MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by yason | 2025-11-18 09:25:43+00:00
As someone who got onto the web in HTML 2.0 era I can feel the appeal of Gemini, although I disagree about their attitude towards static inline images. In day-to-day world that's what separated HTML from the earlier text-based hypertext systems that you could run over a terminal connection (or in a window, like AmigaGuide). You could actually have real documents from the internet, on your own screen, without loading up a word processor. White pages, black text in different sizes, blue links, and color images! Cool!

Obviously, Gemini is a niche that's as futile as it can be. It's like going back to living without a running water because once there was a peaceful village, then first came running water, then electricity, and then the whole village was rebuilt into a big city, and the old village is now gone. But the logic goes: if they didn't get running water in the first place, the people who wanted electricity too wouldn't have moved in, and the city wouldn't have been built. So, reverting back to living without running water now will, if it doesn't maybe demolish the city, at least remind me of the good old days.

The problem with the current web is that before, maybe just 10 years ago, you could use a good browser to remove and disable all the user-hostile cruft aimed at you on websites, and maybe browse pages in relative peace. Now the fight has moved to removing and disabling all the user-hostile cruft aimed at you in the browser, that intend to remove the tools you could use to fight the websites, and given the de-facto monopoly of Google that's just incredibly sad.

What's more demoralising is that it's just one slice in the big trend to erode the concept of ownership alltogether. It's a matter of time until you can no longer even try to own your browsing experience. The web will have changed from a place where people could freely download and view other people's documents over HTTP to people using one-way thin-clients with attestation so that the producer can guarantee their website is interpreted correctly as intended. Good luck writing your own browser that does the right thing for you, it won't be served data off the web unless it can prove the client is unmodified and signed by Microsoft. That is, of course, assuming you could still write code yourself for your computer and actually run it on your own without asking permission from the vendor.

It seems that the 20's answer to what Gemini represents is probably something like asking an AI to load a web page, extract the real contents of the document, possibly with cues from accessibility hints, and reproduce the document as text and still images for viewing.
by sys_64738 | 2025-11-18 09:26:02+00:00
I realize now what total bogus nonsense standups are. You get asked the same pish everyday and nobody listens to what you say. Ten different ways to track things for different audiences. I learned to just ignore all instruction given in these meetings and when board to talk non-stop to consume time and have them quickly move to others. A waste of space. Sack all the PMs and interfering managers who depend on them.
by vintermann | 2025-11-18 09:26:45+00:00
I haven't seen the Townsend group you speak of so I can't judge. I was thinking more of a channel, I think it was called "primitive technology", out of Cambodia, I think? Anyway, very obviously faked stuff.

You're talking past me here. I think old-fashioned crafts are very cool, and certainly people were more self-sufficient 200 years ago. I've been doing genealogy, and verified a family story that we're descended from a famous local woodcarver, who made the most gorgeous church altar pieces during the 1750s, most of which are still in use. He allegedly carved them with a common pocket knife (tollekniv), or, according to other stories, with self made tools fashioned from scythe blades. Fantastically cool. But no one alleged that he used his own bog iron!

In fact, when I dug into the story, the more connected to his society I understood that he was. Art historians have commented that he was clearly in touch with artistic trends from more central European countries. It turned out, he wasn't just a woodcarver, he was also the local schoolmaster, so he was perfectly literate and may well have corresponded with artists in other countries. He had also made musical instruments.

If he'd lived alone, he wouldn't have been able to do much of what he did. We underestimate how connected everyone was 300 years ago - or even 3000 years ago. Bog iron is one thing but try making bronze on your own!
by HEmanZ | 2025-11-18 09:28:07+00:00
You’ve got to remember that google/bing do not index the internet entire. Part of their magic is selectively indexing only a tiny sliver and still being effective.

Other kinds of search systems have to index everything, which simplifies things but has its own scaling challenges.

