MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by IgorPartola | 2025-11-24 05:19:15+00:00
I have never hosted my own email. It took me roughly a day to set it up on a vanilla FreeBSD install running on Vultr’s free tier plan and it has been running flawlessly for nearly a year. I did not use AI at all, just the FreeBSD, Postfix, and Dovecot’s handbooks. I do have a fair bit of Linux admin and development experience but all in all this has been a weirdly painless experience.

If you don’t love this approach, Mail-in-a-box works incredibly well even if the author of all the Python code behind it insists on using tabs instead of spaces :)

And you can always grab a really good deal from a small hosting company, likely with decades of experience in what they do, via LowEndBox/LowEndTalk. The deal would likely blow AWS/DO/Vultr/Google Cloud out of the water in terms of value. I have been snagging deals from there for ages and I lost a virtual host twice. Once was a new company that turned out to be shady and another was when I rented a VPS in Cairo and a revolution broke out. They brought everything back up after a couple of months.

For example I just bought a lifetime email hosting system with 250GB of storage, email, video, full office suite, calendar, contacts, and file storage for $75. Configuration here is down to setting the DNS records they give you and adding users. Company behind it has been around for ages and is one of the best regarded in the LET community.
by eddd-ddde | 2025-11-24 05:19:42+00:00
Wrong, it makes good designs easy to write with clear safe APIs. If you know what you are doing just create a safe wrapper over unsafe functions and do what you need.

For example you can just write a lockless triple buffer for efficient memory sharing and wrap the unsafe usage of pointers with a safe API. now you only need to pay attention to those specific unsafe calls.
by hedora | 2025-11-24 05:19:57+00:00
Is there something similar to this for rust wasm?

I have some frontend use cases for rust that I just ended up rewriting in typescript because transferring and loading the wasm rust blob is more expensive than running the program.

I imagine wasm-conscious optimizations would look a lot like targeting microcontrollers, but with weird escape hatches to high-level browser apis.
by kimixa | 2025-11-24 05:20:08+00:00
I think it's very sector dependent.

Working on drivers, a relatively recent example is when we started looking at a "small" image corruption issue in some really specific cases, that slowly spidered out to what was fundamentally a hardware bug affecting an entire class of possible situations, it was just this one case happened to be noticed first.

There was even talk about a hardware ECO at points during this, though an acceptable workaround was eventually found.

I could never have predicted that when I started working on it, and it seemed every time we thought we'd got a decent idea about what was happening even more was revealed.

And then there's been many other issues when you fall onto the cause pretty much instantly and a trivial fix can be completed and in testing faster than updating the bugtracker with an estimate.

True there's probably a decent amount, maybe even 50%, where you can probably have a decent guess after putting in some length of time and be correct within a factor of 2 or so, but I always felt the "long tail" was large enough to make that pretty damn inaccurate.
by chii | 2025-11-24 05:20:54+00:00
but not completely - and this is only even talking about maintenance. The initial investment is absolutely not "paid for", because the economic returns from them are privatized, and the tax collection of those private benefits aren't really up to par imho. If it was a private business who did this road/highway investment, they'd be losing money (due to the cost of capital, and the lack of returns from collected tolls/taxes, not to mention the maintenance outlay that comes as a big lumpsum).
by AlotOfReading | 2025-11-24 05:23:16+00:00
Consider the case of roads as a system of transit. Fuel taxes and licensing costs don't remotely cover the infrastructure costs, and roads predated them by decades. They're obviously scalable. They're not remotely sustainable financially (and effectively free to access) yet they remain stubbornly resilient even in the face of massive political shifts.

Why is that equilibrium impossible for other transportation infrastructure?
by hshdhdhj4444 | 2025-11-24 05:24:04+00:00
Apple keeps cycling between great hardware and not so great software and great software and not so great hardware.

In the PowerPC era the software was fantastic, especially when you factor in the much lower odds of viruses and malware. However, the hardware was well behind the curve except right at the release of a new generations, which were few and far in between.

