MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by sho | 2025-12-13 06:12:16+00:00
> It requires to have a full copy locally.

yeah that's the thing. When my iPhotos library exceeded 1TB I lost the ability to store the full local copies. Since then, iCloud itself has been the sole source.

Looks like there's some decent, reasonably priced apps to handle this like https://apps.apple.com/us/app/parachute-backup/id6748614170?... (no affiliation)
by x3sphere | 2025-12-13 06:12:36+00:00
It's just insane that a gift card redemption can trigger this. What's the rationale? It would make more sense if they just locked the person out of redeeming gift cards or something, not the entire account.

But reading horror stories like this is is why I only use the very bare minimum of any of these cloud services. Keep local copies of everything. For developer accounts, I always create them under a separate email so they're not tied to my personal. At least it can minimize the damage somewhat.

It sucks that I have to take all these extra precautions though. It's definitely made me develop a do not trust any big corp mindset.
by ninjin | 2025-12-13 06:12:42+00:00
I am somewhat cautious to comment as I know the author is way more experienced than I am and I fear that I may be missing something. However, let me try to accomplish the same with my elementary doas(1) knowledge.

Allowing mounting for a specific group is simple with doas.conf(5):

permit :mountd cmd /sbin/mount permit :mountd cmd /sbin/umount

We can of course tighten it further as the author did:

permit :mount-usb cmd /sbin/mount /dev/sdb1 permit :umount-usb cmd /sbin/umount /media/usb

If you want to go more complex than specifying arguments, we could of course create a shell script and specify it instead of a binary.

Likewise, we can do something similar for a service account:

permit :www-deployment as www-deployment cmd /var/www/bin/build /var/www/application

The key difference here would be that www-deployment can not delegate as easily to arbitrary users, as they would need to ask someone with root access to add additional users to the www-deployment group. But I am left wondering if this use case (if it is important enough) is not equally well served by specifying a location for non-root users to add permissions akin to what we see in doas.conf(5), but with the constraint that they of course can only allow other users to run commands with their privileges. Yes, it would "bloat" doas(1), but these code paths are not that long as long as you keep your scope constrained (doas(1) has a core of just over 500 lines and with environment handling and configuration format parsing we arrive a a final line count at just over 1,300).

At this point, the main advantage I see with capsudod is that you can more easily drop privileges and put in restrictions like pledge(2) before the binary is ever called upon by whatever user we have granted permissions. While with the doas(1) thinking above you have to run over plenty of code that could be exploited. Still, this feels like a rather minor relative improvement to what we already have.

Am I missing something in my ignorance? Lastly, let me also say that I am sure that sudo(8) has the ability to do the same things I proposed to do with doas(1) above, but I know the latter far better.
by sdenton4 | 2025-12-13 06:14:47+00:00
This mod includes collecting cheese (though it's a side activity, and maybe too subtle for the rats): https://youtu.be/qPRvw6kRN-8?si=j9iuTuiHerm0AhQ2

And here's a thing I knew had to exist: a doom mod/level set on a moon made of cheese... https://youtu.be/XxdeUbE9kvw?si=_cpJQKuDy87BN7EP&t=10m20s
by Suppafly | 2025-12-13 06:15:44+00:00
I had a similar issue with "ant", except it was horizontal and the game refused to acknowledge I had found it. I'm wondering if it only registers the ones that it initially generates and doesn't double check when you select others or something. I did notice when you move it, it updated the list to reflect that there were two aardvark's so I'm not sure why it didn't recognize the 'ant' that I located.
by jdyer9 | 2025-12-13 06:16:29+00:00
So, in doing a bit of research from a link in one of the other comments, this is lcos, levelized cost of storage. I understand that to be roughly equivalent to the marginal cost of using it, including the capex divided over the unit volume. That same article uses $125/kwh as the capex, which is in line with your (and my) expectations of the cost to install.

$65/mwh works out to $0.065/kwh, so that makes sense. Effectively you can read this as "it costs $65/mwh to store and then consume electricity using these batteries"
by hvb2 | 2025-12-13 06:17:22+00:00
> Higher productivity is also why jobs pay so much more in the U.S. than the E.U.

