MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by tialaramex | 2025-12-30 13:42:46+00:00
Yes, that's an important consideration for languages like Rust or C++ which don't endorse mandatory defaults. It may even literally be impossible to "initialize with meaningless data" in these languages if the type doesn't have such "meaningless" values.

In languages like Go or Odin where "zero is default" for every type and you can't even opt out, this same problem (which I'd say is a bigger but less instantly fatal version of the Billion Dollar Mistake) occurs everywhere, at every API edge, and even in documentation, you just have to suck it up.

Which reminds of in a sense another option - you can have the syntactic behaviour but write it as though you don't initialize at all even though you do, which is the behaviour C++ silently has for user defined types. If we define a Goose type (in C++ a "class"), which we stubbornly don't provide any way for our users to make themselves (e.g. we make the constructors private, or we explicitly delete the constructors), and then a user writes "Goose foo;" in their C++ program it won't compile because the compiler isn't allowed to leave this foo variable uninitialized - but it also can't just construct it, so, too bad, this isn't a valid C++ program.
by sbarre | 2025-12-30 13:43:08+00:00
It's telling that VFX subcontractors are putting out their own BTS content on YouTube now as promotional material, since the primary production companies for shows and films (with a few exceptions) have completely stopped doing this.

I miss director commentary, I loved re-watching movies with that audio track.

Is there just too much content now? Or has streaming become such a "content mill" that the creators aren't inspired enough about their own work to sit down and talk about it after it's complete?
How to send data from a Python server to C++ program
by ThEoDorr | 2025-12-30 13:43:18+00:00
I asked at other places but got no comments

I try to make a C++ program that receives data to process and store from a python server that receives it's data from the browser via Websocket

But C++ has no Websocket as far I aware so I think about setting a separate and parallel python socket server and C++ client just to allow communication

Now for python you always asyncio/threading for this type of thing
Is the same case for C++?

Or should I use shared memory instead?
I am kind of lost, Inter-Process Communication is a bit confusing

Also I need the C++ to run continuously, so calling it with the python program is not possible
by g947o | 2025-12-30 13:43:53+00:00
While you are at it, might as well do this for C++ or assembly. You hate scripting so much and would rather go to great lengths to use a complied language and throw away all the benefits of a scripting language and scripting itself, just because you don't like the language, not because of technical merit. Congratulations, you just wasted yourself many hours of precious time.

> The price of convenience is difficulties to scale

Of course, they never scale. The moment you start thinking about scaling, you should stop writing code as throwaway scripts but build them properly. That's not an argument to completely get rid of Python or bash. The cost of converting Python code to Go is near zero these days if there is a need to do so. Enough has been said about premature optimization.

> Anyone who's ever tried to get python working on different systems knows what a steep annoying curve it is.

If you need 10 libraries of certain versions to run a few lines of Python code, nobody calls that a script anymore. It becomes a proper project that requires proper package management, just like Go.
by nevercat | 2025-12-30 13:43:56+00:00
The self driving car analogy is a good one, because what happens when you trust the car enough to do most of your driving but it suddenly thrusts the controls upon you when it shits the bed and can't figure out what to do?
You suddenly realise you've become a very rusty driver in a moment that requires fast recall of skill, but your car is already careening off a cliff while you have this realisation.

[The "children of the magenta line"](https://www.computer.org/csdl/magazine/sp/2015/05/msp2015050...) is a god explanation of this, and is partly why I often dissuade junior devs from pretty user friendly using tools that abstract away the logic beneath them.
by codelikeawolf | 2025-12-30 13:44:15+00:00
It's called motion interpolation, but a lot of TVs call it "motion smoothing". It artificially increases the frame rate. I don't really know how to describe it, but I find it a little disconcerting and I immediately turn that feature off when I buy a new TV. It almost makes the motion look more "real life" in a bad way.
by qwytw | 2025-12-30 13:44:22+00:00
> The natural equilibrium would get reached

Except somehow they managed to get it right from the beginning and there was never any real market pressure to change it. Had Valve (or Apple of that matter) decided to charge e.g. 20% due to whatever reasons or conditions that existed in 2007 (but might not anymore) that would still somehow be the "natural equilibrium" even today in the exactly the same way.

