MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by seec | 2025-11-10 13:15:44+00:00
I think you are at least partly right. The period after Jobs left was pretty bad. The Mac was too expensive and not providing enough advantages to be worthwhile. But the work that happened at NeXT basically enabled the Mac to make a comeback (macOS is basically a variant of the NeXT OS).

And indeed this is the period when they did play quite nice but I don't think it was only to get back in the game. I think Steve Jobs really had a goal, a "higher-purpose" towards offering elegant, powerful and easy to use computing devices. If that wasn't true, he would never had started NeXT in the first place, this endeavor nearly bankrupted him, so it wasn't just about greed.

But nowadays the hardware products are quite good (often best in class) but they are way too greedy and very negligent towards what actually matters, the software (having good hardware that cannot run any good software is rather useless).
by radarsat1 | 2025-11-10 13:16:07+00:00
I would love to read more, but apart from not finding a lot of time lately, when I do read, it's fiction. Occasionally I have read a textbook on a topic I am really interested in, and I've read blogs and articles on various sciency themes, but when it comes to books, I have just never been very into reading non-fiction. I don't try often, but when I do, I get one or two chapters in and just .. fail to pick it up again.

I know that non-fiction would be "good for me." Particularly reading more in topics I'm less knowledgable about, like finance and business and politics. Personal growth. However, I do find that fiction helps expand my perspective and even, somehow, knowledge, but it's different from non-fiction, less direct. I don't read for that, explicitly, although I do like the effect. But I read because.. I guess, because it's nice for my brain to be somewhere else. I don't know. But non-fiction has never done it for me.. my mind just gets.. bored, I think, trying to absorb what someone else wants me to know. Even when I find the topic interesting.

I guess there are people who like non-fiction and people who like fiction and they often cross-over but I think most people lean one way or the other. I can see there being positives and negatives to either side. People who equally read both must be rare? Or maybe it's just my impression.
by rcarmo | 2025-11-10 13:16:18+00:00
I am spending my free time doing a few projects to relax and "fix" a few things that should improve my productivity:

- An AI RSS feed summarizer (https://feeds.carmo.io)

- A PyObjC replacement for the bloated StreamDeck app (https://mastodon.social/@rcarmo/115498602604176483)

- A new keyboard, mostly to get back into SMD soldering (https://mastodon.social/@taoofmac/115521815709828495)

- A bunch of small MCP servers for other projects (https://mastodon.social/@taoofmac/115315732816298110)

- A case for a little server (https://taoofmac.com/space/reviews/2025/11/09/1930) that will eventually run at family's out in the countryside and manage a few ESP32 boards scattered around
by echelon_musk | 2025-11-10 13:17:06+00:00
I've tried to use beets a number of times and given up each time.

- beets can't delete transcoded files which have been deleted at source.

- beets can't re transcode existing transcoded files when the source has been modified.

- It's impossible to preserve the original directory structure when transcoding because it strips all path separators for "security".

I use a Bash script I've been maintaining for a number of years instead.
by righthand | 2025-11-10 13:17:21+00:00
There is so much defense of XSLT it’s crazy you assume no one is here defending it. This thread isn’t the single defense point against Google.

Not only that Google engineers Mason Freed has shown pretty forcefully that he will not listen to defense, reason or logic. This further evidenced by Google repeatedly trying to kill it for 25 years.

Personally I just see you licking Google’s boot.
by Razengan | 2025-11-10 13:17:21+00:00
lol I really despise it when corporations try to be "too" smart/helpful and automatically translate their shit to the local language guessed from your IP, which is a major pain when traveling.

Google absolutely sucks ass at this: You can't set your default language without having a Google account which I refuse to sign in except on YouTube, and there's no easy way to change the language on some of their pages.
by ErroneousBosh | 2025-11-10 13:17:31+00:00
> Stephenson (more of a slog through the first 600 pages, then an abrupt 180 and frenetic action in the last 100 with newly introduced, yet game-changing characters?).