You mean the top tier jobs or the bottom 90%?

They pay so much more because the US is very ok with big income inequality.

Those unions represent a much bigger share of the population, so shouldn't they have more away in a democratic system (where demos is people)
by geerlingguy | 2025-12-13 06:19:45+00:00
Yeah, even decent 40 Gbps QSFP+ DAC cables are usually $30+, and those don't have active electronics in them like Thunderbolt does.

The ability to also deliver 240W (IIRC?) over the same cable is also a bit different here, it's more like FireWire than a standard networking cable.
by flipped | 2025-12-13 06:20:03+00:00
Yes, but let's not forget it's voluntary based. There are lots of high quality nodes, although less which are basically burning money and getting nothing in return. We all believe in a censorship-resistant and free web but only few are willing to take action. My two small guard/middle relays are rented at 10$/m each and is only 100Mbit/s non-metered up/down because it gets expensive.
by akoboldfrying | 2025-12-13 06:23:04+00:00
> Now you have to somehow write down what all that does.

I think the core difficulty is that there's no way to know whether your spec is complete. The only automatic feedback you can hope to get is that, if you add too many constraints, the prover can find a contradiction between them. But that's all (that I'm aware of, at least).

Let's take an extremely simple example: Proving that a sort algorithm works correctly. You think, "Aha! The spec should require that every element of the resulting list is >= the previous element!", and you're right -- but you are not yet done, because a "sorting algorithm" that merely returns an empty list also satisfies this spec.

Suppose you realise this, and think: "Aha! The output list must also be the same size as the input list!" And again, you're right, but you're still not done, because a "sorting algorithm" that simply returns inputSize copies of the number 42 also satisfies this new spec.

Suppose you notice this too, and think: "Aha! Every element in the input should also appear the same number of times in the output!" You're right -- and now, finally, your spec is actually complete. But you have no way to know that, so you will likely continue to wonder if there is some additional constraint out there that you haven't thought of yet... And this is all for one of the tidiest, most well-specified problems you could hope to encounter.
by SunlitCat | 2025-12-13 06:23:10+00:00
Don’t forget that many of these manufacturers operate with long-term supply contracts for components like RAM, maintain existing inventory, or are selling systems that were produced some time ago. That helps explain why we are still seeing comparatively low prices at the moment.

If the current RAM supply crisis continues, it is very likely that these kinds of offers will disappear and that systems like this will become more expensive as well, not to mention all the other products that rely on DRAM components.

I also don’t believe RAM prices will drop again anytime soon, especially now that manufacturers have seen how high prices can go while demand still holds. Unlike something like graphics cards, RAM is not optional, it is a fundamental requirement for building any computer (or any device that contains one). People don’t buy it because they want to, but because they have to.

In the end, I suspect that some form of market-regulating mechanism may be required, potentially through government intervention. Otherwise, it’s hard for me to see what would bring prices down again, unless Chinese manufacturers manage to produce DRAM at scale, at significantly lower cost, and effectively flood the market.
by overfeed | 2025-12-13 06:23:32+00:00
> They're saying you forgot about the range 1:1 to 0:1.

Color me intrigued! Tell me more about these slave-CEOs serving at the beck and call of empowered workers. I didn't merely forget about the 1:1 to 0:1 range, it's an Outside-Context scenario. I confess I have never encountered - or thought about - organizations with inverted hierarchies. Do you have any specific example of such a thing?
by burnt-resistor | 2025-12-13 06:23:58+00:00
Proton still appears to suffer from Lavabit's pathologies in several ways because it ultimately stores GPG private keys, hasn't had their "zero-access encryption" audited by an independent third-party, it hosts servers in privacy-hostile jurisdictions that can be seized, and they've already handed user data to authorities over 30k times. [0] Proton Mail is a simulacra of privacy as a service that lies to its customers.

At present time, the best way to assure privacy is to lease (using cryptocurrency) VPS instances in a neutral, privacy-respecting country and self-host a web-mail stack oneself. There isn't really a practical way around this because powerful nation states are able to demand access to customer data from almost every cloud/VPS provider in their jurisdiction.

