MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by Silhouette | 2025-09-08 20:12:06+00:00
Note that in all cases, Signal could/should still fully encrypt this data before pushing it to the provider; the backup wouldn't be expected to be "legible" to the user.

That seems like an unhelpful limitation for a lot of people. For me - and as far as I know literally everyone I communicate with using Signal - the reason to use it is the E2EE for the messages. Once we have the messages or media on our own devices we're fine with having control over them ourselves. By all means also provide an option to create a secured archive for those who want it. But as long as the data can only be read using a specific app on a specific device then whatever you're creating isn't really a backup for a lot of practical purposes.
by Supermancho | 2025-09-08 20:12:19+00:00
> Not everything is sunshine and flowers but we shouldn’t throw around terms when they don’t apply.

It seems to apply, despite your dismissal. Inflation is an ongoing and pressing concern, as stated by the Federal Reserve. The tightening of monetary policy has contributed to unemployment. GDP is irrelevant, as stagflation is a paradox, not a goalpost.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stagflation

To whit:

> In economic theory, there are two main explanations for stagflation: supply shocks, such as a sharp increase in oil prices, and misguided government policies that hinder industrial output while expanding the money supply too rapidly.
by taffer | 2025-09-08 20:12:39+00:00
> It turned out to have a huge multiplying effect on productivity

In retrospect, I am highly sceptical that OOP has had any positive impact on productivity. Its popularity coincided with the advent of automatic memory management, the World Wide Web and relational databases, and later with dependency management tools such as Maven. It is much more likely that it is these factors that have improved productivity, rather than OOP.
by everdrive | 2025-09-08 20:12:46+00:00
I definitely agree with you point, but I think that's what I'm wondering about? Can it actually be filtered out, and are tracking companies actually do this in practice, or is it like when someone says they bridge an airgap by making two computer's RF spectrum do funny things? Possible in a lab, yes. Something most people need to worry about? No.

I'm not saying this _isn't_ the case for tracking -- I just don't have much of a way to know what techniques are actually being employed in real life.
by j45 | 2025-09-08 20:13:10+00:00
Self-hosting seems easiest to think about as a home appliance.

Out of compute, storage, database, networking, etc, which is most preferable to be just an appliance?

It's pretty reasonable to get reliable storage self-hosted without the headache. If a big setup isn't needed, it's reasonably attractive to set up your own storage with reasonable power draw, which can be kept up with more reasonable UPS'.

Just because one can build and run a storage array on their own, doesn't mean it would be the best allcoation of their ongoing attention to maintain and be on call for a daycare for hard drives.

If seamless storage as good (and sometimes better) than a cloud is the minimum, it has to be something trustable, and run like a reliable home appliance needing minimum maintenance.

Lots of folk choose NAS enclosures that have raid mirroring and hot-swap drives built in quite inexpensively using things like Synology or QNAPs. The web admin interfaces on them are reasonable, and it's trivial to poke along with a youtube video to setup a RAID 5-10, and send email notifications how you like if it wanted to bring something to your attention.

Other things that become way more valuable over the years:

- NAS can be configured to backup offsite to the cloud backup of your choice, or another NAS. I know folks running them for 5-10 years and never think about it. Decent NAS with appropriate drives, secured of course. Some people even mail the enclosure to a datacenter and have them plug it in and keep it online.

- If you get a reasonably basic NAS with an intel Celeron CPU, power usage can remain low, but ram can be upgraded on it to run a few services as needed on it, both directly, and as docker images. It's pretty wild.

- If you do consider it, my recommendation is to pick one that has 2 extra drive slots than you need, and start from there. People who buy two bays can outgrow them quick, plus it's only a mirrored raid between two drives. Raid 5 and higher is great, if one drive is starting to have issues, you can just swap it while it's all running and the storage will heal.

Hope that helps. Having data close to crunch can be valuable.
by aDyslecticCrow | 2025-09-08 20:13:24+00:00
Statistics done by a statistics bureau was "revised to look bad"? There are thousands of people collecting billions of data-points all accumulated layer by layer into a summary, compared over different sources. But this year they just decided to make up the numbers instead?