With the six pages in the middle where he may as well say "Right, I had to learn a lot of algebra for compiler optimisation to make this bit work, so now you get to learn it too"
by tentoumushi | 2025-11-10 13:17:36+00:00
As a long time Japanese learner, I've always wanted there to be a simple, free online trainer for learning and grinding Japanese kanji and vocabulary - like Monkeytype in the typing community (fun fact: we actually have 2 Monkeytype devs on our team now!). I'm doing this because I grew tired of all the subscriptions and paywalls, which are unfortunately very common in the Japanese learning apps market. That's why I want to make the most fun, user-friendly and customizable platform for learning Japanese currently available, and the first one that is (and will be, forever) completely free, ad-free and open-source - driven not by profit, but made by the community, for the community.

We already managed to get around 600 stars on GitHub and about 7k monthly users for the app. That being said, I recognize that the app is still in its very early alpha stages and is, objectively speaking, behind paid Japanese learning solutions (at least for now) - which is why I want to change that and make it the first entirely free and open-source platform for learning Japanese to provide a real, high-quality alternative to all the current paid Japanese learning resources, which I believe we can achieve with the open-source community's help.

Why am I doing this? Because weebs deserve to have a free, open-source learning platform too (I'm one of them, don't judge...)

どうもありがとうございます!
by Joker_vD | 2025-11-10 13:18:20+00:00
No, it's not executed before the return, it's executed in the middle of it, so to speak:

class Main { static int f() { System.out.println("f()"); return 1; } static int g() { System.out.println("g()"); return 2; } static int h() { try { return f(); } finally { return g(); } } public static void main(String[] args) { System.out.println(h()); } }

will print

f() g() 2

If "finally" block was executed before the "return" in the "try", the call to f() would not have been made.
by leovingi | 2025-11-10 13:18:54+00:00
Anyone here can go to https://h1bgrader.com/, find their favorite tech company or two and see the entire list of positions they needed H-1B for, as well as the salaries.

Web developers, data analysts, project managers, sales analysts, support engineers - these are not highly-skilled roles that just can't be satisfied by the US market.
by shevy-java | 2025-11-10 13:19:34+00:00
I don't really need or use XSLT (I think), so I am not really affected either way. But I am also growing mightily tired of Google thinking "I am the web" now. This is really annoying to no ends. I really don't want Google to didctate onto mankind what the web is or should be. Them killing off ublock origin also shows this corporate mindset at work.

This is also why I dislike AI browsers in general. They generate a view to the user that may not be real. They act like a proxy-gate, intercepting things willy-nilly. I may be oldschool, but I don't want governments or corporations to jump in as middle-man and deny me information and opportunities of my own choosing. (Also Google Suck, I mean Google Search, sucks since at the least 5 years now. That was not accidental - that was deliberate by Google.)
by Peritract | 2025-11-10 13:20:01+00:00
> I know that non-fiction would be "good for me."

I think this depends heavily on which non-fiction, particularly when contrasted with which fiction you're currently reading.

I don't think reading the same self-help books as a bunch of CEO's who see themselves as bold outsiders to the system will actually benefit you; it didn't make them self-aware.

Fiction contains information and ideas; it helps you expand your horizons, and that's generally a good thing. As long as you're not reading a very limited subset of fiction, it will be beneficial.
by Timwi | 2025-11-10 13:20:23+00:00
Microsoft does have a reputation for ungodly levels of backwards compatibility. You can still run the oldest Windows 95 programs today, still open the oldest Word documents, etc.

The issue with “quality” is that it's really subjective. As someone remembering the switch from Windows 98 (DOS-based) to Windows 2000 (NT-based), the boost in subjective quality was immense. But to someone who's already been on Linux for years, it would have looked like playing catch-up.
by redbell | 2025-11-10 13:20:41+00:00
Nice work, thanks for sharing!

Here's my feedback..

1. Please, consider to always include the latest What Are You Working On posts. For instance, this latest one posted 16 hours ago is not included yet (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45869146).

