MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by korse | 2025-09-18 13:31:27+00:00
My car/motorcycle/skateboard doesn't need over the air updates. It used to be, and still is in some cases, that a vehicle (electronic control modules and all) was sold as a finished product. Your engine control module or speed controller didn't need random firmware updates because it was a finished product that worked as intended upon delivery. Now people are clamoring to drive software licenses and I want no part of it. This isn't about auditing the code, this is about complexity creep and having ownership.
by card_zero | 2025-09-18 13:31:35+00:00
Running with that metaphor, Sinterklaas (freedom and democracy) actually exists, and even when people invoke the Coca-Cola version they're still aspiring to something with a grain of truth to it. It doesn't merely simplify to "us and them" but also contains some actual meaning relating to actual forms of freedom, when people take the trouble to add the depth back in instead of lazily designating outsiders.
by palmotea | 2025-09-18 13:31:56+00:00
> "obviously rubbish" is doing a lot of work here. How do you gauge whether something is obviously rubbish?

If it defies orthodoxy, in most cases. At least that's my observation.

Most of the cases where I've seen complaints of "both-sidesing" is about mainstream media coverage that did not dismiss one major faction's position out of hand. Basically, a demand the journalist put on a judge hat and rule for the speaker's side. And it happened in the context of the cultural moment described here: https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/the-bluesky-ization-of-the-ame....
by sdsd | 2025-09-18 13:32:05+00:00
QBasic was my first language even though I learned to code in like 2008, because my friends in IRC were trolling me and told me it's the best language to start with. I learned from Pete's QB Site, which is still up and an amazing resource: petesqbsite.com

I learned two things: QBasic, and don't ask good faith questions to script kiddies in the Partyvan IRC
by Telaneo | 2025-09-18 13:32:17+00:00
> In a world where distribution of media is (relatively) cheap and easy, we need to think more about how we incentivize the creative process, instead of making it a wild west where anyone is allowed to distribute if they have the bits on them. In a world where everyone pirates, very little worth pirating remains.

China seems to be doing that just fine when it comes to manufacturing. Everybody who's doing engineering or design work on products are talking to each other to figure out what works and does when making stuff, and nobody cares about keeping secrets about these things, since it isn't properly enforced anyway, and if you keep one secret and sit on it, without going out there to continue improving, you'll be outclassed by everybody else in a month or a year. Meanwhile, American companies are sitting on 80 years of IP and are unwilling to even consider sharing their hoard even if half of it is functionally useless, just because it might have some value.

People are creative by nature. Nowadays they have a whole internet to take inspiration from, but most of it is locked behind bars for no good reason. If we want to incentivise creative work, then copyright is wholly counter-productive in a world where information can freely and rapidly flow. I'd rather see it burn and see what comes from the ashes than let it rot into nothingness.

> That's not accurate. Of course if you have a couple hundred subscribers you get nothing from youtube, but neither does a random busker on the subway. Arts are just brutally competitive, and there's way more art being produced than people want to consume.

Go ask anyone between 100k and 10m subs. I'm not talking about people who have anything less than that.

> Youtube's partner programs are quite generous as other people have pointed out in sister comments. In addition, a good chunk of your premium subscription goes directly to the creators you're subscribed to.

And I'd have to give more money to a platform that's hostile to me as a user. No thanks.

> This misses my point, but illustrates the weird thought process people go through when assigning value to digital media. When trying to value a desk we're willing to go through the whole shebang: cost of materials, quality of materials, quality of the craftsmanship and how much labour it would have required, the estimated cost of all the manufacturing processes involved, finishing labor costs etc.

