MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by eru | 2025-11-11 06:11:05+00:00
The classic claim was that the Trabi was made out of cardboard.

Of course, that's a myth: the Trabi was actually made out of cheap plastic.

The Trabant was actually a decent modern car when it debuted in 1957. The problem is that they produced it until 1991, when it was far from modern.

I was born in Zwickau, where the Trabant was produced. It's no accident that they picked Zwickau for the production, because that's where Audi's predecessor company (Horch) had made their cars before.

(Going on tangent: Audi is Latin for 'listen', and Horch is German for 'listen'.)
by junaid_97 | 2025-11-11 06:11:45+00:00
I'm working on Fillvisa.com - a free, browser-based tool that lets you fill complex U.S. immigration forms (like DS-160, AR-11, I-90, etc.) entirely in your browser.

It mimics the official USCIS forms but autosaves locally, validates inputs, and lets you download a ready-to-submit PDF - no signup, no uploads, no tracking.

It’s meant for travelers and immigrants who just need to fill a form once, and as a side effect, it’s become a great acquisition funnel for my paid B2B product, VisaSimplify, which helps immigration lawyers automate client intake and PDF mapping.
by nappy | 2025-11-11 06:12:46+00:00
It's a surprisingly common error where someone picks up an old 35mm print and assumes it is somehow canonical... Besides whatever the provenance of these prints are (this gets complicated) the reality is that these were also made to look at best as they could for typical movie theater projector systems in the 90s. These bulbs were hot and bright and there were many other considerations around what the final picture would look like on the screen. So yeah, if you digitize 35mm film today, it will look different, and different from how its ever been been displayed in a movie theater.
by appjeniksaan | 2025-11-11 06:13:05+00:00
After taking a break from frontend development from a large corporate client. I wanted to get into iOS development to see how mature SwiftUI has become and finally get a chance to build my first iOS app. The result of that: PeekCard - https://peekcard.app

A simple iOS app for scanning (almost any) barcode and storing in the app, or adding it to your home via a widget. No tracking, no subscriptions, just a simple free app that is pretty simple to use and does the one thing I want it to do.

Building my own software has been super refreshing compared to working within a large organization. I really enjoy the path of just developing and it is fun to get into something different than React/TypeScript and Java. It was also really interesting to go through the process of publishing the app in the Apple App Store. Heard so many bad stories, but it was OK. Definitely not great, but not as bad as I was expecting.

Two learnings from this so far:

1. I do not think that I would want to do any Swift development in a large organization. Super fun to build indie style, but I can't imagine having to support 5+ years of old iOS versions. 2. I ditched most social media a long time ago and if you do not have any personal promotion channel, you are super limited into reaching any potential users for your software. I still do not know how to deal with this; I do not have any ambition to go back into building a social following. I just like building the "thing", but just building it is definitely not enough to get any traction.

For the current project I am building another iOS app, a bit more complex, also something I want to use myself. I was considering building with React Native, but ditched that plan because when I am building for myself, there would (I think) be a lot of overhead in testing Android.

For now I really like what I am doing, but financially I think I should consider going back to Java/Scala or React dev for a corporate client :-|.
by Panzerschrek | 2025-11-11 06:13:22+00:00
After reading this article I have yet another idea how to handle errors. A caller should provide two return addresses for a calle - one for normal return and another one for error return. Doing so isn't particularly costly - it requires pushing an error-handler block address before the call instruction and popping it after. It should be easier compared to unwinding, since no side-tables are necessary and thus going the error path shouldn't be substantially costly compared to the happy path.
by Animats | 2025-11-11 06:15:28+00:00
Herb Sutter's article on this.[1]

For C/C++, memory safety is a retrofit to a language never designed for it. Many people, including me, have tried to improve the safety of C/C++ without breaking existing code. It's a painful thing to attempt. It doesn't seem to be possible to do it perfectly. Sutter is taking yet another crack at that problem, hoping to save C/C++ from becoming obsolete, or at least disfavored. Read his own words to see where he's coming from and where he is trying to go.

