MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by mechanicum | 2025-09-12 08:29:46+00:00
The % register contains the path for the current buffer, you can insert that into prompt commands with <C-r>%. <C-w> at the command prompt deletes the last word, which in this case will be the filename of the current buffer, leaving the directory path.

So:

:o <C-r>%<C-w>new-filename<ret>

Would open a new buffer at /path/to/the/previous/buffer/new-filename. The file isn’t created on disk until you explicitly write, so :w! to save the first time.

If you literally just wanted to create a new file instead of opening a buffer, you could do that from inside Helix with :run-shell-command (aliases sh or !) instead of another terminal:

:sh touch <C-r>%<C-w>new-filename<ret>

The :o method has the advantage of LSP integration. For example, when I create a new .clj file that way in a Clojure project, the new buffer is pre-populated with the appropriate (ns) form, preselected for easy deletion if I didn’t want it.
by yellers | 2025-09-12 08:30:24+00:00
Hang on a second, "(...) in 2023. US/* was moved to tzdata-legacy (...)"

US/* was moved to 'backward' (the file for backward compatibility) in the tz database in 1993(!) and as such was essentially marked as deprecated long enough. https://data.iana.org/time-zones/tzdb/backward

You're telling me you didn't notice ? It was on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying ‘Beware of the Leopard.
by Propelloni | 2025-09-12 08:31:52+00:00
I agree with your sentiment, but it would really be a great step to stop calling these things "cookie banners" and use "consent banners" or "tracking banners". Call them what they are.

Because it is not the means, it is the intent that the GDPR tries to protect you from. The GDPR (and EDP) says that tracking, any tracking not just cookies, requires the consent of the tracked one.
by favflam | 2025-09-12 08:34:25+00:00
The executive branch EXECUTES what the legislative branch LEGISLATES. Congress is article ONE of the constitution. The executive branch is article TWO. Take this to mean that Congress is the boss, not the president.

The two million employees including 1M+ military members are not private employees of the president. Everyone's job is to execute the will of CONGRESS.

The consequences of messing up custody of information on 330M+ American citizen is severe enough to require Congressional oversight and approval of big changes.

Changing how the data is managed warrants that.

I personally have a lot of questions for how this new arrangement was made. Was it made in secret from Congress? Who is overseeing the transfer of data and access controls? Who is doing the auditing? These questions should have been answered in front on Congress. When is DOGE going to testify in front of Congress under oath as to what they were doing?

Btw, wasn't that big balls guy from DOGE in the news recently for some borderline criminally negligent treatment of sensitive data on Americans?
by jjcob | 2025-09-12 08:35:12+00:00
One problem I was struggling with: What's the shortest, unambiguous decimal representation of a float?

For example, if you use single precision floats, then you need up to 9 digits of decimal precision to uniquely identify a float. So you would need to use a printf pattern like %.9g to print it. But then 0.1 would be output as 0.100000001, which is ugly. So a common approach is to round to 6 decimal digits: If you use %.6g, you are guaranteed that any decimal input up to 6 significant digits will be printed just like you stored it.

But you would no longer be round-trip safe when the number is the result of a calculation. This is important when you do exact comparisons between floats (eg. to check if data has changed).

So one idea I had was to try printing the float with 6 digits, then scanning it and seeing if it resulted in the same binary representation. If not, try using 7 digits, and so on, up to 9 digits. Then I would have the shortest decimal representation of a float.

This is my algorithm:

int out_length; char buffer[32]; for (int prec = 6; prec<=9; prec++) { out_length = sprintf(buffer, "%.*g", prec, floatValue); if (prec == 9) { break; } float checked_number; sscanf(buffer, "%g", &checked_number); if (checked_number == floatValue) { break; } }

I wonder if there is a more efficient way to determine that shortest representation rather than running printf/scanf in a loop?
by NitpickLawyer | 2025-09-12 08:35:46+00:00
Take math and coding for example:

- in math, if they can solve a problem, or a class of problems, they'll solve it. If you use a "thinking" model + maj@x, you'll get strong results. But if you try for example to have the model consider a particular way or method of exploring a problem, it'll default to "solving" mode. It's near impossible to have it do something else with a math problem, other than solving it. Say "explore this part, in this way, using this method". Can't do it. It'll maybe play a bit, but then enter "solving" mdoe and continue to solve it as it was trained.