The fee is also very sticky, platforms can't really increase without a massive amount if backlash, therefore reducing it becomes much riskier since they can never go back. Given a competitive market doesn't really exist a variable fee based on "market conditions" can't really be a thing either.

It's very hard for someone to undercut Valve just because of the scale. They might sill be very profitable if they charged 15-20% while other smaller stores might not be able to afford that. Same mechanics have always applied to most other monopolies or oligopolies in other industries.
by wincy | 2025-12-30 13:44:51+00:00
We’ve started watching Pluribus on Apple TV and it seems like when they’re making the show Apple contractually obligates them to make a podcast about each episode. Some of them are very interesting (like costume design) and some are less so.

It was funny how the sound engineers remoted in for the podcast and had extremely low quality mics, despite it being a show with fantastic sound (really it’s an excellent show in general, just really good).
by whstl | 2025-12-30 13:45:21+00:00
> Can you provide concrete examples of the things that you think are foundational in software?

Are you really expecting an answer here? I'll answer anyway.

• Making wrong states unrepresentable either via type systems or via code itself, using invariants, pre/post-conditions, etc. This applies to pretty much every tool or every language you can use.

• Error handling is a topic that goes beyond tools and languages, and even beyond whether you use try/catch, algebraic objects or values. It seeps into logging and observability too.

• Reasoning about time/space and tradeoffs of algorithms and structures, knowing what can and can't be computed, parsed, or recognized at all. Knowing why some problems don’t scale and others do.

• Good modeling of change, including ordering: immutability vs mutation, idempotency, retry logic, concurrency. How to make implicit timing explicit. Knowing which choices are cheap to undo and which are expensive, and design for those.

• Clear ownership of responsibilities and data between parts of the system via design of APIs, interfaces and contracts. This applies to OOP, FP, micro-services, modules and classes, and even to how one deals with third party-services beyond the basic.

• Computer basics (some of which goes back to 60s/70s or even back): processes, threads, green memory, scheduling, cache, instructions, memory hierarchy, threads, but races, deadlock, and ordering.

• Information theory (a lot goes to Claude Shannon, and back): compression, entropy, noise. And logic, sets, relations, proofs.

I never said there is a "simple rule" only foundational topics, but I'll say again: The biggest curse of software is people saying "no" to education and knowledge.
by Steuard | 2025-12-30 13:45:40+00:00
How old are you? Because I promise you, that description was pretty much spot-on for most shows through most of the history of TV prior to the late 1990s. My memory is that the main exception was daytime soap operas, which did expect viewers to watch pretty much daily. (I recall a conversation explaining Babylon 5's ongoing plot arc to my parents, and one of them said, "You mean, sort of like a soap opera?") Those "Previously on ___" intro segments were quite rare (and usually a sign that you were in the middle of some Very Special 2-part story, as described in the previous comment).

Go back and watch any two episodes (maybe not the season finale) from the same season of Star Trek TOS or TNG, or Cheers, or MASH, or Friends, or any other prime time show at all prior to 1990. You won't be able to tell which came first, certainly not in any obvious way. (Networks didn't really even have the concept of specific episode orders in that era. Again looking back to Babylon 5 which was a pioneer in the "ongoing plot arc" space, the network deliberately shuffled around the order of a number of first-season episodes because they wanted to put stronger stories earlier to hook viewers, even though doing so left some character development a bit nonsensical. You can find websites today where fans debate whether it's best to watch the show in release order or production order or something else.)

