MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by crossroadsguy | 2025-12-15 01:38:41+00:00
I would blame Apple, or Apple as well. For all their security and privacy circus they still don’t have granular settings like “directory specific permissions” i.e Discord wants to go bonkers? Here’s ~/Library/Discord - take a dump in it if that gets you off, Discord, but you can’t even take a sniff at how it smells in ~/Library/Dropbox and vice versa. I mean it should be setting that if set it’s directory access limit — it can’t change that with anything — in fact it shouldn’t be able to ask for permission to change that, it changes only when you go inside in the settings and change it or add or more paths to its access list.

It should clearly ask for separate permissions if needs to have elevated access as in what it needs to do.

Also what’s with password pop-ups on Macs? I find that unnerving. Those plain password entry pop-ups with zero info that just tells you an app needs to do something more serious - but what’s that serious thing you don’t know. You just enter your password (I guess sometimes Touch ID as well) and hope all is well. Hell not sure many of you know that pop-up is actually an OS pop-up and not that app or some other app trying to get your password in plaintext.

They’d rather fuck you and the devs over with signing and notarising shenanigans for absolute control hiding behind safety while doing jack about it in reality.

I am a mobile dev (so please know that I have written the above totally from an annoyed and confused, definitely not an expert, end user pov). But what I have mentioned above is too much to ask on a Mac/desktop? ie give an app specific, with well spelt limits, multiple separate permissions as it needs them — no more “enter the password in that nondescript popup and now the app can do everything everywhere or too many things in too many places” as it pleases. Maybe just remove the flow altogether where an app can even trigger that “enter password to allow me go on god or semi-god” mode.
by colechristensen | 2025-12-15 01:39:46+00:00
The thing is, they don't need to be more complex. Their administration bloated because it could in order to enrich the people in the administration. It's the MBA/middle management disease.

Why exactly are Universities all-inclusive day cares for young adults covering every life need under a single administrative umbrella? It's like a capitalist commune. Landlord, hospital network, a few professional sports teams, dozens of amateur sports teams, several restaurant chains, life coaches, a police force, and on and on and on.

They do everything, the things they do they overcomplicate, and they overreach control of every tiny thing all under one umbrella. Of course it's absurdly expensive, but there's no reason it needs to be besides there's no incentive for anybody to cut back on anything ever.
by sandworm101 | 2025-12-15 01:40:38+00:00
No. Corporate profits, especially when forwarded to shareholders, are very difficult to tax. Several companies that pay virtually zero income tax (apple, google, amazon) also now sit on piles of cash, piles so big they honestly do not know what to do with it. Thats where all the AI cash is comming from. They need somewhere to spend thier post-covid winnings.
by 8cvor6j844qw_d6 | 2025-12-15 01:40:44+00:00
I heard from a senior programmer I once worked with that a couple of his post was copied almost 1-to-1 as part of a paid course. Eventually he lost interest in sharing technical writeups.

If you don't mind it, go for it.

---

I am curious on how people can output so much content, did they work on their blog while at the office or during working hours for remote work?
by CGamesPlay | 2025-12-15 01:41:18+00:00
Wow, I haven't used Anki since... before they switched to date-based releases, but the new version is a big step improvement from versions I have used previously. When I updated, opening the app for the first time opened the terminal for a text-based installer, which didn't inspire confidence, but it's well improved. (This isn't really related to the backend changes you're mentioning, but this comment inspired me to take another look at Anki.)
by bigiain | 2025-12-15 01:41:41+00:00
Do you actually need a waterproof case? Lots of drone and rc people are just spraying boards with conformal coatings, and the seem to do fine with occasional dunkings even when powered up in salt water. I've seen quadcopters still "working" under water. I've seen people making submersibles that use known non-waterproof 3d printed boxes, then pumping them full of marine grade grease to eliminate any air voids that would allow water ingress.
by Aurornis | 2025-12-15 01:42:02+00:00
> Why pay for SaaS when you can build something “good enough” in a week or two?

About a decade ago we worked with a partner company who was building their own in-house software for everything. They used it as one of their selling points and as a differentiator over competitors.

They could move fast and add little features quickly. It seemed cool at first.

The problems showed up later. Everything was a little bit fragile in subtle ways. New projects always worked well on the happy path, but then they’d change one thing and it would trigger a cascade of little unintended consequences that broke something else. No problem, they’d just have their in-house team work on it and push out a new deploy. That also seemed cool at first, until they accumulated a backlog of hard to diagnose issues. Then we were spending a lot of time trying to write up bug reports to describe the problem in enough detail for them to replicate, along with constant battles over tickets being closed with “works in the dev environment” or “cannot reproduce”.

