MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by ChadNauseam | 2025-11-20 09:17:17+00:00
I know this post is AI generated to some extent but I'm still curious. The subtitle says:

> Rust shouted about safety. Zig just built it — without the ceremony, the sermons, or the 15-minute compile times.

Which I interpret as meaning that zig delivers memory safety in a simpler way than rust. But a few paragraphs in, it says:

> Rust teaches you ownership like a tough-love therapist. Zig, meanwhile, just shrugs and says, "You break it, you fix it." That's the philosophical divide. Rust assumes you can't be trusted. Zig assumes you're an adult.

Does this mean that zig's safety depends on trusting the programmer to write correct code? This wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing if zig makes correct code simple to write or has other advantages, but if incorrect code is allowed it makes sense why the compiler can be more permissive and I wouldn't say it's quite delivered the same thing as Rust.

Ok, another thing:

> Zig looks boring. Feels boring. Reads like a C project written by someone who finally went to therapy.

pub fn main() void { const stdout = std.io.getStdOut().writer(); stdout.print("Hello, World!\n", .{}) catch unreachable; }

> That's it. No macros. No build.rs. No Cargo screaming about outdated crates.

Am I crazy or does this not actually look simpler than

fn main() { println!("Hello, world!"); }

Is the zig version doing something other than hello world? Or did the author, in their post about how zig is simpler and more readable than rust, choose a code example where the corresponding rust code would be much simpler and more readable?
by tcfhgj | 2025-11-20 09:17:49+00:00
> These issues are patched slowly over time, but you shouldn't need to show me a graph demonstrating how you have slowly decreased the decryption issues. There shouldn't be any to begin with! If there are, the protocol is fundamentally broken.

This is wrong, because afaik these errors happen due to corner cases and I really don't like the attitude here.
by concats | 2025-11-20 09:17:51+00:00
I don't think anyone disagrees with that. But it's a good time to learn now, to jump on the train and follow the progress.

It will give the developer a leg up in the future when the mature tools are ready. Just like the people who surfed the 90s internet seem to do better with advanced technology than the youngsters who've only seen the latest sleek modern GUI tools and apps of today.
by pembrook | 2025-11-20 09:17:55+00:00
The current internet zeitgeist is ironically anti-tech and pro AI doomer communism.

Patent trolls hurt tech so thats now a good thing on new HN (now filled with normies like most tech companies these days). The enemy of my enemy is my friend sort of thing.

Nobody has any real values or beliefs anymore. We’re all just swimming in vibes.
by sensanaty | 2025-11-20 09:18:13+00:00
Okay, and why do you need to share whatever info you collect with thousands of random data "partners" if it's just for you to keep track of whatever made up thing you say you need to track? Because in reality that's what GDPR exposed, that random ecomm website selling socks or whatever is sharing everything they know about you with a billion random companies for some unknowable reason.
by RyJones | 2025-11-20 09:18:46+00:00
I used to explain Qualcomm as a navy of lawyers and a dinghy of developers.

I spent SO MUCH TIME getting legal review to publish code.

One of my favorite battles was someone out there in the wild took the Microsoft boilerplate MIDL (MIT 2.0) and stripped the headers, licensing them as GPL. So our boilerplate MIDL files suddenly got ducked and we couldn't ship them any more.

Unless we had someone rewrite them.
by sph | 2025-11-20 09:18:51+00:00
Not sure what you mean, in every thread there's someone that mentions anticheat as if to stress why Proton is never gonna be good enough.

You can be a true gamer™ even if you don't play the latest $90 AAA multiplayer FPS. To me not having a proprietary rootkit is a feature, and Windows is always there for those that are OK with being spied upon.
by aurareturn | 2025-11-20 09:19:53+00:00
For those who are confident that there is an AI bubble and it is going to pop, I have some questions to ask you:

1. Do you think it is peak market already?

2. When it pops, do you think the AI market will still be bigger than in November 2025? In other words, are we in 1995/1996 of the dotcom bubble or 2000?

