MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by bloppe | 2025-10-30 17:20:09+00:00
Ya, this isn't surprising.

https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/new-atlanticist/the-un...

> states parties are obligated to establish laws in their domestic system to “compel” service providers to “collect or record” real-time traffic or content data.

That's probably the biggest poison pill. The whole data sharing thing got watered down to the point of farce. Of course the EU won't extradite Russian LGBT activists under this law. But similarly, how likely do you think it would be for North Korea to extradite its own state-sponsored cybercriminals? They can simply claim that doing so would go against their "sovereignty, security, or other essential interests". Case closed!
by redasadki | 2025-10-30 17:20:11+00:00
Bill Gates’ latest public memo marks a significant shift in how the world’s most influential philanthropist frames the challenge of climate change. He sees a future in which responding to climate threats and promoting well-being become two sides of the same mission, declaring, “development is adaptation.” This position resonates with a core message that has emerged across global health over the past several years: climate change is about health.
by exasperaited | 2025-10-30 17:20:12+00:00
Is Da Vinci Resolve's free version unsustainable?

No. Because it's part of the cost for Black Magic Design that if they want to have their own hardware and not have the industry's monopolists (Adobe and Apple) make it difficult to maximise their sales, they need to control their own app.

This is what Canva think about their asset marketplace and AI tools, I guess. They need their own app to make sure Adobe can never so much as tug at the corner of the rug.
by lateforwork | 2025-10-30 17:20:31+00:00
You don't need two different versions of the software, one that is easy and one that is powerful. You can have one version that is both easy and powerful. Key concepts here are (1) progressive disclosure and (2) constraints.

See Don Norman's Design of Everyday things.

https://www.nngroup.com/articles/progressive-disclosure/

https://www.nngroup.com/videos/positive-constraints-in-ux-wo...
by mns | 2025-10-30 17:21:01+00:00
Devastated about this. Good for them for making money on the sale to Canva, but still, this is a sad day. Studio is now freemium, in the future probably more and more features (outside of AI) will be added in the subscription, and you will end up with an app full of disabled features and pop-ups encouraging you to subscribe and unlock the new and shiny thing.

There is absolutely nothing in the world that anyone can say to convince me that this is not the end for Affinity. Every single product that went through this ended up being an ad data gathering subscription pushing unusable app for anything useful.

I have both a V1 and V2 license. V2 is probably now useless considering that it will never get any updates. This marks the death of one of the last popular pay once and use forever apps (in the sense that a V3 with new features will never exist).
by seemaze | 2025-10-30 17:21:17+00:00
It looks like it is an offline application (after license verification) in he FAQ

>You will need to be online to download and activate your license with your free Canva account. From then on, there is no requirement to be online, even with extended offline periods.

As a long time Adobe "user" (read: hater) I'm curious if this decision targets Adobe or Microsoft options more..? Maybe both.
by yndoendo | 2025-10-30 17:21:30+00:00
That time period was during my IT consultant days.

We were installing on site Windows Small Business server for them. Issues were rare and one offs with self hosted email. The only issue of delayed messages was during changing IP addresses and DNS records, waiting for the updates to replicate to root servers.

Companies would often have a server just for email hosting running Linux on low power hardware. [0]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cobalt_Qube
by pentagrama | 2025-10-30 17:21:39+00:00
I used Affinity for several years, so to add some background here:

Serif is the company that originally built this software.

--------

2014–2024

Serif developed the Affinity suite, a collection of three independent desktop apps sold with a one-time payment model:

- Affinity Designer: vector graphic design (Adobe Illustrator equivalent)

- Affinity Photo: digital image editing (Adobe Photoshop equivalent)

- Affinity Publisher: print and layout design (Adobe InDesign equivalent)

They were solid, professional tools without subscriptions like Adobe, a big reason why many designers loved them.

-------

2024

Canva acquired Serif.

-------

2025 (today)

The product has been relaunched. The three apps are now merged into a single app, simply called Affinity, and it follows a freemium model.