By and large, we all just understood that "nothing ever happens" with long-term impact on a show, except maybe from season to season. (I think I even remember the standard "end of episode reset" being referenced in a comedy show as a breaking-the-fourth-wall joke.) Yes, you'd get character development in a particular episode, but it was more about the audience understanding the character better than about immediate, noticeable changes to their life and behavior. At best, the character beats from one season would add up to a meaningful change in the next season. At least that's my memory of how it tended to go. Maybe there were exceptions! But this really was the norm.
by the_af | 2025-12-30 13:45:56+00:00
> Are you confusing GenX with Baby Boomers?

Maybe it was Baby Boomers, indeed.

> Most? Maybe, I've never met one that hasn't though

I'm sure you acknowledge you're not an expert on general Chinese experience. You were an expat, surely while your first-hand experience was valuable it was also heavily limited to what a Westerner in China would see and be told?

> Something that was true pre-1995 hardly says anything about China today.

"Hardly says anything" is a bonkers statement. The recent past of any country definitely says something about its present. We agree China 30 years ago was different from China today, but what does it have to do with anything?

Do you disagree there's a strong anti-China bias on HN? (Whether justified or not).

> Again, you are just projecting some sort of insecurity with this statement.

Insecurity? I think it's an accurate assessment of groupthink about China here. I may have misinterpreted what you were trying to say though, in which case I apologize.
by Fiveplus | 2025-12-30 13:46:08+00:00
This could be a huge deal for anyone working on video codecs or display tech. Finding legally clear, high-quality, uncompressed (or mezzanine) 4K HDR footage to test encoders against is surprisingly difficult. Most test footage you find online has already been stomped on by YouTube or Meta compression.

Having the raw EXR sequences and the IMF packages for Sol Levante and Meridian means researchers can finally benchmark AV1 vs HEVC vs VVC using source material that actually has the dynamic range to show the differences. The fact that they included the Dolby vision metadata is the cherry on top.
Show HN: Productivity app that blocks you at 10:1 work-to-rest ratio
by kenshozone | 2025-12-30 13:46:29+00:00
I keep burning out and quitting projects. Built this to stop myself.

Hard rules:
- Work 100 minutes - owe 10 minutes rest (enforced via meditation/breaks)
- Complete 5 tasks - owe 1 reflection
- Hit 10:1 ratio - focus timer locks until you rest
- No overrides, no "just one more"

Terminal UI, monospace everything, ASCII progress bars. Black screen, functional colors only.

Live at: app.kensho.zone

Built it because every other productivity app let me work myself into the ground. This one physically stops me.

Feedback welcome, especially from people who've quit projects from burnout.
by mrweasel | 2025-12-30 13:46:38+00:00
> AI should equal the playing field and promote businesses based on merit and capacity not how much they can spend.

Wasn't that pretty much also the promise of Google as a search engine originally? For the longest time Google actively fought SEO, while running a minimal set of ads, then they bought DoubleClick and everything went to to shit.

AI should equal the playing field, but it won't. The current generation have our bias built in and it's not in a good place financially. It's only a matter of time because it becomes infested with ads. You think OpenAI aren't going to promote shitty products or companies, because the algorithm says they shouldn't? No, they might charge that customer more, but they aren't saying no.

This is a multi facet problem. There's a generation of advertisers who believe that advertising is clicking around in the AdWords interface, maybe sprinkle in a little ad spend on Meta and boom, you're done. The reality is that they can't advertising anything, they don't have the skills required to sell a product.

If they can't rely on Google, where can they go? Social media, AI? Nope, because many of us have been burnt by the major online platforms and won't trust any of them. I'm never signing up for another social media platform, hell, I'm reluctant to sign up for ANYTHING. The current generation of marketing has sacrificed the future for a quick profit now. Many aren't on social media, we use adblockers, we pay for services to ensure no ads, we don't watch TV, newspapers are dead, we don't go out much, so where are you going to advertise exactly? Even if you find a venue, many see so few ads that your attempt at marketing is going to feel like an assault, because you're so desperate that you don't dare tone it down enough.

