MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by k310 | 2025-11-28 14:38:56+00:00
Here's a way. I have found that one big reason that people don't use linux or home devices [0] is lack of support. Now, given that jokes have been made for decades about computer support, [1] my best advice to people I meet on forums is to look around the neighborhood for a (trustworthy) computer nut who can diagnose things instantly instead of these 50-reply Q&A's, or some bastard getting you to install remote access software, which usually comes with malware by the boatload. But there just aren't enough.

You can be that person, with a gigantic opportunity begging for help.

> Around 500 million PCs are holding off upgrading to Windows 11, says Dell [2]

That's 500 million PC's begging to run linux. My brother, the least techie person on earth, did it, and after some initial consulting on my part for "equivalent" apps on linux that did what windows apps did (the 90% of daily use .. email, browsing, photo management) he stopped calling for help.

Are most of these corporate PC's? Maybe. So consult on the side.

And if that's too much for people to handle, "Drop it off with me, and I'll load up some cool apps" (and maybe transfer your photos (without snooping, or just explain step by step if said photos are spicy)). Can you be trusted? Well, in an age when nothing and nobody can be trusted, just establishing that improves life. When things are at their darkest, the smallest lamp shines brightly.

OR! Just accept old PC hardware, load up linux, and give it to people (kids, mainly) who can't afford new stuff, and throw in some get-started classes. Most distros come with built-in math and science apps that can help kids create careers.

[0] I worked at Sun when they bought Cobalt. The Cobalt cube was a home server (and classroom server) par excellence. I would extend that concept (currently, my secret sauce) and since this is more complex than your usual home router, it needs some support and "evangelizing." Given the increasing intrusion of surveillance capitalists and surveillance government, imagine the possibilities. Start with the pi-hole idea and go way beyond.

[1] https://www.jokebuddha.com/joke/Microsoft_Air

[2] https://www.theverge.com/news/831364/dell-windows-11-upgrade...
by an0malous | 2025-11-28 14:38:57+00:00
That’s not what he’s saying, the investors are the ones who have put trillions of dollars into this technology on the premise that it will achieve AGI. People like Sam Altman and Marc Andreesen have been going into podcasts saying AGI is imminent and they’re going to automate every job.

The author did not say every dollar was wasted, he said that LLMs will never meet the current investment returns.

It’s very frustrating to see comments like this attacking strawmans and setting up Motte and Bailey arguments every time there’s AI criticism. “Oh but LLMs are still useful” and “Even if LLMs can’t achieve AGI we’ll figure out something that will eventually.” Yes but that isn’t what Sam and Andreesen and all these VCs have been saying, and now the entire US economy is a big gamble on a technology that doesn’t deliver what they said it would and because the admin is so cozy with VCs we’re probably all going to suffer for the mistakes of a handful of investors who got blinded by dollar signs in their eyes.
by netdevphoenix | 2025-11-28 14:39:58+00:00
Great idea, I think there should be some conditions.

a) you should not be the owner (to avoid pet projects that are not actually useful) of the project or at least not the sole owner

b) ideally it should be some high impact projects that have little to no corpo sponsors as opposed to something like React

c) if your contribution is not merged in, it should not count as "work done"
by rsynnott | 2025-11-28 14:40:05+00:00
I've had one power cut in the last decade (urban area, wiring generally underground), but I know people in rural areas who have power cuts a lot due to storms, and sometimes there are problems coming back up. Think it's mostly old-fashioned 'fuse boxes' with actual literal fuses in them that have problems (you don't strictly need an electrician to sort that, but some people are nervous of the giant fuses and I'm not sure I blame them...)

I don't think it's a particularly _common_ issue, but it definitely happens to some extent.
by themgt | 2025-11-28 14:40:41+00:00
It does theoretically look like a useful project. At the same time I'm starting to feel like we're slipping into the Matrix. I check a GitHub issue questioning the architecture.md doc:

> I appreciate that this is a very new project, but what’s missing is an architectural overview of the data model.

