MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by mc32 | 2025-09-30 15:01:17+00:00
What do you mean? If you mean interfering with officers carrying out their duties, then yes, people do get arrested for that. But you would get arrested for interfering with any law enforcement. People do get to protest but they do not get the right to protest violently nor do they get a right to interfere with law enforcement just because they disagree with the law.

Just like if you want to protest eminent domain but officers come in to move out protesters getting in the way of construction. People will get arrested. You can protest peacefully. You cannot interfere with official acts or be violent.
by _mnt | 2025-09-30 15:01:44+00:00
If you use Gmail to pull in other email accounts, that’s ending January 2026. After that, you won’t be able to check any non-Gmail inboxes on desktop at all.

They’re not offering any replacement - just telling you to use the Gmail mobile apps if you want to keep syncing other accounts. No desktop option, no alternative. Huge downgrade for anyone who relied on Gmail as their all-in-one inbox.
by merelysounds | 2025-09-30 15:01:55+00:00
Nonoverse (iOS, free, offline, no ads), a nonogram puzzle game: https://apps.apple.com/app/nonoverse-nonogram-puzzles/id6748...

I’m working on some more QoL and adding more puzzles, I’m surprised how quickly everyone completes the current ~60 levels. A better tutorial is in the works too. If you have any other ideas, feedback is very welcome.

I’m also working on another app, for building social media carousels; it’s currently awaiting app store review, so I’ll show it later.
by rayiner | 2025-09-30 15:01:56+00:00
There is an ulterior motive for these cuts, but please be honest about what it is. The federal bureaucracy is completely dominated by one party: https://www.govexec.com/pay-benefits/2016/10/federal-employe....

No matter who wins the elections, most of the actual decisions are being made by adherents of the same party. Trump had four times the support in AOC’s district in the Bronx than among federal employee donors. This is not a sustainable situation in a democracy.
by robin_reala | 2025-09-30 15:01:58+00:00
Under Umberto Eco’s definition of Ur-Fascism[1] (the usual one I reach for, though others are available) what GP is referencing is most closely aligned with #13 Selective Populism, which at least from my viewpoint outside the US is seemingly correct.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ur-Fascism
by thinkingtoilet | 2025-09-30 15:02:07+00:00
I couldn't stand Duolingo because of the gamification. I'd complete a section and then there would be four screens telling me I earned points, then another screen saying I earned a different type of points, then a screen asking to share my results, etc... Each lesson was only a couple minutes so this ends up taking a non-trivial amount of time. Also, the sentences were often times nonsensical and nothing you would use in a real conversation. However, I would sign up tomorrow if I could get rid of all the gamification nonsense. There simply aren't that many half-way decent Hindi options out there. Pimsler is by far the best, but it only has two levels and you can only do it so many times.
by cogman10 | 2025-09-30 15:02:24+00:00
Trump has actively talked about denaturalizing his enemies [1]. You would be technically correct that he's not going after citizens, but that's only because he'll declare everyone he doesn't like antifa and thus not worthy of citizenship.

A move, I should point out, that the Nazis did to the Jews and Communists.

[1] https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2025/01/27/trum...
by pmarreck | 2025-09-30 15:02:27+00:00
I too am amazed. Real-world example from last week:

After using gpt5-codex inside codex-cli to produce this fork of DOSBox (https://github.com/pmarreck/dosbox-staging-ANSI-server) that adds a little telnet server that allows me to screen-scrape VGA textmode data and issue virtual keystrokes (so, full roundtrip scripting, which I ended up needing for a side project to solve a Y2K+25 bug in a DOS app still in production use... yes, these still exist!) via 4000+ lines of C++ (I took exactly one class in C++), and it passes all tests and is non-blocking, I was able to turn around and (within the very same session!) have it help me price it to the client with full justification as well as a history of previous attempts to solve the problem (all of which took my billable time, of course), and since it had the full work history both in Git as well as in its conversation history, it was able to help me generate a killer invoice.

So (if all goes well) I may be getting $20k out of this one, thanks to its help.

