MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by palata | 2025-10-29 10:05:55+00:00
I find your comment more uninformed and misleading, the parent is actually fine.

Having a curated channel for app loading is indeed a valuable security tool. It does exist in Linux distributions as well. It does not mean that it has to be the only channel.

And it does make total sense, IMHO, to warn the users when they install something through an "unknown" channel. The first time you install an alternative store, it should tell you "you'd better be damn sure that this thing is not malicious because it will install all your apps".

Which brings me to a few points:

1. I don't really see a problem with the Google Play Store being installed by default on Google-certified phones, just like I don't have a problem with the GrapheneOS store being installed by default on GrapheneOS. But the Play Store should allow me to install alternative stores (like F-Droid), just like the GrapheneOS store allows me to install... the Play Store.

2. I should be able to install an alternative OS on my phone and relock the bootloader. Which actually the Google Pixels allow (one of the reasons why GrapheneOS runs on the Pixels). I don't see a problem in allowing Google-certified Android, it's just that Google should not be allowed (by law) to prevent me from running GrapheneOS.

3. Manufacturers should be forced by law to make it easier to some extent for alternative OSes, e.g. by opening the device tree and stuff. If they don't, they should prove that they have a good reason not to. Other than "hmm I don't know, but to be safe I will just keep it all proprietary".
by VagabundoP | 2025-10-29 10:05:58+00:00
Secure boot and OEM bootloader unlock should be able to work with images so you can lock a phone after the upgrade again.

I managed to get a US refubished Pixel 2 somehow with a fuselocked bootloader here in Ireland. I bought it second hand but I've no idea how it got that way. But I'm suck on the Pixel image and I wanted to use it for ROM testing etc.
by chartered_stack | 2025-10-29 10:06:13+00:00
True the unpredictability sucks right now. We're in a transition stage where the models can understand intent but cannot constrain the output within some executable space reliably.

The bridge would come from layering natural languages interfaces on top of deterministic backends that actually do the tool calling. We already have models fine-tuned to generate JSON schemas. MCP is a good example of this kind of stuff. It discovers tools and how to use them.

Of course, the real bottle neck would be running a model capable of this locally. I can't run any of models actually capable of this on a typical machine. Till then, we're effectively digital serfs.
by mikkupikku | 2025-10-29 10:06:42+00:00
The writing has been on the wall for years. Die hard windows users have been telling me that the increasingly esoteric incantations needed to install Windows without submitting to giving Microsoft your identity are a deliberate and officially supported feature which they can rely on even as the common proles are herded onto Microsoft's plantation. I wonder if any still really believe it. The best time to jump ship is now.
by oblio | 2025-10-29 10:07:39+00:00
Programming was rarely the barrier to building these types of companies.

I know software people don't want to accept that, but it's almost always something on the business or administrative/management side of things.

Even for the programming bits, if your initial programmers suck (for some reason) but you have money, a great management team would just replace them with better programmers and fix the code mess with their help. So even that isn't a programming problem, it's a management problem.

And let's look at Twitter, who had atrocious code early on (fail whale galore), yet managed to make a profitable business due to amazing product market fit, despite management incompetence.

Companies just need to pass a code quality bar which is much, much, much lower than the bar programmers set.
by mort96 | 2025-10-29 10:08:16+00:00
I've had tonnes of issues passing through USB devices to UTM. There are SBCs I'm working with which appear as one kind of USB device, then a flashing tool sends a command which makes the SBC disappear and re-appear as another kind of USB device, which the flashing tool then writes an image to. I have gotten it to work in UTM a few times, but it's very janky every time.
by oliwarner | 2025-10-29 10:08:18+00:00
The comments surrounding this story feel so alien to so many outside the US.

Negotiating with a hospital caught double and triple billing and somehow being happy with a bill for four hours down to just $33k? This should have ended in litigation.

Elsewhere I see people facing $4k Ambulance rides jubilant at only paying $500. People laughing that they've already paid so many tens of thousands out of pocket that year so can't be gouged any further. And so many others just saying "Oh that's how hospital billing works" as if you've just explained how central locking works.

Guys, this isn't civilised. It's exploitative and in many cases just outright fraud. Why can't you fix it?
by koolba | 2025-10-29 10:08:36+00:00
> Why does the average applicant need to be penalized when their grandparents legally could not attend these institutions? I think it's pretty obvious why people have such reactions to DEI when it's literally just "legacies for people who legally were barred from participating".