Any new language should be memory safe. Most of them since Java have been.

The trouble with thinking about this in terms of "95% safe" is that attackers are not random. They can aim at the 5%.

[1] https://herbsutter.com/2024/03/11/safety-in-context/
by ramblerman | 2025-11-11 06:17:20+00:00
This new package is about "removing regulation", specifically GDPR.

Which let's be honest has not achieved its intended target. Google/Apple/etc can easily afford to break GDPR and get caught up in fines while as a small business owner it was a huge and complicated liability.

ofc politico will frame this as a negative, it seems their only mission is to make moloch grow.
by bsimpson | 2025-11-11 06:18:45+00:00
Same is true of home video hardware:

If you plug a Nintendo system's RCA cables into a modern TV, it will look like garbage. Emulated games on LCDs look pixelated.

Those games were designed for a CRT's pixel grid. They don't look right on LCDs, and the upscalers in home theater equipment don't respect that. There are hardware upscalers and software shaders that are specifically designed to replicate a CRT's quirks, to let you better approximate how those games were designed to be played.

Related - someone recently built a CRT dock for his Switch, so he could play Nintendo Switch Online's emulated games as originally intended:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wcym2tHiWT4
by vikramkr | 2025-11-11 06:19:04+00:00
And why should the workers who work on the bridge be denied happiness and satisfaction from their work? Building and creating physical stuff is incredibly rewarding in concept for so many people - especially in a culture that values/glorifies physical and manual labor like parts of the US. I mean bob the builder is a popular kids show and "all boys are fascinated by big trucks and construction projects" is both an incredibly common stereotype and to a significant extent just a true statement.
by potamic | 2025-11-11 06:19:05+00:00
6 year time period between 1990-1996. Would have been interesting to see how these results would have fared across the 2000 crash.

But I don't think the paper claims that they beat the market. What they are concluding is that you can classify investors as skilled and unskilled, with the skilled group able to achieve returns consistently. But whether those returns can beat the market, they say the evidence is limited.
by BSTRhino | 2025-11-11 06:19:52+00:00
Easel is an automatic multiplayer game engine that I have been working on for three years. It's been a huge project, and I've had to discover many new ways of doing things to get the peer-to-peer rollback netcode to work as well as possible. I've had trouble explaining why it's not just another rollback netcode implementation, and this is the first time I've been able to articulate them all on a single page. I'm wondering if Hacker News has some other multiplayer networking/game engine/programming language geeks out there who love this kind of stuff too. Would love to hear more about your projects!
by magicalhippo | 2025-11-11 06:20:14+00:00
That's irrelevant in the context of a supposedly reputable news source reporting on what he said.

What BBC did was literally make fake news, something they and other news outlets are accused of doing oh-so often these days.

If they wanted to publish what Trump "actually wanted to say", they should have done that the proper way by finding some third party, like a political expert or similar, which could analyze the speech and convey what Trump "actually wanted to say".
by intended | 2025-11-11 06:22:04+00:00
These ideas are used, and they influence what policy is crafted.

You can’t predict what an individual will do, but work like this kills many inaccurate ideological positions that we inherited.

There’s a paper from 2016 that shows how posts saturate/cascade through conspiracy communities and that it has distinct cascade dynamics. This wasn’t a model, it was a description of observed behavior.

Or take some relatively recent work from Harvard, which suggests that while our capacity to create misinformation has increased in both quantity and quality, its consumption rate seems to be stable.
by mer_mer | 2025-11-11 06:22:32+00:00
You can, that's what Pixar did while creating the film. From the article:

> During production, we’re working mostly from computer monitors. We’re rarely seeing the images on film. So, we have five or six extremely high-resolution monitors that have better color and picture quality. We put those in general work areas, so people can go and see how their work looks. Then, when we record, we try to calibrate to the film stock, so the image we have on the monitor looks the same as what we’ll get on film.

But they didn't do a perfect job (the behavior of film is extremely complex), so there's a question- should the digital release reflect their intention as they were targeting these calibrated monitors or should it reflect what was actually released? Also, this wouldn't include other artifacts like film grain.
by benrutter | 2025-11-11 06:22:43+00:00
I just want to offer a counter ti the comments that, I really don't mind!

