MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by Nextgrid | 2025-11-23 18:07:03+00:00
> The risk is letting criminals/politicians correlate all the information on individuals

But this is already happening with the current data leaks. In fact if digital cryptographic ID was widespread it would make a lot of identity theft attacks (where bad guys use leaked data to impersonate someone and steal their money or take out a loan) obsolete as only cryptographic ID verification would be accepted.

> I don't know how exactly that would work, but from my experience of linux admin, I don't share private keys between devices as that would prevent me being able to revoke any keys that may be leaked.

The normal way to do this would be to implement a PKI. You need to bootstrap the system, so you'd use your passport/etc and get a certificate issued against your device's private key, that cert is valid for X days and can be renewed, etc. There are many options and trade-offs for each but the point is that it's absolutely possible to make such a system secure enough.

But regardless of which way they implement it, a complete compromise of the system is of no risk to the average person; the system would become known as compromised and everyone can now disavow any actions made with their digital ID. The danger is if the system is silently compromised and the attackers only exploit a small selection of targets, but even then the average person has little to fear as they will not be interesting/important enough to waste such as exploit on and potentially risking discovery.

> then why are we wanting to pay lots of money for a fragile and possibly privacy invading system?

The bulk of the money would be spent on implementation, not operation; if the system is broken, patching the vulnerability and reissuing every ID is all it takes, so it's not like a vuln immediately means all the money is lost... and even if it was, it may still be worthwhile if during its years of operation the system saved enough money not having to do ID verification the conventional, insecure way.
by skydhash | 2025-11-23 18:07:19+00:00
You have to think of it like "This desk is busy with some work, let's go to a free desk". So I can have a workspace with my Email and IM clients, one with my music player, another for my leisure browsing, and two each with an editor and a browser for the programming projects I have open.

I'm currently on i3 right now and I have 10 static workspaces (6 occupied):

1. Emacs frames (5 of them)

2. Browser

3. Terminal

4. Terminal (temp), but more often have calibre there, and other random gui tools.

6. Music player (cmus)

9. Password manager (keepass)
by tristan957 | 2025-11-23 18:07:34+00:00
I'm not a new Linux user, and I use GNOME. I've done stints on KDE, Cinnamon, MATE, Xfce, and Budgie.

I personally find GNOME to be the best experience. I'm just stating that GNOME also caters to people with a decade+ of Linux desktop experience.
by spdegabrielle | 2025-11-23 18:07:43+00:00
That's a good question.

The education tooling is all optional (so their only impact is perceptual) DrRacket, teaching languages, and supporting libraries are all optional. (see Minimal Racket - just the compiler and package manager https://download.racket-lang.org/releases/9.0/#:~:text=SHA25... )

I'd like to know what tooling is missing from Racket that is available in major general purpose languages like C#, Java, or Common Lisp implementations?
by lumost | 2025-11-23 18:07:44+00:00
My question with these is always "what happens when the model doesn't need prompting?". For example, there was a brief period where IDE integrations for coding agents were a huge value add - folks spent eons crafting clever prompts and integrations to get the context right for the model. Then... Claude, Gemini, Codex, and Grok got better. All indications are that engineers are pivoting to using foundation model vended coding toolchains and their wrappers.

This is rapidly becoming a more extreme version of the classic "what if google does that?" as the foundation model vendors don't necessarily need to target your business or even think about it to eat it.
by aeternum | 2025-11-23 18:08:37+00:00
For me, he was incredibly right. Steam is so much easier than pirating games, you generally did need accounts to pirate, monthly subscription to either rapidshare/gator equivalent or a VPN to torrent.

The vast majority of steam games run just fine when not started via steam. A few AAA titles might require it but in many years of running steam I've never encountered it as an issue.

Family sharing works fine, and how is steam going to prevent you from giving your acct to your kids? You're okay with violating copyright law but not the steam TOS? Pirated/Cracked games also often had a limited lifetime, updating would break them as cracks were highly version-dependent. Steam with cloud saves, auto-updates, built-in workshop, and the many sales is overall a much better user experience.
by kevincox | 2025-11-23 18:08:52+00:00
I quite dislike the global menu of macOS. It means that you need to switch windows to see the menu for the window, which can result in a lot of tedious mouse movement.