Response:

You're right to call me out on this. :)

Then I check the latest commit on architecture.md, which looks like a total rewrite in response to a beads.jsonl issue logged for this.

> JSONL for git: One entity per line means git diffs are readable and merges usually succeed automatically.

Hmm, ok. So readme says:

> .beads/beads.jsonl - Issue data in JSONL format (source of truth, synced via git)

But the beads.jsonl for that commit to fix architecture.md still has the issue to fix architecture.md in the beads.jsonl? So I wonder does that get line get removed now that it's fixed ... so I check master, but now beads.jsonl is gone?

But the readme still references beads.jsonl as source of truth? But there is no beads.jsonl in the dogfooded repo, and there's like ~hundreds of commits in the past few days, so I'm not clear how I'm supposed to understand what's going on with the repo. beads.jsonl is the spoon, but there is no spoon.

I'll check back later, or have my beads-superpowered agent check back for me. Agents report that they enjoy this.

https://github.com/steveyegge/beads/issues/376#issuecomment-...

https://github.com/steveyegge/beads/commit/c3e4172be7b97effa...

https://github.com/steveyegge/beads/tree/main/.beads
by orwin | 2025-11-28 14:41:01+00:00
> Just because something didn't work out doesn't mean it was a waste

Here i think it's more about opportunity cost.

> I can't figure out what people mean when they say "AGI" any more, we appear to be past that

What i ask of an AGI is to not hallucinate idiotic stuff. I don't care about being bullshitted too much if the bullshit is logic, but when i ask "fix mypy errors using pydantic" and instead of declaring a type for a variable it invent weird algorithms that make no sense and don't work (and the fix would have taken 5 minutes for any average dev).I mean, Claude 4.5 and Codex have replaced my sed/search and replaces, write my sanity tests, write my commit comment, write my migration scripts (and most of my scripts), and make refactor so easy i now do one refactor every month or so, but if it is AGI, i _really_ wonder what people mean by intelligence.

> Also, if anyone wants to know what a real effort to waste a trillion dollars can buy

100% agree. Pleas Altman, Ilya and other, i will hapilly let you use whatever money you want if that money is taken from war profiteers and warmongers.
by lionkor | 2025-11-28 14:41:05+00:00
This is absolutely the correct next step. When considering starting a pretty sizeable FOSS project in the past (was going to be AGPL-3, we had a team and had just left another project to start this), we considered registering an e.V. in Germany, for many of the same benefits. Ultimately, the team disbanded for other reasons, but if this was in place, we would have likely been able to start much earlier and the team would not have disbanded most likely.

We were concerned about finances and legal protection.
by lifestyleguru | 2025-11-28 14:41:24+00:00
So after you paid income tax, then capital gains tax while accumulating, and about to pay VAT tax while purchasing something, they say "hold on, this money looks illegal!". Savings don't have documentation in form of recent payslip or deed of sale.

The yachts and private jets on European harbors and airports don't look like their owners have any problem with money transfers. Wirecard billions? poof, vanished!

If feels as if elites were in process of cutting off everyone else.
by echelon | 2025-11-28 14:41:44+00:00
Sesame is an impressive real time conversational audio-to-audio model you can talk to on their website [1]. But it's closed source. They released some components, but nothing you could use to duplicate their work.

Sesame is what this team (and lots of teams) want to build. I know another team trying to build a real time local NSFW girlfriend you can talk to. They're convinced they can reach $100M ARR quickly if they crack it and make it customizable.

KyutaiTTS provides a lot of the ingredients for this work, but it isn't conditioned for audio to audio afaik or any of the streaming components.

[1] https://app.sesame.com/
by cesarb | 2025-11-28 14:42:09+00:00
> Also, Windows had the ridiculous default of immediately running things when a user put in a CD or USB stick - that behaviour led to many infections and is obviously a stupid default option.

Playing devil's advocate: absent the obvious security issues, it's a brilliant default option from an user experience point of view, especially if the user is not well-versed in the subtleties of filesystem management. Put the CD into the tray, close the tray, and the software magically starts, no need to go through the file manager and double-click on an obscurely named file.

