MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by synapsomorphy | 2025-12-28 19:12:18+00:00
I'm a Linux and Windows user thinking of getting a Macbook, mostly for the hardware.

All these recent proclamations of disappointment in Tahoe seem insanely overblown to me. The problem that this post leads with is that thumbnails' corners are too rounded, which "misrepresents" the original? Seriously?

Maybe it's worse now compared to the golden years, I don't know, never owned a Mac. And it's fair to criticize it from that perspective. But I am completely at a loss for how any of these issues could be bad enough to make you switch platforms. Windows and Linux are not exactly usability all-stars! I had to write my own app for decent speech-to-text on Linux which is built in at a system level on Macs.

This feels to me like just the age-old tale of people wanting to (love | hate) brands, when really, things are nuanced. I switched from Android to iOS recently and the experience did not change much. iOS is absolutely not "borderline unusable" like I've seen many claim. If anything it's maybe a 10% nicer experience overall.

Lack of nuance in people's takes makes for less signal in the noise and makes it annoying to figure out the actual pros and cons of different platforms.
by ssl-3 | 2025-12-28 19:13:00+00:00
Specifically backlit LCDs. Maybe with dynamic backlight; maybe even with zoned dynamic backlight -- but definitely backlit LCDs. It only works in corner cases where important information would normally be displayed as bright saturated subpixels (colors), and even then it only really gets good with special dynamic processing (which probably doesn't exist).

So in terms of practicality: It has none.

And at best, all that these hypotheticals can do is stretch out a battery a little longer by reducing the intensity of backlight that is necessary in order to succeed at using the device in a given level of ambient light.

It has never been my intent to demonstrate "twice the battery life" ["with this one simple trick!"]. That's the path of nonsense, and of chemtrails. :)
by Vincent_Yan404 | 2025-12-28 19:13:03+00:00
To be honest, for me, nuclear explosions only exist in the imagery of propaganda and documentaries. I am not a physicist; I don't understand nuclear physics on a technical level.

My perspective on 'the nuclear' is purely emotional and sensory—I simply find it terrifying. I resonate much more with the raw, human suffering described in Svetlana Alexievich’s Voices from Chernobyl than I do with the scientific future of nuclear power.
by WillAdams | 2025-12-28 19:13:14+00:00
I can still remember a fellow student wanting to know how to write a 3D computer game, the professor being stumped, and my chiming in w/

>Get Foley & Van Dam from the library

noting it should be available to check out, since I'd just checked it back in.

Several new editions since:

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/5257044-computer-graphic...
by bonesss | 2025-12-28 19:13:28+00:00
Functional programming makes DSLs easier/possible, so you express your domain in natural domain language/constructs leading to easier comprehension, standardization, reuse, and testing, thereby improving reliability. This is the exact opposite of write-only code, DSLs are comprehensible/editable to non-programmers. With a strong enough type system these benefits accrue while ensuring the program in stays a subset of more correct programs than allowed by other compilers.

… I mean, if we’re just making global assertions :)

Gimme the “write only” compiler verified exhaustively pattern matched non-mutable clump in a language I can mould freely any day of the week. I will provide the necessary semantic layer for progress backed with compiler guarantees. That same poop pile in a lesser language may be unrecoverable.
by walterbell | 2025-12-28 19:13:41+00:00
2023 Vision Pro (iPad-on-Skull) sold less than 500K devices, with v2 cancelled.

In 2025, the design failed upward to 4000 x 500K users, https://archive.is/gxaYw

> [Apple] is working to simplify the way users navigate and control their devices.. The design is loosely based on the Vision Pro’s software.. will mark the most significant upgrade to the Mac since the Big Sur operating system in 2020.. For the iPhone, it will be the biggest revamp since iOS 7 in 2013... 2 billion devices in use around the world.. when Apple revamped its Photos app last year, legions of users complained. With the entire operating systems changing, the stakes are much higher.