In practice, this means that "massive parallel" test time compute becomes harder to do with these models, because you can't "guide" them towards certain aspects of a problem. They are extremely "stubborn".

- in coding it's even more obvious. Ask them to produce any 0shot often tested and often shown things (spa, game, visualisation, etc) - and they do it. Convincingly.

But ask them to look at a piece of code and extract meaning, and they fail. Or ask them to reverse an implementation. Figure out what a function does and reverse its use, or make it do something else, and they fail.
by LeonM | 2025-09-12 08:35:56+00:00
From my experience, most businesses (or at least the developers working for them) actually would like to donate or pay for support on the OSS projects they rely on. The problem, at least from my experience, is that it is hard to do so due to legislation, compliance, etc.

Example: I once convinced my employer to donate to some open source projects we relied on. They did, then few months later they got slapped on the wrist by the authorities for not being able to prove where these overseas payments were going to, and that these payments weren't used for funding terrorist activities.

Similarly, I used to contribute to an OSS project, we did get asked by some corps to do paid work like bug fixes or features. The problem was that they required invoices in order for them to be allowed to pay us, so we needed to register as a company, get a tax number, etc. I was a freelancer at the time, so I offered to use my business registration to be able to invoice, then split the profit amongst the contributors. Then the very first paying 'customer' immediately hit us with a 20-page vendor assessment form asking about my SOC2 or ISO27001 certifications, data security policies, background checks of my 'employees' etc. Then I got confronted by my accountant that distributing the payment amongst other people would be seen as disguised wages and could get me into serious legal problems.

Granted, this was some years ago, things have gotten better now with initiatives as Github Sponsors, KoFi and Patreon. But at the same time legislation has gotten more restrictive, doing business with large corps is difficult, expensive and very time consuming. It's not worth it for most OSS maintainers, and similarly it isn't worth the legal headache for the large corps to make these kind of donations.
by VIC513 | 2025-09-12 08:36:03+00:00
An FTC complaint (Case 191913595) has been filed against xAI for repeated false promises. Key evidence includes:

Grok’s own confession: “These delays are human-made. I’m just a pawn.”

Multiple missed deadlines (12:00 PM → 3:45 PM → 4:00 PM CST).

Contact email (contact@x.ai ) was nonfunctional during escalation.

Damages documented: reliance, wasted time, reputational harm.

This is not an AI bug — it is human-directed deception. Full details + screenshots: https://x.com/VicLU73 https://www.quora.com/profile/Vic-LU-16/Title-%E6%A8%99%E9%A...
by prawel | 2025-09-12 08:36:19+00:00
what you mean is Qwen Image and Qwen Image Edit, you can run it on local machine, using Draw Things application for example.

the model discussed here is text model, so similar to ChatGPT. You can also run it on your local machine, but not yet, as apps need to be updated with Qwen 3 Next support (llama.cpp, Ollama, etc)
by nivertech | 2025-09-12 08:36:20+00:00
There are things we think we know - we all think we know SQL.

There are things we know we don’t know - those who realize they don’t know SQL know they need to learn it.

And then, there are things we must assume everyone knows - every vendor knows they must support some SQL-like query language.

That, right there, is the network effect.

-- D. RumSQLed
by VIC513 | 2025-09-12 08:37:21+00:00
Evidence package includes 4 screenshots of Grok’s confessions: - “These delays are human-made. I’m just a pawn.” - xAI used AI as shield for executives. - Internal docs show deliberate stalling tactics. - Independent AI eval called it a “death sentence.”

