MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by SkyPuncher | 2025-12-26 03:50:13+00:00
I don't know how to feel about this article.

On one hand, this is a very, very bad bug. On the other, the article is almost of hit job to try to prove FOSS would have solved this issue. There are also a lot of completely factually incorrect statements and wild assumptions.

If my understanding is correct, the device in question, the Freestyle Libre 3, is the most popular continuous glucose monitor (GCM) in production. And, one of only a few approved GCMs available. By the very nature of being an extremely popular device that helps manage a chronic, high effort disease (diabetes management is a massive, massive mental drain) - you're going to have failures.

Not to mention, I've always been under the impression that GCMs have some faults and IF the device reports do not match your expectations, you should confirm with an alternative method (like a finger prick) or seek emergency medical attention (which should have been sought in these extreme circumstances, anyways).

-----

Here's the thing for me. FOSS essentially assumes that the user is going to be willing to understand the underlying details to know when FOSS fucks up. Yes, when FOSS fucks up. That's simply not realistic for any consumer product. If your argument for FOSS relies on users being able to read raw data and interpret things that are only learned by education, that's not a consumer grade solution.

Anecdotally, I used use Abbott's Lingo CGM a few months ago to help get me more data on a health issue I was having. I would never, ever, in my wildest dreams have trusted FOSS to get this right. There's simply too much money/effort/rigor involved in getting these biomedical devices correct to believe that the FOSS community could simply create a better product without actually doing any trials or studies. Not to mention, the recommended app (Juggluco) has a terrible UI. This just isn't going anywhere.

To be clear, this is a deadly bug and Abbott should be held accountable - but claiming the solution is some untested, untrailed, terrible UX is not the answer.
by Trasmatta | 2025-12-26 03:51:06+00:00
I'm pretty intensely depressed, so I think I'd like to learn how to be a little less of that. I've tried so many things, but I guess there's always more. Thinking about getting a personal trainer, because I try to stay active, but have no idea how to actually work out. Seems like a good skill to learn, and should help somewhat with the crushing weight my brain seems to be in constantly.
by dllu | 2025-12-26 03:51:26+00:00
Yes, the M4 is still outperforming the desktop 9950X in single-threaded performance on several benchmarks like Geekbench and Cinebench 2024 [1]. Compared to the 9955HX, which is the same physical chip as the 9950X but lower clocked for mobile, the difference is slightly larger. But the 16 core 9950X is obviously much better than the base M4 (and even the 16 core M4 Max, which has only 12 P cores and 4 E cores) at multithreaded applications.

However, the M2 in the blog post is from 2022 and isn't quite as blazingly fast in single thread performance.

[1] https://nanoreview.net/en/cpu-compare/apple-m4-8-cores-vs-am...
by stephen_cagle | 2025-12-26 03:52:09+00:00
tldr; I found something similar when I forced myself to slow down on "The Wheel of Time" series recently.

I've been reading the Wheel of Time (started by Robert Jordan, ended by Brandon Sanderson). I'm on book 11 currently. I've found something similar in that the Jordan's later books in the WOT are basically just incredible slogs if you read for completion (which, I myself did around 20 years ago at around book 10, where I stopped). Around book 6 or so I purposely slowed down and started really imagine the scenes in my minds eye. I also keep the map open on my phone and just kind of keep note of where they are at different points in the series.

Obvious, but it is really striking how much better his books are when you try to "live in the moment" of your imagination as you read, rather than reading to move the plot and action forward. I was kind of confused with myself when I reflected on it. That I somehow thought it made more sense to skim through an entire series and take reduced pleasure from something, when I could just take 50% longer and actually enjoy it.

Made me wonder about where else I am doing this in my life.

I still thinks these books are radically overpadded. He was clearly in love with his characters and his setting. He needed the guidance of a strong armed editor imho. With all that said, if you are going to commit to reading a massive series like this, you might as well appreciate it in the moment, you are going to be here a while.
by shakna | 2025-12-26 03:52:44+00:00
Parts of AT-SPI are impossible to implement under Wayland.

