MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by ulrikrasmussen | 2025-12-24 07:43:25+00:00
I agree with you except for the Apple TV part. I use a mini-PC running Ubuntu and use a wireless keyboard with integrated touchpad to control it, and it works wonderfully and has a much better user experience than the Chromecast I was using before - a product which has progressively become more and more shitty over the years to the point of being unusable.

An Apple TV is probably also OK, but likely also much more expensive. Also, Apple is a company that is and always has done all they could to lock down their platforms, lock in their users and seek exorbitant fees from developers releasing to their platform.
by bsder | 2025-12-24 07:44:07+00:00
Waymo cars handle 4 way stops just fine.

When traffic lights go out, that is supposed to be a 4 way stop with appropriate yielding of right-of-way. The problem is that most human drivers can't deal with even a simple, low-traffic stop sign 4-way-stop reliably, and these are complex 4-way-stops with lots of right-of-way changes when power is off.

For example, navigating intersections in San Diego during the blackout was a disaster with lots of accidents and that long predated Waymo.
by xgbi | 2025-12-24 07:44:42+00:00
My wife’s work WiFi is handled by a gl.inet 150 (https://www.gl-inet.com/products/gl-ar150/) which is tucked behind her desk since at least 2019. Vanilla openwrt on it, provides WiFi from an Ethernet slot in the wall.

Uptime is in years, it’s invisible and chugs along without visible power draw. All her devices connect to it, including her Cisco voip phone. It autossh to my ovh server with remote port forward for remote admin. Cost me 15€ in 2016.
by hosh | 2025-12-24 07:46:07+00:00
It’s also true that the kind of people who are ready for staff level work are already doing staff level work. While social capital is a factor, it isn’t necessarily accumulated because of title or experience.

The idea of “disambiguation” is itself ambiguous. The way I recognize other people solving problems at a staff level is we are communicating in terms of properties, constraints and tradeoffs. Crucially, these constraints are not necessarily business constraints, but rather, constraints inherent to an architecture. For example, queuing works for ordering because it append-only, and monotonic. So as soon as you have multiple queues (such as partitioning) or try to reorder it, it also loses its ordering guarantee. Does the problem require ordering?

The first couple chapters of Roy Fielding’s dissertation goes through this. The first time I tried reading it, I did not have experience to understand. It was a slog and I got little out of it. The next time I tried reading it, it was helping me gel and articulate things I had started observing from experience. I recognized that I had previously been so focused on architectural elements and that the properties and constraints were far more important. It is this that determines what is being traded off, and antipatterns pop out. Knowing properties and constraints allows me to quickly identify problems, and start the process of disambiguation. Many of the other staff or principal engineers I have chatted with communicate along these lines.

I don’t try to ask smart questions or dumb questions. I ask questions so that I can understand properties and constraints.
by threeducks | 2025-12-24 07:47:14+00:00
HTML to PNG:

chromium --headless --disable-gpu --screenshot=output.png --window-size=1920,1080 --hide-scrollbars index.html

Also works great for HTML to PDF:

chromium --headless --disable-gpu --no-pdf-header-footer --run-all-compositor-stages-before-draw --print-to-pdf=output.pdf index.html
by naet | 2025-12-24 07:47:43+00:00
If my cloud provider goes down and my site is offline, my customers and my boss will be upset with me and demand I fix it as fast as possible. They will not care what caused it.

If my cloud provider goes down and also takes down Spotify, Snapchat, Venmo, Reddit, and a ton of other major services that my customers and my boss use daily, they will be much more understanding that there is a third party issue that we can more or less wait out.

Every provider has outages. US-east-2 will sometimes go down. If I'm not going to make a system that can fail over from one provider to another (which is a lot of work and can be expensive, and really won't be actively used often), it might be better to just use the popular one and go with the group.
by ge96 | 2025-12-24 07:47:52+00:00
For me ego-wise I don't feel like I ever will be senior. I have worked with people who claim to be senior and are barely able to function so it's funny. I have worked professionally in some capacity for almost 10 years. Right now I'm working with cloudformation templates. I have seen myself improving over time and recognize my own older-self bad code. Learning faster. But yeah it's one of those things like I'm the quiet guy in a pack. I'm just lucky I lift so I'm big and people don't mess with me but I'm pretty meek as a person. This job is about merit, I'm not saying physical appearance should matter. But I'm emphasizing my self-esteem problem.