Since 2023 launch, Meta Ray-Ban sold ~4M camera glasses priced below $500.
by m-hodges | 2025-12-28 19:13:43+00:00
I learn a lot listening to the Money Stuff podcast.¹ The newsletter² is also great but I don’t always have time to read every one. I also really enjoy Why Is This Happening.³ Chris Hayes really shines as an interviewer and policy wonk when he’s not in the cable news format. While Ezra Klein seems to be leaning into Democratic Party whisperer, Hayes is leaning into policy nerdity that I miss from Vox-era Klein.

¹ https://www.iheart.com/podcast/1308-money-stuff-the-podcast-...

² https://www.bloomberg.com/account/newsletters/money-stuff

³ https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/why-is-this-happening-...
by pulsepro | 2025-12-28 19:14:06+00:00
Abstract
Current Large Language Models (LLMs) suffer from a fundamental problem:
hallucination
- thegeneration of plausible but factually incorrect information. We present BTRS (Babylon TowerReasoning System), a novel layered knowledge architecture that eliminates hallucination throughstructured knowledge representation, upward pulse propagation, authority-controlled factverification, and strategic caching mechanisms.
BTRS organizes human knowledge into hierarchical rings (0 to ∞), where each ring serves a specificepistemic function. Information flows unidirectionally upward via "pulse propagation," withconsistency validation at each layer. The system achieves near-zero hallucination rates whilemaintaining computational
by jonlong | 2025-12-28 19:14:42+00:00
Well, I have outlined the usual story of logic as it corresponds to programming (as has been accepted for at least some five decades now); it strains credulity to claim that logic is illogical.

Now I do see where you are coming from; under a set-theoretic interpretation with "implies" as "subset", "or" as "union", and "and" as "intersection", the fact that "A implies (A or B)" tells us that an element of the set A is also an element of the set "A union B".

However, this is not the interpretation that leads to a straightforward correspondence between logic and programming. For example, we would like "A and B" to correspond to the type of pairs of elements of A with elements of B, which is not at all the set-theoretic intersection. And while "(A and B) implies A", we do not want to say a value of type "(A, B)" also has type "A". (E.g., if a function expects an "A" and receives an "(A, A)", we are at an impasse.)

So "implies" should not be read programmatically as a subtyping relation; instead, "A implies B" tells us that there is a function taking a value of type A to a value of type B. In the case of "A implies (A or B)", that function takes its input and tags it as belonging to the left disjunct!

Another perspective I must mention: given a proof of "A or B" and another of "(A or B) implies C", how can we combine these into a simpler proof of just "C"? A proof of "(A or B) implies C" must contain both a proof a "A implies C" and a proof of "B implies C", and we could insert into one those proofs a proof of A or a proof of B. But we have to know which one we have! (This is a very short gloss of a much deeper story, where, under Curry-Howard, proof simplification corresponds to computation, and this is another way of describing a function call that does a case-analysis of a tagged union (or "sum type").)

Now "union and intersection" types with the set-theoretic properties you are hinting at have indeed been studied (see, for example, Section 15.7 of Pierce's "Types and Programming Languages"). But they do not replace the much more familiar "sum and product types", and do not play the central role of "or" and "and" in the correspondence of programming to logic.
by beders | 2025-12-28 19:15:12+00:00
Most of the musings on enforcing invalid states with ADTs are impractical when working with real data that needs runtime validation when it enters the system.

Using a schema/spec/type library at runtime that is even more powerful than ADTs is a better investment - or to be less controversial - is an additional investment on top of types.

Yes, it means the compiler can't help you as much, but who has time waiting for a compiler anyways ;)

I find the "make illegal state unrepresentable via types" idea great for software that needs to fly a plane, but for enterprise software not so much. The cost/benefit is not justifiable.
by PaulKeeble | 2025-12-28 19:16:44+00:00
There is a implicit assumption that many peoples thoughts are insincere before this point and its the only moment where you can really get what people truly value and believe in. I don't think that is true, in many ways you say the thing family/the people around you need to hear. A level of candour has taken over because you don't have to worry about a number of other concerns but at that point you often trying to comfort the people who are going to live with your death.