> Wayland has no concept of global coordinates or global key bindings. The protocol itself is designed around atomicity which is a nice concept, but is fundamentally in conflict to the need of assistive technologies to control the entire state of the desktop globally. As such, atspi methods like get_accessible_at_point are impossible in Wayland.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45237411
by heavyset_go | 2025-12-26 03:54:02+00:00
If you're running desktop Linux, you will have a better experience with a rolling release than being stuck with whatever state the software that was frozen in Debian/Ubuntu is in, especially when it comes to multimedia, graphics, screen sharing, etc.

Modern desktop Linux relies on software that's being fixed and improving at a high velocity, and ironically, can be more stable than relying on a distro's fixed release cycles.

KDE Plasma, Wayland support, Pipewire, etc all have had recent fixes and improvements that you will not get to enjoy for another X months/years until Canonical pulls in those changes and freezes them for release.

Similarly, newer kernels are a must when using relatively recent hardware. Fixes and support for new hardware lands in new kernels, LTS releases might not have the best support for your newer hardware.
by Tracy978 | 2025-12-26 03:54:17+00:00
Smart LEDs really are shifting lighting from “hardware” to “software.”

One nuance that often gets missed in the hype: the biggest practical wins aren’t the rainbow effects, but the boring stuff—reliability and predictable power behavior. Addressable strips are amazing for UX, but they also introduce real constraints (power distribution, signal integrity, controller choice, PWM artifacts, etc.). In longer runs, “energy efficiency” can get wiped out quickly if you end up overbuilding the PSU or adding lots of injection points because of voltage drop.

The other interesting direction is feedback loops: ambient light + occupancy + time-of-day is already common, but I’d like to see more systems expose simple local rules (no cloud dependency) and provide introspection (e.g., current draw, thermal throttling, dropped frames on data line) so you can debug automation like you debug software.

If anyone’s curious about the practical side of wiring/controlling addressable strips (controller + grounding + common failure modes), this guide is a decent starting point:
https://suntechlite.com/how-to-control-connect-and-wire-addr...
by alluro2 | 2025-12-26 03:54:34+00:00
I adore my Linux setup and have switched back to it after using M1 Pro for 3 years.

But through all the Dells, Thinkpads and Asus laptops I've had (~10), none were remotely close to a full package that MBP M1 Pro was.

- Performance - outstanding

- Fan noise - non-existent 99% of the time, cannot compare to any other laptop I had

- Battery - not as amazing as people claim for my usage, but still at least 30% better

- Screen, touchpad, speakers, chassis - all highest tier; some PC laptops do screen (Asus OLED), keyboard and chassis (Thinkpad) better, but nothing groundbreaking...

It's the only laptop I've ever had that gave me a feeling that there is nothing that could come my way, and I wouldn't be able to do on it, without any drama whatsoever.

It's just too bad that I can't run multiple external displays on Asahi...

(For posterity, currently using Asus Zenbook S16, Ryzen HX370, 32GB RAM, OLED screen, was $1700 - looks and feels amazing, screen is great, performance is solid - but I'm driving it hard, so fan noise is constant, battery lasts shorter, and it's just a bit more "drama" than with MBP)
by jimmaswell | 2025-12-26 03:55:46+00:00
> typing isn't the bottleneck. Not even close.

I find it absolutely is much of the time - I'll determine the architecture/overall solution, know exactly what needs to go in a multitude of files, and now actualizing all that isn't really thinking anymore, just donkey work. Getting AI to do this has been incredible now that it's finally good enough. I've had Copilot make flawless 500+LOC C++ classes in the first pass, and when I introduced bugs by changing it by hand, it found them instantly from stack traces without even having symbols, saving me hours. I see a future where writing a large codebase all by hand is seen like raising a barn the Amish way with no powertools - impressive and maybe there's something to be said for it philosophically, but just not practical otherwise.
by pzp1001 | 2025-12-26 03:56:06+00:00
If I understand what the article is saying, using DTMF tones like this does not offer anonymity for the patients on the other end of the phone call. Simply recording the DTMF tones would be enough to reveal the patient's true phone number. Perhaps there was some sort of server-side mapping scheme in use to mask the numbers and the DTMF tones were truly just for data transmission, but no such mention was made in the article.
by jauntywundrkind | 2025-12-26 03:56:06+00:00
Hono for example has a RegExpRouter and a TrieRouter, both of which seek for a matching route from amid multiple options. URL Patterns, plural!

