MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by maximus-decimus | 2025-11-23 20:24:55+00:00
I like WSL, but their search bars have gotten worse which really kills any good will I have towards them.

On my work computer, the search bar can't even find Intellij which is installed in a totally normal way. It's even in the same folder as clion in the program files and it can find that one. I also had a problem where the file explorer couldn't find a file by name and it made me look like an idiot.

You know what feature my menu bar has though? I tells me when the s&p 500 goes down in value to try to make me panic sell. That's a feature I really want in my work computer's os menu /s.

Also when I clicked on the time, it used to show me a calendar, but now it shows me a pomodoro app?

I don't want more features in notepad, what I want is the os to do basic stuff, like finding my programs and files or show me the time, right.
by redpenguin101 | 2025-11-23 20:24:55+00:00
> But for the remaining 2%, it's provably true that mouse is better

This is definitely true. The thing is that using the mouse is a habit, and until you break it, people find themselves instinctively using it in situations where it would be better to use the keyboard. So the 'hard' mouse disable is more of a 'going cold-turkey' type thing to try and break the habit. I agree that once it's broken it makes sense to relax this.
by SilverElfin | 2025-11-23 20:25:22+00:00
What’s Howard University and what makes it reputable enough to mention here, presumably as some sort of appeal to authority? And this is from a Heritage Foundation event, which is clearly a right biased organization.

Deloitte is mentioned in this article but let’s not forget, all of big tech also hire H1Bs and pay them the same as others for equal seniority. These companies don’t have different process or pay scales for immigrants. They also care a lot about hiring the best talent. They know better than others and are showing it by spending their money on H1Bs, rather than just chatting about it. It’s ridiculous to think the world’s best companies are just wasting money on “average grade labor”.

I think a lot of the casual generalizations about H1Bs or other immigrants are either based on lower quality talent at consulting companies or a result of racism (especially against Indians) or a desire for a weird “woke right” version of DEI where all of a sudden, those defending meritocracy want to now be shielded from competition. That’s the harsh reality the new “America First, America Only” (AFAO) right won’t admit.
by fragmede | 2025-11-23 20:25:42+00:00
We don't have a 24/7/365 video feed of the man's life with which to throughly judge him on, this is true. So casting him as a villian based on this shadow caricature version of a story we've been told might be unfair to the actual person. We're not Michael at the heavenly gates or Osiris or Anubis though, we're just going off of what's been written. Do the actions of that man as described not qualify as villainous to you? It’s small, affecting only the lives of those in his immediate vicinity. But it’s still not good. Maybe little V villainy not big V villainy like Voldemort?
by p0w3n3d | 2025-11-23 20:26:44+00:00
I've read somewhere a post of alleged MS Windows developer which was about software crisis in company, namely young programmers do not want to ReleaseHandle(HWND*) so the rewrite everything (probably to C#). He gave some example that a well done functionality was rewritten without a lot of security checks. But I am unable to find it right now. It might have been on Reddit... or somewhere else...
by techblueberry | 2025-11-23 20:27:36+00:00
I imagine the fact that the biggest political conspiracy theory of the past like 50 years crosses path with the most divisive element of the Republicans platform is going to lead to some challenges holding together the current coalition on the right.

Curious how this impacts JD Vance’s nomination being so directly tied to SV. If the pro-Israel contingent on the right wins, then probably positively? But then JD Vance is very much a new coalition that is not MAGA/America First or whatever.
I think I found a universal stability law for minds and AI systems(ZTGI)
by capter | 2025-11-23 20:28:04+00:00
For the past months I’ve been developing a framework I call ZTGI — the Compulsory Singular Observation Principle, and I’ve reached a point where I need to pressure-test it publicly.

The claim (yes, this is bold):

Any mind, biological or artificial, operates on a single internal “observation driver,” and all forms of instability, hallucination, confusion, or collapse emerge from conflicts inside this one-focal channel.

