MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by chongli | 2025-12-02 04:20:39+00:00
This is a really nice summary of the history of Mac OS (in both its incarnations).

While Mac OS X in the mid-late 2000s may have been a technologically superior operating system to Classic Mac OS, it was never as easy to use. The loss of the spatial Finder [1] along with the very strong UI consistency of Classic Mac OS apps (including 3rd party apps) left non-power-users behind forever. However, like everyone else in the operating system space, Apple didn't have to care about that because the browser took over and these users stopped doing things in native apps.

Classic Mac OS still can't be beat for working on projects in visual media. The persistence of the spatial Finder is so rock-solid that you can develop muscle memory for where icons will appear on the screen when you open a folder. This allows you to anticipate where they will be and move the mouse toward them before you can even see them (the zooming rectangles animation helps with this).

This method of working exemplifies the core philosophy of what the "desktop metaphor" was all about: having a spatial relationship with documents and tools on a physical desk lets you move your hands and eyes independently, grabbing and interacting with things without having to look at them. Apple worked extremely hard to bring this "illusion" to the Mac OS and no other operating system (including Mac OS X in all its versions up to the present day) has achieved this.

That's because the spatial illusion is very fragile and must be maintained with extreme care. Any loss of persistence (a window opening in a different place, an icon that moved or changed colour) shatters the illusion and puts the user into a defensive, "hunt and click" mode. Imagine cooking or working in a workshop and having someone re-arrange all your utensils or tools while you're away. Your entire workflow gets disrupted and your performance suffers.

Power users survived this disruption (in Mac OS X onwards) by moving to the keyboard and the Terminal, which have the rock-solid physical persistence of the keyboard itself to back them. Any time Apple tried to mess with the keyboard they got a ton of pushback from power users (see the touchbar on older MacBook Pros).

[1] https://archive.arstechnica.com/paedia/f/finder/finder-3.htm
by timschmidt | 2025-12-02 04:20:58+00:00
Someone always crawls out of the woodwork to repeat this supposed "fact" which hasn't been true for the entire half-century it's been repeated. Jim Keller (designer of most of the great CPUs of the last couple decades) gave a convincing presentation several years ago about just how not-true it is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oIG9ztQw2Gc Everything he says in it still applies today.

Intel struggled for a decade, and folks think that means Moore's law died. But TSMC and Samsung just kept iterating. And hopefully Intel's 18a process will see them back in the game.
by johnnyanmac | 2025-12-02 04:21:23+00:00
To be frank, someone who needs to be told why to appreciate art probably isn't going to appreciate Picasso. You can learn art theory, but you can't just "learn" someone's life, culture, and expression. All the latter is needed to appreciate Picasso.

But I digress.

Anyways, I can't speak for the content itself, but I can definitely tell on the javascript coirse from the trailer and description that they understand the industry and emphasize how this is focused towards those wanting a deep dive on the heart of web, not just another "tutorial on how to use newest framework". Very few tech courses really feel like "low level" fundamentals these days.
by whatever1 | 2025-12-02 04:22:08+00:00
Folks it’s very simple. They want to reduce labor for free.

Why? Because no company can afford the bills for LLM infra.

These companies are spending 100s of billions on building infra. Most countries have less GDP than this. The numbers are insane!

And Nvidia demands payments in cash today. Not amortized in 5 years. Every employee slashed is extra compute the hyperscalers can buy today.
by jonah-archive | 2025-12-02 04:22:59+00:00
We'll be celebrating this at the Internet Archive! As a lead-up, we're again hosting our Public Domain Film Remix Contest: https://blog.archive.org/2025/12/01/2026-public-domain-day-r...

We'll be having an in-person celebration at our SF HQ later in January as well, details to come!
by gcanyon | 2025-12-02 04:23:03+00:00
I know one feature Siri has added in the past fifteen years, because I always complained that Siri couldn't "text this photo to my wife." I would demonstrate to people that this doesn't work, complain about the lack of discoverability, and mention how with each new release of iOS I would try it again to confirm it still didn't work.

