MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
Ask HN: Abacus, learning; Can someone explain the order of pushing the beads
by kruffalon | 2025-10-24 12:36:28+00:00
Hello, I've decided to learn the abacus (bi-quinary coded decimal).

I'm doing it because it's fun to learn new things and because I like the tactile, soundscape and afk aspects of the abacus.

At the moment I'm practising counting up and down with the "correct" fingers but it feels like I want to start doing simple arithmetic calculations (+, -, × & ÷) soon.

However, the resources I'm finding don't really talk about, or even show, the order in which to push the beads.

It might be the case that I'm just overthinking this but somehow I think it matters.

For example: 63 - 27

What is the order to push the beads, and why?

My guess is:

- 1 bead from the earth 10 rod down (-10)

- 1 heaven 1 down (+5)

- 2 earth 1 down (-2)

- 1 heaven 10 up (-50)

- 3 earth 10 up (+30)

So first I do the -7 and then I do the -20, I also move the bead(s) with the highest value first.

Does this seem correct?

I suspect I'm not thinking about the numbers and values correctly as I'm used to think about numbers in 1-10-100s and not in 1-5-10-50-100s.

If you have any resource or your own experience to share I would very much appreciate it.
by mort96 | 2025-10-24 12:37:51+00:00
Version 0.x communicates, "the API is not stabilized, and you must be prepared for breaking changes on a whim". If a library did not want to communicate that, it would release a version >=1.x.

And when most library authors communicate "the API is not stabilized, you must be prepared for breaking changes on a whim", then yeah, of course I am going to perceive that as a lack of stability.
by ClarityJones | 2025-10-24 12:38:03+00:00
The guy was punished with a 4-month jail sentence. It's reasonable to assume his crime was of the sort that would result in a 3-6 month sentence... generally misdemeanors.

It's certainly in a different category than speeding or jaywalking, but it's a lot closer to that than to the 150 years that Bernie Madoff got.
by ck2 | 2025-10-24 12:38:27+00:00
The most aggressive yet most realistic project we could reasonably do is the SGL Telescope

Won't happen under this administration and really might take a planet-wide effort but it would be incredible

https://www.centauri-dreams.org/2022/07/22/solar-gravitation...

https://www.nasa.gov/general/direct-multipixel-imaging-and-s...

https://www.universetoday.com/articles/a-mission-to-reach-th...
by vee-kay | 2025-10-24 12:40:16+00:00
The statistics are indeed quite telling.. and chilling!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lists_of_killings_by_law_enfor...

In the United States, law enforcement officers shoot and kill more than 1,100 civilians each year, with a significant number of these incidents involving unarmed individuals, particularly among Black Americans who are disproportionately affected. The FBI has begun collecting data on these use-of-force incidents to provide better insights into the circumstances surrounding police shootings.

Police killed more than 1,300 people in the U.S. last year, an estimated 0.3% increase in police killings per million people. The increase makes 2024 the deadliest year for police violence by a slim margin since Mapping Police Violence began tracking civilian deaths more than a decade ago.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2025/02/26/police...

There is no national database that documents police killings in the U.S., and the report comes days after the Justice Department removed a database tracking misconduct by federal law enforcement. Researchers spent thousands of hours analyzing more than 100,000 media reports to compile the Mapping Police Violence database.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mass_shootings_in_the_...

In 2025, the U.S. has experienced significant gun violence, with 11,197 shooting deaths reported through September 30, along with 20,425 nonfatal injuries. The year has seen a total of 341 mass shootings, resulting in 331 fatalities and 1,499 injuries.

Shootings have happened in all 50 states, at all times of day, and in locations as varied as schools, gas stations, gyms, Walmarts, and homes. Some involved handguns, others rifles or shotguns.

10.3 million guns have been sold across the U.S. in 2025 through September 30.

https://www.thetrace.org/2025/10/shooting-gun-violence-data-...

Mass shootings in the United States are incidents where one or more individuals use firearms to kill or injure multiple people, typically in public settings. The frequency and definitions of these events can vary, but they have been a significant concern in recent years, with the U.S. experiencing more mass shootings than any other country.

