MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by kirankgollu | 2025-11-04 22:52:21+00:00
Our approach is that you need not worry about this. Oodle will be able to handle any scale including the ephemeral metrics.

Secondly, we only look at the unique time series in an hour when computing the billing. This should help us handle ephemeral metrics a lot better compared to many disk based data stores.

Finally, we do support high cardinality since the underlying datastore is columnar. Existing customers are sending on the order of few million cardinality per metric.

re: storing high cardinality metrics in disk vs in-memory index, vijay will comment shortly.
by reaperducer | 2025-11-04 22:52:45+00:00
Hot water from the house supply isn't that hot though?

Depends on how you have it set. My current and previous hot water heaters had thermostats which permitted adjusting the temperature.

They also had warning labels on them about scalding water. If it's hot enough to scald, it's hot enough.

The dishwasher also doesn't need to heat up a "bulk" amount of water, just the amount of water used for washing the current load of dishes.

If you're washing dishes and someone is, or has recently, taken a shower; or someone is, or has recently, done laundry; or someone is, or has recently shaved or done any of the other dozen things that draw from the hot water heater, then the water is already hot and available and doesn't need to be heated all the way from cold by the dishwasher. A properly insulated hot water heater can retain heat for quite some time.
by tailrecursion | 2025-11-04 22:54:18+00:00
Judging by the response to the parent come back, evidently TSMC deserves the high prices it will be charging. Why?

It's unrealistic to expect just anyone to start up a new fab. But if not one person among billions will start up a new fab it points to intrinsic difficulty or unpleasantness or lack of prestige in the task. A correctively high price has all kinds of advantages for the society.

I haven't seen any argument that difficult tasks shouldn't be priced high. Only name calling.
Ask HN: Help me pass Cloudflare Turnstile on my phone?
by Hackbraten | 2025-11-04 22:54:34+00:00
Dear HN crowd, Turnstile is making my life absolutely miserable. Since a year ago or so, I can no longer pass any challenge on my phone. I use the Firefox ESR system package on Linux (PureOS Byzantium). Whenever Turnstile gives me a checkbox challenge, it keeps locking me out from login flows and feedback forms and whatnot. This is a huge deal for me because I can no longer log into some services that I pay for. Not only does Turnstile's checkbox appear regularly, whenever I tap on it, it just spins in an endless loop, never making any progress. No matter how often I reload and retry, it keeps giving me the endless spinner.

I've filled out dozens of Cloudflare's feedback forms this year but nothing has changed at all. On the contrary, it got worse as more and more websites hop on the train and integrate Turnstile. It feels like no one ever at Cloudflare looks at my feedback. Hell, I'd pay them money just to make Turnstile finally leave me alone and allow me to be on the internet on my phone again like I used to.

I don't mind that I get the checkbox (I understand that seeing the checkbox is already a sign that they're flagging my browser as suspicious), I just want to be able to pass Turnstile with my human, fleshy, living thumb and go about my day.

I don't even care what the underlying technical problem is. They don't have to tell me which part of their bot detection secret sauce theater my phone keeps tripping over. I just want them to fix that false positive so I can browse the web again in peace and forget that Cloudflare exists, just like everyone else. I've been dealing with this for a year and it has become such a nuisance to the point that it feels kafkaesque.

Any advice? Any contact at Turnstile to whom I can reach out?
by JohnMakin | 2025-11-04 22:54:34+00:00
I largely agree with much of this, but would like to pose the following hypothetical:

Let's say the AGI true believers, the really big players out there believe 2 things simultaneously that seem impossible together:

1) AGI will revolutionize humanity and propel us to unimaginable progress

2) AGI will destroy humanity

What if they actually believe 2) is a precursor to 1)? A lot of them seem to be building bunker fortresses on private islands right now. It seems like there is a certain class of very rich person that thinks yes, this current iteration of civilization is doomed (whether you believe it to be nuclear war, climate change, AGI, whatever), but, by virtue of them being Very Smart and Wealthy Human Beings, they can ride that out, and create a new civilization built on what was left behind.