When if you hollow out a tree to make a boat, it's value goes up. If you then add a hole to it, it's value goes down again. Work or value you put into a product is not directly correlated with the final value on the other side. I couldn't give a shit about how much money a video takes to make. That sounds like a them problem, not a me problem. If you're spending too much money to make something than you can make back on it, then don't do that. Do something else.
by flohofwoe | 2025-09-18 13:32:31+00:00
KDE Plasma 6 looks absolutely gorgeous on my Kubuntu laptop with highdpi OLED display, and that's coming from a mainly-Mac-user :)

(this wasn't my main reason to switch from Gnome though, I just couldn't stand the random design decisions in each Gnome update anymore, and generally Gnome never really clicked with me the way KDE immediately did - which is also strange since Gnome is supposed to be the 'Mac desktop clone', while KDE is supposed to be the 'Windows desktop clone' heh)
by bluGill | 2025-09-18 13:32:37+00:00
We all (not just KDE) learned that users don't read those. Worse, distro maintainers either don't read them or in their "we are on the latest" push will ignore them. KDE was pushed out to a lot of people who shouldn't have got it.

It is safe to say that many other projects have not done beta .0 releases like that because they don't want the same to happen to them - even though they really need beta testers. Of course few projects will admit that they learned the lesson from KDE.
Ask HN: Experienced the counter-intuitive cost reduction by increasing CPU?
by rudderdev | 2025-09-18 13:33:39+00:00
Wanted to share the insights I learned while working on RudderStack. It was counter-intuitive to see this much cost saving by vertical scaling, by increasing CPU. Have you experienced something similar? In my story, the Kubernetes Vertical Pod Autoscaler (VPA) is the hero.

Anyone thinking about vertical scaling or using VPA in production, I hope my experience helps you learn a thing or two. Do share your experience as well for a well-rounded discussion.

-----

Background (The challenge and the subject system)

My goal was to improve performance/cost ratio for my Kubernetes cluster. For performance, the focus was on increasing throughput.

The operations in the subject system were primarily CPU-bound, we had a good amount of spare memory available at our disposal. Horizontal scaling was not possible architecturally. If you want to dive deeper, here's the code for key components of the system (and architecture in readme) -

* rudder-server - https://github.com/rudderlabs/rudder-server

* rudder-transformer - https://github.com/rudderlabs/rudder-transformer

* rudderstack-helm - https://github.com/rudderlabs/rudderstack-helm

For now, all you need to understand is that the Network IO was the key concern in scaling as the system's primary job was to make API calls to various destination integrations. Throughput was more important than latency.

------

Solution

Increasing CPU when needed. Kuberenetes Vertical Pod Autoscaler (VPA) was the key tool that helped me drive this optimization. VPA automatically adjusts the CPU and memory requests and limits for containers within pods.

------

What I liked about VPA

* I like that VPA right-sizes from live usage and—on clusters with in-place pod resize—can update requests without recreating pods, which lets me be aggressive on both scale-up and scale-down improving bin-packing and cutting cost.

* Another thing I like about VPA is that I can run multiple recommenders and choose one per workload via spec.recommenders, so different usage patterns (frugal, spiky, memory-heavy) get different percentiles/decay without per-Deployment knobs.

------

My challenge with VPA

One challenge I had with VPA is limited per-workload tuning (beyond picking the recommender and setting minAllowed/maxAllowed/controlledValues), aggressive request changes can cause feedback loops or node churn; bursty tails make safe scale-down tricky; and some pods (init-heavy etc) still need carve-outs.

------

That's all for today. Happy to hear your thoughts, questions, and probably your own experience with tools like VPA, and dealing with challenges of scale.
by swiftcoder | 2025-09-18 13:33:47+00:00
> it was, more precisely "A heavily/1% reduced rate."

It's more a tacit admission by Slack that their pricing model can't possible work for orgs that don't match a strict employer-employee model.

Nobody would agree to pay per-seat for every customer who uses a support tool, for example (which is much closer to the model this nonprofit is operating)
by hopelite | 2025-09-18 13:34:26+00:00
Because it's obvious, it's the cabal of ruling class people that are effectively reestablishing a system comparable to the aristocracy that was ended with the US constitution and they have been working on destroying and undermining because it gave power to the people. Unfortunately, it is something that the multitude really have no ability to understand, which is precisely why the founders of the USA tried very hard not to extend power to the uninformed and incompetent multitude, just like how all of us prevent everyone from accessing our source-code for obvious reasons.
by jszymborski | 2025-09-18 13:34:37+00:00
Right, which part of that, especially if you are a republican, is disparaging to Kirk? What part of that is ethically or morally objectionable let alone warranting the FCC to intervene?

