MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by ElevenLathe | 2025-10-21 19:53:27+00:00
I think they key to me is that it is really just helping you write git command lines. The menus are laid out exactly like the options of the relevant git sub-command, so that using Magit makes you more proficient at the CLI and vice versa. Other GUIs (including the awful ones that tend to be built into editors and IDEs) are instead hiding these details from you, so that if you are proficient at git on the CLI, you are still starting nearly from zero with the new interface and vice versa.
by ashleyn | 2025-10-21 19:53:31+00:00
I was tempted to knee-jerk dismiss this as "don't write your own database, don't even use a KV database, just use SQL". And then I remembered the only reason I'd say this is because I went through designing my own DB or using KV databases just to avoid SQL...only to realise i was badly reinventing SQL. It could be worth the lesson.
by inopinatus | 2025-10-21 19:53:48+00:00
I was running millions of accounts using Postfix/Dovecot on shared-nothing storage with a single MUA-facing endpoint and complex policy options, and that was over a decade ago.

Fastmail today would be much bigger again, and they’re on CMU Cyrus.

150k is rookie numbers. Perhaps that was meant ironically to satirise mediocre enterprise thinking?
by echelon | 2025-10-21 19:53:50+00:00
I feel like that attitude has kept us on earth all this time.

We let people do stupid shit and kill themselves all the time. Driving 80+ MPH, driving motorcycles, recreational drugs, alcohol, climbing Everest, etc.

I think it's fine. If I were in the position, I'd sign up to do this.

The moon is meaningful.
by gmuslera | 2025-10-21 19:54:12+00:00
Time is a factor here. How close in time and space would be them?

If we get something coming from more than 100 light years away we might not have the technology to respond, and if we do it may not matter anyway if we are at risk of not having a technological civilization anymore 100-200 years forward. So the meaningful actions on those cases may not include answering back.

Then it will be the actual use of that message. Lets assume that we will decide that is a signal from a civilization that is out there. It will be a signal meant for us and for any other civilization that doesn't have the knowledge/culture level as them, meant for giving us a common ground for communicating back, or it will be something that just will tell us that someone intelligent is out there, but no mean to understand it?

So the options are that we find apparently benevolent aliens willing to contact us, or that we find out that someone is out there but no way to communicate/reach them. I think the second scenario is the most probable one, and how our civilization will react if widely enough will change with time, novelty at first and indifference a few years later.
by dexwiz | 2025-10-21 19:54:21+00:00
Very cool, but I have seen over a decade of alternative robots like this including several iterations of soft bodied robots. However I have yet to see a consumer device that incorporates them.

Does anyone know of them being used in their industry? Or why they haven't made it out of research? I would expect medical would be a prime case of these due to space, but it all seems to be variations on the Da Vinci setups.
by nabla9 | 2025-10-21 19:54:40+00:00
> An increase in populism is a direct result of higher inequality.

Generally considered false by most social scientists, definitely oversimplification. Inequality is a contributing factor to the rise of populism, but it is not a direct or sole cause.

For example, Trump voters are better off economically compared with most Americans. Some recent research:

Mutz, D. (2018). Status threat, not economic hardship, explains the 2016 presidential vote. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1718155115

Norris, P., & Inglehart, R. (2019). Cultural Backlash: Trump, Brexit, and Authoritarian Populism. Cambridge University Press.https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/cultural-backlash/3C7CB...
by ValdikSS | 2025-10-21 19:55:01+00:00
Yes, it has dramatic impact on the battery life.

Wi-Fi in lower power state, when it has nothing to respond to, disables power amplifier and only listens to incoming data. Some functions which are usually performed by the OS are offloaded on smartphones to the Wi-Fi chip, such as ARP/NDP replies, so it doesn't need to wake up a CPU to perform simple answers.

However with the constant keep-alive it has to both enable power amplifier and to wake up the CPU to send the reply that the socket is still alive.

I have a single-board computer with and old Mediatek chip (10 years old), and there Wi-Fi PA increases power consumption by 200mW. Another reporter in the ticket told that his smartphone works basically 1/2 of its common battery life with KDE Connect enabled.

