MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by drdaeman | 2025-10-14 02:41:17+00:00
> have empathy for people who haven't the faintest idea how their gadgets work and no curiosity about learning that.

I sincerely hope that a lot of people are actually better than how the stereotypes may make one think. Empathy (or lack of it) doesn't change the issue: users are deprived of choice and forced to go along a corporate decision, whenever it benefits them or not.

Ultimately, it all boils down to lack of informed consent and power/voice disparity between casual users and large corporations, especially when the choice is limited (and we have a de-facto duopoly). What you're seeing here is users expressing their dissatisfaction with a major decision that goes against their interests and that they had no say in. Have some empathy for those folks too.

I'm pretty sure most people who are unhappy about the news don't want to harm anyone and find no enjoyment if someone is harmed by lacking informedness. I'm very confident there are ways to present the issue and give a choice in a manner that is comprehensible to anyone, without requiring any technical knowledge. Every competent adult should be able to decide if they want to risk a thief gaining access to all their accounts at the benefit of ability to have extended control over their phone. Or be unable to install applications not blessed by the vendor, at the benefit of vendor promising to keep them safe from malware. I might not do the best job here, but I strongly believe that such things can be explained to anyone regardless of their life choices.

That's not what Google is doing, and their disrespect for user autonomy should not be confused for a lack of empathy towards those who don't understand computers.

Consider this framing: there's a controversy whenever it's acceptable that one could be punished for their choices on how their devices behave. I.e. whenever users willing to have better control over their devices should be punished by a refusal to access a lot of popular apps, sometimes even resulting in social awkwardness. I'm sure that empathetic people can see how this can feel unfair.
by idiotsecant | 2025-10-14 02:41:26+00:00
Haha that last part is pretty wild. rather than worrying about systemic problems in the entire internet let's just make mandates crippling devices that China, where all these devices are made, will defffinitely 100% listen to. Sure, seems reasonable. Systems that rely on the goodwill of the entire world to function are generally pretty robust, after all.
by drnick1 | 2025-10-14 02:42:43+00:00
Yes, Lineage and Graphene are far more usable than people without first hand experience imagine. The vast majority of Android apps just work. Some may display a warning when first launched about custom ROMs being "unsupported" (like Whatsapp), but then just work as expected. A few users also report broken notifications (those that use Google's library to implement them), but it's a minor inconvenience, at least for someone like me who dislikes notifications.

And there are many great apps available on these free Android devices that are simply not available on "official" builds such as NewPipe, because Google obviously doesn't want you to block ads on Youtube.
by galangalalgol | 2025-10-14 02:43:30+00:00
The software mistakes that killed people were software doing things no other automaker even tries to do. Very possibly with good reason. The software that does bog standard normal things like coolant control and battery preconditioning works well and seems to be tested and deployed in a reliable way. That is still so much better than what we get out of others. I would love an electric car with no can bus or microcontrollers, so I'm right with you. If anything the point to be made is that Tesla, who has killed people with its software, is still way better than average... So yeah, we are bad at what we do.
by roughly | 2025-10-14 02:44:01+00:00
It gets a lot less contradictory when you realize the principles are window dressing for the interests.

Early America had no regard for intellectual property rights because all the good media came from abroad - then we built Hollywood and saw the light. The west pushes deregulation and free trade because we've got the money and the only thing that can keep us from sucking a market dry is government intervention. The Dutch just seized a company because a geopolitical opponent was using it to exercise leverage, which is also how TikTok became a sub-brand of Oracle.

Nation states will use whatever words are necessary to justify their actions, but the game is and always has been power, leverage, and interest. Given the rise of China, I'm guessing we're going to get a lot more opportunities to tut and shake our heads about how hypocritical western governments turn out to be with regards to national economic interests.

(And, to be clear, I'm not saying this is like it's a good thing. I'm not a government, I'm a person, so all I get is the pointy end of all this happy rhetoric.)
by stmw | 2025-10-14 02:44:30+00:00
Exactly, and it's not just register allocatio: but for many languages also addign proper typing, some basic data flow optimization, some constant folding, and a few other things that can be done fairly quickly, without the full set of trees and progressive lowering of the operators down to instruactions.