Counter to myself, a co-worker of mine who's been at the company I just joined longer than me, he gets to set things up, make decisions. Then he has to change directions and hands it to me, I ask him "how did you come up with this" and he says "I asked ChatGPT" and I'm like what?... But it is a learning tool and doing new things (this case was a starting point for Apache Airflow DAG work). But that's a case of "I'm senior".

I did read this article and I get the idea. I still have that problem where I ask what to do (mid) and a lot of times it's because I don't know if I can make a decision, is my choice good kind of thing. Uncertainty but again merit or ego?

I'm also fine not being anybody, stress-wise and finance. Not sure what the pay jump is where I'm at. Wouldn't mind a coast-type job as I have pretty good perks (gym, walks, beer on tap, hybrid) and I can pursue my other projects outside of work like robotics that I can't do at my day job (agentic work lately).

Alright I'll be done ranting, I have been a one-person dev for a startup that died it was a WebRTC document signing platform, damn that was a great project, had like 7 different repos of different tech even wrote a wrapper around Apple CUPS. So tragic when projects go nowhere and get shelved.
by array_key_first | 2025-12-24 07:48:04+00:00
I would not trust either tool to adequately redact documents, though I'm sure it works under normal levels of scrutiny.

The most reliable way is to just screenshot the document or print and scan it, effectively burning it down and recreating it in a new format that has no concept of the past. This works across basically all formats, too, and against all tools.
Ask HN: What are your AI predictions for 2026?
by LeoWood42 | 2025-12-24 07:48:09+00:00
We've seen Gemini 3 Pro, Claude 4.5 Opus, Nano Banana, Sora 2 and a flood of AI apps. But lately, I’ve found myself feeling more pessimistic than excited. While the capabilities are scaling, the operational costs remain brutal.
by apatheticonion | 2025-12-24 07:48:24+00:00
Haha that was an entertaining read, thanks for sharing. This is also my third attempt.

The first was much like this one with browser storage. There was a bug in Chrome that wiped out the persisted storage of all websites which nuked all of my records

https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-50809216

I tried rewriting it in React because it was the new hotness but spent so much time worried about component rendering cycles, hooks, state that just ended up distracting me away from time on the UI and UX. It was fast (like it matters), but ugly.

As for data sync, I've just added SQLite on the client and going through the painful process of normalizing the records.

My idea is, users will be able to supply a Turso API key and the app can sync against that, keeping a local copy of the data - eventually consistent.

I'll probably do something dumb like keep a timestamp of the last change and push/pull data periodically.

It only works because it's 1 person using the app and no one trains with two phones
by ulrikrasmussen | 2025-12-24 07:48:46+00:00
I have the same setup and have never looked back. My kids can control the TV now via the browser instead of asking me to fiddle with a smartphone, and I can easily block e.g. YouTube via the hosts file. The ability to have multiple streaming services open in different tabs and reading online reviews all on the same screen is also vastly superior to any UX offered by e.g. Chromecast or similar devices.
by Cockbrand | 2025-12-24 07:50:19+00:00
> [...] the response can be something like "you should know X" or "you should know this because of Y context" and it can be discouraging.

This is definitely a cultural problem. You should get clear and non-judgmental answers to questions like these, because it should be regarded as absolutely normal that you can’t keep everything in your mind, or that you may have missed some context.

In a culturally healthy org, everybody supports each other.
by handoflixue | 2025-12-24 07:50:58+00:00
If you're that worried about child molesters knowing where the kids are, I've got very bad news for you: https://www.statista.com/statistics/254893/child-abuse-in-th...

Turns out, 95% of the predators already know exactly where the victims are, usually because it's their kid. Probably we want to worry about that a lot more.