Easiest way to think about it is that while the majority of webpages are never indexed, every blob of text in a social media post, private message in an app, email, document, etc in every major app in the world, including the ones with billions of users, is indexed in a search engine for that app:

- GSuite search (think of how many gmails are searchable in the world right now… and they are all indexed)

- the enterprise search powering ChatGPT, Claude (these maybe there by now, if not they are likely well on the way)

- The Microsoft 365 search (this is probably massive with so many corporate email systems and teams systems on it)

- slack search

- X(twitter) search

- ticktock search (this idk, I’ve never used ticktock but if every video and every comment is searchable then this is probably huge)

- Facebook search (especially since this is likely combined across its product suite)

These are probably all larger in effective size than google or bing.
by sambullbyte | 2025-11-18 09:28:14+00:00
I’m building DBAnvil, a new database modelling tool with a built-in AI assistant designed to handle schema design, transformations, and multi-vendor SQL generation. The AI is currently in prototype form inside the app, but the long-term plan is a fully agentic assistant that can modify your model, generate patterns, and export SQL for any vendor or format.

Looking for early adopters

I’m looking for people who regularly work with database schemas — DB developers, DBAs, data engineers, backend engineers — who can help validate the product direction.

I want to understand:

How you currently design schemas

What slows you down

What would make you actually replace your current modelling tools

How an AI assistant could fit into your workflow

How to get on board

Option 1 — Sign up in the app https://app.dbanvil.com I’ll reach out personally after you sign up to talk through your use cases.

Option 2 — Contact me directly sam@dbanvil.com If you’d prefer a direct conversation, email me and we’ll set up a call.
by ChicagoDave | 2025-11-18 09:28:54+00:00
My point is not about morality. It’s about ROI focus and that OpenAI can’t and won’t ever return anything remotely close to what’s been invested. Adult content is not getting them closer to profitability.

And if anyone believes the AGI hyperbole, oh boy I have a bridge and a mountain to sell.

LLM tech will never lead to AGI. You need a tech that mimics synapses. It doesn’t exist.
by sys_64738 | 2025-11-18 09:30:53+00:00
In SW development the bar is constantly being set extra high expecting people to meet it constantly if they meet it once. Maybe some random unachievable internal date for some pointless goal for a back slap and a feel good headpat. Yeah, no. You will fail sooner or later as the denizens of management and PM-topia expect that is the norm. Better to relax and let every date be missed and tell them life's a bitch.
by dennydog | 2025-11-18 09:31:27+00:00
Hey everyone

This year I hacked together a small iOS side project called Santa Voice. It lets parents generate short personalized audio messages from “Santa” using AI.

Tech stack / features:

SwiftUI + MV pattern

OpenAI for generating the message text (cleaned + edited for kid-friendly tone)

ElevenLabs for the voice output (Santa-style model)

Audio saved locally to user’s library as MP3 (no backend storage)

StoreKit 2 (one-time purchase)

Crashlytics for basic crash reporting

A small static landing page on Render

Just a fun project I wanted to ship before Christmas. If any iOS devs want to critique the architecture, UI, or flow — I’d genuinely appreciate feedback. Also happy to share code snippets if someone’s curious about the OpenAI + TTS pipeline in Swift.

You can hear a sample voice for Emily: https://jumpshare.com/s/tB4f4WGEh3xxmqhWf3TE

The app is available only on the App Store:

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/santa-voice-ai/id6754908623

Thanks!
by animal531 | 2025-11-18 09:32:05+00:00
I myself also tend to do that, but that is a behavior that is seen by the majority/"normal" people as non-social, unless if you already know them very well or if you are the one initiating the conversation.

Listening to people means that you actively listening and supporting them in their conversation, not bringing up your own angles to it. When you do that it is perceived by most people as you trying to one-up them in the conversation, instead of what you're actually doing.

In your listed example its fine because you started the interaction, but let's turn it around and say you walked into a conversation where people are talking about downtown in ABC. You want to participate and remember that there was a blizzard there in '96, so you bring that up.

Most people will see that as severe ADHD, why are we now talking about a blizzard from 1996? We were just talking about about how DEF is happening in ABC later this month?