0. https://proton.me/legal/transparency
by b112 | 2025-12-13 06:26:03+00:00
If you want to truly save your photos, make backups of the locals and put it in your safe deposit box at the bank. Or alternatively, at a trusted friend/relative's house.

Even doing this yearly can save the immense sadness of lost memories. And of course, this works for emails, and everything else.

If you encrypt it, make sure you use a method not tied to any external service, or the machine you're on. I don't use Apple, yet I suspect that an encrypted external backup might be tied to your Apple ID, or some such, because that's how the world flies today.
by echelon | 2025-12-13 06:27:03+00:00
As much as I love Spirited Away and Castle in the Sky, I've been so bummed Miyazaki hasn't returned to more adult storylines.

Princess Mononoke and Nausicaa are two of my top ten films. I'd do anything to have Miyazaki make one more.

I even bought Miramax's old marketing website and kept it online [1].

I was lucky enough to teach English in Hokkaido [2], which is where Ghibli animators drew inspiration for Princess Mononoke. It's such a beautiful place, and you can feel it in the film.

[1] http://www.princess-mononoke.com/ (I should get SSL certs but I haven't touched it in years.)

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46035689
by CobrastanJorji | 2025-12-13 06:27:25+00:00
If you haven't listened to the 99% Invisible podcast before, I highly recommend it. Each episode has a little synopsis, and each time I think "wow, this one's a stinker, I'm don't care about this at all," and then that evening my poor spouse has to listen to me talk on and on about the exciting random obscure world I've just been given a peek into. And there are hundreds of episodes.

I think a good recent starting episode may be "Towers of Silence." https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/towers-of-silence/
by gsf_emergency_6 | 2025-12-13 06:31:28+00:00
>in biology or chemistry..

>But it’s fair to assume that such fields have not been idle either.

"Manngell amnesia", where if you hear of breakthroughs in any field other than AI, you assume that very field has always been stagnant?

There's another angle to this. Eg MoF-synthesis is a breakthrough unappreciated outside of chem because of how embarrassingly easy it is. Laymen (& VCs) expect breakthroughs to require complexity, billions, wasted careers, risk, unending slog etc..

Read the bios of the chem nobellists to see what stress-free lives they led (around the time of the discovery), even compared to VCs and proof assistant researchers. Disclaimer: possibly not applicable to physics/physiology laureates after 1970 :)

https://www.amazon.com/Dancing-Naked-Mind-Field-Mullis/dp/07...

Mullis succeeded in demonstrating PCR on December 16, 1983, but the staff remained circumspect as he continued to produce ambiguous results amid alleged methodological problems, including a perceived lack of "appropriate controls and repetition."

(From wiki)
by userbinator | 2025-12-13 06:31:32+00:00
To paraphrase an old saying: Live by Big Tech, die by Big Tech.

After nearly 30 years as a loyal customer

I've heard others say this (and was a "loyal advocate" of Windows for around 2 decades myself), but the reality is they simply do not care. You are merely a single user out of several billion.

Many of the reps I’ve spoken to have suggested strange things

That almost sounds like some sort of AI, not a human. But if I were in your situation I'd be inclined to print out that response as evidence, and then actually go there physically to see what happens.
by asdff | 2025-12-13 06:32:14+00:00
Frivolous consumption would be a better thing than dumping more money into “productive companies.” Apple becomes a trillion dollar company and did that uplift the world at all? Not really. People at the top got rich. What is there to show for it but ewaste. Slave labor. Lithium mining. Data center pollution. A race to what, I’m not sure. They will spend it on lockheed stock to diversify. Missiles with swords. Bombs. Dead people. Wars to justify more bomb production. Arms races that amounts to lighting money on fire because wwiii will never happen since everyone is so globally overleveraged. Diversify into oil. More pollution. Human rights abuses. The worst leaders in the modern age rich beyond wildest imagination free to slaughter journalists and have the world look the other way after a few months of wagging a finger.