2. Also, it may be better to include ONLY top-level comments and not replies. For instance, the second row appearing on the list says "Thanks for the the kind words.." by @rubansk is a reply and not a root comment which may be of a little value here.

3. For the UI, when I sort by columns "AUTHOR" or "POSTED", the table would take a different size?! It would be nice to keep the size of the table fixed.

Just my two cents..
by basscomm | 2025-11-10 13:21:04+00:00
> If there were that many, why do people only list the same handful again and again? And where are all the /operators/ of those websites complaining?

I've spent the last several years making a website based on XML and XSLT. I complain about the XML/XSLT deprecation from browsers all the time. And the announcements in August that Google was exploring getting rid of XSLT in the browser (which, it turned out, wasn't exploratory at all, it was a performative action that led to a foregone conclusion) was so full of blowback that the discussion got locked and Google forged ahead anyway.

> Is it possible that installing an XSLT processor on the server is not as big a hassle as everyone pretends?

This presumes that everyone interested in making something with XML and XSLT has access to configure the web server it's hosted on. With support in the browser, I can throw some static files up just about anywhere and it'll Just Work(tm)
by trobertson | 2025-11-10 13:21:43+00:00
> Lore and story wise [Oblivion and Skyrim] have incredible depth.

As you said, you never played Daggerfall or Morrowind. Just about all of the lore in Oblivion and Skyrim comes from Daggerfall, Redguard, and Morrowind.

As for the stories... sorry, but you're on your own there. Oblivion's was okay, but Skyrim's story was a trainwreck from beginning to end. Of all the parts of Bethesda games, it is the character + story writing that has suffered the most over the years.
by jeltz | 2025-11-10 13:22:01+00:00
But did it ever actually work in practice? As I remember it the XSLT backed websites still needed "absurd amounts of CSS microsyntac". You could not do everything you needed with XSLT so you needed to use both XSLT and CSS. Also coding in XSLT was generally painful, even more so than writing CSS (which I think is another poorly designed language).

It is all well and good to talk about theoretical alternatives that would have been better but we are talking here about a concrete attempt which never worked beyond trivial examples. Why should we keep that alive because of something theoretical which in my opinion never existed?
by storus | 2025-11-10 13:22:04+00:00
The point was that in ME/CFS you are essentially a conscious vegetable where drinking a glass of water or crawling to the toilet feels like a massive achievement. That mitochondrial supplements allowed pushing the limit every day a bit further in that state could have implications for regular folks as well who for whatever reasons can't move (imagine injury, lack of energy after a stressful day etc.).
by wtmt | 2025-11-10 13:22:14+00:00
> In response, the Wi-Fi Alliance and the DSA are trying to stoke fears that such a move would severely dent Europe's digital development, claiming Wi-Fi is the primary way consumers access the internet and constraining it would impact progress.

Just today, there’s a news report in India where the major telecom companies have lobbied that the entire 6 GHz band be reserved for mobile services and that even part of it shouldn’t be left for unlicensed WiFi. [1]

The problem in India is that the penetration of wired broadband is very low, and the telcos don’t seem to be interested in expanding it as much as they are in grabbing more of wireless spectrum.

I don’t believe it’s a good move to reserve these exclusively for mobile services. We (in general) need more unlicensed spectrum for innovation. Let the companies figure out another way out.

I also know that these bands are already allowed for unlicensed WiFi use in the US.

[1]: https://telecom.economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/industry/j...
by realtorender | 2025-11-10 13:22:38+00:00
Reading this made me think on the recent grants needed to sustain the AI race are honestly alarming. Every new “breakthrough” seems to come with a bigger bill attached, and the idea that only trillion-dollar companies can afford to keep up feels… off. It’s starting to look like the economics of cloud-scale AI might collapse under their own weight. On the other hand, I always looked amazed with little home clusters to run llms. Do this mean local LLMs will have their time to shine and products related to building general public tools and hardware is the big underdog here?
by shevy-java | 2025-11-10 13:23:04+00:00
I recently left (or rather, was semi-forced out from) reddit. Hackernews does not have crazy moderators or at the least not as many; there is more free-form discussion, which is great.

