MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by ajross | 2025-09-18 14:58:50+00:00
The factorization trick was reinvented several times. The algorithm that uses it to do a frequency decomposition was presented just once by named authors. This happens all the time. Freaking out about naming and attribution isn't really very informative.

Edit: as always, Wikipedia is a better source than comment pedantry: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fast_Fourier_transform#History
by WD-42 | 2025-09-18 14:59:09+00:00
KDE the desktop is consistent. The problem is the applications aren't. It's completely possible to run a GNOME desktop without a single QT app, it's near impossible to use KDE without any GTK apps. And there are so, so many great libadwaita apps coming out these days. So on KDE you still end up with an inconsistent mash up of toolkits and styles.
by tlamponi | 2025-09-18 14:59:39+00:00
FWIW, the few non-techie people in my life that I care enough to administer their notebooks and provide support all run KDE on Debian happily.

While I had some reservations about acceptance when I made the switch from Windows 7, it turned out that it was one of my better choices of my life, and resulted in much less work for me compared to what Windows caused for me previously. And GNOME just did not work out well for most of these people and the workflows they are used to.
by vkou | 2025-09-18 15:00:05+00:00
If you're not going to afford people the rights that they are due when accused of a crime, you can't call what you are accusing them of a crime.

It's either a crime, and they are entitled to a a jury trial, or it's a civil issue.

Calling people criminals and treating them as criminals, but not granting them the rights afforded to criminals by the constitution is speaking out of both sides of your mouth.

The sixth amendment is unambiguous about it.

> In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defence.
by gus_massa | 2025-09-18 15:00:06+00:00
Mirror species can eat the local species, so they have it easy.

Mirror life can only use the fats and a few amino acids of the normal life. All sugars have chirality so they would need some enzymes to east their own mirrored sugars and another set of enzymes to eat normal sugars. Also, most amino acids have chirality and they would have to reverse them or make their own.

So even if someone waste a few gazillions dollars to make mirror life, it would not be able to eat most normal food.
by ProllyInfamous | 2025-09-18 15:00:44+00:00
Another comment better-expressed what I was attempting to convey, yesterday: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45286263

>Mel Brooks had the right of it. Fascism and Authoritarianism is defeated by satire and mockery. The ideology is too outrageous to survive any such scrutiny.
by heywoods | 2025-09-18 15:00:56+00:00
I suppose this is as good of a place as any to piggyback off the topic.

Can anyone share their experience with 3D scanner tools like the hand wands? I’ve seen a few kickstarter campaigns for these devices and they appear to be a godsend for someone looking to make a functional print (eg. Replace a broken hose handle)

I imagine these lower-end devices get you ~80% of the way and higher end devices get you closer to 90-95% ignoring technique and size/intricacy of the object being scanned.

How much time does it take to edit the 3D files from these scanners by the way? My only point of reference is the 3D wand my dentist put in my mouth to make impressions for Invisalign haha. The hygienist had to spend ~10 additional minutes after the initial pass scanning my mouth going back over several spots that were not up to par but overall it seemed very straightforward and easy. Tap the area of the mouth to edit —> shove the scanner back in my mouth —> review (software gave a red/green status) —> if green (ie. passing) —> save and done.

lastly, any recommendations for a 3D scanner in any form factor?
by Myrmornis | 2025-09-18 15:01:44+00:00
> Have we ever really defined species barriers?

It's fairly easy to make definitions, and there are several. The real problem is that many biologists for many decades have been confused about whether we are attempting to make pragmatic definitions or whether we are uncovering "true answers" regarding biological discontinuities. It might not seem that bad if you don't consider geographic separation, but when you do, the literature turns into a total mess. The truth is, though it's unpalatable to many, that there's nothing about biological science that implies that the question "are these two geographically disjunct populations members of the same species?" has any particular answer.
by chownie | 2025-09-18 15:02:38+00:00
Has anyone else noticed the extreme dichotomy of developers using AI agents? Either AI agents essentially don't work, or they are apparently running legions of agents to produce some nebulous gigantic estate.

