MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by avidiax | 2025-12-06 22:16:48+00:00
My understanding is that you shouldn't be using HW accelerated encoding for any archival purpose except realtime capture.

The PSNR/bitrate is much lower for HW encode, but the encode rate is typically realtime or better. That's a great tradeoff if you are transcoding so that a device with limited bandwidth can receive the video while streaming, or so that you can encode a raw livestream from a video capture or camera. It's not so great if you are saving to disk and planning to watch multiple times.
Show HN: Mocksy – a lightweight macOS app to mock API endpoints locally
by zawo | 2025-12-06 22:16:50+00:00
I’m a solo macOS developer and I built Mocksy, a small native app for quickly mocking API endpoints on your Mac. I made it because I often needed simple mock responses while building macOS and iOS apps, but existing tools felt too heavy, required config files, or didn’t integrate smoothly into a local Apple-dev workflow.

Mocksy lets you spin up local HTTP endpoints in seconds, return custom JSON responses without running a backend, test UI states offline, and prototype features without dealing with servers. The goal is to keep it minimal, fast, and unobtrusive.
by rootusrootus | 2025-12-06 22:17:04+00:00
Unless something has changed recently, the letters of recommendation are pretty much a formality. If you have a bachelor's in CS with decent grades, getting admitted isn't difficult. I was pretty flippant about the whole thing, applied one afternoon on a whim after reading about it on HN. Asked my manager for a letter of recommendation as well as my nearest colleague. No letters from anyone in academia.

I think the people who have the most difficulty getting accepted are those without a bachelor's in CS who also don't have some good CS fundamentals courses to show achievement and interest.

I did complete the program, and I am happy for the accomplishment. But with my experience (I started working in the mid 90s) this wasn't for my career, it was for my own satisfaction. But in addition to being glad for the achievement, I was soooo glad to be done, LOL. The real commitment is not financial, it is time.
by swaits | 2025-12-06 22:17:42+00:00
Pragmatic is using the best tool for the job. Certainly subjectively, and arguably objectively, jj is the better tool in many ways.

My advice is to try it. You should like it, if you're in the majority of folks to give it a sincere shot. If you don't like it, cool. But then my advice changes. jj is probably the future. Adapt or become one of those old-timers who froze their learning in time.
WebCraft: A C++ 23 async based networking library (which does not use Boost)
by raoa32 | 2025-12-06 22:17:47+00:00
I've created a networking library in C++ which works on Linux, Windows, & MacOS and made the core of it based on C++ coroutines and native asyncio from each of these platforms. Check it out: https://github.com/adityarao2005/WebCraft. Unfortunately, the only examples of it in use are in the test cases but I plan on adding examples soon.
by Nevermark | 2025-12-06 22:17:50+00:00
The corresponding 10x biologists might appear when a simple "programmable" friendly cell platform for bio invention is created.

Think of reducing an existing cell to its minimalist possible survivable form. Then painstakingly recomplicating it. By refactoring and augmenting the DNA, proteins, epigenetics, behavior, and structure, into a modular, regular as possible, optimized to be extensible, form.

A bio OS kernel.

Then go to town. Imagine cells that can self-CRISPR. Cells that can spin off differentiated cells, then trigger their death, for temporary purposes. Communication standards between cells. Standards for cells to group and ungroup.

As apposed to today. Where anything amibitous is like trying to replace a plane's liquid fuel engine with a nuclear reactor assembled from parts taken from passengers, mid-flight, in low visibility and turbulence, with the help of too many first class martinis.

Evolution is the OG of low-effort expediency-first technical debt factories. "That random edit didn't destroy one model, in one test case, in one context? Replicate it!"

Now we must clean up that wet mess, so we can 10x.
by jiggawatts | 2025-12-06 22:18:17+00:00
All resources are "scarce" at very low price points, below which most nations are unable or unwilling to extract them.

Lithium, rare earth metals, and a bunch of others are only "scarce" because right now China is the only country willing to put up with the pollution levels that the cheap, dirty version of their extraction produces.

Everything can be produced cleanly, safely, etc... but that comes at a price.

