MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by adrian_b | 2025-12-08 10:18:42+00:00
I agree that HDR has been mostly misused, but on the other hand the difference between the color space sRGB and the wider-gamut rendering enabled by the Rec. 2020 encoding of the movie is extremely obvious for me (sRGB has a very bad red primary color, which forces the desaturation of the colors in the yellow-orange-red-purple sector, where the human eye is most sensitive to hues and where there are many objects with saturated colors, e.g. flowers, fruits, clothes, whose colors are distorted by sRGB).

Because I want the Rec. 2020 and 10-bit color encoding, I must also choose HDR, as these features are usually only available together, even if I do not get any serious advantage from HDR and HDR-encoded movies can usually be viewed well only in a room with no light or with dim light, otherwise most of them are too dark.
by quietbritishjim | 2025-12-08 10:18:50+00:00
> Using the stack or the heap means your variables aren't always at the same memory address.

Your mention of STL makes it sound like you're talking about C++. But I don't know of any C++ compiler that lets you completely avoid use of the stack, even if you disable the usual suspects (RTTI and exceptions). Sure, you'd have to avoid local variables, defined within a function's body (or at block scope), but that's nowhere near enough.

* The compiler would need to statically allocate space for every function's parameters and return address. That's actually how early compilers did work, but today it would be inefficient because there are surely so many functions defined in a program's binary compared to the number being executed at any given time. (Edit: I suppose you already need the actual code for those functions, so maybe allocating room for their parameters is not so bad.)

* It would also mean that recursion would not work, even mutual recursion (so you'd need runtime checks because this would be hard to detect at compile/link time), although I suspect this is less of a problem than it sounds, but I'm not aware of a C++ compiler that supports it.

* You'd also need to avoid creating any temporary variables at all e.g. y = a + b + c would not be allowed if a,b,c are non-trivial types. (y = a + b would be OK because the temporary could be constructed directly into y's footprint, or stored temporarily in the return space of the relevant operator+(), which again would be statically allocated).

Is that really what you meant? I suspect not, but without all that your point about avoiding the stack doesn't make any sense.
by gloosx | 2025-12-08 10:19:03+00:00
>Outside of buying sex and drugs the only uses for cryptocoins are, and always has been, ransoms, scams and gambling

That is a very shallow take. There are real non-criminal uses for crypto that people in stable, wealthy countries often overlook. Millions rely on it simply to move money between family members across borders when traditional banking is slow, blocked, or outright inaccessible due to politics. In several countries, people use crypto to buy food, medicine, or basic goods because their local currency is collapsing or their banking system is dysfunctional, or their entire nation has been cut off from the global financial system as a decision of few politics persons.

Its fine to criticise the scams and speculation — there is plenty of that — but pretending thats the only use case ignores the people who depend on it for everyday survival.
by russellbeattie | 2025-12-08 10:19:04+00:00
I want to preface this by noting that as an adult, I totally understand the intent behind LOGO, its use as an educational tool, and understand its historic place in computer history.

But as a pre-teen kid in the early 80s? I hated LOGO! I thought it was a baby language and I wanted to get back to doing cool stuff in BASIC. Ten year old Me thought LOGO was soooo dumb - you couldn't make a video game, so what use was it?

It seemed every year we'd have a grade school class using LOGO - for a math lesson, or an art project, or an "intro to computing", etc. I was always a classic 80s young computer nerd snob about it.
by b3lvedere | 2025-12-08 10:19:11+00:00
This. Entirely this.

I do get it when companies who serve billions of people cannot do support like companies who support hundreds. But it should be possible to actually contact some human when you, as a customer, have proven that you have exhausted all other options.

As much as i did not like Broadcom purchasing Vmware and made everything a lot more expensive and annoying, i have to acknowledge that their chat support is pretty good, once you have exhausted all other options.
by latexr | 2025-12-08 10:19:32+00:00
> I'm not sure I've ever seen a contact page that wasn't like this.