Still, a few things I like. I used old.reddit.com, but even that seems to be a bit better than the default UI on hacker news. I don't mind the UI, but I found old.reddit.com easier and faster to use (the new reddit UI is just garbage though). It would be nice if hackernews could add more features that are SIMPLE and also simple improves to the layout - again, just very small and careful changes; people dislike any change to their workflows, so hackernews should make these conservatively and only little; and perhaps with a limit per year or every 5 years or so.

Content-wise I have no huge issue, although I'd like more grouping, as some news are interesting, others not so much (to me). Reading just the title is often not enough; some good articles have horrible titles and vice versa.
by aadc | 2025-11-10 13:23:26+00:00
An AI-powered social media management tool that creates, schedules, and publishes content automatically across Twitter/X, LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, and Threads.

https://postsam.ai

*The problem:* As a solo founder, I was spending hours each week on social media - writing posts, scheduling them, managing multiple accounts. I wanted something that could handle the entire workflow automatically while still letting me stay in control.

*What PostSam does:* - AI generates content tailored to your brand voice (you provide initial brand info) - Creates full content campaigns with posting schedules - Calendar interface to review, edit, or reschedule posts before they go live - Auto-publishes to all connected accounts - Learns from your edits to improve future content

*Current status:* Live and working. Seeing good engagement rates from users who set it up once and let it run. The AI content quality has been surprisingly good - it adapts well to different brand voices.
by seec | 2025-11-10 13:24:02+00:00
It looks like it but it's quite sad.

We need another commercial desktop OS to compete with Microsoft. The problem is Apple is shooting itself in the foot with their greed on hardware pricing.

This is the reasons many heavy/high-duty software never makes it to the Mac, it's just too expensive to outfit everyone with performant enough Mac computers. It's pretty sad because they don't even need the money, and clearly they have shown in the past 10 years that they are completely unable to do anything better with the surplus money. It's just self-defeating greed, they could eat a lot of Microsoft market share where it matters but instead they try to push an even more locked-down approach with the iPadOS.
by Y_Y | 2025-11-10 13:24:05+00:00
I very rarely read man pages (similarly gnu info) on Linux nowadays, whoever they're written for isn't me.

Superior alternatives:

* tldr/tealdeer - usually just a pile of typical usage examples, almost always covers what I want

* jfgi because surely someone has tried to do this before and asked about it on an ancient forum

* llms - regurgitating the info from above, possibly with the bonus of letting it try a script on a sandbox and then entering a error-confusion loop

* source - documentation can be wrong or incomplete, but the source never lies
by adamnew123456 | 2025-11-10 13:24:27+00:00
> Languages for scientific computing like FORTRAN provided multiple floating point types such as REAL and DOUBLE PRECISION as well as INTEGER, often also in multiple sizes. This was to allow programmers to reduce program size and running time. This convention was adopted by later languages like C and Java. In modern systems, this sort of memory saving is pointless.

More than that, the idea that anyone would be confused about whether to use integer or floating-point types absolutely baffles me. Is this something anyone routinely has trouble with?

Ambiguity around type sizes I can understand. Make int expand as needed to contain its value with no truncation, as long as you keep i32 when size and wrapping does matter.

Ambiguity in precision I can understand. I'm not sure this admits of a clean solution beyond making decimal a built-in type that's as convenient (operator support is a must) and fast as possible.

But removing the int/float distinction seems crazy. Feel free to argue about the meaning of `[1,2,3][0.5]` in your language spec - defining that and defending the choice is a much bigger drag on everyone than either throwing an exception or disallowing it via the type system.
by fundatus | 2025-11-10 13:24:34+00:00
> To be really pedantic we should acknowledge there's no good reason to separate Europe from Asia, it's all one geographical continent.

To be even more pedantic you have to throw in Africa as well, as that is connected by land to Asia just like Europe is! Now we have the supercontinent Afroeurasia which contains like 85% of the worlds population.
by stevekemp | 2025-11-10 13:24:37+00:00
I moved from Scotland to Finland, so I guess I'm familiar with the UK temperatures ranges!