It's like when employers complain that "nobody wants to work". That needs to be translated to "nobody wants to work for the low wages I'm willing to pay".
by johnnyanmac | 2025-12-06 22:18:22+00:00
Less and less people have the option to male "art" and need to make "content" to simply survive. Art has historically been reserved for the elite privileged and it seems the world is heading back towards old norms as wealth consolidates.

In a similar breath, that may be why we don't heat much of the next generation of Stallman's and instead hear of a looming crisis in FOSS as the old guard retires. Less devs (if they are even pursuing that path down the line) will have the free time to choose FOSS as a path, unless big tech is paying for it to bend ot to their will.
by reactordev | 2025-12-06 22:18:47+00:00
I’ve been having fun sending Claude down the old school MUD route, giving it access to a SMAUG derivative and once it’s mastered the play, give it admin powers to create new play experiences.

I stayed away from decompilation and reverse engineering, for legal reasons.

Claude is amazing. It can sometimes get stuck in a reason loop but will break away, reassess, and continue on until it finds its way.

Claude was murdered in a dark instance dungeon when it managed to defeat the dragon but ran out of lamp oil and torches to find its way out. Because of the light system it kept getting “You can’t seem to see anything in the darkness” and randomly walked into a skeleton lair.

Super fun to watch from an observer. Super terrifying that this will replace us at the office.
Show HN: Quantum4J–deterministic quantum SDK with OpenQASM and JVM integration
by vijayanandg | 2025-12-06 22:18:55+00:00
Hi HN,

I have been working on an open source quantum computing SDK for the JVM called Quantum4J. I just launched the official site and wanted to share it here for feedback:

Website: https://quantum4j.com GitHub: https://github.com/quantum4j/quantum4j

What it is: A minimal quantum SDK written in Java Deterministic statevector simulator Strict OpenQASM 2.0 importer/exporter Pluggable backend design (example: IonQ REST API) JVM-first design so Java developers can build quantum workflows using familiar tooling

Why I built it Most quantum libraries are Python-centric and research-oriented; I wanted something that fits normal software engineering practices (builds, tests, CI/CD, Spring, etc).

Features Deterministic simulation (useful for testing + CI) QASM-based circuit interchange Clear, minimal API Real hardware backend example (IonQ) Examples included (Teleportation, Bell state, Grover, etc.)

Docs Full Javadoc published under /javadoc Examples included in the repo

Open to feedback

This started as a side project but it’s now getting more structure (examples, docs, hardware connector). I would love feedback from anyone doing quantum software, JVM work, hardware integration, or QASM tooling.

Thanks! Happy to answer questions.
by tengwar2 | 2025-12-06 22:20:08+00:00
BMW bikes have improved. It used to be with the last of the dry clutch flat twins that when the clutch failed (and it would fail), you had to remove the back half of the bike. Literally. As in not figuratively, to avoid doubt. The front half would be left standing, like some bisected cow artwork. Apparently it was a two day job.
by dginev | 2025-12-06 22:20:56+00:00
ar5iv tracks the arXiv collection with a one month lag. Exactly as to signal that this is not the "official" arXiv rendering. It is also a showcase predating the arXiv /html/ route, but largely using the same technology. Nowadays maintained by the same people (hi!)

There used to be another showcase, called arxiv-vanity. They captured what happened pretty well with their farewell post on their homepage:

https://www.arxiv-vanity.com/
by chasing0entropy | 2025-12-06 22:22:14+00:00
Fascinating - telemetry measurements are linear over time if you correct for the server editions.

Default deny all firewall would be my advice for any competent user of a smartphone or pc; but laziness and malfunctioning or inoperable software functions dissuade most users from using the most obvious of solutions to the majority of malware, ads, and privacy.
by bossyTeacher | 2025-12-06 22:23:34+00:00
Apps make or break operating systems and app stores. Just ask Microsoft (Windows Phone) or Huawei (HarmonyOs). IIRC amazon was paying devs to publish to their app store or something like that.