Does the C++ code it made pass the muster of an experienced C++ dev? Probably not (would be happy to accept criticisms, lol, although I think I need to dress up the PR a bit more first), but it does satisfy the conditions of 1) builds, 2) passes all its own tests as well as DOSBox's, 3) is nonblocking (commands to it enter a queue and are processed one set of instructions at a time per tick), 4) works as well as I need it to for the main project. This still leaves it suitable for one-off tasks, of which there is a ton of need for.

This is a superpower in the right hands.
by slightwinder | 2025-09-30 15:02:28+00:00
> Then what are they worried about?

Maybe that the industry is getting destroyed by greedy managers, before they figure out that it's harmful?

> But Pixar proved that it isn't true for their actors made of pixels, so why would it become true when the pixels are arranged with the help of AI?

Animated Characters are obviously fake, while still having real humans creating them. AI-Chars are somewhere in the uncanny valley, unreal, orchestrated.
by mindslight | 2025-09-30 15:02:38+00:00
An autocrat attacking and destroying societal institutions, bringing industry to heel under his dictats, and running concentration camps to perform ethnic cleansing (while being primed to move on to ideological cleansing). It's not "Fascism" in the sense of being Mussolini's party, but if you're willing to label National Socialism / Naziism as "fascism" then the label most certainly applies to Trumpism.
by jghn | 2025-09-30 15:02:48+00:00
People just need to properly set expectations. I've been using Duolingo for about 15 mins per day on average for a few years now. What I've found is that my reading skills are actually pretty good (roughly A2/B1 level), for instance I can open up a Spanish language subreddit and mostly make out what's going on. My listening is rudimentary at best, I can generally have a vague idea of what people are talking about if I listen to a Spanish conversation. My speaking is almost nonexistent.

But you know what? That makes sense. I'm mostly just reading text and clicking words to fill in the blanks. And the listening component is so unrealistic that it barely builds anything up. And I don't do speaking at all.

As you say, it beats doomscrolling. For a free service I'm not expecting that I can parachute into a Spanish speaking country and be fluent. At the same time, I'm a lot better in terms of my skill level than I would have been otherwise.
by matty22 | 2025-09-30 15:03:06+00:00
Building a platform for documenting all of the publicly accessible stained glass (something akin to Find-a-grave.com, but for stained glass). No exciting tech, just vanilla HTMl, CSS, and JS. Glad to have any help on documenting local stained glass in your area!

https://stainedglassatlas.com/
by liampulles | 2025-09-30 15:03:08+00:00
From conception, I've never wanted a comment section on my blog. I just put a line that in effect says "if you want to comment, you can send me an email at xyz".

If you are coming to a blog post of mine that has been shared to you, my assumption is that you want to read my article, and not to be distracted by whatever performance is happening in the comment section. I am aiding you by not even putting a comment section there.

I realize there is a slim chance for there to be enlightening conversation in a blog comment section - but that is not what my blog is for. You are better served doing that here on HN or a more dedicated forum. Here it can be be more visible for others, for people who want to read discourse.
by aitchnyu | 2025-09-30 15:03:12+00:00
I used Gemini to take "0.3 grams of KNO3 will raise the nitrate level of 10 gallons of water 4.84 ppm" and generate tables of how many grams of dry fertilizer for 1ppm, 5ppm, 10ppm for my planted aquariums of 144 and 3000 liters. It calculated them perfectly.

https://rotalabutterfly.com/rex-grigg/dosing.htm
by CaptainOfCoit | 2025-09-30 15:03:15+00:00
On the government endpoint, which returns X that the platform uses as "evidence" for you being an adult, yes, that's tied to your identity, as the certificate/whatever is tied to your identity.

But as long as the platform who need to validate that you're an adult don't get your identity, but just the proof, I don't see what the problem is?

> What is the incentive for the citizen to make sure their authentication isn't shared?