What's odd about the "JIT vs interpreter" debate is that it keeps coming up, given that it is fairly easy to see even in toy examples.
by Waterluvian | 2025-10-14 02:44:35+00:00
For what it's worth, I don't see myself as being cynical. I see myself as playing the role of the consumer. I'm holding yours, and every potential competitor's product to a high standard, which I could imagine being seen as a welcome advantage for any toy maker who wishes to distinguish themselves from the competition.

I'm the "I want to pay a premium to buy something once, and to find joy in how every bit of that thing oozes passion and love by its creator" consumer.
by dotnet00 | 2025-10-14 02:45:17+00:00
By putting his wealth into a vision, I mean all the test flights, being much more tolerant of failure, betting everything on Starlink. We're at flight 13, and likely at least flight 16 before anything orbital, likely into the upper 20s before reliable refueling and non-Starlink payloads. Most other rich people haven't done much besides minimally funding small startups or dead end joyrides.

Bezos has been somewhat similar, he has been pouring billions into BO, and while BO has moved at a slower pace, he's clearly committed for the long term too, considering all the investments into things that only make sense if New Glenn acheives reliable booster reuse (the giant futuristic rocket factory, Project Jarvis, the lunar cargo lander).
by rcleveng | 2025-10-14 02:46:47+00:00
I'd rather write python than rust personally, and I also don't mind if anything performance critical is written in rust.

Letting each language do what it does best is really ideal, I'm glad that python has a great FFI, I wish golang did.

Speaking of golang, the typescript compiler is now written in it. Another case of using each language for it's strengths.
by bigbadfeline | 2025-10-14 02:47:17+00:00
> can now people like you appeal to free trade

You're assuming too much and, along with others here, acting like you've been hurt. "Free trade" is the mantra of Western economists and politicians since the time of Adam Smith, and it's been a ruse since then too. Read him.

> When China cannot compete with incumbents those protections also go up.

They do, but not in the erratic manner, levels or timing we're observing here. China is a party of the WTO and they haven't broken any of its agreements, nor have they used any of its emergency clauses.

> You are being overly charitable to one side here. Which is it? Free trade or Protectionism?

It's not either/or. I can tell you a third option that is worse than both of these - it's jumping from one to the other and back in an erratic manner as we are doing it now.

I could tell you something that's better than all of these too but I won't do it. I've been talking about it for many years, primarily as an alternative to free trade and I'm amazed that at this time, nobody seems to be aware of it. Like, what's the point of pointing out obvious truths over and over again with the same (lack of) result.
by ulfw | 2025-10-14 02:47:23+00:00
Previous poster got a point though. Yes regulations are ridiculous thanks to every German and every EU government piling on more crap. Zero argument there. 100% true.

But its also true that things CAN get through regulations. 1000 pages of environmental impact assessment takes time. But it doesn't take years. Things can be done in parallel if someone actually gave a fuck.

Sadly no one does because by the time anything starts 2-3 new governments/administrators/mayors have been in place. And people don't like to work on things someone else already took credit for.
by gyomu | 2025-10-14 02:47:32+00:00
This is why everyone not in technology hates us.

I'm a technologist. I get it, on some level it's kinda cool that we have the technology to bring this thing into the world, and so of course one wants to build it and make it real.

Breadboarding it as a fun weekend project is one thing. But making it exist as a product sold on Walmart.com is another.

What is the point, exactly? I mean this as a serious question to think about, not as a blanket dismissal. Any object, by the mere fact that it exists, demands something from the people it is put in contact with. What behaviors does it encourage, what beliefs does it promote, what skills does it exercise?

If I spend 60 minutes with my kids writing a physical letter to Santa, then going out and putting it in a mailbox, I have a fair sense of the answers to the questions above, and whether those answers are things I want to encourage or not.

