MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by Esophagus4 | 2025-09-24 15:35:40+00:00
> there is no mechanism past voting to change the big picture.

I hope I’m not reading this too narrowly, but this seems too reductionist. Everything probably rolls up to a vote at some point, sure, but there are lots of things citizens can do to change the big picture between filling out their ballots every few years.

During the Great Depression, protests were a driver of policy change (New Deal, labor rights…) that still endure, and protests laid the ground work for the American Civil Rights Movement in the 60s.

Ultimately, these work because politicians do need to win elections, sure. But there are plenty of ways to organize or be a part of a movement to change society that aren’t simply filling in a bubble in a ballot box.
by brendoelfrendo | 2025-09-24 15:36:14+00:00
Perhaps the GP comment was too US centric, but in the context of US politics, you can't really both-sides this argument or say that the right-wing are the champions of free and fair elections. The Republican party is by far the leader in voter suppression tactics, including closing polling places; restricting or banning mail-in or absentee voting; restricting who is allowed to vote; calling for partisan election observers; claiming fraud and abuse when they lose, in spite of a lack of evidence; and gerrymandering. On the last one, I don't dispute that the Democratic party also engages in gerrymandering, but it's hard to say that Democrats have been even close to as successful in that regard, and Republican gerrymandering is currently in the news as several states appear to be redrawing their voting districts specifically to benefit Republicans.
by zahllos | 2025-09-24 15:36:24+00:00
Agree. Proof of ID in the UK often means copies of utility bills. You can fill out your own with an online template pretty easily. Inside the UK you don't even need to bother with the notarization requirement. It is indeed backwards.

You can say "well you have a driving license" except if you're a teenager or an elderly person who surrendered theirs, you don't. You can also say "use a passport" but they're not convenient to carry and some people have never left the country so never owned one.

An ID card isn't a bad idea per se. It's the same as a driving license except everyone can have it.

What is bad in this round is the government making everyone have it on their phone "because digital is cheaper" (guarantee it will cost billions either way). Similar problems - what about people who don't have phones, how do you mandate I install this on my dumb phone?

The previous iteration might've worked had they not gone overboard on sequencing everyone's genome and giving every government agency and their dog access (only slight exaggeration) to the data.
by th0ma5 | 2025-09-24 15:36:26+00:00
People that don't code think that something can do code 98% correct is surely better, without seeing the hard enforcement of a 2% error without manual intervention. I think all of the jokes about stupid computers and weird behavior of languages when you use them out of spec (famously labeled wat) gave people the wrong impressions about why those problems exist or how they can or cannot be fixed. You'd think they'd be able to transfer that cynicism quicker to models since they are also dumb computer things but apparently they say "hello" and that is tricking them out of that?
by yamapikarya | 2025-09-24 15:37:33+00:00
my team are familiar with python, but i am not, so i decided to take an opportunity to learn this language, although, i prefer to use go because it's lightweight and simple.

at home i built my application using go. i also want to learn rust and elixir, but honestly i am not sure why i should learn both of them. i think language programming are just tools but they have their own advantages. also, learning other languages helps me become a better engineer.
by mschuster91 | 2025-09-24 15:37:38+00:00
> The small-time independent publishers and creators also want to restrict the web because they don't want their content "stolen"

... or just keep their site on the Internet. There hasn't been any major progress on sanctioning bad actors - be it people running vulnerable IoT crap that ends up being taken over by a botnet, cybercriminals and bulletproof hosters, or nation state actors. As long as you don't attack targets from your own geopolitical class (i.e. Russians don't attack Russians, a lot of malware will just quit if it spots Russian locale), you can do whatever the fuck you want.

And that is how we end up with darknet services where you can trivially order a DDoS taking down a website you don't like or, if you manage to get your opponent's IP leaked during an online game, their residential IP address. Pay with whatever shitcoin you have, and no one is any wiser who the perpetrator is.
by debazel | 2025-09-24 15:38:17+00:00
No, this is worse because it solidifies Apple/Google's duopoly over the smart phone market even more than it already is.

