like a 2010 smartphone) is perfectly fine. I find the Plasma experience to be a little lacking, but the Ubuntu experience is good when you find a phone UBPorts works on. Phosh (GNOME) works better on mobile than it does on desktop for a lot of things (multitouch touchpads come close to mobile in terms of smoothness).

Consumers didn't pick up Windows Phone or HarmonyOS enough to matter either. Access to the two common app stores is crucial for user adoption even when the UI is good.
by DiabloD3 | 2025-08-26 11:12:36+00:00
Again, I shall correct the strawmanning of this: If you, the user, reproduce the work, then I can sue you for distributing the reproduced work. If you produce a tool/service whose only purpose is to reproduce works illegally, then I can sue you for making and distributing that tool and the government may force you to cease the production of the tool/service.

The onus would be on the toolmaker/service provider to prove there is legal uses of that tool/service and that their tool/service should not be destroyed. This is established case law, and people have lost those cases, and the law is heavily tilted in favor of the copyright holders.

The majority of LLMs are trained on pirated works. The companies are not disclosing this (as they would be immediately sued if they did so), and letting their users twist in the wind. Again, if those users use the LLM to reproduce a copyrighted work, all involved parties can be sued.

See the 1984 Betamax case (Sony Corp. of America v. Universal City Studios) on how the case law around this works: Sony was able to prove there is legitimate and legal uses for being able to record things that, thus can still produce Betamax products and cannot be sued for pirates pirating with Betamax products...

... but none of the LLM distributors or inference service providers have (or may be even able to) reach that and that doesn't make it legal to pirate things with Betamax, those people were still sued and sometimes even put in prison, and similarly, it would not free LLM users to continue pirating works using LLMs, it would only prevent OpenAI, Anthropic, etc, from being shut down.

If you still think this is an infinite money glitch, then it is exactly as you say, and this glitch has been being used against the American people by the rich for our entire lives.
by KingOfCoders | 2025-08-26 11:12:46+00:00
Someone has these two machines, and claims the x86 feels faster in his work.

You don't own any of the machines but have "made" a comparison by copying data from the internet I assume.

This is like explaining to someone who eats a sweet apple that the internet says the apple isn't sweet.

MacBook Pro, 2TB, 32gb, 3200 EUR

HP G1a, 2TB, 128gb, 3700 EUR

If we don't compare laptops but mini-PCs,

Evo X2, 2TB, 128gb, 2000 EUR,

Mac Mini, 2TB, 32gb, 2200 EUR
by beardyw | 2025-08-26 11:14:06+00:00
There is widely held view, based on textual analysis, that some letters attributed to Paul are not by him. Most prominent of those are 1 and 2 Timothy, thought to be by Timothy himself, and the source of many of the ideas you complain about.

Those letters, even at the time the Bible was compiled - about 400 AD, were nearly not included due to doubts about their authenticity.
by jeroenhd | 2025-08-26 11:14:19+00:00
I'm not saying this is a good idea, am I?

A lot of people are pretending there is no malware problem and that Google should just do nothing and move on. That's not helpful.

This bullshit needs to be aborted as soon as possible, but a solution for mobile malware is desperately needed. The crutch used on desktop, invasive antivirus, doesn't work on Android unless it comes from the OS manufacturer, so we need a new solution.
by AshamedCaptain | 2025-08-26 11:14:30+00:00
I always hear as the excuse but it is ridiculous. If the user wants to transmit on "illegal" frequencies, all he has to do is to change the country setting in their Wi-Fi router, et voilà, illegal transmissions.

The entire Android OS has about as much access to radios than your average PC, if not less. In fact, even on recent android devices, wireless modems still tend to show up to the OS as serial devices speaking AT (hayes) (even if the underlying transport isn't, or even if the baseband is in the same chip). Getting them to transmit illegal frequencies is as much easy or hard as is getting a 4G USB adapter to do it.
by zillow | 2025-08-26 11:14:47+00:00
there's a few different reasons: - its pushed by gov (it gives full access to machines, huge backdoor) - its not actually the worst of its kind, sadly - their threat database is good (ie it will catch stuff) - it lets you look at everything on the machine (not the only one, but, its def. useful) - its big - cant be faulted for "we had it and we got pwned" - yep, sad as well

If operating systems weren't as poop as they are today, this would not be necessary - but here we are. And I bet you major OS manufacturers will not really fix their OSes without ensuring its just a fully walled garden (terrible for devs.. but you'll probably just run a linux vm for dev on top..). Bad intents lead to bad software.
by dspillett | 2025-08-26 11:16:29+00:00
Sort of. With two watches your confidence is ~1.4 of an arbitrary measurement, with three it is ~1.7, with 4 ~2, etc. Though this is an ever-growing sequence.