Keep-alives (not necessary TCP keep alives, but any of this kind of packets) are the _MAIN_ reason for internet battery drain while idle, and are tricky to debug if you don't know where to look (Android lists it as "Android System" or "Phone Idle")

For example, Golang applications had 15 second keep alive until recently: https://github.com/golang/go/issues/48622. Imagine you've opened the website which uses golang web server/proxy and enabled notifications from it in the browser, which use WebSocket from the website itself. Now every time your CPU is woke up every 15 seconds until you close the page and notification channel is offloaded to google/mozilla servers. And remember: every TCP connection has its own 15-second Keep-Alive in different intervals, so it's more like 5-7 second CPU wakeup interval.

The same applies for VPN. When anybody say that anways-on VPN connection drains battery, that is 90% if the time is due to frequent keep-alive packets from the VPN server.

Everything above applies to cellular connection as well, it's the same principle.
by TimorousBestie | 2025-10-21 19:55:07+00:00
> Loadshedding is no more.

I largely agree with you otherwise (viz. South Africa is on the whole improving) but on this specific point I think you’re optimistic. When summer comes round I’m pretty confident Eskom will start loadshedding again, and their public statements more or less align with this.

Regardless: not a sign of decline! Loadshedding is evidence that demand > supply, but that doesn’t imply supply is decreasing or the system as a whole is failing. On the other hand, there’s plenty of evidence that supply has steadily increased since the 90s, new facilities opening and what not. Widespread solar will only improve the situation as the tech improves.
by steveklabnik | 2025-10-21 19:55:14+00:00
I am not an experienced magit user, (because I don't use emacs) so I can't really speak to this directly, but I can tell you what I understand to be the case.

Here's the motivation for jj, described by its creator (this will be on the FAQ in the next release:

The project started as an experiment with the idea of representing the working copy by a regular commit. I (@martinvonz) considered how this feature would impact the Git CLI if it were added to Git. My conclusion was that it would effectively result in deprecating most existing Git commands and flags in favor of new commands and flags, especially considering I wanted to also support revsets. This seemed unlikely to be accepted by the Git project.

Fundamentally, jj is a different VCS, not just a UI layer on top of git. And so there's a lot of differences, but they sort of sound more generic than specifically "vs what magit gives you."

I don't have time to be more lengthy at this exact moment, but I'll be curious to hear what others say, and I can come back and say more later if you're curious.
by b00ty4breakfast | 2025-10-21 19:55:28+00:00
Any project even a quarter as complex as a manned lunar mission going to run into problems and failures and unforeseen complications (just ask anyone who's ever done any home renovation). Things go over budget, deadlines are missed, stuff doesn't work out the way you'd envisioned. This isn't always somebody's fault or the result of poor planning (though they can be).

Yeah, we've been there already, but it's been many decades and we haven't exactly kept all the tech and procedures up to date in the intervening years. And that first go-round itself missed it's intended deadline by about 7-8 years.
by stackskipton | 2025-10-21 19:55:30+00:00
I used Exchange because it was what I most familiar with. SharePoint operates in similar matter with all sharding (though backend is still MSSQL with it's sharding last I checked)

Sure, PostFix/DoveCot will scale if you are doing just email. Once you add GroupWare requirements, PostFix/Dovecot are no longer in same boat.
by jonathanstrange | 2025-10-21 19:56:01+00:00
I would be very worried about banking security if there was only one bank and it was run by the government. Obviously, that's not the case, banks are private companies and there are thousands of them constantly competing for each other. They have a strong interest in tight security to remain trustworthy. They're also heavily regulated, probably even more than the voting system, and they're subject to financial auditing. I'm not an expert but would estimate that for these reasons banking is overall more secure than electronic voting.

I could be wrong, though. As far as I know, hardware companies nowadays cannot even be reasonably sure that the chips they use don't contain backdoors.
by ianbicking | 2025-10-21 19:56:15+00:00
I think a big part of it is not so much that they aren't capable of being a dungeon master, but they are constitutionally unfit due to their agreeability.

