MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by dijit | 2025-10-06 16:21:23+00:00
That's a very precise reading of my argument, and you're right to point out the subtle shift in focus. I agree completely that the fury was over the perceived attempt to downplay the narrative, which means we now agree on the symptom of the problem.

The disagreement now is over the existence of an actual coordinated attempt to downplay the story. Here's why I think that question doesn't even need a leaked memo to be proven, (which is key to understanding why people stop trusting the media).

Traditional journalism operates using shared professional standards called news values[0]; things like Conflict, Prominence, Unusualness, and Human Interest. The Zarutska story was loaded with these: an innocent Ukrainian refugee killed by random, violent crime on public transit. It's an international story of "broken sanctuary" and obvious tragedy. If this had happened in the UK you wouldn't question why it would be international news I would guess?

The media's initial, noticeable hesitation on this high-value story, while simultaneously giving instant (and this is the key), massive coverage to the Daniel Penny incident (which also happened on public transit and also involved mental health issues), is precisely what creates the perception of visible selectivity.

It doesn't take a secret meeting for editors to collectively know which stories fit their organisational or political narrative best and which ones are "toxic." They simply apply the news values inconsistently. The public observes this difference in speed, framing, and resource allocation. They conclude that the news isn't being chosen based on objective newsworthiness, but on political utility. That is the mechanism that drives people away from traditional sources and toward the very "untrustworthy" alternatives that promise to cover the stories the mainstream leaves behind.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/News_values
by tracker1 | 2025-10-06 16:21:33+00:00
On #2, even though I and most of my friends/family are in the US, likely going to offer such to friends and family... I'm about to move from a /29 to /28 subnet to run a few extra services on my hosted server.

I've got a nice mailu config and wanting to expand with Nextcloud (or alternative) and likely xmpp services... I mostly use a pretty light host VM and docker compose configuration to make up/down/backup/restore pretty smooth... I'm not currently running across multiple servers, but do want to be able to have a slightly more consistent config... I've got a combination of Caddy and Traefic on the different servers for TLS and all my apps are /apps/appName/(data|docker-compose.yml) on the server(s). Which keeps my maintenance chores relatively simple from a couple remote ssh commands and rsync.

Mostly been a bit lazy in terms of getting this all done.
Show HN: Photowand – Turn selfies into professional photos with AI
by fengjiabo2400 | 2025-10-06 16:22:03+00:00
Hey HN! I built this over a weekend after a frustrating experience with our wedding photographer.

We paid $5,000 and got back a few dozen photos. The colors were off in several shots – too warm, inconsistent lighting, some faces looked washed out. I wanted to fix them myself, but photo editing is incredibly complicated. Photoshop has hundreds of buttons, layers, masks, adjustment curves. I spent hours watching YouTube tutorials just to adjust colors on one photo. There had to be a better way.

So I built Photowand.

What it does: Upload any photo, describe what you want in plain English, and get professional-quality results in ~20 seconds. "Fix the colors and lighting" or "change background to beach sunset" or "make this look like a professional headshot." No Photoshop skills needed.

Try it without signup: photowand.ai

How it compares to existing AI tools:

vs ChatGPT: - Better photorealistic quality (specialized model, not general-purpose) - 4x faster processing (20 seconds vs 80+ seconds) - Bulk generation (create 50 variations simultaneously) - Iterative editing (make changes to existing photos, not just one-shot generation)

vs Gemini: - No watermarks on any images - Faster generation (20 seconds vs 40+ seconds) - Simpler interface (just describe what you want) - Commercial licensing included

Technical approach: Custom diffusion models optimized for photorealistic photography. I trained specifically on professional photo datasets (headshots, products, real estate, food) rather than general internet images.