The model proposes:

Single-FPS cognition: a mind can only maintain one coherent internal observational state at a time.

Contradiction load: when two incompatible internal states try to activate simultaneously, the system becomes unstable.

Risk surface: instability can be quantified with a function of noise (σ), contradiction (ε), and accumulated hazard (H → H*).

Collapse condition: persistent internal conflict pushes the system into a predictable failure mode (overload, nonsense, panic, etc.).

LLM behavior: early experiments show that when an LLM is forced into internal contradiction, its output degrades in surprisingly structured ways.

I’m not claiming this is “the” theory — but I am claiming the structure seems universal across humans, animals, and AI models.

Before I go further, I want to know:

Is the “single internal observer” assumption already disproven somewhere in cognitive science or neuroscience?

Does treating contradictions as a risk function make theoretical sense?

Are there existing frameworks in AGI safety, unpredictability modeling, or cognitive architecture that resemble this?

If this idea were true, what would it break?

I know this is a high-risk post, but I want honest, technical feedback. If the idea is wrong, I want to know why. If it overlaps with existing work, I want pointers. If it’s novel, I want to refine it.

Let’s see where it goes.
by mrweasel | 2025-11-23 20:29:19+00:00
I love these "rediscoveries" of old code. Often I struggle to comprehend a lot of modern code, and while these older tools can be a little terse they are normally simple enough that I can reason about and modify the code.

Sometimes I wonder if it's due to the older code being produced with the mentality of "Look here something I hacked together, it sort of works." and people where happy about it because it was better than nothing, and you felt no right to demand anything of the author. If you wanted something changed the social contract was that you'd be the one to do the work, even if it meant learning e.g. C, not learning to open an entitled issue on Github.
by serf | 2025-11-23 20:29:34+00:00
so by this rational a person can be abused without even being aware of it and seeing no comparable ill effect?

Where is the line drawn? Am I abusing my spouse when I decide that we're a bit too over-stretched financially and that we're going to need to skip the surprise Disney World trip that I had planned but hadn't yet told them about?

What about if I think they just didn't try their hardest during the family softball competition? Are they abusing me?
by Loughla | 2025-11-23 20:30:10+00:00
Cashless payments, always connected software and devices, and required app use for basic services like power, water, and heat as well as extreme data collection as it exists today makes dropping out of society more difficult than ever.

While his crimes were atrocious, Ted Kaczynski might be right in some ways. The industrial and technological revolutios have improved life dramatically for n many humans and we live in a tube of astonishing abundance, but at what cost?

aaaaannndd now I'm on a list somewhere.
by koliber | 2025-11-23 20:30:45+00:00
One of the most important things about great performers in any discipline is to be adaptive. This also applies to engineering managers. I think the article is correct that it identifies that fads shifted. Great people were able to both adapt to new expectations while all the while adapting their approach to individual situations and people. If you are a one-trick pony sometimes your trick is in line with fads and expectations and you will do well. Sometimes it’s not in line and you will struggle. If you are adaptive you will do well in a changing landscape.
by AnthonyMouse | 2025-11-23 20:31:07+00:00
> Hybrid-sleep

Linux supports hybrid sleep. It might not be enabled by default because if you have a lot of RAM it has a tendency to burn out consumer SSDs. Consider what happens if you have 64GB of RAM, a 512GB consumer SSD that supports 100 full drive writes in total and you enter into hybrid sleep twice a day for three years.

> Ability to enable FDE post-installation

Copy entire filesystem to backup. This isn't even a step because you were already doing it, right? Enable FDE and copy it back.

These ones are just Windows defect workarounds:

> "reset this PC" functionality

> a built-in anti-malware

> Running x86 apps on AArch64 performantly

Windows messes itself up on a regular basis, requiring you to reset it; this is rare on stable Linux distributions and even then "reset this PC" is really just copying the user's documents and reinstalling the OS, which nobody cares about having a one-press button to do when they're not having to do it all the time.

