MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by Waterluvian | 2025-12-25 00:27:24+00:00
I think it absolutely is a medium based on his big picture idea of how the way we consume information influences us. A TV series or a web search or a university lecture or an evening in the stacks all deeply influence how we might study a subject and in what ways the facts take hold within us. An LLM query or “conversation” is a distinct sibling to those. And a secretary is a medium.
by gherkinnn | 2025-12-25 00:27:35+00:00
Optimising for "code is easy to change" hits that balance well enough.

Start with a loose bag of functions. These are easy to compose in to larger pieces of functionality. And, this is key, easy to decompose when things change. Once this WET bag becomes a chore to change, the right abstraction might just show itself for DRY-ing out.
by shomp | 2025-12-25 00:28:06+00:00
What do you mean by "compete"? Surely there are diminishing returns on asking a question and getting an answer, instead of a set of search results. But the number of things that can go wrong in the experimental phase are very numerous. More bumpers equals less innovation, but is there really a big difference between 90% good with 30% problematic versus 85% good and 1% problematic?
by Imustaskforhelp | 2025-12-25 00:28:33+00:00
Yes I 100% agree with you. Thanks for your insight.

> We have to be adults and not play this emotional ping-pong.

Your message does inspire me but I feel as if there rather isn't anything which can be done individually about the situations of both china and america or any country for that matter.

To me its shocking as how much can change if we as a community do something compared to something individual but also the fact that an individual must still try even if people aren't backing them up to stand for their morals and how effortless it can be for a community if they act reasonable and then listen to individuals who genuinely want to help

There is both hope and sadness in this fact depending on the faith they have in humans in general.

I think humans are mostly really good people overall but we all have contrary opinions which try pushing things so radically different that we cancel each other out or negate

I genuinely have hope that if the system can grow, humans can grow too. I have no doubt in the faith I have on an individual level with people but I have doubt in my faith at mass level

Like I wasn't saying that those chinese individuals in companies would be loyal to the chinese party beyond everything but rather I feel like at mass/combine it to something which happens to every company basically and then I have doubts of faith in the system (and for good measure)

I am genuinely curious but when you mention we have to be adults, what exactly does that really mean at a mass scale. Like (assuming) if I gave you the ability to say one exact message to everybody at the same time, what would the message be for the benefit of mankind itself and so we stop infighting itself perhaps too?

I am super curious to know about that
Ask HN: How many HN'ers Celebrate Christmas vs. ?
by gist | 2025-12-25 00:29:28+00:00
HN puts the Christmas banner and alternating colors. I am curious what percentage of HN community celebrates Christmas vs. not at all, another religion, or born Christian but doesn't celebrate etc.

Note: When I was in college (years ago) I asked an admin this and he said point blank 'face it it's a Christian world'
by colechristensen | 2025-12-25 00:29:58+00:00
... have you ever tried to do anything with ffmpeg? tried to backup a DVD to a compressed file?

Video codecs are some of the most complex software I've ever encountered with the most number and the most opaque options.

It's easy for streamers because they don't have options, twitch et al give you about three total choices, there's nothing to figure out.
by gavfaro | 2025-12-25 00:30:58+00:00
Hey HN! Solo dev here! Building something new has always been a fun challenge to take on. But marketing? That's the real beast I've been struggling to crack. Especially in the world of short form video content where that initial hook makes all the difference.

That's why I built VidScore AI: an iOS app that uses AI to analyze your videos before you post.

- Pick platform (TikTok, Reels, Shorts, X, LinkedIn, etc.)
- Choose a goal (virality, engagement, conversions)
- Get a score + actionable tips to boost retention and views

Thanks and look forward to improving based off your feedback!
by andy_ppp | 2025-12-25 00:32:21+00:00
Happy Christmas everyone, I’m at 29000 feet on a flight to Hong Kong after a mini version of planes, trains and automobiles and including cancelled planes and taxis to different airports. I’m struck by honestly what a miracle it is that we can travel thousands of miles at hundreds of MPH and have okay internet access and communicate. I don’t think people quite realise how delicate all of the technology is now and how easily it could fail if we don’t all look after each other. I hope you all have a brilliant Christmas and new year!
by AndyKelley | 2025-12-25 00:32:27+00:00
As the application author you can set the release mode in the build script so that the release flag looks like `zig build --release` instead, and the user doesn't choose the optimization mode.