What incentives do people today have for keeping their identifications to themselves? Why aren't we all sharing CC numbers? Because we realize some data is "personal" and isn't to be used by others, like our username+passwords or whatever. This isn't exactly a new concept, just look at how it works for anything else that is tied to you.
by WesolyKubeczek | 2025-09-30 15:03:38+00:00
> I don't get why Linus just didn't tell bcachefs developer to take a hike.

> He is BDFL.

As far as I remember, "B" in "BFDL" stands for "benevolent". This usually might mean give a couple of warnings, give a benefit of doubt, extend some credit, and if that doesn't help, invoke the "D".
Show HN: I got tired of spreadsheets, so I built a Python GUI to track invoices
by rytisg | 2025-09-30 15:03:42+00:00
Hey HN,

As a freelancer, I found myself spending time every month manually opening PDF and Word invoices, copying the details into a spreadsheet, and tracking payments. It was tedious and error-prone.

I decided to build a simple desktop app to automate this. It's a GUI built with Python and Tkinter that points to a folder of invoices, parses the key details (invoice #, amount, date), and stores everything in a local SQLite database for tracking and analysis. It's been quite a time- and headache-saver for me.

A Note on Simplicity & Caveats

I'm sharing this in case it's useful to any other freelancers or businesses, but I want to be upfront about its limitations:

The UI is very basic. It's built with vanilla Tkinter and is all about function over form. It's not the prettiest app, but it gets the job done. The core automation relies on a "patterns" feature that matches invoice prefixes to clients. This is super useful for my own workflow but might be a bit niche if your invoice naming is less consistent. You can still use manual entry if patterns don't work for you. The stats dashboard is Euro-centric right now and aggregates all currencies into a total shown in Euros (€). I plan to fix this later.

It's a simple personal project that solves a personal problem. The code is on GitHub, and I'd love to hear any feedback or suggestions you might have.
by cjs_ac | 2025-09-30 15:03:56+00:00
In the Westminster system, if Parliament can't pass the budget brought by the Government[0], the head of state dissolves Parliament and issues writs for a new general election. This is because raising taxes and spending money is most of what the Government does, so an inability to do this is a constitutional crisis. In the US, this is impossible, because the head of state leads the administration that prepares the budget.

Historical example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1975_Australian_constitutional...

[0] what would be called the Administration in the US
by HarHarVeryFunny | 2025-09-30 15:04:05+00:00
The only way that could work would be if there was 100% test coverage of every input scenario, whether documented as part of requirements or not, otherwise the regenerated code is almost certain to have regression bugs in it.

Most complex production systems do not have this level of documentation and/or regression coverage, nor I suspect will any AI-generated system. The requirements you fed the AI to "specify" the system aren't even close to a 100% coverage regression test suite, even of the product features, let alone all the more detailed behaviors that customers may be used to.

It's hard to see mission-critical code (industrial control, medical instruments, etc) ever being written in this way since the cost of failure is so high.
by jghn | 2025-09-30 15:04:11+00:00
> I grew to hate the gamification

I don't understand people who say this. I completely ignore the gamification. If I don't feel like doing it one day, I don't do it. I don't even know what the leagues are, despite seeing people talk about them. I never look at any score or badge that they provide.

Why do people care about this?
by daxfohl | 2025-09-30 15:04:22+00:00
One could also say the opposite. It's not abstract at all, just a set of rules and their implications. Plausibly the least abstract thing there is.

On the other hand, two cookies plus three cookies, what even is a cookie? What if they're different sizes? Do sandwich cookies count as one or two? If you cut one in half, does you count it as two cookies now? All very abstract. Just give me some concrete definitions and rules and I'll give you a concrete answer.
by toomuchtodo | 2025-09-30 15:04:23+00:00
Bad for young men chasing status and a desire for traditional gender roles, good for women (unconcerned with status) seeking autonomy and self sufficiency with good paying, stable healthcare jobs as the US rapidly ages.

https://19thnews.org/2025/09/poll-traditional-family-gender-...

https://19thnews.org/2025/09/polling-2025/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UThiu3Q_NcQ