I've not deep dove into a lot of writings by these guys but this kind of attitude seems to ooze from it. They're not concerned, because they think they're the ones that won't be affected. I think history says otherwise - when civilizations undergo catastrophic events, it tends to be the minority ruling classes that get eaten alive, not the other way around. I guess we'll see either way, right or wrong.
by Esophagus4 | 2025-11-04 22:54:40+00:00
Jeez, this was a painful read. I actually stopped after a few paragraphs and asked AI to make it more technically focused and remove the ranting so I could stomach it.

Strawman arguments, ad hominem attacks and Spongebob mocking memes, and the casual venturing into conspiracy theories and malicious intentions...

> Why do all these people care if I save more money or not? ... If they’re wrong, and if I and more people like me manage to convince enough people that they’re wrong, they may be out of a job soon.

I have a feeling AWS is doing fine without him. Cloud is one of the fastest growing areas in tech because their product solves a need for certain people. There is no larger conspiracy to keep cloud in business by silencing dissent on Twitter.

> You will hear a bunch of crap from people that have literally never tried the alternative. People with no real hands-on experience managing servers for their own projects for any sustained period of time.

This is more of a rant than a thoughtful technical article. I don't know what I was expecting, because I clicked on the title knowing it was clickbait, so shame on me, I guess...

Is this what I'm missing by not having Twitter?
I'm working on a project I've been dreaming about for months and it feels good
by sebestindragos | 2025-11-04 22:55:18+00:00
Hey everyone,

Just wanted to say that I haven't felt this good about writing code in a very long time. No pressure, just building something I've been wanting for a long time and the pieces are finally falling into place.

Yes, it is using AI ... local Ollama models to control an electron browser context via Playwright connected as an MCP tool to an agent instance. Sounds fancy, right? And you know what? It is and it's pretty darn cool. I've been waiting at least 6 months to build this because I couldn't find an ai agent sdk library for nodejs that didn't suck. Fortunately a while ago, Open AI released their python port finally.

Now that I had all the tools that I needed, I got to work and in a couple of weekends I managed to get a prototype working. It's still rough around the edges and needs a lot of polishing, but as a proof of concept, it works.

I can't even remember the last time when I went to bed at 4am because I got stuck on a coding frenzy. But it feels nice man.
by jaredcwhite | 2025-11-04 22:55:27+00:00
I took a look at Datastar, and pretty quickly realized I really don't like libraries which try to do so many different things. The surface area of the API is way too big. htmx is already too big for me, I tend to reach for mostly vanilla-only or small vanilla-adjacent solutions I can either write by hand or import. But as I've been experimenting with htmx (including its very good extensions API), I'm realizing it's in a pretty good sweet spot overall.

I'm very excited about htmx 4.0 and sounds like things are headed in a promising direction.
by toomuchtodo | 2025-11-04 22:55:34+00:00
Low prices destroy oil exploration investment, making it harder to establish future extraction as China pumps clean tech exports to the world.

https://ember-energy.org/data/china-cleantech-exports-data-e...

(half a million barrels a day of global oil demand is destroyed every year EVs are produced at the current rate China produces them at)
by shooker435 | 2025-11-04 22:55:52+00:00
The author touches on it briefly, but I'd argue that the cloud is immensely helpful for building (and tearing down) an MVP or proving an early market for a new company using startup credits or free tiers offered by all vendors. Once a business model has been proven, individual components and the underlying infrastructure can be moved out of the cloud as soon as cost becomes a concern.

This means that teams must make an up-front architectural decision to develop apps in a server-agnostic manner, and developers must stay disciplined to keep components portable from day one, but you can get a lot of mileage out of free credits without burning dollars on any infrastructure. The biggest challenge becomes finding the time to perform these migrations among other competing priorities, such as new feature development, especially if you're growing fast.

Our startup is mostly built on Google Cloud, but I don't think our sales rep is very happy with how little we spend or that we're unwilling to "commit" to spending. The ability to move off of the cloud, or even just to another cloud, provides a lot of leverage in the negotiating seat.