Averages are meaningless, only individuals matter. Suggesting that preference for legacies be removed is a fine topic on its own, but it's orthogonal to explicitly discriminating against individual applicants based upon the color of their skin.

Since you clearly feel strongly about this topic, I'll ask again. Why should the poor white kid with no legacy relationship get cast aside for some other non-legacy kid with a tan?
by palata | 2025-10-29 10:08:40+00:00
> You have the right to install whatever you want on your computer, regardless of whether that computer is on your desk or in your pocket. That's a hill I'll die on.

I totally agree with that. BUT:

> Splitting hairs about the origin of the term "sideload" does not change

You can't start your article by splitting hairs about the meaning of the term, and then complain that people follow down that discussion :-).
by chiefalchemist | 2025-10-29 10:09:27+00:00
Editorial: If things weren’t stupid enough, Ars Technica drops another headline / title unworthy of a high school newspaper.

Sadly these stupid “journalists” believe they’re doing journalism. Worse, a high percentage of the public - yes, even on HN - believe them.

Ask HN: Does anyone know of a browser extension that’ll allow me to display: none any AT articles that are submitted. I’m tired of being insulted. Certainly there’s got to be better sources for the same information.
by int_19h | 2025-10-29 10:09:31+00:00
If the same code was all aggregated in a single large crate, it would still be compiled as a single unit, so I don't see how it would affect compilation times. And, of course, that is orthogonal to security issues.

That pip/npm/cargo model doesn't play well with distro package managers is not a new thing. I think that eventually the distro packagers will have to bite the bullet and just start packaging apps that need any of these as bundles (which, yes, means that they need to be serviced separately for security updates; but there's no reason why the metadata used to decide when that is necessary should be the same as install-time package dependency graph).
by thaumasiotes | 2025-10-29 10:09:42+00:00
"Rarely"? Did you do any investigation at all? I meant it when I pointed out that the standard pattern includes all of one of the words.

Looking at https://byjus.com/english/portmanteau/, because it was easy to find:

guesstimate, mocktail, popsicle, breathalyser, athleisure, bromance, frenemy, tragicomic, docudrama, webinar, Medicare, listicle, fanzine, scromelet, chillax, frappuccino, permafrost, staycation, workaholic...

guesstimate, bromance, and tragicomic include all of each of their source words.

And just by looking at your list, you can see why the norm is to include all of one word - those are difficult to interpret for English speakers. Brunch, spork, and sitcom are well understood, though sitcom is more likely to be seen as an abbreviation than a combination. Probably cronut will be understood too, if someone's looking at one. Motel is obviously related to hotel, plus an inexplicable m. Smog is guessable. Cyborg and Velcro are completely opaque; those are just "words".
by yahoozoo | 2025-10-29 10:09:56+00:00
What kind of features are folks implementing that require a small “team” of parallel agents? I get the feeling a lot of this use case is for start-ups and/or folks trying to self-start a SaaS or something. Personally, there’s nothing at my job that I find needs more than maybe a prompt or short back and forth with a single LLM to accomplish, but then again the project has been established for about a year or so now.
by gf000 | 2025-10-29 10:09:57+00:00
I'm not saying it's seamless and good. I'm saying that I have had windows fail in similar or worse ways.

For example the laptop I had from my previous employer (a pretty beefy Dell) was failing to go to sleep, I had to unplug the charger and the HDMI cable on my desk each night, otherwise every second night it was keeping my monitor lit on the lock screen; when low on battery it clocked the CPU down so much that the whole system froze to a grinding stop not even the mouse pointer was moving, and even after putting it back on the charger it remained similarly unusable for a good 10 mins..

Like I have been using Linux since the Xorg config days when you could easily get a black screen if you misconfigured something, but at least those issues are deterministic and once you get to a working state, it usually stays there. Also, Linux has made very good progress in the last decade and it has hands down the best hardware support nowadays (makes sense given that the vast vast majority of servers run Linux, so hardware companies employ a bunch of kernel devs to make their hardware decently supported).
by martchat | 2025-10-29 10:10:30+00:00
I believe there is some merit in the fact that everything is overanalyzed now. Every new trend, fashion, or viral phenomenon is analyzed and commoditized so quickly that it kills its originality. Movies are generated, not directed (Netflix). Music lacks character — where are the crazy, drunken stars from the ’70s, ’80s, and ’90s?

I also agree that there may be some connection with the use of mobile phones, which has actually made personal contact more difficult. Previously, if you wanted to discuss something with your neighbor or an old acquaintance, you had to call them and talk. Now it’s often just a chat. People are less aggressive and less willing to take risks.