The biggest improvement there is to treat the game engine as the "user", and the player (and their input) is merely one among many things the game engine is managing. But then you also need a game engine that manages lots of the state programmatically, with formal transitions of that state. The LLM can manage the state transitions, but the actual state needs to be more formal.
by jandrewrogers | 2025-10-21 19:56:33+00:00
I've worked on several thread-per-core systems that were purpose-built for extreme dynamic data and load skew. They work beautifully at very high scales on the largest hardware. The mechanics of how you design thread-per-core systems that provide uniform distribution of load without work-stealing or high-touch thread coordination have idiomatic architectures at this point. People have been putting thread-per-core architectures in production for 15+ years now and the designs have evolved dramatically.

The architectures from circa 2010 were a bit rough. While the article has some validity for architectures from 10+ years ago, the state-of-the-art for thread-per-core today looks nothing like those architectures and largely doesn't have the issues raised.

News of thread-per-core's demise has been greatly exaggerated. The benefits have measurably increased in practice as the hardware has evolved, especially for ultra-scale data infrastructure.
by andrewflnr | 2025-10-21 19:56:46+00:00
Oh, I can easily believe the spelling made sense at the time. I'm not necessarily blaming the Franks so much as the English for hanging on to it. But you can't deny that words like "maquette" have French origin. (TBH I'm only taking it for granted that it has any real usage in English, but certainly words like it tend to be French. "-quette" is a dead giveaway.)
by oceanplexian | 2025-10-21 19:56:56+00:00
"Close" means a different thing in Space than it does on Earth.

If the planets are aligned the Delta-V is not that different between the two (Mars is about twice as much Delta-V for 100x the distance). You can use aerobraking in the Mars atmosphere but can do no such thing on the Moon. And then the last problem is that on the Moon you need to budget for a round trip, but on Mars we could produce fuel on the surface for the return trip. When you start thinking about all that it's obvious that Mars makes more sense.
by em-bee | 2025-10-21 19:56:59+00:00
this is a question i have explored as part of my own scifi world building:

what is a realistic timeline for first contact, and how will it actually happen?

so we decode a message that we are pretty sure is of alien origin.

we send a message back and then wait a few decades or centuries.

we don't know how far away the origin of the message is. let's assume that it is less than 50 light years. that's still a round trip of 100 years. in other words it's a generational project, and we don't know if our first response is understood. we'll have to keep iterating until we can confirm that we are actually communicating. and then, the next step will be to try to understand each other.

with a round trip that long, even under the most optimal conditions just establishing a dialog based on say math is going to take a few centuries.

of course once we have a dialog, communication is going to speed up because then we can send longer messages.

but then it could still take anywhere from 500 to 1000 years before a common language is developed and we are able to share actual scientific and engineering knowledge.

once we reached that level of communication however, we can collaborate on developing FTL.

contrary to star trek, it was always my idea that FTL travel is not developed by the inhabitants of each planet/star system on their own, but only in collaboration across multiple such systems. maybe even more than two. driven by the desire to meet each other.

so from the point of the first received message it will be one millennium before we get to learn anything about and from these aliens, and another millennium before we can meet them in person.

and that's the optimistic projection. it could just as well take 10 times as long.
by okanat | 2025-10-21 19:57:05+00:00
You may ask how do you make sure nobody changes the votes in the box somehow?

First the box is in front of everybody. Second, before allowing people to throw votes in, you seal the box with an tamper evident seal. Usually pouring beeswax over a string works. You can have multiple seals for all sides.

Having a mark anywhere else but the box you cross / stamp invalidates the ballot. You put ballots in envelopes. Each envelope must have a single ballot inside.

A voter can replace the ballot if they made a mistake. They need to destroy their ballot in front of everyone.
by ApolloFortyNine | 2025-10-21 19:57:18+00:00
They were literally 'inventing the wheel' of space travel in the 1960's to meet JFK's deadline.

Four years may sound insane to you, but they did in 8 during a time they were still using slide rules and the integrated circuit didn't even exist for 80% of the duration.