US labor and economics statistics is famously most reliable in the world, going further back in time than any other statistics source. Its not only used by the government but by banks, companies, and international organisations to predict and analyze economic trends.

But surely this year when the numbers looked a bit bad, they made the numbers to intentionally look that way? Simply no. The administration firing the people collection statistics is the real concern. (and its not the first time the administration has removed historical statistics either)

(manual revisions are made in statistics to compensate for anomalies. Companies stocking up on product to escape tariffs created a false peak in GDP that does not correspond to real consumption for example. But that's how statistics work, and the US is the gold standard in proper statitics)
by greysonp | 2025-09-08 20:13:39+00:00
Hi there, Signal dev here. While we won't do this for you automatically, any time you link a new secondary device, we give the user the option to transfer their message history. It follows the same rules as backups: last 45 days of media for free, or all of it if you're a paid user. And even if you're not a paid user, you can request individual attachments be transferred from your primary device.

One caveat is that we don't offer this if you're re-linking an install that already has data but became unlinked. This is because we don't currently handle merging message histories. But if you cleared the data from the secondary install first, it would work. We're thinking of ways to make this smoother!
by noja | 2025-09-08 20:14:17+00:00
> You already had secure and encrypted backups on your phone, which you could copy and restore, if you remembered to copy them, and write down a very long password.

Did I? Where? on iOS I don't.

Edit: there is a transfer to a new phone thing, but that only works if the old phone still works. Which makes it not a backup (it's a transfer).
by sirwhinesalot | 2025-09-08 20:14:28+00:00
Indeed, putting related code together in the same source file is one of the ways we cope with complexity.

Though it too breaks down, because the relations between various bits of code may be so complex that there's no good way to "linearize" them.

And you should be documenting your code, but documentation comments take up space on the screen since they are linearly arranged in the same file, so you see less functions at a time.

Imagine as an alternative that the documentation was presented on a side view of the functions, like how you can open two files side by side in VSCode. Then you'd be able to see many more functions at the same time.

If you have any unit tests then it would be great if you could see them (and run them) while editing the function. In Rust you can put tests in the same file as the function (very nice) but usually on a submodule at the bottom of the file rather than near the function itself. Again, the problem of trying to linearize everything in a single file.

The issue with visual programming tools is that they don't put any thought into this. On how they could actually help get you the information you want to see. Instead they focus on letting you make cute drawings.

It's a UX problem, we should be able to do better than text files, even if what we end up editing is still text (because of all the advantages it has).
by SyrupThinker | 2025-09-08 20:14:31+00:00
The amount of people here just exposing their network to Tailscale, and recommending others to do the same, is surprising, to say the least.

I've set up Wireguard on a VPS once six years ago, and nothing needed adjustment since. It is as easy as you make it out to be, and depending on the use case the firewall rules can also be simple.

If I need to add a new device, which is probably a rarity for the average user, and once a year for me, it takes two minutes to edit two files and restart a service.

I can see reasons why one would want to use Tailscale, especially in an organization. But just uncritically recommending it for home-lab like setups seems as harmful as pushing people to Cloudflare for everything.
by FirmwareBurner | 2025-09-08 20:14:36+00:00
>So you could very well have bought a decent quality 32 bit system after 2005, although the writing was on the wall long before then.

Not really. With the launch of Athlon 64, AMD basically replaced all their 32bit CPUs lineups with that new arch, and not kept them along much longer as a lower tier part. By 2005 I expect 90% of new PCs sold were already 64 bit ready.
by alephnerd | 2025-09-08 20:14:47+00:00
I posted that article yesterday on HN, but got no engagement [0].

It is absolutely worrisome, and does connect with my own personal experience visiting other states for work - there is a slowdown in most states aside from those with large diversified economies like CA, TX, NY, FL, and NC that also benefited from the IRA [1], IIJA, and CHIPS [2] act.