Then one time, in a job interview of all things, (I'm a PM and was asked for an example of a product I liked or didn't like) I went into this spiel, and what do you know, Siri texted the photo to my wife. :-)

So somewhere along the way they did add that feature, and apparently I didn't realize I had missed checking for it.
by gcanyon | 2025-12-02 04:23:29+00:00
I know one feature Siri has added in the past fifteen years, because I always complained that Siri couldn't "text this photo to my wife." I would demonstrate to people that this doesn't work, complain about the lack of discoverability, and mention how with each new release of iOS I would try it again to confirm it still didn't work.

Then one time, in a job interview of all things, (I'm a PM and was asked for an example of a product I liked or didn't like) I went into this spiel, and what do you know, Siri texted the photo to my wife. :-)

So somewhere along the way they did add that feature, and apparently I didn't realize I had missed checking for it.
by hg30 | 2025-12-02 04:23:53+00:00
Been a fan of Mark's channel for quite some time and always look for the restaurants he reviews when I'm traveling. Decided to make a website with a visualization that shows all the places he's eaten across his videos. Has direct links to the restaurant on Google Maps and the corresponding YouTube video for over 1,000 restaurants he has reviewed over the years. Hope you enjoy!
by Telaneo | 2025-12-02 04:24:31+00:00
On the one hand, PTM7950 is really good. On the other hand, a 50 degree temperature drop can't really be explained by anything other than something being terribly wrong to begin with. That thing might unfortunately be Dell, but I'd imagine if more than three brain cells were involved in temperature management design of that machine, it wouldn't have been quite as catastrophic.
by zerosizedweasle | 2025-12-02 04:24:50+00:00
• Nvidia Corporation may be nearing the peak of the Al cycle, with recent deals raising bubble cortcerns.

• NVDA's transactions and strategic investments, including with CoreWeave, Lambda, and OpenAl, could be masking slowing demand.

• Competition is intensifying as AMD, Alphabet, and Broadcom make major Al chip moves, while NVDA's valuation remains historically high amid a long-term growth slowdown.

• Given bubble risks, valuation concerns, and increased competition, there is significant downside potential for NVDA shares despite near-term growth.
by troad | 2025-12-02 04:25:45+00:00
This is relatable. I often find myself starting a reply on here, really thinking it through as I type it out, and then hitting delete on what I just wrote. Sometimes I even hit submit, and then delete a few moments later.

It's just hard to justify engaging. Worst case, I get a fight on my hands with someone who's as dogmatic as they are wrong, which is both frequent and also a complete waste of my time. (A tech readership is always going to veer hard into the well, akshually...) Most likely case, I get fictitious internet points. Which - I won't lie - tickle my lizard brain, just as they do everyone else's. But they don't actually achieve anything meaningful.

Best case is that I learn something. Realistically, this happens vanishingly infrequently, and the signal-noise ratio is much, much worse than if I just pulled a book off my shelf.

I suppose this is all an artifact of time and experience. Maybe I've just picked all the low-hanging fruit, and so I no longer have the patience to watch people endlessly repost the same xkcd strips from fifteen years ago, navel-gaze about tabs or spaces, share thrilling new facts that I have in fact known for many decades, etc. And while I'm very excited for them to discover all these things anew (and anew... and anew...), it's just not a good use of my time and patience to participate.
by johnnyanmac | 2025-12-02 04:25:51+00:00
As we see with tech, mass production isn't an instant advantage in this market. In fact, something bespoke has a higher chance to stand out here than most other industries.

And no, I don't think people are seeking demand for AI website slop the way they do for textiles. Standing out is a good way to get your product out there compared to being yet another bloated website that takes 10 seconds to load with autoplay video generic landing text.

I'd liken it to Persona 5 in the gaming market. No one is playing a game for its UI. But a bespoke UI will make the game all the more memorable, and someone taking the time for that probably pjt care into the rest of the game as well (which you see on its gameplay, music, characters, and overall presentation).
by sgc | 2025-12-02 04:25:58+00:00
1. I have kids and they don't know how to deal with them well. They are not at all aggressive, just a very slightly clumsy as kids tend to be - and the tech is unforgiving. They are human beings and the tech should work for them too.