GVA has recorded 325 mass shootings in the U.S. this year through three quarters. Those have resulted in 309 deaths and 1,490 injuries.

Mass shootings in the last quarter included the high-profile shooting at a New York skyscraper, as well as the shooting of 29 people, 26 of them children, at a church in Minneapolis. Two children, aged 8 and 10, were killed in that incident.
by mellosouls | 2025-10-24 12:41:22+00:00
It's quite frustrating when writers like the author - who seem quite thoughtful and potentially useful to read - appear to pontificate on a field without seemingly being aware of it; using a great mathematician's thoughts on it as a springboard doesn't justify it as its not his field of expertise either.

The essay might be more useful grounded with references to the sort of thing you link to.
by bayindirh | 2025-10-24 12:41:28+00:00
> "Upstream systemd will do X, distros who want to are free to do Y"

Yes this is a good response from upstream. I can work with that, but in that case, even this response didn't get reflected to mailing list discussion, or drowned out instantly.

My question was more general though, questioning systemd developers' behavior collectively (hence the projects' behavior) through time.
by whynotminot | 2025-10-24 12:41:32+00:00
Many of you don't seem to grasp that AI isn't a binary "don't use at all" or "all-in on pure slop" proposition. AI assisted development is not automatically vibe-coding.

Believe it or not, you can actually use these tools to level up your skills and understanding faster and then ship better code! Like with any powerful tool, it requires some care to use it correctly.
Show HN: ResizeImage.dev – A fast image resizer runs in browser
by wainguo | 2025-10-24 12:41:40+00:00
Hey HN

I built ResizeImage.dev that runs 100% client-side — nothing gets uploaded, and it’s instant.

What it does

Resize, crop, and optimize images directly in your browser

Supports JPG, PNG, WebP

Works offline (PWA-ready)

No tracking, no server, no data collection

How it works

It uses the Canvas API and WebAssembly codecs to process everything locally. All transformations happen in-memory, so no files ever leave your machine.

Why I built it

I needed a simple, no-BS way to resize images for web and social media — something fast, private.

Try it

https://resizeimage.dev

Feedback welcome

I’d love feedback from the HN community

Thanks for reading!
by GuB-42 | 2025-10-24 12:42:21+00:00
Maybe it should be "really learn about object-oriented programming (at a low level)".

Methods are functions, with an implicit argument usually called "self". Unless they are static, in which case, they are just regular functions. Classes are data structures, abstract methods are function pointers, inheritance adding data at the end of an existing data structure. In fact, inheritance is like a special case of composition.

Those who oppose object-oriented programming the most are typically the functional programming guys. But what is a function variable if not an object with a single abstract method, add attributes and you have a closure.

It will all end up as machine code in the end, and understanding how all these fancy features end up on the bare metal help understanding how seemingly different concepts relate.
by groovecoder | 2025-10-24 12:42:23+00:00
Populism isn’t just bad elites or gullible masses. It’s what happens when both sides lose the virtues that once held them together. Elites forget humility and justice, turning reason into arrogance; populists forget prudence and temperance, turning righteous anger into resentment.

HN itself is a kind of popu-elitism. Look at the other comments here. We're a crowd of self-identified “slow thinkers” who often post fast, intuitive reactions. The irony is that our intuitions here are shaped by analytic habits, not moral ones.

The real goal isn’t to think faster or slower, but to build a society that makes a virtuous life first possible, and then easy.
by cookiengineer | 2025-10-24 12:42:56+00:00
The real question I have in my mind, observing this from Germany, is: How much dirt does Sarkozy have on these families that own the media/press?

Was this a regime similar to Putin's role in the FSB when he collected all the dirt on oligarchs until everyone was controllable?