It reminds me of an excellent Stanisław Lem sci-fi novel, Return from the Stars, where an astronaut returning from a mission finds that people on Earth have neutralized themselves from all aggressive impulses, and he is perceived as a wild and dangerous “prehistoric” man.

Another factor could also be that populations are growing older, which means less risky behavior and fewer “youth” crimes.

On the other hand, perhaps the norm to which we should compare the 20th century is the Middle Ages, when for hundreds of years everyone lived in essentially the same way.
by dominicrose | 2025-10-29 10:10:31+00:00
When you need to borrow a hundred times your salary to own a decent home, you need three hundred months to pay it back, that's 25 years in an economy were you're lucky to keep the same job for a couple of years. And I'm not even talking about all the related or other fixed or mandatory costs.

It may be a game for someone who's already rich, but it's not for most people, and if you add kids to the equation, well, that's much more difficult because it requires time which we don't have, or if we have it then it means we don't have money.
by lrvick | 2025-10-29 10:11:11+00:00
Not had a smartphone in 5 years, and would never go back. I get lost sometimes and explore new areas, I enjoy concerts with my own eyes, I can wait to deal with work when I am back home and enjoy dinner with my family, and I am always present in whatever I am doing not allowing the internet to ever tear me away.

It has changed a lot about my life, and I am so much happier. And have so much more privacy, given I also only use cash in public. I am mostly invisible when away from home, digitally.
by mort96 | 2025-10-29 10:11:19+00:00
> As you also do if a library has been on version `0.2` for the past few years. As is the case for `libc`. Or `0.4` for `log`.

If the library has been on 0.2 for a few years, that tells me nothing other than "the developer probably hasn't committed to a stable API yet". It's completely fair for a library on version 0.2.3 to break the API in major ways in version 0.2.4, since it's still in the early development 0.x phase.
by evolighting | 2025-10-29 10:11:42+00:00
Some concept from evolutionary biology: if the environment remains stable, dominant competitors can sustain their advantage indefinitely, ultimately excluding all other rivals.

This pattern seems to apply equally to the "lifestyle" of human societies. When societal environments are too stable, existing advantage groups or models will continually reinforce their status, resources become concentrated and monopolized, and new changes and opportunities become increasingly scarce.

In other words, what we may be facing is a social system lacking ecological disturbances—a world that is so stable as to suppress evolution.
by baseonmars | 2025-10-29 10:11:43+00:00
I think that's a shame - I take a different approach that means the article resonates with me a lot more.

It's about learning enough to be able to appreciate something beyond surface level. You struck a chord with coffee and headphones - yes, I've gone deep on both, but rather than suck the enjoyment out of cheaper options it's given me an appreciation across the segment. I can now buy a cheap coffee and make it taste excellent - I can appreciate a well tuned headphone regardless of cost or lack of technicalities.

When headphones reach $2k+ and coffee starts costing $50 for 100g, rather than get universally better they tend to get opinionated - a different flavor of weird as a friend once said.

So I would suggest that it's fine to go deep on something, but make sure you're doing it to get to a deeper true/understanding.
by Sweepi | 2025-10-29 10:11:56+00:00
> Back in the PowerPC and Intel days, Macs would sometimes go years between meaningful spec bumps, as Apple waited on its partners to deliver appropriate hardware for various machines.

Yes and no. Sometimes Intel did not move as fast as Apple wanted, and sometimes Apple didnt feel like it. Especially the MacPro (trash can and old cheese-grate) and the MacMini (2012-2018) were neglected.

Today, the MacPro ships with M2 Ultra, the MacStudio ships with M3 Ultra, and its not certain that the MacMini and the iMac will get the M5 or will continue shipping with the M4 for the foreseeable future.
by ggm | 2025-10-29 10:12:36+00:00
I think the concentration of ownership in Murdoch and Bezos, and like, has not helped. C suite newspaper people have become more craven as the rewards rise. So we see pay-off to politicians for market access. That undermines trust from the top.

I think the emergence of infotainment paid stories eroded the "news is something somebody doesn't want you to read" side.

And I think the fusion of non journalist commentators and editorial meant we get slant and not as much facts.
by int_19h | 2025-10-29 10:12:48+00:00
> What we used to have is a big ball of mud. Modern languages made it easier to decompose a system into components. But what we really want is easily decomposing a system into modular components which is yet unsolved.