Cloud vendors can also lead to an easier risk/SLA conversation for downstream customers. Depending on your business, enterprise users like to see SLAs and data privacy laws respected around the globe, and cloud providers make it easy to say "not my problem" if things are structured correctly.
by RickJWagner | 2025-11-04 22:56:10+00:00
Here’s a few examples:

Bill Clinton being defended by Gloria Steinem and the National Organization of Women.

Dan Rather trying to take down GW Bush with forged documents.

Anderson Cooper standing in a hole while bemoaning a flood that really wasn’t that bad.

Katie Couric and the deceptively edited gun owner interview.

The deafening silence about George Floyd’s criminal record.

The whole media attack on the Covington High kids. ( With Hollywood social media assist. )

Jussie Smulletts attempted Trump smear.

All the participants outraged at Justice Kavanaugh ( who are oddly silent about Bill Clinton’s much worse transgressions ). Such outrage for a very thin allegation.

The complete media silence during the surprise Hunter Biden laptop discovery. ( Add to that dozens of ‘expert’ testimonials that called it ‘Russian disinformation’. ) Of course by now it is proved genuine. The damage in this big lie was the proximity to Election Day. That’s why the denials and silence are so very important.

There are many more, but you should see the point. If you think there’s nothing to all of this, then I’m afraid we’re just on opposite sides of a strange wall that distorts what seems truthful.
by gnuplustoejam | 2025-11-04 22:56:28+00:00
Early generation Nest hardware was garbage, and was known for blowing FETs that failed closed, turning people's ACs into giant ice cubes. Putting it in the landfill would be doing yourself a favor.

The ex-Apple culture in the early history of Nest was evident, which ostensibly spec'd FETs over mechanical relays for superficial reasons, because clicking sounds are ugly. The results were in the spirit of other Apple engineering marvels (Titanium Powerbook, Antennagate, Bendgate).
by SpicyLemonZest | 2025-11-04 22:56:39+00:00
> Meanwhile, even a squirrel has an intuitive understanding of the laws of gravity that are beyond the ability of an LLM to ever experience because it's stuck in a purely conceptual, silicon prison.

I just don't think that's true. People used to say this kind of thing about computer vision - a computer can't really see things, only compute formulas on pixels, and "does this picture contain a dog" obviously isn't a mathematical formula. Turns out it is!
by stephen_g | 2025-11-04 22:56:53+00:00
No, what they are talking about is that you click on a link to see a PDF in these web apps, and instead of serving up the PDF document itself, they serve up a page in their web app that embeds a PDF viewer.

I assume they are trying to be "helpful" but 99% of the time the user's browser can render the PDF more conveniently than the app's embedded viewer (not breaking scrolling and zooming etc.)
by brokencode | 2025-11-04 22:57:08+00:00
That doesn’t change the fact that he keeps making these doomsday predictions that don’t come true.

Also, his returns aren’t really impressive compared to VTI, which has had an annualized return of 14.04% over the past 10 years according to Vanguard. That works out to 372% total returns in that period.

It’s easy to make money when even the broadest US index fund is up by that much.
by wvenable | 2025-11-04 22:57:15+00:00
In the US, whether you're legally required to identify yourself depends on the situation and the state:

"Stop and identify" states: If police have reasonable suspicion that you're involved in a crime, you can be required to state your name. Refusal can result in arrest.

Non–stop-and-identify states: You generally don't have to provide your name unless you're lawfully detained or arrested.

It's not illegal everywhere to refuse, but, as you said it can escalate the situation.

However, from a civil liberties perspective, people do explicitly choose to refuse in order to assert their rights and/or protest unlawful stops. You can certainly choose to be a high-IQ person, always give your name, and contribute to the eroding of your own rights over time. Face scanning tech just removes that option and automatically eliminates those civil liberties.
by thewebguyd | 2025-11-04 22:57:19+00:00
> I can't say much about the macOS market,

For certain types of apps from the mac app store vs installed directly (mostly VPNs), they also have to use the MDM APIs and install profiles on the device to function.

So if a home user, for example, uses Tailscale and installed it via the mac app store, they'd flag as being MDM managed if the software used the code in the article.