The logical choice for a media agency would be to disassociate themselves from Sarkozy, not the other way round. There has to be something else at play here, and I'm assuming it's not financial control because Sarkozy's family should not have much influence left there, given that the Judicative rulings already are done.
by beAbU | 2025-10-24 12:44:11+00:00
Having grown up in an African country that has been "collapsing" for the last 30 years, and looking at the neighbouring countries that went through or is going through similar issues, I think the US has far to go before things can be regarded as "collapsed". Unfortunately such an implosion is not instant, but it's a gradual frog-boiling decline that gets harder and harder to get out of.

If you are hoping for some limit to be reached where a popular uprising will be triggered, then I would advise to not put your hopes on it.
by TacticalCoder | 2025-10-24 12:44:28+00:00
First before venting I'll say this: thanks to stuff like hypervisors, VMs, non-systemd distros, minimal immutable Linux distro like Talos (made to run Kubernetes with a minimum number of executable) and OCI containers where, by definition, PID 1 is not systemd, there's thankfully a real way out of systemd, even on a Linux stack.

And I think more people should look into being, once again, 100% systemd-free.

> Can anyone tell why systemd developers run fast and loose with what they believe and bully everyone with a stick made out of their ideas?

Because the goal is to take control of Linux. That's why systemd is PID1. That's why Poettering works for Microsoft.

The real question is: why was that ultra-convoluted xz backdoor attempt only working on Linux systems that did have systemd? People shall try to wag the dog saying "but it's because this and that made is so that xz was loaded by OpenSSH, it's got nothing to do with systemd". It's got everything to do with systemd.

And the other question is: how many backdoors are operational, today, on systems that have systemd?

Systemd is Microsoft-level bloat, running as PID 1, spreading its tentacles everywhere in Linux distros, definitely on purpose.

Poettering is moreover an insufferable bully, as can be seen once again.

From TFA:

> So what do you recommend how to go on from here? Change Debian policy (as asked in #1111839), revert the change in systemd, find a Debian wide solution or let every package maintainer implement their own solution?

I suggest Debian just drops systemd once and for all. Debian can still be made systemd-free but it's a hassle. Just make Debian systemd free once again.

Meanwhile you'll find me running systemd-less distros on VMs and running containers giving the PID 1 finger to systemd.

I can't wait to switch my Proxmox to FreeBSD's bhyve hypervisor (need to find the time to do it).

But most of all: I cannot wait for the day a systemd-less hypervisor Linux like Proxmox comes out.

It's coming and people who write stuff like: "Don't use Docker, use systemd this and systemd that" are misguided.

systemd is to me the antithesis of what Linux stands for.

I hope Debian gets pissed enough at some point to fully drop systemd.

P.S: one of my machine runs this: https://www.devuan.org/ and honestly it's totally fine. So yup: power to all those running systemd-less distros, BSDs, etc.
by mewpmewp2 | 2025-10-24 12:44:47+00:00
Yeah I never understood descriptions or who the intended audience of those long winded descriptive words is, but if other people have this magical capability of getting visual imagery out of it, I guess sure. It is hard to believe, but it must be the case. It is so hard to fathom that other people process things so differently, but I guess it can also explain a lot.
by ramses0 | 2025-10-24 12:44:49+00:00
Take a look at "cockpit", because if there were, that's where it "should" be.

https://cockpit-project.org/applications

--

With no command line use needed, you can: Navigate the entire filesystem, Create, delete, and rename files, Edit file contents, Edit file ownership and permissions, Create symbolic links to files and directories, Reorganize files through cut, copy, and paste, Upload files by dragging and dropping, Download files and directories.
by Razengan | 2025-10-24 12:46:19+00:00
> Or does it strand you halfway between stars in the doldrums where the force on both sides of your sail equals out from two stars?

This is actually I "love" to think about:

What would it be like, to be "stranded" in the space far from any stars?

or in the "voids" where there are relatively very few stars/galaxies to begin with?

There must be things drifting there right now...

It would also be the perfect place to HIDE something :)
by duxup | 2025-10-24 12:46:24+00:00
Yeah we already have judgments that the executive branch has gone well beyond it's allowed limits and the majority of SCOTUS stance has been:

"Yeah well let the legal process play out ... in the meantime our guy gets to do whatever he wants, and you're still fired / kicked out of the country / funding cut / an so on".