> You also get exactly what you want rather than some £300k per year CRM

What’s the fully loaded (including taxes and benefits) cost of hiring enough extra developers and ops people to run and maintain the in house software, complete with someone to manage the project and enough people to handle ops coverage with room for rotations and allowing holidays off? It turns out the cost of running in-house software at scale is always a lot higher than 300K, unless the company can tolerate low ops coverage and gaps when people go on vacation.
by tialaramex | 2025-12-15 01:42:09+00:00
> You seem to be suggesting that a language being safe or unsafe is a social contract rather than a technical property of the language.

Quite some way up this thread pizlonator insists that each programming language defines memory safety differently, quantifying some as "weaker" or "stronger" and giving the example that Rust has the `unsafe` keyword and so that's weaker than Fil-C.

That's what we were discussing when you jumped in with your C hypothetical.

You apparently instead believe in a single universal "safety" and every language is either absolutely safe or unsafe according to foldr for whatever that's worth - but that's not what we were talking about.
by popalchemist | 2025-12-15 01:42:28+00:00
LOVE this. Are there any plans to open-source? I'd love to run my own instance.

Also some feedback: the ordering buttons are inexplicably in french despite everything else being in English. Choice of language or defaulting to English would be expected...

Also - multi-select and nullable options. So that I can create options like Taco / Steak / Pasta, and add side options that are relevant only when one of those is selected.
by em-bee | 2025-12-15 01:43:09+00:00
i understood the long stay visa differently: since you can spend the whole year in the EU there is no limit on traveling except he can't spend more than 90 days in any single EU country (besides the one he got the visa for), but even if that is wrong, if he gets the visa for the largest country to traverse, which i think is france, then he could: enter france, travel to another eu country, walk 90 days, go back to france, walk 90 days in france, travel to another EU country walk 90 days, go back to france, finish walking. if he still has a leg left at that point, wait until the 90 days are full, then finish the remaining leg. i don't know how much time he really needs, but i think the whole EU needs less than a year. 180days outside of france could be enough.

with "how would anyone know?" i meant the reverse. if there are no stamps that document the travel within the EU, how can he prove that he did not violate the rules?

all in all, these visa rules are way to complicated. it sounds like that without the EU existing, he would have had 90 days in each european country mostly visa free. so that is in effect a regression. as a EU citizen i am not happy about that.

i traveled across europe before the schengen area was created, and there was no problem entering any country and stay there other than some countries charging a lot for the visa at the border. anyone with a british or US or similar "powerful" passport would have been able to do the same.
by hurturue | 2025-12-15 01:43:31+00:00
After you read all the fluff, the real purpose of this website is at the end of each article:

We’re a lean, fast-moving lab made up of some of the world’s most talented minds. We have an exciting roadmap of compute at MAI, with our next-generation GB200 cluster now operational. And we have an ambitious mission we truly believe in.
by eek2121 | 2025-12-15 01:44:41+00:00
I built a CMS back in 2010 in Ruby on Rails (it powered a once popular site that I shut down for unrelated personal reasons). It originally used a thin layer of javascript along with a few buttons to wrap around some HTML. I later extended it to use markdown for fast editing. I didn't spend more than maybe 3-5 days on the entire project, including testing/deployment, and it stood up for over a decade until I retired it due to reasons mentioned.

I bring that up because when I see headlines like this, I know EXACTLY the type of person who wrote the content.

For my part, there were a few occasional issues/bugs early on, however I was able to catch them and fix them quicky thanks to testing, user input, and understanding of the code base.

Side note: I still own the domain. It sits on Cloudflare and resolves to an IP address which isn't valid. The AI traffic that has been hitting my domain has been about 4X the user base I had. This isn't CF spitting this number out...I've verified it.

Thankfully CF doesn't really have usage limits that folks like me would ever notice.
by brightball | 2025-12-15 01:45:04+00:00
I didn’t sit in on it so I can’t say for sure. My son got up to the 2nd version of the 6 handed clock. You have to have perfect accuracy within a certain amount of time to advance to the next tier.

Even with the 6 handed I don’t remember exactly what each was though. I asked Grok and this is what it said.

> In the Arrowsmith Program’s Cognitive Intensive Program (CIP), the primary exercise is the Symbol Relations exercise, commonly known as “Clocks.” This involves reading analog clock faces that progress from 2 hands to up to 8 (or sometimes more) hands. Each hand on the clock represents a separate time (an independent position pointing to a specific hour/minute on the clock face). Participants must interpret the positions of all hands simultaneously, understand the relationships between them (e.g., angles, relative positions, and sequences), and record the times accurately under time pressure. The multiple hands do not represent different concepts symbolically (like hours, minutes, seconds); instead, they increase cognitive load to train the brain’s ability to process and relate multiple pieces of information at once. This strengthens the Symbol Relations cognitive function, which supports logical reasoning, comprehension, seeing connections between ideas, cause-and-effect understanding, and abstract thinking. Progression adds more hands as mastery is achieved, making the task more complex to build capacity in handling interrelated symbols and concepts. The CIP focuses intensively on this exercise to accelerate improvements in reasoning, processing speed, and related skills.
by hluska | 2025-12-15 01:46:00+00:00
Writing is difficult and like all art forms, it’s subject to impostor syndrome. Blogging is the best way I have found to remind yourself that you’re not an impostor. And the more experience you get proving you’re not an impostor, the easier impostor syndrome is to deal with.