3. After it pops, do you think the AI market will reach the peak again and if so, how soon? Or do you think AI is a fad and will fade and will never reach the peak set in November 2025?

4. If you believe that the bubble will burst but the market will reach over the November 2025 peak again, are you going to buy the AI bubble dip?
by StopDisinfo910 | 2025-11-20 09:20:04+00:00
I absolutely do not mind, yes.

You can't go out in the middle of your city, build a shoddy bridge, say you wave all responsibilities and then wash your hands with the consequences when it predictably breaks. Why can you do that with pieces of software?

Limiting the scope of liability waivers is not the same things as censoring what software can be produced. It's just ensuring that everyone actually take responsibility for the things they distribute.

As I said previously, the current situation doesn't make sense to me. People have been brainwashed in believing that the way software is released currently, half finished and crippled with bugs, is somehow normal and acceptable. It absolutely doesn't have to be this way.

It'a beyond shameful that the average developers today is blissfully unaware of anything related to producing actually secure pieces of software. I am pretty sure I can walk into more than 90% of development shops today and no one there will know what formal methods are. With some luck, they might have some static analysers running, probably from a random provider and be happy with the crappy percentages that it outputs.

It's not about research. It's about a field which entirely refuses to become mature despite being pivotal to the modern economy. And why would it? Software products somehow get a free pass for the shit they push on everyone.

We are in the classical "market for lemons" trap where negative externalities are not priced in and investing in security will just get you to lose against companies that don't care. Every major incidents remind us we need out. The market has already showed it won't self correct. It's a classical case where regulatory intervention is necessary and legitimate.

The shift is already happening by the way. The EU product liability directive was adopted in 2024 and the transition period ends in December 2026. The US "National Cybersecurity Strategy" signals intend to review the status quo. It's coming faster that people realise.
by friendzis | 2025-11-20 09:20:05+00:00
> ability to churn out quick proof of concept code (pre AI) made the difference. It has catapulted me. I thought talking was all-important

It is always the talking that transitions "here's quick proof of concept" to "someone else will implement this fully and then maintain". One cannot be catapulted if they cannot offload the implementation and maintenance. Two quick proof of concept ideas you are stuck with and it's already your full capacity. one either talks their way out to having a team supporting them or they find themselves on a PIP with a regular backlog piling up.
by DonHopkins | 2025-11-20 09:20:26+00:00
Posting abusive bigoted bullshit in a memorial thread is cuckoo crazy behavior. Calling it out and describing it isn't. You're confusing describing the abuse with committing the abuse. Direct your scorn at the person I'm criticizing, unless you agree with what they did, in which case my criticism also applies directly and personally to you, so no wonder you created a throw away sock puppet account just to attempt to defend your own bigotry and abuse.
by nandomrumber | 2025-11-20 09:20:51+00:00
> The fix for corruption is vote the bums out of office.

That doesn’t seem to be working.

I argue there’s an acceptable level of corruption, only the particular flavours change from time to time.

Come out of government better off than when you when in. Fine, good on ya. No need to tells us about how you’re going about it while you’re going about it.

Learn to be at least a little bit discreet, and at least do something occasionally that comes across as good for the average person.
by williamcotton | 2025-11-20 09:21:12+00:00
If you want the patent holders to lose, NPEs or otherwise, then you want to fight through litigation and not the incredibly high bar set by the IPR. IPRs are expensive, time consuming and difficult. I've mainly seen them used strategically to encourage the court to grant a stay. Continuing litigation by focusing on invalidity contentions in response to infringement contentions is a better path forward.

A successful IPR will most likely need multiple forms of prior art. Each prior art must cover every independent and dependent claim of the patent in question, either through anticipation or combined obviousness.

Typical infringement contentions will not cover every claim and are therefore easier to defend.
by disgruntledphd2 | 2025-11-20 09:21:13+00:00
> Where? When there's not a more obvious choice trade is done in English, packaging usually has multiple languages (which are often mutually comprehensible with other nearby languages) and your instruction booklets and regulations are given in the 24 official languages. Sure not every country has a good standard of English, but even France seems to be able to get by.