Doubly so since, y'know, this only works if the predator lives close enough to act on the information before it changes - so the tiny possibility of a predator, a tiny possibility that they didn't already know this, and a tiny possibility of being able to act on the information...
by ozim | 2025-12-24 07:51:44+00:00
Typical software developer fallacy - well it looks the same so we can abstract and merge concept.

Well NO lock file and SBOM formats are used for different purposes and are to be consumed by different audiences. They will evolve in different speeds and ways. Ideally SBOM should not evolve and package lock should be able to change on a whim by package manager developers.

SBOMs are meant to be shared by 3’rd parties while lock files not - just because some tooling accidentally started using lock files for ingestion is just because people didn’t knew better or couldn’t explain to their customers why they should do SBOM so they did first easiest thing.
by concinds | 2025-12-24 07:52:04+00:00
It's ludicrous. I remember when Apple took pride in the audio never stopping. Once a very long time ago my entire Mac froze, even the Force Touch trackpad was unresponsive, but the music kept playing. Now, press Volume Up and the audio stutters. Or AirPods randomly get choppy and then stop playing until you reconnect them. The heck?
by delifue | 2025-12-24 07:52:07+00:00
How does static allocation avoid wasting memory?

Static memory allocation requires hardcoding an upper limit of size of everything. For example, if you limit each string to be at most 256 bytes, then a string with only 10 bytes will waste 246 bytes of memory.

If you limit string length to 32 bytes it will waste fewer memory but when a string longer than 32 bytes comes it cannot handle.
by MostlyStable | 2025-12-24 07:53:23+00:00
Of all the topics to judge LLM use, this seems the least appropriate. This is about people making software for themselves and no one else. Your opinion on the quality of their software is entirely beside the point. No one is ever going to force you to use an LLM to make personal software. And no one is ever going to force you to use LLM-generated software that was explicitely made and intended to be used only by the one person.

There are a lot of contexts where I can understand arguing against LLM use (even in cases where I might not entirely agree, I can understand the objection), but this is not one of them.

Don't think this will improve your life? Great, don't do it. But this is also the most classic case of "don't yuck other people's yum". If someone tells you they used an LLM to make some piece of software for themselves and they like it or that it improved some aspect of their life or workflow, what on earth is gained by trying to convince them that no, actually, it's not good and isn't improving their lives and is in fact garbage?
by hatthew | 2025-12-24 07:53:38+00:00
Would you say a country of 300 people isn't small?

Big, small, etc. are relative terms. There is no way to decide whether or not 300 is small without implicitly saying what it's small relative to. In context, it was obvious that the point being made was "valve is too small to have direct employees working on things other than the core business"
by ttctciyf | 2025-12-24 07:54:23+00:00
From TFA:

> [Indyke] was hired by the Parlatore Law Group in 2022, before the justice department settled the Epstein case. That firm represents the defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, and previously represented Donald Trump in his defense against charges stemming from the discovery of classified government documents stored at Trump’s Florida estate.

So I don't know about "not a Washington person", but clearly connections exist to the current administration.
by Animats | 2025-12-24 07:54:24+00:00
If the onboard software has detected an unusual situation it doesn't understand, moving may be a bad idea. Possible problems requiring a management decision include flooding, fires, earthquakes, riots, street parties, power outages, building collapses... Handling all that onboard is tough. For different situations, a nearby "safe place" to stop varies. The control center doesn't do remote driving, says Waymo. They provide hints, probably along the lines of "back out, turn around, and get out of this area", or "clear the intersection, then stop and unload your passenger".

Waymo didn't give much info. For example, is loss of contact with the control center a stop condition? After some number of seconds, probably. A car contacting the control center for assistance and not getting an answer is probably a stop condition.
Apparently here they overloaded the control center. That's an indication that this really is automated. There's not one person per car back at HQ; probably far fewer than that. That's good for scaling.
by least | 2025-12-24 07:55:04+00:00
I could be entirely off base, but I would expect Android to be more likely to have more users that would go out of their way to use a non-default web browser, given that it seems to be favored by people who like customizing things. The relative openness of the platform invites a different demographic.