From what I’ve tested, you need a Canva account to download and open the app (you can opt out of some telemetry during setup).

The new app has four tabs:

- Vector: formerly Affinity Designer

- Pixel: formerly Affinity Photo

- Layout: formerly Affinity Publisher

- Canva AI: a new, paid AI-powered section

Screenshot https://imgur.com/a/h1S6fcK

Hope can help!
by zahlman | 2025-10-30 17:21:41+00:00
Because bin/ is a conventional name that Linux inherited from UNIX going back literally decades; but there is nothing analogous in the Windows ecosystem, while Windows has a culture of trying to give folders names that are convenient for (and understandable to) end users with none of that UNIX cultural exposure. "bin" means absolutely nothing to the average person who grew up using Windows and is now learning to program with Python. "Scripts" is at least potentially understandable.
by jcalvinowens | 2025-10-30 17:22:03+00:00
You vastly underestimate what you can do on prem. Equivalent elastic compute for a $800 desktop that uses $100/mo in electricity is >$2000/mo. As sibling points out, it could easily be much much more depending on what you're doing.

Bandwidth is usually the killer with AWS. Bandwidth on prem is free. Some cloud vendors are much better, in fairness.
by davisr | 2025-10-30 17:22:17+00:00
> That's the entire point of copyright.

And the entire point of copy/left/ is to make the code a public good, a commodity. Everyone owns the code I write, and everyone is entitled to make a business from it.

If they have better marketing than me, earning a lot more money than me with the verbatim program, that sounds like my software was priced wrong and I should set the price higher. How high -- $50,000/copy? Who knows. If someone wants to make themselves my distributor, they /should/ get paid for that.

That kind of competition -- yes, it is competition -- would inspire /cooperation/. That would give both of us, the distributor and myself, incentive to work together to maximize both of our profits.

Another example is with my program itself. It's a desktop application, a local management client for a tablet that otherwise must use its manufacturer's cloud service. I am directly competing with the manufacturer. When I receive money for my program, $12/year, they loose a customer of their service, -$36/year. BUT -- many, and I mean MANY of my customers told me they would have returned their $500 tablet were it not for my software, after using which, made them keep the hardware. I estimate that my software has saved the manufacturer over $500,000 in returns.

That means: my software has /increased/ the total value of my competitor, and we are /both/ making profit. My software literally expanded their market.

And if a distributor of the verbatim program wants to expand /my/ market, I'm all for that. But I don't think they will, because /they know/ that anyone else can do exactly what they're doing. They need to add something of value. Sometimes, marketing can be value, sure. More value is derived from the program itself -- that's why people buy it in the first place. Not because of its marketing, but because of its function.

And if they improve my program, the function, they MUST release the complete corresponding source code, and they MUST do so granting forwards the same copyleft privileges I gave them. And that means I can, and will, take their improvements and merge them back into my original product. And since I have the first mover advantage, the reputation, the search engine hits, the community engagement, I will probably win.

And if I don't win, the user /does/. They get a better product at a better price. That's the WHOLE POINT of free software, that it's good for the user, not for the developer. It's the kind of software I use myself, so I elect to write it, too. It's the world I want to live in.

You have an obsolete understanding of the world, a misunderstanding of the motivations of free software, and are totally wrong about the dynamics of selling free software.
by locknitpicker | 2025-10-30 17:22:58+00:00
> all because of M2 money printer, it broke how money works , process of fiat money started in 1971 but with covid printing they made last nail in the coffin.

I don't think your claim is well founded or even has a rational basis. Frankly it sounds like an attempt to cram together impopular cliches.

It doesn't mattet whether you have fiat money or any type of commodity money. What matters is the monetary and economic policies in place. The gold standard didn't prevented the kind of inflation or drops in purchasing power that you're pinning on fiat or whatever scapegoat.

In addition, any type of commodity you might think of still shows huge price fluctuations. Take gold for example. Gold prices increased around 50% in the last year alone, and tanked about 20% in the last two weeks alone. Do you think that with the gold standard this would have zero impact on inflation?

