MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by Nevermark | 2025-11-27 00:41:27+00:00
> If the smartest engineers cannot do it, it doesn’t work.

[FIX:] ..., it doesn't work universally.

And the answer to that is pretty clear. It does not work universally. If every developer started only shipping code they had credibly formally verified, the vast majority of developers would go into shock at the scale of work to be done. Even the best "validators" would fall into career shredding pits, due to "minor" but now insurmountable dependencies in previously unverified projects. The vast majority of projects would go into unrecoverable stalls.

But formal validation can still work some of the time with the right people, on the right scale and kind of project, with the right amount of resources/time expended.

It isn't as if regular "best practices" programming works universally either. But validation is much harder.
by asa400 | 2025-11-27 00:41:31+00:00
You probably know about these, but for the benefit of folks who don't, you can forbid slice access and direct unwraps with clippy. Obviously this only lints your own code and not dependencies.

- https://rust-lang.github.io/rust-clippy/master/#unwrap_used - https://rust-lang.github.io/rust-clippy/master/#indexing_slicing - https://rust-lang.github.io/rust-clippy/master/#string_slice
by anamax | 2025-11-27 00:41:34+00:00
> This is very weak a priori arguing. I could just as well argue that USB-C has the center blade shielded instead of exposed and so is more durable.

The unshielded Lightning center blade is on a $5 connector. If it breaks, I'm out $5 and it's reasonable to have spares.

The shielded USB-C center blade is part of an expensive device. If it breaks....
by kragen | 2025-11-27 00:43:57+00:00
Batteries cost US$80/kWh. 700° sand costs about US$1.25/kWh, though that depends on how far the sand has to be trucked. A normal stove burner is about 2kW and requires about 20 minutes to cook a meal for a person, so about 0.7kWh. Either of these is probably affordable in Ghana, where the national income is about US$2500 per person per year, i.e., US$200 per person per month. But the cost of the battery would be significant for an individual (one or two weeks of income), and the cost of the sand isn't.
by nerdponx | 2025-11-27 00:43:57+00:00
And surely a for-profit extrajudicial court system that holds a monopoly on extrajudicial courts is going to be a fair and impartial resolver of disputes, especially when the defendant is essentially a valued repeat customer and the plaintiff is some nobody and not a major revenue source. What could possibly go wrong?

Arbitration between businesses acting in good faith makes perfect sense. Arbitration between an individual customer of a large corporation is nothing but a violation of that individual's basic rights.
by dzhiurgis | 2025-11-27 00:45:29+00:00
Not sure this would solve much as new iOS would be far too slow for these devices.

Better they allowed installing linux on old devices. But even then it wouldn't move a needle - it's such a niche case.

Maybe some would end up in extremely poor countries, but even there people can afford $30-50 for a brand new computer and Apple rather get those old devices recycled properly.
by summa_tech | 2025-11-27 00:45:39+00:00
I think a lot of the negativity comes from the odd choice of keyboard layout.

You can think of it as a weirdness budget: this is an odd-purposed device, running a specialty distribution of Linux by design. It is not portable despite having portable-like specs. And on top of this, it has an unusual keyboard layout.

It costs a lot of money and requires pre-orders, so you can't even impulse buy it. You can't actually see if you'd like the keyboard switch or layout in stores, either.
by harles | 2025-11-27 00:45:54+00:00
There are some clear objective signals that aren’t just user preference. I shelled out the $250 for Gemini’s top tier and am profoundly disappointed. I had forgotten that loops were still a thing. I’ve hit this multiple times in Gemini CLI, and in different projects. It gets stuck in a loop (as in the exact same, usually nonsense, message over and over) and the automated loop detection stops the whole operation. It also stops in the middle of an operation very frequently. I don’t hit either of these in Claude Code or Codex.

There certainly is some user preference, but the deal breakers are flat out shortcomings that other tools solved (in AI terms) long ago. I haven’t dealt with agent loops since March with any other tool.
by tristanj | 2025-11-27 00:45:57+00:00
My understanding is that Apple didn't add USB-C to iPhones because they planned to remove all ports from the iPhone entirely. They envisioned it as a wireless only device.