A better model might be to measure the confidence with something like (x-1)/x as this grows, more slowly with each step, towards 1, without really getting there until infinity. With two watches you are 50% of maximum confidence in your time, with three 66%, with four 75%, five->80%, and so on.
by lo_fye | 2025-08-26 11:17:46+00:00
Feels like Google is either following Apple's playbook from iPhone OS 1, or they're working together so they can argue this is standard practice in the industry... or something. Either way, no more Android gloating that they can install any app from anywhere any time without centralized approval. Not great. I'm an Apple fan, BUT I like having a fully open backup plan.
by markus_zhang | 2025-08-26 11:17:48+00:00
Everything coming from China is going to be closed source as well, and it's going to be pretty hard for banks to onboard themselves on open source solutions. I think the ultimate solution is: two phones, one shitty one just for banking/trading/whatever, which only stays at home most of the time, and one Linux phone that we more or less own, for calls/texts/web browsing, which stays with us.
by donatj | 2025-08-26 11:17:50+00:00
As a decades long time Mac user, when I see something show up in ~/.config it just feels like a maladapted port. It's a similar feel to seeing .dotfiles that are not actually hidden on Windows. Like, whelp, they didn't even bother.

No part of macOS's desktop uses or specifies the XDG standard, it's not a POSIX standard nor a standard embraced by the OS. Following it is applying someone else's custom.

As another commenter mentioned though, ~/Library/Preferences is likely the more correct location on macOS.
by cobbzilla | 2025-08-26 11:18:12+00:00
In some places hand-fishing for catfish is a time-honored tradition! [1] [2]

Soundtrack by The Flaming Lips. Very entertaining. But I don’t think watching would make anyone want to try catfish!

[1] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0294805/

[2] https://www.okienoodling.com/
by sam_lowry_ | 2025-08-26 11:18:47+00:00
At least in EU, transmitting is illegal, having hardware to transmit is not.

That's why people can buy TX/RX SDRs and Yaesu transceivers without a license.

AFAIK the radioamateur world, serious violations of frequency plans are rare and are usually quickly handled by regulators. OTOH, everyone is slightly illegal, e.g. transmitting encrypted texts or overpowering their rigs, but that's part of the fun.
by latexr | 2025-08-26 11:18:51+00:00
That Python code looks like it was punched in the belly and is about to fall down on itself like a Jenga tower. Additionally, the last `else` is hard to track visually and if you make the slightest error in whitespace (which are invisible characters!), everything breaks.

To each their own. It’s because we all have different preferences that there are so many choices.
by pie_flavor | 2025-08-26 11:19:50+00:00
None of the tools the author mentions as following XDG, actually follow XDG. No default tools shipped with macOS place files under .config or anything like that. There is a bunch of dotfile vomit in $HOME and that's it. Every tool that uses .config is one you manually install from an external source.

The XDG spec is to coordinate the userspace of Linux software, meaning both CLI apps and windowed apps. Linux needs things called standards because Linus has not bothered to write them down himself, so there is no equivalent of Microsoft telling you data goes in AppData and Apple telling you data goes in Library. Identifying it as a standard for CLI tools across OSes is just wrong.

When CLI tools do this on macOS, it is not because anyone thought 'this is a standard for macOS', it is because they thought 'with -target darwin I don't get any compilation errors. ship it!' and frequently use those locations on Windows too where they don't make any kind of sense at all.

The standardized location is Library. If you do not expect it, that is on you; you should expect it, as it is the standardized location. It is only just now that people are starting to catch up with it, instead of blind ports with absolute minimum macOS-specific code, because of libraries like `dirs` which make it easy.
by arielcostas | 2025-08-26 11:19:53+00:00
My Pixel phone warns me before allowing free installs (I refuse to call it "sideloading") from any app for the first time. And others like Xiaomi show (or used to show) a more prominent warning you had to read with the consequences, waiting at least 10 seconds to enable the option.

Plus the whole "banks need to protect you by ensuring your device" is stupid when cards are protected only by a PIN, and the app also requires some form of biometry to unlock it, which is to encrypt the underlying tokens. Banks should protect your money on their end, with clients having their responsibility to keep safe their stuff, whether that's their card or phone. It's a stupid premise itself, and it's lazy engineering.
by yaro330 | 2025-08-26 11:19:53+00:00
> Adding to that, it is very picky about which power brick it accepts (not every 140W PD compliant works) and the one that comes with the laptop is bulky and heavy. I am used to plugging my laptop into whatever USB-C PD adapter is around, down to 20W phone chargers. Having the zbook refuse to charge on them is a big downgrade for

It's Dell, they are probably not actually using PD3.1 to achieve the 140w mark, instead they are prolly using PD3.0 extension and shove 20v7a into the laptop. I can't find any info, but you can check on the charger.