Then when Apple switched to Intel, you had a few years of incredible hardware and incredible software. This is when the Mac absolutely blew up.

But then while Apple has constantly been improving the hardware (although they’ve made repairabiltu and extensibility worse), their software has seen a steady decline.

Where Apple has been really lucky is that while their software has seen a steady decline, their primary competitor MS’s software has seen several steep declines.
by TheDong | 2025-11-24 05:24:11+00:00
The "internet" died long ago.

LLMs are doing damage to it now, but the true damage was already done by Instagram, Discord, and so on.

Creating open forums and public squares for discussion and healthy communities is fun and good for the internet, but it's not profitable.

Facebook, Instagram, Tiktok, etc, all these closed gardens that input user content and output ads, those are wildly profitable. Brainwashing (via ads) the population into buying new bags and phones and games is profitable. Creating communities is not.

Ads and modern social media killed the old internet.
by dragonwriter | 2025-11-24 05:25:14+00:00
> The age of the earth, according to a reasonable interpretation of the Old Testament, is likely to be 6000 (Masoretic text) to 8500 years (if you rely on the Septuagint versions).

So, when you say Christian creationism is “evidence based”, you mean a “reasonable interpretation” of a text with a whole litany of direct internal inconsistencies, and which itself has no evidence (leaving aside personal faith) of being anything other than a collection of mythology, supports it and not, you know, actual material evidence?
by chii | 2025-11-24 05:26:32+00:00
the root cause is customers refusing to punish these downtime.

Checkout how hard customers punish blackouts from the grid - both via wallet, but also via voting/gov't. It's why they are now more reliable.

So unless the backbone infrastructure gets the same flak, nothing is going to change. After all, any change is expensive, and the cost of that change needs to be worth it.
by yummypaint | 2025-11-24 05:26:54+00:00
Interactions between species are scarcely understood in general, if they are known at all. It's only very recently that the existence of mycelial networks was discovered. It's only very recently that the importance of micro biome and it's role in health is starting to be recognized. It's only in hindsight that impact of the near extinction of vultures in India on human health was understood.

History has shown industrialized humans to be dangerously ignorant of environmental systems, and almost every action we take with regard to these systems is destructive. Every extinction is irreversible. Things are so wildly out of equilibrium now that it's no longer possible to return to the equilibria from our past.

Ecological collapse isnt some mild inconvenience that makes milk more expensive. Once it has happened, ecological collapse cannot and will not be undone by the seriousness of "business." This type of thinking embodies exactly the kind of arrogant hubris that led us into this situation. The negative feedback loops that have kept earth habitable for us so far aren't laws of nature, and no-one knows how far they can be bent before breaking, or how they even work.
by saghm | 2025-11-24 05:28:56+00:00
A greedy algorithm (in the academic sense, although I suppose also in the colloquial sense) isn't the optimal solution to every problem. Sometimes doing the next most valuable thing at a given step can still lead you down a path where you're stuck at a local optimum, and the only way to get somewhere better is to do something that might not be the most valuable thing measured at the current moment only; fixing bugs is the exact type of thing that sometimes has a low initial return but can pay dividends down the line.
by the_af | 2025-11-24 05:30:07+00:00
But that's the kind of argument you're making by dismissing opinions that e.g. clubbing other athletes since winning is the most important thing is bad, and that if we don't like it we should "join a commune".

Others have already explained that while a business must make money, that's not always the most important thing, there are competing goals (not excluding money, but sometimes as important).

And if you didn't understand the original comment by stavros, then he clarified what he meant. So now you have the chance to stand corrected: he meant making money at the expense of all else, including worker happiness. This point has been made more than once already, you cannot have missed it.
by shinycode | 2025-11-24 05:30:07+00:00
The worse thing is the companies behind those tools know it, they know it’s not reliable and it looks like they want to build a world where a majority of people won’t check sources anymore and blindly trust the LLM as authority. I fear that, by a tour de force of some kind, they’ll shield themselves from giving any source is the future in the name of « intelligence ». What will happen in the next generations where young that have grown up only with LLM giving them answers they saw as truth and older generations died? What a different world it will be.
Ask HN: How to get over the "Work –> Appreciation" cycle
by Nischalj10 | 2025-11-24 05:30:14+00:00
I am a 24yo trying to figure out what kind of work makes me happy. I am currently a software engineer.