As a user you can pass `--release` to `zig build` to request release mode. If the application doesn't want to pick for you, you'll get an error and then you can pick for yourself.

In this case, it looks like the author of Phoenix wants to choose ReleaseSafe as the official release mode of the application.

Phoenix is the name of my hometown, btw.
by geoffpado | 2025-12-25 00:33:11+00:00
> We often hear that "people leave managers, not jobs." But sometimes, people leave jobs despite loving their managers.

These two aren’t really mutually exclusive. Your manager may be extremely friendly and accommodating to you personally (as it seems like the author’s manager was), but part of a manager’s job is growing and supporting their reports with their career goals. If you’ve spent years majorly underleveled like it seems this person did, your manager is failing you. No matter how much of a nice person they might be, they’re not doing their job well if you’re attempting to grow at the company and aren’t succeeding.

So yes, I do think that this person still left a manager. He left a manager who wasn’t meeting the needs he had to stay at the company.
by nine_k | 2025-12-25 00:33:18+00:00
Yes, but at least humanly possible. Likely not with all the gear, but at least as a player you feel more like a running person than like a flying pilot.

Doom offered very nice gentle "bobbing" that added to the illusion of a real person's gait. Of course, only when you played single-player and switched off the "always run" mode. (Regarding this, I wish there were a popular FPS that would explore the notion of stamina, so that running mindlessly would be wasteful, but sprinting at critical moments would be an extra game mechanic. It worked reasonably well in Diablo, released in 1996.)
by glzone1 | 2025-12-25 00:33:23+00:00
Python 3 was actively antagonistic to Python 2 code for no reason other than to lecture us about how we were doing things wrong, writing code to support 2 and 3 to help transition was dumb etc etc.

For example, in python 2 you could explicitly mark unicode text with u"...". That was actively BLOCKED with python 3.0 which supposedly was about unicode support! The irony was insane, they could of just no-oped the u"". I got totally sick of the "expert" language designers with no real world code shipping responsibilities lecturing me. Every post about this stuff was met by comments from pedantic idiots. So every string had to have a helper function around it. Total and absolute garbage. They still haven't explained to my satisifaction why not support u"..." to allow a transition more easily to 3.

Luckily sanity started prevailing around 3.5 and we started to see a progression - whoever was behind this should be thanked. The clueless unicode everything was walked back and we got % for bytes so you could work with network protocols again (where unicode would be STUPID to force given the installed base). We got u"" back.

By 3.6 we got back to reasonable path handling on windows and the 3 benefits started to come without antagonistic approaches / regressions from 2. But that was about 8 years? So that burnt a lot of the initial excitement.
by abdullahkhalids | 2025-12-25 00:33:27+00:00
When I was a prof, I used to get a lot of emails. My system was that every few hours I would go through all new emails in my inbox and archive all of them in the following fashion

- Some emails required a one line immediate response. I did that.

- Some emails required a longer reply. I tagged them (in Thunderbird) as ToDo and archived them.

- Some emails had information I would need at a later meeting. Tagged as TempInfo and archived.

- Most emails were read once and archived.

Now, inbox is zeroed. Next, can attack items in ToDo one by one, and untag them, so the ToDo list is always short. Similarly, as soon as the relevant meeting finished, untag TempInfo emails.

Now, I work somewhere where Slack is used, resulting in an endless deluge of messages that cannot be controlled.
by refulgentis | 2025-12-25 00:34:51+00:00
My deepest apologies, I can't parse this and I earnestly tried: 5 minutes of my own thinking, then 3 llms, then a 10 minute timer of my own thinking over the whole thing.

My guess is you're trying to communicate "tinygrad doesn't need gpu drivers" which maybe is transmutated into "tinygrad replaces CUDA" and you think "CUDA means other GPUs can't be used for LLMs, thus nvidia has a strangehold"

I know George has pushed this idea for years now, but, you have to look no further than AMD/Google making massive deals to understand how it works on the ground.