If it is at all inconvenient for the most powerful folks in the country, they get any limits on their actions protected by SCOTUS ... at the cost of the people.
by neobrain | 2025-10-24 12:46:59+00:00
> The repeating behaviour and the 'not now' are two sides of the same coin. Per the original post, and my experience, those 'not now' buttons keep coming back.

So you're using "not now" as a shortcut to identify malicious design. That's fine but personally I'm not. I would go as far as claiming as most people don't feel this way about such a tiny wording detail, but I obviously haven't ran any A/B testing to confirm either interpretation.

> And, for the sake of argument, how should respectful software behave? If I clicked 'not now', are you _ever_ going to ask me again? If so, how do you decide on the time-period?

Honestly this question seems bizarrely focused on making the software give you a definite promise on what it will or will not do. It's a valid design question how to respectfully prompt the user for choices, but if that's your concern then this specific wording choice is an unimportant detail to get stuck on.

> If not, why make 'no' more complicated than 'yes'?

The reason was given my my opening argument: "no/yes" demands a conscious choice whereas "not now" doesn't. "not now" is plausibly less complicated than "yes" for a majority of users, and cognitive overhead generally matters more to people than imaginary contracts about future choice prompts.
by BOBOTWINSTON | 2025-10-24 12:47:34+00:00
Short Answer: The whys can just be boiled down to gambling, weird investing, flexing wealth, sports fandom stuff, or wanting to invest in your hobby.

Long Answer: It is a bit of a perfect storm, and you'll get a lot of mixed answers to this, however these are the reasons I see roughly in order of their impact.

1. Skins are the vehicle for gambling (you bet them instead of $). The loot boxes definitely get people hooked, but the skin gambling arena is a whole different beast.

2. Valve, whether by luck or skill, created a perfect system of scarcity. I can elaborate a lot on how this is done. The rarity of the skins is one thing, but the float system giving each drop a mostly unique appearance causes a 2nd tier of scarcity that adds a lot of value. They hired a bigwig Greek economist to develop this system.

3. The market has been stable-ish for long enough that some people view it as a legitimate safe investment. I have heard this is very popular in China, but I really don't know how this behavior is spread out globally. I have a friend with over $100k in the market (well, he did before this).

4. Almost everyone I know who plays seriously has at least invested a small amount in the game. I play with roughly the same 8 people, and 7 of us all spent $1-2k on the game, with inventories ranging from $1-5k.
by tim333 | 2025-10-24 12:48:20+00:00
I think the brexiteers are saying this is no good - they didn't do it properly. One of my disappointments with it all as a remainer was I thought at least the brexiteers will be happy but they were miseries before and miseries after as well.

There's quite a lot of scrambling just to keep most stuff going as you say.
by foul | 2025-10-24 12:48:57+00:00
In European nations who aren't English-first-language it's quite widespread around university students and people that outgrown Whatsapp, it isn't very much different than using a Discord groupchat (and you lose less important stuff in Telegram). Admittedly a bit is for network effect around "grindset" jocks but it isn't very much different than using discord or Meta messenger or Slack, just a freemium SaaS that the project doesn't support firsthand so if "our server" is down, "theirs" maybe is not. I say they are all the same although Telegram's insecurity is proven, they still are the same overall for a FOSS project.
by mewpmewp2 | 2025-10-24 12:49:04+00:00
I am much better with written too, but more so I feel because my monologue under pressure from scratch wouldn't be as focused or systematic since in social situations there are so many random questions, factors, and things to process. While on my own I can let my monologue systematically work in its specific tempo without being interrupted.

Searching physical items is something I am terrible at, usually because my monologue doesn't care for it and rather would do something else or think about something else. So I tend to have monologue about something entirely other than searching and I walk randomly hoping I find the keys as a background process. Sometimes my monologue will get to a really interesting idea for me and then I just have to try it out and forget that I had to go outside in the first place.

