MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by rootnod3 | 2025-11-15 15:19:58+00:00
I got good and bad news: my own WM did it Xmonad style, but I have not updated it in years. If there is enough request I might revive it (also X11 though, so not fitting the bill).

See https://github.com/Kintaro/wtftw It handles screens the exact same way Xmonad does, because it was modeled after Xmonad. The config is entirely done in Rust, so it allows for a lot of hackability. On reload, the config gets compiled to a dynamic library and the WM restarts itself, passing the current window IDs to itself to "reload".

But I was meaning to pick up a new project in 2026 for myself. So maybe a CL based Wayland WM with an Xmonad style?
Show HN: Research on NeXT ('85–'97) + Interview with Co-Founder Dan'l Lewin
by zaxel1995 | 2025-11-15 15:21:54+00:00
Hi HN,

I recently finished a research paper on NeXT Computer, Inc. (1985–1997) that might be valuable to people interested in computing history, Steve Jobs’ wilderness years, educational technology, and the origins of technologies that shaped modern software.

The paper includes:

A 30-minute interview with Dan’l Lewin, NeXT co-founder and current CEO of the Computer History Museum

Analysis of primary sources (press releases, 10-Ks, financial filings, early marketing material)

Secondary sources including Steve Jobs & the NeXT Big Thing

A historical and technical review of NeXT’s strategy, failures, breakthroughs, and product decisions

Lessons from NeXT that apply to modern educational technology and software platform design

If you’re interested in how NeXT influenced macOS, iOS, modern development environments, object-oriented software, and the early web (Tim Berners-Lee built the first WWW browser on a NeXT workstation), this might be a worthwhile read.

Paper Link: https://hdl.handle.net/1853/79808

Happy to discuss any aspects of NeXT history, product strategy, or interview insights that didn’t make it into the final draft.

—Zachary
by rootnod3 | 2025-11-15 15:21:57+00:00
If I an switch left and right via keyboard, why just not switch workspaces? I honestly don't see the point in the scrolling layout.

Switched workspaces I know what is on each workspace, I can switch to it, see what's there. But the Niri approach, I have to scroll through the space to see which windows are actually there.
by al_borland | 2025-11-15 15:23:06+00:00
I still use Apache for some internal stuff I host. It works, has been running for over a decade, and no one has ever complained about the speed. I have no reason to invest time in changing it over.

Technology should solve business problems. If the move from Apache to nginx isn’t going to solve an actual problem, it becomes technology for technology’s sake.

In some cases, squeezing out a little extra performance does matter, but for most sites, I don’t think it’s that big of a deal.
by fersarr | 2025-11-15 15:24:13+00:00
Just found this from Azure which specifically talks about Section 203 from Germany: https://assetsprod.microsoft.com/mpn/data-secrecy-amendment-...

> Microsoft is aware of legal obligations with regard to allowing access to Customer’s clients’ information and that non-compliance with such obligations can entail criminal sanctions for the parties involved (cf. in particular §§ 203, 204 StGB) (imprisonment or fines).

> Microsoft shall be obliged to maintain confidentiality in accordanc...

Would be great to find something like this from AWS or GCP.
by raw_anon_1111 | 2025-11-15 15:24:24+00:00
You’re right, because laws against underage drinking and drug use have really been affective over the years. It only takes one smart 12 year old to show everyone else how to do it. Heck if I were 12 now with 1TB u/d internet connection, I’m sure I would have set some type of proxy up for my friends.

If I could figure out 65C02 assembly programming at 12 in the 80s without the Internet and some books, I’m sure the 12 year old me in 2025 could set up a proxy.
by breppp | 2025-11-15 15:24:28+00:00
"The Justice Department said in court filings that agents did not post any child pornography to the site themselves"

"The FBI kept Playpen online for 13 days"

"There was no other way we could identify as many players"

I think the normal person would think this is worth while to catch more pedophiles, hence why this would work politically. However, you can read by the tone of the article that even this drew a lot of rage.