I hope he doesn't victimize you further with his rants. It's cruel of him to use people to assuage this own ego and make them look silly in public.

Re: has someone else does this? https://github.com/albertstarfield/apple-slick-rtx (May 2024, 19 months ago. didn't bother looking further than 4th google result for "apple silicon external gpu")
by lloydatkinson | 2025-12-25 00:34:58+00:00
> Not a very clear issue report, but looks like a conflict between language features, copilot, and possibly snippets?

Which is overwhelmingly the VS Code experience for any language. Everything feels shaky. I've had to report a bunch of irritating issues like the post for TypeScript - never fixed or resolved. I have never needed to report issues like this for C# in Visual Studio, and when I have tried C# in VS Code the experience makes me wonder if it's a bad joke.
by sklargh | 2025-12-25 00:35:43+00:00
Merry Christmas HN. I offer this group my thanks for something I can learn from every day.

This is the Trinity College Choir’s advent concert - really puts me in the mood for the season,
a remarkable performance and service: https://www.youtube.com/live/MsUd-twzG2U?si=1HMiaD2-Le70-fch
by rvnx | 2025-12-25 00:36:20+00:00
If you want, “SameSite=Strict” may also be helpful and is supported on “all” browsers so it is reasonable to use it (but like you did, adding server validation is always a +).

https://caniuse.com/mdn-http_headers_set-cookie_samesite_str...

This checks Scheme, Port and Origin to decide whether the request should be allowed or not.
by ahachete | 2025-12-25 00:36:24+00:00
I have two Framework 13 DIY, top of the line (Ryzen AI 9 HX 370, 96 GB of RAM, 2TB WD BLACK SN850X). Well, TBH just one, the other one was stolen with less than one month, but that's a different story.

Can't be happier with this choice.

First of all, now I feel confident I can easily tinker with my laptop, open it and replace any components. No, I'm not repeating their Marketing, I'm truly confident now. Some months ago my previous Lenovo X1 Carbon stopped charging and I was scared as hell. Sure, I have everything in version control and cloud drives blah blah blah but if it doesn't charge, it's dead. Sure, I can extract the NVMe (is it easy at all?) and rsync the data (for a faster recovery) but is that easy, feasible, can I do it on the go (X1 stopped charging while I was on a trip).

The Framework 13 DIY I built it in less than 10 minutes. I can easily disassemble again in a heartbeat. This is priceless.

Other than this, build quality is higher than expected, and several other people said exactly the same when I showed my unit. Powerful? Most than any desktop out there. Perfectly portable. Works well OOB with Linux. What else do I need? Nothing, it's my laptop and will be the next one.

(Actually the next one may be cheaper, as I may only need to replace the motherboard, we will see)
by kmeisthax | 2025-12-25 00:37:39+00:00
If you're alleging that I replied to an Apple-affiliated troll farm employee, the possibility is there. But Apple is particularly unique in that it has a certain brand of customer that stuck it out during the days where System 7 was being absolutely clowned on by Windows 95 and NT. These hardcore Apple customers treat the company as if they are members of a persecuted minority religion. In other words, Apple doesn't need a troll farm, they have their fans to do it.

(Which, ironically, was also the strategy of Epic's entire Fortnite stunt...)
by smj-edison | 2025-12-25 00:37:47+00:00
Bit of an observation, but I've noticed that there's been quite a few pragmatic projects started in Zig. Bun vs Deno comes to mind (one focused on DX, the other on security), and now this vs Wayland. Not to say that designing something properly is wrong, just that it tends to throw away a lot of important interoperability.
by laidoffamazon | 2025-12-25 00:37:52+00:00
At Amazon, level is public. Microsoft, only the title (Senior etc) is visible not the precise level is visible is my impression. At Google, it can be public but apparently can also be hidden. At Facebook it's always hidden.

I'm interviewing engineers right now, it is tough to judge what their current level mapping is especially if they come from Facebook. You can guesstimate from their resume accomplishments and tenure but the rest is just interview performance or asking directly - there are staff engineers that get there from 3 years out of college and there are seniors that are at that level for a decade.
by didibus | 2025-12-25 00:37:54+00:00
That's quite a shallow view:

Unemployment has increased.