Pivoting has the same problem, there are social cues that display your role in the group. Just walking into a conversation while trying to pivot it to your interests is in general quite rude etc.
by ClaraForm | 2025-11-18 09:35:00+00:00
I've been running Affinity Photo on Fedora for a while by running this installation script[1]. Works flawlessly and they recently upgraded the script to install Affinity 3.0. I haven't encountered/solved your second use-case, but I'm /sure/ someone has.

[1] https://github.com/ryzendew/AffinityOnLinux
by Ygg2 | 2025-11-18 09:35:32+00:00
> Other vectors probably mean a single vector: external entities,

XXE injection (which comes in several flavors), remote DTD retrieval, and quadratic blowup (a sort of twin to the billion laughs attack).

You aren't wrong though. They all live in <!DOCTYPE definition. Hence, my puzzlement.

Why process it at all? If this is as security focused as Google claims, fill the DOCTYPE with molten tungsten and throw it into the Mariana Trench. The external entities definition makes XSLT look well designed in comparison.
by alecco | 2025-11-18 09:35:33+00:00
Because FreeBSD is known for having the best network stack. The code is elegant and clean. And, at least until a few years ago, it was the preferred choice to build routers or firewalls.

AFAIK, they were the first to implement BPF for production ready code almost 3 decades ago.

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

But all this is opinion and anecdotal. Just pick a random network feature and compare by yourself the Linux and the FreeBSD code.
by siev | 2025-11-18 09:35:40+00:00
Gonna link SSFF's enjoyable telling of the 3DO port story: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yxF1_wg2d_Q

I will never get over the company CEO sending here PNGs of new weapon models and saying, essentially, "Yeah so you can just copy & paste these into the game, right?"
Show HN: Fluxion – Rust async stream composition supporting error propagation
by umbgtt | 2025-11-18 09:36:54+00:00
Hi everyone,

I just released *Fluxion 0.2.1*, a small async library for Rust that lets you compose heterogeneous event streams and preserve the order in which events arrive.

GitHub: https://github.com/umbgtt10/fluxion
by lproven | 2025-11-18 09:38:03+00:00
> You can get ARM-based PCs and laptops. Thing is so far they all suck except for Apple right now.

This is true, but there's a consolation -- they suck much much less than RISC-V kit.

I run a bunch of nearly 15 year old laptops. I am not a performance addict. But I have not laid fingers on a RISC-V box I'd be willing to spend a morning on.
by anastasija2504 | 2025-11-18 09:39:07+00:00
Same reasons for quitting, same salary expectations, same frustrations. Wait a minute, where is it coming from? Let's see... Oh, no. Reddit. Why on Earth would we make big career decisions based on anonymous tips?

The answer is – because it’s easy. Because it confirms what we already feel. Because they are pressing all the right buttons in our heads…

If I asked you: “Are you stupid?”, your answer, hopefully, would be – NO!

But what if you are? What if we all are? Not in the general sense but concerning how easily we get seduced by Jane and Joe Doe on the internet, especially on Reddit. In a sea of relatable posts and viral threads, even the smartest among us can get swept up.

And that raises a bigger question:

Are we really shaping our careers or is Reddit shaping them for us?
by zimpenfish | 2025-11-18 09:39:56+00:00
[0] is a good article about this; not least that this has been happening since at least 1889 (to the point where I'd say we could now probably consider it a valid alternate spelling.)

[0] https://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/001166.... (no, I've no idea why they're behind the wrong subdomain certificate)
by ktpsns | 2025-11-18 09:40:00+00:00
Are they? On client side, technically it is easier not to execute scripts then to do so (despite the UX of https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/noscript/ might let you think the opposite). Technically, with DOM inspection one can also easily filter out elements you don't like, both on client and server side. It is literally one XQuery/XPath away.

The problem is that most modern "apps" stop working once you prevent them from exchanging data with third parties or using nowadays-standard APIs such as XHR or Websockets. This is why a radical cut was chosen by Gemini.
by realo | 2025-11-18 09:40:24+00:00
Well... this is similar to COVID. As long as your computer is disconnected from any network, yes you should be able to do whatever you want and decide. But as soon as your computer can be a danger for others, then your risk taking decisions can harm others, and then what?