2. I have a usb-c right here, and the weight of the cable is absolutely distorting the port. It will need to be replaced soon just based on its own self-damage. The cable is not even that heavy. I see all kinds of used devices advertised with the caveat - one usb-c not working. It is very common.
by ferguess_k | 2025-12-02 04:26:17+00:00
Yeah you are right. Just checked out Lenovo ThinkPad L16 Gen 1 with 32GB ram and it costs 1,143 CAD (it's a deal but the original cost is still < 2,000 CAD). I was thinking more about workstations back then, but I probably don't need one TBH. I guess my X1 Carbon experience kinda tarnished my view of Lenovo laptops.
by eigen | 2025-12-02 04:26:41+00:00
I'm sure you read the footnote that goes along with the spike in 2020 where the definition changed.

and looking at the numbers, I see declining increaes over previous 5 year periods

39.1% increase from 2010-06 (8628.1) to 2015-06 (12004.6)

30.8% increase from 2015-01 (11787.8) to 2020-01 (15416.3)

21.0% increase from 2020-06 (18140.6) to 2025-06 (21942.4).
by alextingle | 2025-12-02 04:27:32+00:00
Two reasons.

1. Dynamic memory allocation is error prone. Mixing it in with your control flow makes that hard to manage.

Many of the strategies for keeping track of dynamic memory add significantly to the complexity of the program... You need to consider object ownership, maybe introduce reference counting, even garbage collection, or "borrow checkers".

If you can avoid all of that by making good architectural choices up front then your code will be much simpler and robust.

2. Dynamic allocation is slow, especially in a multithreaded environment. It's doubly slow if you layer garbage checking or whatever on top of it.

Prefer fewer trips to the allocator, preferably none in your code's hot path.
by gcanyon | 2025-12-02 04:27:34+00:00
Not 100% related, but I remember when OS...8? came out with balloon help, and one of the guidelines for it was that it should provide specific messages for when a menu item or control is disabled, to explain why the feature was disabled. e.g. on the Copy menu, "Not available because nothing is selected"

Reporting an error is a good thing.
by socalgal2 | 2025-12-02 04:27:35+00:00
> The process to allow running applications that are unsigned is just a horrible hack. It feels like a last minute "shove it and move on!".

If you're talking about the process that just says "Foo.app is damaged and can’t be opened." and the only way around that is to manually remove the com.apple.quarantine extended attribute, that's arguably working as intended. Apple doesn't want users to run untrusted apps period. They want only apps approved by them.

As a dev and open source dev I don't like it. But, I can't totally be against it I think. It is safer for some users and experts can learn how to remove the attribute with `xattr -d com.apple.quarantine filename`
by stavarotti | 2025-12-02 04:27:43+00:00
I just want whoever is next in line to make Siri perform reliably and consistently. Not 70% of the time of even 90% of the time, 100% of the time for the limited uses cases that most (perhaps just me?) people use it for:

- Call "person"

- Call "business" (please don't say "I don't see so and so in your contacts" and on a second try, work)

- Find "place" (while driving) - Define "phrase or word" (please don't say I found this on the web)

- Set a timer or alarm

- Check the messages (in a sane way)

- Set reminders (this one surprisingly works well)

- Use intents correctly (I just want to be able to say "play 99% invisible in Overcast")

It doesn't need to do all the fancy things they show-cased last year. It just needs to do the basics really well and build from there.
by necovek | 2025-12-02 04:29:18+00:00
All the American cars (Ford, Chevrolet, GM...) are much cheaper in Europe than eg. German cars from their trifecta (and other Europe-made high end vehicles from eg Sweden, Italy or UK), and on par with mid-priced vehicles from the likes of Hyundai, Kia, Mazda...

Obviously, some US brands do not compete on price, but other than maybe Jeep and Tesla, those have a small market penetration.
by pwg | 2025-12-02 04:29:57+00:00
Register renaming allows the CPU to execute in parallel instructions it might otherwise need to serialize.

But it does nothing to help you, the programmer, when your algorithm really needs to have 9 registers worth of data in registers and your CPU only has 8 architectural registers available to you. At that point, you either spill manually, or you take the performance hit from keeping the ninth value in memory instead of a register.
by johnnyanmac | 2025-12-02 04:30:21+00:00
If you're telling a craftman to ignore their craft, then you're falling on deaf ears. I'm a programmer, not a businessman. If everyone took the advice of 'I don't need a good website' then many devs would be out of business.