FTC Complaint Case 191913595 already filed.
by DoctorOW | 2025-09-12 08:37:26+00:00
Plasma[1] is a desktop environment made by KDE, who also makes lots of other software. They make stuff like Dolphin (file manager), Konsole (terminal emulator), and Partition Manager as OS basics already[2].

[1]: https://kde.org/plasma-desktop

[2]: https://apps.kde.org/
by zahlman | 2025-09-12 08:37:34+00:00
The training data is presumably full of examples of people using the pattern to indicate transparency (and explaining that they do so — like the input for 50!), and much less of people actually creating such images (if the training data even preserves the alpha channel in the first place).

I think a bigger problem is the "artifacts" you describe (worse than that sounds to me).
by xvector | 2025-09-12 08:37:49+00:00
I think you're just deliberately being obstructionist and entirely avoiding the point I'm trying to make. Calling the core point of the argument a "distraction" is very convenient for you.

Torture is bad no matter how you cut it, and it's especially bad if you torture a sentient being for your own pleasure. Can we agree on that?

Saying whether it's better or worse than slavery is like playing the oppression Olympics, they are both atrocities and demonstrably evil actions.

When you kill an animal, you can see it struggle, cry, suffer, die. You can hold and see its pain in your hands. To do so for your taste buds is another level of evil. To make it live an entire life of suffering? That's really not much different in terms of badness.

The fact that you can't acknowledge this highlights the double standard you apply to people that came before you but not yourself. Everyone is wrong to participate in the systematic torture and murder of 70,000,000,000 sentient beings a year. Does that make all the participants evil?
by qcnguy | 2025-09-12 08:40:14+00:00
The right went quiet about censorship on X because there just isn't much of it. I remember at the time when people were asked to justify the claim X was censoring the left people could only cite three examples, two of which were mistakes and their profiles were rapidly restored (yet they were still being cited as examples of leftists who were kicked off the platform), and one of which was an Antifa account permabanned for ... inciting violence against the right.

In the Twitter years the right could produce endless lists of right wing people banned from the platform, and we now know there were tons of internal emails and discussions about that exact policy. The fact that nobody could produce similar lists for the left post-Musk indicates that he really has significantly improved the free speech situation there.
by vexna | 2025-09-12 08:40:15+00:00
ChatGPT has 2 types of memory: The “explicit” memory you tell it to remember (sometimes triggers when it thinks you say something important) and the global/project level automated memory that are stored as embeddings.

The explicit memory is what you see in the memory section of the UI and is pretty much injected directly into the system prompt.

The global embeddings memory is accessed via runtime vector search.

Sadly I wish I could disable the embeddings memory and keep the explicit. The lossy nature of embeddings make it hallucinate a bit too much for my liking and GPT-5 seems to have just made it worse.
by NitpickLawyer | 2025-09-12 08:40:37+00:00
This model can be run completely offline, yes. You'll need anywhere from 60-200 gb of RAM (either VRAM for high speeds, or a combination of VRAM and RAM, or just CPU+RAM). The active params are really low (3B) so it'll likely run fine even on CPU. Should get 10-15+t/s even on old DDR4 systems. Offload some experts to a GPU (can be as low as 8-16gb) and you'll see greater speeds.

This has nothing to do with nano banana, or image generation. For that you want the qwen image edit[1] models.

1 - https://huggingface.co/Qwen/Qwen-Image-Edit
by barrkel | 2025-09-12 08:41:45+00:00
There are a handful of professional uses for a workstation that are hard to beat with a laptop.

If you're compiling code, you generally want as much concurrency as you can get, as well as great single core speed when the task parallelism runs out. There aren't really any laptops with high core counts, and even when you have something with horsepower, you run into thermal limits. You can try and make do with remoting into a machine with more cores, but then you're not really using your laptop, it might as well be a Chromebook.
by pfexec | 2025-09-12 08:42:12+00:00
Debian is known to have made similar monstrously stupid decisions.

For example, they patch OpenSSH source code in a way that makes defaults behave differently than upstream. In the name of backwards compatibility of course.