Realistically if you start now, you’re years away from a devoted readership and that’s fine. You’ll gain from publishing and if you’re diligent, you’ll gain from watching your writing improve.

For me, I like writing and can’t get paid enough in publishing or as a writer to do it professionally. So it’s worth it for me because I have a lot of fun writing. I spent a good part of my life hunting for eyeballs and now I’m content just writing whether anyone reads it or not.

I’m not sure that I’d recommend any particular theme, cadence or style for a new blogger. And I definitely wouldn’t recommend a style of post. Rather those sorts of things will come organically as you get used to writing and start building a community. When you’re getting started, just focus on writing, trying to build habits and learning how to edit yourself. Most writers will struggle with one of the three on their way to developing a voice so if you’re going through hell you’re likely on the right path.

If I were starting today, I’d focus less on hunting eyeballs and more on writing for the joy of it. I’d also spend a lot more time writing about subjects that I’m not interested in because that’s really good practice. And finally, I wouldn’t worry so much about writer’s block - it happens, it sucks but it goes away when you stop worrying about it.

On the subject of writer’s block, if it’s something you struggle with I have a great exercise for you. When you’re stuck, interview yourself about the finished piece you’re stuck on. Pretend it’s done and interview yourself. I would have started doing that twenty five years ago and I’d be a far better writer now because of it.

Finally, keep everything you write and read it regularly but there’s nothing wrong with pruning your blog regularly. If things you wrote two years ago are embarrassing today that means you’re a better writer. Go with that.
by ChrisArchitect | 2025-12-15 01:46:15+00:00
Some insights and related discussions this year:

It’s still worth blogging in the age of AI

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43166761

Blogging in 2025: Screaming into the Void

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46156379

Write the post you wish you'd found

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43154666

Ask HN: Is maintaining a personal blog still worth it?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42685534
by ammut | 2025-12-15 01:46:38+00:00
If you have a good network CI/CD pipeline and can trace the time of deployment to when the errors began, it should be easy to reduce your total TTD/TTR. Even when I was parsing logs years ago and matching them up against AAA authorization commands issued, it was always a question of "when did this start happening?" and then "who made a change around that time period?"
by harimau777 | 2025-12-15 01:46:40+00:00
I suspect that the reason might be that the Industrial Revolution happened over 200 years ago. That provides a lot of time for 97% of jobs to progressively disappear without disrupting society too much (except for all the revolutions and world wars). That would be quite different than if AI caused any significant percentage of jobs to disappear in a much shorter period of time.
by syousif | 2025-12-15 01:47:26+00:00
I'm working on an open source swift app that sends anything you circle in a pdf or epub to AI for an explanation. Currently it works with Gemini but I'm going to allow users to add their own OpenAI compatible endpoint soon.

I think it works best on Mac and iPad. Available on TestFlight and GitHub.

https://github.com/syousif94/EasyReader https://testflight.apple.com/join/1KvY5cwC
by Oarch | 2025-12-15 01:47:38+00:00
Given the conduct we've seen to date, I'd trust them to follow the letter - but not the spirit - of IP law.

There may very well be clever techniques that don't require directly training on the users' data. Perhaps generating a parallel paraphrased corpus as they serve user queries - one which they CAN train on legally.

The amount of value unlocked by stealing practically ~everyone's lunch makes me not want to put that past anyone who's capable of implementing such a technology.
by amiga386 | 2025-12-15 01:47:58+00:00
It makes a lot of sense to me.

They key problem is that GO SUB and GO TO are not instantaneous like a CALL or JP instruction would be in Z80. The BASIC interpreter does a linear scan through the entire source code, until it reaches the specified line number. Every time you want to jump or call.

That's why this article is called "Efficient Basic Coding"... all the "tricks" are about moving the most frequently called code to the lowest line numbers, so the interpreter spends as little time scanning the source code destination line numbers as possible.

The second article in the series is on a theme, where variables aren't indexed either, the interpreter scans through each variable in turn until it finds the one with the name referenced in the source code... again you want to define them in order of most frequently accessed...
by hoten | 2025-12-15 01:48:04+00:00
I've spent a considerable amount of my free time over the last few years working on an open-source game engine for making Zelda-like games (link in profile). It's been around for a few decades, and I played it when I was a kid - and now I'm contributing heavily to it. To give a since of scale, there's ~1000 custom fangames made in this: so pretty niche, but if your thing is Zelda it's got some real gems.