Number of gig workers is at an all time high.

Layoffs have continued.

Polls show most people have financial anxiety and feel squeezed.

Inflation is not under control.

Buy now pay later usage is up as much as consumer spending is.

Income and wealth inequality are near records high.

GDP and consumer spending were also seen peaking before the last 5 recessions as well...
by wyre | 2025-12-25 00:38:34+00:00
FWIW coding is one of the largest usages for LLM's where SOTA quality matters.

I think the bar for when coding models are "good enough" will be a tradeoff between performance and price. I could be using Cerebras Code and saving $50 a month, but Opus 4.5 is fast enough and I value the piece-of-mind I have knowing it's quality is higher than Cerebras' open source models to spend the extra money. It might take a while for this gap to close, and what is considered "good enough" will be different for every developer, but certainly this gap cannot exist forever.
by genuser | 2025-12-25 00:38:57+00:00
The modern creative professional faces a perpetual dilemma: the need for formidable on-the-go computing power versus the desire for a truly portable machine. The Dell 14 Premium enters this arena with a clear, uncompromising thesis, positioning itself as a desktop-grade workstation crammed into a 14-inch chassis. However, its most immediate and defining characteristic is a surprising one: its substantial heft. Weighing in at nearly four pounds, this laptop feels more akin to a robust 15-inch device, trading the featherweight portability of some rivals for a sense of indestructible, over-engineered build quality. This core identity power and durability at the cost of mobility shapes every aspect of the experience, raising fundamental questions about its fit for the very audience it seeks to serve.
Show HN: Calclock, Countdown/Lifeclock, Configurable
by HocusLocus | 2025-12-25 00:39:33+00:00
I originally built this in Visual BASIC in 1994 for a friend who was in McMurdo Base Antarctica waiting on an 'Air Drop!' that was still months away, that would bring fresh food and much-desired mail to its denizens. It was a looming event everyone was anticipating and the waiting was cruel. No shortages but the 'freshies' run out first and for long spans everyone had to eat from cans, which saps morale. People would barter for spare batteries. I said via email "Sorry I cannot help you... but HERE is something that will make the wait even harder to bear! Hopefully it will become funny after awhile." So I sent him a CALCLOCK counting down to Air Drop. For awhile I used it to countdown to various things and to make life clocks.

It stopped working a long ago. It was made using 16-bit Visual BASIC so ancient it even crashes the wine emulator today.

This is the 2025 rewrite. Runs everywhere, 76k self contained html using js/svg elements built on the fly.

Set from-time to NOW and to-time to the date of something in the future, and it becomes a countdown clock and will be 'all hands up' when the future moment arrives.

Set to-time to a day and time of birth and hit the BIRTHDAY button. This sets from-date to a year before the birth. Since the to-event is long past, it is showing elapsed time since birth and the blue and gray hand in the center will track the year as it leads up to the birthday again. The 'flip' button mirrors the clock horizontally for clockwise/anticlockwise. Or hit flip repeatedly and make the hands dance.

You can also SAVE a local copy to a folder that loads the clock with the current settings. The EVENT NAME becomes the title of the window or browser tab.
by simfree | 2025-12-25 00:39:39+00:00
The replacement parts aren't cheap either as Framework has very little used parts market.

I can rehouse a Thinkpad or most other high volume laptops for a quarter or less the cost of a Framework, making the total lifetime cost much lower. Framework will sell you a new housing with screen for $399, but at that point I can buy an 11th gen Thinkpad for half the cost.

I want the economics to work, but even with free labor it makes no sense.
by Gailgonz-11 | 2025-12-25 00:41:27+00:00
In today's fast-paced world, ensuring safety during power outages is paramount. Emergency drivers play a crucial role in providing reliable backup lighting solutions. This article explores the quality assurance measures taken by Qihui Lighting, a leading manufacturer of LED emergency products, to ensure that their emergency drivers meet international standards and customer expectations.https://info.qihuilights.com/recognized-emergency-drivers-qu...
by grepfru_it | 2025-12-25 00:41:58+00:00
Why do you think I have an unrealistic expectation? Nothing in my comments alluded to a legion of people. Just a random passerby’er making a comment. It was everyone else who responded negatively with criticize. I have nothing to prove, I know what I saw and the image is available on the public internet for anyone else interested in following up.