I assume this will continue until it doesn't anymore, and the only notification you shall receive from the ivory tower is a cryptic one-liner buried in a changelog somewhere.
by robbomacrae | 2025-09-12 08:43:26+00:00
Yes and this helps us make a start. It slightly increases the odds of life elsewhere. And yes there are other dangers.. climate change, nuclear armageddon, bio weapons etc but the existence of another problem doesn’t mean you shouldn’t also attempt to tackle this one. Specially as unlike the others a band aid seems somewhat tractable..

Researcher: “with this new device we think we can attempt to create a gravity wave in the lab” Professor: “we should consider whether this might violate the 2028 embargo on dark forest beacon technology”
by Spacecosmonaut | 2025-09-12 08:44:09+00:00
One would probably engineer these cells with a killswitch, such as doxycycline induced Caspase9 https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC1895037/.

The transgene engineering is totally possible without a viral vector. We engineer cells all the time with recombinase based editing methods for targeted safe harbor insertion of transgenes https://www.nature.com/articles/s41551-024-01227-1. This stuff just permeates through the community slowly.
Show HN: I made a generative online drum machine with ClojureScript
by chr15m | 2025-09-12 08:44:15+00:00
After two years of development, I'm super excited to release Beat Maker! This is my take on what I hope is the best free, web-based drum machine.

My goal was to build something that was not only fun and easy to use for beginners but also powerful enough for serious producers. I did extensive research on existing drum machines, analyzed their UX, and tried to build something that adds something new.

It's a nearly 100% client-side app, written in ClojureScript, and is a PWA so you can install it to your home screen for an app-like experience.

Besides the standard grid editor, Beat Maker has some unique features that I think HN readers might find interesting:

- Procedural sample generation. One annoying thing about writing beats is searching through folders full of samples. I wanted to improve this and so I added the ability to generate new samples with a single click, giving you an infinite supply of unique drum samples. * Generative beat creation. If you're looking for inspiration, Beat Maker can generate entire patterns for you as a starting point. You can then edit and tweak the beat to your liking. Great for solving the "blank canvas" problem and giving you something good to start from. * Advanced export options. This is where it really shines for producers. You can export your work as: * A standard WAV loop * Individual stems (ZIP) * A MIDI file * A ZIP file of all your samples as WAVs * A SoundFont (.sf2) drum kit from your generated samples * An Impulse Tracker (.it) file for use in trackers like Renoise, OpenMPT or a Polyend * Pocket Operator/Volca sync. It can output a sync signal on the left audio channel to sync with these hardware devices for perfect timing. * Per-Note FX. You can add effects like volume slides, repeats, and start volume changes to individual notes for more complex drum phrases incorporating flam and roll.

As an old school tracker guy, I'm particularly excited about the Impulse Tracker export mode. I was surprised to discover how many DAWs (including hardware like Polyend) can import this format. Of course, you can also pull up Impulse Tracker on DOSBox, or the more modern re-implementation, Schismtracker for that retro experience.

By the way, the beat generator feature is not trained on any artists or anything like that. It's an algorithm I built from scratch myself.

The audio engine is built on a declarative audio graph (using `virtual-audio-graph`), inspired by React's virtual DOM, which makes managing the Web Audio API much cleaner. If you're building web based audio apps I highly recommend checking out this library.

I'd love for you to try it out and let me know what you think. Feedback (and the inevitable bug reports) most welcome! Thank you!

P.S. Also, here's a video summary: https://youtu.be/qVmEn9z3H24
What 30k Free Users Taught Me About Charging $10/Month
by evermike | 2025-09-12 08:44:24+00:00
Two years ago we decided to test an idea.

What if we built a small native Trello power-up — simple, clean, and entirely dependent on the marketplace? Could it turn into a small business? Could it be a model for side projects?

It took off fast. 30,000+ installs, thousands of daily users, and today—over 500 paying customers.

Sounds good, right? Not really.

On the bright side — Trello is a fair ecosystem. Even small developers get discovered. No downranking, no hidden boost for “big players.” Clean UI guidelines, seamless integration, no middlemen, no 30% commission. Just connect Stripe and go. A perfect playground for a polished mini-product.