> Numbers go up because they can print UNLIMITED $trillions, your work means nothing.

You're complaining about changes to the money supply. With a gold standard, you'd get the exact same benefit and consequences by the state increasing debt to fund their monetary and economic policies.

I think you're trying to vent frustration but you are failing to identify the problem.
by fellowniusmonk | 2025-10-30 17:22:58+00:00
Sorry, I see how my post lacked sufficient clarity.

The idea behind a cheap UI is not constant change, but that you have a shared engine and "app" per activity.

The particular workflow/ui doesn't need to ever change, it's more of a app/brand per activity for non-power users.

This is similar to how some apps historically (very roughly lotus notes springs to mind) are a single app but have an email interface/icon to click, or contacts, or calendar, all one underlying app but different ui entry points.
by jay_kyburz | 2025-10-30 17:23:32+00:00
It's not free, it's a lure. There is a hook hiding somewhere.

The real cost of tools like these is not the upfront price, but the time invested learning the tool and incorporating it into your workflow.

Krita is clunky, but good enough for me, and it really is free.

Update: Changed my analogy to lure.
by cosmic_cheese | 2025-10-30 17:23:45+00:00
It's my belief that much of this flavor of UI/UX degradation can be avoided by employing a simple but criminally underutilized idea in the software world (FOSS portion included), which is feature freezing.

That is, either determine what the optimal set of features is from the outset, design around that, and freeze or organically reach the optimium and then freeze. After implementing the target feature set, nearly all engineering resources are dedicated to bug fixes and efficiency improvements. New features can be added only after passing through a rigorous gauntlet of reviews that determine if the value of the feature's addition is worth the inherent disruption and impact to stability and resource consumption, and if so, approaching its integration into the existing UI with a holistic approach (as opposed to the usual careless bolt-on approach).

Naturally, there are some types of software where requirements are too fast-moving for this to be practical, but I would hazard a guess that it would work for the overwhelming majority of use cases which have been solved problems for a decade or more and the required level of flux is in reality extremely low.
by ZeWaka | 2025-10-30 17:23:49+00:00
> 8% annually

Historically, yes - but the last 5 year average has been ~14% (I guess it's like ~9% if you're adjusting for inflation). I think 10% is a bit of a better number these days.

That's not to say I couldn't be eating my words when the market crashes tomorrow, however.
I interviewed the Rails developer who "accidentally" hacked 37signals
by basileafe | 2025-10-30 17:24:11+00:00
I just published part 1 of my conversation with Greg Molnar, who found critical security vulnerabilities in console1984 and initially disclosed them in the wrong order (blog first, then notify). Jorge from 37signals handled it brilliantly - no lawyers, just "hey, next time contact me first."

We also discussed building Spektr Scanner when Brakeman changed licenses, his life on an island, and why he thinks "security is mindset, not memorization."

Part 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jphaSlu_aTw

As someone new to podcasting, I'd love feedback from the HN community on the technical discussions.
by _DeadFred_ | 2025-10-30 17:24:24+00:00
Google's new AI voice assistant finally seems to reliably set timers. The problem is they released it what, a year ago? And during that time it didn't and I now no longer trust the AI on my phone to do tasks. Google themselves trained me not to trust their AI tools.

Youtube (Google) currently degrades my feed because when I block AI videos, they assume I dislike the related topic. They have made it either I love AI videos/music, or they punish me.

You are right, they have stakeholders causing inertia to protect their fiefdoms across a large range of products. You are right, they have (profitable) current products which will prove to be barriers to nimble, future, nearterm non-profitable products. I'm not sure that's a strength seeing how they have responded so far.

They are too big and too slow to adapt. They have too many people with interests in protecting their (legacy) niche, too much inertia to overcome. The classic signs of a zombie company. Going purely off their ability to adapt in the last year, they are dead and don't even know it yet.
by philipkglass | 2025-10-30 17:24:40+00:00
The more depressing problem is that the US is raising trade barriers for solar equipment made outside of China nearly as fast. I think that the current administration just dislikes solar power, and only a part of that animosity is due to its tough-on-China stance.