Masks during covid were a matter of public health.

Regular updates are also a similar matter.
by mgaunard | 2025-11-18 09:41:31+00:00
You made me check the programme of many university courses.

Most parallel programming courses are at Masters level and require specialization, but those are much more advanced (sorting networks, distributed computing on supercomputers and GPU, consensus algorithms, parallelization of linear solvers...)

There are undergraduate courses that cover simple things like multithreading patterns in mainstream languages, but it seems they are only available if you go to an education institution with both a practical mindset and a firm grip of the fundamentals, which is unfortunately quite rare, as most institutions tend to specialize in one or the other.
by mrkeen | 2025-11-18 09:41:32+00:00
And it's all still true, although I would offer the usual argument that concurrency!=parallelism, and if you reach for threads&STM to try to speed something up, you'll probably have a bad time. With the overhead of GC, STM-retries, false-sharing, pointer-chasing, etc you might have a better time rewriting it single-threaded in C/Rust.

STM shines in a concurrent setting, where you know you'll multiple threads accessing your system and you want to keep everything correct. And nothing else comes close.
by fodkodrasz | 2025-11-18 09:41:57+00:00
Many people are using Win 11 out of free will, until they alienate them. The main problem is that they are alienating developers, and that they don't focus on anything they do everything half-heartedly (even AI).

They abandoned the mobile phone market, where they couldn't decide to target businesess or consumers, so they let them both down.

Same happens on the desktop, they are quickly eroding the platform advantage they had and leaving both hobbyists and home users and enterprises without a reason to choose them.

They are pushing for the AI now, but in a way that is too controversial and is not acceptable nor for many individuals, nor for businesses, also doing so with forced hardware updates and high monthly costs.

XBOX is being abandoned. They did venture into the streamed gaming topic, but abandoning, guess because all those powerful GPUs are needed for AI.

Many core services are being abandoned, without alternatives, eg. Maps in windows was abandoned, without any successor. At least they could have created like a PWA wrapper for google/apple/osm, and put in a chooser facede on first start. It would have taken about 1 month for a single developer experienced in the windows relevant subsystems.

Windows is still reliable, stable, decently fast and secure, but that is useless when you abandon it as a platform, you don't attract developer talent, you don't have a unified UI/UX language that differentiates you (if not with anything els then with its consistency), does not provide a more streamlined deployment and update flow than competitors, etc. Windows had these advantages, and is repidly loosing these.
by sebstefan | 2025-11-18 09:41:58+00:00
>STM is an optimistic concurrency system. This means that threads never block waiting for locks. Instead, each concurrent operation proceeds, possibly in parallel, on their own independent transaction log. Each transaction tracks which pieces of data it has accessed or mutated and if at commit time it is detected that some other transaction has been committed and altered data which this transaction also accessed, then the latter transaction is rolled back and is simply retried.

I already foresaw (and it gets mentioned later), the problem that if you have many small, frequent operations, they will prevent a big, long operation from happening because they will always change the state and cause conflicts before the big one can finish. You can easily code yourself an app that will softlock forever.

The post doesn't offer a good solution (it talks about one where there's a tradeoff, but you don't need tradeoffs for this)

The way this gets fixed it is to make the lock acquisition (or in this case, the priority of the merge?) preemptive (Wound-Wait)

All transactions have a global, ever incrementing number attached to them, their ID, which we call "seniority", if you try to get a a lock, and the lock is held by a transaction with a lower seniority (=> a higher ID), you kill the transaction, take the lock, and once you're done the transaction you killed is allowed to retry

In the meantime, if a transaction with the lower seniority tries to get the lock, it gets blocked

This insures that your program will always finish.

In the case of "lots of frequent small transactions" + "one big, long report", the report will get killed a few times, until your report inevitably becomes the most senior transaction to ask for this resource, and is allowed to complete.
by eternityforest | 2025-11-18 09:42:08+00:00
A lot of us might experience similar things, but this seems somewhat unique.

He has a large amount of original low level code where he's the only maintainer, that doesn't work with standard dev tools.