To me it's more insane that anyone is putting priority into more manned missions when you can launch at least 10x unmanned for the same cost. Scientifically speaking, I'm not sure what exists to be gained by a human on another planet versus a rover. A manned colony sounds cool but that's about the extent of its usefulness.
by hinkley | 2025-10-21 19:57:49+00:00
I believe it was git that finally made me accept that my working memory is actually below average and that I’ve coped basically my entire life by leaning on my chimpanzee-like spatial reasoning and building mind [palace] for everything, especially architectural and network topology conversations (I became the reviewer and copy-editor for the network architect for a project I wasn’t even on because someone knew me better than I did). Graph theory works a treat with this so I become the de facto VCS surgeon. It’s “just” a big, fat, straggly, 4 dimensional tree.

I try not to torture anyone with it (VCS repair) who hasn’t already exhibited a knack for graph theory. I just tell them where the man traps are and to ask if they feel like they need to go there.
by dmitrygr | 2025-10-21 19:57:51+00:00
My favourite PalmOS game! The OS 5 version is well done in that it properly adjusts to any screen resolution, including ones that no device ever shipped with. I often use it to test rePalm builds on new hardware. The OS 4 version was not as well done, so i had to patch it to support Dana widescreen and HE330 HVGA. Patched versions are here: https://palmdb.net/app/warfare-inc

For Dana, it was a simple binary patch. For HE330, a separate hack is needed that I had to write that 'enables Warfare'. Thus I called it "Kissinger"

Here is your game running on a Fisher-Price Pixter with my rePalm project on it: https://x.com/dmitrygr/status/1977255077501939726
by mikkupikku | 2025-10-21 19:58:49+00:00
Deadlines, political pressure to ignore issues and get it done, is how you get astronauts dead. Apollo 1, Challenger, Columbia. And of course Soyuz 1 and Soyuz 11 / Salyut 1; it's not just a problem for America.

I fear it's going to happen again; Orion isn't safe and hasn't been successfully tested. The heat shield started to disintegrate the last time they tested it and instead of testing it again with their changes they're going to put people in it next time.
by jotux | 2025-10-21 20:00:21+00:00
>NASA regresses so far that they are now unable to do anything by themselves...

I keep running across this perception and I don't understand where it comes from. Overwhelmingly, like since the 1970s, NASA has not built anything per it's appropriations from congress. Their job is to 1) Define mission requirements and objectives, 2) Oversee contracts to execute those missions, 3) Test and verify elements of those systems, and very distant 4) do some in-house research and development for cutting edge technology (still mostly contracted out). ~75% of their budget is contracts to private companies to execute missions.

NASA's job, as defined NASA directors over the years and by congress via appropriations, is to come up with ideas and fund private companies to execute them.
Show HN: AI Widget Turning News into Market Direction for Any Blog/Site
by LuckyAleh | 2025-10-21 20:00:40+00:00
I built an AI Market Pulse Widget that analyzes the day’s news and instantly shows the market sentiment and direction. It’s designed to be plug‑and‑play: just copy the embed code and drop it into your site or blog.

Key features:

AI‑driven sentiment analysis of daily financial news Clear market direction signals (positive, negative, neutral) Customizable design (colors, layout, size) to match your site Simple integration — works anywhere with a quick embed Free to use for bloggers, traders, and financial platforms Why it’s useful: Instead of manually scanning headlines, your visitors instantly see how the market is reacting to the latest news. It’s a quick way to add real‑time, AI‑powered insights to any website.
by inglor_cz | 2025-10-21 20:00:46+00:00
At 47, I am an older guy already. But in my generation, people who went on to be programmers usually started tinkering with code at ~ 11 y.o. (back then on ZX Spectrum and similar cheap beasts available in freshly post-Communist Europe) out of interest and passion, not because of "I want to build a lucrative career".

(Given how massively widespread piracy was back then, programming looked rather like a good way to do hard work for free.)

Money matters, but coders who were drawn into the field purely by money and are personally detached from the substance of the job is an unknown species for me.