If it's some new greenfield project, I definitely want a script rather than a screenshot, but if you're saying "i think this line is the issue", "here's my error stack" or "what if we added something here?" then I'll happily recieve screenshots if it's easier for you!

(just please, please, semd me something and not just "there's am issue with x because it is throwing me an error")
by creatonez | 2025-11-11 06:22:54+00:00
No, it does not always crash. This is a common misconception caused by thinking about the problem on the MMU (hardware) level, where reading a null pointer predictably results in a page fault. If this was the only thing we had to contend with, then yes, it would immediately terminate the process, cutting down the risk of a null pointer dereference to just a crash.

The problem is instead in software - it is undefined behavior, so most compilers may optimize it out and write code that assumes it never happens, which often causes nightmarish silent corruption / control flow issues rather than immediately crashing. These optimizations are common enough for it to be a relatively common failure mode.

There is a bit of nuance that on non-MMU hardware such as microcontrollers and embedded devices, reading null pointers does not actually trigger an error on a hardware level, but instead actually gives you access to the 0 position on memory. This is usually either a feature (because it's a nice place to put global data) or a gigantic pitfall of its own (because it's the most likely place for accidental corruption to cause a serious problem, and reading it inadvertently may reveal sensitive global state).
by VerifiedReports | 2025-11-11 06:23:14+00:00
Android has been a fraud for a long time now. Let's not pretend that the "open-source" mobile OS that was supposed to free us all from vendor and telco tyranny ever approached that promise.

Did they even really try?

As far as iCloud "alternatives" go... Android doesn't offer ANY legitimate syncing infrastructure to compete with iCloud, open or not.
by aalhijawi | 2025-11-11 06:23:54+00:00
From Reactive to Predictive: The Future of IT Operations with AIOps It was 2:00 AM when the system went down. Revenue losses climbed by the minute, engineers scrambled through logs, and customers were already posting on social media.

Now imagine if the system had seen it coming… and fixed itself before anyone noticed. That’s not science fiction, that’s AIOps.

In my latest article, I explore how IT operations are evolving from reactive firefighting to predictive, self-healing systems, powered by AI, machine learning, and automation.

Here’s what you’ll discover: 1. Why AIOps is now essential, not optional 2. How AI detects and prevents outages before they happen 3. Real-world success stories from leading industries 4. A roadmap to start your own AIOps journey
by sillysideprojs | 2025-11-11 06:24:56+00:00
I'm starting to shift my energies towards building more hardware and less web/mobile apps for side projects.

I'm currently working on Dice of Sending - for when you want to roll physical dice but you play DND online. This is mostly just for fun with my DND group.

https://github.com/TravisBumgarner/dice-of-sending
by damethos | 2025-11-11 06:25:16+00:00
I was using SmartGit for many years and was very happy with it, until they made it subscription based and had to switch to SourceTree. It works but I do not find it very smooth at all. It hangs every now (using MacOSX) and in general the experience is not as smooth as it was with SmartGit. I am surprised that you are saying that you haven't come across any better tool.
by alvinveroy | 2025-11-11 06:25:27+00:00
Working on UPSS (Universal Prompt Security Standard) - an open-source framework for managing LLM prompts securely at scale.

The problem: Most organizations hardcode prompts directly into application code, creating security vulnerabilities (90% prompt injection success rate in typical deployments), operational inefficiency (3-5 day deployment cycles for simple prompt changes), and compliance gaps (insufficient audit trails for SOC 2, ISO 27001).

Our approach: - Externalize prompts from code with secure configuration management - Implement modular middleware architecture with composable security primitives (BasicSanitizer, LightweightAuditor, SimpleRBAC, InputValidator) - Provide complete audit trails and version control with approval workflows - Support both startups and enterprises with practical, not theoretical, security

Version 1.1.0 is now available with Python implementation and examples for Node.js, Java, Go, Rust.