Thankfully, some apps have both web and native mobile versions but for a modern digital life, the critical apps are sadly not on both versions.
by tolerance | 2025-12-06 22:24:07+00:00
> Like the wealthier populations getting neat little explanations/excuses whenever convenient. Theres the scholastic benefit of ADHD diagnosis and anxiety diagnosis, which can help a lot in school/academia and to everyone else who cant afford it they get the cheaper label: "being bad at school" or "dumb". And still requires even more effort.

What I find interesting is that now we’re beginning to see more of the “un-wealthy” (i.e., not quite middle class, not quite rich; just covered by health insurance) achieve these diagnoses. Whether or not a child in a single-parent household is diagnosed with “oppositional defiant disorder” likely becomes a question of where that single parent works. While their peers with similar traits are pushed into a classroom in the basement.

> What is normal for the poor to carry is a diagnoses and special treatment for those who can afford it.

With this I’ll defer to our colleague in this thread, jt2190, with two modifications of my own:

> We all have degrees of “diagnosable” traits, it’s only when those traits become problematic [to our position in society] do we [become compelled] to seek help.
by ojosilva | 2025-12-06 22:24:25+00:00
Yes there was a reason as Perl took inspiration from Lisp - everything is a list- and everyone knows how quick C's variadic arguments get nasty.

So @_ was a response to that issue, given Perl was about being dynamic and not typed and there were no IDEs or linters that would type-check and refactor code based on function signatures.

JS had the same issue forever and finally implemented a rest/spread operator in ES6. Python had variadic from the start but no rest operator until Python3. Perl had spread/rest for vargs in the late 80s already. For familiarity, Perl chose the @ operator that meant vargs in bourne shell in the 70s.
Show HN: ElfReview – Face detection meets corporate satire for Christmas
by shoarek | 2025-12-06 22:25:18+00:00
I built a satirical "North Pole HR department" that generates bureaucratic performance reviews based on facial expressions.

How it works:

- Upload a photo: the app detects expression locally in browser

- Expression (happy/sad/neutral) determines "naughty or nice" baseline

- Generates a mock HR report with randomized corporate satire (job titles, misconduct logs, gift eligibility scores)

Open to feedback
by CamperBob2 | 2025-12-06 22:25:30+00:00
It will generate anything. Xi/Pooh porn, Taylor Swift getting squashed by a tank at Tiananmen Square, whatever, no censorship at all.

With simplistic prompts, you quickly conclude that the small model size is the only limitation. Once you realize how good it is with detailed prompts, though, you find that you can get a lot more diversity out of it than you initially thought you could.

Absolute game-changer of a model IMO. It is competitive with Nano Banana Pro in some respects, and that's saying something.
by zozbot234 | 2025-12-06 22:26:02+00:00
Booting into a mainline Linux kernel on your average junk-level SBC with all the hardware working (without simply sticking to an Android-like downstream/proprietary BSP) is quite hard, and that's what you need in order to make a phone usable as a daily driver. That's really the root issue; mobile phones are built as embedded devices, with no consideration for running a generic OS kernel. This isn't even an Android issue, OpenMoko was the same deal. If anything, Android was the first mobile platform to even loosely approach any kind of PC-like openness.
by jmward01 | 2025-12-06 22:26:54+00:00
I did some fast back of the napkin math on the idea of sahara solar + electrified shipping + sodium ion batteries. A lot depends on the, as yet, fully disclosed pricing of sodium ion batteries but the trend in pricing, and capacity, is clear and the price point may have already happened to make this viable. One thing is clear though, even if my napkin math was massively optimistic and it isn't economically feasible now it will be shortly and at that point energy production around the world is potentially disrupted. Ships can pull in and feed the grid directly or offload containers and onload empty ones to make the trip back for cheap, clean, renewable power. It is looking more and more viable to ship electrons like we do for oil and that is a major game-changer.
by rootusrootus | 2025-12-06 22:27:02+00:00
I did it with two kids (both were in school at that point, which helps). It -is- a lot of work. I spent maybe an hour a day during most days of the week, and then for some things I'd try to get a few more hours early or late in the day on the weekend. And for the most part I only did one class per semester. I did two for one semester because they were both expected to be fairly easy, and that worked out, but I definitely wouldn't do that with GA or any of the ML stuff.