Advertisement needs to reinvent itself, and it needs to stop funding the entire online services industry, because it can't, not without cannibalizing its own future.
by bluGill | 2025-12-30 13:47:59+00:00
Let me put it a different way: what is a unit?

i have concluded a unit needs to be large. Not a single class or function but a large collection of them. When 'archtecture astronaughts' draw their boxes they ar drawing units. Often thousands of functions belong to a unit. even then though often it is easier to use the real other unit than a test double.
by hopelite | 2025-12-30 13:48:04+00:00
Unfortunately this seems to be exactly the slope the West is going down after dismissing all the crazy talk of conspiracy theorists who warned of this very thing.

I haven’t seen anything about it here, but another example that is worse because it’s an attack on a private person, is the EU recently sanctioning the former Swiss intelligence officer Jacques Baud, living in Belgium which he now cannot leave, for seemingly, essentially reminding the people of Europe and EU politicians’ of the things they said.
by spwa4 | 2025-12-30 13:48:29+00:00
But if people start to understand this they'll start to understand how their interpretation of Gandhi was total bullshit. That Gandhi in reality wasn't against violence, in fact the was pro-violence. He was above violence. I believe he said at one point that he sees violence as one way to achieve an outcome. Not the only way, ideally not the best way, but sometimes necessary. As in, he wants violence done, but not by him, and not against him or any Brahmin. He, personally, shouldn't be anywhere near it. He is not a man of peace, he is a general sipping tea over maps, hundreds of kilometers from the front.

I mean Gandhi achieved a lot. Just not by peaceful means. Multiple millions died in the partition wars, giving Gandhi what he wanted (ie. India). He just wasn't directly involved in the killings (I mean, yes, arguably only Pakistan was, but ...) Hell, it's even true that he actively tried to prevent it and succeeded in some of that ... with more violence.

> Also, intermarriage or intermixing between castes is discouraged in the Hindu scriptures.

That's putting things mildly. Very mildly. There are prescribed punishments.
by Webstir | 2025-12-30 13:48:40+00:00
Can you hear it? That sound? The luddites are coming for you. What was once fashionable, is now distasteful. Y’all had the chance to do some good in the world, but you’re just too transfixed on “the next thing” so numbers go up whether it’s good or bad.

Well, guess what? The worm has turned. Geeks tried, and failed, because your narrowly educated myopia can never see the big picture. Always looking no further than the screen in front of your faces.

Good riddance to bad rubbish.
by ManicInventor | 2025-12-30 13:49:14+00:00
I think this is a big problem today, with the amount of good looking vibe coded clones that are showing up one after another.

I think it will be harder and harder for new platforms to establish themself.

What I think has to be done in 2026, is that you have to show really unique genuine innovation. Not genetic recombination of existing solutions, but genetic mutation and successful such.

Then you have to get that signal out, and with a lot of force. You have to show that you have done something truly unique, and make that signal go viral. If you don't get momentum before someone has vibe coded a clone of your Idea, you will have a hard time catching up
by PaulRobinson | 2025-12-30 13:50:54+00:00
Of course it does. So it also makes sense that if you are operating that train, you make sure you don't end up on tracks 3, 4 or 7. You stop and verify that the signalling and routing is in place to let you stop at that station before it becomes too late and that option becomes impossible.

This is basic management, it's basic competence.

The train was misrouted because nobody cared about routing it properly: the driver, the conductor, the signallers, the routers, the management. Something weird happened and everyone shrugged and started to hum "Que sera, sera" to themselves, rather than committing to doing a job in the passengers' interests.
by gbnwl | 2025-12-30 13:51:05+00:00
You're still not closing the gap between the problems you're naming and how your solution solves them?

> With a flat file, both agents can read it, but you’re relying on humans as the coordination layer: deciding which docs are authoritative, when plans are superseded, which tickets are still valid, and how context should be scoped for a given agent.

So the memory system also automates project management by removing "humans as the coordination layer"? From the OP the only details we got were

"What it does: (1) persists context between sessions (2) semantic & temportal search (not just string grep)"

Which are fine, but neither it nor you explain how it can solve any of these broader problems you bring up:

"deciding which docs are authoritative, when plans are superseded, which tickets are still valid, and how context should be scoped for a given agent, questions like who can read vs. update which parts of context, how to share only relevant decisions, how agents discover what matters without scanning a growing pile of files, and how updates propagate without state drifting apart."