Click the “Contact” link at the bottom of this HN page. It’s a mailto link.

mailto:hn@ycombinator.com

Reeder has a simple contact form on the page.

https://reederapp.com/classic/

Overcast list an email and social media to contact.

https://overcast.fm/contact

Alfred points to the forum and lists email addresses to contact.

https://www.alfredapp.com/help/contact/

iA Writer lists emails.

https://ia.net/about-us

SnippetsLab list an email.

https://www.renfei.org/snippets-lab/manual/mac/share-your-fe...

iTerm2 list an email.

https://iterm2.com

Those are just a few off the top of my head. Indie developers tend to be more respectful of their customers.

> I'm perfectly happy with "speaking to a human" being the last port of call to fix a problem. as long as it is available somewhere

Yet, too often, it simply isn’t.
by pbhjpbhj | 2025-12-08 10:19:41+00:00
>They have no idea I manage large (not huge) AWS deployments

I wonder if that is true? Like, how tenacious are they with knowing customers? If the same IP address was used to login to manage two deployments would customer service see a potential link in their interface?

I'm never quite sure in our supposed data-driven economy how clever companies get with this stuff.
by saagarjha | 2025-12-08 10:19:48+00:00
Nope, it is. This is a shallow question with no understanding behind why the additional folders were added, which was to bring a lot of functionality that used to litter your entire computer into a place where it is tied to the app that installed it. So the complaint is like looking at a trash can in the park and going “ew this garbage is ugly the park is going downhill” when the reality before that can existed was people threw the litter all over the park.
by pjc50 | 2025-12-08 10:19:49+00:00
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_iAPX_432

I'd never heard of it myself, and reading that Wikipedia page it seems to have been a collection of every possible technology that didn't pan out in IC-language-OS codesign.

Meanwhile, in Britain a few years later in 1985, a small company and a dedicated engineer, Sophie Wilson, decided that what they needed was a RISC processor that was as plain and straightforward as possible ...
by Citizen_Lame | 2025-12-08 10:20:07+00:00
Congratulations on writing the most servile corporate apologia I've seen all week. This is a masterpiece of Stockholm syndrome.

"Accountability means money and paperwork." Beautiful. Just beautiful. You know what else means money and paperwork? A protection racket. "Nice app you got there, shame if something happened to it before it reached customers. That'll be 30% please." But sure, let's call extortion "accountability" because Tim Apple said so.

Your driver signing example is chef's kiss levels of missing the point. Microsoft said "hey, sign your drivers so we know they're not malware" they didn't say "only drivers we approve can run, and also we get a cut." You're comparing a bouncer checking IDs to a mafia don enforcing territory. These are not the same thing.

And oh my god, the Nintendo argument. You're seriously holding up Nintendo's lockout chip as consumer protection? The same lockout chip they used to squeeze third-party developers, control game production, and maintain an iron grip on pricing? "Until Nintendo cleaned out the garbage" yeah, they cleaned it out alright, straight into their own pockets. The video game crash was caused by publishers like Atari flooding the market with garbage like E.T., not by independent developers needing more "accountability."

"The future is signed code with deep identity verification for every instruction." Holy hell. You're not describing a security feature, you're describing a prison. You're literally fantasising about a world where every line of code needs corporate permission to execute. That's techno feudalism with RGB lighting.

This isn't about protecting anyone from bugs. It's about trillion-dollar companies convincing people like you that you need their permission to use the computer you bought. And somehow, SOMEHOW, you've decided this is good actually, and the 1980s with its freedom and innovation was the problem.

The fact that you think general-purpose computing is a "danger" that needs to be locked down says everything about how effectively these corporations have trained you to beg for your own chains.
by simgt | 2025-12-08 10:22:17+00:00
I think the volume is what defines the cost for cargo shipping so your 10x is likely pessimistic. $2.50 is both significant relative to the price of one these jeans and not much compared to what has been the expected cost of a pair for decades.