Key features: - Natural language editing ("fix the lighting" instead of adjusting curves) - Consistency across batches (same person in multiple poses) - 400+ photo pack templates (LinkedIn headshots, product photos, etc.) - Unlimited revisions (describe changes, apply instantly)

What happened after I launched: - Now processing 500k+ photos daily - People using it globally in more than 180 countries - Turns out lots of people have the same problem (photographers cost $500-$5,000)

Where it still fails: - Wedding photography (emotional timing requires human intuition) - Complex hand interactions (I flag ~5% for manual review) - Extreme artistic vision (brand-specific creative direction) - Events requiring physical presence

The irony: I made this to fix my wedding photos. Now people mostly use it for business photography (LinkedIn headshots, product catalogs, real estate listings).

Tech stack: Custom diffusion models, Next.js, R2 storage, Cloudflare

Try the demo: photowand.ai (no signup required)

I'm here all day to answer questions about the architecture, training approach, or where AI photography still needs humans.

What would make this more useful for you?
by ishouldbework | 2025-10-06 16:22:07+00:00
"will put me into a torture camp" for sure, but "devalues my life or personhood" is pretty vague. So, for example, if I value guns and consider them necessary for my well being and personal safety, should I refuse to work with anyone who votes for increased gun control? This sounds like a recipe for very fragmented, unstable society.
by lunias | 2025-10-06 16:22:14+00:00
Strong disagree on crossovers providing the "best combination of the three." People seem to think this, assuming that their purchases are influenced by thought... But based on my observations (and physics); Sedans, coupes, or anything with less mass will be safer, more efficient, and more capable. It's actually the tendency of people to purchase crossovers and even more massive vehicles that results in smaller vehicles being seen as "less safe". It has created an arms race of sorts, but doesn't change that F=ma. Car companies want to sell you a crossover because it's good for them, not us. Just stop and think for a minute why there are no SUV motorsport series... Enthusiasts have competitions for almost every type of vehicle except the type that most people buy. SUVs / crossovers are like dull, heavy knives wielded by the inexperienced and uncaring.
by giraffe_lady | 2025-10-06 16:22:46+00:00
> And what worries me is those (both on the left and on the right) who think that silence is a form of opinion or approval.

Definitely definitely. When a racist paramilitary is disappearing my neighbors my primary concern is whether people will consider me complicit for publicly stating that I have no duty to interfere.

You don't have to have an opinion on everything but you do have to have an opinion on some things. Or I mean, obviously you don't, but then you have to accept the social consequences of cowardice.
by aeturnum | 2025-10-06 16:23:25+00:00
I have been eagerly sharing my location with as many people as possible for years. I have not been very discerning about it - and in fact if anyone in this thread wants my location feel free to message me on signal (drex.64) and I'll share on google maps. No need to share back (though I don't mind)!

The simple reason for this is that we are all already sharing our locations with many corporations all of the time. I just shared my location with home depot a few days ago so it could locate which store I am in. Google knows my location constantly. There is an urgent, obvious need for us to develop social practices around location sharing. We must build these practices and preferences within our communities so that as the wide scale tracking develops we can understand what we would consider reasonable. The demarcation of pen registers to track phone calls came out of a sense of what is a reasonable invasion of privacy - we must socially develop that sense around this form of sensing.

I now have a pretty healthy community of location sharing and the stories in this piece are familiar. When I was in the ICU for a few days (thankfully due to medical confusion and not a real condition) people reached out to see if I was ok and needed anything. I know people who discovered that a mutual friend died unexpectedly when their phone had been at the morgue for several days. There is no question, in my mind, that "always on" sharing is probably too much for most people. But the only way we will develop a detailed sense of what we want instead (and what we should insist on when it comes to corporate tracking) is to engage with it and reflect.