At least when they blow their money on some iberico ham a farmer somewhere keeps his livelihood. An expensive cocktail and a 200 year old distillery keeps its doors open. $100 tip on valet directly into the local economy. Live in housekeeper providing for their children.

Productivity is a cult. Why are the most “productive” things the most dehumanizing? What are the true great works of this world? Most reasonable people would say trying to help the poor, cure disease, save the environment. All things private investment has deemed insufficiently productive over some machiavellian horror.
by Helmut10001 | 2025-12-13 06:32:18+00:00
I set up automatic backups of WhatsApp to my self-hosted Nextcloud once. Since you need 'tested backups', I tried to decrypt these WhatsApp backups independent of my phone, but this was not possible. You need the original device. There are some hacks online, but they are always out of date.

I am tending now to running Mautrix Whatsapp bridge and backing up my data through this.
by tptacek | 2025-12-13 06:32:20+00:00
Yeah, at some point people are going to work out that the problem isn't Johnny, it's email. Email is distinctively hostile to secure messaging. No matter what software Johnny uses, "secure" email will always be inferior to alternative options.

https://www.latacora.com/blog/2020/02/19/stop-using-encrypte...
by scrubs | 2025-12-13 06:34:25+00:00
I see no need to dunk like that. There are ample stories over the years on HN how software orgs without using FM have bugs, waste money, treat people poorly, all leading to canceling software projects before delivering anything to customers. And I'm only mentioning just a very few issues. Software development in corps has many challenges to ROI and customer satisfaction.

I might also point out FM had a nice history of value-add in HW. And we know HW is higher quality than software.
by compounding_it | 2025-12-13 06:34:33+00:00
My 2 cents:

There was a time when I accidentally deleted some photos of which I had only one copy. I blamed myself for being stupid not having a copy but also money was tight for additional drives.

Then there is this: depending on a service provider and then blaming them for something like this. The problem is that now you are losing trust in service providers (of which there should be little to begin with) and on top of that you are also blaming yourself for depending on them. However you have to create a trust model where your fault allows you to have a service helping you with it while a fault at the service provider will allow you to restore data from your end too, getting the best of both worlds.

MacOS and Windows / Google with always logged in systems that lock you out completely at their will is an example of how your devices are not owned by you to begin with and then trusting them with your data as well means your digital life is basically owned by them completely.

Now imagine that there are no humans to solve this but endless LLM bots that respond with generic responses because the LLM has never seen a problem like this. I want to point out that owning your data and hardware is really important if you depend on it and your business especially does.
by samdoesnothing | 2025-12-13 06:34:49+00:00
So the problem with your fridge example is that if the product was as bad as you say, nobody would buy it and thus there is no risk of a monopoly. If the product is so good that everyone wants it, there goes the rest of your pro-consumer argument.

This whole argument is a neat trick, as you smuggle bad outcomes into a situation where there aren't any by pretending that everyone wants to buy the horrible product.

If you want to make a case that monopolies that arise from consumers overwhelmingly choosing a preferential product are bad, go ahead, but don't construct an impossible scenario where everyone loses their minds and buys a product that provides purely negative value to them just cuz.
by helterskelter | 2025-12-13 06:36:42+00:00
This. I was reading about some of the ugly hacks Valve has had to get around to use 2.1 on the steam machine. They (HDMI consortium, whatever its called) won't let you use 2.1 if your video drivers are FOSS. Since SM has open drivers for the AMD card it's leading to subobtimal video output at certain resolution/framerate combos (4K@120fps? Something like that), and they can't legally advertise support for HDMI2.1.
by pratyushnair01 | 2025-12-13 06:36:55+00:00
Correct if I'm wrong, but without any new entrants, the market effectively cornered by a few players and high demand from data centers, how will the prices come down? Just like the GPU prices post COVID and bitcoin demand, how will there be any incentive to bring down consumer prices? The only scenario I can think of is chinese firms catch up and swoop in to corner the market.
by b112 | 2025-12-13 06:37:30+00:00
The broken logic is that it will expose why the account was flagged, and thus, allow 'bad actors' to better navigate and bypass such flags.