If they spend 60 minutes interacting with this object, I'm not so sure I feel so confident about the answers.
by barnabyjones | 2025-10-14 02:47:37+00:00
I'm not seeing any mention of the Entity List ITT, which seems like the real reason. Via SCMP:

>Some analysts said the move by the Dutch ministry resulted from a new rule issued by the US Bureau of Industry and Security, the agency responsible for export control policies. The rule, effective September 29, imposed new restrictions on entities which are at least 50 per cent owned by enterprises on the Entity List or the Military End-User List – two blacklists issued by the US government.
by tomjakubowski | 2025-10-14 02:47:46+00:00
> Add tests for fixed bugs to never repeat them

In my experience of all the kinds of tests one can write, it's easiest to see that regression tests carry their own weight. But they have a tendency to bitrot; after enough refactors and rewriting of core elements and dropping of features they may need to be thrown out. Hopefully your bug tracker is in good shape so you can recapture the test's intent in your new context when you rewrite it, or else make the case that the bug is no longer relevant and discard the test for good.
by a_bonobo | 2025-10-14 02:48:22+00:00
I used to work in such a factory in Germany and turn-over was high :) A large pool of uni students doing their summer breaks propped up the place. They could afford to work there for 1-2 months mentally because they knew they'd go back to university (me, too). The few long-timers on the factory floor were mostly functioning alcoholics.
by epistasis | 2025-10-14 02:49:01+00:00
"Seriously spent" where serious is less than the cost of a single bomber for the military. I forget what Geoffrey Hinton said it was, but it was an embarrassingly small pittance.

Military spending is largely economic dead weight, roughly the equivalent of handouts. And the end result is deterrence in a game of prisoners dilemma. Yet it is sacrosanct, and subject to ever increasing budgets for no gain.
by bgwalter | 2025-10-14 02:49:48+00:00
Part of that comes from Microsoft API deals. Part of that will most certainly come because the vast network of companies buy subscriptions to help "Open" "AI" [1].

Given the rest of circular deals, I'd also scrutinize if it applies to the revenue. The entanglement with the Microsoft investments and the fact that "Open" "AI" is a private company makes that difficult to research.

[1] In a U.S. startup, I went through three CEOs and three HR apps, which mysteriously had to change for no reason but to accommodate the new CEO's friends and their startups.
by Spivak | 2025-10-14 02:50:07+00:00
> make an "adult" version that crudely simulates a phone-sex hotline

This is a quaint almost vintage version of the technology that already exists. Why stop at just audio when you can right now have a "video call" with your AI sexbot? If you were worried porn was going to lose it's top spot for pushing technology forward—and backward and forward and backward—to it's eventual climax then worry no more!
by thomassmith65 | 2025-10-14 02:50:22+00:00
We are much more "zero-sum," both right and left.

The mistake with ending on that note is that, while 'both right and left' are more zero-sum, only the left gives a shit about the ideals in the actual quote.

To drive the point home, the current crop of Republicans wouldn't take kindly to an immigrant SJW college professor like the character in the film preaching to them about liberal values.

Then again, he is Hungarian like Viktor Orbán, so maybe that would get him in the door.

https://npr.org/2025/05/29/nx-s1-5399682/hungary-trump-vikto...
by drnick1 | 2025-10-14 02:51:09+00:00
> I just switched to the iPhone with the new cycle, explicitly because of this news.

And guess what, sideloading has never been allowed on iPhones.

So you just went from bad to worse. The only rational option for tech-minded people nowadays is to buy a device that supports Lineage or Graphene (ironically Pixels are good for this) and to replace the stock OS.
by jazzyjackson | 2025-10-14 02:51:59+00:00
That's good. 1 800 chat gpt really let me down today, I like calling it to explain acronyms and define words since I travel with a flip phone without google, today I saw the word "littoral" and tried over and over to spell it out but the model could only give me the definition for "literal" (admittedly a homonym but hence spelling it out, Lima indigo tango tango oscar Romeo alpha Lima, to no avail)

I said "I know you're a robot and bad at spelling but listen..." And got cut off with a "sorry, my guidelines won't let me help with that request..."