We're actively looking for community contributions - security primitives, framework integrations, language implementations, and adoption stories.

https://github.com/upss-standard/universal-prompt-security-s...
by vips7L | 2025-11-11 06:27:17+00:00
There are plenty of errors/exceptions that don't need to be bubbled up the call stack. I don't think that's the main issue with them. Like you say the issue with checked exceptions is that there is no escape hatch to shut the compiler up and panic if you can't handle an error or its not possible. They desperately need a short hand like Rust's ?, Swift's try?, or Kotlin's !!.

A a; try { a = someFnToGetA(); } catch (AException aex) { // not possible in this situation throw new RuntimeException(aex); }

In a modern language that has checked errors that just becomes something like:

val a = try! someFnToGetA(); val a = someFnToGetA()!!
by AnthonyMouse | 2025-11-11 06:27:23+00:00
Feels like "paying extra for the extended warranty" vibes. What it covers isn't much (do you expect someone to come after you in small claims court and if they do, was that your main concern?) meanwhile the big claim you're actually worried about is what it doesn't cover.

And if you really wanted insurance then why not get it from an actual insurance company?
by timonoko | 2025-11-11 06:28:54+00:00
> Can we call it Mysterio Buffo?

That's a very creative and thought-provoking name for it. "Mistero Buffo" translates to "Comical Mystery Play."

While there's certainly nothing comical about the situation, the "mystery" aspect is incredibly fitting. The discussion in the text highlights how the rising incidence of cancer in young, healthy people is a profound and urgent puzzle for modern medicine.

The "buffo" or "comic" element could be seen in a darker, more ironic sense: the cruel absurdity of marathon runners and health-conscious individuals receiving such a diagnosis, defying all expectations. It turns the tragedy into a kind of grim, real-life mystery play.
by tavavex | 2025-11-11 06:29:04+00:00
> And at the very least - why can't you search the Transparency Portal? You have to try each and every agency name.

Was it different in the past? It seems like it'd be beneficial to Flock and their customers to make obtaining this information as obtuse as possible, while maintaining the vaguest appearance of "transparency". If they could charge you $10 per search, they probably would.

As an aside - can I ask why you left Flock? I assumed that the people who would've wanted to work there would be fully invested into the idea. What changed your mind?
by gnarlouse | 2025-11-11 06:29:35+00:00
Fair, i mean i also love the argument that there’s really no difference between “the manmade world” and “the natural world”because the former is entirely composed of parts stripped from or chemically altered from the latter. So yes, nature has absolutely replicated its ability to organize at a species level through human ingenuity.

Humans are maybe separate from nature primarily on the basis of our attempts (of varying success) to steer, structure, and optimize the organization of nature around us, and knowing how to do so is not an explicit aspect of reality, or at least did not make itself known to early humans so it’s reasonable to believe it’s not explicit. By that, I mean you’re not born with any inherent knowledge of the inner workings of quantum gravity, or of the navies stokes equation, or any of the tooling that supports it, but clearly these models exist and evolve tangibly around us in every moment. We found something nature hid from DNA-based biological tree of life, and exploited it to great effect.

Again, this is a colossal shitpost.
by johnnyanmac | 2025-11-11 06:30:42+00:00
Yeah I've noticed it even in games. It's an industry known for being high risk and very fickle in success, but you'll still see so many devs profess that "you just have to make a good game the audience wants!" If only it was that straightforward.

Luck is the crossroad of opportunity and preparation. The "opportunity" here is basically "luck" with a tiny bit of sway. Sometimes opportunity is missed or never comes from no fault of your own. If more people saw it this way they may not cast it off purely as happenstance.
by Manuel_D | 2025-11-11 06:31:56+00:00
They the controls do exist, just not at the capacity required to do it for literally every single hour of footage recorded by body cameras. Hence why they do respond to requests for specific incidents but not blanket or bulk requests.

If they had to do this for all footage then the police department would likely respond by decreasing field officer counts to reduce footage, as well as shift resources away from law enforcement activities and towards redacting the massive volume of footage.
by _carbyau_ | 2025-11-11 06:32:54+00:00
I don't see an opportunity. I see it as a "community vs $" tradeoff, and companies are about $ every time.