Of course, this is absolutely silly and beyond absurd, for bad actors share information of forums, can deduce fairly easily, and even have help from people on staff.

Such actors typically know about detection and flagging methods within days of implementation. There's literally zero benefit to secrecy. None. Security through obscurity can be a beneficial additional layer, but it simply never helps here.

We really should pass a law requiring full disclosure of the precise method of banning. I can even see a 'trial' period, where accounts activated (and used!) for 3 months receive this benefit, but new accounts, or new + dormant accounts do not.

This should likely be coupled with mandated full refunds of phones or computers, as an example.

Note that this isn't a 'free' account we're talking about here. An Apple account, or a Google account is required to use an iphone or pixel in its default config, and all the features it entails. These accounts aren't free, they're part of purchase cost, and core-required.

(Even if it's a, for example, Samsung phone? It comes pre-installed, with uninstallable Google Play cruft, as part of an agreement with Samsung. Same conditions need apply here)
by beala | 2025-12-13 06:38:48+00:00
I self host an Immich [1] instance to backup photos on my iPhone. It’s OSS and has a level of polish I’ve rarely seen in free software. Really, it’s shockingly good. The iOS app whisks my photo off to my home server several times per day.

What I’m not sure about is how to backup things like iMessages, Notes, and my Contacts. Every time I’ve looked, it appears the only options are random GitHub scripts that have reverse engineered the iMessage database.

1. https://immich.app/
by maplethorpe | 2025-12-13 06:40:06+00:00
But nevertheless, a human did still do it. How gruelling and exploitative the process was, or how many humans it took, is beside the point. The fact that the image existed meant that there was an attainable skill that a person could learn in order to do that same thing, and that was inspiring.

Since the days of cave paintings, that experience has been available to all humans. In the year 2025, it died, and I will never experience it again.
by abernard1 | 2025-12-13 06:42:01+00:00
A useful distinction I've made before is that of technical vs business services.

This also mirrors the alignment that arises in tech companies between platform (very useful to be centralized) vs architecture. Platform technologies are useful as pure technology, and therefore horizontally distributable. Whereas big-a Architecture as a central committee died an ignominious death for good reason: product and business decisions require deep knowledge, and therefore architecture is simply a function a product team does.

I am old enough to remember when there were simply "services," and there was an understanding that a service was something a team or business function did, because it mirrored Conway's Law. The root of service is literally "serve." That there was a one-to-one correspondence between a software service and the team serving others was a given.

Microservices were a natural evolution of this. When growth happened, parts of those things improperly in a too-large service were pushed down so they could be used by multiple teams. But the idea of a hierarchy of concerns was always present in plain ol' SOA.
by AngryData | 2025-12-13 06:44:15+00:00
We aren't talking about a civil war though, we are talking about a civil uprising. Trump didn't take the government by force or strongarm politicians into compliance, they mostly went along with all this bullshit too. People already had the view that federal politicians as a whole were corrupt and self-serving and have been failing to effectively govern and legislate in the country's favor for decades. I also doubt any or enough of them would be willing to take up arms themselves and become a factional leader. Nobody is going to rally behind Kamala or some geriatric or the democratic party even if they were willing to try.

And in an insurgency type situation private arms/small arms are extremely effective, if costly with lives. The US failing to subdue multiple countries long term despite having a tiny fraction the amount of small arms, veterans, or people directly involved in US logistics operations, is all the proof we need. Nobody wants that, it would be horrendous and bloody, but tanks and planes don't run off mere hopes and dreams and the US citizenry is more heavily armed by multiple factors than any other country or people in history.
by scrubs | 2025-12-13 06:46:47+00:00
Nvidia is adversarial too, and a giant pain to deal with. But then since the 1980s there's been a slow pendulum move to suppliers having more actual and self-perceived power over customers. I'm a big proponent of respectfully letting the supplier know when needed I tell them they don't me if I am satisfied or whether its worth the $ spent on them. Always have options. Without options there's no choice. Internal suppliers (in a corp) periodically need to be told the same thing. Mishandling one's customer power in the relationship is an error i don't like to make.