On the other hand, the default on Android is Chrome so there may be less motivation to change since it's the 'default' platform to target. But if Apple opened up iOS to other browsers, the likely outcome would not be Firefox gaining market share but Chrome completely taking over.

I do not like that iOS doesn't allow for alternative engines but I appreciate that it's basically the only thing that even somewhat reigns Google in.
by onion2k | 2025-12-24 07:56:28+00:00
Considering tablets and laptops are ubiquitous, it is pointless to optimize for narrow mobile consumption unless it is the most trivial content (just a text scroll, basically).

At the company I work for we make a website for gaming. 80% of the millions of people who visit it are using a phone, 10% use a laptop, and about 8% use a 4K screen with the browser window maximised. The rest use a whole bunch of things like tablets, desktops with unmaximized windows, televisions, etc. We have text content like blogs, promotions, help pages, legal stuff. It all has to work everywhere. There is no way I would ever let us deliver a layout that doesn't respond to the user's device capabilities. That would suck.
by array_key_first | 2025-12-24 07:57:06+00:00
You could say that, because anyone can say anything, but you'd just be wrong.

Obviously, "fine" is subjective. Serial killers are just fine with eating Cheez-its out of a bowl crafted from a human skull.

But when the topmost officials are routinely doing very illegal things, we have at least some metric - they're illegal. When they just gloss over the illegal things they're doing, that's bad.

People are really missing the broader context of CECOT and the trump administration as a whole. Who cares if a few hundred not-criminals get tortured overseas? That's a statistical drop in the bucket.

And it is, but the broader implication is what matters. The implication that due process is merely a suggestion, the implication that this administration does not give even a single fuck about the american people, the implication that suffering is a price this administration is willing to pay for a prize they cannot quantify.

Whether these things are happening or not is, again, not up for debate. The debate shifts to apathy. Do you care about America or it's citizenry? Or, in a pursuit of correctness, are you willing to burn it all down?

Such foolishness, selfishness, and naivety is only observed in very young children. Those with developed brains under the cost of actions, and their lasting effects.
by visarga | 2025-12-24 07:57:09+00:00
The prefix tuning approach was largely abandoned for LoRA, it does not change the process if you tune the prefix or some adapter layers, but it is more flexible to train the LoRAs.

The Skills concept emerged naturally when you see how coding agents use docs, CLI tools and code. Their advantage is they can be edited on the fly to incorporate new information and can learn from any feedback source - human, code execution, web search or LLMs.
by Sesse__ | 2025-12-24 07:57:51+00:00
> Serializable in principle, maybe. Actually serializable in the sense that the code contains a way to dump to a file and back, absolutely not. It's extremely rare for programs to expose a way to save and restore from a mid-state in the algorithm they're implementing.

If you should ever look for an actual example; Cubemap, my video reflector (https://manpages.debian.org/testing/cubemap/cubemap.1.en.htm...), works like that. It supports both config change and binary upgrade by serializing its entire state down to a file and then re-execing itself.

It's very satisfying; you can have long-running HTTP connections and upgrade everything mid-flight without a hitch (serialization, exec and deserialization typically takes 20–30 ms or so). But it means that I can hardly use any libraries at all; I have to use a library for TLS setup (the actual bytes are sent through kTLS, but someone needs to do the asymmetric crypto and I'm not stupid enough to do that myself), but it was a pain to find one that could serialize its state. TLSe, which I use, does, but not if you're at certain points in the middle of the key exchange.

So yes, it's extremely rare.
Ask HN: Mental model for Google account verification?
by sriram_malhar | 2025-12-24 07:58:03+00:00
I have a google account that has two devices associated with it, one Android and one iPhone. 2FA is enabled, and I have an authenticator associated as well.

I would like to find out if I have the mental model of the google account verification process wrong, or it is just horribly engineered.

--------------------------

First problem: When accessing a Google service on a laptop that has not accessed that service before, Google sends "Is this you" verification to only one phone (the Android phone that belongs to someone else), not to iPhone (mine). I'd like to get notifications on my iPhone as well.