There is no moment in our lives where we can be trusted to think deeply and express a hard to hear honest thought, and those people that do it often when talking about others are just mean and unlikeable.
by cmyr | 2025-12-28 19:16:53+00:00
A technical note: OpenType Layout does have a way of representing the appropriate _cursor positions_ to use for components of a ligature[1], which is a good proxy for where the individual glyph boundaries are in the trivial case (fi and fl, say) but these tables are not reliably included in all fonts, and they are not actually used by much client software (last I checked they were used by CoreText but not by HarfBuzz or DirectWrite.)

[1]: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/typography/opentype/spec/g...
by Daishiman | 2025-12-28 19:17:25+00:00
> All these recent proclamations of disappointment in Tahoe seem insanely overblown to me. The problem that this post leads with is that thumbnails' corners are too rounded, which "misrepresents" the original? Seriously?

The example in Photos is absolutely egregious, and as a user of Linux for the past 25 years and recent user of a Mac for work I can’t remember something that bad in a mainstream desktop environment on Linux.

In fact from a usability perspective a modern Gnome desktop seems for more usable and consistent than modern Mac OS and that’s saying something. Font scaling seems to work better in Linux, UI wisgers in Gtk seem to be more consistent. Dark themes have been around on Linux far longer and it shows.

I don’t use the latest Mac OS version; it’s _okay_ from a usability perspective. But this new version seems like a clear downgrade for something where the purpose of paying large sums of money is for higher productivity and comfort.
by franciscop | 2025-12-28 19:17:40+00:00
I have the same problem and my "solution" is mediocre, but kind of works: use a VPN. I used to set it to the UK, but since the recent developments I've been experimenting with other English-speaking countries. My native language is Spanish, but I live in Japan, and it's odd because I never want Japanese (language) results, but I am fine with Spanish results.

Some times I need to switch to Spain, or Japan, or just disable it due to geo blocking. I use Mullvad, which makes this easier, but TBH the main practical use of my VPN is what you mention, I never want results in Japanese and Google is very bad at getting the hint.

The worst one I keep noticing is MDN, I know there's an article in perfectly fine English but why am I always redirected to the local language one? That's not even location-dependent.
by brewmarche | 2025-12-28 19:17:43+00:00
You have to write a disposable wrapper to return. Return it in error case too.

readonly record struct Result<TResult, TDisposable>(TResult? IfHappy, TDisposable? Disposable): IDisposable where TDisposable : IDisposable
{
public void Dispose() => Disposable?.Dispose();
}
by mettamage | 2025-12-28 19:18:53+00:00
For the curious among us, here are articles related to cold exposure in mice and cancer [1, 2, 3]. I briefly skimmed it but seems like a somewhat plausible idea in the realm of: if it doesn’t hurt you, it can perhaps benefit you.

Also, I think in some cases you can pair it with the Wim Hof Method to make short extreme cold exposure more bearable. I don’t know what the interaction is with norepinephrine though as doing the WHM, one releases a lot of it [4] (I was part of this experiment as a participant so remember the paper quite well). Note, I am not claiming the WHM may help with suppressing cancer, I am simply claiming that it is my experience that performing the WHM makes cold exposure a bit more comfortable. I suspect this is because tons of norepinephrine goes through your body.

On day 4 of our WHM training we were walking 2.5 hours to the top of some Polish ski resort near Wim’s house. It was -7 degrees Celsius. We had shoes on and shorts. No one got frostbite (24 people in total did it, 2 groups of 12 - a few weeks apart). There were 2 research doctors with us (though they were capable doctors as they needed to apply oxygen to one person almost, as he took the training on day 3 really far as we were encouraged to by the doctors and Wim - ultimately it wasn’t needed. Just before they rushed to apply it he started breathing himself again and regained consciousness).

[1] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-05030-3

[2] https://news.ki.se/cool-room-temperature-inhibited-cancer-gr...

[3] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41392-022-01284-5

[4] https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1322174111
by ssl-3 | 2025-12-28 19:18:53+00:00
Yeah, I "know" how it is supposed to work. I "knew" that back then when I bought my first WWVB-receiving clock, too.