If it lists 28V then it's 3.1, else 3.0. If it's 3.1 you can get a Baseus PowerMega 140W PD3.1, seems like a reeeeally solid charger from my limited use.
by pimterry | 2025-08-26 11:20:21+00:00
I think Play Integrity is the fundamental issue here, and needs to go. That's the crux of the issue.

Allowing apps to say "we only run on Google's officially certified unmodified Android devices" and tightly restricting which devices are certified is the part that makes changes like this deeply problematic. Without that, non-Google Android versions are on a fair playing field; if you don't like their rules, you can install Graphene or other alternatives with no downside. With Play Integrity & attestation though you're always living with the risk of being cut off from some essential app (like your bank) that suddenly becomes "Google-Android-Only".

If Play Integrity went away, I'd be much more OK with Google adding restrictions like this - opt in if you like, use alternatives if you don't, and let's see what the market actually wants.
by cft | 2025-08-26 11:20:38+00:00
Their incentive is even stronger: most users of ReVanced for example unlock YouTube, which belongs to Google. In that case we are talking about 100% revenue loss, not 30% app commission. This goes for NewPipe, etc.

I wonder if OsmAnd, Termux, F-Droid would survive this or will be casualties. Who will authenticate for a decentralized open source app that has 100 active contributors?
by ZiiS | 2025-08-26 11:20:38+00:00
https://github.com/x653/xv6-riscv-fpga is a fully open RISC-V core, using fully open tools written to tiny FPGA. It betters 386 performance, is practical for an individual to recreate, and it is almost inconceivable that the underlying hardware could have compromised this usage. If your security posture cares about ME et al. you also shouldn't be running any form of speculation, so 'modern' performance would be off the table even if you bought Nvidia and TSMC. I would more judge a concerted effort comparable to larger open source projects could design verifiable hardware for processes that it readily available to crowdfunded projects that are more efficient and performant then anything released in the previous millennium.
by lapcat | 2025-08-26 11:21:22+00:00
> Am I the only one who thinks that describing this as a "bug" sounds a bit off?

Yes, you are the only one, because you've misunderstood.

> Most bugs don't come with their own updated alert text. It sounds a bit more like they had planned to switch to a different trial method and enabled it earlier than they expected?

No, the bug was simply that the trial period ended after 15 minutes instead of the intended 15 days.

> Or maybe a "rogue" employee added the feature as an experiment and didn't tell anybody?

There were no employees. At the time this happened, the company consisted entirely of the 3 cofounders. In fact the bug, that is, the shortened trial period, is what allowed the company to grow and hire employees, although the company is still relatively small.
by jack_pp | 2025-08-26 11:21:29+00:00
> bot net

Fair enough, but besides mail spam which is filterable and DDos for which there are counter services, does it really impose that big of an issue to justify such a strict lockdown?

> mine crypto

Considering how little mining power mobile devices have and how anyone would figure out pretty fast there's a problem with heat / battery issues from it idk if that's really realistic these days. Hard to keep this one hidden while also profitable

> work files gets stolen

I think this has already been solved by corporations on PCs, there are already solutions for locking down a work issues laptop as for phone I think that's rarely an issue since people mostly use it for communications so probably rare for really sensitive info to be on there.

Overall those issues don't really hit me as that critical to impose such measures and there are ways to severely limit impact for people that care about security
by iamthemonster | 2025-08-26 11:21:58+00:00
I don't own guns myself but I know someone who runs a gun club and a policeman. They are both in agreement that the latest legislation changes have introduced absolutely no improvement, for example a recent lifetime ban for somebody who renewed their license one day late.

Australian gun legislation already has every protection you would expect built in. As soon as a Violence Restraining Order is in place, guns are immediately removed. Your guns need to be stored in a locked safe where the safe is bolted to the ground. Background checks on every license application. You really couldn't name a practical improvement to gun safety.

However the "something must be done" approach is applied, which wastes time targeting clearly responsible gun owners.

The trend of firearms per capita and firearm related deaths per capita is relatively stable, although it might have increased from about 8% of USA's figures to 9% of USA's figures, although I haven't established whether the apparent trend is statistically significant (since gun related deaths are a small sample size so the numbers jump around per year).
by troad | 2025-08-26 11:22:21+00:00
Ruby is such an elegant language, but the strong and ongoing hostility to any sort of sensible gradual typing is a real mistake.

I know that the Ruby community loves its clever runtime metaprogramming, but even the most metaprogrammed codebase is still going to consist mostly of plain old in-out methods. And as anyone who's ever typed a dynamic codebase knows, you pick up so much low-hanging fruit, in terms of edge cases and errors, when you slap some types on those. You don't need to type everything, but there is real hostility in Ruby circles to gradual typing, even where it would make sense and wouldn't impose any major costs.

Personally, I've stopped writing Ruby. Short of any pathway to sensible gradual typing, I just can't shake the feeling that every new line of Ruby is instant tech debt. Which is such a shame, since I find real beauty in the language.