Not only that, but having this locked behind something that works for 95% of users means the other 5% will never have enough leverage for any other implementations to be approved. Which is absolutely unacceptable for such an essential feature like age verification.
by ZhadruOmjar | 2025-09-24 15:38:19+00:00
I agree that we are only going to see solidification of languages due to tools like Claude Code. Why would I take a risk on something new if I can't use a much faster tool, it can already be such a battle getting adoption in mid/large companies. I wonder how a release like React would fare if it was released in another 5-10 years once LLMs are deeply embedded.
by marcosdumay | 2025-09-24 15:38:19+00:00
All of those things have some niche use in an element here and there that allows for much better interaction in some kind of site.

I'm honestly at a loss with unselectable text, but for example capturing the right mouse button is very useful for applications.

Anyway, yes, it should be easy to turn those things off site-wide, like it's easy to zoom.
by igorzij | 2025-09-24 15:38:35+00:00
Hi HN - one of the founders of Digger here, the company behind Project OpenTaco.

Allow me to explain the initiative. Under per-run and resources-under-management pricing models many organizations have adopted workarounds and shortcuts that slow the growth of IaC adoption, and are incredibly frustrated by the arrangement. ([1], [2])

But wait - what about OpenTofu?

With OpenTofu, the community already has a credible open-source CLI alternative to BSL-licensed Terraform by Hashicorp. However that only solves half the problem: while the CLI helps teams avoid lock in to BSL licensed Terraform, it doesn’t address governance or collaboration challenges at scale any bigger than a single laptop. That's what TACOs are for; but so far, no open source project was able to challenge Terraform Cloud / Terraform Enterprise.

This is what led to the idea behind project opentaco. The project aims to add the missing enterprise workflows (currently proprietary and extractively priced) to Terraform and OpenTofu: secure remote runs, granular access controls, automated drift detection, enterprise SSO, and stack management, to be delivered as an open, self-hostable tool.

We feel this is Terraform’s “backstage” moment. Backstage did for Internal Developer Portals what we believe Project OpenTaco will do for IaC automation. Before Backstage, enterprises had scattered service catalogs and homegrown portals; Backstage created a standard, defined the category of IDPs, and won adoption at some of the world’s most recognizable companies [3]. We are building OpenTaco to follow the same path for Terraform and OpenTofu orchestration as the open standard.

We’re happy to launch v0.0 today (demo here [4], docs here (5)), you can try it starting today, we’d love any and all feedback!

[1]:https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7376235... [2]:https://www.linkedin.com/posts/coquinn_am-i-getting-this-rig... [3]:https://github.com/backstage/backstage/blob/master/ADOPTERS.... [4]:https://www.loom.com/share/046b75fdc4e54cfa8d5089a1eb02f272 [5]:https://docs.digger.dev/ce/state-management/architecture
by whstl | 2025-09-24 15:39:00+00:00
A native Chinese high school graduate is generally expected to know around 3500 characters. A middle school student, 2500-3000.

For Kanji the numbers are around 2136 and 1200 and respectively.

If you know the language, then you don't need this.

But if you're claiming that you can type a random Hanzi or Kanji character you see in an interface without speaking the language, you are either missing something here or not arguing in good faith.
by FrenchyJiby | 2025-09-24 15:39:16+00:00
I enjoy:

- seamless container logs (journalctl), no weird separate logger

- service start/stop/enable-at-boot no weird separate command

- integration with system/user slices, triggers, cronjobs (timers), exposing containers as first class commands overall!

Basically it's worth seeing container services work with non-container services.

If you don't like systemd, or have no stake in it, sure, have fun without it, but it's definitely added value when you're running services, and want to start containerizing some of them without abandoning all the good tools you are using in favour of docker logs docker run etc.
by ethbr1 | 2025-09-24 15:39:24+00:00
I'd say free speech absolutism (read: early-pandemic Zuckerberg, not thumb-on-the-scales Musk) has always aged better than the alternatives.