It's doable, that's all I'm saying. But you will definitely need to be committed to see it through to the end, and you will be happy to have your life back when you're done.
by nickm12 | 2025-12-06 22:27:05+00:00
Two random anecdotes: when the concept drawing were first shown to the graduate students, someone asked what the swooping walkways above the main corridor were for. The answer they gave was "lightsaber battles".

When we first moved in, there was a seminar room that made some people physically nauseous due to its sloping walls. For a time, they were trying to use masking tape on the walls to make the effect less pronounced. Some of the grad students tried to name it the "vomitorium", but the name never stuck. Fortunately,, once the room had a full compliment of chairs, furniture, and a projector screen the effect seemed to be much less pronounced.
by dqg82 | 2025-12-06 22:27:19+00:00
OMSCS student here. You are absolutely right that the DB course is one of the weaker offerings. There is a newer Database System Implementation course, which is based on Andy Pavlo's excellent undergrad course (which is also available online), but only the first half or so of that course is covered, which is disappointing for a graduate course. In terms of the larger program, however, the two database courses are outliers and most courses are of much higher quality and definitely not undergrad level.
by roenxi | 2025-12-06 22:27:29+00:00
With what surplus resources? Europe seems to be suffering from some pretty catastrophic looking political blowback with groups like Reform, AfD and a host of similar-looking parties gaining popularity because people don't think their interests are being prioritised. The US has a Trumpism phenomenon that might be matched by a left-wing revolt (crazy policies waiting in the wings Mamdani prioritising New York over Israel. The gall of the man).

On paper the US is broke. I'm not sure about the Europe situation but I doubt they're doing well either the growth statistics I saw last were a joke. They're all struggling to even arm Ukraine for this war.

If I were a Ukrainian strategist I too would not count on some sort of vast infusion of resources appearing after the war. These are not the conditions of the Marshall Plan where Europe had massive economic potential and the US was the world's leading industrial superpower with wealth to spare.
by bitwize | 2025-12-06 22:28:12+00:00
They come built in with a set of heuristics that help them interact with other NT minds very well with very little cognitive effort, so why spend it if you don't need to? There's a certain perverse genius to it which you'd see if you spend any time around profoundly NT people: for example those who fit the "theatre kid" archetype, or even skilled marketers. They can shape the trajectory of an interpersonal relationship in real time as easily as we breathe.

Expending large amounts of cognitive effort to better understand and deal with others can be exhausting. We do it because we have to just to survive. The benefit is we have a lot of uncommitted neural capacity potentially freed up for other things, like experimenting with computers. But it's a stiff price to pay, and in the EEA it's advantageous to be able to participate in a cohesive group without thinking much about it. Our brains are our most energy-hungry organs, and sustenance could get scarce...
by hiAndrewQuinn | 2025-12-06 22:28:25+00:00
Tiny Core Linux has a version for Raspberry Pis called piCore [0] that I wish more people would look at, because it loads itself entirely into RAM and does not touch the SD card at all after that until and unless you explicitly tell it to.

Phenomenal for those low powered servers you just want to leave on and running some tiny batch of cronjobs [1] or something for months or years at a time without worrying too much about wear on the SD card itself rendering the whole installation moot.

This is actually how I have powered the backend data collection and processing for [2], as I wrote about in [3]. The end result is a static site built in Hugo but I was careful to pick parts I could safely leave to wheedle on their own for a long time.

[1]: https://til.andrew-quinn.me/posts/consider-the-cronslave/

[2]: https://hiandrewquinn.github.io/selkouutiset-archive/

[3]: https://til.andrew-quinn.me/posts/lessons-learned-from-2-yea...
by andrei_says_ | 2025-12-06 22:29:37+00:00
One way to think of LLM output is that it is all hallucination. Sometimes it happens to coincide with reality.

To an LLM it’s all the same as there’s no relationship to reality, just to likelihood to reality.

It’s the difference between “this is something that Peter might say” and “this is something that Peter said”. To LLMs there’s no distinction.
by firesteelrain | 2025-12-06 22:29:51+00:00
You can use this site https://distro.ibiblio.org/tinycorelinux/downloads.html

And all the files are here https://distro.ibiblio.org/tinycorelinux/16.x/x86/release/

I posted that above in this thread.