But what I absolutely love is the menu search. I would love to see GNOME (well GTK I guess) add menu search. Also bring back the ability to bind hotkeys by typing while hovering a menu item while you are at it!
by jliptzin | 2025-11-23 18:09:10+00:00
My home is in the woods. Took me a while to switch to Starlink because it was difficult to get line of sight. Eventually, Xfinity pissed me off so much that I was willing to move heaven and earth to move to Starlink. I ended up running a 300 foot cat6 cable through a pond to the back of my property to the only place I'd get line of sight and it's been working great. If you have to pay someone to climb up a tree and mount the dish so it's above the tree line, it's well worth it.
by superzamp | 2025-11-23 18:09:16+00:00
Question is a bit broad, but out of all the concepts under the financial engineering umbrella you're bound to explore the concept of ledgering eventually.

I've written a bit about it on my own co's product blog in an attempt to demystify some core concepts [1], [2], [3].

Still on ledgering and expanding into less mathematical and more applied concepts, I can also recommend a book called "The Accounting Game: basic accounting fresh from the lemonade stand" [4].

[1]: https://www.formance.com/blog/engineering/how-not-to-build-a... [2]: https://www.formance.com/blog/engineering/debits-and-credits... [3]: https://www.formance.com/blog/engineering/ledgering-all-the-... [4]: https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Accounting_Game.htm...
by perching_aix | 2025-11-23 18:09:18+00:00
The embarrassing failures or misconceptions of math experts with regards to research level mathematics? Definitely a serious problem.

Though by your "Perelman and Wiles didn't need "AI" assistance" comment, you'd surely be there on the sidelines to ridicule them for each and every single one. I guess maybe that's where your concerns are coming from?

I can practically see how these concerns of yours would suddenly evaporate if they started using self-hosted models instead... ... yeah, right, who are we kidding?
by attila-lendvai | 2025-11-23 18:09:53+00:00
it's bootstrapped off of GHC.

it was only using ChezScheme as an optimizing compiler backend.

(i created a PR to refactor their build system to reify the bootstrap process all the way down from GHC. it basically generalized the normal build workflow of Idris2 to be able to animate the entire bootstrap chain from GHC. sadly, it was pretty much ignored, and later abandoned: https://github.com/idris-lang/Idris2/pull/1990)
by Tagbert | 2025-11-23 18:10:29+00:00
Yes, there are some toxic people here, as in any community or population, but there are also thoughtful and compassionate people here. This article seems to be mostly filled with the latter. I don’t know what your experience on HN has been but I encourage you to look beyond the that unpleasent post and consider the humane majority on this pot before you make your decision.
by glenstein | 2025-11-23 18:10:35+00:00
Every raving crank tells this story to themselves about how they're the next Galileo, and that they are the exception that warrants suspending our skills for critical interrogation.

I think this is cool, plausible and warrants investigation, but not suspension of disbelief. There needs to be a better way to go about this than responding "what about Galileo!?" to any principled application of critical thinking.
by 0xbadcafebee | 2025-11-23 18:11:05+00:00
> Helicopters avoid car chases by allowing them to follow the car until it gets to a destination or runs out of gas.

So, the thing that we could do cheaper and easier with drones, we should continue to do with vastly more expensive helicopters.... why?

> Even if they "usually" start from a minor traffic violation (which they do not),

Except that both independent journalists, and every major law enforcement agency, has been saying they do, for 30 years.