EU regulation stopped this from happening, and now once they added USB-C it's difficult to take this feature away. I predict we'll be stuck with the USB-C port and form factor on most phones for the next decade.
by sfRattan | 2025-11-27 00:46:06+00:00
The vendors who want you to just buy things in their app will treat any such exchange adversarially, and will ultimately always have the upper hand.

They can respond with litigation, as Amazon already is against third-party LLM agents accessing their marketplace. They can respond by banning accounts for violating the terms of service, making examples out of those who profit the most. They can watch the external marketplaces and cancel (undelivered/unfulfilled) sales they believe are linked to arbitrage.

All they need to do is make it inconvenient enough to discourage 80-90% of customers from participating in arbitrage.
by Spooky23 | 2025-11-27 00:46:19+00:00
The hotel industry is bizarre. I feel like we hit this maxima circa 2005 where prefabrication made for the shockingly cheap/nice Hampton Inn style hotels in the US.

Now those places anre on the wrong side of the depreciation curve, and every chain hotel is a little worse every day. They bill upfront since COVID, don’t clean the room, shrink the towels and deliver a shittier level of service. I was at a Marriott recently where the room had no linens - no towels, sheets, pillows, nothing.

I called and was instructed to do everything myself, and the hotel GM’s attitude was that “shit happens”.
by GenerWork | 2025-11-27 00:46:20+00:00
I find it to be sometimes easier to utilize my Figma library to design what I want as I generally don't have to do rework. It gets annoying after awhile to waste tokens and context dealing with stupid small things like "Hey, the icon in the icon button is wrong." if you do prompting. Pulling in the same icon & icon button through a MCP is generally easier.
by ruralfam | 2025-11-27 00:46:46+00:00
I have had a FOSS web app for learning arithmetic for quite a few years. I occasionally review it, and make changes. Each year Chrome and Safari both nip at the edges of what allows a PWA to be OK. No one really cares until one has to write documentation helping folks install the PWA and avoid issues that did not affect the PWA a few years ago. I mean really, are Tim and Sundar really that afraid ?? I guess so. They have dozens of millions on the line. Capitalism... gotta luv it.
Show HN: Statements to Sheets – Convert Bank Statement PDFs to CSV
by spiked | 2025-11-27 00:47:16+00:00
I built a small web app that converts bank statement PDFs into clean CSV files for Excel and QuickBooks.

It started when a friend couldn’t export multi-year transaction history from his bank and every converter we tried choked on scanned pages or odd formatting. This focuses on reliability with real-world statements.

Features:

OCR for scanned statements

AI optional (privacy-first mode)

Multi-page support

Import-ready CSV output

https://statementstosheets.com

Happy to hear any feedback on the product or positioning.
by rolandog | 2025-11-27 00:49:30+00:00
That's a beautiful strawman argument; let me have a tussle with it to see if it holds on its own.

First, let's not miss the forest for the trees. We're engaging in a common "hacker" watering hole. Our opsec skills are very likely not representative of what your average person has, and the point of the article is to educate the average person.

Second, most of those apps require you give your pound of data upfront, or they won't work correctly until you grant permissions.

Next, it's not the same if the establishment I'm buying chicken nuggets from ties down my credit card to my identity or if it does the same plus a ton of extra data that I've been forced to grant.

Also, one of the main concerns from the article is surveillance pricing... So yeah, you sure "saved" a bunch ($100) over the course of 1 year at a restaurant, but overall you're worse off because some data broker managed to have all airlines raise your flight prices by $500 because they learned that you're going to have to attend your best mate's wedding.

And last, but not least, the article mentioned the binding arbitration clause that one blindly signs away when accepting the app's ToS:

> Walking into a restaurant to buy a cheeseburger, there’s no way a company can force you to enter a contractual agreement that includes binding arbitration. Downloading an app, however, requires agreeing to a “Terms of Service,” and those can absolutely include a binding arbitration clause, and that clause can be applied even to cases outside the app. This happened to Jeffrey Piccolo when his wife died of food poisoning in a Disney World. Disney made a motion to dismiss because a couple years back, Jeffrey had signed up for a free trial of Disney+, which included a binding arbitration clause, which meant that if Jeffrey wanted to complain about how Disney murdered his wife, they’d have to settle it out of court with a mediator that Disney hired. No jury, no judge, no oversight. [...]