So far my thoughts on how to do it better involve a series of contextual elements to increase or decrease the specificity of sharing. I.e. if you are out doing errands there's no need for a precise location - show a few blocks. However, if you are close to a friend, show a precise location and notify both parties. Consider creating tiers of sharing where when you enter an area of concern (hospital, morgue, etc) your location is visible and flagged for people close to you but otherwise appears generally to others (as if you are shopping as above). Etc, etc. There is much work to do here and I hope others are thinking about how to do it.
by DonaldPShimoda | 2025-10-06 16:23:25+00:00
By "it" do you mean delimited continuations? If so, my understanding is that they are the standard mode of interruption in Racket — all error-raising/handling and other continuation forms (call/cc, etc) are implemented in terms of delimited continuations because they're a more general abstraction than the older primitives. You can read about Racket's continuation model and where they're used in §10.4 of the Racket Reference [1].

[1] https://docs.racket-lang.org/reference/cont.html
by CharlesW | 2025-10-06 16:24:01+00:00
It likely aligns with California generally:

Democrats: 10,396,792 (44.80%) Republicans: 5,896,203 (25.41%) Third Party/Other: 1,577,083 (6.80%) Unaffiliated: 5,336,441 (23.00%)

However, keep in mind that Apple’s rank-and-file employees have virtually no power to effect change, and are no more likely to rock the boat than their counterparts in other Silicon Valley companies. They like their job and their healthcare.
by microtonal | 2025-10-06 16:24:13+00:00
It's not surprising that game pass is failing. We got an Xbox Series X over Playstation because of Game Pass. We subscribed to Game Pass Ultimate in April 2023 for 12.99 Euro per month. Now little over two years later, the same subscription is 26.99 Euro (more than doubled).

It's great that it has quite a lot of games, but in practice we only played a small number of titles. This was fine for the original price, the benefit over buying games was that you could try more titles before choosing what you like to play. But we are certainly not going to pay 26.99 monthly for games that you do not own in the end.

It kind of feels gross/bait-and-switch'y.

In the meanwhile the Xbox is collecting dust we got a Switch 2. Sure, Switch 2 titles are expensive, but at least you own them.
by saltyoldman | 2025-10-06 16:24:13+00:00
> A firefighter cools down burnt batteries at the National Information Resources Service (NIRS) in Daejeon on Sept. 27. [YONHAP]

New caption:

> A firefighter wants to see the cool explosive reaction between water and lithium at the National Information Resources Service (NIRS) in Daejeon on Sept. 27. [YONHAP]
by alexchantavy | 2025-10-06 16:24:22+00:00
I love the idea of GamePass (unlimited games for one small monthly fee) because it reminds me of Sega Channel on the Genesis back in the 90s.

But in practice, games that I’m into take 20+ hours to finish, and with my busy schedule, a $60 game gets stretched out to a year or so, so GamePass’ $15 fee (which is a lot higher now!) becomes too expensive
by Andrew_nenakhov | 2025-10-06 16:24:27+00:00
I guess it's part of the trend now. Some time ago both Google and Apple rolled out very flat UIs -- Apple in iOS 7 and Google with Material Design in Android 5, and both where mostly flat. I don't know, maybe they were influenced by Microsoft's Flat UI that ultimately went nowhere. Yet, over time, Google began introducing more and more meaty designs with more aggressive rounded corners, eventually ending up doing everything very curvy. Maybe folks at Apple looked at that and wanted some of those curves, too. So previously the trend was to flatten everything, now the trend is the reverse of the previous.
by johnnyanmac | 2025-10-06 16:24:47+00:00
Let's seriously ask ourselves here: even if we sit down and let ICE detain, say, 10k people (mind you, that's about 1.5% the population of Oregon, or 1 in 60 people): do you really think they are going to bother with the violent homeless person you complain about?

They aren't hitting gangs or any actually dangerous people, they are looking for weak targets. They aren't trying to clean up the streets, they are geting their rocks off playing GTA IRL.
by rps-cx | 2025-10-06 16:25:07+00:00
SEEKING WORK | Fractional post-sales leadership (Customer Success, Professional Services, Support) | New York/NJ (US-ET) | Remote or on-site

Hi, we’re RPS Consultants. We install and run the post-sales engine for SaaS companies so founders can focus on growth. Two-in-the-box model: you get an operator for Customer Success and an operator for Operations working as one team.