Most of my time has been spent practically rewriting the engine from just single-screen play areas (like Zelda 1) to be free-scrolling (like Zelda 3). I've also put lots of work into supporting all platforms (was just Windows; now it's also Mac/Linux/Web). And I've delved into tons of interesting programming projects while working on this: a deterministic record + replay testing system; a garbage collector for our custom scripting language; JIT compilers for x64 + WASM; a VS Code language server; the list goes on...

Anyhow, this month I'm trying to polish it up as much as I can so we can officially release the next major version.
by alex989 | 2025-12-15 01:48:48+00:00
I disagree about how calculators and math are deterministic a in real world scenarios where you use math at work. When you compute a formula in your calculator or in a fancy design software, it will always give you answer but it doesn't mean you asked the right question. If you use the wrong units in your input or if you make a typo, if you used the wrong formula, etc., the calculator/software will blindly give you an answer and only an experienced engineer will spot it a first glance. As soon as there is a human in the loop, things get messy.

For exemple, if your calculator tells you that a 15m long W200x31 steel beam can resist 215kN•m in bending moment, I know at first glance its at least 4x too much for that length, but how many people reading my comment could? A civil engineer fresh out of college would not.
by rustcleaner | 2025-12-15 01:49:34+00:00
Digital sovereignty is woefully undertaught. Things like FOSS software, cryptography and its many uses, digital rights management, ownership rights, right to repair, etc. We are turning computers into monkey-friendly appliance devices, when we should be molding tiny humans into digitally sovereign supermonkeys on advanced universal computation devices. How does anyone graduate high school not having heard of the Diffie-Hellman Key Exchange? In my ideal, that would not happen. Students taught properly in digital sovereignty should be extremely difficult to surveil or control digitally with almost any kind of local, network, or service lock. This is a good thing, we want digital barbarian warriors and not digital slaves.
by BrenBarn | 2025-12-15 01:49:36+00:00
Why not just tax wealth at steeply progressive rates? If the robots result in increased wealth inequality, a wealth tax will counteract that. If not, then it means the introduction of robots led to more broadly-based benefits.

Either way, I'm so sick and tired of people talking about the effect on GDP. GDP is a terrible way to measure anything remotely meaningful. GDP has gone up and up and things have gotten worse and worse for more and more people; GDP could go down a lot and things could still get better for many people. Without some kind of (in)equality adjustment, GDP is meaningless at best and misleading at worst.
Show HN: Silly website to earn badges for touching grass
by buildItN0w_ | 2025-12-15 01:49:48+00:00
I started giving away badges on X to people who touched grass just for fun and most of them loved it! So I decided to create a whole website about it.

Process is simple: - Enter X username / url - Fetch Profile image and choose badge - Generates a badge page which can be shared with nice OG images

The site is deployed on Vercel, with R2 and Browser rendering for OG images and data storage.
by hbrn | 2025-12-15 01:50:08+00:00
> What a weird blast furnace! Would anyone try to use this tool in such a scenario? Not most experienced metalworkers.

Absolutely wrong. If this blast furnace would cost a fraction of other blast furnaces, and would allow you to produce certain metals that were too expensive to produce previously (even with high error rate), almost everyone would use it.

Which is exactly what we're seeing right now.

Yes, you have to distinguish marketing message vs real value. But in terms of bang for buck, Claude Code is an absolute blast (pun intended)!
by AnimalMuppet | 2025-12-15 01:50:53+00:00
Well, let's say you weren't on a machine with hundreds of users. Let's say you were on your own machine (either as a solo dev, or on a personal - that is, non server - machine at work).

Now, does that machine have any important files that are world-writable? How sure are you? Probably less sure than for that machine with hundreds of users...
by mikewarot | 2025-12-15 01:50:57+00:00
Fringe physics: Trying to understand WTF the A field is in electrodynamics, and how I can measure it for a price I can afford. Specifically, I want to communicate through a wall of rock or sea water at VHF frequencies, with high bandwidth. I just upgraded my subscription with ChatGPT to try to grok all of the physics involved. It decided that since this could be used to covertly exfiltrate data, it wasn't something that could be discussed. ;(

Recently a friend acquired a Collins KW-1 transmitter, serial number 1. I helped him get it working again after a long period of disuse by it's previous owner. You wouldn't believe how often it turns out that wires and bolts don't actually conduct electricity.
by willis936 | 2025-12-15 01:51:24+00:00
I had a roomba i5 fully stop working earlier this year. It said it couldn't connect to the internet but I believe what it meant was "some aspect of the remote server has decayed to the point that it no longer works with this platform". I threw it in the trash, vowed to never let this happen again, and got a valetudo machine.

I think the lights have been off for some time already.