Thankfully, the flip phone allows for some satisfaction when hanging up.
by tomhow | 2025-10-14 02:52:02+00:00
I believe you. But one of the reasons we have this guideline is that, most of the time, the author/publisher is not in the thread, and was not the submitter to HN, which seems to be the case here. So it amounts to "shouting into the void", as your comment will not reach the person who can respond or take action.

I get that you don't see it as "complaining" or "shouting", but it's still an off-topic tangential remark, and we want discussion to focus on the substance of the article.

It's different if the author is active in the thread; then it's fair enough to ask them about this kind of stuff, because they are able to respond and take action.

Otherwise you'd be better to contact them directly via email, Tweet, etc.
by oskarkk | 2025-10-14 02:52:43+00:00
It's obvious that before SpaceX moved in, 6 permanent residents of that little village weren't damaging that environment more than today's thousands of people working on a huge industrial site built in place of that village (and now 500 people are actually living in Starbase). SpaceX activity in that area obviously has some environmental costs, like every other industrial activity or any human settlement. The cost of human progress.

Btw, it was a seal[0][1], not a dolphin ;)

[0] https://x.com/TalulahRiley/status/320421724644573184

[1] https://x.com/TalulahRiley/status/320422298618302464
by lrvick | 2025-10-14 02:53:02+00:00
In the 5 years since giving up a smartphone I started a new generation Linux Distro from 0, started a security consulting company, made hires, traveled the world, and learned several completely new skills, while having a fairly active family and social life.

Having so much more time to do actually useful things means I am present when relaxing, and focused when working, and get a lot more out of both portions of my life.

Anyone telling you that you need a smartphone to survive in the modern world is an apologist gaslighting you. Use cash, and offline tablet or nothing at all, and be digitally invisible and 100% present in the real world.
by bee_rider | 2025-10-14 02:54:55+00:00
“While it is never safe to affirm that the future of Physical Science has no marvels in store even more astonishing than those of the past, it seems probable that most of the grand underlying principles have been firmly established and that further advances are to be sought chiefly in the rigorous application of these principles to all the phenomena which come under our notice.” Albert A. Michelson (yes, that Michelson, one half of Michelson-Morley), 1894

If it feels like there’s nothing for us engineers to research, that’s probably a sign we need more basic research from the scientists!
by zbentley | 2025-10-14 02:54:56+00:00
You sure? Which hardware?

Put another way: stuff like Electron makes a pretty good case for the "cheap hardware leads to shitty software quality/distribution mechanisms" claim. But does Docker? Containers aren't generally any more expensive in hardware other than disk-space to run than any other app. And disk space was always (at least since the advent of the discrete HDD) one of the cheapest parts of a computer to scale up.
by jazzyjackson | 2025-10-14 02:55:42+00:00
They ain't called guard rails for nothing! There's a whole world "off-road" but the big names are afraid of letting their superintelligence off the leash. A real shame we're letting brand safety get in the way of performance and creativity, but I guess the first New York Times article about a pervert or terrorist chat bot would doom any big name partnerships.
by Eji1700 | 2025-10-14 02:56:24+00:00
Ehhh I can see it. The right attack at the right time could directly or indirectly kill people, and that’s ignoring the fact it can cause economic havoc.

Having the entire internet function on a “pay or be nuked” threshold that could easily get much worse if companies like cloudflare become less ethical (not that they’re saints).
by kube-system | 2025-10-14 02:56:41+00:00
US employers cannot discriminate against a deaf person and must make reasonable accommodations to make it safe for them to do their job.

US employers are not legally required to make accommodations for people who simply want to listen to music at work.

Today's vehicles already have a lot of sound deadening (and good stereos) and it is becoming a problem for emergency vehicles. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6lvTBmBDPno
by LarsDu88 | 2025-10-14 02:58:53+00:00
That's feels like such a luddite take. 50 years from now AI powered toys will be so ubiquitous and common to people, they will barely blink.