They also have a linear search router, which they even say could have wins in some cases. But for relatively complex apps, with lots of possible sub-routes, the idea of running theonesr search feels so bad to me.

https://hono.dev/docs/concepts/routers
by kinj28 | 2025-12-26 03:56:14+00:00
My cofounders mom had got Alzheimer’s at rather younger age of 60 something. It grew extremely rapid and within 2 years she grew into a vegetative state.

Given how I have seen different patients and varying pace of dementia growth - I somehow think Alzheimer’s must have multiple sub families & may appear same but must be behaving differently from their onset.
by niccl | 2025-12-26 03:56:27+00:00
This is one of the things I actually remember my mother saying. Festina lente [0]: Make haste slowly. I've always tried to stick to it because when I have it's been useful.

Sadly, for some reason I now can't read slowly, which pisses me off. I and my partner read aloud together alternating chapters of a chosen book, and I love how get _much_ more out of the book than I would reading alone in a tenth of the time.

0: (https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/festina%20lente)
by rewgs | 2025-12-26 03:57:20+00:00
Technical:

Audio programming with C++. I was a professional film/game composer for the first 10+ years of my career, but when I started programming I was mostly interested in solving problems that required web and infrastructure skills. Also, I always looked at C++ as something to tackle once I was a better programmer -- I now think I'm a pretty okay programmer and am ready to take it on. I'd like to eventually do a deep dive into Rust as well, but I'm focusing on C++ first, as the vast majority of audio programming is still done in C++ and likely will be for the foreseeable future, and I think learning Rust will be more valuable once I've run into many of the pain points that it addresses.

Non-technical:

Improve my archery. I started this year and love it.
by tomhow | 2025-12-26 03:57:49+00:00
Hacker News can only be good if people make the effort to make it good. Sure, there is always going to be a mix of things that push the standard up and things that drag the standard down. That's how averages and distributions work.

Unfortunately what we see from you is a pattern of low-effort comments, some of which don't even bother with basic sentence formation like capitalization at the start and a period at the end. Looking down your comment feed we see many single-line comments that are low on substance and high in snark.

The guidelines make it clear we're trying for something better here. They ask us to be kind, and to avoid snark and swipes. They ask us to converse curiously. They ask us not to fulminate, and not to sneer, including at the rest of the community.

It's fine to want HN to be better. As moderators we certainly do; that's why we do this job. But it requires us all to actually make the effort to be better in our own conduct. When you see comments from other users that aren't up to standard, we need you to use the tools that have always been here, like downvoting, flagging and emailing us (hn@ycombinator.com) so we can take action.

If you really want HN to be better, please do your part to raise the standards rather than dragging them down further.
by fragmede | 2025-12-26 03:58:16+00:00
Asking "what is this?" is fine. Treating "I was unfamiliar with this" as evidence that the post is deficient is not.

HN already assumes a baseline of technical literacy. When something falls outside that baseline, the usual move is to ask for context or links, not to reframe personal unfamiliarity as an author failure.

So please, don’t normalize treating "I don’t know this yet" as a failure of the post.
by SkyPuncher | 2025-12-26 03:59:00+00:00
> CGMs (of any brand) are not, and have never been, reliable in the way that this story implies that people want them to be reliable

This has been my impression. I briefly used an Abbott Lingo to help me understand some health issues I was experiencing.

It's always been clear to me (including in the app and documentation) that CGMs are an extremely convenient tool as a first line - but struggle in extreme circumstances. And, let's be clear, if you would generally know if your body is in one of these extreme circumstances. You'd probably be feeling like shit.

That's not to mention the device in question, the Freestyle Libre, is (to my understanding) by far the most popular insulin-dependent diabetes CGM available.