Those states with moderate expansion like PA, OH, IN, AZ, and SC are also those that had manufacturing industries that benefited from the IRA [0], IIJA, and CHIPS [2] act.

The states marked as "Treading Water" or "In Recession" didn't receive significant economic stimulus on a per capita basis (eg. Clean energy jobs created in GA vs IN were similar despite GA receiving double the amount of IRA funding and GA having almost 1.7x the population of Indiana) and lack diversified or semi-diversified economies

[0] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45160699

[1] - https://www.governing.com/infrastructure/map-which-states-ar...

[2] - https://www.eiu.com/n/us-election-its-impact-on-industrial-p...
by dpc_01234 | 2025-09-08 20:15:03+00:00
NPM dev gets hacked, packages compromised, it's detected within couple of hours.

XZ got hacked, it reached development versions of major distributions undetected, right inside an _ssh_, and it only got detected due to someone luckily noticing and investigated slow ssh connections.

Still some C devs will think it's a great time to come out and boast about their practices and tooling. :shrug:
by qrios | 2025-09-08 20:15:11+00:00
> it's the uncertainty

Anecdotal reports from Europe (one insurance company, two banks, one systems integrator, one consulting firm; all multinational): All values in the risk assessment systems must be reassessed if an American partner is involved. For two companies, this must be done on a monthly basis.

A chancellor in Germany once proclaimed a ‘policy of steady hands’ when the opposition accused him of unsettling the economy with his many reforms.
by hnpolicestate | 2025-09-08 20:15:36+00:00
"My wife and I had a disagreement about letting my son (now 23) have my old desktop replacement laptop."

But at least that's your son. We shouldn't outsource these difficult decisions to strangers, school, municipal, federal systems etc.

I wouldn't consider my organization dangerously authoritarian. But definitely authoritarian. I doubt any preferable locations exist in education. They all support this digital authoritarianism. Lastly, I don't have the economic means to just quit.

I can vent on HN though lol.
by darrmit | 2025-09-08 20:15:42+00:00
I've tried so many things like this over the years and considered Configurator, but my only Apple computer at this point is a corporate Mac that blocks USB access to my phone. It's a great idea, and I'm glad to see it documented.

That said, the biggest shift I encountered in my own phone usage was when I got an Aro box [1]. It's expensive (I got one refurbished), but pretty, and functional, and it has made a HUGE difference in my phone habits. I no longer keep my phone in my bedroom and when I catch myself ignoring those around me in favor of my phone, I can hard cut that off by putting it in the box.

I like the idea of simplifying your phone with software tweaks like this, but I have found the physical separation to be the most freeing, and encourage that if you're interested in freeing yourself from the screen.

[1] https://www.goaro.com/for-families
by mgh2 | 2025-09-08 20:15:55+00:00
1. What is your willingness to consider a candidate who does not match 100% of your requirements?

2. How willing are you to hire someone without the exact background or industry but can adapt and learn quickly due to transferable skills?

3. Do you recognize a bias for "people like you" (nepotism/cronysm, race, nationality, etc.) vs. the rest of the pool? Is this your "fit" criteria without admitting it due to legal reasons?
by AlexandrB | 2025-09-08 20:16:18+00:00
Do you have children? Were you ever a child? It really doesn't sound like it. It's easy to stop a 4 year old from going to the liquor store. Basically impossible to stop a 14 year old. And 14 year old kids will do all kinds of dumb stuff for approval/attention from friends or (especially) the opposite sex.
by Fire-Dragon-DoL | 2025-09-08 20:16:21+00:00
Mostly concerned for my kids (although we are not in Australia, we are in Canada, west coast), we don't get sunburn and we avoid sun from 11 until 3 PM (if we do, we put sunscreen on), but usually we don't put sunscreen on after 3 PM, so I was re-evaluating my practice, since my daughter does get tanned over summer by simply playing at the playground at 10 AM in the summer
by WhyNotHugo | 2025-09-08 20:16:30+00:00
What kind of disruption are you expecting? It can only get replaced with something similar, not something better.