It says more about how dirt cheap shipping is the single enabler of globalization, even doubling the cost may not be enough to significantly shorten the supply chains.
by jbstack | 2025-12-08 10:24:11+00:00
I'm not sure how you reached this conclusion. I did as you suggested. $100 invested 50 years ago into gold would be worth $3000 today. $100 invested into the S&P500 50 years ago would be worth $6870.

https://www.macrotrends.net/2324/sp-500-historical-chart-dat... https://www.macrotrends.net/1333/historical-gold-prices-100-...
by Barathkanna | 2025-12-08 10:24:13+00:00
This actually looks handy for the “small team with a couple of env files” use case. Most secret-management tools are great once you’re at scale, but trying to explain sops or git-crypt to a team that just wants to stop pasting secrets into Slack is… not fun. A simple password-protected vault committed to git is a reasonable middle ground.

I like the OS keyring integration too,removes a lot of friction. Curious how it behaves in multi-machine workflows and whether you plan to add any guardrails around accidental plaintext commits, since that’s usually where lightweight tools get tripped up.
by lallysingh | 2025-12-08 10:24:39+00:00
No they won't. DoD is small compared to the rest of the software market. You get better quality and lower cost with COTS than with custom solutions, unless you spend a crap ton. The labor market for software's no different.

Everyone likes to crap on C++ because it's (a) popular and (b) tries to make everyone happy with a ton of different paradigms built-in. But you can program nearly any system with it more scalably than anything else.
by rsynnott | 2025-12-08 10:24:56+00:00
In Ireland, knowingly charging more than th display price is a criminal offence; the fake sales mentioned in the article are also illegal, though I’m not sure if that one’s criminal or civil. I expect it’s similar elsewhere.

_Prosecution_ is often more of an effective threat for companies than summary fines, as judges will tend to throw the book at repeat offenders.

Also, the nature of US urbanisation might be a factor. If you can get to more stores easily it’s harder for them to screw your; you will just go elsewhere.

I tend to do my shopping in small batches when walking home from work, and have a decent short term memory for numbers. I don’t remember _ever_ being overcharged by the likes of Tesco/Lidl/whatever. Very occasionally by small shops.
by nephihaha | 2025-12-08 10:24:56+00:00
Urgh... One of the worst things, when you want to contact someone and they have hidden every means of doing so. It reflects badly on the companies that do this and questions why such pages exist to begin with. I understand why companies hate spam, but when a company hides customer service, that should be a major red flag and reeks of cowardice. Customers can and do have major problems, not just Karen type issues, but being ripped off for hundreds or even thousands. They sometimes hide behind underpaid staff who are students or can barely speak English.
by kragen | 2025-12-08 10:24:58+00:00
No, as I explained, it's based on the resulting increase in human capacities and improvement in human welfare. Technology is a collaborative, progressive endeavor in which we advance a skill (techne), generation by generation, through discourse (logos).

Fraud detection can be (and is) extremely hardcore, but it isn't progressive in that way. It's largely tradecraft. Consequently its relationship to novelty and technical risk is fundamentally different.
by mraduldeodhiya | 2025-12-08 10:25:14+00:00
Zono makes it easy to see the time in different places around the world. You can view multiple time zones right in your Mac’s menu bar, so you always know the time anywhere with just a quick look. Whether you work with people in other countries, travel often, or want to stay connected with family and friends abroad, Zono helps you keep track of time without confusion.
by graemep | 2025-12-08 10:25:27+00:00
Its bikeshedding - they can see it so they have an opinion on it. I think it happens in many fields where the output is visual - photography, advertising,.....

There is also a general feeling that websites are primarily about design (rather than development) and that the design is aesthetic (rather than UI).

> I can't imagine another field—hairdressing, construction, financial advice

For financial advice, maybe not as readily, but it definitely happens pretty firmly. Lots of people have lost money taking risks they have been warned about. A lot during booms because of FOMO, and a lot because people do not even take advice in the first place.
by unloader6118 | 2025-12-08 10:25:44+00:00
The contact page on the left is something I absolutely hate. If the prefer method of contact is email, just give me an email. If they need to enter that into some ticketing system, give me access to the ticketing system. The page on right give me some ideas how they handle things internally.