"South Korea files WTO complaint over US solar tariffs"

https://www.pv-tech.org/south-korea-challenging-us-solar-tar...

"US DOC issues steep AD/CVD tariffs on Southeast Asian solar cells"

https://www.pv-tech.org/us-doc-issues-ad-cvd-tariffs-on-sout...

The US Department of Commerce (DOC) has issued anti-dumping and anti-subsidy tariffs against solar cell imports from Thailand, Vietnam, Malaysia and Cambodia.

"A Casualty of Trump’s Tariffs: India’s Nascent Solar Industry"

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/27/climate/india-solar-panel...

"Solar products from Mexico and Canada slapped with tariffs for first time"

https://www.solarpowerworldonline.com/2025/02/solar-products...
by sambuccid | 2025-10-30 17:24:43+00:00
> In a normal market there would be no incentive to side load because legitimate app owners would have no incentive not to have users load apps outside of the secure channel of the official app store, and users would have no incentive to go outside of it.

> Solve the platform tax, solve the side loading issue.

I think maybe for a large part of legitimate app owners there would be no incentive, but there are other reasons/incetives for legitimate app owners to go outside the official app store even in the case of no tax, a few that pop to mind are:

- open source devs might have the preference to publish their app on a community-led store.

- users trying to keep an old phone functioning using an unofficial custom android, with no support for the store.

- developers creating apps for themselves and their friends not needing to publish the app publicly.

- companies creating apps just for work phones wanting to keep them private outside of any store.

- A company providing "build-your-app-with-AI" service preferring to just provide a final apk file.

I think it's important to remember that there are loads of other reasons outside the financial one to keep the ability to install what you want on your phone. If google dropped any tax they put on their store now, the problem with these new changes would still be there

(edits: formatting issues)
by lisperforlife | 2025-10-30 17:25:42+00:00
The 5ms write latency and 1ms write latency sounds like they are using S3 to store and retrieve data with some local cache. My guess is a S3 based block storage exposed as a network block device. S3 supports compare-and-swap operations (Put-If-Match), so you can do a copy-on-write scenario quite easily. May be somebody from TigerData can give a little bit more insight into this. I know slatedb supports S3 as a backend for their key-value store. We can build a block device abstraction using that.
by toast0 | 2025-10-30 17:25:51+00:00
Probably not, UEFI boot is terribly fussy and I haven't seen any sort of UEFI image loader similar to memdisk that works for BIOS boot. There's an optional standard for loading images, but I don't think any of my firmwares support it; and I'm not sure if the loaded image is available after boot services terminate anyway.

Linux images have to be processed to pull the kernel and initramfs images out, rather than booting an image, and then if the image used a filesystem after boot, hope it finds it. (This is even messier for PXE, at least with USB, you have a fighting chance)
by jamesmaniscalco | 2025-10-30 17:26:09+00:00
This is fun! but not so surprising to me:

987,654,321 + 123,456,789 = 1,111,111,110

1,111,111,110 + 123,456,789 = 1,234,567,899 \approx 1,234,567,890

So 987,654,321 + 2 x 123,456,789 \approx 10 x 123,456,789

Thus 987,654,321 / 123,456,789 \approx 8.

If you squint you can see how it would work similarly in other bases. Add the 123... equivalent once to get the base-independent series of 1's, add a second time to get the base-independent 123...0.
by lbrito | 2025-10-30 17:26:14+00:00
That's not the point.

Why are some people entitled to more than others based on where they live?

The US is the world leader in per capita CO2 emissions. Has been for over a century. Only in 2021 China has reached 8t per capita. Do you know when the US reached that figure? 1899.

The inhabitants of the US, and of the UK before it, have been enjoying the benefits of energy-intensive industry for hundreds of years. But the externality of that process - the emissions - is a burden shared with everyone else in the world. As others have mentioned, the planet does not care who emitted CO2.