A lot of non-hacker devs would probably have lost interest in, or totally rewritten a project to match modern APIs, long before it was likely to break like that.

Lots of people seem to be offering to help, but that doesn't seem to be what he wants.

He mentions a feeling of fate telling him to move on, hiking, and staying healthy, which seems much more interesting and important.
by stacktrace | 2025-11-18 09:46:32+00:00
Very interesting read! But I want to point out a small correction - the DNS collapse issue at HAProxy, along with O(N^2), also had some O(N^3) code paths, which is just mind-blowing.

Also, I believe this should be the correct GitHub issue link - https://github.com/haproxy/haproxy/issues/1404

> Production Lesson: Code that "works fine" at small scale may still hide O(N²) or worse behavior. At hundreds or thousands of nodes, those costs stop being theoretical and start breaking production.
by A4ET8a8uTh0_v2 | 2025-11-18 09:49:01+00:00
So its gonna sound weird, but some companies really have strict policies and notepad there is ok, but notepad++ isn't. Usually, there is some way to get exceptions, but those tend to require more effort than it is usually worth it. I guess what I am saying it: it is not always by choice:D
by 1718627440 | 2025-11-18 09:49:36+00:00
They are still free, since it is a deposit, not a fee. Also don't you need to put in a coin, when you use a locker, in a museum or the library, or the train station? This is ubiquitous here. You don't need to use a real coin, they are also fake plastic coins for only this purpose, you can get everywhere, and also tools, which you put in to unlock, and then can immediately pull out again.
by rsynnott | 2025-11-18 09:49:56+00:00
This… is a think that people believe, but it’s not as simple as that. Most basic research is universities, all over the place. Many drugs are developed in Europe. A lot of medical machinery is developed and made in Europe (Siemens, Philips and Roche are huge in this space). Like most things, med tech is fairly globalised.
by Xelbair | 2025-11-18 09:50:01+00:00
Well it all started with usual SV style "growth hacking"(price dumping as a SaaS) of "gather users now, monetize later" by OpenAI - which works only if you attain virtual monopoly(basically dominance over segment of a market, with competition not really competing with you) over segment of the market.

The problem is no one attained that position, price expectations are set and it turns out that wishful thinking of reducing costs of running the models by orders of magnitude wasn't fruitful.

Is AI useful? of course.

Are the real costs of it justified? in most cases no.
by throwaway_ab | 2025-11-18 09:50:59+00:00
Not sure how this would work, if you blocked those IPv6, the mostly innocent companies and people that are now blocked will be in short order getting a new IPv6 assigned by the ISP after a support call.

I was under the impression that these botnets still rely on vulnerable computers, which have a human that will be calling support asking for the issue to be resolved.

Then it needs an ISP to figure out the issue and ask the client to sort out their compromised computer, but unlikely the ISP will stop a paying customer from internet access especially if it's not clear why their original assigned IPv6 is blocked.
by ZeroGravitas | 2025-11-18 09:51:02+00:00
Powering an extended, worst-case-scenario month-long dunkelflaute entirely with gas rather than a realistic mix of options would only take 5% of Germany's current gas usage (coincidentally roughly equivalent to Germany's domestic gas production).

It's wild how much attention that gets compared to the 50% being used to heat buildings.

That is a problem for which we already have great solutions. We have German made heat pumps, that could be German fitted and run off German generated electricity, or worst case EU electricity imports.

Solve 10% of that problem and you have freed up enough gas and money to cancel out an apocalyptic scale dunkelflaute or three every year.
by mimi_007 | 2025-11-18 09:51:30+00:00
You can skip low-level PDF libs entirely and just generate the PDF from an HTML/CSS template (or plain HTML or URLS). With PDFBolt you design the layout once in HTML/CSS + Handlebars, then your C# code sends JSON and gets a PDF back from the API. That avoids the whole DOM/layout/rendering headache and you don’t have to ship a browser engine yourself.

It’s not a replacement for permissively licensed libraries when you need everything local, but for reports/invoices/etc. it can save a lot of time.