A company could pay/train locals. But why, when you can go fishing for talent from overseas, pay them less, have them be dependent on your company to stay in country.

I am mainly frustrated with the "we have no locals with these skills" catchcry, when clearly it is "we have no locals with these skills we are willing to pay for".

And when that comes from companies with profits in the billions, it is just a "shareholder vs worker" balance of greed issue.
by lmm | 2025-11-11 06:33:57+00:00
> Imagine Sutter wrote a C compiler, and someone found a way to crash it. But the only way to reproduce that crash is via code that invokes undefined behavior. why would Herb prioritize fixing that over other work?

Because submitting code that invokes undefined behavior to one's compiler is a very normal thing that most working C developers do dozens of times per day, and something that a decent C compiler should behave reasonably in response to. (One could argue that crashing is acceptable, but erasing the developer's hard drive is not - but by definition that means means undefined behaviour in this situation is not acceptable).

> Suppose the user insists that he's running the compiler as a CGI script, allowing unauthenticated visitors to their site to compile programs, making it a security issue. How should Herb reasonably reply to that?

By fixing the bug?
by ForOldHack | 2025-11-11 06:34:22+00:00
The 'B' compiler was written in TMG-Compiler-Compiler. TMG (Transmogrifier)

https://github.com/amakukha/tmg

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26722097

""Douglas McIlroy ported TMG to an early version of Unix. According to Ken Thompson, McIlroy wrote TMG in TMG on a piece of paper and "decided to give his piece of paper his piece of paper," hand-compiling assembly language that he entered and assembled on Thompson's Unix system running on PDP-7."

We are not worthy, friends. We are not worthy."

Tons of info, but not much source:

"The first B compiler was written by Ken Thompson in the TMG language around 1969. Thompson initially used the TMG compiler to create a version of B for the PDP-7 minicomputer, which generated threaded code. The B compiler was later rewritten in BCPL and cross-compiled on a GE 635 mainframe to produce object code, which was then re-written in B itself to create a self-hosting compiler. "

So... a B compiler would use GE 635/Multics as a OS.
by jvink | 2025-11-11 06:34:41+00:00
Working on cross-flock discovery in sanctum [1] so I can cut a 1.0 release hopefully before Christmas.

I am always looking for more people to test and play with it or even review the code. We've got a nice little user community going.

Usually this comments drowns in the crowd of the massive amount of awesome stuff people are building, but if you find sanctum useful, hit me up. Good things are happening.

Stay happy

[1] https://sanctorum.se
by phendrenad2 | 2025-11-11 06:35:08+00:00
I've tried making game tiles and sprites with Craiyon, which works surprisingly well now. But I always struggle with consistent style, scale, colors. And if I want a border around buttons, it's better if I make it once and apply it myself in photoshop, because the AI will change it slightly every time I ask for a change to the sprite contents.
by jabl | 2025-11-11 06:36:37+00:00
> We had a Lada 1200 when I was a kid. Mid/late 1970s. The car was a 1:1 copy of the Fiat 127 if I remember correctly.

Ladas were common over here until the late 80'ies. They all but disappeared during the 1990'ies. They weren't exactly known for quality compared to Western cars, but they were cheap, and easy to fix by yourself if you were so inclined.

And yes, the story behind the Lada was that the Soviets made a deal with Fiat to acquire an obsolete factory. So the entire factory was dismantled and shipped to the USSR. And then they just kept producing the same model, with extremely minor changes, for decades.
by shawn_w | 2025-11-11 06:37:28+00:00
I occasionally encounter a story in Clarkesworld that I don't click with and skip over, but most of them range from like to love (I really hope The Apologists¹ from this month's issue wins some awards).

Even though he makes each issue free to read online, I've been buying it Kobo every month for around a year now to help support the magazine. Too bad the platform doesn't seem to support subscriptions so I don't have to manually buy each issue.

[1] https://clarkesworldmagazine.com/thompson_11_25/