I love when people appreciate what I have built - and this cycle of "work -> appreciation" has been shortest in software engineering. Other fileds rarely feel the same (eg research, hardware, etc.)

With the tiktokification of software engineering with AI - this cycle has never been shorter - though I do agree making production grade software still requires meaningful amount of efforts and us as programmers have always been writing toy software just for the fun of it.

But lately, I have been deeply interested in pursuing psychiatry research and have been thinking of doing it full time by going for a masters degree. All things aside, I am not sure how would I get over this extremly short feedback cycle of delight that software has made possible and if there's any advice on how should I think about this transition.
by gobip | 2025-11-24 05:31:40+00:00
It's not a storm in a teacup.

They lost thousands of emails and they treated every customer individually while blocking people from complaining on their subreddit.

Then, it was posted here on HN and they finally decided to stand up and fix their reputation by saying they care and want to do better, after months of silencing the issue as much as possible.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33432296
by larusso | 2025-11-24 05:32:46+00:00
Ok I wished for this kind of feature for years. I started using a yubikey with an ssh key via gpg ssh-agent in 2018 or 2019. When resident ssh keys came around I switched over to FIDO2 based keys on my yubikey. The main issue with both was the fact that the default ssh setup wasn’t working anymore. One needs extra configs and more commands to get to the public key etc. Yubikey’s are great but block an USB port. And then there is the age old question for me: One SSH key per User for all services? One key per machine for all services? Or one key per service? This year I started to play around with the 1Password ssh-agent feature (bit warden has it as well as far as I know) If you're ok with allowing all your keys being listed in the agent this works pretty easy out of the box. I never liked the fact that the default recommended way to use ssh is to use an agent that just has multiple keys which can be tested one after another and in most cases stay unlocked there after first use for the rest of the session. I configured around to make sure that I explicitly use one key for one specific service. But that is sadly extra configuration etc etc.
by KingMob | 2025-11-24 05:32:59+00:00
I have the same problem, but I always assumed it was Apple's fault. I don't know why the HAs/Airpods have the final say.

I don't think there's a way around it on the iphone, but I was able to cobble a fix for my macbook at least. It uses Shortery to run a Shortcut whenever my HA connects. The Shortcut runs a shell script that uses https://github.com/deweller/switchaudio-osx/ to determine the built-in mic and switch back to it immediately:

BUILTIN_MIC_ID=$(switch-audio --list-input | jq 'map(select(.name == "MacBook Pro Microphone")) | .[0].id') switch-audio --set-input="$BUILTIN_MIC_ID"
by chickensong | 2025-11-24 05:33:16+00:00
Yes, we all know the basic requirements of business.

The replies to your comment are push back against your attitude of "biz make money, don't like it join a commune", in the context of grinding up employees.

We're saying there's a middle ground, where some businesses will sacrifice some profit in exchange for taking care of their employees, instead of treating them as disposable.
by nobody9999 | 2025-11-24 05:33:48+00:00
>Whenever I hear about this criticism of free public transit I always wonder why the question isn't "how do we keep homeless people from living on our busses" and is instead "why don't these homeless people have some place to live that isn't a bus?"

Exactly. and asking the wrong question is nothing new either. there were plenty of folks wondering aloud about how to "get rid of" the homeless people back in the 1980s in NYC (then the homeless population there was ~50,000).

Usually it was some sort of "arrest/detain them all, then reroute them to shelters." The shelters being places where they can be warehoused and victimized over and over again without disturbing the normies or, heaven forfend, the tourists!

Only once did I see the right question being asked. I've searched and searched but have been unable to find the article online. It's an op-ed piece from the Village Voice, circa 1987 by Nat Hentoff or Dan Ridgeway entitled" What Do Homeless People Want?"