This article is equivalent to calling the Boeing 737 unsafe because it's had the most Full Lost Events while completely ignoring it's flown 238.84M flights (which is basically more than the entire rest of the list combined).
by spudlyo | 2025-12-26 03:59:48+00:00
I started learning Latin in 2025, and I'm pretty happy with my progress. I can read intermediate level pedagogical texts -- mostly adapted Greek and Roman myths. In 2026 I want to get my proficiency up to the point where I can comfortably read the first book of Caesar's Commentarii de Bello Gallico. This is doable, many of the texts I'm reading now were designed to teach the vocabulary and grammar so High School students could slog through it.
by shmerl | 2025-12-26 03:59:58+00:00
> The answer was as unhelpful as possible

Looking at the answer, I wouldn't call it unhelpful. They were planning to release a source for the library that would essentially implement all the needed data interfaces? That's more than helpful and at least they responded.

I tried contacting Nuvoton for example about their documentation for some of their super I/O chips which lack Linux support. Not only I got no details, I literally didn't even get a response from them at all. So above case is hugely better.
by Magmalgebra | 2025-12-26 04:00:01+00:00
> I hate leetcode and that keeps me away from most of the job opportunities

Odds are that until you can get past this mindset, you will hit a similar wall in every career, it will just be less obvious to you that you're hitting it.

Success at most careers means a lot of tedious grinding out basic skills. If you're lucky you like the grinding, but that's rare.

And here's the important part - getting better at this stuff makes the job more fun, humans really like the feeling of mastery. My first 4 years in SWE were miserable because I had no CS background. But I ground really hard on textbooks and leetcode, every minute of which was uncomfortable, and now my career is awesome!

Maybe SWE isn't for you, but whatever you do, commit to the work.
by dilyevsky | 2025-12-26 04:00:01+00:00
> How would you determine or estimate "age of email"? It isn't really public info. Does it imply that you are by now expected to be doxxed by data brokers to not be judged suspicious?

There are services that let you do that. Imperfect ofc as they rely on data brokers like you said. You can thank all the spammers and carders for that
by AbstractH24 | 2025-12-26 04:00:03+00:00
To expand my knowledge of product management and JavaScript enough to build a strong prototype of app/business i have in mind with the help of Lovable and other ai tools.

Already, I know enough to know that just prompting without a solid foundation is going to be unpleasant in so many ways.

And then, once I’ve proven it out hire real coders.
by pinkmuffinere | 2025-12-26 04:01:18+00:00
- Do the splits!

- Climb a V8 at my local climbing gym! I presently project V5's, and I think the scale is super-linear (but personally it doesn't feel logarithmic to me). So that would be a significant increase, probably near the edge of what I could really achieve in a year.

- Get our business (mydragonskin.com) to a point where it pays us standard engineer salaries. So far we've been extracting significantly less than our market value.

- Acquire (romantic) partner that I believe will be my person; find "The One"
by herewulf | 2025-12-26 04:01:27+00:00
No major manufacturer is even approaching what Framework is trying to do, so I'm happy to cut them some slack in order to support a product philosophy that I believe in. My 12th Gen Framework 13 is certainly good enough in this respect.

People have bought not so well made electric cars for the same reason (e.g.: Tesla).

Your car analogy does not really hold up though, considering that anything but an absolutely awful car is quite repairable and (in the right hands) upgradable.
by II2II | 2025-12-26 04:03:09+00:00
> For the same reason I have decided I don't like fast travel in games.

I was playing Wing Commander, Privateer way back when (mid-1990's) and didn't realize that there were ways to travel faster. So I did the obvious: I pretended I was a trader on a long haul route, dug out some books and notebooks, and just did whatever until I arrived at my destination or was attacked by pirates. I loved the passive game play in the moment, but I didn't realize how much until about a decade later. That kinda ruined gaming for me in general since games tend to keep the player busy (even if they aren't action games).