All of this is correct, and that's why the single market for goods (except for booze and tobacco) has been such a massive success. However, lots of growth (particularly in the US) comes from services, and for this, languages matter a lot more.

Sure, lots of continental Europeans speak multiple languages, but the vast discrepancies in languages and regulations (insolvency, capital markets etc) means that there are dis-economies of scale in the EU. Like, there's a reason that companies start selling in their home market and then move directly to the US.

A common language can't be assumed across the EU, while other large blocs (China, US) can make this assumption which is important for services trades in particular, as well as bespoke goods trade.
by TrackerFF | 2025-11-20 09:21:47+00:00
I don't remember the exact name for this marketing strategy, but that's how some of the black- and grey hat marketers made millions upon millions the past decades.

One marketer I know made his fortune (as in tens of millions) buying up dead sites, often for dissolved companies / organizations / etc., kept the design somewhat relevant to said entities, but filled the site with ads and referral links to gambling sites / credit cards / etc.

And as seen with Groklaw, it still works. Whenever I see some old semi-popular website call it quits, it just takes a couple of months until it becomes a landing or referral page for something crypto.
by yonki | 2025-11-20 09:22:07+00:00
>Zig, meanwhile, just shrugs and says, "You break it, you fix it."<

Exactly. That’s what Rust defends us from. It makes breaking things way harder. Rust forces you to think differently, you cannot just do what you want, but that’s it’s selling point. The article focuses mainly on feelings not facts and that’s ok, but I don’t feel exhausted writing Rust. I like that it’s safe and I’m happy to sacrifice some freedom if I get safety in return.

That’s a weird article. Rust wanted to be safe systems language and it is. Where’s the issue? Zig has different goals. That’s ok. What are actually discussing here?
by johnisgood | 2025-11-20 09:22:29+00:00
> Nobody can vouch for their own sanity. Attempting to do so only make you sound insane.

Exactly, and if people deem you to be insane, you cannot do anything about that. They will find reasons for why what you are saying is out of your insanity. There is a great movie about a woman being held against her own will at the locked up psychiatric ward and it explores this.
by masfoobar | 2025-11-20 09:22:30+00:00
I have been a GNU/Linux user since 2006. While I still had a Windows PC (likely dual-boot on one machine) for games and my full-time job, Linux provided ALL I needed 90% of the time.

I tried various Linux flavours. Starting with Ubuntu. From memory, I tried Mint, Fedora, Slackware, Manjaro, etc. I cannot remember when I last tried a Distro. It likely ended by 2010. Since I have just stuck with Debain.. for both client and server installs.

I said goodbye to Windows a few weeks ago.. fully. While Windows has served my purpose in certain ways, I have always been critical of Microsoft and their practices. I would agree that Windows 11 is a solid OS.. its the "features" added on top that slows it down.

This time, I have the latest version of Debian. No dual-boots.. nothing else! Despite being aware of Steam's Linux support for some time, now.. I actually gave it a shot and suprised how easy it was. I then tried Heoric (Epic) Launcher and just as easy!

It probably helped that my laptop is an AMD. I normally hear effort and difficulty with nVidia but I did not have much trouble 10 odd years ago. Not sure what its like to properly work today.

So far I have tried 4 games. 2 modern games, and two 90's games. All of the worked! Whiles the 90's games had their issues at times.. this mostly refers to using a gamepad.

The 2 new games (sure this is not a good experiment for all games) have worked flawlessly!

Honestly.. in my opinion.. installing Debian appears exactly the same as it was back in 2010.. maybe more. I rarely had issues. It's just this time I am able to play Steam and Epic games and installing dotnet is easy on Linux.

Let's not forget the work Steam are doing. We have a new Steam Machine. While being marketed as a new games console it's still a PC... and new users will try it out. For the younger generation, it might increase the Linux skills and spread wider adoption.

The only thing Linux has against it is time. Time is something humans lack... we lack patience! I knew that one day Linux would get better games support. It was possible even back in 2008. I managed to get GTA3:ViceCity working through Wine.