I have no words to describe how depraved that is.
by burnto | 2025-11-27 00:49:42+00:00
The 90s films mentioned in this post are works of art and the actors and creators were artists. Compensation sustains the art, but it’s not the primary purpose.

Netflix is a business. The content on Netflix is largely designed or purchased with a primary goal of engaging paying users.

We can find plenty of films that are works of art after the 90s. One Battle After Another is a recent one that comes to mind. Parasite, No Country for Old Men, Arrival, Moonlight, Tree of Life, Midsommar, Mandy…
by lucgommans | 2025-11-27 00:49:51+00:00
More than 200 hotels already on this website. Wouldn't this be much more useful as an OpenStreetMap tag so people can find and share these good/bad hotels in whatever front-end they like?

There does not seem to be a tag for it yet. That there are apparently hundreds of instances, and it being definitely something you'd want to select for, makes me think it's a good fit for OSM. Currently, hotels can already have tags like phone number, reception opening hours, WiFi fees, etc. It might even be a good fit for the toilets:* namespace, since this has overlap with toilets in (semi-)public spaces offering different levels of privacy
by defrost | 2025-11-27 00:50:41+00:00
> Doesn't that seem like the silliest thing you ever read?

Not even close to be frankly honest.

Leaving aside the delibrate silliness of Edward Lear, Roald Dahl, et al and focusing just on origin stories relating to the spread of various beliefs ...

* Have you heard the one about the Buddist Monk, the Monkey, Pig, Fish, Dragon, and Horse spirits ?

* the tale of a great snake that carved rivers ?

* maybe that fishing boat passenger that got out and walked across the water ?

> If anything, don't you think the guy converted to get preferable treatment from the arab traders

I suspect the marriage was political .. but he wasn't marrying into a family of arab traders, Sultan Malikussaleh (the progenitor of the Samudera Pasai Sultanate) was an Acehnese man from part of what is now called Sumatra, a part of Indonesia.

> special access to the arab trading network

Was pretty low key wrt volume between the modern middle east and Indonesia back in the time we are looking at - the trade advantages by volume (ie. that which mattered) was all local to the greater archipelago.

Moreover, returning to the original point upthread, there's no evidence of colonisation by arabs in the sense of colonisation by the British of India or various parts of Africa, colonisation by the Dutch in the East Indies, colonisation by the Germans in Africa and PNG, by the French in Vietnam, etc.
by array_key_first | 2025-11-27 00:50:42+00:00
Because it's not an x11 "flaw" or exploit, it's just how X works. I also just don't buy the whole "well other stuff has exploits too" mentality.

I mean, yeah, it does, maybe. So why bother creating a password to a service if their database is probably running Linux anyway and the rdbms is probably compromised and yadda yadda yadda. It's the kind of argument you can make for anything.

Also no - privilege escalation is not "numerous" on Linux. It's very difficult to do in practice. It's only really a problem on systems built on old kernels which refuse to update. But those will always be insecure, just like running Windows 7 will be insecure.
by beep8_official | 2025-11-27 00:50:46+00:00
BEEP-8 is a new browser-based fantasy console designed for developers who enjoy low-level systems programming.

It emulates an ARM v4-like CPU running at 4 MHz, includes a lightweight RTOS, and provides a full C/C++ toolchain for building ROMs. The graphics system is powered by a custom WebGL-based PPU supporting a 128×240 vertical display, 16-color palette, 8×8 sprites, background layers, and single-color wireframe rendering. The sound subsystem is a Namco C30-style APU implemented in JavaScript.

The aim is to recreate the feel of retro bare-metal console development, while keeping everything instantly runnable in the browser — no installation required.

SDK (toolchain, examples, docs): https://github.com/beep8/beep8-sdk

Sample games running in the emulator (playable online): https://beep8.org/

Feedback from the HN community would be greatly appreciated — especially on technical direction, performance, and usability.
by wmf | 2025-11-27 00:51:24+00:00
You can get a normal PC with Linux preinstalled from Lenovo, Dell, Framework, System76, etc. This isn't bringing much new other than a retro case, a few widgets, and pretentious marketing. I understand that they're probably "lean' so the first version isn't going to be impressive, but that means they need to sell it below cost not at a premium.
by codingdave | 2025-11-27 00:52:02+00:00
Internet rando says: "Trust me, upload your bank statements. It is totally secure." I'm not saying you are malicious, I am saying I need more than a shiny landing page before I'd give such trust.