It made more sense back when most software was distributed as pressed CD-ROMs, and the publisher of the software (which you bought shrink-wrapped at a physical store) could be assumed to be trusted. Once CD-R writers became popular, and anyone could and did write their own data CDs, these assumptions no longer held.

> I'm not even going to mention the old Windows design of everyone running with admin privileges on their desktop.

That design makes sense for a single-user computer where the user is the owner of the computer, and all software on it is assumed to be trusted. Even today, many Linux distributions add the first (and often only) user to a sudoers group by default.
by rdm_blackhole | 2025-11-28 14:42:09+00:00
I am a fairly apolitical guy but in light of this I will cast my next votes for the parties that want to leave the EU from now on.

Yes, I know Brexit was a failure and the UK is no better in terms of privacy but there has to be some sort sort of political repercussion for the people who made this possible.

Since there seems to be nothing else to do, then voting to leave is better than the status quo.
by absoluteunit1 | 2025-11-28 14:42:11+00:00
> The loneliness. The pressure. The constant decision-making. The endless context switching. All the invisible work that isn’t coding. These are the things you learn once you’re already in it.

> It’s more chaotic and demanding than it looks, but also more rewarding in ways you don’t expect.

The first few lines immediately captured my attention because that's exactly how I've been feeling since going solo.

I left my big tech job about 5 months ago and started building my app - it's been a roller-coaster and I think this write-up summarizes how I've been feeling really well. I especially relate with the "constant decision making" - this can get exhausting; I definitely get decision fatigue frequently lol
by constantcrying | 2025-11-28 14:42:26+00:00
What is the point? What benefits does an Ehrenamt even bring (fyi I have one) and why would an activity as broad as open source work qualify? Many open source projects are done without any good for the public, why should such a developer get such a title?

If you want any of this, why don't you found a Verein and have open source activities as the purpose?

All in all I an very much against this. Mostly because I think Ehrenämter, as they exist now, are pretty stupid and pointless and because I strongly believe the state should not get involved with this at all.
by tqwhite | 2025-11-28 14:42:29+00:00
Did someone say that LLM was the final solution while I wasn’t listening? Am I fantasizing the huge outcry about the terrible danger of AGI? Are people not finding ways to use the current levels of LLM all over the place?

The idea that the trillions are a waste is not exactly fresh. The economic model is still not clear. Alarmists have been shrill and omnipresent. Bankruptcy might be the future of everyone.

But, will we look up one day and say, “Ah never mind” about GPT, Claude, et al? Fat chance. Will no one find a use for a ton of extra compute? I’m pretty sure.

I don’t much dispute any of the facts I skimmed off the article but the conclusion is dumb.
by Hizonner | 2025-11-28 14:42:32+00:00
> I don't know your age, but I think we can both agree in the fact that the Internet has changed a lot in a short period of time, and still does. I met some of my best friends online: games, forums, group chats.

It changes. Hasn't gotten materially less "safe" on the whole, though. And it doesn't change that much.

> However, as well as we could go out and play in the street without much concern some years ago and now the streets are for cars that can injure/kill you + other stuff,

You are out of your mind. Streets in general, in most of the world, are safer for pedestrians than they were "some years ago". And they are a whole lot safer than they were when I was a kid, which was rather more years ago than you seem to be talking about. What's changed is people's perceptions and tolerances about risk. And not entirely for the better.

Unless "some years" is somewhere over 100, you're just making up obvious nonsense here.

> Not only that, but now parents are also people who grew up with the Internet and no longer see it as something new or weird, so they are not as afraid as previous parents were. That means that children are raised without or with much less fear to online dangers.

Parents were not, in general, terrified of the Internet in the 1990s. Whereas there's a vast wave of paranoia right now. Again, what you're saying is just flat out factually false.
by pjmlp | 2025-11-28 14:43:00+00:00
Because that is how normies buy computers, duh?

Go into store, get to talk with a "genie", whatever upsells to meet their KPIs, and leave with another computer that counts to the world market share in desktop units.