Mark my words. Linux will gain marketshare. The only part I am concerned about is infiltration of corporations jumping all in. It's not the kernel I am concerned about as it's protected by the GPL.. it's the larger corporations selling their products which the average user adopts and eventually becomes "required" software in most distributions.

The best way to understand this is, in an alternate universe, Microsoft drops Windows and encourages everyone to use Linux. How do you think they would get involved. Just think about that.
by roryc89 | 2025-11-20 09:22:44+00:00
In most FP languages it is simple to print to screen and get a random number.

Pure functions often exist in practice and are useful for preventing many bugs. Sure, they may not be suitable for some situations but they can prevent a lot of foot guns.

Here's a Haskell example with all of the above:

import System.Random (randomRIO) main :: IO () main = do num <- randomRIO (1, 100) print $ pureFunction num pureFunction :: Int -> Int pureFunction x = x * x + 2 * x + 1
by jacquesm | 2025-11-20 09:22:49+00:00
The problem is that there are a thousand merchant marine vessels operating right now that are all doing great - until the next loose wire. The problem is that nobody knows about that wire and it worked fine on the last trip. The other systems are all just as marginal as they were on the 'Dali' but that one shitty little wire is masking that.

Running a 'tight ship' is great when you have a budget to burn on excellent quality crew. But shipping is so incredibly cut-throat that the crew members make very little money, are effectively modern slaves and tend to carry responsibilities way above their pay grade. They did what they could, and more than that, and for their efforts they were rewarded with what effectively amounted to house arrest while the authorities did their thing. The NTSB of course will focus on the 'hard' causes. But you can see a lot of frustration shine through towards the owners who even in light of the preliminary findings had changed absolutely nothing on the rest of their fleet.

The recommendation to inspect the whole ship with an IR camera had me laughing out loud. We're talking about a couple of kilometers of poorly accessible duct work and cabinets. You can do that while in port, but while you're in port most systems are idle or near idle and so you won't ever find an issue like this until you are underway, when vibration goes up and power consumption shoots up compared to being in port.

There is no shipping company that is effectively going to do a sea trial after every minor repair, usually there is a technician from some supplier that boards the vessel (often while it is underway), makes some fix and then goes off-board again. Vessels that are not moving are money sinks so the goal is to keep turnaround time in port to an absolute minimum.

What should really amaze you is how few of these incidents there are. In spite of this being a regulated industry it is first and foremost an oversight failure, if the regulators would have more budget and more manpower there maybe would be a stronger drive to get things technically in good order (resist temptation: 'shipshape').
by t43562 | 2025-11-20 09:23:05+00:00
does he have it because he gets into the news all the time? Do other people with support get proportionate air time to their support? I don't think so.

Like all news organisations the BBC gets views based on outrage and I don't think the Greens or the Libdems get 1/2 Farage's news coverage based on having 1/2 his support and that's clearly because they don't do outrageous things.
by Y_Y | 2025-11-20 09:23:32+00:00
Strongly agreed. Reading the actual bible is (mostly) boring as sin. There are a couple of gems in there that you can just take on their own though.

My personal favourite is Ecclesiastes which, apart from a couple of lines of slop added by a later author, has little to do with Abrahamic religion and is more just a little nugget of proto-existentialism.

“Meaningless! Meaningless!” says the Teacher. “Utterly meaningless! Everything is meaningless.” What do people gain from all their labors at which they toil under the sun? Generations come and generations go, but the earth remains forever.

https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=ecclesiastes%20...
by Zalar | 2025-11-20 09:24:20+00:00
PMF is usually the tricky one. You should focus and talk the people you are trying to sell your product to even before you build anything. Starts with asking and identifying if they even have a problem you are trying to solve, how are they solving it today, is it even important to them … You can get sooooo much info just by talking to you potential customers, users … And, it’s really mind-boggling how few startup founders ever really talk to their customers.
by RyJones | 2025-11-20 09:24:32+00:00
OK. One OEM (I don't remember who, they make TVs and the like) took our BSP and just... sent it out. To millions of devices. Tens of millions of devices. However many TVs there are.