"You can also solve problems as a local handyman"

That is NOT the same sort of talent. My fingers are clumsy; my mind is not.
by kqr | 2025-10-21 20:01:02+00:00
You can choose to not learn Emacs and still use Magit. Any LLM will teach you the necessary config and then Magit is its own set of keybinds and everything.

You don't need to learn the JVM (beyond getting it installed) to play Minecraft and you don't need to learn Emacs to run Magit.
by echelon | 2025-10-21 20:01:07+00:00
Kardashev Type III civilization:

Reverse the light cone, resimulate all moments of the past down to the neurotransmitter level. The thoughts, feelings, and memories locked inside your head.

From Neanderthal to Shakespeare to you, we could bring back everyone who has ever lived and put them in a theme park without any of them ever even knowing.

Some simulation instances might be completely accurate. For historians or as a kind of theme park or zoo.

Maybe that's us right now.

Some simulation instances might be for entertainment. They might resemble plain and ordinary, mundane day to day life (like this very moment), and then all of a sudden dramatically morph into a zombie monster outbreak tornado asteroid alien invasion simulator.

Or maybe it's obvious when a group of future gamer nerds log into an instance to role play Musk and Zuckerberg and Altman and speed run "winning". Or try to get a "high score".

Maybe it'll be eternal heaven - just gifted to us without reason or cause. That'd be nice.

Or perhaps and seemingly more likely, a bunch of sadomasochistic hell sims for psychopaths. Where some future quadrillionaire beams up into the matrix to torture poor people that used to live just for fun. It's not like we would have any rights or protections or defense against it.

Who knows.
by lewiscollard | 2025-10-21 20:01:24+00:00
> There's really no good practical solution to this problem.

Remote attestation via trusted execution environments is a thing. It is not a theoretical one either. See, for example, Graphene OS's Auditor app[0]. Solving this for voting machines in particular would be a matter of good design, not of solving fundamentally hard problems.

[0] https://attestation.app/
Ask HN: Need validation whether either of these ideas have potential?
by busymom0 | 2025-10-21 20:01:32+00:00
I have two ideas which I am researching. Do either of these have potential? These ideas are inspired by comments on an older post:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28436395

1. An app/website where you post once a day only. You can see your friends' single posts for each day. Chronological feed.

OR

2. An app/website where only pictures of animals, sceneries, architecture etc. are allowed. It auto-rejects any photo with humans.

Maybe an extra idea for both ideas: You are only allowed to post photos directly from the camera. Edited photos or photos from your photo library not allowed.

For paying the bills - no ads. Instead, the app will auto-delete all posts after 24 hours. Paid users are allowed to choose how long posts are around (1 day, 1 week, 1 month, 1 year, or permanent). They can also pin some posts to the top of their profile.

Thoughts?
by flux3125 | 2025-10-21 20:01:42+00:00
>That said, I think that if it got out, a lot of people would absolutely lose their snot. Completely. It would be chaos in some places.

It would definitely be the most important discovery ever made and would move some billions of dollars, but realistically I think people would just carry on with their lives (assuming physical contact with them is impossible in a lifetime).
by ubermonkey | 2025-10-21 20:01:49+00:00
Wow that's a wall of text proving pretty much nothing, other than that RMS is an out of touch goofball.

As I and others have noted, actually using emacs on a Macintosh is dead easy. MacOS ships with an older terminal version, so you don't even have to download anything if you're fine with that distro. OTOH, multiple native build distributions exist and are a click away.

I spend a good chunk of my day in a native build between text, scripting, and Orgmode, and, again, it's just not a problem. It's far easier, in fact, to use emacs on a Mac than on Windows precisely because MacOS is a unixy environment.
Ask HN: Have your testing and documentation practices changed?
by logicallee | 2025-10-21 20:01:54+00:00
AI will write documentation if you ask it, and also write test suites when asked. On the other hand, it can go too far and overengineer tests, or write too much documentation if asked. When making changes to the code or refactoring it, the documentation previously written could become out of date.

Have your testing or documentation practices changed due to new workflows? How many tests and how much documentation are you asking for?