I think the crucial difference is that I do actually see evidence (ie the codebase) posted sometimes for the former, the latter could well be entirely mythos -- a 24 day old account evangelizing for the legion of agents story does kind of fit the theme.
by brokegrammer | 2025-09-18 15:02:41+00:00
KDE has a ton of bugs that I don't like, but it's the DE that I always choose when using desktop Linux because it treats you like an adult. The ability to customize it is unparalleled unless you're building your own DE with a tiling window manager or something.

One killer feature is KDE Connect. Saves me from having to grab my phone when I need to copy an SMS OTP code. It's similar to Phone Link on Windows, minus the privacy violations.
by MisterTea | 2025-09-18 15:02:46+00:00
> The hard work is all in software. You need a supplier with product lifetime guarantees and a known SoC manufacturer.

We need easily accessible documentation on the hardware so anyone can maintain the software. The problem I see is most SoC makers either have poor or no publicly available documentation. Their poor excuse for "open source" are undocumented Linux drivers for their black box hardware and a near obsolete kernel that they may or may not update.

These chips are made by big companies for big companies and not hobby people. They expect that you're going to buy in volume, sign NDAs and possibly license IP from them. The chip goes into a product that is likely never going to be updated and thrown out in 5 years.
by __turbobrew__ | 2025-09-18 15:02:46+00:00
Sleep — just like looks — is a large part hygiene and related life decisions.

Exercise helps you be more tired, setting an alarm for the same time every day helps you stay more consistent, having a pre bed time routine that doesn’t involve screens helps your brain slow down. There are discrete actionable things which are proven to help with sleep.

My natural tendency is to stay up to 2AM and sleep to 10AM, but with conscious effort — and an internally driven motivation to change — I now get up at 6AM every day.

It was hard and I didn’t get there right away, but lots of worthwhile things in this life are hard.

Honestly I think there is something wrong with either our environment or how we raise our kids, because I see so often that people lack executive function and any ability to manifest change for the better in their life. I don’t blame people for having issues as they stem from their parents, I have lots of personality issues that stemmed from how my parents raised me (the business end of a belt) but I would like if society could take a step back and figure out how we can raise humans who are better in control of their own destiny.
by jmclnx | 2025-09-18 15:02:52+00:00
Funny thing is, I showed KDE to a Windows user a few months ago. She loved it, she stuck with windows for now due to "change and all".

But I am sure I could move her over to Linux once Windows does something real bad to her. She is no the fence now, but I do nor what to end up as permanent tech-support :)

FWKW, if I am ever forced into Wayland, right now I would use KDE.
by bitshiftfaced | 2025-09-18 15:03:00+00:00
If I'm understanding it correctly, the FCC didn't actually do anything here. The FCC chairman made, at worst, a threat. ABC immediately pulled the show, and news article's link this to license approvals and such.

But if the FCC actually strong armed the media due to political reasons, would it stand up in the courts? Disney has more than enough money to fight it. One possibility is that they're using this as an opportunity to cut the show, which maybe they were leaning towards anyway. It effectively redirects blame to the FCC instead of the company that actually made the decision.
Ask HN: Parental control for a 13yo, on Linux (remote, web-based, extensible)
by markun | 2025-09-18 15:03:45+00:00
I’m looking for a solid parental control setup for my 13-year-old, who just got her own PC and us Linux. Currently on Lubuntu, but I could switch distros if there’s one that comes “safe by design” for kids.

Features I’d like to have:

Web-based remote control (so I can manage it from another machine)

Ability to set schedules and total time for internet access

Browsing history monitoring (ideally also logs from things like Discord)

Ideally extensible with plugins or an API

Bonus points:

Contextual filtering powered by AI, ideally running locally for privacy.

I’ve been told I could run Pi-hole inside a VM on the same machine and manage things from there. That seems workable, but I’m curious if there are friendlier / more integrated solutions.