The trick is there's a fine line between honest free speech absolutism and 'pro free speech I believe in and silence about the freedom of that I don't.' Usually when ego and power get involved (see: Trump, Musk).

To which, props to folks like Ted Cruz on vocally addressing the dissonance of and opposing FCC speech policing.
by DangitBobby | 2025-09-24 15:40:05+00:00
Evil can be small and banal. Intentionally creating a negative outcome (algorithmically distance families) and charging people to escape it (preferred seating fees) certainly rhymes with a protection racket. It's purely the bad kind of capitalism, where instead of charging people for value you've created, you create new problems that only you can be paid to solve.
by tialaramex | 2025-09-24 15:40:32+00:00
Right, in early Rust, years ago, it's not even legal to do this:

fn main() { let mut x = 5; let y = &x; let z = &mut x; }

The original borrowck goes oh no, y is a reference to x and then z is a mutable reference to x, those can't both exist at the same time, but the scope of y hasn't ended so I give up here's an error message. You needed to adjust your software so that it can see why what you wrote is fine. That's "fighting the borrow checker".

But today's borrowck just goes duh, the reference y goes away right before the variable z is created and everything is cool.

These are called "Non-lexical lifetimes" because the lifetime is no longer strictly tied to a lexical scope - the curly braces in the program - but can have any necessary extent to make things correct.

Further improving the ability of the borrowck to see that what you're doing is fine is an ongoing piece of work for Rust and always will be†, but NLL was the lowest hanging fruit, most of the software I write would need tweaks to account for a strict lexical lifetime and it'd be very annoying when I know I am correct.

† Rice's theorem tells us we can either have a compiler where sometimes illegal borrows are allowed or a compiler where sometimes borrows that should be legal are forbidden (or both, which seems useless), but we cannot have one which is always right, so, Rust chooses the safe option and that means we're always going to be working to make it just a bit better.
by Aperocky | 2025-09-24 15:41:47+00:00
And barely a few days after google did it the fix is in.

Amazing how they simply couldn't win - you deliver content to client, the content goes to the client. Could be the largest corporation of the world and we still have yt-dlp.

That's why all of them wanted proprietary walled gardens where they would be able to control the client too - so you get to watch the ads or pay up.
by catapart | 2025-09-24 15:41:53+00:00
I made myself clear to the other development professionals I was talking to as evidenced by their feedback.

The people who seem to have the most trouble understanding what I'm advocating for are the people who seem to only be taking a user-centric approach to the situation, rather than grappling with the practicalities of the web environment.

At this point, I'm over trying to make anyone understand anything. They'll either get it, when it is relevant for them to get it, or they won't and it won't matter to me or anyone else at all.

In a year, we might have better web functionality or a new built-in browser or OS feature, or any number of other things that could mitigate this specific gripe, so I'm not super concerned about any of it. Those that understand what I'm saying will have better UX for heeding the advice with appropriate exception. And those that don't won't make UX worth using. No worries either way!
by Aurornis | 2025-09-24 15:42:02+00:00
This is common in many countries around the world.

I’m sure the prices have gone up since that comment, but 200€/month actually seems very reasonable for a commercial bar that shows sporting events. That’s let’s than 7€/day and would be more than covered by the first group of people walking in the door and buying a round of drinks.

I don’t approve of the microphone activation spying stuff or the ridiculous internet blocking. However it’s also kind of bizarre that it reached this point when the monthly fees for bar owners were such a trivial amount.
by AdamN | 2025-09-24 15:42:43+00:00
Didn't read the book but I think it's more insidious than what you wrote. The journalists don't think they're writing these stories to amplify the police narrative (they think they're unbiased). They just don't have the judgement (or will?) to look beyond the initial narrative which is police-driven.

In the end if a journalist can get their story out faster by leaning on a few 'trusted sources' and then move onto the next article, most of them will and their managers will encourage it. Maybe you'll get a more in depth story if it makes it to On The Media a week or two later but that's basically all we have at this point which is very sad.
by myfonj | 2025-09-24 15:43:34+00:00
> If you really need to translate ONE WORD, it's not that onerous to type it.