And the placement was still fickle.

It's simple to observe:

A) Purchase and install clock. Wait (days). Observe failure to chooch.

B) Move clock. Wait (hours). Observe correct operation.

My world is ultimately bounded by reality, not theory: When it works in one position but not another, then that's the only reality I have to work with.
by like_any_other | 2025-12-28 19:18:59+00:00
> It does give information about "former Labour strategist.."

That's what I wrote? From my post: The earlier article has a brief mention of CCDH's Labour links, and none of the other information in my post.

> This event isn't about whatever broken system [..] As I would expect of any reporting, that it not go off on tangents that are unrelated to this event.

When a government complains about something, I would expect of any half-competent journalist to mention that they are guilty of the exact same thing. Just repeating statements of the parties involved is not journalism, but stenography. Naturally I disagree that it is "unrelated".

> They quote UK govt officials making their UK talking points the same as they printed the US govt officials talking points.

You don't notice propaganda when it's right in your face. The first three paragraphs of the BBC article:

The Center for Countering Digital Hate founder was among five people denied US visas - not "he claims he was denied"

after the Trump administration accused them of seeking to "coerce" tech platforms into censoring free speech. - but here it is a mere 'accusation', despite the CCDH's well-documented tactics [1] of deplatforming and going after the finances of media they dislike.

The move brought a backlash from European leaders defending the work of organisations monitoring online content. - they mention the monitoring, but not the deplatforming campaigns. Again, not a he-said she-said, but in the journalistic voice of stating facts.

> As for the "goal" or "tactics" that you found on some substack

The tactics are directly from the wikipedia page for the CCDH, as cited in my post.

> It has no relevance to real-world reporting, it doesn't meet journalistic standards to take every random one-sided internet theory as fact -- nor are they obligated to investigate and verify every substack posting on the internet.

It's not a "theory" but documents leaked by a whistleblower. Maybe it's false, but it's not random, but by Matt Taibbi [2]. Please don't ignore half my post, and misrepresent the other half.

I find it sad that you think stenography is journalism, but investigating or providing context is irrelevant and sub-standard.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Center_for_Countering_Digital_...

[2] In 2021, Ross Barkan of New York wrote, "Taibbi is—or was, depending on your view—one of the most celebrated investigative journalists of his generation." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matt_Taibbi#Assessments
by embedding-shape | 2025-12-28 19:19:51+00:00
While reading through the post, I too felt it being similar to LLM generated text, but the stories and the perspective is uniquely human, or is there something specific that sticks out as inhuman from the text? Specific parts that sounds implausible?

It obvious that something was used to do the translation, but it doesn't feel worse than any other machine-translated texts, as long as I get the gist and the overall idea of what the author is trying to communicate, I feel like it's good enough.
by jedberg | 2025-12-28 19:20:44+00:00
It's probably the least secure of the ones I mentioned, yes. But even so, it massively increases the search space for a dictionary attack because the attacker doesn't know which algorithm was applied first.

But yes, at the end of the day, the best bet is to just take a mosaic of a random text and place it over the text you're trying to obscure. The reason people use mosaic is because it is more aesthetic than a black box, but there is no reason it has to be a mosaic of the actual text.
by randycupertino | 2025-12-28 19:21:25+00:00
Pfizer has been resting on their laurels ever since it struck gold with boner pills and Lipitor. Viagra made it rain beaucoup bucks and rewired the entire firm to prioritize commercial sales and marketing over real scientific clinical development. Pfizer is optimized for sales over research and development. Now they primarily acquire and license a bunch of me-too drugs and late-stage acquisitions vs creating their own homegrown breakthroughs.