I have tried the following on the iPhone:
a. Re-installed google apps (google, gmail) and logged in again, for which I needed to get it approved by the Android phone.

b. Enabled notifications. I did get a notification once on the gmail app, but never after that.

c. Enabled background app refresh

d. Set notifications on Wifi and cellular. Battery levels are fine (apparently, by default notifications are disabled on low battery level)

------------------------

Second issue: How does one log in using an authenticator? It never asks me. As soon as I enter the password, it says to tap a Google code on the Android phone. It does not show Authenticator as an option when I click on "Try another way". So frustrated.
by roncesvalles | 2025-12-24 08:00:58+00:00
I like to think I'm very much abreast of the bleeding edge because I feel this anxiety myself. At this point I can't code without LLMs because I just notice things that I could hand off to LLMs and they will do it faster and there's no reason for me to do it myself (although I still could).

But the overall gain in efficiency is still a low single digit speedup. It's not a multi-OOM speedup as if e.g. doing 1000 long divisions by hand over many days versus letting a computer program do them in a split second. The "wall" that is irreducible complexity was never OOMs away from how modern pre-AI software development was done.
by efreak | 2025-12-24 08:01:35+00:00
When banned on steam, I believe you are still about to download and play your (offline) games.

My understanding is that your account is effectively made read-only (blocked from purchasing, community, etc) and not removed entirely. Steam's help article on restricted accounts[1] seems to agree with this, given the text description of account suspension implying that it's temporary or for legal reasons (because the account has been used for illegal activity, or to prevent the account's use until it can be restored to its owner in cases where a lock might not suffice)

Admittedly, I have no personal experience with this, nor do I even know anyone who does, but I've never heard of anyone complaining about being unable to play their existing library when banned; complaints about steam tend to be about accounts being stolen and VAC/community bans, with the occasional complaint from someone I know that lost access to an account when they lost their email address and forgot the password (this was before steam had account limitations and steamguard, and they had never bought anything).

[1]: https://help.steampowered.com/en/faqs/view/4F62-35F9-F395-5C...
by why-o-why | 2025-12-24 08:02:00+00:00
It's gotta be me, or my eyes. I've never watched a film and said, "Oh that transfer looks beautiful," but I have watched many and said, "Damn that transfer sucks." I remember buying some Criterion films in the early 2000's and was thoroughly disappointed (but back then transfers sucked so....)

But take LoTR for example: I have a friend with a 60-something inch TV and watched the 4K DVD and then watched the streaming at home on my 50something inch and I'll be damned if I can tell A from B. Maybe I need to put them side-by-side some day!

So I'm gonna go with, "I'm old, Bob."
by Marycerv-17 | 2025-12-24 08:02:12+00:00
In the ever-evolving notebook industry, the demand for high-quality, innovative products continues to rise. As consumers seek both functionality and aesthetic appeal, credible manufacturers play a crucial role in shaping the market. This article explores leading manufacturers who stand out for their commitment to quality, creativity, and customer satisfaction.https://info.yunyuoffice.com/leading-the-notebook-industry-w...
by JumpCrisscross | 2025-12-24 08:02:55+00:00
> Just the smallest variation in places that have been inked twice will reveal the clear text

Sure. But anyone can visually examine this. That means everyone with situational context can directly examine the quality of the redaction.

Contrast that with a digital redation. You have to trust the tool works. Or you have to separate the folks with context from the folks with techical competence. (There is the third option of training everyone in the DoJ how to examine the inner workings of a PDF. That seems wasteful.)
by jibal | 2025-12-24 08:03:11+00:00
Non responsive. All of her photos are bad ... this one, catching her moving, actually makes her look better than most.

And what photos I've seen of myself is irrelevant, and "your friends deleted them" is dumb ... most of the photos I've seen of myself were taken by me, and many of those were on something called "film". (And yes, of course some are distorted because I was moving, the angle or lighting was bad, etc. ... none of this is relevant.)

I won't respond further.