Which for all practical purposes means Windows, macOS, Chromebooks, iPad Pro or Android tablets with keyboard for Dex, HyperOS, HarmonyOS NEXT , and zero GNU/Linux devices.
by genuser | 2025-11-28 14:43:23+00:00
The Best Phone operating system for you depends entirely on your priorities: Do you value ultimate customization and hardware choice, or a seamless, polished ecosystem? The debate between Android and iOS represents a fundamental choice between two competing visions of mobile computing. Android offers an open, flexible platform with incredible device variety and deep personalization, while iOS provides a meticulously crafted experience with unmatched ecosystem integration and update reliability. Both platforms have matured into sophisticated operating systems, but their core philosophies continue to define the user experience in distinctly different ways.
by ramses0 | 2025-11-28 14:43:24+00:00
Interesting use of `latency_ms_max` as a naming convention. I'm definitely guilty of `max_latency_ms` instead, but they make a convincing argument for putting `max` at the end.

If this topic floats your boat, go look up the NASA coding standards. For a few projects, I tried to follow a lot of their flow control recommendations, and will still reach for: `while ... && LIMIT > 0` in some situations.

Still a huge fan of including some type info in the variable name, eg: duration_s, limit_ms makes it extremely clear that you shouldn't mix math on those integers.
by budududuroiu | 2025-11-28 14:43:50+00:00
I have this feeling that I can’t shake off that this is done as the EU political class’ coping mechanism for being absolutely terrified because their whole worldview was shattered overnight:

- Sanctions against Russia backfired (from the EU at least)

- Trump-Vance slapping the EU around in a humiliating fashion (re: that guy that cried at the Munich security council, EU being forced to adopt unfair trade deals with the US)

- look at the body language from Macron, VDL and Xi’s meeting a couple years ago, VDL is being sidelined on purpose, meanwhile Macron given royal treatment

Liberalism is dead, and these career bureaucrats are clinging to any remaining feeling of control:

- they can’t do the antitrust thing because Trump is wagging his finger at them

- they can’t project power externally

- they can’t engage with China (idk why, maybe due to their feeling of superiority)

… so they resort to projecting power internally
by pessimizer | 2025-11-28 14:44:25+00:00
> It's more like a contractual agreement with something provided and specific, non-negotiable obligations.

The obligation is not to the author of the code, it is to the public. MIT-style licenses are gifts to people and companies who produce code and software, copyleft licenses are gifts to the public.

I don't give a shit about the happiness of programmers any more than the happiness of garbage collectors, sorry. I don't care more that you have access to the library you want to use at your job writing software for phones than I care that somebody has access to the code on their own phone. You're free to care about what you want, but the pretense at moral superiority is incoherent.

It is non-negotiable. GPL is basically proprietary software. It's owned by the public, and all of the work that you do using it belongs to the public. If you steal it, you should be sued into the ground.
by Deegy | 2025-11-28 14:44:50+00:00
We currently have human-in-the-loop AGI.

While it doesn't seem we can agree on a meaning for AGI, I think a lot of people think of it as an intelligent entity that has 100% agency.

Currently we need to direct LLM's from task to task. They don't yet posses the capability of full real world context.

This is why I get confused when people talk about AI replacing jobs. It can replace work, but you still need skilled workers to guide them. To me, this could result in humans being even more valuable to businesses, and result in an even greater demand for labor.

If this is true, individuals need to race to learn how to use AI and use it well.
Could Endpoint SLMs Replace Cloud LLMs? Would Datacenter Race Shudder to a Halt?
by aniijbod | 2025-11-28 14:44:54+00:00
Yeah, an SLM on an endpoint like a phone will have fresh latency issues as it goes online to fill gaps in its inference engine's knowledge base that a cloud LLM might not have, but cloud LLMs aren't exactly latency-free either, so the latency/performance issue isn't necessarily LLM's winning card.
by KaiserPro | 2025-11-28 14:44:57+00:00
> Importing high prices from the failed energy politics of UK

Remember that its a market, not the consumer price.