On mobile we use Google Family Link, which works surprisingly well — but it also ties you strongly into Google’s ecosystem.

So my broader question is: how do fellow hackers handle parental controls for teenagers? Do you rely on technical solutions, household rules, or some combination of both?
by pavel_lishin | 2025-09-18 15:03:52+00:00
Right, but we're in the 1992 of these glasses. Maybe they'll be good eventually. They aren't now.

And frankly, even the online recipe experience leaves much to be desired. Skip past the blog post. Skip past the list of ingredients. Skip past another blog post. Find the single statblock on the bottom that lists ingredients & amounts, & instructions - hoping that it exists.

Like other commenters, I've also started going back to paper cookbooks.
by carlosjobim | 2025-09-18 15:04:00+00:00
Sure! One example is copy-paste, which doesn't always work as expected in Linux. Another is things in OS X, such as deep Spotlight integration with apps, and a unified scripting and automation language between apps.

You can also use links between most apps, documented here: https://github.com/bhagyas/app-urls

And drag and drop files and stuff onto and between apps, etc.
by botirk | 2025-09-18 15:05:12+00:00
I wanted to understand what the bare minimum of an operating system looks like.

So I built one in Zig, keeping the whole thing under 1000 lines of code.

It can: → Boot from GRUB → Manage memory → Schedule simple tasks → Output text to VGA

The point was not to make it feature-rich, but to show how much is possible with just a few hundred lines if you strip everything down to the essentials.
by sirwhinesalot | 2025-09-18 15:05:15+00:00
Which parts of Windows 11? Because there are still double digit different context menus in there, on recently developed built-in applications (introduced in 8 onwards). KDE is 1000x more consistent than that and has been that way for a long time now.

It still has weirdly inconsistent margins in places but compared to the disaster that is the jumble of different UIs in Windows that's nothing.

macOS before Tahoe, sure, but now? Have you looked at the screenshots where people layered different fullscreen apps on top of each other and the rounded corners look like a stack of cards because they're all different? It's a complete disaster.

You could power all those fancy new AI datacenters with Steve's spinning skeleton.
by MDCore | 2025-09-18 15:05:47+00:00
I had a problem where it was not possible to include people from different organisations. Once you have more than one external organisation involved, I have to manage how they join and whether "external" or "guest". This makes it difficult or even impossible to set up the channel/chat with the people you want. This is entirely a Teams limitation.

Slack does not have these artificial barriers. You can invite single channel guests, or add them as full-fledged members. It's simple and logical.
by righthand | 2025-09-18 15:05:49+00:00
In the west we’re trained to believe that if something happens there should be some sort of tangible reward on the other end, no matter how minute. Death takes and leaves nothing tangible and it’s the absence that drives us crazy. Since we’re trained this way we seek out some solution with the other trained aspect, spending money. Which in turn only temporarily numbs the grief until you deal with it.

We also stigmatize mental health care in the west, telling people to “suck it up” or “get over it”. So our money spending usually doesn’t direct us to a more helpful path.

I often wonder how dealing with death compares to the east where ancestors are commonly remembered, contemplated, and revered.
by WD-42 | 2025-09-18 15:05:57+00:00
Do you have any examples where power features aren't accessible? The OP used a wifi applet as an example of exposing information. I'm not sure if this isn't as common as I think it is - but what's wrong with typing `ip` into a terminal (that's always open anyway)? It's desktop agnostic, works even without a desktop. And then there's no need for an entire applet dedicated just to wifi for the rare occasion you need to lookup your MAC address.
by pxc | 2025-09-18 15:06:02+00:00
Most software I find to provide a smooth, gratifying UX has been carefully designed, but not by a designer.

The Fish and Elvish shells have designs involving lots of small, tasteful choices that add up. `fd` refines the traditional Unix `find` CLI in a ton of ways that reflect "good taste" and at the same time brings it more in line with the conventional long and short options of most GNU CLI utilities, including reducing dependence on ordering/positions of arguments.