I'm generally one of those people who is always warm, so with that caveat inmind I don't find -10 to be too difficult. I can travel to the office, or shops and back with jeans, t-shirt a hat and a decent jacket.

It's only when things get colder than -15 or so that I need gloves, a scarf, and more layers. That's the kinda temperature where your face starts to hurt when you're outdoors, and daily life gets unpleasant. You start to think "Maybe I'll go to the shop tomorrow", and plan things so that you don't have to go outdoors like that.
by moron4hire | 2025-11-10 13:25:01+00:00
> I fail to see how this is the standard that all languages are converging to.

Yes, you are failing to see it because it's not there.

Crockford had a hot book amongst junior and amateur JavaScript developers 17 years ago. But he's never really been involved in any language standardization work. Even his self-described "invention" of JSON I wouldn't really call an invention and rather a discovery that one could send JS object literals instead of XML over the wire. This discovery also opened a new class of XSS exploits until browsers implemented JSON.parse.

So, when he says "DEC64 is intended to be the only number type in the next generation of application programming languages," it's just the same, old bloviation he has always employed in his writing.
by Imustaskforhelp | 2025-11-10 13:25:08+00:00
> If you're doing things blindly in Linux, there's no point

I digress. Everyone has to start somewhere and not everything has to have a point in the start

When I started using linux, I got so fascinated by open source software that I would just search for software/software types and searched open source alternative to X and go to alternativeto or others and try it out etc.

I used to copy paste dnf commands in the start and I still remember that phase.

I think I learnt linux from myself and have given challenges along the way and I feel like there are things that I have still done blindly along the way (building linux isos)

But the fact was that I still felt proud that I was atleast able to replicate the commands and able to have some familiarity with the process. I feel like if I wanted to able to know more about xorriso and cpio to a deeper degree to understand what wizard magic commands I was running to building custom linux iso s etc.

Now I don't know about fortnite etc., I am a kid but surprisingly games don't interest me that much, I am way more in my movies / tv shows (just ended dexter s8) right now.

There is some alienated feelings when people online my age mention the games they play but I think that games on linux are genuinely great support from what I know and my pc doesn't have anything beyond integrated gpu so yeah

my cousins didn't want me to play much games and so they didn't buy a good gpu during the pc and I think they did succeed in this.

Its complicated to how I feel the situation or even let alone think how I would even try to approach this situation if or when I become a parent myself. Honestly, parenting can be a bit hard but I still don't know if you should shun something that you think is faddish or low quality partially because I think that the best thing you could do (imo) is educate them on the positives on linux and how they might outweigh the benefits of fortnite in the short to long term in a fun manner.

Its um complicated and there is definitely a feeling inside me on that i do some incredibly niche things which would be so complicated to explain to someone my age in my proximity. I think there is only one or two of my friends who actually know even 1% of the stuff that I do in linux (one of them had installed hyprland because of me haha)
by dtagames | 2025-11-10 13:25:18+00:00
Not really. Paid access gets you more tokens per month on better models. Some models are actually better at coding complex tasks than others. And without tokens, you can't submit anything at all.

This is why folks making software products that sell or are expected to sell are willing to pay the monthly fee. It's peanuts versus the value of the code we're getting.

The modern tools have a pay-to-play interface and you can see your actual cost in dollars and cents for each prompt. If you don't have enough budget in your plan (or pay extra) you simply can't submit such a prompt.

Disclosure: I spent over $100 on Cursor this month and will likely go to the $200 plan next month.
by metalliqaz | 2025-11-10 13:25:28+00:00
Tech culture, startup culture, whatever you want to call it... is sick. They do see the world in this way. Hyperscale, burn money faster than the other guy until you dominate everything (the only possible way to pay it off).

Techbro culture also discounts experience, which is how you get silly articles like this that claim you can beat "insiders" by reading 25 books. Please.