Linux has functional package managers that people actually use, which makes the default way to install software be the one that isn't likely to introduce you to malware.

And the package managers recompile the software for whatever architecture you're using so you don't need to emulate a different one.

> Touch/Face login

I think people have tried to add this and the users went out of their way to remove it again. "Have the machine record your biometric data" is creepy and the security is bad because people leave their fingerprints on everything and post pictures of their face on the internet.

> Fast fractional HiDPI scaling

X has legacy issues with this:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27009035

Wayland supports it.
by nikitajupiter | 2025-11-23 20:31:30+00:00
Nikita Volkov is a 13-year-old builder who has been creating products since he was seven. Now he is working on Ace, a study app designed by a student who understands the problems other students face.

Before starting Ace, Nikita built an online store at age 7, a recipe discovery and management app at 11, a dropshipping store at 12, an AI coding agent, an AI chatbot for education, and a faster macOS Spotlight-style launcher integrated with AI. Each project was an attempt to fix a real frustration he had at that age.

Ace follows the same pattern. Nikita found that most study apps were either slow, overly complex, bad at what they are meant to do or designed by adults who no longer experience school in the same way students do. Rather than wait for a better tool, he decided to build one himself.

Ace focuses on clarity, speed, and real learning. Nikita is building it publicly, sharing his progress as he refines features and tests ideas in real time.

For someone his age, Nikita’s output is unusual, but his approach is straightforward: find a problem, understand it deeply, then build something better. Ace is the latest step in a journey that has already lasted several years, and he is documenting the entire process for others who may be on a similar path.
by squidbeak | 2025-11-23 20:32:03+00:00
> Obviously this will not just be stored on your phone. There will be a backend database of all issued IDs. Which will then serve as an authoritative identity system for unifying government databases.

Incorrect, that isn't the proposed system at all. In fact, Government is kept out of the loop, except as a reference. You seem not to understand what the IDs are, so I'll try again to explain their form.

The wallet (the app) holds data that you enter. A datum might be your name or national insurance number, citizenship etc. These are verified individually by the verification service and it returns each one with a cryptographic signature. The 'ID' is then a container for proofs. It exists only on your phone. It's totally disposable. Delete a container and you can regenerate it. And you'll have more than one, many more in fact, for all different uses. Each will have a different selection of attributes and their signatures. The IDs never exist anywhere else other than on your phone. There's no database of IDs, and the app has no contact itself with the government API. Representing it in any other way is a fundamental misunderstanding of the proposal. The proposed format simply doesn't work the way you claim.
by cyberax | 2025-11-23 20:32:26+00:00
Yes, it's called "annealing". Basically, the core is de-fueled and a huge electric resistive heater is put inside it. Then the entire vessel is heated to something like 600C, and kept there for several days.

It helps the atoms displaced by neutron collisions to "snap back" into the correct places in the crystalline structure. But it can never restore the material completely, and over time the annealing breaks will have to be more and more frequent.

It also can't be used for everything. Some pipes will experience large thermal stresses if annealed, and some components can't be heated properly due to complex geometry.

As with everything in engineering, all problems can be solved with additional complexity. It's possible to design LFTR reactors to be more annealable, but it will likely make them impractically complex.

There are also other issues with LFTRs. A significant part of the energy production will happen _inside_ the pipework carrying the molten salt, as delayed fission happens and daughter products decay. This will cause inevitable problems with the reactor power control.

Modern light water reactors are engineering marvels. They are incredibly compact for the amount of power that they generate, and they are now designed with the anticipated 70-100 year operating lifetime. Getting LFTRs to the same level of maturity might be possible, but it'll require literally hundreds of billions (if not trillions) invested, just like with the classic nuclear.
by johnisgood | 2025-11-23 20:32:43+00:00
Depends on your use case, and you will still have to generate your master key offline even if you want the subkeys generated directly on each YubiKey, which then you sign with the master key.