Imagine the FBI agents collecting CSAM, uploading it to websites for the purpose of... preventing copyright infringement
by Levitz | 2025-11-15 15:24:47+00:00
Because even though it definitely happened, it's one of those things you cannot prove and that don't really get recorded anywhere.

It also doesn't help that there is not even a time reference here. I want to say somewhere around 2018? Maybe earlier? Gamergate era? CTR?

There are pieces of internet history which are a "either you were there or you weren't" kind of deal. Like how the implementation of image posts in Reddit was very controversial, with concerns of the quality of the site going down. Wrong side won that one.
Show HN: I Built the Anti-Social Network (and Social Media Billionaires Hate It)
by abilafredkb | 2025-11-15 15:25:57+00:00
I had 3,000 LinkedIn connections and felt completely alone. So I built something that will probably make me zero dollars: a social network that actively prevents you from building a following. Here's what makes this controversial:

Your connections literally expire after 48 hours (yes, really) Zero followers, zero likes, zero feed to doomscroll The algorithm tries its HARDEST to match you with someone NOT from your country No ads. No data mining. No engagement metrics to optimize for.

The nuclear take that will get me roasted: Social media isn't broken because of the algorithm. It's broken because we've gamified human connection. Every platform is optimizing for addiction and engagement, calling it "connection." They've convinced us that 3,000 shallow relationships > 3 deep ones. Eintercon does the opposite. It's anti-growth, anti-retention, anti-engagement. You get matched with ONE person abroad, 48 hours, then they're gone. No building empires. No personal brands. Just... talking to another human. What I'm asking HN:

Am I insane for building an app that intentionally limits growth? Is there even a business model for "authentic connection" when surveillance capitalism pays 100x more? Has anyone else felt completely alienated by having "thousands of connections"?

I know this will get comments saying "this already exists" (it doesn't, not like this) or "no business model = dead" (probably true). But I'm curious if anyone else feels like social media made us less social, not more. Try it: eintercon.com Roast me. Or tell me I'm onto something. Either way, I need to know if this resonates or if I've completely lost the plot.
Show HN: Rovr – a modern terminal file explorer
by NSPG911 | 2025-11-15 15:26:46+00:00
Hi, so this is a project of mine to make a terminal file explorer that feels like Windows' File Explorer but in a cleaner and feature packed way. I didn't like how superfile didn't support mouse actions, and I found out about the Textual framework, so I decided to make this for myself.
by lelanthran | 2025-11-15 15:27:34+00:00
> C folks rather reproduce badly C++ than acknowledge its Typescript like improvements over C

This is a rather crude misrepresentation; most C programmers who need a higher level of abstraction than C reach for Java, C# or Go over C++.

IOW, acknowledging that C++ has improvements over C still does not make the extra C++ footguns worth switching over.

When you gloss over the additional footguns, it looks like you're taking it personally when C programmers don't want to deal with those additional footguns.

After all, we don't choose languages based on which one offers the most freedom to blow your leg off, we tend to choose languages based on which ones have the most restrictions against blowing your leg off.

If your only criteria is "Where can I get the most features", then sure, C++ looks good. If your criteria is "Where are the fewest footguns", then C++ is at the bottom of the list.
by getnormality | 2025-11-15 15:27:36+00:00
This is a nice package, and a great illustration of how languages other than R suffer from the lack of an aesthetically elegant way to select list elements with bare words, like R's $ operator.

Because their lists don't have selection by bare words, they have to go one of several other specialized, distinct, built-in Abstract Data Types to get it. They have to create whole so-called "Classes" and "Modules", when all they really needed was a list whose elements can be accessed with a dot and a bare word.

The pandas package for tabular data manipulation requires even more complicated workarounds. It has a DataFrame Class composed of objects of Column Class. Then it makes an arbitrary bunch of common functions, so common that many are built into Python itself, Methods of said Columns. (In R, a table is just a list of vectors, and no Methods are needed.)