Fact is there's just less businesses forming, so there's less demand for landing sites or anything else. I don't see this as a sign that 'good websites don't matter'
by chasing0entropy | 2025-12-02 04:30:34+00:00
Anyone remember when Nvidia obsoleted $800 video cards with 'twice as powerful, twice as efficient'on a yearly basis?

Remember when Microsoft made operating systems that fit on a single CD or better yet, 13 floppy disks? Remember when windows update didn't turn itself on, when new windows firewall rules weren't magically created, when outlook didn't tell people you were online?

Remember when Oracle made and supported database software that was actually better than it's competitors? It ran on your own hardware and did not cost a small country's GDP per license?

AI bagholders are getting a lesson retail gamers and small business sysadmins have been suffering for decades with tech bros toying with supply, using convoluted licensing, prioritizing manufacturing to artificially inflate hardware prices. Retail trader bros have a bit more weight behind their punch so this will be an interesting hardware cycle.
by energy123 | 2025-12-02 04:31:32+00:00
It's like AMD open-sourcing FSR or Meta open-sourcing Llama. It's good for us, but it's nothing more than a situational and temporary alignment of self-interest with the public good. When the tables turn (they become the best instead of 4th best, or AMD develops the best upscaler, etc), the decision that aligns with self-interest will change, and people will start complaining that they've lost their moral compass.
by jmyeet | 2025-12-02 04:32:04+00:00
Um, I don't know what information you're getting but this is easily Googleable eg [1]:

> The tax basis of property acquired by a beneficiary from someone who dies is ordinarily the property's fair market value at the date of the decedent's death.

[1]: https://www.fidelity.com/learning-center/personal-finance/wh...
by johnnyanmac | 2025-12-02 04:33:14+00:00
>it might be your rating scale that is broken.

Or it could mean that most websites are trash.

>it’s been obsessively optimized by armies of people for years to be exactly what converts well and works well for their customers.

Yeah, sorry. I will praise plenty of Amazon's scale, but not their deception, psychological manipulation, and engagement traps. That goes squarely in "trash website".

I put up with a lot, but the price jumpsa was finally the trigger i needed to cancel prime this year. I don't miss it.
by shuoga | 2025-12-02 04:34:29+00:00
The "TPP11," which includes a provision to extend the term of protection to 70 years, will enter into force on December 30, 2018.

In Japan, the term of copyright protection will, in principle, be 70 years after the death of the author (or 70 years after publication for works published anonymously, under a pseudonym, or in the name of a corporate body).

Copyrights that have already expired at the time of enforcement will not be revived (principle of non-retroactivity of protection).

Consequently, no works will newly enter the public domain for the next 20 years.

From Japan Library Association: https://www.jla.or.jp/hogokikan-encho/#:~:text=%E4%BF%9D%E8%...
by ActorNightly | 2025-12-02 04:35:15+00:00
Lol its kinda suprising that the level of understanding around LLMs is so little.

You already have agents, that can do a lot of "thinking", which is just generating guided context, then using that context to do tasks.

You already have Vector Databases that are used as context stores with information retrieval.

Fundamentally, you can have the same exact performance on a lot of task whether all the information exists in the model, or you use a smaller model with a bunch of context around it for guidance.

So instead of wasting energy and time encoding the knowledge information into the model, making the size large, you could have an "agent-first" model along with just files of vector databases, and the model can fit in a single graphics cards, take the question, decide which vector db it wants to load, and then essentially answer the question in the same way. At $50 per TB from SSD not only do you gain massive cost efficiency, but you also gain the ability to run a lot more inference cheaper, which can be used for refining things, background processing, and so on.
by alsetmusic | 2025-12-02 04:36:21+00:00
My previous employer ran an experiment. They had us come in two days per week for six weeks and ran the numbers. We ended up going 100% wfh with a downsized office. We been planning to double our office capacity before the pan.

I’m convinced that more than half of orgs would see similar numbers if they cared to look. I bet a bunch of the ones mandating RTO see them but do it anyway.
by ThatPlayer | 2025-12-02 04:36:26+00:00
USB-C ports have so many features that require extra connections, which makes them costly. And then adding extra ports without those features gets confusing to the end user if it can't properly communicated.