Fortunately the question posed in the title is answered in the very first sentence of the body: "Homes, mostly."

Why is it that we're not asking (or acting upon the obvious answers to) the right questions? That's not really rhetorical, although the answers will likely be pretty ugly.

Here in the US we can* do better, and we should do better. This is not a new issue that requires new solutions. Give homeless people, you know, homes.

But that's evil and wrong and absolutely Stalinism that will end up with tens of millions dead, right? Please.
by stevenjgarner | 2025-11-24 05:34:45+00:00
Here's a crazy idea. I personally prefer the fidelity of an active ambient in-ear monitor (IEM), as used by musicians on stage over the best hearing aids. Once a year, I do a monthly trial with the latest hearing aid models and IMO the fidelity (especially low-end) and the comfort just is not there compared with the best active ambient IEMs. The difference between hearing aids and IEMs is blurring, but they are not yet fully interchangeable.

Standard IEMs isolate you from the world, which is the opposite of what a hearing aid does. However, a specific category called "Active Ambient" IEMs bridges this gap. These are IEMs with embedded high-fidelity microphones on the outer shell. They pick up the sound of the room (bandmates, crowd, conductor), amplify it, and blend it with your monitor mix. The accompanying bodypack or app often includes a multi-band EQ and Limiter. You can boost specific frequencies where you have hearing loss (e.g., boosting highs to hear cymbals or speech clearly) and set a volume ceiling to protect your remaining hearing. I have no ownership/sponsorship in the product, but I personally LOVE the ASI Audio 3DME (powered by Sensaphonics), which is the industry standard for this. [1] It allows you to use an app to shape the ambient sound to your hearing needs.

The Pros: It provides hearing protection + monitoring + hearing enhancement in one device.

The Cons (Why they aren't daily hearing aids):

1) Form Factor: You are tethered to a belt pack. You likely won't wear a wired bodypack to a grocery store or dinner party.

2) Social Barrier: Wearing full-shell custom IEMs creates a "do not disturb" look that discourages conversation in social settings. This can be more socially alienating than a comparatively inconspicuous hearing aid.

3) Battery Life: IEM systems typically last 6–8 hours, whereas hearing aid batteries can last days or weeks.

[1] https://www.sensaphonics.com/products/3dme-custom-tour-gen2-...
by queenkjuul | 2025-11-24 05:34:47+00:00
Personally, coming from higher level languages (Python, TS, Java, C#) I've found Go by far the easiest to get productive in.

You're probably right that for trivial examples C is, in principle, the simplest to learn and understand. But in reality, non-trivial C projects come with complex build systems, makefiles, macros, endless compiler flags... I've found it pretty hard to, for example, fork a moderately-sized C project and modify it. Hell sometimes even building it is a challenge when you don't understand make/build system errors and how to set up and configure C projects.

Go, however, i could just get up and running. Simple to use modules, simple to import dependencies, simple to build projects, great centralized documentation. Now granted do i fully understand all the nuances of things like pointer receivers and generics? No, but i don't really understand memory allocation in C either to be quite honest, and I've spent more time trying to understand C in my life than i have Go (please understand: extremely little in both cases)

Rust does seem similarly impenetrable honestly, except that it seems much easier to build and manage Rust projects. But I definitely can't even just read Rust code and get it the way i can Go (or even C)
by the_af | 2025-11-24 05:35:09+00:00
It's ridiculous to expect every single aspect of the employer-employee relationship spelled out in the contract. There are - or should be - certain societal expectations that the employer will not cause undue stress or unhappiness on the worker. This must not be negotiated in a cutthroat manner; that's such an American thing to expect (which was partly stavros point, I believe).

There are other ways to conduct business that are less exploitative without requiring a specific clause in the contract saying the employee will be treated well.