It is only slightly less secure if you pre-generate subkeys on an offline machine if you want identical subkeys on multiple devices (and if you want exact backups). Sometimes this is exactly what people want.

Ultimately it really depends on your use case.

BTW, please check the parent comments to which I responded.

PS. I think it would be useful for others if you elaborated on your statements (for educational purposes).
by dspillett | 2025-11-23 20:33:04+00:00
> an extremely polished web browser, clipboard history, Windows Sandbox, screen recording, OCR, automatic private info redaction, Markdown support in Notepad and many more. None of those exists on most distros.

That is simply wrong. Some of them might be a package install away rather than there by default, but they are hardly features that Windows pioneered…

> automatic private info redaction

With regard to that, I wasn't aware of a direct end user feature for that in Windows. There are tools for it in Office, and from a programmers PoV in .Net, but these are things that will continue even if Windows gets canned because it is a tech debt problem: Office is still a cash cow and .Net is via VS/VSCode and funnelling people into Azure.

> - "reset this PC" functionality

Maybe not as a one-click, but just re-follow the installation instructions…

> - a built-in anti-malware

Good point, though it is less needed due to most users installing via OS package repos which offers some friction to malware installation. Individual services that particularly need it have support for it though (mail servers and such). This might become a bigger issue if the use of “curl -> bash” as an installation or quick-run method keeps gaining traction.

> - Touch/Face login

I'm a refusenik there so I don't care about that one - biometric are bad for authentication/authorisation as they can't be easily revoked! And I'm sure I've seen it done so it is at least available.

> - Ability to enable FDE post-installation

Valid, ish, but where FDE is required commercially it is going to be done on first install anyway, the same for most home users that care enough. And conversion is possible after-the-fact, just not in as automated a manner as with Windows.

> - Hybrid-sleep

Though while we are talking about that, proper hibernate has been broken on Windows on many laptops for some time.

> - Fast fractional HiDPI scaling

I can't comment on that, it isn't something I would need. Though it is worth pointing out that a great many applications on Windows don't handle HiDPI well anyway, especially when you have different scaling factors on different screens. This is the same on any OS I think.

> - Running x86 apps on AArch64 performantly

Again completely out of my wheelhouse so I can't really comment. Again, this feels like a niche issue for consumer use cases ATM - the situation may change quickly as demand increases.

> (like shoving Microsoft accounts, Teams, and anything Electron-based down our throats)

And bloody “AI”. They've put it in notepad…

Thankyou the Sirius Cybernetics Marketing Division!
by Spartan-S63 | 2025-11-23 20:34:11+00:00
Dark versus light, in general, is fascinating. My fiancee and I have really different light sensitivities. She'll struggle to see in dimmer/only natural light indoors and I'll be able to see fine. Turning on overhead lighting really bothers me and causes a stress-like reaction. I'm much more amenable to artificial light after sunset and if it's indirect, diffuse light (i.e. a standing lamp).
by koliber | 2025-11-23 20:34:13+00:00
# Books

## *Trading and Exchanges: Market Microstructure for Practitioners by Larry Harris*

- comprehensive overview written in an accessible way

## *The Microstructure of Financial Markets by Frank de Jong and Barbara Rindi*

- 1st 1/4 of the book is generally useful. Then the math starts. This math is not needed to get a basic overview.

These are two books I wish someone gave to me when I started my first capital markets software engineering job. I recommend them to all the people I place in financial system engineering roles.

This is my passion. Message me if you want to talk more about this — see HN profile for contact info.
by Drupon | 2025-11-23 20:34:21+00:00
He was so afraid of coming out that he FORCED his wife to never divorce him and kept a lover on the side while cheating on him as well with multiple partners at the heights of the AIDS epidemic while lying to him that they had a future that he was too scared to ever make a reality. If that's not a coward, then I don't think you and I can agree on very simple definitions of words like "coward".
by elliotto | 2025-11-23 20:35:21+00:00
This is a good article that is critical of narratives around behaviour within organisations. I particularly enjoyed his criticism of the 'morality tale'.