I'm confident that I can type just a tiny fraction of all Latin characters all world languages use. I'm sure that pretty much any Vietnamese word is way beyond my keyboard layout. No clue about writing any non-Latin script. Can you type any Cyrillic, Kanji, Hebrew, Abjad, …, character you see?
by rtkwe | 2025-09-24 15:43:48+00:00
Knocking someone out safely isn't cheap. There's a reason anesthesiologists are so highly paid. Just ask the hostages from Dubrovka Theater [0] how improvising an anesthetic gas can go (spoiler: you'll need a medium/ouija board).

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moscow_theater_hostage_crisis
by 0xbadcafebee | 2025-09-24 15:43:59+00:00
What's the most popular tag-line for YouTube/TikTok videos and online spammy ads? "The TRUTH about ..."

Americans have PTSD, and paranoia.

Before Nixon, Americans had an idylic belief in "America" as some bastion of exceptionalism, independence, idealism. We're the best, and we can do anything. We never got attacked, we had the most money, power, etc. Everything's good and we're the best.

But since Nixon, they learned their most-venerated politicians lie to them. But not only politicians; the news lies, corporations lie, scientists lie, their neighbors lie. And when 9/11 happened, suddenly the facade of invulnerability fell (because it was a foreign terrorist, rather than domestic, like Oklahoma City). Year after year, the media bombards Americans with terrifying stories of somebody lying to them, secretly hurting them. They're all out to get you. And polls show year after year that Americans are less trusting of their institutions.

To function in a society, you have to trust somebody. So they still watch the news, listen to politicians. They hide in some in-group, like a political party or ideology, or even just a Facebook group. But they are hyper-aware that anybody could be lying to them at any time. That some commonly-held truth is actually a weapon used to hurt them.

They have been bombarded with fear for decades by the media and politicians. Every single day they are told that "the enemy" is working to destroy everything they love. This isn't an exaggeration, this is literally the line given by politicians, and then parroted by their favorite media source. This is why Americans both obsessively watch media, and are really emotional about everything they hear in the media. It's why so many Americans latch onto conspiracy theories now (they didn't used to). We are all afraid because our system has made us afraid, and we don't know who to trust.
by Ukv | 2025-09-24 15:44:13+00:00
A menu with "我的帳戶" in it, and often a generic icon or no icon at all, doesn't really have sufficient context to determine what the button means. If the website is already translated into your language then great, but many websites aren't (because it's a small site, or you don't speak one of the most common languages, or it's aimed at a different audience, etc.)
by datadrivenangel | 2025-09-24 15:44:19+00:00
For a small project, this would be fine. Maybe a slight step up from just storing data in a single local file. For a more serious small project, SQLite is the way to go, as git's 'atomic' commits are still going to be relatively slow.

I assume you'd struggle to get a few hundred commits per second even on good hardware?
by moralestapia | 2025-09-24 15:44:35+00:00
Tangential.

The TIDAL app is absolute trash, it has this same issue all the time; not just that, but also, if a download fails it just hangs there and does not download the rest of the album/playlist.

Also, why would you want to download things in the first place? To watch them offline, right? Well, guess what happens when you open the app w/o an internet connection ... it asks you to login, so you cannot even access your music. 900k/year TOC genius work there.

The only reason why I haven't canceled is because I'm too lazy to reset my password in order to login and cancel, lol. Might do it soon, though.
by pessimizer | 2025-09-24 15:45:00+00:00
I used only pre-"built" decks and got to C1 in Spanish. One was actually prebuilt, the other was literally algorithmically generated disposable clozes. That, one graded reader and comic books got me to being comfortable in an L1->L1 dictionary, and then it's over. You don't need language learning material any more, just material.

People are just repeating this advice about making your own decks, and it's based in nothing but having had it repeated to them. Spaced repetition is boiling in pseudoscience and ancient studies that don't say much other than that there's a forgetting curve.