Think of tabaco. Nothing comes along and gets people to quit addiction to this shit. The only stuff that might naturally have this effect is usually worse.

Folks addicted to social media won’t quit for something healthy. Those who do, do so with great effort, much like those who quit tabaco.
by jaysonelliot | 2025-09-08 20:16:51+00:00
Before installing all those apps the author listed, I'd recommend this exercise:

Let the battery die on your phone, and live one week without it. Cold turkey. Tell people in advance if you need to, give them an alternate way to reach you. Replace your phone for that week with a small notebook that fits in your pocket.

During that week, every time you want to do something that requires a smartphone, jot it down in your notebook. Then, fifteen minutes later or so, write down what you did instead.

After a week, you're ready to start using your smartphone again and turn it into a so-called "dumb phone." Read your notebook and think honestly about which things you really needed to do, and which ones weren't such a big deal after all.
by dang | 2025-09-08 20:17:02+00:00
Here's the list I have - but I think there were others?

The AI vibe shift is upon us - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45003052 - Aug 2025 (100 comments)

95% of Companies See 'Zero Return' on $30B Generative AI Spend - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44974104 - Aug 2025 (415 comments)

95 per cent of organisations are getting zero return from AI according to MIT - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44956648 - Aug 2025 (14 comments)

95% of generative AI pilots at companies are failing – MIT report - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44941118 - Aug 2025 (167 comments)
by card_zero | 2025-09-08 20:17:20+00:00
No time for a long reply, but what I want to write has video games at the center. Exterminate the aliens! is fine, in a game. But if you sincerely believe it's not a game, then you're being cruel (or righteous, if you think the aliens are evil), even though it isn't real.

(This also applies to forks. If you sincerely anthropomorphize a fork, you're silly, but you'd better treat that fork with respect, or you're silly and unpleasant.)

What do I mean by "fine", though? I just mean it's beyond my capacity to analyse, so I'm not going to proclaim a judgment on it, because I can't and it's not my business.

If you know it's a game but it seems kind of racist and you like that, well, this is the player's own business. I can say "you should be less racist" but I don't know what processing the player is really doing, and the player is not on trial for playing, and shouldn't be.

So yes, the kids should have space to play at being racist. But this is a difficult thing to express: people shouldn't be bad, but also, people should have freedom, including the freedom to be bad, which they shouldn't do.

I suppose games people play include things they say playfully in public. Then I'm forced to decide whether to say "clanker" or not. I think probably not, for now, but maybe I will if it becomes really commonplace.
by Lammy | 2025-09-08 20:17:23+00:00
Context: https://tailscale.com/kb/1011/log-mesh-traffic

“Each Tailscale agent in your distributed network streams its logs to a central log server (at `log.tailscale.com`). This includes real-time events for open and close events for every inter-machine connection (TCP or UDP) on your network.”
by gsibble | 2025-09-08 20:17:25+00:00
That's by far the hardest part. Almost all referrals. I've tried everything including hiring a sales team paid on commission and nothing reliably works.

Because of that my pay varies pretty dramatically. Something always seems to come in at the right time, but I still haven't figured out how to reliably find clients, despite how many companies are looking for people out there (I'm an AI expert and lots of companies are interested in my work but they are very hard to find).
by lock1 | 2025-09-08 20:17:37+00:00
That's called "ones complement", the most significant bit represents a sign. Like the sibling post mentioned, it does have a weird quirk of having 2 representations for 0: (-0) and (+0).

While "twos complement" turns the MSB unsigned value to a negative instead of a positive. For example, 4-bit twos complement: 1000 represents -8 (in unsigned 4-bit, this supposed to be +8), 0100 represents 4, 0010 represents 2, 0001 represents 1. Some more numbers: 7 (0111), -7 (1001), 1 (0001), -1 (1111).