So now you've got a thing that's supposedly a real Class, but it's really just a container of completely arbitrary fields and data types. These fields are themselves instances of another Class that is supposedly specific to pandas, but is really just a vector, and a vector doesn't necessarily have anything to do with being part of a table. And that Class has some random methods that give you additional ways to do basic things the language already does, and are often not the functions you actually need to work with the data therein.

All that just so that we can write stuff like df.col.max(), and... gosh, what is that even supposed to mean? Can we all just admit that we like writing code in chains separated by dots, and stop tying that capability to hierarchies of Official Abstract Data Types?

These non-R languages make you utter such strange incantations just to put something in a key-value container and access that thing with nice-looking code. I feel like this makes it harder to realize that very often this is the best way of doing things.

R has a bit more varied and sometimes mildly ugly syntax than other languages, but once you get used to the building blocks it gives you, it has all these powers to do very dynamic things in very easy ways, without a bunch of ponderous specialized concepts.
by andai | 2025-11-15 15:28:01+00:00
Many moons ago I became quite obsessed with analyzing spectrograms on my computer.

I would load up audio files in Audacity and look at them to see how the audio "looked", as a function of how intense each frequency is over time.

You can even set a track to spectrogram while recording which allowed you to see the sound in real time.

Music also tends to be very beautiful in the spectrogram! And birdsong also. Sometimes I would see a bird first, and only afterwards notice it in my field of hearing.

I noticed while analyzing a podcast that I began to recognize common words like "you." I also noticed that I was able to easily distinguish between different people's voices.

I had to wonder if I were deaf, or if I become deaf, I would suddenly have a strong motivation to learn how to read these things. To develop some kind of device which would show them to me 24 hours a day.

I have not done this, but the project has remained in the back of my mind for over a decade.

Does anyone else know more about this? Does such a device exist?

I think that only some linguists learn how to read spectrograms. But it seems like something that might be extremely useful to any hearing impaired person?

Relating to the article, I think one could quickly learn to read them fluently (e.g. as subtitles, perhaps overlaid on real life), and of course you get the tonal information built in for free—that's what a spectrogram is!
by DrewADesign | 2025-11-15 15:28:06+00:00
A career change that left me as a recent graduate in a decimated marketplace missing the bottom ten rungs on the ladder and no interest in getting back into the software world has led me to advanced manufacturing as a metal worker. I code a little, move heavy steel pieces periodically which is a nice way to break up the standing/sitting but not nearly as much as a general laborer, solve lots of problems, keep my trigonometry muscles toned, am forced to take breaks, get paid for my overtime, there’s a union that the company ownership is totally willing to work with, and when I’m not at work, work isn’t with me. There’s something very satisfying about leaving work with exercised muscles, smelling slightly of cutting oil. The money sucks comparatively so early in my career, but the rate increases more for performance than seniority so its rising quickly, the benefits are good, the career trajectory is pointing upwards, and longevity-wise, it’s certainly a whole lot better than gig work.

There’s a huge crisis in US manufacturing: we’re bleeding craft knowledge because off-shoring let companies hire existing experienced workers for decades, so they never had to train a new generation of tradespeople. Now all those folks are dying and retiring and they need people to pick up that deep knowledge quickly. Codifying and automating is going to kill jobs either way, but one factory employing a few people making things for other factories with local materials is better than everything perpetually shifting to the cheap labor market du jour. I’m feeling much more optimistic about the future of this than the future of tech careers.

I think over the next few years, a very large percentage of folks in tech will find themselves on the other side of the fence, quickly realize that their existing expertise doesn’t qualify them for any other white collar jobs where vibe coding experience is a bullet point in the pluses section, that tech consulting is declining even faster than salaried jobs, and that they’re vastly less qualified than the competition for blue collar jobs. Gonna be a rough road for a lot of folks. I wouldn’t invest in SF real estate any time soon.
by surajrmal | 2025-11-15 15:28:15+00:00
There are RCU safe trees like the maple tree in Linux: https://docs.kernel.org/core-api/maple_tree.html

The tl;dr is that it uses garbage collection to let readers see the older version of the tree they were walking while the latest copy still gets updated.