The form on left is almost certainly a webform-to-email, this is ridiculous.

looking at font choice, how ironic they are complaining about UX
by korianders | 2025-12-08 10:25:45+00:00
One baffling thing I see people do with typedefing function pointers is insisting on adding in the pointer part in the typedef which just complicates and hides things.

If you want to typedef a function pointer, make a completely ordinary function declaration, then slap 'typedef' at the beginning, done. This does require you to do "foo_func *f" instead of "foo_func f" when declaring variables, but that is just clearer imo.

typedef int foo_func(int); // nice typedef int (*foo_func)(int); // why?
by torginus | 2025-12-08 10:26:17+00:00
3. has always bothered me - if you run a McDonalds, you have to pay market price for the building, kitchen equipment, both when buying and maintaining it. If you don't pay enough to maintain the fridge, it won't unionize - it will break down.

The idea proposed by these 'free market types', that somehow people working there below sustenance salaries 'deserve it' - that the cost of labor needs to be essentially subsidized just doesn't make sense to me.

Practice what you preach - either pay the wages people need to get by, or close down.
by d4rkn0d3z | 2025-12-08 10:26:23+00:00
An LLM creates a high fidelity statistical probabistic model of human language. The hope is to capture the input/output of various hierarchical formal and semiformal systems of logic that transit from human to human, which we know as "Intelligence".

Unfortunately, its corpus is bound to contain noise/nonsense that follows no formal reasoning system but contributes to the ill advised idea that an AI should sound like a human to be considered intelligent. Therefore it is not a bag of words but a bag of probabilities perhaps. This is important because the fundamental problem is that an LLM is not able, by design, to correctly model the most fundamental precept of human reason, namely the law of non-contradiction. An LLM must, I repeat must assign nonvanishing probability to both sides of a contradiction, and what's worse is the winning side loses, since long chains of reason are modelled with probability the longer the chain, the less likely an LLM is to follow it. Moreover, whenever there is actual debate on an issue such that the corpus is ambiguous the LLM becomes chaotic, necessarily, on that issue.

I literally just had an AI prove the forgoing with some rigor, and in the very next prompt, I asked it to check my logical reasoning for consistency and it claimed it was able to do so (->|<-).
by skepti2 | 2025-12-08 10:26:23+00:00
> It seems to me that the software field overall has become more open to a wider variety of languages and concepts, and knowing Ada wouldn't be perceived as widely as career pidgeonholing today.

Are you sure? I cannot even find Ada in [0].

I tried modifying some Hello World example in Ada some weeks ago, and I cannot say that I liked the syntax. Some features were neat. I had some trouble with figuring out building and organizing files. Like C++, and unlike Rust I think, there are multiple source file types, like how C++ has header files. I also had trouble with some flags, but I was trying to use some experimental features, so I think that part was on me.

[0]: https://redmonk.com/sogrady/2025/06/18/language-rankings-1-2...
by aaaaaaron | 2025-12-08 10:26:33+00:00
"However, I also don’t like to carry two computers just to jot down personal notes. My remedy is to install a virtualization system and create a “personal” virtual machine."

I have the same problem, but I'm not sure if a VM is a good solution. The work OS has full access to the VM and I don't trust putting my personal things even in the VM. (I consider the work laptop backdoored and full with spyware.)
by skeledrew | 2025-12-08 10:27:21+00:00
> If you haven't socialized the means of production when you could strike and make it stop, there's no way you're going to do so when it doesn't need you anymore.

Way I see it, there isn't really a choice here. Once humanity gets to the point where they are literally no longer needed to produce value due to automation, the means of production will be - logically - accessible to all who survive. Those who don't have access will die. And the fewer the survivors, the less relevant the purpose of said means. The means will always "need" people to validate its continued existence.
by ehnto | 2025-12-08 10:27:38+00:00
I appreciate your willingness to keep trying to communicate your experiences. It's obviously a huge spectrum of possible lived experiences and incredibly hard to legislate in a way that does the best for everyone. Do you think having a trained case worker evaluate each person's circumstances and coming up with a pathway to success makes some sense?