On the other hand, apart from a few odd GUI disasters, it seems every piece of software I've used that has a UI I hate has had one or more designers behind it.

Is there even a "haute couture" school of design for interfaces other than GUIs? Are there designers who design for the experiences of people who are visually impaired short of totally blind? It seems to me that virtually no trained designers care about what actually makes computing experiences useful or pleasant for me, let alone beautiful. (And they often devote an inordinate amount of energy to things I'd say don't matter at all.)
by mindcrash | 2025-09-18 15:06:04+00:00
You could get into Microsoft's tenant with any Entra account.

That's because Microsoft's own fucking developers don't even understand how Entra authentication/authorization works, and that in some/most scenarios you'll need to check if a account is actually authorized to enter a protected resource post-login (which you need to do within the Oauth login flow in the resource being accessed, nobody will do it for you).

Something I already discovered by accident (and fixed, ofcourse!) in my own SaaS service at the time (with support for Entra B2B authentication) even before this researcher discovered the same at Microsoft:

https://research.eye.security/consent-and-compromise/

HN discussion thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44850681
by _DeadFred_ | 2025-09-18 15:06:35+00:00
Huh? This is just plain correct correct. Which is the normal kind of correct.

If you break laws and conduct terrorism then yeah, breaking the law is illegal. Because breaking the law is illegal. Does not change anything I wrote or make what I wrote 'technically correct'. The United States military now extrajudicially just executes people the President designates to die claiming they are 'drug terrorists'. There is no US mechanism for him to flag American organizations in this manner (currently). Probably again, the worst kind of correct thing for me to say.
by fluoridation | 2025-09-18 15:07:09+00:00
It wasn't an analogy, it was a comparison. I wasn't trying to produce an analogous situation. My point is that a company lying to you about their service while you're trying to cancel wouldn't necessarily constitute fraud. If the ISP lying to you in the way I said wouldn't be fraud, then "they are verifiably false statements made for the purpose of monetary gain" does not compellingly argue that Slack's lie is fraud. An example of something that would be fraudulent: "stay with us and we'll give you 1000 AI credits", but then if you don't cancel they only give you 100.
by seanmcdirmid | 2025-09-18 15:07:34+00:00
Very indirect and circumstantial. “Hey his roommate was trans this must be why!” You can tell that even FoxNews doesn’t believe it since they keep pulling it off the page. Edit, oh they are back at it again: “ Relative reveals why roommate of Kirk's alleged assassin was kicked out of parents’ home”. At least they aren’t mentioning trans anymore but come on, but the comments are still really toxic. See https://www.foxnews.com/us/charlie-kirk-alleged-assassins-ro...
by pansa2 | 2025-09-18 15:07:57+00:00
Luau seems to be significantly more complex than Lua - I'm not sure it can still be called "small". Looking at the relative size of the implementations: Luau's is 120,000 lines of C++ [0], an order of magnitude larger than Lua 5.1's 14,000 lines of C.

But I think that complexity is unavoidable for a gradually- or statically-typed language. Any language with a reasonably-complete type system is inevitably going to be much more complex than a dynamically-typed scripting language.

[0] Counting *.cpp files in the "Analysis", "AST", "Compiler" and "VM" directories
by jlokier | 2025-09-18 15:08:45+00:00
> You could make sensitive data non-screenshottable and non-photographable.

That made me curious, so I took a photo of my laptop screen running this page.

With default camera settingse, the text wasn't visible to me in the photo on my phone screen.

However, setting the exposure time manually to 0.5s, the text came out white on a noisy background and I could easily read it on the phone screen.

I would not be surprised if the default camera settings photo could be processed ("enhance!") to make the text visible, but I didn't try.
by superkuh | 2025-09-18 15:09:08+00:00
Moved on to matrix? Many did... and they're all realizing matrix doesn't actually work long term. There's only the synapse server and there's literally no way to trim data from the db in synapse or everything breaks. That means the db just grows and grows until it's too expensive, or too slow (re:IO), to work. That's why the matrix.org homeserver has a 55TB db. That's why many long running IRC servers gave up on running matrix bridges because it simply became too computationally/resource costly to run the simple text based server even if they loved the features.