You forgot the rest of the quote:

“In between the finger-pointing, there was grieving.”

That, however, is criticism of the administration.
by fssys | 2025-09-18 13:34:39+00:00
in order for anything to become truly profitable its uniqueness must be quantified and integrated into existing power structures, it must be expressly oriented towards fulfilling the needs/desires of the largest amount of people for the least amount of expenditure. Profitability IS intrinsically distasteful. Market forces, online ecosystems etc, quickly strip away any idiosyncratic features present in a viral trend, they aggressively select for sticking power, everything tends toward uniformity. This is closely linked with the process of reification.
by whitehexagon | 2025-09-18 13:34:41+00:00
I've had Asahi installed on my M1 since I bought it, but only just switched to it as my main development workhorse (upgrading to Asahi Fedora remix 42).

I have to say I am really impressed with KDE, and the large selection of decent applications. I'm new to linux desktop, but I already hope that nothing changes, because to me it already seems complete.

The best part of the experience is feeling like I own my computer again.
by shagie | 2025-09-18 13:34:56+00:00
In looking at my filter log (I use AdGuard on a Mac), I do not see the API calls associated with YouTube getting blocked. In particular, the "cross device continuity" (Continue Watching) feature provides the data sufficient for monetization of the channel view.

When I looked at the same video while in incognito (and signed out), I could see some requests originating getting blocked that were not at all present during my watch of the video under premium.

---

For YouTube, what is a "view?" If a chunk is downloaded, is that a view? If the next chunk is downloaded, is that two views? How do you verify that it's not the person who watched the first chunk?

YouTube doesn't appear to be counting views based on chunks downloaded as there are lots of ways to download chunks. Even doing things like scrubbing the video back 5 minutes would produce incorrect chunk download counts.

From this it appears that YouTube is counting views based on an API call from the page that identifies you (arguably through privacy issues) so that you downloading 1 chunk or 10 chunks only counts as one view. That API call appears to now be blocked.

Counting chunks downloaded would arguably be even less truthful or accurate than counting API calls.
by nobleach | 2025-09-18 13:35:01+00:00
Oracle is exactly who sprang to mind. Throughout my history as a software developer, even Microsoft has had a ton of interest in being involved in the community. Yes, they've wanted to extinguish much of it, when it didn't align with their financial goals... but they were always interested in being part of the "software development conversation". Oracle on the other hand has never extended an olive branch. They're quite happy existing on their own proprietary island. A great reminder that, "they don't want ot play in the pool with you, they want to own the whole pool and charge you to swim in it".
by sho_hn | 2025-09-18 13:35:43+00:00
This will be a purely personal answer, as we don't really maintain any official list of favorites.

Myself and my family are running Fedora's KDE edition. The Fedora team has a long history of working very closely with the Plasma dev team, quite actively contributes upstream, and I haven't been disappointed. I'd vouch for this one from first-hand experience!

We also have a new project to produce a distro of our own in the works, called KDE Linux. That has recently had its first alpha release. It still has some real feature gaps and may not serve you well if one of the missing bits is something you require, but it's definitely worth looking into. It has a lot of next-gen ideas baked and some things we got to learn during the SteamOS effort, and think it has a place in the ecosystem.

In the dev community I generally see a lot of people running KDE on Arch, Debian and openSUSE as well.
by carlosjobim | 2025-09-18 13:35:49+00:00
Gnome has been the best looking desktop for about 5 years now, with OS X in second place. KDE and Windows (after 7) are so far below that they're a category of their own.