I will add that most places, forums, sites don’t deliver the hash OOB. Unless you mean like GPG but that would have came from same site. For example if you download a Packer plugin from GitHub, files and hash all comes from same site.
by pron | 2025-12-06 22:30:39+00:00
The only lists it's topped are for likeability by users, where it was followed by Elixir and Clojure. If we go by the meaning of popularity that suggests how many people use these languages, let alone professionally, their ratings are quite low (e.g. https://www.devjobsscanner.com/blog/top-8-most-demanded-prog...). Considering how old Rust is, the numbers are significantly lower than of any language that's become truly popular (as in widespread). An old language used by so few people can be many things, but "popular" isn't one of them.
by roenxi | 2025-12-06 22:30:44+00:00
Literally yes, because they haven't started an actual war. If the US manages the same in Venezuela then they'll be doing a good job there too.

The difference between China and the US is China (humorously, probably because of US pressure) keeps re-investing their economic surplus and the US keeps blowing big chunks of it on meaningless wars. That seems to be the big factor of why China had this huge industrial economy appear out of nowhere and the US has been sort of lurching along for the last 20 years.

Hard to believe it, but trillions in investment is better for people's wallets than trillion dollars in making life horrible for goat herders in the middle east.
by throwaway-11-1 | 2025-12-06 22:31:19+00:00
I keep hearing this from people who love charts but in the US I see the rate of homelessness rapidly increasing, more people ending up in medical debt, and groups of poorly trained militarized thugs storming neighborhoods to disappear people without trial. So yeah, Bezos and Zuckerberg are putting up great numbers but it's kind of crazy to paint prosperity and peace with such a large brush. It my travels it seems that a lot of less wealthy nations have a better quality of life despite the numbers
by andrewl-hn | 2025-12-06 22:32:19+00:00
Other parts were legendary, too.

* They came with a mail and chat (IRC) clients, a download manager, a set of browser dev tools, and in the age of limited internet traffic all of that was smaller than a single download of Firefox.

* Their dev tools were the first that allowed remote debugging. You could run Opera on your phone (Symbian, Windows Mobile, early Android) and debug your website from a computer.

* They were the first browser to sync your bookmarks, settings, history, extensions across devices.

* They were the first to add process isolation, albeit initially on Linux only. If an extension crashed your page it didn't take the whole browser down with it. This was later added first by Microsoft in IE8 and then by Google in Chrome.

Their browser was a brilliant piece of tech and a brilliant product. Too bad that the product couldn't survive under pressure.
by librasteve | 2025-12-06 22:32:53+00:00
> Perl has always “flowed” for me and made mostly intuitive sense. Every other language I’ve had to hack on to get something done is a struggle for me to fit into some rigid-feeling mental box

That is just how I felt about Perl (4 years full time dev in the 2000s) and how I now feel about https://raku.org (aka Perl6). Anyway, I tried to gather some fellow feelings here about 18 months ago:

https://rakujourney.wordpress.com/2024/05/22/perl-love-notes...

It is sad that Perl became so despised after the error of preannouncing a non-compatible upgrade. I understand that people couldn't wait. But Raku is here now and it is worth a second look imo.
by rootusrootus | 2025-12-06 22:32:58+00:00
I think it is generally pretty effective for most people. Science says it is roughly comparable to hycosine.

For me, I find that one Dramamine I (dimenhydrinate) pill is very effective at preventing motion sickness, but it will put me to sleep quite reliably a couple hours later. Two pills and I can play Unreal Tournament 2004 until I'm too tired to sit up. I'd be quite concerned though with 3 or 4 pills about hallucinations -- and from my understanding, the hallucinations you get on dimenhydrinate are not good.

Dramamine II (aka Less Drowsy), which is meclizine, is a little less effective but usually adequate, but still reliably makes me really sleepy the rest of the day.

Kwells (hycosine) is the least effective overall for me, but I can take a little more if I need to, and it does not make me drowsy at all. I would take original dramamine every time based on effectiveness if not for the drowsy part.