Imagine having 4 USB-C ports, but 2 of them are USB 2.0 only. Like that but more complicated because it's a feature on a separate controller. Video out, which requires additional connections to the GPU. Power input, done through a USB-PD controller. PCI-E tunneling, taking up PCI-E lanes from the CPU.

Even looking at the Framework Laptop: https://frame.work/laptop16?tab=specs , only the Nvidia GPU USB-C port supports charging while the AMD one doesn't. Look at the section on the "6x user-selectable Expansion Cards" where they list the capabilities of the individual ports. I think different specs for those USB-C ports are less egregious because the idea is to install an expansion card, but giving 6 different USB-C ports like that to a regular user sounds like a bad idea.
by cdrini | 2025-12-02 04:36:34+00:00
Perhaps; but I would argue talking to many AI evangelists is a form of selection bias. Which makes the false dichotomy conclusion reasonable given the inputs, but still inaccurate given reality.

True, it's a form of false dichotomy, but I think this specific instance is particularly interesting in that it allows the holder to dehumanise their opponent to an extent, and justify lack of discussion. It's also an incredibly common conclusion in politics after people gain a somewhat superficial understanding of both sides. I wonder if it might play a key role in social polarization.

For me the strongest arguments are the ones that can argue the opponent's side as effectively as the opponent, and then show why it's weak. And that feels entirely incompatible with a dumb-or-evil argument.
by gorgoiler | 2025-12-02 04:36:48+00:00
It seems a silly thing to love but a hot-hatchback 2+2 is such a great format for the dual purposes of:

(a) zipping around in a lightweight coupe; yet

(b) being able to load a lawnmower / week’s groceries / cat baskets / a fully equipped camp setup in the back as well.

This photo in the article shows it well:

https://hips.hearstapps.com/hmg-prod/images/1981-datsun-280-...

I do enough trips to the dump with my TT mk3 to refer to it as a 250bhp flying dumpster. It’s like a baby El Camino with a lid :)

For comparison, here’s the TT’s trunk:

https://images.cdn.autocar.co.uk/sites/autocar.co.uk/files/a...
by somenameforme | 2025-12-02 04:37:18+00:00
The path to his discovery may have been difficult to replicate, but the fact that the mold could kill other bacteria was not, and was immediately replicated.

It just wasn't seen as relevant because, at the time, few people imagined its internal use in humans and it was instead seen more as a tool for other microbiologists and the like. The jump to "And then I see the disinfectant, where it knocks it out in a minute. One minute. And is there a way we can do something like that, by injection inside or almost a cleaning?" took quite some time.
by hekkle | 2025-12-02 04:37:54+00:00
> Sotomayor said [to] Cox. "You didn’t try to work with universities... You could have worked with a multi-family dwelling... You did nothing".

Like YEAH, of course, they were not obligated to do anything under the DMCA, they were not hosting the material in question. Also, just because Sony sends you a letter alleging someone who is using your service is doing something 'illegal', doesn't mean they are. Why should Cox bear the burden of an investigation when there is no legal requirement to do so?

I wonder if this precedent is set, will that mean they are required to shut off Open AI's internet, when I put in a DMCA complaint that they pirated my IP?... Nah, American Law only applies to the poor.
by slater | 2025-12-02 04:38:12+00:00
yerrrp... from the article:

"A bail document seen by The Telegraph refers to an allegation of possessing a firearm with intent to cause fear of violence and a further allegation of stalking related to a photograph of a house that appeared on his social media."

just variant #9812981837 of the "which opinions, MFer??" goose meme merry-go-round
by dilap | 2025-12-02 04:38:43+00:00
It's basically a "when to rip the band-aid off" type of situation.

Briefly poked around w/ linux again for the first time in years (Omarchy, DHH's tune of Arch + hyprland), and hoo boy, it's come a long way! Nothing like the KDE/Gnome+X jankery of the olden times. Very polished, very slick, very nice.
by AngryData | 2025-12-02 04:39:36+00:00
I dunno where you live but in my part of the country getting into union work is the best way to prosper and succeed as just an average person. Maybe that isn't true for tech work at the moment, but union carpenters, plumbers, HVAC, pipe fitters, arborists, linemen, auto and factory workers, all make significantly more doing union work with better and safer work conditions.