Apple should at once hire the people who are responsible for Gnome's UI, because they've got it figured out. Even better, put back together the Nokia N9 GUI team.
by jacquesm | 2025-09-18 13:36:41+00:00
Oh that's an easy one, they go to the Geneva Zoo and from there they get trafficked all over the world. It's essentially whitewashing of hamsters on an elephantine scale. We got one of those here as well, it looks like the real deal from a distance but up close the illusion falls apart. The thing that will get you is all the little eyes staring at you and the incessant mewing sounds.
by judahmeek | 2025-09-18 13:37:05+00:00
> Kimmel said the shooter is MAGA and the MAGA 'gang' assassinate their own.

Oh, so the last X political assassins have been white, male, and apparently strong supporters of the second amendment, but they don't hate minorities enough to be MAGA? (A recent study found a link between prejudice against minorities & support for political violence[0] so...)

> You now have the world you deserve, and smart people will ignore your pleas because you will never be more than a stereotype for the other side to use. Enjoy.

That's funny. Multiple people have lost their jobs for basically saying the exact same thing to conservatives after Kirk's assassination.

0: https://www.psypost.org/new-study-finds-strong-links-between...
by FirmwareBurner | 2025-09-18 13:37:24+00:00
>I just find it ugly vs Gnome or Mac. Inconsistent padding, font sizes, colors.

IDK mate, I care more about the utility than the looks since I spend my time using the DE, not hanging it on my wall to admire its artistic attention to detail.

Like I'm sure those inconsistencies exist, but am I the only one whose brain just filters them out like they just don't exist? Kind of like how your brain filters out your nose from your eyesight and you only become aware of it when you look for it.

And to me and my use case and formed habits, utility wise KDE >>> Gnome by a wide margin, though KDE still has some annoyances I wish they would tackle, but for a free product, I can't complain.
by cestith | 2025-09-18 13:37:48+00:00
This was definitely NT. It was the IIS server at an ISP. It might have been the same timer, and it might’ve been 49 days instead of 42. Its was in the forties, and 42 sticks in my mind pretty easily. It may have been basically the same bug.

UPDATE: Apparently it was 49.7 days in NT, same timer bug as 9x. Only remember this was a server OS. https://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/86jxva/anyone_rem...

That, or the Reddit poster and I have the same wrong memory of the bug. I do know my boss at the time made us make the scheduled task to reboot because he understood it at the time to happen on NT 4.
by donatj | 2025-09-18 13:37:59+00:00
I did a lot of front end work from about 2000-2015, but I've fallen into almost entirely backend professionally. That said, I still enjoy it and try to keep up. I have a side project SPA I developed using a css pattern I'm calling "apps"

Basically I have JS "controllers". Every controller type gets a root HTML element. They pick the element type, these root elements automatically get a css class ala "{controller}--app"

Then from within each of these controllers I largely only use un-classed HTML - and style almost entirely based on direct ancestor ">" operators. Something like

.sidebar--app { > ul > li > a { // style sidebar } }

I generally keep the scope of what is a "controller" pretty small, a few elements deep maximum. It's a sort of hierarchical mvc and controllers have controllers have controllers, so for instance my sidebar controller has a search controller. The search controller just manages its own elements and reports changes via events. This pattern has kept the JS and CSS very clean and understandable, and the generated HTML pristine.

I've been hacking on this for close to a decade, it's a fun little side project. It's pretty large in scope yet it's honestly been a delight to work on. The styling of everything is quite scoped so there's very little unexpected problems. The actual HTML is readable and pleasant.
by t_mann | 2025-09-18 13:38:11+00:00
Not just the Plasma desktop, there is a lot of KDE software that works well even outside of the KDE desktop, and some of it is really excellent. I find Kate to be a criminally underrated editor for example. It never comes up in VSCode vs vim/... discussions, but I think it's an excellent VSCode replacement if you're looking for something more familiar. Currently my favorite editor hands down.
by jfengel | 2025-09-18 13:38:24+00:00
That won't help. The count is currently 6 Republicans to 3 Democrats. The party isn't an absolute predictor of how they'll vote, but it's pretty close.