I'm also surprised this is needed. I use a small local bank, and I can download my entire transaction history directly to CSV. I figured everyone could. Do other banks really not offer this?
by netsharc | 2025-11-27 00:52:36+00:00
Booking.com has this grade inflation issue. if something is shit but you rate everything else fairly (things like location, staff friendliness, etc), the final score will be 7 or 8.. in summary: I had a lousy experience, 7/10!

It takes some experience to realize that a place graded 7.x probably has serious issues.
by rester324 | 2025-11-27 00:52:38+00:00
Well, then it's clear you don't have enough experience to objectively judge the situation.

I lived near 5 different stations in Tokyo in 10 years and all of those were how I described it.

I also lived in Saitama and Kanagawa. It's the same there too.

Maybe you should get more exerience first and live longer in Japan?
by itopaloglu83 | 2025-11-27 00:52:44+00:00
Apple also helped develop ARM, but I believe nobody likes to talk about that.

I wonder when the Europe is going to open up European companies like ASML, who are pretty much the de facto monopolies in their field. I believe the Nexperia incident showed that there's also a lot of political and national reasons behind such decisions, not just creating open and fair markets.
by raw_anon_1111 | 2025-11-27 00:53:18+00:00
Do you have any evidence that Walmart negotiated a special deal with Amex to the lower their fees to match Visa and MC?

There are plenty of companies that don’t accept Amex and every Amex user knows that they need to carry a none Amex card with them. Either that or they have never left the country which is doubtful for the Amex demographic.

And I have no idea why this is even an argument on a post about companies wanting you to use their app

https://www.cnet.com/personal-finance/credit-cards/why-wont-...

https://www.macrumors.com/2025/01/23/walmart-reiterates-why-...

https://www.al.com/shopping/walmart/apple-pay/
by lysace | 2025-11-27 00:53:21+00:00
Seems like it. Randy from Cupertino should probably avoid visiting UAE again.

https://uaelegislation.gov.ae/en/legislations/2131

> Section Two: Crimes and Penalties; 2. Slander, challenge, or insult the Divine Essence:

> Anyone who commits one of the acts stipulated in Clauses (2, 3, and 5) of Article (4) of this Decree by Law, by any means of expression or other forms or by using any means, shall be punished by imprisonment for a period of not less than one year and a fine of not less than (AED 250,000) two hundred and fifty thousand UAE Dirhams and not exceeding (AED 1,000,000) one million UAE Dirhams, or by one of these two penalties.

While this is obviously grotesque, it's both funny, sad and telling that the overarching name for the legislation is Federal Law by Decree Concerning Combating Discrimination, Hatred and Extremism. UAE learned this from the US/Europe.
by ThatPlayer | 2025-11-27 00:54:04+00:00
Yeah I'd say it's not accurate to say it's the same anticheat. Only the same name. It's like saying Excel supports iPad. Except Excel on iPad doesn't support VBA, so any more complicated spreadsheet will not work.

I don't think cheaters are swarming to Linux, but part of the issue with Apex Legends is that Linux support is done through Proton, through the Windows version of the game, because there no Linux version of Apex Legends. So now you've got a backdoor for everyone on Windows to run the less secure anticheat.

Solvable maybe by having a separate Linux version of the game, but that's also more supported needed.
by kragen | 2025-11-27 00:54:06+00:00
Diode heating does a better job of "MPPT tracking" than a resistive wire, but diodes are orders of magnitude more expensive, and they only work at low temperature (typically up to 175°, though SiC diodes can go a little higher). Resistive wires can easily work up to 500° or 1000°, which is potentially much better for sensible-heat thermal energy storage like this sand system. It might be better to run your resistive wire with a 3¢ microcontroller running an MPPT algorithm and controlling a 60¢ power MOSFET, something like a PSMN4R0 (https://www.digikey.com/en/products/detail/nexperia-usa-inc/...), which is rated to control almost 3000 watts (30 volts at 95 amps).
by dotancohen | 2025-11-27 00:54:14+00:00
This erosion of privacy is being taken to extremes.