We need to take modularity a lot more seriously, and by this I don't mean just making things more pluggable, but also well-defined component boundaries and contracts on them.

Sadly a lot of this stuff is moving at a glacial pace, and little of it is mainstream. Design-by-contract was introduced 40 years ago, and yet no mainstream PL in use offers anything past the bare minimum (asserts). Niche tech like Ada SPARK is picking it up, but even there it took decades.

And now we throw AI into the mix and expect things to work. Madness.
by jwr | 2025-10-29 10:12:51+00:00
> the APP3 are what forced the upgrade to iOS 26

I resisted, did not upgrade, and I have to suffer through Apple's spiteful treatment of my AirPods as "just another Bluetooth device". You can't even see the battery status, the battery widget will show three headphones (!). I find their attitude annoying and disturbing. There was no reason to degrade the experience.

In case anyone says "but new iOS is required to make use of the fancy new features/protocols/whatever" — that is not true for functionality that existed in AirPods 2. I know, because they didn't have the time to break things on the Mac, so my Airpods 3 work exactly the same on the Mac as Airpods 2 did: they show battery status as expected.
by NekkoDroid | 2025-10-29 10:13:32+00:00
> Every US president in history has left office peacefully, the most probable outcome is that future presidents will too.

I think you are forgetting a date that happened on the 6th day after the start of 2021. I would most certainly not call that pieceful in any way shape or form (and yes, I count that as part of leaving office, being the certification of the next president). By your logic this would mean that it is unlikely that he will peacefully leave office.
by N-Krause | 2025-10-29 10:13:41+00:00
While you're at it, you might as well downgrade to Win7. No jokes aside, if all the software you want runs on it, it is fine. Just no security update etc.

I would suggest just switching to Linux and using a VM for things that NEED to be Windows. Games that run kernel level Anti-Cheat won't run, but tbh nothing I would suggest installing anyway.
by cbeach | 2025-10-29 10:14:10+00:00
I think you're mistaken about appointment/election:

* Citizens vote in a nationwide election every four years.

* Those votes determine electors in each state — this is part of the Electoral College system.

* The Electoral College then formally elects the president based on those state results.

* The candidate who receives at least 270 of the 538 electoral votes becomes president.

So while there’s a layer of formality through the Electoral College, the president is ultimately chosen by voters, not appointed by any government body.
by kevincox | 2025-10-29 10:15:00+00:00
GrapheneOS is in some ways not an open OS. The official builds don't provide root access. So for example apps are able to hold your data hostage from you.

I get that this is in the name of security hardening. And you can make a build that has limited root access and is officially supported. But GrapheneOS isn't the end-all solution to computing freedom. Although hopefully on those devices you will be able to install custom OSes (root capable build of Graphene or otherwise).
by jwr | 2025-10-29 10:15:01+00:00
Or, just don't use a table saw. Get a tracksaw. It simply isn't true that a table saw is "required" for woodworking. Yes, there are cuts which take more time and/or are more difficult with a tracksaw, and in general you need to think more. But you don't waste a ton of space centrally in your workshop, and you get to keep your fingers, as it's a much safer tool.

The mythology is strong: I am especially amused by youtube woodworkers who, when cutting sheet goods, make "initial" cuts with a tracksaw, because it's so much safer and more practical, and then do "final", "precise" cuts on their table saw. I cut my sheet goods once, with a tracksaw (parallel guides FTW), and they are perfect.
by haunter | 2025-10-29 10:15:04+00:00
IoT LTSC is updated until 2032 https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/lifecycle/products/windows...

I use it since 2021 on my gaming PC. Zero problems, it’s a trimmed down Win 10 with most of the bloatware removed

Win 11 has a similar trimmed down LTSC version

Just install it, MS doesn’t care about piracy
by int_19h | 2025-10-29 10:15:20+00:00
I wouldn't say that Windows/ARM is that obscure anymore, not when there are quite a few laptops on the market with it.

But, by the same token, it's not an exotic dev platform. The compilers are there, the libraries already have to compile on Linux/ARM as well as Windows/x64, which means that the same C code will usually compile and work just fine on Windows/ARM.

So yeah, no, that's not a valid reason to rewrite it in Rust.
by fodmap | 2025-10-29 10:15:39+00:00
I use a ubports phone as a daily driver, and in my experience the main showstopper is all those banks, and even all those public institutions, that make mandatory to be a Google or Apple client to deal with them.

So I also need to use another phone, running VollaOS, to handle my online payments but I'm afraid Google will close this option with their latest policies. We'll see.