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/07/03/business/econ... | https://archive.today/nVk8Y
by ldoughty | 2025-09-30 15:04:40+00:00
The point is that they don't want it to recover. This is evidence that the US Government can't be trusted to provide the service themselves, and those functions should be privatized / contracted out instead... like how our Defense budget is so small thanks to us paying government contractors for everything we need, like $5,000 screwdrivers and $7,500 toilet seats installed by $300/hour Mechanic Specialist II's.
by thinkcontext | 2025-09-30 15:04:46+00:00
The deferred retirement scheme is an incredibly ill-conceived way of shrinking the government. The way the incentive is structured it encourages the workers who are most able to find another job to leave. These are your best workers. The ones that will disproportionately stay are the least competitive in the job market. The other group of workers that will take it are those that were going to leave or retire anyway. So, for them its a waste of money and the transfer of their knowledge is cut short.

The same goes for the other DOGE employment initiative of firing probationary employees. These are mostly either people you have just hired or those that have been promoted. Of course, these are the employees you would most want to keep.
by dvcoolarun | 2025-09-30 15:04:50+00:00
I built this: https://github.com/dvcoolarun/web2pdf — a CLI tool for converting web pages to PDFs, open sourced after adding a bunch of new features.

If anyone’s looking to hire a dev or knows of opportunities, I was recently let go and am actively searching. Would appreciate any leads or feedback!

Sample PDF: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1n7M1TKOptSsYiibrbvV_Yojx53T...
by burkaman | 2025-09-30 15:04:53+00:00
It was voluntary on paper, but there was a clear threat that if you didn't take it there was a good chance you would be fired with no severance. Whether this threat was implicit or explicit depended on what department you were in.

Source: Federal workers I know personally, and numerous public statements from DOGE officials and cabinet secretaries when this offer was made.

> “The reality is clear: A large-scale reduction, in response to the President’s workforce executive orders, is already happening. The government is restructuring, and unfortunately, many employees will later realize they missed a valuable, once-in-a-lifetime opportunity,” the official said.

- https://www.cnn.com/2025/02/04/politics/trump-administration...
by yboulkaid | 2025-09-30 15:05:05+00:00
I wonder if something about this explains why Fuji RAF files are the only RAW files that make Lightroom struggle.

I never heard the fans on my M1 mac until I started processing those RAF files, they're not even that large but something about them makes Lightroom struggle. And judging by posts on photography forums, I'm not the only one either
by lxgr | 2025-09-30 15:05:06+00:00
> The only big difference is that high level programming languages are still deterministic but natural language is not.

Arguably, determinism isn't everything in programming: It's very possible to have perfectly deterministic, yet highly surprising (in terms of actual vs. implied semantics to a human reader) code.

In other words, the axis "high/low level of abstraction" is orthogonal to the "deterministic/probabilistic" one.
by zeta0134 | 2025-09-30 15:05:07+00:00
Duolingo was exceptionally useful to get me started on my language learning journey (Spanish, a bit of Japanese) while knowing basically nothing. It tapered off pretty fast, is very slow to introduce new vocabulary, and the core lesson structure doesn't explain much unless you dig into the submenus with intent.

As a basic starter tool, it's cute and briefly enjoyable, and that's enough. But you'll need to supplement it with something else almost right away, and your daughter's structured classes and reading material were almost certainly that something else. I think Duolingo's *streak* is the only key feature worth imitating in any form, as it gamifies habit development, which is difficult for many people. If only the lesson content could keep up with that one good idea.
by sorcercode | 2025-09-30 15:05:36+00:00
There's truth to a lot of what's said in this post and I see many people complain but these opinions feel short sighted (not meant derogatorily - just that these are shorter term problems).

> Teams that care about quality will take the time to review and understand (and more often than not, rework) LLM-generated code before it makes it into the repo. This slows things down, to the extent that any time saved using the LLM coding assistant is often canceled out by the downstream effort.