It would take a minimum of two Republicans to retire, and be replaced by Democrats, to change the partisan balance. The oldest justice is Clarence Thomas, but the next two are both Democrats. Everybody else is under 70 and will not retire for a minimum of a decade.
by gempir | 2025-09-18 13:38:40+00:00
I would recommend checking out Cosmic by System76. It's getting a beta very soon but I've been using the alpha and straight their git main for months now and it's very stable.

It looks amazing and feels super snappy, I have never had such a painless Linux desktop experience. It even has a tiling window manager functionality built-in that was enough for me to sway away from i3/sway. But it also just works like a normal desktop that a non-technical user can use with ease.

https://bsky.app/profile/system76.bsky.social/post/3lylz3cfy...
by palmotea | 2025-09-18 13:39:31+00:00
> The government should be the government, and corporations should be corporations. Nothing good will come of having them bleed together.

> Like church and state, you keep them separate for the good of both.

I'm not convinced of that anymore. The problem is the government is so weak and slow: the corporations can implement some bad decision before the government has a chance to notice and regulate.

There needs to be more stakeholders with power at the corporate decision-making table than just the shareholders and their representatives. You need workers there, you needs someone to speak for the interests of the country as a whole, etc.
by bergie | 2025-09-18 13:39:50+00:00
I was able to avoid WhatsApp until we started our current multi-year sailboat cruise. All the local cruiser communities are on WhatsApp. So when we got to the Canaries, I created an account.

But I'm making sure WhatsApp will not be used for anything outside this context. That way I can nuke it when we're back home.
by fdsfdsfdsaasd | 2025-09-18 13:40:14+00:00
In this case, it looks like Hack Club sat on a gargantuan bill for at least weeks and maybe months (see top comment on this post).

I'm not denying that what you describe happens, but in this case - ignoring the warning signs, letting the issue crash into a wall and then complaining online about it doesn't help anyone.
by whafro | 2025-09-18 13:40:31+00:00
Haven't been a Linux daily driver in years, but I love that KDE continues to have such an impact.

Reminder that its built-in browser Konqueror debuted the KHTML rendering engine circa ~1999, which was then forked to become WebKit, and now (including all subsequent forks) powers something approaching 90% of web views globally. Pretty amazing!
by noirscape | 2025-09-18 13:40:46+00:00
While I can't speak to anyone else, back when I did tech support as a job for the elderly, one of our policies was to always install uBlock Origin. Our docs even had warnings to remove ABP and similar stuff because they let ads through.

Speaking from a purely personal experience (both before and after that job), the moment you ask me to regularly fix a device for you, I'm going to install uBlock Origin on every major browser you have and finetune it for privacy (aka enable the anti-tracking lists - these days I'd probably also install consent-o-matic to get rid of cookie banners without agreeing to sell all personal data). 99% of the bizarre computer problems people run into is because they clicked on a malicious internet ad and now a ton of PUPs are installed, are probably mining out their personal information or are trying to sell their users on junk subscriptions (this not so entertainingly includes virus scanners, which are almost all perversions of their original selves).

An adblocker is just basic hygiene and allows for the discussion to be on that remaining 1%, which usually is more on boring corporate fuckery from either Apple or Microsoft or the remainder which are the real technical problems people have.

AdBlock is basic hygiene, and I imagine most people have one installed on their desktop these days if they're either barely technically literate or have a family member who is.
by Findecanor | 2025-09-18 13:40:54+00:00
Oh, some classic mice of a previous generation.

I can spot two three-button Logitech PilotMouse. It was OEM'ed for many brands (SGI, DEC, ...) and also very common standalone.

The Sun mouse is probably an optical one made by Mouse Systems. I think it is the one in the same style with ball that is rare.
by bgwalter | 2025-09-18 13:40:57+00:00
The quoted part is really amazing. The author of the article just makes claims and clearly hasn't been exposed to any real art or music education. I suppose to some extent he means taste in programming, but anyone who is writing such an article does not have that either.

We can also talk about taste in articles, which seems to have degenerated to "any pro-AI article will be voted up and defended".