- San Francisco Chronicle "Fast and Fatal" Investigation reported that 82% of car chases that resulted in a death started as a pursuit over a traffic stop or a non-violent offense. (https://github.com/sfchronicle/police_pursuits) (https://journalistsresource.org/media/police-chases-how-they-did-it-san-francisco-chronicle/) - A 2025 NY State Attorney General's Office report on improving policing and public safety cited data suggesting that many chases are for minor reasons and highlighted data on the high risk of negative outcomes. (https://ag.ny.gov/sites/default/files/reports/improvingpolicingandpublicsafety.pdf) - A 2020 California Highway Patrol report detailed that half of all police pursuits in California during 2019 were initiated for four non-violent reasons: speeding (20.7%), stolen vehicles (13.6%), license/registration violations (8.8%), and red light violations (7.5%). (https://www.chp.ca.gov/siteassets/files/police_pursuits_sb_719_-2020.pdf) - A 2010 article from an FBI bulletin noted that "the majority of police pursuits involve a stop for a traffic violation". (https://leb.fbi.gov/articles/featured-articles/evidence-based-decisions-on-police-pursuits-the-officers-perspective) - A 1998 Bureau of Justice Statistics analysis of over 952 pursuits in Dade County found that 512 (over 50%) were initiated for a traffic violation. (https://bjs.ojp.gov/library/publications/police-vehicle-pursuits-2012-2013)

> the majority of individuals who run have outstanding felony warrants or are engaged in committing another crime

So what? That doesn't justify vehicular homicide, either of bystanders or the perpetrators, not to mention property damage.

You could stop a suspect from running by firing a rocket launcher. But there's a substantial risk associated with what that rocket is going to hit, so we don't do that! A car is a 2-ton missile, and you have multiple of them careening wildly through the street. The risk is insanely out of balance with the objective. There are much less dangerous methods to find and apprehend suspects, and law enforcement agencies have said the same.

If you haven't watched the John Oliver episode that I linked above (YouTube link), I highly recommend it, because it goes over all this in detail.
by mitchbob | 2025-11-23 18:11:17+00:00
> Our obsession with deadly game shows - from “The Running Man” and “Squid Game” to MrBeast’s real-life reënactments - reflects a shift in the national mood to something increasingly zero-sum.

https://archive.ph/2025.11.18- 111928/https://www.newyorker.com/news/the-lede/the-most-dangerous-g...
by alex1138 | 2025-11-23 18:11:45+00:00
"Social media harm" sounds like one of these nebulous things which has no real definition

"Social media was a mistake, just like the internet" oh ok so we should just give up our gmails and reddits and everything because people insist on the widest possible swathe of categories

But actually when it comes to Metabook... I don't think Zuckerberg cares about anybody, and more to the point they refuse to give you a chronological service just for starters

People have died and their friends haven't known about it because the algorithm never showed them. People have noticed messages they've got from people trying to get in touch with them years later, because Zuck feels you should be using Facebook all the time, not email https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4151433

When your company is run by a megalomaniac this is what you get...
by johnisgood | 2025-11-23 18:11:52+00:00
I had panic attacks every morning before school. God, I hated school. Mainly because of the other kids, and when I was older, because of both the kids and the teachers. I remember telling my IT teacher I am using Linux (I forgot why I told her) and she was very condescending. I have a lot of other stories but yeah, school was an anxiety-inducing nightmare.
by Nextgrid | 2025-11-23 18:13:40+00:00
> Paint to forge official documents good enough for them to pass? That's some skill!

I was thinking more about signatures on paper documents. There's been many times I had to pretend to print a PDF I just received, sign it and scan it. Obviously I've just overlaid my signature with a Paint-like tool. This idiocy appears to be widespread enough that open-source projects exist to make more convincing renditions: https://github.com/erstazi/falsisign

> If this was available and made stuff for me easier and wasn't tied to a device I'd use it, just like passkeys.

Ideally it would be NFC/smartcard based, with optional smartphone integration (you can bootstrap a virtual time-limited copy of it from a physical one).

> I also have a suspicion it will be overly complicated and massively over budget, and likely fail. The digital equivalent of HS2.