Good luck!
by makeitdouble | 2025-12-25 00:42:52+00:00
> hardware has usually advanced far enough

That's not what we're experiencing.

Screens have seen improvements, but not in a significant way within these 4-6 years. Keyboards haven't improved leaps and bounds. Track pads either. Laptop casings haven't seen innovation either.

The only thing that significantly changes is the motherboard, which is not nothing, but replacing it independently makes sense to me.

> port module idea.

That's one of the best idea they have! You might have bought a laptop with 4 USB ports 5 years ago, only to realize you'd be so much happier with two USB-A. Or you realize you never ever use the SD Card slot. Well, you'd fix that easily on a Framework, not on any other laptop.

I wish I could do that right now. The only reason I haven't one of their laptop is their stubborn refusal to ship outside a dozen or so countries.
by wrs | 2025-12-25 00:43:09+00:00
I agree “literally” was too strong, but you’ve implemented the core idea of GTD inbox, which is to have a place to put stuff you don’t want to do right now, plus the confidence that you’ll look there later (which is what lets you forget about it now).

> If this message is not urgent, and if dealing with it now will distract me, and if it’s either not long, or if it’s personal, it goes straight into the folder.

How do you know if it’s urgent, or if dealing with it will distract you, if you don’t know what the action is?

Anyway, I didn’t mean it as a criticism; that sort of thing happens to me all the time so I thought I recognized the phenomenon.
by kmeisthax | 2025-12-25 00:45:35+00:00
> If third party headphones are given access

Third-party headphones already have access. Bluetooth audio is a standard that is well-supported both by iOS and headphones of any kind[0]. The problem is that the process for pairing a device on iOS (or, for that matter, Android) is a pain in the ass for knowledgeable users and completely untenable for everyone else.

Apple recognized that this was a problem, and made their phone detect if you were trying to pair new headphones and pop up a notification for it. But only for Apple's headphones. Which is stupid.

[0] In fact, this is why I use AirPods Pro on an Android phone.
by simonw | 2025-12-25 00:45:47+00:00
I find that cookie setting really confusing. It means that cookies will only be respected on requests that originated on the site that set them... but that includes when you click links from one site to another.

So if you follow a link (e.g. from a Google search) to a site that uses SameSite=Strict cookies you will be treated as logged out on the first page that you see! You won't see your logged in state until you refresh that page.

I guess maybe it's for sites that are so SPA-pilled that even the login state isn't displayed until a fetch() request has fired somewhere?
by huug156 | 2025-12-25 00:46:04+00:00
All L4s are going to have supervision at Google, whether they “need” it or not. And most managers and tech leads aren’t going to just sit around twiddling their thumbs when no one “needs” supervision. Because most of them are bad at their jobs (I can count the number of good managers I’ve seen in 20 years on one hand).
by coffeemug | 2025-12-25 00:46:10+00:00
> nothing beats the comfort and security of one's parents home, especially during the holiday season.

A bit morbid, but reminds me of this passage by John Quincy Adams:

> Everything about the house is the same. I was not fully sensible of the change till I entered his bedchamber [...] That moment was inexpressibly painful, and struck me as if it had been an arrow to my heart. My father and mother have departed. The charm which has always made this house to me an abode of enchantment is dissolved; and yet my attachment to it, and to the whole region around, is stronger than I ever felt it before.

Hope you get to spend the next Christmas with your family!
by ptero | 2025-12-25 00:46:38+00:00
It is important to clarify what we mean by "obligated / not optional", as I think there is a terminology mismatch.

When I said that a particular job task is not optional I mean that not doing this task will lead to a disciplinary action from the employer (being fired, put on a performance improvement clock with the HR, etc.). Reducing those tasks brings in one set of considerations.

Your definition of "obliged", if I understand it correctly, is primarily a self-assigned or a community-expected one: "if I stop running this seminar or remove myself from that editorial board, I will feel I am not doing all I can / my colleagues will look at me askance". But it will not trigger retaliation from the employer. Reducing overload from those tasks brings a completely different set of considerations.