You're claiming that semantic and temporal search has solved all of this for free?
This project was presented as a memory solution and now it seems like you're saying its actually an agent orchestration framework, but the gap between what you're claiming your system can achieve and how you claim it works seems vast.
by cryptica | 2025-12-30 13:51:15+00:00
Yes, strongly believe this is the case. The corrupt leaders are rarely chosen by the people; they are installed by foreign powers. There are many cases you can dig into which are absolutely atrocious; like people getting paid big money by western leaders to assassinate their friends to take power and pass laws which facilitate the extraction of resources by foreign corporations.

Like the story of Thomas Sankara's assassination by his trusted childhood friend Blaise Compaoré is quite disturbing. It seems like Compaoré was leader for a very long time and is still in politics... I cannot think of a more morally deprived individual. If game theory was as claimed; nobody should want to work with such deeply disloyal and psychopathic individual. It's just like I say; people have a strong tolerance, even attraction to abusers. If you look at the real story, you notice this pattern over and over... but we are so badly gaslit about such things (aka 'PR') that we don't notice.
by mapontosevenths | 2025-12-30 13:51:24+00:00
It's not the internet that changed, it's the people.

I'm an old timer, and I've been there since the beginning. I remember the beginning of the eternal summer, and the gradual decline that came after.

One of my first jobs was actually 3rd shift help desk for a regional dial-up ISP. The people that called were mostly drunk southerner's who, at the time, seemed hopelessly non-technical.

Looking back I now see that any one of them knew much, much more about how the internet actually worked than a the average modern user, and were probably more worldly in general than todays average user.... and there are billions more of them now.

We thought that global access to information would democratize everything and expose people to a higher level of rhetoric and thinking. We just KNEW that the best ideas would rise to the top of discourse naturally and the world would magically become a better place. We were so very wrong. It's turns out that more than cream floats.
by seec | 2025-12-30 13:51:59+00:00
And sometimes it randomly scramble the output for no good reason.

I think their HMDI implementation completly suck as well, I have had to get an USB-C adaptor to make it work properly.

Macs with external displays don't make a lot of sense, it basically against their initial idea about computer (standalone, with everything needed built-in). They don't even have chips that get very hot, it makes zero sense.
by walterbell | 2025-12-30 13:52:51+00:00
20 years ago, it was possible to seamlessly merge video clips from multiple streaming RealPlayer servers into a single composite video stream, using a static XML text file (SMIL) distributed via HTTP, with optional HTML annotation and composition.

This is technically possible today but blocked by DRM and closed apps/players. Innovation would be unlocked if 3rd party apps could create custom viewing experiences based on licensed and purchased content files downloaded locally, e.g. in your local Apple media library. The closed apps could then sherlock/upstream UX improvements that prove broadly useful.
by tormeh | 2025-12-30 13:53:00+00:00
The US seems mostly healthy except for corruption skyrocketing. I don't even need to see the stats. If the president is this bad, and Americans overall think that's fine, then a lot of lower offices will soon be filled with corrupt officials. Attitudes shape incentives, and incentives shape behavior. Otherwise, both in terms of labor laws and capital markets, the US looks very healthy. But corruption in itself might create huge problems in the long term.
by IlikeKitties | 2025-12-30 13:53:12+00:00
Dark Knight is an edge case because Christopher Nolan is a special kind of retarded when it comes to mixing his movies. He literally refuses to accept that people want to understand what characters are saying. [0]

But here's the thing: Most movies are mixed for 5.1 or more surround setups, where the front middle speaker has most of the dialog. Just boost that speaker either via setting or in a stereo/virtual surround by a significant amount and add some volume compression and you get something that's reasonable on a home theater setup.

[0] https://www.theguardian.com/film/2020/nov/16/tenet-up-listen...