One of my short stories takes place in a not-to-distant future, where there is absolutely no privacy. In one chapter a child goes to a bathroom in an old building, and he sees that there is not only a door, but there is a contraption on it. A lock! The child runs out of the bathroom in fright. The audience learns only a little later that the child is frightened about what human-eating animals might stalk prey in that area, that anybody would ever think to lock themselves in there.
by tech234a | 2025-11-27 00:54:47+00:00
I'm fairly sure the article is wrong.

For example, someone found strings in Google's implementation that mentioned AWDL: https://social.treehouse.systems/@nicolas17/1155847323390351...

Also people have mentioned having success Airdropping to macOS devices, which are not listed as being supported on the Wi-Fi Aware page.
by michaelt | 2025-11-27 00:57:09+00:00
It depends on the market you're aiming for.

A younger, lone traveller staying 2-3 nights is probably going to be out doing things in the day, and in the evening. And they won't have much luggage either.

Elderly travellers might not have the same level of energy; they might prefer to spend a few hours quietly relaxing with a book. And they might want an armchair per person, rather than sitting on the bed to read.

Business travellers might need somewhere to set up a laptop and work from, power, decent internet connectivity, and someplace they can iron some shirts.

Longer-term travellers (e.g. someone visiting a city to supervise like the building of a warehouse) will have more luggage, and they'll want to make themselves a bit more at home - they won't be out on the town every night for a month. They're more likely to use the hotel gym.

For some people, holidays are all about relaxing and doing things at a leisurely pace. Perhaps they want to spend the morning sitting on a balcony reading the newspaper - if you have a balcony.

For couples on honeymoon, they might want a nice room with a great bed.

Families might have two children and two adults sharing a room, with the children going to bed earlier and the adults sorta hanging out nearby; in this market, the hotel room sofa might fold out into two beds suitable for under-10s.

And of course, if you want to target all of these markets at the same time you end up with the classic cluttered hotel room with wardrobe, desk, desk chair, armchair, bedside tables, reading lamp, ironing board, TV, etc etc etc
by notnmeyer | 2025-11-27 00:57:27+00:00
ehhhh, i disagree partially. a less cynical take would be to call it “opinionated”.

any computer can be for “experts”, but that’s not the same as delivering something preconfigured and opinionated.

nobody has actually seen this thing in action yet, but in my head it’s hardware + some opinionated linux distro (i imagine something like omarchy) + support.

certainly not what everybody would want, but if there are people that enjoy configuring their systems then there’s people that don’t.
by kachapopopow | 2025-11-27 00:57:42+00:00
ymmv, but I think all of this is too much and you generally don't need to think about how to use an AI properly since screaming at it usually works just as well as very fine tuned instructions.

you don't need claude code, gemini-cli or codex I've been doing it raw as a (recent) lazyvim user with a proprietary agent with 3 tools: git, ask and ripgrep and currently gemini 3 is by far the best for me even without all these tricks.

gemini 3 has a very high token density and a significantly larger context than any model that is actually usable, every 'agent' I start shoves 5 things into the context:

- most basic instructions such as: generate git format diff only when editing files and use the git tool to merge it (simplified, it's more structured and deeper than this)

- tree command that respects git ignore

- $(ask "summarize $(git diff)")

- $(ask "compact the readme $(cat README.MD"))

- (ripgrep tools, mcp details, etc)

when the context is too bloated I just tell it to write important new details to README.MD and then start a new agent

https://github.com/kagisearch/ask
by array_key_first | 2025-11-27 00:58:30+00:00
It's extremely exhausting, welcome to modern America. Where you can't trust shit from anyone. Everyone is lying, everything is a scam, everything is stupid just cuz, and it feels more and more like the world around you is being specifically designed to piss you off as much as possible.

I just want to give businesses my money in exchange for goods and services. Is that asking too much?
by DaiPlusPlus | 2025-11-27 00:58:59+00:00
> So many people below the poverty line barely making it by and then you have this stuff and Wallstreet Bets.

I agree the juxtaposition demonstrates how callous our society is - but would you agree that these are two entirely independent things, though? (i.e. we could have eliminated poverty while still having irrationally overpriced BTC; or maybe in the future when BTC's value eventually reverts back to 2 pizzas we will still have poverty and destitution.