Intuitively, "ones complement" MSB represents a multiplication by (-1). While "twos complement" MSB adds (-N), with N = 2^(bit length - 1), in case of 4-bit twos complement it's (-2^3) or (-8). Both representation leave non-MSB bits work exactly like unsigned integer.
by hinkley | 2025-09-08 20:17:46+00:00
I had a coworker who was very loud about how most of the perceived instability of Windows was actually kernel panics caused be Creative’s godawful windows drivers.

My counter was that while it’s true that Creative Labs is garbage and so is everyone who works there, that’s doesn’t excuse the fact that Windows’ popularity hinged substantially on a permissive driver model and therefore any crashes of Windows allowed by this decision were equally Microsoft’s responsibility. You don’t get to reap the rewards and disavow the blame for the consequences.
by tkiolp4 | 2025-09-08 20:17:48+00:00
You don’t get it. People don’t add “is-arrayish” directly as a dependency. It goes like this:

1) N tiny dubious modules like that are created by maintainers (like Qix)

2) The maintainer then creates 1 super useful non-tiny module that imports those N dubious modules.

3) Normal devs add that super useful module as a dependency… and ofc, they end up with countless dubious transitive dependencies

Why maintainers do that? I don’t think it’s ignorance or laziness or lack of knowledge about good software engineering. It’s because either ego (“I’m the maintainer of N packages with millions of downloads” sounds better than “I’m the maintainer of 1 package “), or because they get more donations or because they are actually planning to drop malware some time soon.
by j45 | 2025-09-08 20:18:20+00:00
This is very true. For the most basic approaches of using stochastic agents for this purpose, especially with genralized agents and approaches.

It is possible to get much higher quality with not just oversight, but creating the alignment from the stochastic agents to have no choice but to converge towards the desired vector of work reliably.

Human in the loop AI is fine, I'm not sure that everything doesn't to be automated, it's entirely possible to get further and more reps in on a problem with the tool as long as the human is the driver and using the stochastic agent as a thinking partner and not the other way around.
by yencabulator | 2025-09-08 20:18:49+00:00
I have an application that receives a feed of availabilities, like the fact that you could reserve an item or service on 2025-10-20 at 13:00, it is currently available. The feed is global and the location of the business is a human-input address with potential errors, sometimes but not always has GPS coordinates (that may also be incorrect), and often where the actual service will happen is not the same as the location of the retail business.

Yeah. It's just whatever 1 in the afternoon means in the local time, at the time of the reservation. I don't know what the timezone is. But they definitely have dates!
by rurp | 2025-09-08 20:18:56+00:00
This makes no sense. The initial jobs numbers usually get much more attention than the revised ones, so posted inflated numbers that eventually get revised down helps whoever the current administration is. The recent revisions have gotten unusual attention because of how bad the overall situation is, and from Trump drawing extra attention to them by firing the BLS head and essentially calling for the numbers to be cooked.

What does the last administration even have to do with this? Job growth plummeted under the current administration. I get that Trump blames Biden for everything because he always needs a scapegoat, but am shocked that anyone still gives that any weight given that Trump has very publicly and deliberately created the current economic trouble.
by commandlinefan | 2025-09-08 20:19:11+00:00
Kind of depressing to read because it's so accurate, yet so likely to be ignored.

I remember when Martin Fowler first published the book "Refactoring" - I was so relieved at the time because somebody with some clout that executives might actually listen to had not only identified what was wrong with software but identified a way to fix it and even gave it a name! Boy was I wrong - now you have to be careful how and when you use the term "refactor" because the people who ought to be supportive hear "wasting time".
by theologic | 2025-09-08 20:19:20+00:00
If you lean at all toward evolutionary biology, You tend to pay attention to the idea that earlier man had a diet which had a much higher ratio of Omega 3 to Omega 6.

I would add that vegetable oils probably are not the ideal solution just beyond the idea that you need to extend the carbon chain up to something that can be used for your body in some type of pharmacological type role. The modern western diet has a ratio of somewhere around 15 to 20 to one in terms of Omega 6 to Omega 3. Virtually every vegetable oil will continue to drive that ratio toward a imbalance toward Omega 6.