I recently tried a mini experiment for myself to (dis)prove similar notions. I feel more convinced we'll figure out a way to use LLMs and keep maintainable repositories.

i intentionally tried to use a language I'm not as proficient in (but obv have a lot of bg in programming) to see if I could keep steering the LLM effectively

https://kau.sh/blog/container-traffic-control/

and I saved a *lot* of time.
by evanjrowley | 2025-09-30 15:05:36+00:00
Oof. Those demo laptops appear to have the same "Seamless Glass Touchpad" design as recent premium laptops from Dell[0]. Personally I would never buy a laptop with this feature and I hope it does not catch on with the Snapdragon X2 series.

Side Tangent: I sencerely hope this trend does not catch on, because as someone who touch types (i.e., both palms on the laptop and fingers resting on home row), I strongly view the "seamless" trackpad as an anti-feature. They are far too easily to accidentally activate, leading to unpredictable things happening when trying to type anything on your computer. I have one of these XPS models from work, and despite it's other advantages, that one design choice holds it back so much. I have to talk about how horrible this design choice is every time I see it, because if product managers don't realize the mistake they're making by adding it to their laptops, then touch typists will be doomed.

[0] https://www.dell.com/support/contents/en-us/videos/videoplay...
by bluGill | 2025-09-30 15:06:05+00:00
What scale? If Toyota sold 1 car per year they would need to charge hundreds of millions to pay for the engineering. Just making an engine to meet modern emissions will cost more than a billion, but since that engine will be made for a decade we can amortize it and say the cost of the engine is 100 million per car. However because they make many more than that their costs go down. Because they make many cars they have developed assembly lines - to build the whole factory is likely another billion dollars (I don't have real numbers), but if you are only building one car a skilled machinist could do that in a year for much less cost than a factory.

Thus my question - what scale are they targeting. At some level of sales their expected costs are right. However if demand is a lot more than they expect it could probably scale down to $10k, maybe less, while if it is less costs go up...
by rmunn | 2025-09-30 15:06:13+00:00
> Most programmers that write JavaScript for a living don't really understand how to scale applications in JavaScript, which includes data structures in JavaScript. There is a very real dependence on layers of abstractions to enable features that can scale.

Although I'm sure you are correct, I would also want to mention that most programmers that write JavaScript for a living aren't working for Meta or Alphabet or other companies that need to scale to billions, or even millions, of users. Most people writing JavaScript code are, realistically, going to have fewer than ten thousand users for their apps. Either because those apps are for internal use at their company (such as my current project, where at most the app is going to be used by 200-250 people, so although I do understand data structures I'm allowing myself to do O(N^2) business logic if it simplifies the code, because at most I need to handle 5-6 requests per minute), or else because their apps are never going to take off and get the millions of hits that they're hoping for.

If you don't need to scale, optimizing for programmer convenience is actually a good bet early on, as it tends to reduce the number of bugs. Scaling can be done later. Now, I don't mean that you should never even consider scaling: design your architecture so that it doesn't completely prevent you from scaling later on, for example. But thinking about scale should be done second. Fix bugs first, scale once you know you need to. Because a lot of the time, You Ain't Gonna Need It.
by timr | 2025-09-30 15:06:17+00:00
I'm not terrified. Just to put some perspective on this, per Pew [1], the federal workforce excluding the postal service (which has actually shrunk as a semi-private employer) has grown by about 1% per year since 2000. As of 2024, it was at 2.4M people. The federal workforce is dramatically bigger than it was even a few years ago [2].

Moreover, the vast majority of federal workers don't have anything to do with the kind of consumer-facing services that people think of when they think "government". More than half of all federal employees comprise: the Defense departments (Army, Navy, DoD, etc.), the Department of Homeland Security and the VA [3].

The federal workforce continues to get bigger and bigger, there's absolutely no practical incentive to stop it, and congress has abjectly failed to do its job in controlling the budget.

To be clear, this is not the right way to reduce the size of the federal government, but I'm not "terrified" of losing 100k employees in a government of this size. We need more cutting, not less.

[1] https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2025/01/07/what-the-...

[2] https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2025/01/07/what-the-...

[3] https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2025/01/07/what-the-...