None of those countries is in a position to criticize the emissions of China or India or Brazil or whatever other country.
by edanm | 2025-10-30 17:26:31+00:00
There are clear differences, I don't disagree, I just think the difference isn't "rooted in real physics" vs "rooted in imaginary physics". The difference is more a matter of tone and general setting. Space? It's scifi. Medieval culture? Fantasy.

An author once wrote an intro to some short story. The story is part of a much larger futuristic scifi universe in which people have developed telepathy and other things through genetic means. And the specific short story was the first one he wanted to publish, and it was about a specific planet in that world, in which the whole story is basically a telepath coming into town and interacting with the population.

And the publisher returned the note that this wasn't scifi, it was fantasy. Because of course he did - stripped of the broader futuristic setting that the story takes place in, it's just a story of a wizard coming into town. Never mind that there are solid science fiction explanations for the "magic" - you don't get that in the short story.
by m_2000 | 2025-10-30 17:26:31+00:00
The original Fawkes ( https://github.com/Shawn-Shan/fawkes ) project came on my radar when I have started working on adversarial examples in deep learning. Fawkes cloaks facial images by adding pixel-based perturbations to the original images, barely visible to the human eye. This bypasses face-recognition systems (or at least weakens their confidence).

I highly recommend reading the original paper available from the developer's website: https://sandlab.cs.uchicago.edu/fawkes/ to understand how it works. Generally speaking, Fawkes computes _cloaks_ by maximizing feature similarity to unrelated faces while minimizing DSSIM (Structural Dissimilarity).

These cloaks are then applied to the original images, producing cloaked images. These cloaked images look as similar as possible to the original images, whereas their feature space deviate "as maximal as possible" from the original.

DISCLAIMER: I am not the developer of Fawkes. I merely developed a web-interface for it. Big thanks to the [original researchers from SANDLAB, Chicago: https://people.cs.uchicago.edu/%7Eravenben/publications/abst...

Yes, the trained model is part of the repo. Just in case you're irritated by it's size (~300MB).
by thaumasiotes | 2025-10-30 17:26:39+00:00
> Ok, so it's basically a "five eyes" style agreement for sharing intel on citizens. Why would anyone want their government to support this?

While I agree that it's not a good idea, I can answer that last question:

The idea would be that when an American enforcement body, presumably the FBI, determines that a bunch of cash or whatever was stolen by Russian hackers, the treaty compels the Russian government to keep records of the hackers' activity, and it "creates frameworks for collaboration, including mutual legal assistance and extradition". So instead of saying "hey, you stole all our money" and getting the response "wow, it must suck to be you", we could make them give the money back and extradite the criminals.
by embedding-shape | 2025-10-30 17:26:49+00:00
Same here, that's why I was kind of surprised. Shame what YouTube forces creators to degrade into, I remember it being super nice being able to see a video about a new SIGGRAPH paper before diving into the details, but these new videos (well, "new" if what you say is true about it being years) I can barely stand because of the change...
by marcosdumay | 2025-10-30 17:27:07+00:00
The most likely is that storage will never be "solved".

We will run with 100% renewables for years, and there will still be people asking if storage has been solved already. We will just solve every large issue, and suffer lots of small issues.

Also, if you are using your car as a battery, you can't use it as a car. It's more likely that you will have extra batteries at home so that you can charge your car when you want.
by nonethewiser | 2025-10-30 17:27:29+00:00
You're kinda contradicting yourself. You're right that it's about absolute numbers. But then you use a percentage.

perhaps 12% for 5% of the global population is too high. But you dont want to relate it to population. Relating to number of countries is rather non-sensical. Some are big (by productivity, area, population, etc.), some are tiny.
by seanmcdirmid | 2025-10-30 17:29:01+00:00
First, the only reason solar isn't so common in Alaska is that hydro is even easier to get power from, so your outback communities will often use small scale hydro instead of solar (especially in southeast Alaska).

Communities in the north will use diesel generators in the winter (nothing else is viable). Again, I assume you are talking about off grid communities, which is basically all of them except a few cities (and most cities have their own grids disconnected from the rest, especially Southeast Alaska).