Oh yeah obviously, this is the UK we're talking about; but in theory the idea is nice and would save a lot of headaches if done well (also remove the need for some parasitic industries like fraud protection or credit reference agencies, so another reason why it probably won't succeed).
by augusto-moura | 2025-11-23 18:13:49+00:00
Support for proton drive on rclone is still on beta [1], Proton, AFAIK, doesn't provide documented official APIs for accessing their Drive. Much of the work on the rclone plugin was made via reverse engineering and reading Proton's open source projects code

[1]: https://rclone.org/protondrive/
by mytailorisrich | 2025-11-23 18:13:53+00:00
My comment was neither patronizing nor out of touch. In fact it acknowledges that this is a "tough question".

Social issues can't be tackled without facing the tough questions head on.

My point is that I think that the best way to actually help families and children is to incentivise and teach not to have children you can't afford in the first place instead of infantilising people and to tell them that anything goes and the state will pick up the tab.

No-one, no-one replied to my comments on the point. Only intellectually lazy outrage.
by immibis | 2025-11-23 18:14:18+00:00
If you're trying to argue "Group X should own it instead of Group Y" then you're right - there is no good argument to fix any particular Group X - there's only special pleading. Why should it be the group who controlled it in 1600 AD, not the group who controlled it in 1600 BC or the group who controls it right now?

But there are other philosophies that don't have this problem. Philosophies where there's no notion of ownership at all, or ownership is by the entirety of humanity/the world (which makes it meaningless), and one person can only borrow something for an extended period of time. This is how a lot of native peoples viewed land, which makes sense since it cannot be created or destroyed. Or philosophies where, for example, all humans collectively own all land and houses, but it's very practical to uniquely assign one human to each house, but there's nothing special about that connection, and it doesn't give the rights to, say, hold that object hostage for money. (This is how socialists view toothbrushes, I'm told.)
by soegaard | 2025-11-23 18:14:22+00:00
From the Idris 2 documentation:

>> Can Idris 2 compile itself? > Yes, Idris 2 is implemented in Idris 2. By default, it targets Chez Scheme, > so you can bootstrap from the generated Scheme code, as described in Section > Getting Started.

Also, check this talk:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h9YAOaBWuIk
by deepskyapps | 2025-11-23 18:14:49+00:00
I’m an indie iOS developer and I built a note-taking app that automatically transcribes recordings, detects language, generates summaries, action items, decisions, and creates full PDF reports.

My goals were: • make capturing meetings and lectures effortless • avoid complex interfaces and setup • make it work fully on mobile • allow fast export and sharing

Key features: • record or import audio • AI transcription (multi-language) • automatic summaries + action items • PDF report generation • no account required • timestamps + tap-to-jump playback • chat with your recordings/transcripts • templates for professionals and students

I’d love feedback: • what’s confusing? • what’s missing for your workflow? • would you trust this for real meetings?

Happy to answer questions and share how I built it.
by elevation | 2025-11-23 18:15:32+00:00
If companies are spreading lies/misrepresentations about unions, they're leaving a lot of good material on the table! I have a lifetime of union abuse stories from family and neighbors in the trades, service work, factories, and even elementary education.

A close female relative declined to cooperate with a unionization effort at her job -- she made good tips and didn't want to pay dues. She started receiving threatening calls at night describing her indoor pets and other details of her home that heavily implied that the caller had physically surveilled it, or was perhaps currently nearby. While the unionization effort ultimately failed, the harassment she endured left psychological scars.

My best friend's brother lost his union job after refusing to work unpaid overtime for them. When he showed up at his second job (with another union) he found out he was also fired there -- the union bosses in town had collaborated to blacklist him. So he took a non-union job framing houses. Months later, some union goons caught him alone on a job site and assaulted him for being a scab. They struck him several times with a 2x4 and kicked him. He nearly died.

Other friends in town have had their tires slashed, windows broken, or had out-of-state union members show up at their house on the weekend after trying to step down as union steward.