We had just added a TURN implementation to AllJoyn and set up a dev server. Not literally a small machine under someone's desk, but basically that. Maybe a two vCPU VM.

The DDoS was _very_ distributed. The DNS requests knocked Qualcomm off the air.

So we made that an opt-in compile-time feature for all BSPs going forward.
by inovica | 2025-11-20 09:24:49+00:00
I still love PHP. 23 years ago we created some encryption software for it and it is still going. I also run a PHP newsletter. There's still a strong community of people and whilst there are other languages which I also use (Python, Node.js) I still find myself gravitating towards PHP for fast and simple work

The only issues I have. is that this is a 'double edged sword' in that PHP has become far more complex since the launch of PHP 5 and so it isn't as easy to understand from scratch as it used to be
by daotoad | 2025-11-20 09:24:52+00:00
You say it was a "bad language" for projects of any real size. But I've worked on large systems written in perl maintained by multiple teams. Perl wasn't the source of our difficulties.

The real issue was ugly code that was in the product when it was acquired--you can write 2000 line methods in any language if you are cursed enough. Believe me, if you do this, you will be cursed.

We dealt with the flexibility of the language by defining clear guidelines on what approaches were recommended and what misfeatures were banned.

I'd go so far as to argue that the expressiveness and flexibility of the language was an asset that helped us in our refactoring. For example, we built instrumentation that took advantage of Perl's unusual semantics for dynamic "local" variables to create flexible instrumentation that could have log levels enabled based on the call stack--if you turned on aggressive logging in function A, it would propagate to A's calls into functions B and C, while other calls to B and C would be logged at normal levels.

Yes, it's possible to do this sort of thing in other languages using a singleton that tracks logging context, but the dynamic scoping gave us the tools we needed to build something powerful with only a small amount of clear, commented code.
by gabrielgio | 2025-11-20 09:26:41+00:00
There is a simpler version for zig.

pub fn main() !void { std.debug.print("Hello, World!\n", .{}); }

The only difference is this writes to stderr and does not fail (and explicitly says it is meant for debug), while their example writes to stdout. In zig if you want to write to stdout you need to explicitly pick the std and handle all the details (like error handling).

He gave the possible worst example, this article is nonsense.
by gmac | 2025-11-20 09:27:52+00:00
> they were clearly pro-Remain

I would say they were a lot less pro-Remain than the facts were, such that they were effectively heavily biased towards Leave.

Typically they'd interview someone to factually explain how Brexit would be bad, and then 'balance' it up by giving equal airtime to some liar/fantastist telling us how it would be wonderful.
by tcfhgj | 2025-11-20 09:27:56+00:00
> The recovery key approach was unfortunately made painful and error-prone in recent Element releases, by disabling the option to choose a passphrase instead, but most people can simply use one of the other two approaches.

honestly it's the best thing ever they have done:

- I have heard of someone who failed to use Matrix, because he got frustrated of having not a secure enough passphrase

- people don't choose secure passphrases

- it provides options making things more complex (especially when guiding others)

- you know you won't memorize it, so you are more likely to put it down
by zokier | 2025-11-20 09:27:56+00:00
I just ordered few days ago a AMD 6850U based minipc (still on it's way). 15 watts TDP, 8 zen3+ cores at 2.7-4.7 GHz. On paper very good fit for minipc. Obviously zen4/5 would be nicer, but those are more difficult to find.

Big reason why I wanted AMD is that Intel officially supports only 16GB RAM on these N series chips. Also AMD has 20 gen4 PCIe lanes vs 9 gen3 lanes for Intel.

https://www.techpowerup.com/cpu-specs/ryzen-7-pro-6850u.c276...
by Simran-B | 2025-11-20 09:28:05+00:00
Zig has the concept of illegal behavior, of which a subset is unchecked illegal behavior - basically undefined behavior, but if evaluated at comptime, it results in a compile error. The documentation also states that most illegal behavior is safety-checked unless you use the ReleaseFast or ReleaseSmall optimization modes (and don't enable safety checks for individual blocks).