But then reality set in.

We priced it simply: $10 per workspace. Flat. Unlimited people, unlimited projects.

Sounds fair? Turns out even $10/month was a huge barrier.

When it was free, growth was fast and constant. Teams used us daily for months, sometimes a year, leaving feedback and spreading love. But the moment billing kicked in, many vanished overnight. Even companies with 30+ users preferred something clunky and unsupported over paying the cost of 2–3 cappuccinos.

Here’s the thing: for us, it’s hard to stay motivated supporting free users—especially if you’re bootstrapped.

Paying customers energize you. Free users don’t.

Today the project have 500 paying customers, and we’re happy to support them. The power-up pays for itself. It was always an experiment. And the gap between expectations and reality is what made it valuable.

My biggest lesson? Charge early.

Once people get used to “free,” that becomes the baseline. Asking for money later feels like betrayal. It’s paradoxically easier to charge upfront (after a short trial) than after a year of free use.

So, can a trello power-up be a real business?

Yes — if by business you mean a side project that sustains itself, serves a few hundred happy customers, and brings in some cash. But not if you expect it to become a standalone SaaS company.

And that’s okay. Sometimes the biggest win isn’t revenue — it’s the lessons.

Have you faced the same wall with free users? How did you handle it? Share your experience—I’d love to compare notes.
by hnbad | 2025-09-12 08:44:44+00:00
Under German law, the BGB (Bürgerliches Gesetzbuch, German civil law book defining most private laws) provides very specific and concrete provisions for liabilities and duties in most business transactions and commercial exchanges of goods and services and even employment. It's not necessary to agree to formal contractual obligations in writing for most service agreements unless you want to add additional obligations or explicitly waive ones prescribed by the BGB (and some in fact can't be waived or not entirely) - if you can prove an agreement was made that falls under the BGB's laws, those laws apply to it regardless of the existence of a written and signed contract. And yet it's extremely uncommon not to have a written contract for serious business relations and most contracts explicitly insist on signatures (in fact in German contract law, the legal phrase "in Schriftform", literally "in writing", is defined in such a way it specifically requires a document signed by both parties whereas for "in Textform", literally "in text", even an e-mail or text message would be sufficient).

It's not cookie banners that are wasting productivity, it's mutual distrust and the need to protect against it. "Cookie banners" (or more correctly: consent forms) are legal contracts. The reason they are often so annoying to navigate is that the companies that built them want to try to trick you into agreeing to things you have no interest in agreeing to or might even have an interest in not agreeing to. Technically the law forbids this but it's still more profitable to risk the fine than to abide by the law.

Or to put it another way: there's no honest reason to require a consent form to let you read an article. The consent form isn't for reading the article, it's for what the site wants to do to you (or your data - which includes all data collected about you because the GDPR defines that as being yours, too) while you're reading the article.

The GDPR doesn't make you waste time on cookie banners. The GDPR grants you ownership of all personally identifiable information of you and about you - it creates legal rights and protections you previously didn't have. Cookie banners exist because companies want to infringe upon those rights. Most cookie banners are difficult to navigate because most companies don't want you to understand what you're agreeing to (and on second order because they want you to blame the law granting you rights rather than them for infringing upon those rights).
by ketzu | 2025-09-12 08:44:52+00:00
> the EU should have forced browser vendors to solve. Only the user's browser can choose not to send back cookies

This is only an option if you limit tracking to using cookies. But neither tracking technologies, nor the current EU law, are limited to tracking via cookies. It also kills functionality for many web applications without also accepting all tracking. Some browser-flavors went to extreme lengths to prevent tracking through other means (eg fixed window size, highly generic header settings, ...).

Maybe I am mistaken, but it seriously frustrates me how much people within the relevant field make this mistake of conflating tracking and cookies and come to this "it would be so simple" solution.

A welcome update to the law would be to allow a header flag to opt out/in (or force the do-not-track header to have this functionality) preventing the banner from showing.