In some respects, I think that slow travel offers a sense of authenticity to the game. Well, I should say to some games. Many games set out goals for players. It's obvious why. If there is nothing to accomplish, there is little sense of accomplishment. Yet goals also ruin things in my mind since there is an urgency to get things done to see what the outcome is. Of course, games also reward following up on that urgency. That's contrary to real life where you may be rewarded or you may have to wait upon the rewards.
by AdieuToLogic | 2025-12-26 04:04:02+00:00
> I want to learn driving.

Two low-risk and cheap ways to develop relevant driving skills are bumper cars[0] and go-karts[1]. This may appear to be silly at first, but both involve the same hand-eye coordination and decision skills of vehicular driving (though the latter is no where nearly as fun as the others).

0 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bumper_cars

1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Go-kart
by pan69 | 2025-12-26 04:04:06+00:00
I want to quit my cosy, well paying, job and start building the products I have been wanting to build for quite some years now. I have been starting to use AI about 12 months ago and, as an experienced engineer of 30+ years professionally, I am blown away by how productive it makes me. What I used to be able to do in a week now takes me a day, what I used to be able to do in a month now takes me week, etc.

So, 2026 is going to be the year I'm going to run this experiment on myself and see what I can accomplish with this way of working.
by beingfit | 2025-12-26 04:05:05+00:00
I love my Apple Watch (it’s a few years old) and depend on it everyday to track things and keep me motivated to exercise and move. I do have to charge it for nearly an hour everyday, though like others have said I would prefer longer battery life (as opposed to getting a bigger and more expensive one like Apple Watch Ultra).

I wouldn’t be exaggerating when I say that it’s changed my life for the better. At the same time, I personally know people who have it but aren’t used to it or don’t use it for what it does best.
by SkyPuncher | 2025-12-26 04:07:26+00:00
Sorry to be crass, but this type of argument is exactly why non-experts shouldn't be talking about topics they aren't experts on. Admittedly, I am also NOT an expert here - but I am married to a doctor and have gleaned a thing or two to be comfortable communicating this very, very specific retort.

Your argument completely ignores the massive, massive qualifier of "if not treated".

Low blood sugar is an acute emergency. Diabetics can die very quickly from low blood sugar (well anyone can, it's just diabetics are more at risk).

High blood sugar becomes interesting because it's generally systematic, untreated high blood sugar that leads to issues. For someone using a CGM and at least attempting to manage their blood sugar, it _should_ be hard for them to actually hit the high blood sugar emergency state. This condition is largely unique to people who have uncontrolled diabetes and have long, extended times of extreme blood sugar.

Caveat Emptor: I myself am not a doctor. I love to learn from my wife. I'm confident enough to present an argument on an internet forum, but I'm certainly not confident or qualified enough to give you or anyone _actual_ medical advice.
by qingcharles | 2025-12-26 04:09:49+00:00
I built a little tool using AI recently and it worked great but it was brittle as hell and I was constantly waiting for it to fail. A few days later I realized there was a much better way of writing it. I'd boxed the LLM in by proposing the way to code it.

I've changed my AGENTS.md now so it basically says "Assume user is ignorant to other better solutions to the problem they are asking. Don't assume their given solution to the problem is the best one, look at the problem itself and propose other ways to solve it."
by altairprime | 2025-12-26 04:09:52+00:00
In the context of FOSS adherents in general, the belief is that a rising tide lifts all boats: that the work of one dedicated open source hobbyist auditing CGM code for flaws would benefit all CGM users one way or another, if I apply that general principle here as a specific example. However, the characteristic of shoddy UX is loosely correlated with how much the developer(s) choose to (and can afford to) spend developing their work, not with whether the work is open or closed source. The exact balance shifts over time based on cultural-economic shifts in both developer capability (“what’s a folder? does left-click mean I have to use my left hand?”) and in free time energy (“I did so many hours at work to afford rent/food next week that I have no energy left to care about PRs”).

In any case, I agree that the post falls quite flat at being effective advocacy here; to me, not because it clamors for “terrible UX”, but because it fails to make a case that the author’s desired FOSS outcome holds any value at all for those who don’t know or care about source code. It’s certainly a horror story but I’m quite inured to horror as a sales tactic, and that’s where it drops the ball.