Pfizer's strengths are regulatory compliance, M&A and global manufacturing. They suck at research and clinical development. Losing the GLP-1 race was predictable as they simply don't prioritize emerging science compared to other mid-sized and large pharmas.
by HDThoreaun | 2025-12-28 19:21:43+00:00
Of course there are trade offs. Suburbanites are just happy to spend time commuting in exchange for a big house with a big yard. You are still talking like they don’t realize the tradeoff they’re making instead of accepting that they’ve considered that and come to the conclusion that it’s worth it. They think living in apartments with no personal space sucks more than commuting.
Show HN: Tinytunes DJ – A DJ deck in the browser
by dworks | 2025-12-28 19:21:46+00:00
TLDR: https://dj.t-tunes.com/

Hey everyone, the past few months I've been working on a couple of lightweight music apps that run within the constraints of the browser, and focus on providing a delightful (hopefully) music experience.

The first project I've launched is tinytunes DJ (just in time for NYE parties!), a minimal DJ deck that runs in your browser, on your laptop, your phone, and your tablet.

The absolute essence of a good DJ set is a great track list and smooth transitions (crossfade) between the tracks. tinytunes DJ helps you accomplish that and a bit more too.

A quick overview below:

## ADD TRACKS

From mp3s from local library or tracks and playlists from YouTube.

## PLAY

Control two decks, playlists, cue, sync and crossfader. tinytunes DJ has configurable keyboard mappings, UI hints and visual feedback so you can get a tactile feel by using the keyboard controls.

## RECORD

Record combined audio output, track list and timings. (Local only at the moment)

## SHARE

Every mix is shareable, listenable, and likeable. Each recorded mix has its own page and URL, and shows the track lists and when which song was played, etc. Peeps can give you feedback in the form of likes and comments.

## BONUS: Music Player
A lot of people have asked me if they can just use this as a music player. Yes, just toggle AUTOPLAY ON on the deck/queue and tinytunes becomes a music player, meaning it automatically plays next track in the queue. You can then create playlists and tinytunes will automatically play the next track in the background, even YouTube playlists running in the background on your phone work (depending on your browser, settings, and OS. Edge works perfectly on Android).

Coming soon is support for Bandcamp, ability to import YouTube playlists, cloud sync for local tracks (YouTube tracks and playlists already sync across devices), so your music collection is available anywhere, as well as support for MIDI controllers, and a cue channel.

Try it out and let me know what you think. Looking forward to bug reports and rough edges, UX improvement ideas, feature requests etc. And if you don't want to DJ you can try using it as your music player.

PS. If you want to stay updated you can simply create an account and you will automatically get a lifetime 'Medium' account and occasional emails when I launch the above features.
by bitsage | 2025-12-28 19:22:26+00:00
This comment isn’t as much of an exaggeration as it seems, at least regarding engineering. At a previous job, I was tasked with helping a product line achieve certification to a government standard. The public facing government contact I interacted with was just a middle man with the consultancy, ICF, who actually developed and maintained the standards, to government specifications. Also, those government specifications had significant input from industry.
by embedding-shape | 2025-12-28 19:22:36+00:00
I don't think anyone here tried to use it that way, but it's useful to have some framing around things. It might seem macabre to see people argue "Well, if it killed 10 kids but saved 10,000, doesn't that mean it's good?" without understanding the deeper perspective a person like that would hold, which essentially is a utilitarian.

And I don't think any utilitarian would be against "something with some harm but mostly good can be made to do even less harm".

But the person I initially replied to, obviously doesn't see it as "some harm VS much good" (which we could argue if it's true or not), and would say that any harm + any good is still worth considering if the harm is worth it, besides the good it could do.
by dupdup | 2025-12-28 19:23:15+00:00
Person that has the ability to have post here in HN is enough of productive at least from most of us reading here. But for us, most of the time staring at the screen reading HN is also nice to keep a list here is what I do:
I have a notebook on my desk that has horizontal lines(what is the word for it) I guess one line is .75 cm wide using that as a day of week I noted what I do that day with codes HackerNews hn, game, read, first job(fj), second job(sj), youtube you, bodybuilding bb, fut for thinking about future life. I keep the list over detail to show you how much a mundane life i have. But be sure more items make you more happy for that day. SO I mean please keep a list of what you are doing taht day