It is really, really hard for me to direct my monologue to everyday routine activities.
by MrDarcy | 2025-10-24 12:49:40+00:00
I believe so. For me it was helpful to visualize getting up and convincing the judge of the damages.

I’d run a PnL, get average daily income from visitors, then claim that loss as damages. In court I’d bring a simple spreadsheet showing the hole in income as evidence of damages.

If there were contractors to help get the site back up I’d claim their payments as damages and include their invoices as evidence.
by hagbard_c | 2025-10-24 12:49:41+00:00
I tend to use a shop vacuum to get rid of undesirable wasp nests. Fill the tank with a few litres of water so the victims have something to drown in, point the tube at the nest entry or whatever entry the wasps use and switch it on for an hour or so. As soon as there is some disturbance most of the resident wasps will exit the nest to defend it so you'll get the resident population in only a few minutes. Keep the vacuum in place for a while to catch those which were out and about. Once you've got (most of) the workers the nest will die out if left alone. If you can reach it you can knock it down and drown or burn it, if it is in a wall somewhere that is not an option.

Don't forget to put water in the tank or you'll be met by a cloud of angry wasps when you open it.
by nerdralph | 2025-10-24 12:49:45+00:00
We install rodent guard mesh on all our residential rooftop installations. The Canadian Electrical Code requires it in most instances. Rule 64-210 5):

Where the dc arc-fault protection referred to in Rule 64-216 is not located at the module, photovoltaic source circuit insulated conductors and cables installed on or above a building and installed in accordance with Subrules 1), 2), and 3) shall be provided with mechanical protection in the form of an enclosed raceway or other acceptable material to protect against damage from rodents.
by dpoloncsak | 2025-10-24 12:49:55+00:00
FWIW, people were purchasing Steam Decks with the "Steam Money", then reselling the console for cash.

Its still not "cashing out", but I'm sure some made some decent money. I would assume you could sell game keys to those less-than-reputable sites as well? Dunno

Agreed overall though, these are just extensions of "happening off-market"
by whywhywhywhy | 2025-10-24 12:51:31+00:00
>This attitude really rubs me the wrong way, especially on a site called Hacker News.

It's just that even in the realm of hardware by small teams built upon Pi boards this is very overprice and poor construction and cheap components for what it is.

Selling for $400 there are case solutions other than a cheap 3D print, and button choices other than the cheapest button on the market.
by ace520 | 2025-10-24 12:51:32+00:00
An online free image mosaic website, including various image processing functions:

1. Image Mosaic

2. Image format conversion

3. Icon image generation

4. Image compression 5. Convert color images to black and white 6. Add watermark to the image 7. Image watermark removal 8. Nine Palace Grid Cutting Diagram 9. Text to image conversion 10. Image stitching 11. Image with text 12. Round corner processing of images 13. Image enlargement 14. Old image restoration 15. Black and white coloring 16. Transparent background color 17. Background color change
by xg15 | 2025-10-24 12:51:51+00:00
CSCI 2171: User Experience of GUI tools

- Learn how to design a graphical user interface that empowers the users instead of coercing or manipulating them.

- Prerequisites: Any course that used the term "funnel", "user journey", "A/B tests" or "engagement".

- Includes a historical bonus part about "Native UI Toolkits" (not part of the exam)
by duxup | 2025-10-24 12:52:02+00:00
Sometimes these articles confuse me. I think because I came from Windows to the Apple land (at least full time) only in the past few years.

These articles sometimes confused me until someone on HN had a quote:

"MacOS has never been worse, but the distance between MacOS and Windows has never been greater."

So I see these articles and I ... I'm really happy in MacOS land.
by steveklabnik | 2025-10-24 12:52:13+00:00
Most of the time in jj you don’t even rebase manually, because it’s automatic. And the vast majority of the time, I’m using one or two flags to rebase if I am calling it. You might even need only two in this case (before only might be fine?) I just use both before and after because it’s so easy to remember the names.

Anyway you should use the tools you like, it’s all good.