The spot price for UK electricity is still quite competitive in the winter, just not reliable.

The other thing to note is that peak in the UK is different to peak further up in longitude, which means that there is benefit to both countries for this.
by mwexler | 2025-11-28 14:45:05+00:00
Early strips are very different. Dark, sarcastic, double meaning, lots of depth. They changed as Schulz got older and lighter, and that's what most folks know. But worth reading the earliest entries, and then see how those themes play out in the later strips.

Calvin and Hobbes tried to replicate that darkness but were more ham-handed. Still clever, but much less subtle.
by TeMPOraL | 2025-11-28 14:45:17+00:00
> The encryption requirement makes sense on paper, but it basically breaks the whole value proposition of SaaS.

Good. It's high time to flip the status quo on its head - instead of data being something we ship to specific cloud services, for them to lock it away and charge for access, it should be code that should be a commodity, shipped to servers of our choosing and granted access to operate on our data without owning it.

Just like regular, old-school desktop software, back in the day before SaaS was a thing. The provider didn't get to "see plaintext", because the software was operating on your hardware and not communicating with the provider. And if it tried to communicate back to the "mothership", we'd rightfully call it spyware, tell people not to use it, and wonder if there's legal action that could be taken.
by a022311 | 2025-11-28 14:45:29+00:00
Shor's algorithm has been known for a while now (apparently since 1994) and is the main reason quantum-resistant cryptography became an important research subject. The article explains it nicely (for someone like me who doesn't know nearly enough physics or maths to fully understand the technical parts), but this bit at the end ruins it a bit:

> Rotate everything that lasts >10 years to pure PQC now

The author suggests switching to Post-Quantum Cryptography which uses relatively new ciphers that haven't been as battle-tested as older ones like RSA and ECC. Back when those were introduced, there weren't any stronger ciphers at the time, so if they were broken, at least people knew they did the best they could to protect their data.

Now, however, we have standardized encryption with (to the general public's knowledge at least) uncrackable algorithms (provided sane key lengths are chosen), so doing anything that could weaken our encryption makes us worse than the baseline. This proposal is theoretically stronger, but it is unknown whether it will stand the test of time, even with today's technology, due to it being relatively new and not widely deployed.

The standard practice of rolling out PQC is using it as an additional layer alongside current encryption standards. This adds redundancy, so that if one is broken the data will stay safe. Using only PQC or only RSA/ECC/whatever makes the system have a single point of failure.

FYI, this is exactly what governments want (I'll let you guess why). This related post was on the front page just a few days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46033151
by cbeach | 2025-11-28 14:46:10+00:00
The media plays a big role in election outcomes. The Murdoch empire used to have an oversized influence, but since Murdoch exited Sky UK, that's been on the wane. The Sun (which helped Labour's Tony Blair win his landslide) is still a Murdoch enterprise, but it hasn't really moved with the times, and newer media-savvy outlets are starting to get mindshare.

GBNews launched in 2021 with a strong anti-establishment mandate. The growth in its audience surprised everyone, surpassing both BBC News and Sky in viewership. For four consecutive months (July-October 2025) GBNews has been Britain's number one news channel (Source: BARB).

Crucially it also has 2.5bn views on YouTube since launch.

The establishment try to write off and condescend GBNews, but in doing so they condescend the large and growing section of the UK public that GBNews represents (e.g. for example - people on both the Left and Right who are frustrated with 110,000 undocumented migrants entering the UK over the last three years, many of whom have been put up in hotels at taxpayer expense).

As the elite condescend and push away large swathes of the population, they are creating increasing loyalty toward GBNews, and by extension, the Reform Party.
by lanfeust6 | 2025-11-28 14:47:07+00:00
Geolocation sharing can be disabled as reflected in your source. Everything else you linked to is trivial, but notwithstanding, it all relies on JS which, as I already said, can be disabled. Oh, and many aren't even available in Firefox: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Battery_Sta...

> What information do you think apps have without your permissions that websites don’t?

Your actual personal information. Access to photos, messages, metadata (name, address, contacts, notes, metadata, habits).