Fonts on iPad work the same way, the font apps install an MDM profile to install the fonts on the device because Apple gates this behind that for some stupid reason.

Like you said, I suspect doing things through configuration/MDM profiles is going to become more and more common on desktop like it has on mobile.
by Rochus | 2025-11-04 22:57:24+00:00
Here is an article with no paywall: https://www.theregister.com/2025/11/04/uk_court_getty_stabil...

Getty Images largely lost its lawsuit against Stability AI, with the judge dismissing most copyright claims.

This ruling is also highly relevant to the music AI cases (e.g. record monopolists vs. Suno). The court ruled AI models don't store copies of training data. The court also distinguished between training process and outputs; trademark infringement only when Getty watermarks appeared in outputs, not from the training itself.
by mmooss | 2025-11-04 22:57:31+00:00
Democracies are overwhelmingly the most efficient governments. Look at long-standing democracies and autocracies - which are the most efficient and effective? The least corrupt?

Autocracies are like communist centrally-planned economies. If the autocrat isn't all-knowing and all-good, they can't possibly know enough to run things - or even to make enough decisions to avoid being a bottleneck. One of the great advantages of democracies is that the people affected have power - they have a seat at the table. They know what's going on and what they need. If you want to plan flood relief for a town in Mississippi, ask the people there what the problems are and what they need. If you want to regulate software development, developers get input.

That goes for social, political, financial, economic, foreign affairs, and all other policy.

Regarding crime, the autocrat and servants commit plenty of that. Generally, thieves don't break down your door in the middle of the night, kidnap you, and imprison and torture you for years without trial - or just seize all your assets and prevent you from working. Also, what source do you have on crime levels in autocracies - where could reliable information come from? And as another commenter said, I don't see a correlation between crime and democracy.

(Singapore's very unusual nature makes it a poor example.)
by duped | 2025-11-04 22:58:01+00:00
I've seen a few products that are in essence, "virtual jamming" but they're not marketed like that. For example a bunch of live sound mixers come with an iOS app for live monitoring that you can use to feed monitor mixes straight to musicians' devices. Super useful if you have an iPad controlling Mainstage, a monitor mix, and sheet music. Another that's less obvious are live transcription/hearing assistance where you want to use your phone to tap into the output of the recording console's mix, or a translation/audio description mix.
by mannyv | 2025-11-04 22:58:21+00:00
"It works, until it doesn't."

The question is, at what point does it not work?

Vacuuming is grief enough. Rebuilding the index sounds like more of a nightmare than with Solr/Lucene. And what happens when indexing fails? In Solr/Lucene it used to mean you were dead. I'm sure they fixed that, but at some level you need to either be behind on one while you reindex or figure out some queueing system that works like transactions.
by maerF0x0 | 2025-11-04 22:58:52+00:00
To me this seems simply anti-competitive. Could Amazon say I cannot make purchaess with a Mac, or Xfinity internet, or a logitech keyboard, or while wearing Levi's jeans? IMO they should have no right to dictate how I make a purchase. Sure, I am not allowed to mass harvest and distribute their data (such as the prices of every item), but for the purposes of making my own best choice I should be allowed to collect datapoints that I could easily and legitimately find on my own .
by pfix | 2025-11-04 22:59:16+00:00
I would really be interested in an actual comparison, where e.g. someone compares the full TCO of a mysql server with backup, hot standby in another data center and admin costs.

On AWS an Aurora RDS is not cheap. But I don't have to spend time or money on an admin.

Is the cost justified? Because that's what cloud is. Not even talking about the level of compliance I get from having every layer encrypted when my hosted box is just a screwdriver away from data getting out the old school way.

When I'm small enough or big enough, self managed makes sense and probably is cheaper. But when getting the right people with enough redundancy and knowledge is getting the expensive part...

But actually - I've never seen this in any if these arguments so far. Probably because actual time required to manage a db server is really unpredictable.
by geerlingguy | 2025-11-04 22:59:20+00:00
For convenience, I like to still have the files somehow marked 'already imported', so I've since modified my script to move the files on the card into an 'imported' folder. Then after the card gets full, I'll format it if I'm finished with the main project I'm working on.