Even when I don't know the people involved, I can see the union machinery at work around me. When my local children's hospital awarded a parking garage contract to the lowest bidder, the local carpenter's union wanted a cut of the action. So the union brought in ruffians from out of state to protest the job site, causing delays. Someone covered the downtown with defamatory posters with pictures of the man who owned the construction company, so that his family, friends, and people he'd never met would see him made out to be the devil. The hospital and construction company could have made all the sabotage and harassment go away if they paid their protection money.

All the unions my family has experienced this century are just organized crime.
by junto | 2025-11-23 18:15:54+00:00
Possibly, but maybe the real difference is the subtlety between a planned deterministic (logical) result versus deterministic (black box) outcome?

We’re seeing this shift already in software testing around GenAI. Trying to write a test around non-deterministic outcomes comes with its own set of challenges, so we need to plan can deterministic variances, which seems like an oxymoron but is not in this context.
by greatgib | 2025-11-23 18:16:15+00:00
It's the novlang of 1984. Its shows were our society is headed, slowly but surely.

Little bit little remove or ban the language that might be offensive to some. Twist the meaning of things to ensure that normal words become "shameful" words when used. Until people forget. Then you can reach this society were there is no contestation, no social agitation and political unrest because the concept doesn't even exist.
by nabla9 | 2025-11-23 18:16:16+00:00
> Russian books doing this.

Mathematics: Its Content, Methods and Meaning by A.D. Aleksandrov, A.N. Kolomogorov, M.A. Lavrent’ev,.. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/405880.Mathematics

It's still a masterpiece. Originally published in 1962 in 3 volumes. The English translation has all in one.
by belter | 2025-11-23 18:16:23+00:00
This one is a hard pass. The book needs tighter editing and more rigorous reviewing.

It tries to serve all at once, but ends up in an awkward middle ground. Not deep enough to function as a real analysis text for Mathematicians, yet full of proofs that Scientists and Engineers do not care about, while failing to deliver the kind of practical rigor, those groups need when using calculus as a tool.
by mtud | 2025-11-23 18:16:36+00:00
Sure, but unlike the CRL checks the server gets to directly know how recently the client fetched the update if my understanding is correct. Knowing which landmarks the client has would likely give you a fairly precise picture of the update time, since more frequent landmarks yields smaller MTC proofs.

Spitballing here, would it still meet the needs of the protocol if the client offered which MTCAs it has (no version information), the server sends back some “typical” depth (say, 3 levels up the tree), then the client can decide to either: * Accept the MTC * Request a deeper traversal, following some super linear growth like fib numbers. In that case, they’d communicate “give me up to 5 nodes above your leaf” * Reject the MTC * Request the full certificate for “traditional” validation

The server still has a side channel for “how recently updated is this client” by knowing how many levels of inclusion proofs needed to be shared, but this is much less signal than knowing exactly which landmarks a client has.
by iammattmurphy | 2025-11-23 18:16:57+00:00
> macOS

This is the most counter-intuitive, user-unfriendly, confusing piece of software that I’ve used in my life.

Insane hyperbole in my opinion. Most of his complaints are that of a power user, and because it’s missing something he liked from Gnome. Fair enough I guess, the stuff he talks about does sound nice.

Later on in the article:

> The macOS itself isn’t all that bad.
by immibis | 2025-11-23 18:17:04+00:00
You're only reacting to a part of the system. You're starting from the axiom that businesses need a level of risky funding that only VCs will provide, and then congratulating VCs for swooping in and saving the day. But would it be possible to have a system where startups to require less funding? For example, by UBI, or normalizing bootstrapping?
by spdegabrielle | 2025-11-23 18:17:17+00:00
The IDE is not the language.

Racket has good support in VSCode (via magic Racket and the Racket langserver), Emacs (Racket Mode) and Vim. https://download.racket-lang.org/releases/9.0/doc/guide/othe...

The Racket Langserver obviously enables use in other editors that support the LSP. https://github.com/jeapostrophe/racket-langserver For editors that lack LSP support, scheme support is generally sufficient.

All that aside, DrRacket the IDE has some nice features that just don't exist in other editors. I don't know of another IDE that has an integrated macro stepper.