Most people are just parroting stuff they read on the Supermemo wiki (or somebody read off the Supermemo wiki and repeated to them like they came up with it), and all of that is just thoughts off the top of one guy's head. His innovation is that he wrote a program to do Leitner boxes before he had ever heard of a Leitner box, but people treat every word like gospel.

The only five things I can say for language learning is to go really hard on systems in a new language that are completely unknown to you (like Romance conjugations for an English speaker); only drill sentences, not individual words; always say your Anki answers out loud, and read out loud as much as you can; comic books have pictures, too; and once you get comfortable in an L2->L2 dictionary, you're a more comfortable reader than a lot of natives.

-----

* Random Anki decks for a few European languages: https://sookocheff.com/post/language/cloze-deletions/

(Edit: the lovely thing about 10K algorithmically generated clozes is that they're utterly disposable, unlike cards that you make yourself. If one is a leech, forget about it. You'll see another one just like it when you get to the point that it won't be a leech for you.)

* Instructions on how to generate your own in other languages, for developers: https://sookocheff.com/post/language/bulk-generating-cloze-d...

(You could probably point out the above URL to an LLM and it would generate the code for you.)

* Anki to learn Romance conjugations first: https://www.asiteaboutnothing.net/w_ultimate_spanish_conjuga...
by yndoendo | 2025-09-24 15:45:03+00:00
Retractions are a blimp in the sea of falsehood. 30 second retraction statement has no weight against 1 day of false narratives.

The only way to create a true counter weight is the amount of time encompassing the false hood should be the same amount of time given to the retraction. 1 day of false hood should equal 1 day of retraction.

Will this mode of operation exist, most likely not. The closest the USA had to such would be the Fairness Doctrine. [0]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairness_doctrine
by m_ke | 2025-09-24 15:45:05+00:00
I wonder how Google built their empire. Who knows? I’m sure they didn’t scrape every page and piece of media on the internet and train models on it.

My point was that the large players have monopoly hold on large swaths of the internet and are using it to further advantage themselves over the competition. See Veo 3 as an example, YouTube creators didn’t upload their work to help Google train a model to compete with them but Google did it anyways, and creators didn’t have a choice because all eye balls are on YouTube.
by LatteLazy | 2025-09-24 15:45:55+00:00
The UK has a bunch of deeply divided issues: 40% want lower house prices and rents (tenants and would be buyers) and 40% want higher house prices and rents (landlords and owners). The same is true for taxes and immigration and crime/justice and welfare etc.

So governments are desperate NOT to do anything on most issues. And they are desperate to do SOMETHING (as a distraction) on issues seen as more neutral and less likely to offend vast numbers of people.
by gdwatson | 2025-09-24 15:46:13+00:00
The point isn't that the developer should disable text selection whenever he thinks it's unnecessary, which would indeed be silly. It's that sometimes the user interface rules for navigating selectable text conflict or interfere with the user interface rules for navigating, say, a set of tab panes. In that situation, making the tab titles selectable will cause grief.

I agree with your address example. That is user data, and it should be selectable.
by Esophagus4 | 2025-09-24 15:46:41+00:00
I remember this book well.

I also remember thinking “this guy kind of seems like a self-impressed jerk,” while reading it.

Not that HubSpot didn’t earn their portrayal as a hype-driven business run by clowns, but the author lost me when he described himself getting into a passive aggressive Facebook comments argument with coworkers as an indication of how stupid they were… when all I could think was “you’re all idiots, cut the FB drama and get back to work.”

It seemed like he was kind of looking for a fight the whole time. Like… if you’re shocked a marketing tech startup runs differently than a newsroom, that’s on you.
by Beretta_Vexee | 2025-09-24 15:46:53+00:00
Because the expected values are not fixed, it is possible to measure response times and errors to check whether something is in the cache or not, etc.

There are a whole host of tricks relating to rendering and positioning at the edge of the display window and canvas rather than the window, which allow you to detect execution without rendering.

To simulate all this correctly, you end up with a standard browser, standard execution times, full rendering in the background, etc. No one wants to download their YouTube video at 1x speed and wait for the adverts to finish.