What we do - Stand up or mature CS/PS/Support so time-to-value, retention, and renewals improve - Design and run expansion motions with forecastable NRR - Build simple operating rhythm: onboarding playbooks, handoffs, health scoring, QBR/EBR, risk reviews

How we work - 2-week evaluation across people, process, data, and tools - Then a fixed cadence: 8, 16, or 32 hours per week split across two operators - Fixed-fee, outcome-oriented; short diagnostic or multi-quarter engagement

Who we help - B2B SaaS, post-Series A to D, strong sales motion but thin post-sales

Recent outcomes - Scaled a cybersecurity vendor’s post-sales functions to support $50M+ ARR - Led transition from perpetual licensing to subscription with SaaS operating fundamentals - Built global teams and reporting from sub-10 to 100+ across CS/PS/Training/Support

Availability - US and EMEA hours. Start with a two-week evaluation or jump straight into an operating cadence.

Contact - Email: contact@rps.cx - Book a chat: https://rps.cx/meet - Site: https://rps.cx

If you are winning deals but losing momentum after the sale, we should talk.
by dannyobrien | 2025-10-06 16:25:29+00:00
This is the path that the GNU Mes and Guix folks are taking: https://guix.gnu.org/en/blog/2023/the-full-source-bootstrap-...

(sans LLMs -- I believe they have a Scheme (GNU Mes) that can be compiled from their 357 byte bootloader, and that Scheme can run a C compiler that can compile tinycc, and I think there's a path from tinycc to compiling gcc. I'm not sure how far it can get after that -- this blog post[1] implies that you still need a binary of guile to run Gash, which is a POSIX shell written in Scheme. I'm guessing the plan is to either simplify Gash or complexify Mes to be able to remove Guile as a dependency.

[1] https://guix.gnu.org/en/blog/2023/the-full-source-bootstrap-...
by A4ET8a8uTh0_v2 | 2025-10-06 16:25:55+00:00
<< So wait, you're saying that Trump hasn't actually stopped more people from coming in? That doesn't surprise me, since the only policy goal here is the cruel spectacle to entertain the plebs.

Hmm. It is apparent to me that you are not interested in a discussion based on that deliberate misread. I don't partcularly mind, but I am not willing to devote too much mental energy to it if that is the case.

<< You're either getting me confused with someone else

It is possible, but your note gave me an idea so thank you for this.

<< "aw shucks, it is what it is" isn't a very interesting position

Then it begs the question: why did you deem it interesting enough to respond to. I don't need you to respond. This was rhetorical.
by andrewmcwatters | 2025-10-06 16:26:34+00:00
Bullshit. Practically an AI slop article itself. The rest of us actually building products know reality is different because we’re intimately familiar with our competitors and their limitations.

Copying and playing catch up was possible before AI.

I really wish we could downvote submissions like this. It adds nothing of meaning to the discussion of the subtleties of competitive product development.
by 1gn15 | 2025-10-06 16:26:57+00:00
IIRC the IA no longer cares about robots.txt after it kept getting abused [1] to take down older pages. You can still request to take down pages, but it needs a form and a reason. [2]

(Remember, robots.txt is not a privacy measure, it's supposed to be something that prevents crawlers from getting stuck in tar pits!)

[1] https://blog.archive.org/2017/04/17/robots-txt-meant-for-sea...

[2] https://help.archive.org/help/how-do-i-request-to-remove-som...
by kyryl_shulga | 2025-10-06 16:27:29+00:00
Hi everyone, I'm the creator of Stat. I built it because I found it surprisingly hard to get a quick sense of what people actually think — most survey tools are too heavy for that. On Stat, every post is a poll: you can vote, see live percentages, and filter results by demographics like age, gender, or country. You can also attach a short blog-style note to discuss or question the outcome.