Just imagine how people must've failed against the first electronic toys 80 years ago, or Pokémon 30 years ago. Ask yourself... if this makes you depressed, what exact kind of new technology would make you happy?
by zamadatix | 2025-10-14 02:59:23+00:00
(Having also worked on DDoS mitigation services) That "entire /64" is already hell of a lot more granular than a single CG-NAT range serving everyone on an ISP though. Most often in these types of attacks it's a single subnet of a single home connection. You'll need to block more total prefixes, sure, but only because you actually know you're only blocking actively attacking source subnets, not entire ISPs. You'll probably still want something signature based for the detection of what to blackhole though, but it does scale farther in a combo on the same amount of DDoS mitigation hardware.
by gruez | 2025-10-14 03:00:59+00:00
Source? The wikipedia article makes it pretty clear that it was in response to the 9/11 attacks. It got delayed several times so it ended up taking 2 decades to implement, but Trump had little to do with it. The May 7, 2025 deadline was set back in 2022, under Biden.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real_ID_Act#Legislative_histor...
by Sean-Der | 2025-10-14 03:01:24+00:00
How is roleplay with this object different then other toys? If you get lost in a D&D game is that bad because the world isn't real? Getting lost in Myst and making Doom WADs was a joy I have always been trying to recapture. I am constantly looking for a way to do that for others.

What do you think of my take here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45575175? These 'LLM Role play' toys have hit a real fun spot with my kids.
by gngoo | 2025-10-14 03:02:22+00:00
I really like building products, and with AI now I can just offload huge parts of the technical duties, and do the actual product building much faster. For me this is where the real satisfaction is. Yes of course, there was a lot of satisfaction with doing it myself, fixing a bug, problem or finally implementing something after a long grind.

But honestly I do not miss it at all. The further AI coding advances, the easier it becomes to build and iterate over small products (even if they just start out as MVPs). And the more I actually feel in my element. I understand why people dislike it, but it feels as if these tools where specifically made for me; and I am getting more and more exited while these keep getting better.

In a perfect world, I'd see no code at all and just tell the AI what I want, and a blackbox implementation with my product appears that I start to sculpt down to something I can work with and serve to users. That would be my ultimate satisfaction.
by heavyset_go | 2025-10-14 03:02:22+00:00
> Mac apps outside of the Mac App Store really doesn’t have any sandboxing.

Apps can and do ship with sandboxing rules that will be applied at runtime.

> ChromeOS also isn’t open source. And expecting end users to “configure sandboxes” you might as well not have one.

I listed ChromeOS as one of four consumer operating systems used by billions of people that uses sandboxing, not as an open source OS.

Notice how I did use ChromiumOS when referring to open source software, along with Chromium.

> And expecting end users to “configure sandboxes” you might as well not have one.

Who said anything about expecting users to do that? I just mentioned that you could configure them if you wanted to, like I said in my GP.

Again, my point is that these are consumer products that billions of people use everyday that use sandboxing by default, yet somehow not even having to think about sandboxing is too onerous for end users?

> Firefox is s browser, and didn’t they tighten what third party extensions can run?

Yes, it is open source consumer software that does sandboxing by default without the user having to think about it.

> Android - or at least the version that most people use - is not “open source” by any stretch of the imagination.

AOSP is very much open source
by dhosek | 2025-10-14 03:03:01+00:00
Probably he’d be Josué. But in Greece, he’d be Ιησούς (Jesus). Beginning with the Vulgate¹, there was a distinction between the two names in Biblical texts that is carried over into most modern contexts (although I would note that Russian follows Greek in preferring then name Иисус (Jesus) for Joshua the prophet and I’m guessing that this in general follows the Catholic/Orthodox split (Croatian uses Jošua while Serbian Исус lending support to my hypothesis.²

⸻

1. Or maybe the Vetus Latina, I can’t claim enough authority over early Biblical translations to say with any certainty. And perhaps some other non-Western translation would have priority in making the Joshua/Jesus distinction.

2. My grand strategy for making these sorts of cross-lingual comparisons is to use the “other projects” links from Wikipedia which is also a great way of getting more accurate translations for somewhat niche terminology than machine translation or dictionaries can offer.