So unfortunately Matrix is a dead end. The matrix foundation gave up control 2 years ago. Matrix is now controlled by Element.io corporation and they only care about their government hosting contracts. It's really only viable if you have a significant constant money stream to pay for the ever increasing server resources like governments/corps.

IRC persists. It is the text chat layer of the internet which is the platform. Trying to build the entire internet into your text chat platform, and storing everything, is the kind of insanity only for-profit operations do... and eventually die from. Whereas IRC being a dumb pipe with lists of IPs associated with sockets will live forever. And cheaply.
by bloomingeek | 2025-09-18 15:09:49+00:00
I heard an article on NPR, which the interviewed one said the world was now ready for this technology. He said he thinks the "glasshole" opinion of most people has most likely passed. I freely admit, the price and the attitude was what stopped me from getting a pair back then.

Now I won't hesitate, although the in-lens display is fantastically intriguing, I'm wondering about safety concerns like: walking down the sidewalk or crossing a street, at the wheel of a car(!), work related issues, etc. Gee, I guess I am hesitating! It will be interesting to see a study on how these glasses change our brains as it deals with this new paradigm.
by tedggh | 2025-09-18 15:09:50+00:00
I found out that summarizing a completed task and feeding it to a new context works better than staying on the same context for multiple tasks. So let’s say I have a sprint with tasks 1, 2 and 3. I start by creating a project with general information including the spec, git issues, code base, folder trees, etc then work on Task 1. When done I ask for a summary using a template, which gives me a txt file describing what the original goal was, what we changed and what the next steps are. Then I repeat the process for Task 2 and I feed the summary from Task 1. At least in ChatGPT keeping the same context for multiple tasks has lots of issues like speed, increased hallucinations, and ChatGPT referencing content from old files.
by franticgecko3 | 2025-09-18 15:09:58+00:00
I've started learning (in 2025!) and using Perl lately as shell++

It's extremely stable, installed almost everywhere, and has much fewer insane idosyncrasies than shell.

I can write some Perl and confidently hand it to a colleague where it will almost certainly work on their machine.

It's a shame it's so dead, for a scripting language there's nothing else that ticks the same boxes.

I would never write systems software with it, of course
by Yizahi | 2025-09-18 15:11:03+00:00
Thank you. After hearing about KDE Linux here on HN I'm now very interested in the project and its future.

Personally I've had an issue with KDE on Fedora several years ago, possibly due unstable Wayland, but I don't know real reason. Something in the graphic stack failed. So that was a reason for me asking about it.
by CGMthrowaway | 2025-09-18 15:11:14+00:00
I don't disagree. Taste is dynamic. One distinction I'm making is that there are tastemakers and tastetakers. And they are not the same.

The dynamism can come in different ways as well. For example, the tastemaker can change their mind. Or, gen pop can change who they look up to as arbiters of taste.
by pjerem | 2025-09-18 15:11:21+00:00
Well, once installed, Fedora Asahi is just standard Fedora ARM with some drivers and bootloader code. You can do anything you would do with a Fedora.

> (I have been exploring/searching on Asahi and I am gearing up to use it on my M1 MacBook Pro - will be using/trying Linux desktop after more than a decade)

If you are still hesitating, it's actually really easy to try : just run the command on the Asahi website and follow the instructions. The setup will resize your partition automatically and will not touch anything of your macOS install or your data. It's even easier than on PC where you have to boot the installation media and manage the partitionning yourself. IIRC, there isnt even the option to remove your macOS partition at any moment so you can't even lose your data by mistake.

The only prerequisite is having free space on your disk and everything else is automatic.

Also, uninstalling Asahi is as easy as going to macOS Disk Utility App, right click on the asahi partition, delete, and resize the macOS partition. After those three clicks, your Mac is now in the same state than before installing Asahi.