I’m also working on a small game inside Stat where you try to guess the actual poll percentages — a fun way to test how well you understand the crowd.
by hedora | 2025-10-06 16:27:30+00:00
This article is currently flagged for some reason, but here’s a productive suggestion. Maybe it’ll get unflagged:

If you’re building a phone app, make sure the progressive web app version has feature parity.

I’m extremely late to the party, but recently found react native, and my software runs on android, ios, pwa, macos, windows and linux, “for free”.

This not only bypasses potential future app store censorship, but, with critical mass, is an enabling technology for “daily driver” quality open source (or at least not ios/android) phones.

Are there other enabling technologies like this that I should know about?
by duskwuff | 2025-10-06 16:27:55+00:00
Looks like:

1) Too few developers to keep up with new Android releases, or with devices becoming obsolete over time. They got stalled trying to update to Android 11 (2020) and never finished.

2) Refusing to support newer devices that doesn't meet their demands (e.g. must have a removable battery). Turns out, the market doesn't respond to the demands of a small open-source project.
by lenerdenator | 2025-10-06 16:28:05+00:00
Video gaming is the mess that it is in 2025 because the market allows for it. If you can commoditize nostalgia, people who really should not be paying you money will gladly do so.

How many of us have more games in our Steam libraries, bought during a sale ("It was only $7, how could I resist?!") than we could reasonably hope to enjoy in a human lifetime? How many Game Pass subscriptions are actively used vs. just forgotten about and drawing revenue on auto-renew and autopay? How many people regularly comment online about how anti-consumer Nintendo has gotten with their IP lawsuits and remastered game sales, only to gladly preorder those same games on the new console?

Vote with your wallet.
by xpe | 2025-10-06 16:28:14+00:00
Here is how I would charitably and clearly restate your position -- let me know if this is accurate:

1. You accept the definition: "Xenophobia is fundamentally about irrational fear or hatred of people based on their foreign origin or ethnicity. It targets people and operates through stereotypes, dehumanization, and often cultural or racial prejudice."

2. You claim this sentence from the NIST report is an example of irrational fear: "the expanding use of these models may pose a risk to application developers, consumers, and to US national security."

3. As irrational fear isn't sufficient for xenophobia, you still need to show that it is "based on their foreign origin or ethnicity".

4. You don't provide any evidence from the report of #3. Instead, you refer to Trump's comments as evidence of his xenophobia.

5. You directly quote my question "Can you please share where you see BS and/or xenophobia in the original report?" In your response, you imply that Trump's xenophobic language is somehow part of the report.

My responses to the above (again, which I think is an accurate but clearer version of your argument): (1) Good; (2) I disagree, but I'll temporarily grant this for the sake of argument; (3) Yes; (4) Yes, Trump has used xenophobic language; (5) Since we both agree that Trump's language is not part of the report, your example doesn't qualify as a good answer to "Can you please share where you see BS and/or xenophobia in the original report?".

Your claim only shows how a xenophobic Trumpist would interpret the NIST report.

My take: Of course the Trump administration is trying to assert control over NIST and steer it in more political directions. This by definition will weaken its scientific objectivity. To what degree it has eroded so far is hard for me to say. I can't speak to the level of pressure from political appointees relating to the report. I can't speak to the degree to which they meddled with it. But this I can say: when I read the language in the report, I don't see xenophobia.
by frizlab | 2025-10-06 16:29:28+00:00
> Apple also uses its app store control to block rival browser engines (every browser on iOS is just a reskinned version of Safari).

Yeah, that’s a good thing to prevent browser monopoly.

> Apple's own browser engine, Webkit, is riddled with longstanding, grave security vulnerabilities, and there is no way to distribute more secure browsers on iOS.

Adding a new browser will just increase the attack vector. Especially since webkit is used everywhere in iOS, not just in Safari…