I think it totally could for people in just the right position and timing, but I also feel like for many it would be advice and help that could end up unreceived.
by npoc | 2025-12-08 10:27:39+00:00
"Monetary policy" in reality simply means printing more money than is ever destroyed. It's human nature and always will be.

This means bitcoin's average price will go up forever when priced in fiat tokens. Or anything else for that matter - even gold's above-ground stock doubles every 35 years. How's that for an incentive?

The largest amounts of value will always settle in the best store of value for large amounts of value. Show me one with better fundamentals than bitcoin.
by copirate | 2025-12-08 10:28:11+00:00
Yes, but as long as you monitor, double spending is not possible. And it's possible to use tools to do that somewhat passively.

There are conditions on every payment system. With bitcoin you also have something to do to prevent double spending: wait for some number of confirmations (and making sure you're on the right chain).

And "double-spend protection guarantees of blockchains" is very dependent on the cost of doing a 51% attack, so it's not strong by itself. It's very strong in bitcoin only because the quantity of hashrate/money required to do one is astronomical. It's not so strong on small blockchains.

And I fail to see how the risk increases with more transactions on a single lightning channel.
by kragen | 2025-12-08 10:29:31+00:00
"So what" is that Intel is making things ASML can't, things nobody has done before, and they have to try things that might not work in order to make things nobody yet knows how to make. Just to survive, they have to do things experts believe to be impossible.

AirBnB isn't doing that; they're just booking hotel rooms. Their competitive moat consists of owning a two-sided marketplace and political maneuvering to legalize it. That's very valuable, but it's not the same kind of business as Intel or Gurobi.

Nuclear weapons are certainly a case that tests the category of "technology" and which, indeed, sparked widespread despair and abandonment of progressivism: they increase human capabilities, but probably don't improve human welfare. But I don't think that categories become meaningless simply because they have fuzzy edges.
by zozbot234 | 2025-12-08 10:29:45+00:00
Actually, optimal taxation models tend to show that a base transfer at zero income with an initially "high" marginal rate for clawing back the transfer at the lowest end (but still no higher than 100%, and falling very quickly as earnings increase!) works very well. (Marginal rates then rise progressively for higher incomes, and paradoxically become lower again at the very top end, trending towards zero at the extreme top-end of the scale. This is actually a consistent result in non-linear incomes taxation models; the very top earner should face zero marginal tax on the very last cent she earns!)

The intuition is that you only "feel" the high marginal rate if you earn very little, which impacts very few people; but the effect of making the break-even point more manageable with lower marginal rates for most earners is felt throughout the incomes scale. What really screws up things is higher-than-100% marginal rates, which are regrettably common in real-world systems amd completely useless.
by GJim | 2025-12-08 10:30:41+00:00
> I wonder if some kind of big floating energy station could be a thing

Congratulations, you have just re-invented offshore (floating) wind turbines. https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ftsa&q=floating+wind+turbines+&ia=...

> I guess you don't have to pay anyone for the space or worry about too many regulations etc.

I'm ammused you think offshore energy is lawless. It's the same assumption that had the entire maritime community laughing at the clowns behind 'Seasteding" and the amusing MS Satoshi 'cryptoship'.
by scott_w | 2025-12-08 10:30:49+00:00
> This has always frustrated me. You wouldn't go to a doctor, hear that you need an appendix removed, and feel "belittled and undermined"!

Many people absolutely do. Hell, look at the number of people who refused to take a safe and effective vaccine during a pandemic!

> The 'problem' (it's a problem from my pov) is that clients simply think they know better when it comes to digital/computer/online stuff.

I must also say there is definitely a reasonable point to challenge your doctor. While they're an expert, they're still human. As a software engineer, I expect my non-expert colleagues to challenge me, and I've come up with better ideas as a result.

As a real-life example, I'm currently trying to get treatment for my Morton's neuroma (foot-nerve issue). The orthopaedic consultant wants to do a neurectomy but I want to investigate alternatives before taking the leap. Why? The alternatives, while they may not work, won't make things appreciable worse, whereas a neurectomy has a 3-6 month recovery if it goes well and can't really be undone if it goes wrong.