The author then postulates some guidance for how to survive in organisations more generally, working above these strange social structures largely unique to silicon valley. It wasn't the purpose of the article, but I wish he was a bit more critical of these structures in general.
by mercury24aug | 2025-11-23 20:35:49+00:00
Giving LLM the ability to generate UI is a cool concept, but our models are not there yet. MCP Apps can be extremely powerful, for example, you can play Doom inside ChatGPT: https://x.com/rauchg/status/1978235161398673553?s=20

I don't think we can generate anywhere close to this kind of UI just yet.

We built https://usefractal.dev/ to make it easier for people to build ChatGPT Apps (they are technically MCP Apps) so I have seen the use cases. Most of these use cases LLM cannot generate the UI on the fly.
by tehjoker | 2025-11-23 20:36:32+00:00
Here’s a good starting point for learning about the situation:

“Our Genocide” by an israeli human rights organization https://www.btselem.org/publications/202507_our_genocide

This book too:

“The 100 Years War on Palestine” by Rashid Khalidi https://www.amazon.com/Hundred-Years-War-Palestine-Coloniali...
by Exoristos | 2025-11-23 20:36:35+00:00
> The conclusion here is clear: the industry will want different things from you as it evolves, and it will tell you that each of those shifts is because of some complex moral change, but it’s pretty much always about business realities changing. If you take any current morality tale as true, then you’re setting yourself up to be severely out of position when the industry shifts again in a few years, because “good leadership” is just a fad.

Institutional rhetoric at high levels is always meant to manipulate labor markets, financial markets, popular opinion. This is basic worldly-wisdom. The question is how does one (who is not at a high level) survive the recurring institutional changes? There seem to be two approaches to an answer: Do one's professional best regardless of change, or try to anticipate changes and adjust with the wind. For the first, gods may bless you, but it is folly to think your bosses will respect you. For the second -- good luck, you're running with bulls. Either way, the pill to swallow is that most employees including managers are grist to the mill.
by drnick1 | 2025-11-23 20:37:27+00:00
My suggestion, if you can, would be to host the data on your own hardware. The Internet was initially conceived with this kind of decentralization in mind -- most people/organizations hosting their own websites/email/files/etc. And this is what we must go back to if we want to retake control from "cloud" providers.

Technically, this could be as simple as a Samba server behind Wireguard, but you could also, or in addition, look into other projects like Nextcloud especially if you are interested in sharing files with people.
by godelski | 2025-11-23 20:37:39+00:00
I might be too naïve but

> For example, where is the color palette defined?

There's literally an option for "auto", "light", and "dark" on each page. If changing the default value from "light" to "auto" is not a single variable change then honestly I believe there are bigger issues. There's a master template in their code where they set the default option...

I'm saying it's silly to have an "auto" option and not making it the default. I'm not sure how this is anything but laughable. But again, if I'm being naïve here, I'm happy to hear the reasoning. If I'm naïve then it means I'm in need of being informed.

> That wouldn't be helpful anywhere outside of Wikipedia.

Well that specific complaint was about Wikipedia. I'll stand by that Wikipedia should change from a default value of "light" to "auto". Unless you have a compelling argument against this?

There are other websites that have a toggle and don't read the browser or os theme. That might require an additional few lines to do so but let's also not pretend that's hard.

If your website doesn't have both a light and dark theme, that's out of scope of my complaint. My complaint for those is: if using a template site that you didn't create, use one with this feature, there's millions. Else (you didn't use a template), please add this feature, the fact that these fights exist is irrefutable evidence that people value both options. It's evidence that there's very strong preferences and the work isn't useless (though may be hard to measure its effectiveness)

> Maybe if you link to the Wikipedia page you're talking about that would help.

You can visit any article on Wikipedia and you will see the options for this on the right side.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacker_News