I read a paper recently about concurrent interval skip lists the other day as well which was interesting.
by kannanvijayan | 2025-11-15 15:28:32+00:00
You'd want to have the alteration reference existing guides to the current implementation.

I haven't jumped in headfirst to the "AI revolution", but I have been systematically evaluating the tooling against various use cases.

The approach that tends to have the best result for me combines a collection of `RFI` (request for implementation) markdown documents to describe the work to be done, as well as "guide" documents.

The guide documents need to keep getting updated as the code changes. I do this manually but probably the more enthusiastic AI workflow users would make this an automated part of their AI workflow.

It's important to keep the guides brief. If they get too long they eat context for no good reason. When LLMs write for humans, they tend to be very descriptive. When generating the guide documents, I always add an instruction to tell the LLM to "be succinct and terse", followed by "don't be verbose". This makes the guides into valuable high-density context documents.

The RFIs are then used in a process. For complex problems, I first get the LLM to generate a design doc, then an implementation plan from that design doc, then finally I ask it to implement it while referencing the RFI, design doc, impl doc, and relevant guide docs as context.

If you're altering the spec, you wouldn't ask it to regen from scratch, but use the guide documents to compute the changes needed to implement the alteration.

I'm using claude code primarily.
by pmontra | 2025-11-15 15:28:50+00:00
It works but it takes a long time to load.

I've got two customers that both use Slack for everything except calls. One does calls in Meet and the other one in Teams. I asked to the Teams one and they told me that Teams works for everybody every time. Slack sometimes has problems with the video or audio setup. Too bad, because huddles are only one click away.
by mikkupikku | 2025-11-15 15:29:33+00:00
You should stop believing that you can learn what America is like by reading about it online or in the media. Homeless scum making libraries unusable is extremely rare in America, if in fact it ever happens at all. I regularly visit libraries everywhere I go and only a few times did I ever see anything even like that and it was limited to one or two street people wandering around in the lobby or hidden off in some corner. Even in Seattle where the number of street junkies sprawled out on sidewalks was far too high for my standards of decency, the public library downtown was absolutely pristine. You might sometimes see a bum in the ground floor going for the toilets, but that's it. They otherwise avoid the library, it has nothing for them. Porn? They have phones I guess, I've never once seen a computer room overflowing with street coomers. I'm not saying it never happened somewhere at some time, but it's not a regular thing.

Also, I don't just visit big flagship libraries in big cities. Libraries in metro suburb areas and also libraries in small rural working class towns are places I've been to many times without seeming anything like what you've described. All across America, libraries are clean and designed to be safe and inviting places for families of all ages.

Of course what I've written is just a other online account which you shouldn't blindly believe. You shouldn't have beliefs one way or the other about American libraries unless you've actually visited American libraries yourself. If you aren't even American, then the status of American libraries shouldn't be something you pretend to be informed about. It shouldn't even be something you pretend to have an opinion about. It's like my opinion on Luxemburg supermarkets; I have none! I've never been in one and they're far from my life so I can't just walk into one. I have no opinion on them, have no reason to pretend to have an opinion, have no reason to believe I can form meaningful opinions about them by reading about them online. Somehow people can't manage this when it comes to America.
by polotics | 2025-11-15 15:29:58+00:00
Showing strength is also showing restraint. The Russian pilots now know that they owe their life to NATO's restraint, a restraint that they know they cannot expect from their own chain of deluded command.