I really wish modern cameras could stream over WiFi 6 or 7 (since it's just H.265 compressed, 50-100 Mbps) so I could either do NDI or a video stream off to my NAS. Still save to the card in the body, but also record over the network directly in-body!
by charlieflowers | 2025-11-04 22:59:31+00:00
I read the whole thing and I didn't see any waffle. Sure, undeniably some excess word count, some emotion in responding to critics. But no waffle.

The "is this cloud or not" debate in the piece makes perfect sense. Who cares whether Hetzner is defined as "the cloud" or not? The point is, he left AWS without going to Azure or some other obvious cloud vendor. He took a step towards more hands on management. And he saved a ton of money.
by buran77 | 2025-11-04 23:00:22+00:00
> The idea authoritarianism reduces crime [...] is a fallacy. Crime still happens

There's a whole range between "reduces" and "eliminates", and introducing the "elimination" argument is a strawman.

Authoritarian regimes do cut down on crime committed by the oppressed masses. It's a side effect of the heavy handed control that allows those in power to stay in power. Severely punishing crime is one more means of exerting more power and control over that population, the leaders can't afford to let regular people get away with flaunting authority. But the upper echelons will always commit crimes or abuses especially against those they control because they can afford to get away with it.
by chickensong | 2025-11-04 23:00:34+00:00
Tmux/screen can also use separate PTY for named sessions, not just multiplex a single session. A separate process is used as well.

Why not just use something like Ansible if you mainly want YAML config management? It handles multiple environments elegantly and isn't constrained to any particular use case.

Not trying to knock your tool; building stuff is cool, and little custom programs are great for internal use, but it's a harder sell to convince the general public to move away from more generic and battle-tested tools. My feedback here, is that I'm still not sure why I'd choose sbsh.
by mothballed | 2025-11-04 23:00:43+00:00
There have been a few autocratic-esque governments that have gotten around the dictator information problem by basically implementing a free-ish market by fiat.

This is how much of UAE and to the extent Singapore is one, does it.

The dictator will basically let the free market operate and then interfere a few percent off the top of that. They are not torturing enough people to destroy their economy.
by HeinzStuckeIt | 2025-11-04 23:01:04+00:00
Earlier, I would have agreed that microblogging pales next to long-form blogging. But then so much long-form blogging moved to Substack that has an overall culture as full of pathologies as microblogging: post regularly even if you don't have anything new to say, hustle a brand that can be monetized, accept a comments section with a broken UI full of people shamelessly trying to hustle their own brand. People doing long-form video content will often speak openly about how they feel forced to change their content in order to avoid being punished by the YouTube algorithm.

Personally, I'm pessimistic that there are many remaining sources of substantial discourse and discussion at all. I just pirate a lot more university-press books from Anna's Archive.
by tqi | 2025-11-04 23:02:16+00:00
I'd be more interested to understand (from folk who were there) what the conditions were that made AWS et al such a runaway hit. What did folks gain, and have those conditions meaningfully changed in some way that makes it less of a slam dunk?

My recollection from working at a tech company in the early 2010s is that renting rack space and building servers was expensive and time consuming, estimating what the right hardware configuration would be for your business was tricky, and scaling different services independently was impossible. also having multi regional redundancy was rare (remember when squarespace was manually carrying buckets of petrol for generators up many flights of stairs to keeps servers online post sandy?[1]).

AWS fixed much of that. But maybe things have changed in ways that meaningfully changes the calculus?

[1] https://www.squarespace.com/press-coverage/2012-11-1-after-s...
by tonymet | 2025-11-04 23:02:22+00:00
What I always say when given a false choice: ¿porque no las dos?

vcpu, iops, transfer fees, storage -- they are all resources going into a pool .

If Hetzner is giving you 10TB for $100 , then host your static files/images there and save $800.

Apps are very modular. You have services, asyncs, LBs, static files . Just put the compute where it is most cost effective.

You don't have to close your AWS account to stick it to the man. Like any utility, just move your resources to where they are most affordable.