Companies lay off employees for all sorts of evil reasons unrelated to "we will go under otherwise". There's reason to believe the "great layoffs season" of a few years back was at least partly an act of collusion by big tech companies (which it then cascades to smaller companies) which had more to do with regulating down wages than with them risking going under.

Someone mentioned a few weeks back Nadella's memo explaining some big layoffs at Microsoft where he rambled about how it seemed contradictory that the company was doing so well yet they were letting go so many employees "which we've known and learned from for years" yet "the Lord works in mysterious ways" (ok, I made up this last phrase, but what he said amounted to the same). He failed to point out a single specific reason, and in particular he never mentioned "or else Microsoft's profits will go down" or whatever. I guess if Microsoft ex employees don't like it they can go join a commune!

P.S. as an example of how American this is, in some countries companies cannot simply let someone go unless they can provide legal reasons for this (bad performance beyond all fair chances, justified cost cuttings, etc). You can argue whether this is good or bad, but the point is: there is more than one way of conducting business.
by scuff3d | 2025-11-24 05:35:13+00:00
Yeah the author makes a classic mistake of over arguing the point (potentially because the article was AI generated).

Laser focusing on housing and childcare would have been enough to make the point. Throw healthcare in and it's a solid argument. Get into the weeds on individual expenses and you open yourself up to a lot of nitpicking, which is all over this comment thread

He also way overshoots the target. I absolutely believe the current poverty line is way to low, but trying to argue it should be $140,000 a year is insanity. A lot of people will disregard the overall point of the article just due to that claim alone.
by pugworthy | 2025-11-24 05:36:40+00:00
Yea, my Phonak + iPhone experience was not great. I stopped using any integration with them after a while and now just use AirPods for all my calls, music, etc. I have open domes and can pull off wearing both, but do take the HAs out now and then when I just want to focus and let the noise cancellation do its thing.
by altmanaltman | 2025-11-24 05:36:49+00:00
Yeah, I do understand your point of view. I'm just doubting if it applies universally, like you may superimpose that assumption on the thinking caveman, but is the thinking caveman really doing the same?

Yes, technique is one thing, but being really good at throwing spears doesn't make you really good at math, is my argument. And most people will encounter maths in a formal setting while lacking the broader perspective that everything is technically "math".

Yet, we need to see the argument from the common person's view, if we're talking about calculus and learning in the traditional sense. The view you stated is quite esoteric and doesn't generalize well in this setting imo.

It's like a musician saying they see music in every action, but to most non-musicians (even if the stated thing is kind of true) that doesn't make a lot of sense etc.
by PaulDavisThe1st | 2025-11-24 05:37:41+00:00
You may not use it for frequent updates; we do.

There is state.

It is shared state.

It is mutable state.

There are readers, who can see the shared state.

There are writers, who copy it, update it and push it back so that the new state is visible to everyone else.

I have no idea what your definition of mutable shared state might be if that doesn't fit it.
by pietroppeter | 2025-11-24 05:38:05+00:00
Great work! As a side track, it led me to dive into the history of the manufacturing company of Breda trains. Originally founded in Milan late 1800s by Ernesto Breda for locomotives, expanded in the war products during the wars, and went through nationalization, fusion to become AnsaldoBreda and later bough by Japanese to become Hitachi Rail Italy.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hitachi_Rail_Italy
by labcomputer | 2025-11-24 05:38:08+00:00
For the Russian invasion of Ukraine, that may have had more to do with Ukraine’s budget and economy of the time: Ukraine had a massive trade deficit with Russia in the 2000’s and early 2010’s, and the government was running a huge deficit.

Faced with cuts to state pensions, Ukraine started using gas from the pipeline which connects Russia to Western Europe, without paying for it. That understandably annoyed Russia (that’s not a justification for war!), who couldn’t turn off gas to Ukraine without also turning it off for their main customers in Western Europe.

These events seemed to have kicked off the norstream pipeline (legal) and invasion of Crimea (illegal).

Here is a contemporary article less than a year before the Crimean invasion: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/oct/29/russia-ukraine...

See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kharkiv_Pact#Effects