The releasing of this information to the Russian public demonstrates clearly who is what, and how foolish joining the ranks of the man-eating army of the losing side would be.
by faragon | 2025-11-15 15:31:00+00:00
I used Dillo in 2001-2002 with the PlayStation 2 Linux kit. With 32MB of RAM for Linux, and 4MB for the graphics. It worked really well despite the CPU was 294MHz (MIPS R-5900, two-way in-order CPU, with SIMD unit, and only one hardware thread, having two auxiliary vector units as companions).
by pjmlp | 2025-11-15 15:31:35+00:00
Nah, it is called life experience meeting those kind of persons since the 1990's, starting on BBS forums.

My criteria is being as safe as Modula-2 and Object Pascal, as bare minimum.

C++ offers the tools, whereas WG14 has made it clear they don't even bother, including turning down Dennis Ritchie proposal for fat pointers.
by hulitu | 2025-11-15 15:31:48+00:00
> Its interesting that being unable to find a legal route to dig up dirt on archive.is, they're going the route of CSAM allegations.

This looks like someone in US (because FBI + CSAM) does not like them.

A lot of "sensitive" content is behind paywalls in the "free press" so someone, possibly FBI, wants to suppress this info.
by hylaride | 2025-11-15 15:33:28+00:00
Using UDP means QUIC support is as "easy" as adding it to the browser and server software. To add it as a separate protocol would have involved all OS's needing to add support for it into their networking stacks and that would have taken ages and involved more politics. The main reason QUIC was created was so that Google could more effectively push ads and add tracking, remember. The incentives were not there for others to implement it.
by al_borland | 2025-11-15 15:33:45+00:00
Is killing the connection after 48 meant to push people to share alternative contact information? 48 hours seems like it could be fast for this.

It seems that the connection should persist as long as the conversation is alive. Start chatting and keep all active conversations with some kind of 2 way back and forth within the last week. If the conversation dies out, then let the connection expire.
by CPLX | 2025-11-15 15:34:48+00:00
> The internet will be destroyed as countries the world over seek to impose all of their silly and incompatible laws on it.

> I'm happy to have known the true internet. Truly one of the wonders of humanity.

I'm old enough to have been around for the whole thing. I used to kind of share this view, but I don't anymore.

I think it's impossible to reconcile this point of view with the obvious observation that huge aspects of life have gotten really dramatically worse thanks to the internet and its related and successor technologies.

It has made people more addicted, more anxious, more divided, or confused. It has created massive concentrations of wealth and power that have a very damaging effect on society, and it is drastically reducing the ability of people to make decisions about how they want to live and how they want their society to be structured.

It's also done a tremendous amount of positive good, too, don't worry. It's obvious to me, like it should be obvious to any rational person, that there are huge benefits too. And of course, to some extent, there's a bit of inevitability to some parts of this.

While certainly there are examples of silly laws in the world, it's worth noting that that's the exception, not the rule. In general, laws are things that society does on purpose with the intent of making the world match its values.

I think countries should in fact be governed by the consent of their own citizens and by the rule of law. I welcome changes that make that more likely.

I also like Archive.today, and I hate paywalls, they're annoying. This may not be the best place to post my counterpoint, but I think it's worth mentioning and it doesn't get repeated enough.

I was around in the 90s, and I'm very familiar with the techno-utopian approach of the first internet generation. It failed.
by noisebuffer | 2025-11-15 15:35:15+00:00
To create an AI that people will want to use, we need people to use it so we get better data, improve it, and learn how to control models. It’s a catch-22. I definitely don’t want AI tabs in Firefox but I can see why all this might be necessary because of massive potential for a superintelligence to solve problems or open new doors we didn’t know existed. But then we have to ask ourselves if these new pathways for humanity are so far removed from what humans can accomplish on their own, is there pride in a new revolution akin to the human derived pride in what we have accomplished on our own for the Industrial Revolution, for example, or even just petrol or nuclear power discovery?
by utopcell | 2025-11-15 15:35:44+00:00
..we found an off the shelf keyboard that could work, but we couldn't get it because it was 999 euros. So let's make 7 iterations of our own keyboard with our Formlabs 3d printer, create silicom molds for each key, print legends with our uv printer and we're done. Glad he did though, looks awesome!